Maeve Binchy - Quentins

"Indeed I would, Madam," he said as he tied Ivy's table napkin around her neck, the "way the French do.

"What lovely dresses you have." The old woman felt the coloured velvet frocks.

"They're from our mother. She doesn't live with Dad any more, you see, so that's why she's not here." Daisy seemed to have a mission to explain today.

"So you must remember it all to tell her. She'll want to know what you did because she loves you so much, like your father does. He must love you a lot to think of taking you to a very high class restaurant like this."

"Is it high class?" Rose was interested.

"The highest there is." Yvonne's mother was firm on this.

"It's a pity they're not both here together," Daisy sighed.

"Oh, I don't know ... you can have better times separately. Like Yvonne's father and I. We loved her to bits, but we changed in loving each other, and she was always happy with both of us, weren't you, Yvonne?"

"Yes, I was, indeed," Yvonne said, astounded.

"So her dad loved someone else eventually, and I loved someone else, but it didn't take away one bit from loving Yvonne. Isn't that right?" she barked at her daughter.

"Oh, absolutely right, Mother. Like as if your heart got bigger or something and there was more love in it," Yvonne said, wild eyed at the whole thing.

Frank patted her knee and stroked her hand. "Yvonne, I wish you knew how much this means .. ." he began.

But Yvonne was listening to what her mother might be up to now. It was reasonably harmless. She was asking her new best friend Blouse Brennan for some bread that they could throw to the ducks in St Stephen's Green.

"Can we come too?" Rose asked.

"Please," Frank begged. "Please." And it was arranged. There would be time later, much later, when she would tell him that her mother and father had never separated, and he had died fifteen years ago and her mother had never looked at another man. This was not the time to do it. The Special Sale Lunch was nearly over, the rain had stopped and it was time to go and feed the ducks.

PART III

Chapter Nine.

Ella looked up when the stories were told. As far as she could see, they had gone well. At least she had managed to hold their interest. She must leave them now and give them a chance to talk about it all. She moved swiftly. No, no, she would get herself a taxi, she pleaded. It was part of the excitement of being in New York. Please let them not see her out, she would much prefer them to stay and discuss what she had told them.

And then she escaped. Down in the lift, out of the quiet building into the amazingly noisy traffic. And then she got to her little hotel, which was beginning to seem like home, and up to her

room.

Now she could do what she had been putting off until she got her work settled. She sat down and opened up Don Richardson's computer.

It got dark in New York as she trawled through the computer. Bank account numbers in the Isle of Man, in the Cayman Islands, in Switzerland. None of it made any sense, since the names were in some kind of code.

She recognised property agreements there, but none in Don's name or in his father-in-law's. Then she saw the file with her own name and her heart leaped. Maybe he had made an investment for her as he had once told her he would. Something to provide for her after his time. She gulped in case he really had done that. He must have loved her at one stage. But it didn't seem likely. It wasn't Ella Brady. This Brady family, a family of five, a man, his son, the son's wife and two children, and they were living in Playa de los Angeles. There were letters about them to banks and from banks. Whoever they were, these Bradys had plenty of money. And a lot of it deposited very recently. By far the largest sum had been the week that she had been in Spain with Don. When he had been away from the hotel. When his wife Margery Rice, mother of his two children, was there. Suddenly she realised that not only had he taken everything else she had but he had also taken her name.

There were so many things she could do. She could find the number of the Fraud Squad in Dublin and tell them the machine was ready for collection. She could contact an Irish television station. She could telephone Don now; the Brady family had a phone number and were listed in his machine. She could tell him that if he restored all that her father had lost, she would hand him back the computer, no questions asked. She could contact one of the various insurance companies involved and offer to give it to them. She realised that this was a decision she had to make entirely on her own. Everyone's judgement would be partisan. They would want to do what they thought was best for her or for them or for somebody. Why did she not give it straight to the police? That was what a normal citizen would do.

She opened the mini bar in her room and took out a miniature Jack Daniel's and drank it from a tooth mug. It made nothing clearer. It did nothing to sharpen the blurred edges. If you had loved someone, slept with him, shared everything with him for month after month, you didn't hand over the files without a backward glance. There was some kind of mad nobility about it ... Even if be behaved like a bastard, she was not going to. This was just one more test of her loyalty.

There was a way she wanted to show him that not everyone sold out their friends and lovers. She didn't want to talk to Deirdre about it, or Nick or Sandy or anyone. She had to make up her own mind what to do. In some crazy way she wanted to talk to Don. Well, that was an option too. Mad as it sounded. There were so many things she wanted answers to. Like had he always known he was going to call himself Brady or was it because of her? Like how could he have planned everything so meticulously and then left the machine in her flat? Did he intend to or was it an oversight? And if he had always loved Margery, why had they lived such totally separate lives? And did he have any guilt, or could he live with it all, saying it was just showbiz? In some insane way, she

could imagine the conversation. But she would not have it from here. She had been alarmed to know that he was now looking for the machine and sending messengers around the place trying to track her down. It had been a bit frightening.

But she hadn't felt frightened before. In fact, having the laptop made her feel in some odd way more secure. And as long as she had this computer in her possession, he might get in touch. She realised now that this was why she had never let it go. It was her last link with him. For four months it had been a sort of comfort to her to know that it was there physically. Some solid reminder of all they had.

But things were suddenly very different now. She could no longer tell herself that Don knew nothing of all that had been going on. That he had been swept along somehow in his father-in law's plans. That there was going to be a perfectly innocent explanation.

Having opened the lid of the laptop, she could no longer tell herself this. It was beginning to dawn on her that Don Richardson was deeply involved. For the very first time she realised that she might indeed be in real danger and she had no idea what to do. She was so tired she couldn't think.

She would do nothing tonight. There was no need. After all, the briefcase containing the computer had been in her possession for over four months. If she had been going to turn him in, he could well assume that she would have done it by now. He must think that she had never got into it and had decided not to hand it over to those who would be able to learn what it contained. He should be feeling safe and secure now, so why on earth was he suddenly getting jittery and sending her messages about it? Maybe he really wanted to see her. A man went up the lane behind Tara Road and put a letter into what they called the Annexe of what used to be the Bradys" house. It was not in an envelope, just folded in half. It had been sent by e-mail and printed out, but with no name or identifying marks at the top.