The Valentine's Card Read online

  ‘They want to interview you.’

  ‘Me? Feck off!’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Why? Feck off!’

  ‘They want to talk to you about Sim, how you got together, how you’re coping without …’ Reece faltered, ‘Bad idea. Sorry. I’ll tell them to, what is it, feck off?’

  ‘The Courtesan thing’s not even on telly yet.’ Orla’s heart pumped harder. Anonymity suited her. Sim was the one who’d wanted to be in OK! and now here she was in a London members’ club discussing interview requests while he lay in a coffin. The cosmos had cartwheeled.

  Their food arrived. Both were glad of the distraction, but as soon as the fishcakes were tasted, judged, pronounced better than school’s, Reece returned to the subject.

  ‘I want you to be, you know, prepared. The Beeb spent a fortune making Courtesan and they’re spending another fortune promoting it. They want awards. And syndication. Sim’s a gift to them. They’re running with the whole “dead before his time” thing, “young star cut down in his prime”, all that bollocks.’ Reece leaned back, looked at the ceiling. ‘Trouble is, the little bastard was so handsome.’

  ‘Wasn’t he though?’ Reece had told Orla about the panic straight after Sim’s death, when the BBC had sounded out the Quinns about retaining their son’s performance. With some rejigging of the storyline and the use of a lookalike in long-shot, they’d been able to salvage the production without recasting the Comte de Caylus. Orla would have liked to hear it from the Quinns themselves: another small hurt she’d had to bear.

  ‘Are you going to watch it?’ Reece asked.

  ‘Not sure. Seeing Sim walking and talking and wearing fancy breeches. Being alive. It would be voodoo.’

  ‘It might help.’

  ‘It might kill me.’

  ‘I should shut up.’

  ‘No. You should say—’ Orla held up her glass, ‘—happy birthday, Orla!’

  ‘What?’ Reece looked aghast, held up his glass automatically and clinked it with Orla’s. ‘You’re kidding. Why are you here with boring old me and not with your mates?’

  Confessing that her landlady was her closest friend would sound bizarre to an arch networker. Orla could have explained that she’d chosen not to seek out new people, that company exhausted her, that a septuagenarian fulfilled all her needs, but said instead, ‘My friends are all in Ireland.’ There had been cards from the family and a Skyped, out of tune round of Happy birthday to you / you look like a poo from Juno and Jack. Orla hadn’t told Maude, hadn’t wanted any fuss. Now, in this tipsy room lively with laughter and gossip, fuss seemed desirable. Another green shoot, Orla guessed, unfurling and stretching towards the light.

  ‘Happy birthday, Orla.’ Reece looked sobered. She hoped very much – that it wasn’t pity in his eyes. ‘Sim would have taken you somewhere splendid. I’m a poor replacement.’

  ‘No, you’re—’ Orla was cut off by a shriek from the door-way.

  ‘REECE! DARLING!’

  Reece swivelled, half stood, ‘Look what the cat’s dragged in!’ he cried.

  The room swelled, the lights brightened, as heads turned to see the newcomer. Petite but long limbed, with a dancer’s prancing step, the woman approached their table, singing good-humouredly, ‘YOU’VE BEEN AVOIDING ME, YOU CUNT!’

  As the actress neared them – and it was an actress, Orla would have bet her house on that – the years stacked up. She grew older with each step until she enveloped Reece in a bear hug, and Orla could plainly see how the shoulder-length hair rebelled at decades of red dye and how the eyebrows aimed for the ceiling at an improbable slant.

  ‘I’m so rude,’ she said, noticing Orla. ‘Interrupting your tryst like this.’ She held out manicured fingers to Orla. ‘I’m Anthea.’

  Well, of course she was. Orla kicked herself for not recognising a household name.

  ‘Hello.’ Her voice small, Orla was dismayed to discover she could be star struck. She shook the lily-like hand. Anthea’s grip was as strong as a docker’s.

  Anthea Blake trained her attention on Reece once more. Orla was able to study her, as extravagant endearments and the fruitiest of four-letter words ricocheted off the walls. Feminine without a hint of submissiveness, Anthea elicited a heightened, almost erotic response. Orla wondered if she was reacting to the woman’s fame, or to something intrinsic, carried on the fog of perfume and riding the flicked tendrils of mermaid hair. She was smothered by Anthea’s charisma, but happily so, and awaited the moment when Reece would announce their common denominator and this star would shine on her.

  The fact that Sim had been filmed naked alongside her, Orla preferred to sidestep.

  Tapping his Blackberry as if waking a tiny animal, Reece nodded at Anthea’s convoluted complaint about her current director. ‘I’ll call him tomorrow. It’s a simple misunderstanding, darling. I made it quite clear – no weekend filming.’ He turned to Orla, ushered her into the charmed circle (which was the focus, discreetly, of the room) by saying, ‘Ant, darling, this lovely creature is Orla, our gorgeous Sim’s beloved. And Orla, this is the incomparable Ant Blake, the courtesan herself.’

  ‘Oh.’ All Anthea’s vivacity stilled, as if somebody had pulled out her plug.

  Orla accepted the awkwardness with good grace. She’d become expert at ignoring such tongue-tied reactions. When Sim died, Orla had become ‘poor Orla’ – and it was bad casting.

  ‘Hello Anthea,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’

  ‘And I you.’ Anthea’s hand went to her throat, a dramatic gesture that seemed natural; perhaps it had become second nature after a working life spent making it to order. ‘I’m so sorry. About …’ She waved the hand, as if referring to something too awful to name. Her eyelids fluttered. ‘God. It was so …’ All of Anthea’s fifty-plus years marched back over the line in the sand drawn by her plastic surgeon. ‘A talented man. A great loss. You must miss him terribly.’

  ‘Yup.’ Orla felt hot, ambushed by grief again. In the actress’s eyes she read real distress – which was a surprise. ‘It gets better,’ she heard herself say, dismayed at her own banal heartlessness.

  ‘He’s bloody marvellous in Courtesan. He’ll blow me off the screen.’ This was safe footing, and it revived Anthea; her face glowed once more. ‘But I’ve disrupted your meal. Do carry on. Lovely to meet you.’ She threw Orla a kiss. ‘And as for you … we’ll talk tomorrow, Reece.’

  The merest shadow of a ‘look’ passed between client and agent. Orla felt it was more than dismay at this shared encounter with grief; it felt as if Anthea was planning a ticking off.

  ‘That wasn’t meant to happen,’ said Reece in an under-tone as a phalanx of staff shepherded Anthea upstairs like a visiting potentate. ‘Ant’s a love but she’s very full on. Are you OK?’

  ‘Of course!’ Old-fashioned good manners, drilled into Orla by Ma, meant she strived to be the least troublesome bereaved woman in the world: it was her job to save Reece, everybody, from any discomfort on her behalf. ‘The chips are good. Want one?’

  ‘Ant finds it hard to talk about him.’

  ‘Me too, sometimes. And you.’ The droop of Reece’s red head told Orla a lot. He and Sim had shared a genuine friendship, not just the necessary professional intimacy.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ said Reece. ‘I want to talk to him.’

  ‘You want to know a secret? I actually do!’ laughed Orla. She could tell Reece about the valentine. He wouldn’t laugh at her crazy widow’s weeds. ‘I tell Sim how my day went. I ask his advice about what to cook for dinner. I tell him jokes, I moan – sweet Jaysus, do I moan! About the tube, the weather, money. I treated him to a ten-minute riff on my fat ankles this morning. He used to stick his fingers in his ears and sing the national anthem, anything to shut me up, or shut me out; but now he has no option but to hang on my every word.’

  ‘Do you imagine him?’ Reece was intrigued. And touched. ‘Or do you talk to a photo?’

 
‘This is where it gets truly loony. Honestly? I talk to a card.’

  ‘A card? What do you mean?’

  ‘A valentine’s card. The last one he sent.’

  Reece sat back, put down his fork.

  ‘The one that arrived just as you were telling me about … just when you called with the news.’

  ‘It’s unopened, right?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I know what it says.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘You probably know too!’ Orla hadn’t realised this before. ‘Sim told you everything.’

  ‘Um, not everything.’ Reece was uncomfortable, his bonhomie withered. ‘What do you think it says?’

  ‘I know it’s a proposal.’

  ‘Of marriage?’

  ‘No, of caravanning in Wales. Yes, Reece, of course of marriage!’ Her attempts to lighten the mood were doomed; Reece was sombre.

  ‘I had an inkling,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t open it. You understand … Reece!’ Orla assayed a light laugh which fell on its face. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Seriously, darling, this is morbid. Wrong. Get rid of it.’

  ‘I never thought I’d say this, but you sound like my Ma.’

  ‘Keeping hold of it, talking to it, but never intending to read it? That’s not healthy. It’s odd, Orla.’

  ‘I didn’t say I’ll never read it.’

  ‘If you want my advice—’

  ‘I don’t, but go on.’

  ‘Burn the bloody thing.’

  Orla took the card to bed with her that night. She kissed it, having carefully wiped the ruby stain off her lips first: the card was deteriorating now, and she treated it with respect.

  ‘As if I’d burn you. You’re never going in the fire, matey. Do you remember Valentine’s Day 2010? It was our first anniversary. The actual card’s back in the hatbox under my bed at home but I can quote it to you, if you like, aren’t I clever?’

  Dearest Fairy,

  365 days and counting. I love you! Is that old hat yet? This shouldn’t work. You’re a buttoned up schoolmarm and I’m a star struck eejit. I should be with some glamour-puss as shallow as I am. You should be with somebody solid and solvent who nods approvingly when you talk all clever and doesn’t tease you about your arse. But the stars will have to realign. The rule-makers will have to start again from scratch. Orla and Sim are doing it their way. I’m hanging on for ever. Please tell me you’ll do the same.

  Happy Valentine’s Day.

  Sxxxx

  P.S. Hear that? In the distance? That’s my Big Break circling nearer and nearer …

  ‘You didn’t have to bang on quite so much about me being a buttoned up schoolmarm.’ Orla kept it light when she complained to the valentine, just as she had with its sender. ‘And maybe I’m not a glamour-puss but I scrub up well.’ She’d always bristled against his caricature of her, but never carped: the resulting row wouldn’t be worth it.

  ‘Goodnight, darling,’ she said, and switched off the light.

  Sim’s journal

  14 February 2010

  Do you know what I’d like? Once – just ONCE – to order a meal for which I am bloody paying without a Greek chorus of disapproval from my girlfriend. Valentine’s Day is a big con / the set meal is better value / you don’t even like foie gras.

  One year in and O can get my goat more efficiently than any other living person. Take tonight, for instance – the restaurant was too nice.

  Yes. Too NICE.

  Very loudly, I told her, ‘But darling, nothing is too good for you, you moany cow.’ And that made us laugh. And it’s game over when we laugh. Everything set us off after that.

  Orla Cassidy is exasperating. But I love her. Not like I did a year ago. This is deeper. I love her like … I can’t even find a comparison. I love her like I love her. She’s the nicest person in the world and I don’t deserve her.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘I’ve always liked her on TV but she sounds hideous in real life.’

  ‘I’m making her sound grotesque. She’s nice, honestly. Very charismatic.’

  ‘Fancy being called Ant. I’d rather be Thea. Bet she fancied the pants off old Sim.’

  ‘Juno. That kind of hurts.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m being flippant. But everybody fancied your fella, Orla. And you loved it!’

  ‘I kind of did. I kind of didn’t.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have had a hope in hell. I mean, even if he’d been single. She’s decrepit.’

  ‘Weirdly ageless, actually. Like a sprite. Very slender, very feminine. Not girly. Feminine. Dazzling presence. Now I know what the term star quality means.’

  ‘Sounds like you fancy her yourself.’

  ‘Are you growing your hair? The screen’s so blurry it’s hard to tell.’

  ‘Himself hates it. We had a sit-down to discuss the state of the marriage.’

  ‘Sounds ominous. What was the outcome?’

  ‘The state of the marriage is that the marriage is in a state.’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Really really? I’ve missed a few episodes, haven’t I? So bloody wrapped up in myself.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Well I do.’

  ‘Himself and me’ll work it out. We always do. If only he’d keep something in reserve for me, not use up all his sparkle on client lunches, you know? He came in the door tonight and before I even opened my mouth he held up his hands and said, Go easy on me, it’s been a long day.’

  ‘His voice isn’t like that. You make him sound like a eunuch chipmunk. I suppose he has to work hard to keep you and Jack in your, er, high standard of living.’

  ‘You’re trying so hard to be nice when you want to shout, you greedy bitch, you want the moon on a stick and then you’re annoyed because the poor man is tired. My mother just says it right out. That’s a direct quote, actually.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re a greedy bitch.’

  ‘Don’t you? I do. Listen, how’s the valentine? Still in one piece? Hasn’t fallen into a shredder by mistake?’

  ‘Why doesn’t anybody get it? That card is my lifeline.’

  ‘If you were here, we’d go out for a Thai curry, cure my marriage and drown that card in the Liffey. What’s this Reece like, then? A possible?’

  ‘A what? You mean, Jaysus woman, a possible boyfriend?’

  ‘No, lover. They’re much better value. Or do you plan to wall yourself up with your old biddy?’

  ‘I don’t hop from man to man.’

  ‘Unlike me, filthy tart that I am, eh? You didn’t say it, but you thought it now didn’t you …’

  ‘Ha! Well, if the tarty hat fits …’

  ‘I was a bit of a one, wasn’t I? God, it was fun. So, anyway, Reece isn’t a possible? Are you truly telling me you’re in London, capital of the known world, and you haven’t met one single solitary man who’s piqued your interest? Who hasn’t made you feel, well, womanly?’

  Marek, she thought – and almost said it out loud.

  ‘No.’

  That unusual name with its soft opening and its whiplash final syllable had popped up like a mole from her subconscious, after just five minutes’ exposure to a dark and quiet man who should mean nothing to her.

  ‘Who sent you flowers?’ Bogna circled the roses on the counter, popping her gum.

  ‘None of your beeswax.’ Orla played with the long-stemmed beauties, trying to muss them up, failing. Such haughty blooms could do nothing but look stiff and expensive. Reece’s tastes were grand: Sim had known to send her posies.

  ‘Arthur used to send me roses,’ said Maude, halfway up a ladder, dusting the foreign language section. ‘Always red. Like those.’

  Arthur! Orla pounced on the unsolicited nugget of Maude’s autobiography and squirrelled it away. That there’d been a Mr Maude was obvious: according to the post Orla picked from the mat each morning, Maude was a M
rs, and double-barrelled at that, but her husband was never mentioned, nor alluded to. If a conversation threatened to trespass on Maude’s romantic history, however obliquely, Orla felt the air between them thicken and become gelid.

  As an Irish woman, Orla was accustomed to the special atmospheres generated by her elders. Weaned on Ma’s trademark atmospheres surrounding menstruation, intercourse and homosexuality – Breda Cassidy’s holy trinity – she knew when and how to step away from discomfort.

  Another one of Maude’s no-go areas was any conversation about her financial set-up. Coming from a family that had always lived close to the bone, Orla was fascinated by the wealthy. She’d been perversely impressed by Sim’s ability to spend money – his unerring choice of the most expensive items on any menu, be it a Harvester’s or the Ritz. Likewise, Lucy’s habit of arranging for the tiniest pot of Crème de la Mer to be delivered from Brown Thomas, instead of popping it in her handbag, had left her dumbstruck.

  The economics of the rich was beyond her. How, Orla had puzzled, did a job – even one as high profile as Senator Quinn’s – generate sufficient money to fuel a Dublin town-house, an underground garage quivering with cars, a dependant son and a high-maintenance wife? And mistresses don’t come cheap.

  Similarly, though, how could an elderly woman with no visible means of support own three floors of central London real estate? Orla was savvy enough to know that even in this edgy postcode, flanked by pound shops and bookies, Maude’s house was the financial equivalent of an entire street in Tobercree. But still, the middle flat was let out at a cut-price rate, and the shop was a drain, not an asset. Presumably Maude had what Ma referred to reverentially as ‘old money’ – cash that had tumbled down the generations to land in her pocket.

  ‘Arthur?’ asked Orla warily, concentrating on the roses.

  ‘Orla’s flowers are from a friend to celebrate a wonderful development in her life.’ Maude turned to Bogna, drop-kicking Orla’s timid cross into the long grass.