| |
After wandering around for a while longer and chatting with Lauren about the most up to date costs, Dorothy went to bid goodbye to a smug looking Saul and got back into her car. Just as she was about to drive away, the phone rang. She quickly pulled on the handbrake and answered it.
It was Gemma to say she was expecting Orla and Peter for dinner. She invited her sister to join them, as she rarely got a chance to see Peter. Feeling more than ready to face her siblings after her day out in Howth, Dorothy accepted the invitation with alacrity. As soon as she arrived home, she arranged with Jamie to drop her off so she could have a glass of wine with dinner.
Dorothy didn’t mention a word about the money throughout the meal, and instead listened avidly to Orla’s stories about life as a partner in a physiotherapy practice, and the volume of paperwork she was expected to understand and produce now she had climbed the food chain to managerial level.
As soon as the main course was finished and the children had gone to their rooms to do their homework or watch TV, she handed each of the girls an envelope containing thirty-five thousand in cash. She told them it was a small gift because Claudia’s portfolio of investments had been doing very well. Her sisters examined the contents of the envelopes then regarded her gravely.
‘We were under the distinct impression the two million you gave us in January was the end of it,’ Gemma remarked coolly. ‘Has something changed?’
Inwardly Dorothy cringed. She held Gemma’s gaze, determined not to be outstared by her big sister for no other reason than she had given her a present.
‘I’ve been rather in touch with my inner Joey these past few months,’ she replied in a subdued tone. ‘Mainly because this situation is so new to me I wasn’t sure how to behave. I see now I may have gone a little too far the other way. It might be time to lighten up and just enjoy it, instead of wondering who’s after me for my money the whole time. There are complications attached to this new life I never foresaw. I’ve even had the occasional moment when I’ve distrusted people I’ve known for years. Folks like Bea and Jools. For fuck sake, those two have been my friends for a decade. They were my friends when I only had two thousand in the bank. Yet I still found myself watching them one day and questioning their motives.’
She expected gasps of horror and looks of revulsion all around, but instead, to her everlasting amazement, Gordon began to laugh and Peter quickly joined in.
‘Something amusing you men?’ Gemma poked her husband in the arm.
‘You wouldn’t catch me feeling guilty just because I didn’t want to be a cash cow for everybody who crossed my path,’ Gordon chortled. ‘It must be a woman thing. As for the Laceys. They might be your pals, Dottie, and love you for who you are, but trust me on this. If they thought they could extract another million out of you for the refurb of that blessed hotel, they wouldn’t hesitate to do it.’
‘The thing that pisses me off the most,’ here Peter chipped in, ‘is I didn’t win the spondoligs myself. If I had, you can bet your skinny Irish ass you wouldn’t have gotten any more than a million out of me. And there is no fucking way on God’s green earth I would have splashed out the three mil on the villa. I would certainly have bought a holiday home, but only for Orla, the kids and me. There is no way any of you lot would be getting your greedy mitts on my swanky pad in the sun. You would have had to buy your own.’
‘Sometimes,’ here Orla made a contribution to the party. ‘Sometimes,’ she repeated, ‘I feel so envious of you, I could literally vomit. Literally. I never used to think of myself as greedy, but since January I’ve seen a side of myself I never knew existed. I’m ashamed of myself.’
‘Yeah, you’re a desperate woman all right,’ Peter told her fondly, as he topped up her glass.
‘It never ceases to amaze me,’ Gemma leaned against her husband’s shoulder as she spoke, ‘how much emotion one hundred and thirty-eight million yo yos can stir up in the human heart. For the first time in my life, I am no longer the number one child of the family. It’s worse than having a brother. It’s seriously upsetting me. I may kill Ma and Pa before the year is up. If I have to hear how fucking wonderful their darling Dottie is one more time, I swear I won’t be held responsible for my actions.’
‘Dottie’s such a great girl for buying us the bungalow in Westport,’ Orla piped up in a scarily accurate imitation of her mother. ‘None of the rest of you would have thought of doing that for us. We can always rely on Dottie.’
Gemma made a vomiting sound in her throat, causing Peter and Gordon to roar with laughter.
‘I hope those children are suitably grateful to their auntie Dottie for buying them those National Solidarity Bonds,’ Orla got her Pat Lyle on again. ‘I bet the little feckers never even made her a card to say thank you. She did it out of the goodness of her heart you know. In my day, children were more grateful. I’ve a good mind to tell her not to give them any Christmas presents. And don’t think I haven’t seen those husbands of yours salivating over sports cars in the magazines. I won’t have her taken advantage of by any of you.’
‘Mum said that?’ Dorothy found herself struck dumb by these disclosures, and only now managed to find the will to speak.
‘If we told the silly cow we were intending to build a temple in your honour, she’d tell us we should have thought of it sooner,’ Gemma replied bitterly. ‘I tell you, I’m going to throttle that woman one of these days.’
‘I had no idea. I’m so sorry,’ Dorothy whispered dejectedly.
Seeing the expression of remorse on her face, her sisters and their husbands howled with laugher.
‘Yeah, it’s all your fault, never forget that,’ Peter just managed to spit out, before he put his head on the table and succumbed to the mirth.
Wendy came rushing in looking worried. ‘Is everything okay?’ At the sight of the chortling adults, her expression changed to one of bewilderment.
‘We were just explaining to your auntie Dottie how mean she is with money, and how much we hate her, and how we’re going to murder your granny,’ her mother informed her cheerfully.
Wendy skipped across the room looking remarkably like Diane, except her hair was darker and her eyes a normal shade of green. ‘If you’re going to kill one of them then I think it ought to be Granddad,’ she stated firmly. ‘You guys have no idea how mean he is. The other day when we were over there helping him sort out the shed, the ice cream van came around. When Eoin asked him if we could all have one, he sort of glared at us and started to back away as if we were going to mug him for his wallet or something. In the end, Granny had to come out and give us the money. I don’t know what she sees in the miserly old fecker. No wonder he’s always constipated. He can’t let go of anything.’
Gordon pulled his daughter down onto his lap. Wrapping his arms around her, he hugged her against him, all the while laughing. Dorothy stifled a gasp as the Space Ache made its presence felt. For the briefest of moments, Wendy and Gordon disappeared, and in their place she saw a large man with very little hair with a woman cradled in his arms. The woman was small and blonde and was sobbing as if her heart was on the point of shattering.
In a flash, both the pain in her chest and the image were gone. Gordon was telling his daughter she would be wasted as a dentist, and should consider a career in comedy instead. Wendy then informed her father she had no intention of attending college, and every intention of marrying her cousin, Joshua, like a girl from a Jane Austen novel, and forevermore leading a life of leisure as the wife of a multimillionaire.
‘Where will it all end?’ Gemma gasped, once she had recovered from her daughter’s latest witticism. ‘How will those poor twins ever know if anybody loves them for themselves? In some ways, Dottie, I feel sorry for them, and I know that’s a crazy thing to say. I wouldn’t wish it on my own children. I haven’t offended you, have I?’ she suddenly asked anxiously.
‘Not at all,’ Dorothy smiled sadly. ‘I often ask myself the same question. Deep down, I suspect they worry about it too. That’s one of the reasons they cling so tightly to Emily and Deco, and the other friends they’ve known for years. It’s a strange life, and it will only get stranger as they get older and come into their money. I pray it doesn’t make them distrustful of the opposite sex. At least not to the point where they end up alone.’
‘What about you, Auntie Dottie?’ Wendy enquired in a small voice.
‘I have a similar problem, hon,’ Dorothy did not pretend to misunderstand what she was being asked. ‘Even if I felt like getting involved with a man, would I be able to trust him? From now on, will every man who seems to be interested in a relationship with me only be after my money? It’s a very lowering thought. Bel thinks I should be getting back into the dating game. She’s worried about me being vulnerable if I stay single.’
To Dorothy’s astonishment, it was as if a light had been extinguished. All traces of mirth disappeared from the faces around her. As one, the rest of the family sat up straighter. Even Wendy, at sixteen years of age, looked remarkably grave.
‘We think you should be very careful about who you get involved with,’ Gordon told her seriously. ‘Never mind what Bel has to say on the subject of romance.’
‘Oh,’ Dorothy perused the solemn faces. ‘I must admit I expected you all to agree with her.’
‘Well, we don’t,’ Peter said firmly. ‘There are plenty of sharks out there. Gordon and I meet them on a daily basis, and they’re not always that easy to spot. A lot of them come wearing very sharp suits and driving very swanky cars.’
‘We think you should take your time and make sure the fella, whoever he is, is trustworthy,’ Orla said gently. ‘And don’t worry about going along with any blind dates of Bel’s just because you feel pressured into it. You’ll know when the time is right.’
‘I will, won’t I?’ Dorothy smiled around at them. ‘Okay then. I’ll take your advice and go with my gut instincts. Thanks, guys.’
They all immediately relaxed and looked more cheerful. Wendy skipped off to find another bottle of wine so she could top up the glasses. Dorothy had arranged for Jamie to collect her, and was more than happy to have hers refilled.
‘I won’t be fit for much tomorrow,’ she told them cheerfully, ‘but I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Talk about your eye opener. Bel will probably drop by for a cup of tea and a chat, but apart from that I don’t have much on, thank God.’
‘The little Marc Jacobs bag you bought her in Rome is beautiful,’ Wendy said timidly, as she carefully poured wine into Orla’s glass. Dorothy gazed at her niece’s little face in wonder. You have been blinded by fear, Dorothy Lyle. Fear. The one thing that is guaranteed to cripple the human spirit has taken hold of you. Well it’s time to let go, and not a moment too soon either.
‘I’ll get you a designer bag for your birthday,’ she promised, and was relieved to see the girl’s face light up.
‘Just as long as it’s not too similar to any of Bel’s bags,’ Gemma said bitingly. ‘You know how she likes to be unique. If she sees our Wends with something like hers, there’ll be hell to pay.’
When Jamie arrived to collect Dorothy, he was amused to find her quite tipsy. After he had chauffeured her to Falcon, he linked her arm all the way to the twelfth floor as a basic precaution. Once they were safely ensconced in the apartment, he helped her undress. Then he gently removed her makeup so she would not resemble a panda when she woke up the next morning. After that, he put a large glass of water on her bedside table and kissed her goodnight.
‘I’ve never known you to natter on so much about handbags,’ he told her fondly. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were becoming obsessed by designer labels.’
Fortunately for Dorothy, her hangover was very mild in comparison to her ordeal after the Take That concert, and was all but gone by lunchtime the next day. When Bel dropped by for a chat, she was indeed carrying one of the bags Dorothy had purchased for her in Rome, although it was not the Marc Jacobs Wendy admired. Remembering Gemma’s rather caustic comments, Dorothy could not help but wonder what Bel’s reaction would be if a sixteen year-old girl sauntered in clutching an identical version.
To distract herself from the thought, she quickly handed the guest an envelope of cash, and told her things were going very well in the world of investments. Bel thanked her politely, but was less effusive than any of the others had been. Dorothy had noticed her friend seemed to take these things very much in her stride, and did not seem at all surprised or shocked whenever Dorothy spent money. On the contrary, Bel was of the opinion her pal was not spending enough, and still regularly mentioned a house in the Seychelles as a potential purchase.
On one occasion, she had even shown Dorothy a photograph of a Boeing jet belonging to Dorian Ganley, Ireland’s richest man. She put forward the suggestion that her pal should consider buying something similar for herself. That had been a strange conversation which Dorothy did not wish to revisit in a hurry. The jet went the same way as the Seychelles villa. She promised Bel she would think about it once she was settled in Howth, and the other woman seemed content with that.
The next day, Dorothy dropped off ten thousand at the home of an ecstatic Amanda, and after knocking on the door but receiving no reply, popped a second one through Horace’s letterbox containing a modest three hundred.
Josh had reported back that, upon opening his birthday hamper, the hairy one had been delighted with the selection of goodies therein, and had not hesitated to slip the two hundred from the envelope into his ancient money clip.
It was clearly the amount of the gift that determined his reaction, and not the fact it was from a woman. The 30K she had presented to him in January had been off-putting in the extreme, yet he was positively laidback about accepting relatively small amounts. Dorothy briefly regretted she had not put an arrangement in place whereby he would receive a monthly allowance from her, but swatted the idea away like an old cobweb. It was too late for all that. Besides, Horace really needed to start growing up and stop being such a fecking drama queen!
After her flying visit to Shankill, Dorothy went to visit her parents. Instead of giving them separate envelopes, she put forty thousand in large denominations into one. She handed it to her mother and told Pat her investments were doing well. Then she suggested they might like to consider having the bathroom made over, since it was looking a tiny bit dated.
Her mother was delighted with the idea, and thanked her daughter profusely. To celebrate, she had a good attempt at force feeding her middle child with homemade fries and a cheeseburger. It took Dorothy a full hour to escape from her mother’s clutches. She only managed it then because she ate half the burger and hid a few fries in her bag.
As she was pulling into her apartment building her phone beeped with a message from Gemma. Gee thanks, sis. Muggins here has to arrange for the plumbers and decorators, while you get all the glory. BTW, I hear the council are planning to name a road after you. LOL
