Personally Hilary could see why Rod would like Lynda’s curves, as well as the rest of her. Hilary had bumped into them one night in O’Donohue’s after Colette had taken flight to London, and Rod had introduced her to Lynda. She was a down to earth, warm, friendly type with sparkling green eyes, and a mop of auburn curls that cascaded onto smooth creamy shoulders, and a full and ripe bosom, and was far from the ‘carrot-haired, fat bogger’ Colette had so disparagingly described. Natural and voluptuous, Lynda certainly did not share Colette’s clothes hanger sophistication.
Rod’s rejection of Colette had been too devastating to bear and, when her mother had suggested that she go to London to get over her broken heart, Colette had agreed.
An angry honking of a car’s horn at the Artane roundabout brought Hilary back to earth and real life. Thank God it wasn’t directed at her, she thought guiltily. She had been driving on auto pilot, her thoughts way back, what was it, ten or more years since the days of their giddy early twenties? And now both of them were married, she to Niall who had indeed phoned her to arrange a date, and Colette to Des, a London-based financier whom she had married in a fairy-tale wedding in Rome.
Both of them married, both of them mothers, she to Sophie and Millie, Colette to Jasmine. And both of them with very, very different lives, Hilary reflected as she stop-started her way to work. Colette was such a complex character, it was a wonder their friendship had lasted as long as it had. She was one of the most competitive people Hilary knew. She had to be the centre of attention. Had to have a bigger car, better job, sexier boyfriend than any of their circle of friends. But Hilary knew that behind the confident, smug, superior façade lay a young woman who was plagued by insecurity. Hilary was one of the few who knew the real Colette. The Colette who was generous to a fault, the Colette who would cry buckets because of a broken heart, the Colette who had longed to be ‘ordinary’, just like Hilary and her sister Dee, and have a mother who was waiting at home when she came in from school, who would be interested in hearing about her day, and who would have a yummy dinner waiting for her. Even though her friend could drive her mad with her selfish, thoughtless behaviour, Hilary could never stay annoyed with her for long, because she was a big softie and she knew Colette’s vulnerabilities and she knew that Colette thought of her as the sister she’d never had.
Colette wouldn’t be stuck in traffic, doing the school run and the bumper-to-bumper commute to work though. Hilary couldn’t help the pang of envy, knowing that her friend had a nanny and housekeeper in her luxurious London flat. She wouldn’t come home to breakfast dishes on the draining board and a hastily swept kitchen, or a mountain of clothes in the linen basket that had to be washed, ironed and put away, like Hilary would. Their lives had always been dissimilar, even when they were little girls, but their friendship, imperfect as it was, had lasted this long. That in itself was an achievement, Hilary thought, amused, remembering some of their humdinger rows as she swung into the car park of Kinsella Illuminations, the showrooms of the family’s lighting and electrical business.
C
HAPTER
T
WO
Colette O’Mahony stretched luxuriously between her Frette Egyptian cotton sheets and watched the sun dapple the apple-green leaves of the trees that lined the street on which her white-painted, stucco-pillared Holland Park mansion of luxurious flats stood.
She was tired and a hint of a headache lingered around her temples. She was sorry now that she’d told her husband that she’d accompany him on a business trip to Dublin. They were booked to fly from Heathrow later that evening, after meeting a Japanese client for afternoon tea in Cliveden House, and the thought of traipsing around that grey, grim tunnel they had the nerve to call an airport terminal made her head ache even more. What was it about Heathrow that always left you feeling wilted, hot and sweaty, no matter what terminal you went to? She’d stay in bed for another twenty minutes and then pack. Colette yawned and turned over, snuggling into the pillows, dimly aware of the sound of the vacuum down the hall. At least she didn’t have to get up and set the flat to rights. That would have been the pits, she thought groggily.
They had hosted a dinner party the previous evening for some of her husband’s Wall Street colleagues who were in London for myriad meetings with their UK counterparts, and while it had all gone very well – as all of her dinner parties did, thanks primarily to her housekeeper, Mrs Zielinski, her caterers, and, of course, her own organizational skills – it was still wearing. Des always amped up the psychological pressure in the days coming up to an impress-the-hell-out-of-the-colleagues dinner party.
‘Have you scheduled the mini-maids and the window cleaners? Have you ordered the lobsters? Should we have venison instead of steak? Have you ordered the flowers? How about orchids only? Are you using the Crown Derby and the Lalique?’
‘Yes, yes, yes and yes, Lalique for the champagne, pre-dinner drinks, Waterford crystal for the meal
