Kate Thompson - The O’Hara Affair

There was a shrine to Fleur’s little doggie, Babette, on the deck. It comprised a photograph of Babette that Daisy had taken, and had framed as a present for Fleur. Fleur had surrounded the photograph with flowers and candles and some of Babette’s toys. She had buried her best friend six months ago, on the beach at Díseart, where the dog had loved to romp. Fleur still missed the Bichon Frisé with the laughing eyes and the perma-smile.

From the hill above, the church bell chimed nine. Fleur had promised Río that she’d be in the fortune-telling booth ready to go at midday. For the past week, she had practised her crystal ball skills every evening, using Daisy’s password to gain entry to her Facebook page for research purposes. Some of the comments on Daisy’s wall had expressed a genuine interest in going to see Madame Tiresia. ‘If she got your future sorted, Daisy-Belle, then I’m deffo gonna go!’ one girl had written. ‘She might make me lucky 2 ’

Fleur had felt a twinge of guilt when she’d read that one. She guessed that some people really did believe in tarot and horoscopes and all that jazz: you just had to look at the number of fortune-tellers advertising in the back pages of gossip magazines, who charged rip-off rates for their services. But then, Fleur wasn’t ripping anybody off. All the money she took today was going to charity – and then some. Corban had been true to his word. After she’d donned her gypsy outfit for him last night, he’d made out a cheque to the Irish Hospice Foundation, signed it, and left the amount blank.

‘You’ve just quadrupled your donation,’ he told her. And then he’d taken her by the hand and led her upstairs to her bedroom.

It was funny, Fleur thought, that dressing up for Corban didn’t embarrass her. If any of her former lovers had suggested that she dress up to have sex, she’d have told them where to get off. But then, in all her previous relationships, Fleur had been the more experienced partner: her lovers had deferred to her. In her current relationship, Corban called the shots; and it hadn’t taken long for Fleur to find what a relief – and what a turn-on! – it was to be told what to do rather than doing the telling.

The mini Mills & Boon scenario she’d dreamed up earlier had rehashed much of what had actually happened on the night she and Corban had first met. Having gone off to book a hotel room, her tall dark stranger had returned to find Fleur sitting on the edge of the fountain in an attitude of bewilderment. ‘What’s wrong?’ he’d asked. ‘I’m not who you think I am,’ she’d told him. And his response – as per the stupefying response of her Mills & Boon hero – had been: ‘I don’t care who you are, any more than you care who I am.’ And then Corban had escorted her upstairs to the room and – with a passion that compensated for the deficiency of ceremony – had baisé ’d her.

Smiling, Fleur leaned her chin on her forearms. Why was there no equivalent word for the sex act in English? ‘Fuck’ was too rough. ‘Shag’ too casual. ‘Making love’ was far too fey. The only verb that accurately conveyed the deliciousness, the pleasure, the sheer je ne sais quoi of coitus was the French one: baiser .

She remembered how, afterwards, he’d unmasked her and laughed and said: ‘You’re Fleur O’Farrell!’

He’d seen her in Lissamore, he’d told her, going about her business, and thought how quintessentially French she was, and how very lovely. He’d Googled her and viewed her website, but he had never found an opportunity to woo her. And now that he had her in his bed, he told her, he didn’t intend to let her go.

‘What about Rachel?’ she’d asked.

‘Ancient history,’ came the response. ‘Let’s not talk about her.’

So they’d talked about him for a while instead. Over a glass of champagne, Fleur learned that Corban O’Hara was a successful entrepreneur who had taken to financing films. The O’Hara Affair was his most ambitious project to date. He was divorced, he told her, sans children. A pleasure craft, recently acquired, was moored in the marina at Lissamore, where he owned a holiday apartment – also recently acquired. He supported numerous charities, including her favourite, the Hospice Foundation. And when he let a hint drop as to his age, Fleur realized that – at nearly a decade older than her – he was the most grown-up lover she’d ever had. It made her feel deliciously, absurdly youthful.

And then they’d had some more champagne, and she’d told him a little about herself, and they’d discovered that they each had a penchant for Paris and piquet and the Monsieur Hulot films, and they’d laughed and larked a little and then baisé ’d some more.

But Rachel – whoever she might be – preyed on Fleur’s mind. Corban had booked the room for Rachel, and the champagne and the flowers that had been brought to that room had been intended for Rachel, not for her. Fleur felt bad about the fact that she’d muscled in on another woman’s man, and it unsettled her to know that Corban had cheated on this Rachel with such insouciance. But any time she questioned him about her, he just said those two words: ‘Ancient history’. So finally, she made herself stop thinking about Rachel altogether.

‘Flirty! Good morning! Isn’t it a gorgeous day?’

Daisy was hailing her from the sea wall that skirted the main street of the village. She was wearing frayed cut-offs that revealed an astonishing length of golden leg, and a man’s hoodie. Despite the dressed-down ensemble, she still looked as if she’d stepped out of the pages of Vogue . Fleur felt a great surge of love for her niece. She was so beautiful, so full of joie de vivre , so young !

‘Good morning, Daisy-Belle!’

‘But bad, bad Flirty, to be lazing in the sun when she should be hard at work!’ Daisy scolded her. ‘Why aren’t you doing your homework?’

‘Homework?’

‘ Livre de visage! ’

Oh. Facebook. Daisy was right. Fleur should be practising her fortune-telling skills, not lounging around on her deck, coasting on a nostalgia trip.

‘OK, OK. Do you fancy joining me for coffee?’

‘No, thank you kindly. I’m off for a swim. Catch you later!’ And Daisy swung a leg over the pillion of the motorcycle that was waiting for her, a helmeted youth revving the engine. He handed her a lid, and they were off, buzzing up the village street like a hornet.

Fleur wandered back into her kitchen and booted up her laptop before fixing herself coffee. Sitting down, she entered Daisy’s password, and perused the new postings on her wall. A lot of messages that meant nothing to Fleur, some photographs, a couple of links to YouTube videos.

Fleur now knew how engrossing Facebook could be. Over the past few days she had been distracted from her ‘homework’ on numerous occasions: once you got sucked in to YouTube it was difficult to pull yourself away. She found herself checking out all the silly Bichon Frisé footage, and even contemplated putting up some of the sequences she’d compiled of Babette. And, of course, it was impossible to resist all the clips from old movies – Rita Hayworth singing ‘Put the Blame on Mame’, Marilyn crooning ‘I Wanna be Loved by You’, Ava Gardner rhapsodizing over her man in Showboat .

She had also followed links to numerous blogs, many of which made her want to weep for the young people out there who seemed so lonely, despite the myriad methods of communication available to them:

I’ve finally hit triple digits with Facebook friends – altho the females outnumber the males. Why? Now, topping out at a hundred, I have more Facebook friends than real life ones. Sad, or what?