Better Together (28 page)

‘Go on!’ Vinnie grinned. ‘You were looking for incompetent country bumpkins floundering around.’

‘I wasn’t,’ she protested.

‘Sometimes a tragedy is just a tragedy,’ said the garda. ‘And the truth is that Paudie really had to pick himself up afterwards. It was hard for him. But, like you said, defining in the end.’

‘D’you like him?’ she asked.

‘I haven’t seen him in years,’ replied Vinnie. ‘But I liked him back then. I still like him now. He’s done a lot for this area of the country. He deserves his success.’

‘Fair enough.’ Sheridan stood up. ‘Thanks for your time and for the information.’

‘Maybe not the information you wanted. But the truth,’ said the garda. ‘However,’ he added, ‘I can tell you something that you seem to have missed.’

‘What?’ She looked at him hopefully.

‘He sued a local paper over suggestions that he had something to do with it. He won. That paper doesn’t exist any more.’

‘He bankrupted them!’ Sheridan was astounded.

‘I don’t think it was entirely due to him. But having to make a payment to him certainly didn’t help. So if you were thinking of saying anything scurrilous about him, you’d want to be very sure of your facts first.’

Sheridan nodded glumly. Then she picked up the bill and went to the cash desk to pay it. When she turned around again, the superintendent had gone.

The boutique just off the main street wasn’t the sort of place Sheridan normally shopped, but she’d caught sight of the jade-green dress as she and the garda superintendent were walking to the hotel, and the image had stuck with her. However, she felt a little awkward when she walked inside and realised that she was the only customer, and that the sales assistant was already asking if she could help. Sheridan’s preferred method of buying clothes was to go into a chain store and rummage through the racks with no clear ideas of what she wanted. Which was why she usually ended up in T-shirts and jeans.

‘It’s a lovely dress,’ said the sales assistant when Sheridan mumbled that she was sort of interested in it. ‘Very flattering because of its wrap-around styling. Why don’t you try it on? What size are you?’

‘Fourteen.’ Sheridan always felt fat when she had to confess to being a fourteen, no matter how often she was told that she was just well built (a term she nevertheless felt made her
sound like a horse). In any event, it freaked her out when she went through the rails and saw dresses starting at size eight. Or sometimes even six. They couldn’t be for real people, she often thought, while sometimes wishing she could fit into one.

The assistant, though, didn’t look at her as though she was a freak, but simply selected a dress and handed it to her. Sheridan went into the changing room and pulled her jumper over her head. She hoped the assistant wasn’t the sort who rapped at the door, poked her head around and asked how you were getting on when you were still standing around in your knickers and trying to suck in your stomach. But she didn’t need to worry. The assistant left her alone.

She was a completely different person in the dress. So different that she couldn’t quite believe it. The gentle folds of the material fell loosely around her, the wrap-around effect smoothing her shape so that her thighs didn’t seem to signal their presence straight away, as was usually the case on the rare occasions she tried on dresses. The colour, a few shades darker than she normally chose when wearing green, enhanced the flame of her hair and the tawny brown of her eyes. She stared at her reflection in shock, then looked for her mobile, took a photo and sent it to Talia asking for her opinion, because she couldn’t trust herself to think that she was wearing a dress and looking good.

A few seconds later the mobile rang.

‘Where are you?’ demanded Talia.

‘A shop in Kilkenny.’ Sheridan’s voice was low because she didn’t want the assistant to hear her.

‘Who’s that dress for?’

‘Me, of course.’

‘I know that!’ Talia said impatiently. ‘But you’re buying it because of someone. Who?’

‘Can’t I just buy a dress?’

‘It’s me you’re talking to,’ said Talia. ‘Who?’

‘I met a guy,’ confessed Sheridan. ‘He asked me out.’

‘Way to go, girl! You’re holed up in the country and you’ve met someone. Fair play to you. I wasn’t expecting that!’

‘We’re just having dinner,’ protested Sheridan. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Come on, Sheridan. You never bought a dress for Griff. And you thought you loved him.’

‘This is different,’ Sheridan said. ‘He’s bringing me to a nice restaurant and I have to look good.’

‘And that
certainly
never bothered you before,’ said Talia. ‘Didn’t Griff bring you to L’Ecrivain once? You wore Levis.’

‘They were my very best Levis,’ Sheridan reminded her.

‘You had three days to buy a dress but you didn’t. As I recall, Ms Gray, you said that you weren’t going to be shoe-horned into the whole stupidness of feeling you had to be someone other than yourself just because you were going to one of Dublin’s finest eateries.’

‘Yeah, well, Dublin’s different too,’ said Sheridan.

‘Tell me about this man,’ demanded Talia.

‘He’s just someone I met. He’s nice but it’s not a big deal.’ Sheridan tried to sound casual.

‘Don’t talk rubbish, it’s a massive deal!’ cried Talia. ‘You’ve been keeping secrets from me. Whenever you email, you just say it’s going well and you’re enjoying Ardbawn more than you thought but that you’ll be glad when that girl comes back from her maternity leave and you can high tail back to
Dublin. You never said anything about hunky men who might keep you there.’

‘You’re reading way more into this than you should,’ said Sheridan. ‘OK, he’s nice and I . . . I have to admit that I fancy the pants off him. I’ve never really felt like this before. But I’m sure I’ll get over it.’

‘Sheridan! You’ve never felt this way before? Not even with Griff? Who is this guy?’

‘I’m probably exaggerating,’ said Sheridan, even though she could still feel shivers up her spine every time she thought of Joe.

‘You sound excited. Different.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it’s just because there isn’t much going on here,’ said Sheridan. ‘Perhaps if I’d met him in Dublin I wouldn’t even have noticed him.’

‘You think?’

‘He’s very attractive,’ Sheridan conceded. ‘I suppose I would’ve noticed at least.’

‘You’re in love!’ exclaimed Talia. ‘I’ve never heard you sound so thrilled about a guy before.’

‘I’m not in love! I hardly know him.’

‘Love at first sight! Even better.’

‘Stop it!’ cried Sheridan, although she was laughing. ‘It’s just . . . Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, I didn’t intend for us to have a big discussion about him. All I wanted to know is what you thought of the dress.’

‘You know perfectly well already what I think,’ said Talia. ‘You must have known when you sent the pic. He’ll be thinking about getting you out of it from the moment he sees you.’

‘I don’t want that sort of dress,’ Sheridan protested. ‘I want to look gorgeous and elegant, not slutty.’

‘And you do,’ Talia told her. ‘You look incredible, Sheridan. All I’m saying is that any red-blooded man will want to have sex with you.’

‘I don’t want to have sex with him,’ Sheridan said. ‘At least . . . not on a first date.’

‘I’m so excited for you!’ Talia’s enthusiasm for the dress and for the new man in Sheridan’s life was very evident. ‘You went through a rotten time and you’re coming out of it with a replacement job and a replacement man too.’

‘Both could be equally temporary,’ Sheridan reminded her.

‘So what!’ cried Talia. ‘You’re back in the saddle, Sheridan Gray. And I’m delighted for you.’

Sheridan smiled as she closed her phone. She realised that she’d only sent the picture to Talia because she wanted to let her friend know about Joe. And because she wanted to show off in her dress. Maybe she wasn’t so different from every other girl in the world after all.

The sales assistant tapped at the door and Sheridan opened it.

‘Stunning,’ was all the assistant said.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ Sheridan twirled slowly in front of the mirror and looked anxiously at the other girl. ‘I didn’t check the price, though.’

The dress was expensive. But not outrageous. Sheridan handed over her credit card. Even if it all went pear shaped with Joe later, the dress was an investment. But the truth was, she hoped it would be more than that.

Sheridan took a more winding route back from Kilkenny so that she could drive past March Manor. Although she now accepted Superintendent Vinnie Murray’s insistence that
Elva’s death had been a tragedy, the story was still going round in her head. She stopped a few yards short of the house, on the opposite side of the road, just outside the entrance gates to the Ardbawn Riding School. There was little to see from her position, as the house was sheltered by the high trees that were planted either side of the driveway, but Sheridan could make out the structure of the building, its slate roof and tall chimney stacks. She could also see cows in the field behind it, and assumed that this was Paudie’s famed Limousin herd.

Perhaps there was no point in thinking about him as a potential route back into a full-time job. Her original intention had been to find out and reveal something untoward about his business dealings, simply to get her own back on him for the staffing policies that had made her redundant. Learning about Elva had made her more interested in the man himself. The whiff of intrigue about her death had made it seem all the more fascinating. But looking at his house now simply made her feel like a snoop. The man had suffered a tragedy in his life, had picked himself up, ruined a newspaper and made a fortune afterwards. Most people would think of that as success.

But Alo had said that the site would be interested if she did a profile. It didn’t have to be sensational, just revealing. She could write something thoughtful and positive about his recovery from personal grief, and show that she was more than just a sports writer. She could persuade him that the time was right to be more open about himself. Being here in Ardbawn was a massive advantage. She could get him to talk to her because she was a local now. He wouldn’t think of her as being a hostile interviewer. He’d see her as the girl
who was working on the
Central News
. His very own newspaper. His tame reporter. He’d be well disposed towards her. Why wouldn’t he?

She’d talk to DJ about it. Explain how important it was to her future career. Maybe he could set it up. After all, she thought he liked her. He’d surely want to help her get a proper job.

She put her car into gear and was about to move off again when the gates opened and a big Range Rover turned on to the road in front her. She peered through the windscreen of the Beetle, wondering if Paudie was driving it. But the only part of the driver she could see was a red baseball cap pulled low over his (or her) eyes to protect them from the glare of the setting sun.

She waited for the gates to close. They didn’t. She edged the car forward, craning her neck to see if someone else was coming down the driveway, but it was empty. She hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath, glanced in her rear-view mirror to make sure there was no traffic on the road, then swung her car across it and powered her way through the still open gates.

It wasn’t possible to see the entrance to the riding school from the stables, which was where Nina was talking to Peggy Merchant, the owner. The two of them had trusted and respected each other ever since Nina had come to Peggy with her idea about running joint promotions for the guesthouse and the riding school over twenty years earlier. Peggy had been impressed with Nina’s determination then, thinking that the young girl had a smart head on her shoulders. She’d revised her opinion somewhat when Nina had married Sean Fallon. In Peggy’s view, Sean was a shallow man who didn’t deserve someone like Nina Doherty. But, like everyone else in Ardbawn, she’d re-evaluated her opinions about him over the years, particularly the last decade or so, when he seemed to have become far more settled and content with his place in the community. Peggy put a lot of value on the community – she believed in people working hard and helping each other for the common good, which was why she regularly protested about developments that would change the character of the town. Although the councillors thought she was a pain in the butt, most of the residents supported her, and she’d managed to stop or change some of the worst proposals.
Nina often suggested that perhaps Peggy should run for a seat on the council herself, but her friend always said that she was an issues-based woman and would be hopeless with the day-to-day stuff that went on.

She was doing day-to-day stuff now, brushing the horses as Nina watched, pleased to see her friend, who’d called around to chat about the Spring Festival. Until her break-up with Sean, Nina had dropped by Peggy’s at least once a week, but over the last while she had been reluctant to talk even to her closest friends. So Peggy was pleased to see her now, even though her face was still far too pale and her eyes were like dark smudges on parchment.

Nina was relaxed in Peggy’s company, soothed by her rhythmic brushing of the horses and the familiar conversation about the festival. She knew that Peggy wouldn’t ask about Sean until she herself was ready. She was a wise woman, Nina thought, tall and rangy with iron-grey hair and a long face that some of the less kind people in the town said was very similar to those of the horses she loved so much. Nina had to agree that Peggy wasn’t attractive in the way the word was normally used to describe beauty, but there was a certain purpose about her that held your attention. Her clear grey eyes were firm and determined and she walked with a confident stride. Nina had never seen Peggy anything other than positive. And she wanted some of that positivity now.

‘I need some advice,’ she said as Peggy finished with the last horse, an amiable mare called Lucy who was good with first-time riders. ‘My head is in a whirl.’

‘Come in for tea,’ said Peggy. ‘These things are easier to discuss over tea.’

She led the way to the house, scraping her boots at the door.