‘Gabriel?’ Dominique was taken aback.
‘He got back to Ireland yesterday.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Now why would I joke?’ demanded Kelly.
‘I know, I know. It’s just an expression. What’s he doing here?’
‘Holidays, I suppose.’ She looked at her mother thoughtfully. ‘I know you and he had a bit of a falling-out,’ she said, ‘but why don’t you ask him along tonight?’
‘Did you ask him already?’
‘No,’ said Kelly. ‘It’s your party, Mum. But you haven’t seen him in ages and it’s silly to row.’ She looked sideways at her mother. ‘He did try to be kind to us after Dad disappeared. ’
‘I know,’ said Dominique. ‘It’s just that Gabriel has his own way of doing things and it’s not necessarily mine.’
‘What did you row over?’ asked Kelly.
‘It was a tense time back then,’ said Dominique, not answering the question. ‘We all said things that maybe we shouldn’t.’
‘Was it to do with Aunt Emma?’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘I don’t live in a bubble, you know,’ said Kelly. ‘There’s always tension between you and Emma when Gabriel is around.’
‘It’s not important,’ said Dominique.
‘Well, will you ask him?’ Kelly looked enquiringly at her mother.
‘I’ll call him,’ said Dominique, although she had no intention of asking Gabriel to a divorce party.
Especially as Emma would be there.
She hadn’t spoken to Emma in weeks, and she’d hesitated before sending her an invitation. Her contact with all of the Delahayes had lessened, although she still rang Lily once a week. But their conversations were usually short and not the rambling, gossipy ones they’d once had. She spoke to Greg, too, but ever since the night he’d called to her house, she’d felt the closeness she’d once had with him slowly erode. It seemed extraordinary to her that, after a night when they had been closer than ever before, this should be the case, but it was.
She both regretted and was grateful for the distance between herself and the Delahayes. They had been such a huge part of her life for so long that it was strange not to see one or other of them every day. It was particularly odd not to see Emma, to whom she’d been closest. As Emma had once said to her, they were both Drimnagh girls in the wilds of Cork. They should stick together. Not having seen her for a while had made Dominique less emotional about Emma, her marriage to Greg and her ill-defined feelings towards Gabriel. She was sorry that she’d rowed with her, and she wondered how the other girl was doing, still in the thick of things.
So when she was drawing up her guest list, she picked up the phone and called Emma, who was astonished to hear from her.
‘A party?’ she’d said. ‘What sort of party?’
Dominique had explained it to her, and Emma, though at first surprised, had said that she’d love to come.
‘I’ll stay with Johnny and Betty in Rathfarnham,’ she said, ‘and get a cab over to you.’
‘That would be great,’ Dominique told her. ‘It’ll be good to see you again.’
‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘You too.’
Dominique didn’t want her reconciliation of sorts with Emma to be tarnished by Gabriel’s presence. She didn’t know whether Emma and her brother had got in touch after the breakdown of her marriage, and part of her didn’t want to know. But the idea of the two of them together in her house, either gazing soulfully at each other or lugging around past baggage, was too much.
She rang her parents’ house, but Evelyn told her that Gabriel had gone out.
‘He won’t be back till late,’ she said. ‘He was meeting someone.’
‘Say hello to him from me,’ Dominique told her mother as she pushed the thought that Greg could be meeting Emma to the back of her mind. ‘And I’ll be in touch.’
She felt as though she’d been let off the hook. She’d done the right thing and still got the result she wanted. She hadn’t had to talk to her brother and she hadn’t had to invite him to her party.
Not my party, she reminded herself, as she went outside to look at the sky again. Paddy’s party. Something I have to remember.
Kelly had compiled a party playlist and was transferring it to her iPod. Dominique left her to it and went upstairs to get changed.
She stood in front of the wardrobe, but she already knew which dress she was going to wear. It was the purple polka dot, the one she’d worn to the last party she’d ever hosted, on the day that Brendan had disappeared. She hadn’t been able to wear that dress since - hadn’t really had the occasion to either - but now it seemed the appropriate choice. She was back, and so was her dress. Not the same as before, of course. She wasn’t Dazzling Domino any more. But neither was she the crying, despairing wreck that she’d been. She was still Dominique Delahaye, because she could never go back to being Dominique Brady. But now she was Dominique Delahaye on her own terms. With a new sense of who she was and what was important to her, and with her own friends and her own house and her own job. She was still working at the golf club. Agnes had decided not to return after her maternity leave, and Paul had immediately offered the full-time position to Dominique, who was both efficient and popular. He told her that she was one of the most organised people he’d ever met, which always made her smile, because in the last few months she hadn’t really considered herself to be organised at all. More hopeful, she thought, hopeful that things wouldn’t go pear-shaped, but prepared for the fact that they might.
‘Hey, Mum, are you going to be in there for ever?’ Kelly banged on the bedroom door. ‘I thought I took ages, but you’ve been in there for hours.’
‘Not hours,’ said Dominique as she opened the door. ‘It takes longer when you get to my age.’
‘Oh, Mum,’ breathed Kelly. ‘You do look lovely.’
And Dominique smiled, because she’d taken a lot of time to become Dazzling Domino again, in how she looked if not in how she felt. The purple polka dot clung to her body (thinner now than she’d been the last time she wore it) and her dark hair fell in loose waves around her face. Her make-up was simple, but she’d blended, toned and concealed in all the right places so that her skin appeared smooth and flawless. Her big dark eyes were emphasised by her smoky eye shadow and long-lash mascara.
She was wearing sparkling drop earrings and a silver pendant with a small diamond stone. The pendant was the one piece of her expensive jewellery that she’d kept. She’d bought the earrings in Boots for less than a tenner.
‘How do you do that?’ demanded Kelly. ‘How do you manage to look as though you’ve just stepped out of a magazine? ’
‘Depends on the magazine.’ Dominique grinned at her. ‘And, as you pointed out, it takes hours. Whereas you, my sweet, look totally fabulous and it only took you ten minutes.’
‘A bit more than that,’ said Kelly, who was carrying off a layered look in shades of green that Dominique knew she’d never be able to do herself.
‘The thing about it is that you are young and therefore automatically lovely,’ said Dominique. ‘But then you always do look great, you wretch.’
‘Dazzling Delahayes.’ Kelly grinned at her.
‘And why wouldn’t we be?’ asked Dominique cheerfully as she ruffled her daughter’s hair.
It was a dazzling party, too. Maeve and Kevin arrived first, followed by some of Paddy’s friends, and then Paddy himself turned up with a huge bouquet of flowers for Dominique, although she was hard pressed to find a place to put them. Charlie, Kelly’s boyfriend, who was studying chemistry at college, was being barman for the day and enjoying himself hugely making cocktails for anyone who wanted.
The sun continued to shine, and even though the yard was now in shadow, the air was warm. Kelly’s party playlist was in its mellow phase and so was excellent background music to the conversation that buzzed both inside and outside the house. I’m good at parties, thought Dominique as she listened to it. I really am. And a key part of it is getting the right mix of people. It’s nice that I can do that with people who are my friends.
She looked around her. There were some notable absentees this time, like June, who’d once been at almost all her parties but who (unlike Emma) she simply couldn’t bear to see again. Greg was looking after Lugh so that Emma could come, which meant there was no chance of him dropping by as he might have done in the past. Emma herself still hadn’t arrived. But the major absentee, even though he hadn’t always turned up to her events, was Brendan. And she couldn’t help thinking about him. No matter how much she’d wanted this party to be different to all the others she’d ever had, the ghosts of the past were still with her.
I wonder if everyone’s lives are this complicated, she asked herself as she handed around some of the nibbles that Lizzie Horgan had left earlier. I wonder if we all seem to be sailing along on the surface while we’re madly bailing out the water underneath.
Emma arrived twenty minutes later. Although she looked as stunning as ever, her careful make-up couldn’t conceal the fact that her face was thinner, which really didn’t suit her.
‘Thank you for asking me,’ said Emma. ‘I’ve missed you, Domino.’
‘I’ve missed you too,’ Dominique said as she hugged her fiercely. ‘And look who’s here!’
Emma pushed her way through a knot of people to where Maeve was standing admiring Charlie’s antics with the cocktail shaker. The two girls squealed as they saw each other (although as Maeve told Dominique afterwards, ‘God knows why I squealed, I was never that friendly with her’) and both declared that the other hadn’t changed a bit.
‘I bloody hope I have!’ Maeve cried, and Emma smiled at her.
Dominique was delighted that Maeve was able to take the strain of Emma from her shoulders. Even though she was pleased to see her sister-in-law again, she knew that if she’d had to talk to her herself, they’d have ended up thrashing through Delahaye relationships, and that was something she wasn’t interested in today. It was Paddy O’Brien’s party, not an occasion for Delahaye drama. Meanwhile she was keeping her fingers crossed that Gabriel truly did have the good sense not to show up. It wasn’t a day for the Bradys to have a go at each other again either.
She glanced at her watch. It was time to crack open the bottles of champagne. Dominique still loved the bubbling fizzy drink, which always seemed to promise better things. She went into the house and retrieved the bottles, then made sure that Charlie had the glasses ready.
She stepped up on to the small yellow-brick wall that enclosed the flowerbed and clapped her hands.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said. As she spoke, she remembered all the other times she’d done things like this. Always, perhaps, for better causes and better reasons, but none that were important to her personally. Not like today. Because even though they weren’t celebrating her divorce, she was celebrating a sense of liberation that she hadn’t realised she needed.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to thank you all for coming here today.’
Among the guests, she could see Emma leaning against the back wall of the house, Paul Rothery from the hotel and golf club beside her. Kelly and Charlie were both behind the bar, holding hands. Her neighbours from either side had been invited too, and were watching her. Maeve and Kevin were standing side by side. Paddy was smiling.
‘We’re here to celebrate a divorce,’ she said. ‘Which sounds a bit strange, given that it’s the end of something rather than the beginning. Yes, it means that a marriage is over. And that’s always sad. But it also means that two people have decided that they need to change their lives. And sometimes, hard as it is, we have to do that.’ She cleared her throat. ‘You all know that my life has changed a lot over the last while. Not all of it was welcome.’ There was a small murmur of acknowledgement. ‘But even when change isn’t welcome, we have to get on with it. No point in trying to hide.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So for helping me not to hide, I’d like to thank all of you who are here. Most especially Kelly, the best daughter in the world.’
Everyone applauded, and Kelly blushed.
‘However, we’re not here because of me.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘We’re here to party! So I’d like to thank Paddy for not saying no to the idea of celebrating his divorce and for being a really good friend to me over the past few months. I hope he has a very happy time as an officially single man. I can vouch for the fact that being single again is not as bad as people make it out to be.’