Maeve Binchy - Quentins

"It's not from Don. Dad, there's a mistake ."

"I don't know what to do, Ella. I've told your mother. She didn't read it on her way out. .. she said I could take it to her office and she would fax it to you."

"Is it long, Dad?"

"No, it's quite short."

"So could you read it to me?"

"But perhaps you wouldn't want me to ..."

"You've read it already, Dad, and you've read it to Mother. Just once more. Please."

She could hear him putting on his glasses and rustling the paper. It probably took a couple of seconds. It seemed like infinity.

""Dearest Angel,"" he read. ""By the time you get this it will all be over. Maybe you won't care at all. You refused to get in touch with me through the many, many messages that I sent you, so perhaps you never cared. But I can't believe that. I can't believe those hours and hours of love meant nothing to you. So I want to say a special goodbye and a great thank you for making my life so happy, and to tell you three things.

""There was room in my heart for you all, you and my family. I couldn't leave them when the crisis hit. I was always trying to come back for you, too, but you wouldn't listen. The briefcase doesn't matter now. I won't be there to face what it reveals. If you have the generosity to throw it away on the grounds that I trusted it to you and that you would like to show me some trust too, then that would be great. But it's up to you. And lastly, I really liked your father and I know he lost clients" money because of my advice. I arranged some bank drafts, things that can be easily cashed. It's to say sorry to him and to you. This is the number of the deposit box. I wish I could give everything back to everybody. But then I wish a lot of things, mainly that I had years ahead with you, Angel Ella. You made me feel young and happy, you made my heart sing. Please know I loved you. Don."" Her father's voice trembled as he came to the end. There was a silence.

"Thank you, Dad."

I wish you weren't so many miles away, Ella. We wish you were at home."

I'm better off working hard, Dad. Believe me, I'm fine, and tell Mother, won't you?"

"He did love you, Ella."

"Of course he did, Dad."

She sat for a while and looked at her reflection in the mirror. None of this was happening. She would wake up soon back at a time before she had even met Don Richardson. When conversations like she was having this morning were totally impossible. But meantime she had to get on with what the rest of the day was going to throw at her.

She went down to the lobby and asked for a taxi to Derry and Kimberly's office. She was shown into their boardroom, where they sat close together at the far end of a table. They jumped up when she arrived.

"Ella!" Kimberly said as if surprised.

"You're here?" Derry was definitely surprised.

"We did say nine o"clock, didn't we?" Now Ella felt suddenly anxious. Maybe the shock had wiped everything out. They reassured her, that was what they had said. There was something odd about the way they looked at her, as if they hadn't expected her to make it. Had Nick disobeyed her and told them? No, he wouldn't dare.

She sat at the table and Kimberly poured coffee for them all.

"Have you been on to Dublin .. . um .. . this morning?" Derry began.

"We were just wondering if you'd been able to talk to anyone back there," Kimberly asked.

They did know something. But how?

Ella was determined not to weaken or to put her head down on the shiny table and cry her heart out to these people about her dead love. The man who had written her a letter and e-mailed it some hours before he killed himself.

I spoke to Nick," she said brightly. "He said to tell you that those clearance forms are standard." She looked from one to the other. They didn't seem to be listening to her. "So if that's all right, then . .." She waited for them to get on with the meeting.

"You know, if you don't feel like working or concentrating today, then that's fine, there are many other days." Derry's eyes were very kind and he actually patted her hand in a gesture you don't see outside the movies.

Kimberly was offering the same kind of sympathetic reassurance. "No need to force yourself," she pleaded. It can be done when you're feeling more up to it."

"You know," Ella said slowly. "Someone told you about me and Don and what happened."

"We always knew about you and Don from the outset," Derry said simply. "We just read what happened to him this morning."

"How did you know?" She felt cold.

"Same way as you knew I liked dogs. We looked up the files."

"That's different. You're a public person. There's no file on me," Ella said with spirit.

"There's plenty of information. We're not going to take up with a tiny outfit like Firefly Films, make a movie about a place we never heard of called Quentins, unless we have someone on the ground to advise us."

"And who did you ask to advise you?"

"A lawyer. Nice guy. He marked our card, everything you said all checked out. This is about four months ago, remember, so you were a bit in the news."

"And he bothers with tittle-tattle like that!" Ella was stung.

"To be fair to him, I think he was just letting us see everything that was on the table about everything. It has never had the slightest relevance to anything, only today we wondered . . ." Berry's voice trailed away.

"You know Don seems to have been thorough to the end," Kimberly said.

Ella wondered how they could work together so amicably after a long spell of marriage. Once there must have been a time when they had both wished for years ahead together .. . and, what were Don's words, when they had felt young and happy and made each other's hearts sing.

Ella tried to lift her coffee cup but her hand was shaking so she put it down again. She must pull herself together, banish the sound of his voice. She must. But at this point she could almost hear Don saying, "I want to say a special goodbye, a special goodbye, special goodbye. .." It was booming through her head.

She gripped the sides of the table very hard, but she felt herself falling down. Right down into a great black pit with the voice still there in her ears. When she saw shapes they were vague shapes first, then they turned into legs. They were legs of chairs, and Kimberly's amazing, shapely ankles in their high dark shoes, and also legs in brown trousers, and eventually she saw Derry King's face only inches from her own. The square, lined face that gave nothing away. Except now it was worried and full of concern.

"She's coming round, Kim," he said with relief.

"Keep her head down. You're meant to let the blood flow to the head." Kimberly was authoritative.

"We'll have to lift her back on to a chair then, to get her head down."

Gently they did that, and she actually did feel something happening to her head as if everything really was sliding back into place.

"What happened?" she began, but by the time she asked the question she knew the answer. She had fainted. She struggled to sit up, but she could feel Derry's hand on her neck and she could hear his voice speaking urgently.

"You're just fine. Keep your head down. Breathe deeply, you'll be okay in ten seconds."

Ella counted to ten and then sat up. They were both looking at her anxiously. She managed a weak grin. "Textbook lesson on how not to present your case," she said feebly.

"We've all the time in the world. Stop fussing," Derry said. "You've had a shock," Kimberly said.

"But I was fine and suddenly everything tilted."

"Could you be pregnant?" Kimberly asked.

Derry seemed startled by her question, but Ella wasn't at all put out by it. "No, when you consider all the disasters that have happened . .. and there have been many . . . that's not one of them."