Chapter 2 #2
‘Sorry, Kate,’ Jake panted. ‘Spiderman’s after me. I’m the bad guy.’ His four-year-old brother Sam was storming through the crowd towards them, while her brother Conor tried to field him. They sent a kind of Mexican wave through the crowd as drinks were hoisted aloft to save them from spilling.
‘Well, there goes my reputation as Supermum!’ Helen smiled wryly.
A former actress, she was now at the centre of a growing industry built around her cult status as an Olympic-standard home-maker.
A tall, strikingly attractive blonde, she seemed effortlessly elegant, her precision-cut bob gleaming as if it had been newly polished, her tailored oyster suit showing off her figure, which was still girlishly slim even after two children.
Sam thundered up to Jake on his chubby little legs, with Conor, red-faced, in the rear.
‘Sam!’ Kate grinned. ‘You wore your Spiderman costume!’
‘He wouldn’t put on his new clothes,’ Jake explained importantly, with all the superiority of an elder brother.
‘It was the only way we could get him out of the house,’ Helen said. ‘Rachel’s furious.’ She giggled.
‘Huh! I’d like to see her wrestle Sam into something he doesn’t want to wear.’
Sam and Jake tore off again.
‘No more running, you two!’ Conor roared futilely.
He greeted Kate with a kiss. ‘Hi, Lorcan,’ he called to his brother. ‘Saw your show last week – complete bollocks!’ he roared cheerily.
‘Uh, thanks Conor.’
‘I’ll call you during the week, give you a few pointers where you went wrong.’
‘Great!’ Lorcan grimaced. To create a diversion he introduced Conor and Helen to Carmen.
‘Helen’s quite famous, actually,’ he told her.
‘She’s kind of a Jane Asher on speed – Ireland’s answer to Martha Stewart.
’ When Carmen looked blank, he explained, ‘She’s a sort of housewife guru. She has her own TV show.’
‘Oh really? I’ve never seen it.’
‘Oh, no one ever sees it,’ Lorcan said airily. ‘It’s on during the day when real people are at work.’
‘I do have my adoring public, Lorcan,’ Helen protested mildly.
‘It’s kind of Blue Peter for grown-ups. She shows you how to make a dinner service out of pastry and knit your own Christmas tree, stuff like that.’
‘Don’t mind him.’ Helen laughed. ‘It’s a lifestyle show,’ she explained to Carmen. ‘We do cookery slots, features on entertaining and home decor, stuff like that. It’s not going to set the world on fire but—’
‘Don’t sell yourself short, Helen,’ Lorcan said. ‘You’re setting the world on fire one homemade scented candle at a time.’
Meanwhile, Conor was badgering Kate about her career plans. ‘So, what’s next?’ he asked.
Kate hesitated to tell him that she didn’t have any plans. ‘Freddie and I are doing Northsiders on Monday,’ she said brightly.
‘Right.’ Conor sounded unconvinced. ‘That’s, what, half a day’s work?’
She should have known he wouldn’t be that easily fobbed off. ‘It might be a whole day,’ she mumbled. She knew Conor meant well, but he always made her feel like such an idiot.
‘I meant what are your plans long-term?’
‘I’m going to sign up with a temp agency while I look around for something.’
‘Give the poor girl a break,’ Helen butted in. ‘She’s only just got back.’
The truth was, career-wise, Kate was the failure of the family.
Since qualifying as a chef she had worked her way steadily down the ladder of success, drifting through a series of short-term, dead-end jobs that allowed her to cook without the pressure of a restaurant.
Food was her passion, but she found most professional kitchens terrifying – huge, frenetic places lorded over by megalomaniacal bullies.
Between cooking jobs she kept body and soul together by waitressing, catering the odd dinner party and occasionally being a TV extra.
‘Helen could put in a word for you with her producer,’ Conor was saying now. ‘They’re always looking for people to develop new cooking shows – they’re so popular now.’
‘Oh yes,’ Helen chipped in, ‘and I could get you in for a cookery slot on my show any time you want.’
‘There you go,’ Conor said, in his another-problem-solved tone. ‘You could do the odd cookery slot on Helen’s show and build up an audience from there.’
Why, Kate wondered, did everyone in her family assume that she wanted an audience? ‘I don’t want to build up an audience, Conor. I’m a chef, not an entertainer.’
‘Same thing nowadays, isn’t it? Get known on the box and the world’s your oyster. You could do whatever you want after that – write books, open your own restaurant, whatever.’
Any minute now he’d have her launching a range of cookware or ready meals, Kate thought.
‘And you look terrific – slim but voluptuous. You’ve lost just the right amount of weight but not so much that you look like you don’t enjoy your own cooking. They say you should never trust a skinny chef.’
Kate was aware that Conor was schmoozing her, but she had to admit he was good.
She was almost starting to believe she was the next Nigella Lawson, bending over her pots in a low-cut top while she licked sauce off her fingers and made come-hither eyes at the camera.
But that was Conor’s talent, bringing out the best in people, making them believe in themselves and getting others to believe in them.
His bullying charm had made him the hugely successful producer that he was.
Unexpectedly, Carmen got Kate off the hook, saving her from any further onslaught. ‘My God! Is that Phoenix?’
They followed her gaze to the door through which Phoenix, the biggest rockstar in Ireland, was entering, accompanied by his stunning Egyptian wife, Summer, an edgy looking, snake-hipped supermodel.
A frisson of excitement went around the reception as everyone clocked them.
As the singer with Walking Wounded, Phoenix was the most visible member of the band and probably the most famous Irishman in the world, although the legendary excesses of his bandmates, Rory and Owen Cassidy, had earned them more column inches of late.
He was swiftly followed by the least visible member of the band, his little sister, Georgie, who played drums. They took up position in a corner, while the rest of the guests acted cool, pretending they weren’t there.
‘You know them?’ Carmen asked.
‘Will is Walking Wounded’s manager,’ Lorcan told her.
All the guests were acting like bad extras, feigning absorption in their conversations and studiously ignoring the stars while their eyes drifted surreptitiously towards them.
Nobody missed it when, moments later, Rory and Owen Cassidy came in together with their girlfriends and joined the private party in the corner.
They were all dressed down but still managed to look more glamorous than anyone else.
Beside them, all the other guests appeared clownishly overdone and frumpy.
‘I don’t know why they were invited to the wedding,’ Conor said. ‘Tom’s partied with them a few times, but they’re not that close.’
‘Rachel wanted to up the ante,’ Helen said drily. ‘They’ll add cool to the proceedings and give her a much better chance of getting the wedding written up on the society pages.’
‘The real question is, why did they come?’ Kate said.
‘Free grub and booze, according to Will,’ Lorcan told her.
‘But they’re loaded – they don’t need free booze.’
‘Ah, you can take the boy out of the tenement, but you can’t take the tenement out of the boy. Will reckons they can’t shake off the ligger mentality.’
‘Phoenix seems to have copied your hairdo.’ Kate grinned slyly at Lorcan. ‘What’s the real story on that? I don’t buy for a minute that it was Tom’s idea.’
‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.’ Lorcan laughed, and proceeded to tell her anyway.
* * *
As there was no sign of dinner and everyone was still mingling, Kate armed herself with another pair of gin and tonics and dutifully did the round of her relations, who all asked jovially when she would be giving them a day out.
With a pain in her face from pretending to take this in good part, she decided she wasn’t quite pissed enough yet to deal with them and drifted towards the bar in search of reinforcements.
She was seething at the unfairness of it all. For once she had a boyfriend she could parade in front of them and now when she mentioned him they looked at her as though she’d made him up. What was the use of having a boyfriend if you couldn’t pull him out on occasions like this, like a trump card?
‘Hello, Kate.’ A familiar baritone shook her out of her private strop.
‘Will, hi!’ She turned, smiling at him.
He bent to kiss her cheek.
‘I haven’t seen you in ages,’ she said, immediately realising how idiotic that sounded. They had just spent the afternoon in each other’s company at the wedding and posing for photographs. ‘I mean, you know, before this afternoon,’ she babbled. ‘I hadn’t seen you for ages.’
God, what the hell was she saying? She’d had too much to drink.
Still, she thought, maybe it was just as well – the booze might loosen her up.
She was ridiculously shy with him. It was ludicrous that after more than ten years she still felt that night after the Trinity Ball hanging in the air between them whenever they met.
She wondered yet again if Will had any recollection of it. She’d probably never know.
‘You look fantastic,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
‘You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?’
‘I’m surprised you noticed!’
‘It suits you.’
‘You should see me without this dress on.’
‘What?’ Will spluttered.
Kate blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘I didn’t mean, you know, the full monty or anything. I just meant this dress is so massive I’m amazed you can tell I’m a bit thinner,’ she explained, in a desperate attempt to save face. Too late – Will was already smiling at her like the idiot she was.