Maeve Binchy - Quentins

A tall man passed by and looked at her appreciatively. Ella felt alarmed. Suppose Harriet had been right about New York being a good place to hide. Possibly Don was in this city. She might meet him at the end of this block, at the next traffic lights. But she must not give in to silly fears. This is the way madness and weakness lay.

"You've got to have courage," she said aloud suddenly.

"Right on, lady," said a man at a news-stand who was the only one who had heard her.

Ella hugged herself. She liked New York, she was as safe here as anywhere. She would walk until she was too tired to walk a step further, and then she would take a taxi back to her hotel.

She slept for fourteen hours and got up feeling better than she had felt for ages. I thought you'd be older," Derry King said as he shook hands with her in the foyer of the hotel.

"I thought you'd be older too," Ella said with spirit. "But here we are, babes in a big business world, so can I offer you coffee?"

He smiled.

He had a good smile for a square-built man with a very heavily lined face. She knew to the day how old he was, and yet he didn't look it. Forty-three-year-old New Yorkers wore their years better than most Dubliners of the same age.

Til drink coffee, sure. Do you want us to talk here, or should i we talk in your suite?"

"We are a small outfit, Mr. King. I have a bedroom, not a suite. I think we'd be much happier here."

"And I'd be happier if you called me Derry. I prefer the first name thing."

"Fine, Derry. I brought you a present," she said.

"You did?" He was surprised.

"And is she here at the moment?"

"No, she's gone off ... the way they do at that age."

"Has she gone abroad, do you think?"

Ella's mother was frightened now. This was no courteous man looking for an apartment for a colleague. It was someone looking for Ella.

"Do young people ever tell you where they're going these days?" She laughed nervously.

"Oh, I know, but doesn't she have to work? I think you said she was a teacher."

They hadn't said Ella was a teacher.

"She does a bit of this and a bit of that . .. it's easier to get time off."

"Maybe she went out to the sun, to Greece or Spain?" the man suggested. "Lots of people go out there in September."

Barbara Brady directed her firmest gaze on her husband. "She didn't say anything about going to the Continent to me, did she mention it to you, Tim?"

"Not a word," he said. "Somewhere down in Kerry or West Cork, she said. It could be that she's got herself an extra little job. She ran into a spot of bad luck earlier in the year, and she's desperately trying to gather some money together."

"So anyway, to go back to the flat . .." Barbara began.

But the man had lost interest in the flat in Tara Road. "We're back here for a few days. Will you have lunch with me, Deirdre?"

"No, Nuala, thanks, but I can't."

"You didn't even wait to hear which day," Nuala complained.

"I can't any day. There's a crisis at work. We're all on short lunch hours," Deirdre lied.

"Are you annoyed with me about something, Dee?"

"No, I'm annoyed about having to eat into my lunch break. Why would I be annoyed with you, for God's sake?"

"You seemed pissed off when I asked you "where Ella was. It's just that I have to know. Frank keeps going on at me. He says it's the one thing I might be expected to know and I don't even deliver on that."

"Real charmer Frank turned out to be," Deirdre said unsympathetically. "No, they're frightened. His brothers too, all of them."

"I thought they got their money back in a brown paper bag?"

"That was just a little to show that they could get it back if ..."

"If what?"

"I suppose, if they played ball . .."

"And handed Ella over, is that it?"

"I don't think it's quite like that."

"So it's just as well that neither of us knows where she is, then, isn't it, Nuala?" Deirdre was brisk.

"You know, Dee."

"I wish I did."

"Advise me. Help me, please." Nuala was desperate.

"I don't suppose it's the kind of thing you'd get the Guards in on," Deirdre said.

"Not really. Frank and his brothers always steer clear of police and lawyers," said Nuala. Patrick and Brenda Brennan were going to bed. It had been a long, busy night. "I ask myself, do we need this documentary? Every table was full tonight," Patrick said.

"I know, I've thought that too. We'd have to consider expanding." Brenda was frowning.

"Which would change it all." Patrick frowned too.

"Still, it's not meant to be just an advertisement," Brenda cheered up. "It's more like a history of Dublin, isn't it, as seen through the changes in one place."

"Now you're beginning to sound just like young Ella Brady," he said, yawning.

"I wonder how she's getting on out there," Brenda said as she sat at her dressing table and took off her makeup.

She couldn't hear what Patrick said, since he was under the duvet and mumbling into the pillow.

"I do hope she's all right. She's been through a really terrible summer," Brenda said to herself as she creamed away the last traces of the stylish makeup that always took ten years off her age. Derry King was right. They did get on well together. Ella told him no lies, and exaggerated no aspect of Firefly Films.

"What's in it for me?" he had asked early on, and she had tried to tell him as truthfully as she could. He would be part of something fresh and new, made with high production values, which could well win prizes at film festivals, that would be shown on television in many lands.

"How is it new and fresh?" he wanted to know.

"It's not going to be full of shamrockery," she said and he had laughed.

"What's that?"

"Oh, you know, the how-are-things-in-Gloccamora, top-of-the morning approach. There's nobody doing leprechaun duty on this movie."

He was interested. "Warts and all, then?"

"Well, yes ... we'd want to make fun of everything pretentious," she said.

"Give me an example."

"Patrick's very funny about the way Irish people often pretend they know things when they don't, like they don't want to look foolish. He says that you should never drink the second cheapest wine on the menu. It could be any kind of old rubbish, because it's the one people go for so they don't look cheap or shabby by buying the very cheapest on the list."

Derry was smiling at her. "And he'll say all this?"

"Certainly."

"Not afraid of losing his clientele?"

"No, he'll walk a fine line. You'll like him when you come over. I'm actually amazed you were never in Quentins when you were in Ireland before," Ella said.

"I was never in Ireland," Derry said flatly.

"I'm sorry?"

"I was never there," he said, and though his smile did not leave his face, his eyes looked hard. "And I never intend to go." Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather had only lost a small sum when Rice and Richardson had gone to the wall. Compared to others, they had been very lucky. Only an outstanding bill for 700 euros: One catered function unpaid for.

It was the one afternoon a week when Maud and Simon were in to polish what were called Tom and Cathy's "treasures", and to discuss in detail the forthcoming baby. What would it be called? Where would it live? Would it be grown up when Tom and Cathy finally got around to getting married? Could they teach the baby to do step-dancing?

It was almost a relief when the bell rang in the front office and they could escape the children's questions for a few minutes. It was someone enquiring about brochures and price lists. He was a well-dressed man who didn't seem to have any precise idea about what he wanted. There was something about the vagueness of his request that made them suspicious.

"I believe you know Ella Brady," he said, out of the blue.