Maeve Binchy - Quentins

"But no dramas, no scenes, no regrets?" she wanted to know.

"No, none of those things, Kim," he said.

He looked at the door to the sitting room, which he had left open. Was Ella awake? Listening? He had better go and see. "Hold on, Kim," he said, and walked next door. The sofa had a folded rug on it and beside it was her computer. With a note on top. You are a generous man, Derry King. I will never forget your kindness to me last night. Please, can I leave this machine with you to look after for me? I will have made my decision about what it contains by Sunday night, and I so appreciate your help. Love, Ella He went back to the telephone. "Sorry, Kim. I thought it was room service. No, everything's fine here, as you said to me years ago. It's an ordinary place, not full of dragons, as I thought it might be." He heard her breathe more easily.

"Thank God, Derry. That's what I wanted so much for you. You deserve it," she said.

He sat for a while thinking about their conversation. In his whole life he had never lied to her so much. Everything was not fine here. He had not been checking room service. There were more dragons in this place than he had encountered for a long time. None of them having anything to do with him but everything to do with Ella Brady.

"I'm sorry for staying out all night," Ella said. "I hope you weren't worried or anything?"

"No, not when you called, of course not," her father said.

"I meant worried that I was going to start yet another unsuitable affair." She managed a slight smile.

"No, heavens, no," he protested.

"Derry's not in the same league at all, totally different. He's all work, no time at all for relationships of any kind. Anyway, you'll meet him tomorrow at Dee's place."

"And is he enjoying Dublin?" Ella's mother asked.

"Hard to know. He plays it very close to the chest." Ella's face was thoughtful. She seemed miles away.

"Will you be at home today?"

"No, Mother, I've a lot of things to sort out." Again she was distant. "I want you to think about something very seriously," she said eventually. "All the money you lost because of Don, it's there, you know, in this safe deposit box, banker's drafts, cash, bearer's bonds, whatever. You've read the letter. You know where it is. I haven't looked, but I know it's there. If you want to take it, I'd be happy for you to do that."

"Now, Tim," Barbara said in triumph, "I knew she would feel like this. Your father said not to mention it to you, but I said you'd see sense about it all. After all, it was his last wish that you should be seen all right and not have to work like a dog."

Chapter Thirteen.

"Oh, I'm not taking one euro of it, Mother, but you and Father, that's different. It's your choice."

"And of course, if we don't take it, then it just lies there," Barbara Brady was almost pleading.

"Or we could give it to others who were defrauded," Ella said crisply.

"We don't want it," her father said.

"Tim!"

"Discuss it today. Tell me what you come up with tomorrow. Oh, and there's another thing, Dad. In your talking to people, did you think that Don or Ricky was the brains of the outfit?"

"Ricky Rice, they said, but Don injected all the charm and the sort of razzmatazz into it," Tim Brady spoke ruefully. A man reduced to living in a wooden house in his own garden because of someone's charm and razzmatazz. "Would it surprise you to know that Ricky Rice owned nothing, that it was all in Don's name? Ricky is free to come back here any day he wants to and may well do so now that Don is dead."

"He'd never have the gall. He couldn't face people who've lost money," Ella's father said.

If he wasn't a part of it, then why did he flee?" Ella's mother was practical.

I don't know. I've been thinking about that all night," Ella said.

"They were always together, he and Don, and he was crazy about his grandchildren. Maybe he couldn't bear to let them go." Tim Brady tried to work it out.

"But why wasn't his name on things?" Ella wondered.

"There must have been a good reason," Tim Brady said. Ella drove down to the Liffey and parked her little car. She walked around the apartment blocks where Don Richardson had had his little hideaway, the place he was meant to be living when he stayed all that time with her. They were small and purpose-built. Not much movement around the place on a Saturday morning. Perhaps people would come out later and buy papers and milk for their coffee. She must enquire what had happened to his little flat here. Who had bought it, who lived a life in those four walls now.

Then she drove back to look at her own flat. The place where she had been so happy with Don. It was rented now by two girls who worked in the television station down the road. Ella had found them in twenty-four hours, once she decided to move. She

had slaved to leave the place looking perfect, and even donated some of her own possessions. Like the duvet. She could never sleep under it again.

She parked across the road and looked at the place thoughtfully for a long time. If it had not been for meeting Don Richardson, she might be living there still to this very day. Her garden was shabby. Had she ever noticed that before? She longed to go over and tidy it up a bit, take away some of the autumn leaves and dead stalks of flowers. But what would they say if they had seen her, the women who worked in the television station? They had already thought her eccentric. After all, the time they met her she was famous, her photograph every day in the evening newspaper, usually beside the words "love nest". If they were to spot her back months later, kneeling in their garden, then they really would be alarmed.

She drove past the school where she had taught. She had been happy there too, before Don Richardson had been part of her life. The kids had been mainly great. She wondered how the new teacher was getting on. Was she able to cope with loudmouths like that brassy Jacinta, who always answered back and went as far as she could get away with? Still, no point in sighing over them. Kids would learn with whoever was put in front of them. They were very resourceful.

Which reminded her about Maud and Simon, "who were coming to lunch tomorrow. She must find out how they were related to Tom or Cathy, whichever it was. They kept saying that Cathy's parents were not really official grandparents, but then they got everything so confused. Dee said she did hear once, but it was all so complicated and far-fetched that you'd be asleep by the time it was explained.

She drove south of Dublin, then through the suburbs and by the sea to Killiney, where Don and Margery had their elegant home. Where his sons had played tennis, where his father-in-law had visited so often it was like his second home. Ella knew the address but she had never seen the place. Today she needed to look at it.

It said Private Road, but there was no gate keeping you out. Just the words and the size of the house would do that, keep you away, unless you had business there. She drove slowly along, noticing the gardeners here, the window-cleaners there, the activity of an autumn Saturday morning in a wealthy area. She saw the big cars parked in the driveways, the women who dressed to go to the supermarkets and shopping centres, the expensive security systems. This was where Margery Rice had lived for years with her father, husband and sons. Yet she must have lived a lot of the time on her own. Her sons had been at school, her father out working, her husband in the arms of Ella Brady. And today Margery was calling herself Mrs. Brady and living in Playa de los Angeles, in Spain. Did she want to be back in this splendid house with the immaculate green grass? Had it been sold, or did they rent it out? Would Margery and her father, if they were so blameless about everything, come home and take up where they had left off?