It was utterly magnificent. The floors were all timbered in white oak, while the fixtures and fittings were of such a high quality that Dominique couldn’t help feeling that she was walking into one of Brendan’s snazziest show houses.
‘Well of course,’ Brendan told her cheerfully when she said this. ‘It
is
a show house. I want anyone who visits us to see just how good I can be.’
It was three times the size of their previous house and the location was spectacular. On the first morning, as Dominique stood at the bedroom window and gazed out over the green fields to the ocean beyond, she told Brendan that it was almost paradise. She was astonished that they’d been given planning permission to build it at all, she said, because its position on the top of a hill gave it unrivalled views down to the sea. Brendan had grinned at her and told her that it was always worth knowing the right people, and that the dinner he’d held with some local councillors before they’d started building had been a worthwhile investment.
Dominique settled into her new life much more quickly than she’d expected. Although she knew that the Delahayes were well known and liked in the area, she hadn’t quite realised that, thanks to her media exposure, she was a minor celebrity here too. Her assumption that her social star would fade with her move was quite wrong, because along with Emma and June, she found herself part of a buzzing social scene and a trophy guest at some of the high-profile balls and dinners that were part and parcel of the local social circuit. One day, as she looked at herself in the full-length bedroom mirror before going out, Dominique realised that she had done what she’d always wanted to do. She’d found a look that suited her and that she felt comfortable with and she’d become popular. Now when she stood beside Emma she felt just as groomed and attractive as her sister-in-law, and it was a good feeling. It was strange, she mused, how it could take you so long to find yourself. But when you did, you became comfortable with who you were. And for the first time in her life, Dominique Delahaye knew that she was comfortable with who she was.
So the affair came as a bolt out of the blue.
She found out about it because she saw the message on Brendan’s mobile phone. As she read it, she felt as though everything she had built up for herself was about to come crashing down around her. She read it over and over again, as though by doing so she could suddenly find a different meaning to the words that were tearing a hole in her heart. But it didn’t matter how many times she read it. The meaning was plain.
She’d been a fool.
Brendan had a few different mobiles because he liked to use a variety of numbers depending on what part of his business he was dealing with. So it wasn’t entirely unusual for him to leave a phone at home, and it was one of these phones that Dominique picked up when she went into the room he used as an office to get a writing pad for Kelly. Kelly wasn’t allowed into the office, so Dominique had offered to get her one, and picked her way through the mess of hard hats, reinforced boots and rolled-up site plans thinking that no matter how much time he was now devoting to different business interests, he really was a bricklayer at heart.
The phone fell off the desk as she grabbed the writing pad. She didn’t know why she looked at it. She never felt the need to check up on her husband. And yet, with the phone in her hand, she couldn’t help herself scrolling through his messages. They were mostly short; things like ‘See you Tuesday’ or ‘Meeting Friday’, which were, Dominique was sure, work-related. And then she opened the one that made her blood run cold and had the potential to change her world for ever.
Hi hon
, it said.
Really enjoyed last week, so sorry you had to leave. Miss you loads. You’ll always be my Valentine
. There were about ten kisses and a smiley afterwards.
There was no name assigned to the number, which she didn’t recognise. She sat down abruptly on the leather swivel chair behind the desk. She had always lived with the fear that one day Brendan would leave her. She’d expected it when she was first going out with him (especially when he met her parents); she’d thought it would happen after she found out she was pregnant; it had been a fear, along with so many other fears, during the dark months after Kelly’s birth; and, she had to admit, it had been at the back of her mind all of the times he’d gone socialising without her as part of his so-called network-building. She’d worried that he’d find someone prettier, cleverer and more interesting to be with than her. But ever since she’d become Dazzling Domino those fears had eased. According to the magazines and newspapers, she was a confident woman, elegant and beautiful. She was a charity queen. She was an inspiration. How could he leave someone who was so great?
But Brendan had known her before she was dazzling and she was wrong to allow herself to think that the Domino Effect was enough to keep him in love with her. In the same way as she would always remember him as the man who’d sat at her table in American Burger, he’d always remember her as the girl he’d felt obliged to marry. Which might have worked out OK if she hadn’t turned into the woman who refused to have more children. The woman who’d lied when she’d said ‘not yet’. Who hadn’t had the courage to admit that ‘not ever’ was the far more likely option.
She’d justified it by trying to convince herself that her feelings would change. There were, after all, lots of women who’d had difficult pregnancies, difficult births and even post-natal depression and who’d gone on to have more children and be happy. But she’d known that she just couldn’t do it. She was a coward, she told herself, but she couldn’t help it.
And so, in the end, she’d let him be the one to decide that his work was more important than having the family he’d always wanted. And she’d pushed all of her anxieties to the back of her mind and decided that it was the best thing for both of them. She’d thought that she was right, because even though she knew their relationship had changed subtly, their sex life had improved beyond measure. She’d done everything she could to make him feel that she was the only woman in the world for him. At the launch of Larkspur, when he’d been so wowed by her appearance, he’d made love to her twice when they got home and told her that he loved her and that she was wonderful.
But not wonderful enough.
She felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. Her breath was coming in short gasps and she was finding it hard to focus. Her hands were shaking. She didn’t want to believe that the worst had happened. She didn’t want to think that he could possibly be seeing someone else.
She sat motionless in the chair for a few minutes. Then she stood up again, tucked the phone into the pocket of her jeans and went to give Kelly the writing pad. Her daughter was sitting at the desk in her room, her long hair pushed to one side as she studied the book in front of her.
‘Here you are.’ Dominique was surprised to hear her own voice sound quite normal.
‘Thanks, Mum.’ Kelly didn’t look up from the book.
She was a good student, thought Dominique. Smart for her age. Very focused. Unlike her. More like Brendan, really.
She walked into their bedroom. It was a big room with long sash windows, which allowed plenty of light to stream inside. She sat on the double bed with its wrought-iron bedstead and ivory satin quilt and looked at the message again.
My Valentine
. She wanted to laugh at that. Brendan didn’t believe in Valentine’s Day. He never sent her a card or flowers. He said that only suckers paid ten times the normal prices for roses on that one day of the year. But he did bring flowers home to her from time to time. She wondered now if they were to assuage his guilt.
She also wondered if Greg had known. She recalled the conversation she’d had with him when they’d talked about forgiveness and he’d asked if she could forgive an affair. He’d said that he’d picked it as an example and she’d believed him then, but now she wasn’t so sure. Perhaps . . . the thought suddenly came to her . . . perhaps that was why Greg had occasionally seemed so distant with her lately. If he knew that Brendan was being unfaithful to her, he’d want to tell her. But he might also be conflicted because of his loyalty to his brother. Should she call Greg and ask him straight out? she wondered. Or should she talk to Brendan first?
She tried to think of how she might bring up the subject. Drop the phone on the table, perhaps? Ask him how he’d spent Valentine’s Day? There had been a meeting that evening, she remembered now. With Matthew, who was still his accountant, and Ciara, who had taken over as his lawyer. Dominique had met Ciara a number of times. She was a well-groomed and intelligent woman, but hardly what anyone would regard as a babe. She was comfortably built, tall enough to carry a few extra pounds, with dark brown curly hair that she wore in a neatly cropped style. Not unattractive. But not a stunner either. He couldn’t be having an affair with Ciara. If he was going to play away from home, he’d surely pick someone better-looking than his schoolmarm lawyer. So maybe the meeting on Valentine’s Day had just been a meeting. Or maybe it had taken all of ten minutes and then Brendan had headed off to be with . . . with . . . Caryn, the PR girl, perhaps? She was altogether edgier-looking than Ciara. Younger, too. But Dominique couldn’t see Brendan being interested in Caryn. She was too skinny. Brendan didn’t like overly skinny women. So who?
It could be anyone. Dominique didn’t know much about the people Brendan met when they weren’t together. There was no need for her to know them or to meet them. But did she know this woman? Was she from Cork? Or Dublin? Was he in love with her? Were they, even now, having urgent conversations together, talking about the state of his marriage, discussing how it could all be ended? Was Brendan saying that he’d never really loved Dominique but, as this girl knew, had had no option but to marry her. Old-fashioned rules for old-fashioned times. He said that about planning laws sometimes. Did he think the same way about being married?
Divorce hadn’t been available in Ireland when they’d got married, but it was now. The bitter campaign, in which posters with slogans like ‘Hello Divorce, Goodbye Daddy’ had been attached to lampposts along the streets, was still fresh in her mind. She hadn’t given it much thought at the time. Her view had been that there was no point in forcing unhappy people to stay together. When a campaigner opposing the change had stopped her on the road one day, Dominique had pointed out that people split up whether or not divorce was available. And that it was unfair and unreasonable to expect them to remain legally tied to each other long after they’d physically moved apart.
She felt now that those words might come back to haunt her. She didn’t want Brendan to divorce her. He was her husband and the father of her daughter and she didn’t want anyone saying anything different. She didn’t want him to think that he could simply leave them and set up a new home with a new wife and start a new family. But maybe that was what it was all about. Brendan had wanted a big family and she couldn’t give it to him. He’d said that it didn’t matter any more. He’d substituted bricks and mortar for children. But maybe he’d changed his mind. She felt sick at the thought.
She stared at the anonymous number as though by looking at it for long enough she could see the woman who sent the text. Should she send a message back in return? A warning, maybe. Stay away from my husband or else? Or else what? she asked herself. What can I do if he wants to be with Little Miss Valentine instead of me? What can I do to keep him?
She released her breath very slowly. Leaving would be a trauma for him too. It would be shocking publicity, because everyone liked her. Or, at least, they were supposed to like her. But did they really? And if Brendan got Caryn Jacks to spin some story about her . . . that was how PR people worked, wasn’t it? Caryn had spun the Domino Effect story. She could spin something else, something that made Dominique appear a completely different sort of person. And people would feel sorry for him.
She squeezed her eyes shut. It wasn’t about other people and what they thought. It was about her and Brendan. That was all. It was about how they felt for each other and why he might want to leave. The only reason would be that he loved this girl more than her and Kelly. Loved her enough to change his life completely. He couldn’t love her that much. He just couldn’t.
She opened her eyes again and scrolled through the rest of the messages. There weren’t any more from the mysterious number. Maybe, she thought, the relationship, whatever it was, had already fizzled out. Maybe, whoever she was, she didn’t really mean that much to him.
And maybe it hadn’t. And maybe she did.
She said nothing when he came home that evening and nothing the following day either when he told her that he would be going up to Dublin and staying overnight. He had an apartment in Dublin, in a block that Delahaye Developments had built on Bachelors Walk. He’d brought her to town to see it and she’d laughed and told him that it was an apt address, and he’d laughed too and agreed that it was his secret bachelor pad. At the time, it had been piled full of folders, hi-vis jackets and Delahaye Developments calendars, and Dominique had thought of it more as an office with a bed in it than a bachelor pad. She might have been wrong about that. Now she thought of it as his illicit den. She pictured a large bed with chocolate-coloured silk sheets in the small bedroom, and a white leather sofa and zebra-skin-patterned rug on the living-room floor. Red lights everywhere and maybe a sideboard with a stash of drinks in the corner. She’d never actually seen how he’d decorated the apartment because she hadn’t been in it since that day. There was no need. She hadn’t spent a night in Dublin ever since she’d moved to Cork. She’d always wanted to come back to her beautiful home.