Looking at her, Roisin suddenly felt all wrong. She was nearly thirty-seven, a mother and a soon-to-be divorcee. Who was she kidding? What was she doing here? Shay was in his late twenties and lived the kind of drifting lifestyle that didn’t loan itself to fitting in with her regimented life in London. So, what was this? Why was she here? Deep breaths, Roisin, she told herself, practising the exercises she’d been telling Shay about a few minutes earlier. She approached the table with a smile firmly attached to her face.
‘Roisin, this is Estelle,’ Shay said as she sat back down.
She would be called Estelle. It had been too much to hope for a good old Geraldine or the likes, Roisin took the girl’s soft, dainty hand and managed to refrain from giving it a hard squeeze. ‘Hi, lovely to meet you,’ she said in a breathy voice and Roisin instantly felt mean. Her face was open and honest as she smiled at her. Even so, Roisin was pleased to note that she had lipstick on her teeth.
‘You, too.’
‘Estelle and I go way back,’ Shay explained. ‘We met when I was just starting out.’
‘At a gig in Galway.’ Estelle filled in the blanks.
God, what was she then, twelve? Stop it, Roisin.
‘I was dating Lex from Bad Noise,’ Estelle grimaced. ‘God, he was a nightmare. It took him longer to do his hair than me and he was forever pinching my smoothing serum.’
Roisin smiled despite herself at the mental picture invoked and the girl beamed back straightening up. Roisin was glad she was sitting down. Her head would have only come up to the girl’s chest and as for her legs, well, they’d finish at Estelle’s kneecaps.
‘Well, Roisin, it was lovely to meet you and Shay.’ She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Always fabulous to see you but I’ll have to love you and leave you, Maxim is like a spoiled baby when he’s not getting attention.’ She giggled and pointed to her date who looked like a Calvin Klein advertisement as he pouted around the restaurant, a moody vision in denim.
‘Yeah, you too, say hi to Bella, Sebastian and the gang for me when you catch up next. It’s been way too long.’
Roisin looked at him and back at Estelle and felt like the square peg who’d never fit into the round hole world, they moved in. She knocked back her sunrise and ordered another.
Chapter 19
1957
‘Nice flowers kid,’ Dermot Muldoon said, gum snapping as he passed by her desk. She’d put the bouquet in an emptied-out pencil holder and was almost hidden behind the colourful blooms as she attacked her typewriter in an effort to catch up on the pile of rewrites dumped in her in-tray. The gum chewing usually annoyed Clio, they weren’t Americans and Dermot loved to play the hardened, New York reporter type, modelled no doubt after films he’d seen. Today however, the thought of America and anything to do with the country made her feel like singing. In fact, she’d just had a tap on the shoulder from Ciara, who sat at the desk behind her, asking her to stop humming Loving You. She hadn’t known she was but Ciara said she’d inadvertently typed Elvis Presley into the editorial she was working on.
Nobody had ever given her flowers before and this posy had been brought to her desk by a young delivery boy who’d winked at her and said, ‘Somebody must be sweet on you.’. It had made her feel all warm inside and she knew her face had coloured. She’d been centre of attention as the other girls in the typing pool had speculated as to who her admirer was. Clio had been coy, although she’d enjoyed all the fuss. She’d ignored the whispered remark bitchy Brigid, who wore her skirts just a little too tight, had made about there being no accounting for taste. She was only jealous, she told herself. All that mincing around the office she did was getting her nowhere.
The note she’d pulled from the envelope attached to the blooms was from Gerry. There was no one else they could have been from and her pulse beat a little quicker at the thought of him thinking enough of her to splurge on a bouquet. She’d held the message close as she read it, well away from the others’ prying eyes.
Dear Clio, I hope I didn’t offend you the other day and if I did well, this is my way of apologizing for being a brash and insensitive American. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and would like to invite you to afternoon tea at that most Irish of establishments, the Merrion Hotel this Saturday at 3.30pm. I shall wait for you in the drawing room where I believe the people watching is excellent and I hope I’ll see you there.
Clio gazed at the flowers, once more losing herself in the intricate patterns of the petals. Nature was a wonderous thing she thought dreamily, jumping a moment later as the chief’s booming growl sounded from his office. ‘Clio where are those damned rewrites? They should have been on my desk half an hour ago.’ Her fingers began to fly over the keys once more. Nature was all well and good but she had a job to do, she told herself sternly.
CLIO’S WEEK WAS MERCIFULLY busy although her mind kept drifting to Saturday and what she would wear. She’d seen a dress in the window of Brown Thomas on her way to get the bus and had stopped to stare. It was lemon coloured with a nipped-in waist and full skirt and the slogan next to it said ‘Be a Ray of Sunshine on an Autumn Day. Yellow looked well on her, she knew that. The dress was far prettier than anything she had hanging in her half of the wardrobe at home. She mentally poured herself into the dress and imagined the admiration in Gerry’s
