Last of the Great Romantics (44 page)

'Oh goodie,' squealed Lucasta, who loved a good boozy late night out more than anything. 'Will there be Ferrero Rocher?'

'Ah, shut up,' said Mrs Flanagan. 'More to the point, will there be diplomats there?'

'Some, I'm afraid.'

'And yer going to let Lucasta loose on top of them? Jaysus, we'll be lucky if a third world war doesn't break out. She
is
a weapon of mass destruction, ya do know that, don't ya, luv? I'm only telling ya so ya know what yer letting yerself in for.'

Meanwhile Daisy was at the bar, happily chatting away to Simon and feeling better than she had done in days. 'I'll tell you one thing,' she was saying. 'Jasper calls me the last of the great romantics but he's dead wrong. After this experience, I am totally changing my whole belief system. Movie love only exists in Hollywood. Romance is just something that's peddled to us in chick flicks.'

'Go on,' said Simon, looking at her, intrigued.

'And I'll tell you something else. The last few weeks have proved to me that my judgement of men is totally up my own arse.'

'Because you thought Mark Lloyd was a wee sweetie who gave to charity and slept with birds and pet mice lulling him to sleep like in a Disney cartoon?'

'Yes.' She was giggling again. The accent . . . 'But I'll tell you another thing. I don't think I'd know a genuinely nice guy if he danced naked in front of me. I solemnly vow never again to trust my own judgement. I never want to be a pushover for any guy who just thinks he can have me like that.'

'Do go on,' he said, 'I feel like I'm having a chat with Emmeline Pankhurst.'

'You may laugh, Simon, but from here on in, things are going to be very different in my love life. No more Miss Pushover. No more Miss Sucker for any guy who just happens to give me a bit of attention. Any bloke I date from now on will be put through the most painstaking interview process. And I'll want references from all of his exes and my sensible sister will have to give him the thumbs-up before I'll as much as have a drink with him.'

'Anything else?'

'Oh, and Mummy will have to do an energy clearing on him.'

'Phew! That it then?'

'Yip, think so.'

'Shame.'

'Why?'

'Because I was going to ask you out on a movie date this weekend. The slogan outside your local cinema really made me want to go there. "The Ballyroan Grand. It's either this or else drive forty miles to the multiplex in Liffey Valley". I have to go there purely because it is the most honest advertizing slogan I have ever seen in my life.'

Daisy looked at him, reddening. 'I'm sorry, did you just invite me out? For real?'

'Hey, but if you'd rather stay home to read Emily Dickinson poetry, I totally understand.'

'Thought you'd never bloody ask.'

'Really?' He looked genuinely surprised. Surprised and delighted.

'Well, you were my knight in shining armour the other night, weren't you? I'd be a right ungrateful cow for turning you down.'

'You see? You're prepared to go out on a date again. Now that is what I call the triumph of hope over experience. Maybe you really are the last of the great romantics.'

Epilogue

Six months later

The Davenport Country House Hotel now boasts a waiting list of at least two months even to get a reservation, ever since it was awarded a Michelin star, the only hotel outside the greater Dublin area to have merited one. As Andrew once confidently predicted, it is the hottest ticket for miles and is fully booked out for weddings until early in 2008. Tim is thrilled, the bank managers are thrilled and, to this day, Molly continues to open doors with her elbows and berate guests for leaving dirty footprints on the marble floors.

Jasper now works there as duty manager and regularly meets up with Eleanor for theatre dates, although, in his wildest dreams, it never occurs to him that he might stand a gnat's fart of a chance with her. 'Sure, why would a woman like that as much as look sideways at the likes of me?' he says to Lucasta every time she teases him, which is every time she's pissed. Eleanor still continues to call him and, in her own gentle way, is making slow but steady inroads. As she says to Daisy, whom she sees regularly, 'It's a case of how long it takes for water to wear away a stone. Just watch this space.'

Lucasta and Mrs Flanagan, meanwhile, dutifully trooped off to the ambassadors' do in Phoenix Park House and, true to form, made a complete show of themselves. At one point, a drunken Lucasta berated the Jordanian ambassador for being an oily git and there was almost a diplomatic incident when they were told that, although this was a private residence, they'd still have to go outside for a cigarette, same as everyone else.

'Fuck this,' needless to say, had been their joint reaction. Relations between Phoenix Park House and Davenport Hall were almost completely broken off after that night, when the pair of them were found to have hijacked the Italian ambassador's CD number-plated car and driven it all the way home. 'At least we can have a fag in the car, where it's nice and cosy,' had been Lucasta's reasoning. Even Robert's patience and politeness had been well and truly exhausted at this point, although he is very fond of Jasper and, sources say, is even thinking of offering him a job as his personal protection officer.

Both Lucasta and Mrs Flanagan have, to everyone's relief, a new fad to occupy them and keep them well out of harm's way. Lucasta has recently embraced the Kabbalah with a vengeance and now drags poor Mrs Flanagan to meetings of the Kildare branch in Newbridge once a month. Mind you, the pair of them rarely get beyond Shaughnessy's bar on the main street.

'But that's not the point,' as Lucasta firmly says. 'We're on a spiritual quest for enlightenment and there's nothing like a nice g. and t. to open the chakras, I always say. And we both have these lovely cottony bracelets to show for it too, you know.'

On a different note, Daisy has now been happily dating Simon for the past few months and they've just gone off to Mexico on holiday together. They both really needed the break; Daisy having worked harder that she'd ever done in her whole life, now that she's been promoted to a fully fledged hotel manager, and Simon badly needing to recover from the stresses of the Oldcastle season. The main stress being Mark Lloyd, who had his worst season yet, being plagued with injuries and blaming it all on Simon. Although the hounding he received from the press when it came out that the 'rebound girl' he was seen leaving his own aborted wedding with was, in fact, a post-op transsexual, did very little to improve his performance either. On or off the pitch.

Simon and Daisy, who does a very good impression of him, just laugh at him behind his back and plot how they can get Eleanor together with Jasper. According to Simon, she's knickers mad about him, the trouble being that Jasper remains utterly oblivious. The type of guy who would barely notice that a woman fancied him, short of her dancing naked in front of him singing 'take me now'.

There was only one slight hiccup on their outward journey. While waiting on a connecting flight at Newark airport, they were sitting at a Starbucks café, when who should come clickety-clacking her stiletto-heeled way in. She was wearing the Continental Airlines stewardess's uniform and was with a gaggle of other air hostesses but there was no mistaking her. The big hair, the inch-thick pan-stick make-up, the lip gloss: it was definitely Shelley-Marie.

'Holy mother,' said Simon, 'is that who I think it is? And do you think she's on her way to a cross-dressing convention or what?'

Daisy giggled, but just then, Shelley-Marie turned from the counter and spotted her. A moment of recognition passed, where each saw the other but neither said anything. Wordlessly, Shelley-Marie picked up her overnight wheelie bag and swished out of the coffee shop.

'She was staring right at you,' said Simon. 'I was afraid there'd be a cat fight.'

'Most definitely not,' replied Daisy, smiling up at him. 'Just let her go.'

'Thank God for that. The size of her? She'd have beaten seven kinds of shit out of me.'

As for Andrew, he was as good as his word. He went back to New York, finished the Globex case and then, much to everyone's surprise, turned down Macmillan Burke's incredibly generous offer to stay on in New York on the grounds that his wife was pregnant and his place was with her. In Davenport Hall. More precisely, in the gate lodge, where he's now living, whilst Portia has temporarily moved back into the Hall proper. The official reason is that, now that she's big and blooming, it's better for her and the baby to rest up in the Mauve Suite, being pampered and waited on by Tim and Molly and all the staff. Only what she deserves, having worked so hard for so long, everyone says.

And if there were a few raised eyebrows at her living separately from her husband, Portia didn't care.

'If I didn't know better, madam,' Molly often remarks to her, 'I'd say that you and Andrew are more like boyfriend and girlfriend than husband and wife. Another dinner date again tonight! It's like he's courting you all over again.'

Portia smiled.

'And do you think you'll move back into the gate lodge then, madam? After the baby's born, I mean?'

'We'll just have to see, Molly. Just wait and see.'

THE END

REMIND ME AGAIN WHY I NEED A MAN?

By Claudia Carroll

Ever since she was a little girl, all Amelia Lockwood has ever wanted is to get married. The Tiffany ring, the Vera Wang dress, the Jordan-style tiara . . . the whole shebang. The car, the gorgeous flat and three fabulous friends only go so far in consoling her now that she's thirty-seven and still not married.

So when Amelia hears about a course that promises she'll be saying 'I do' before the year is out, she jumps at the chance to enrol.

What Amelia doesn't realize is that a fundamental principle of the course is that you need to revisit all your past relationships to work out where you went wrong. In single-minded pursuit of her ultimate goal Amelia gets in touch with every ex-boyfriend she's ever had – right back to age sixteen – with some surprising results!

059305539X

COMING IN SEPTEMBER FROM BANTAM PRESS

HE LOVES ME NOT . . . HE LOVES ME

By Claudia Carroll

In the heart of County Kildare is Davenport Hall – a crumbling eighteenth-century mansion house, ancestral home to Portia Davenport, her beautiful younger sister Daisy and their dotty, eccentric mother, Lucasta. Disaster strikes when their father abandons the family, cleaning them out of the little cash they had managed to hold on to. But a ray of hope appears when Steve Sullivan, an old family friend and confirmed bachelor, suggests that they allow the hall to be used as the location for a major new movie.

So Davenport Hall is taken over by the
crème de la crème,
including the self-centred Montana Jones, fresh out of rehab and anxious to kick-start her career, and Guy van der Post, a major sex symbol with an eye for Daisy. Throw in Ella Hepburn, Hollywood royalty and living legend, and soon there's more sex and drama off-camera than on!

'IT BUBBLES AND SPARKLES LIKE PINK CHAMPAGNE. A HUGELY ENTERTAINING READ' Patricia Scanlan

'HEARTWARMING AND WITTY. A WONDERFUL DEBUT FROM IRELAND'S NEW ANSWER TO JILLY COOPER'
Morag Prunty

'IT MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD'
Anita Notaro

'FABULOUS FUN – A SPARKLING DEBUT'
Kate Thompson

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