Family Affairs Read online

  “Yes, looks like an English degree wasn’t necessary, after all.” But he smiled fondly at his “nearly” daughter. “Nicely done,” he winked as he got up from the table. “Right, I’m off to play a few chords. See you at dinner,” he said as he headed towards the drawing room where their baby grand piano was located. “Call me if you need any help, darling,” he threw over his shoulder to his wife.

  “Sure, Dad.” Molly just laughed. “We all know your help is sipping your evening whiskey and giving directions.”

  Jo rubbed her hand over her youngest daughter’s head. “Leave your father alone,” she laughingly admonished. “He helps lots. In his own way,” she added.

  Frankie sat as the others began gathering bits and pieces, opening drawers and cupboards, rooting in the fridge, boiling pans of water, all like a well-oiled machine. How did they know what the other person was going to do so things weren’t doubled up? She was happy enough doing her own bit of cooking now she’d had more practice and even sharing the task with one other person, but several people all making a meal together just put her on edge for some reason. Her therapist would raise the dreaded control word – a favourite topic since the whole stalker business had begun.

  Seriously, who wouldn’t have control issues if you were being followed by a lunatic and didn’t know when they were going to strike next? If that didn’t make you want to have some control in your life, what the hell would? Frankie accepted the cutlery, or flatware as she called it, from Ali and set the table, remembering to find the cloth napkins that Jo liked. Funny how some families had their little routines and foibles.

  Frankie remembered staying with a school friend during Halloween mid-term and that family only ever ate off paper plates as the mom didn’t like washing-up – turned out, of course, that the poor woman suffered badly with OCD and had to use fresh dinnerware every time – but as a kid Frankie thought the paper plates were awesome. Another family never drank wine from actual wine glasses – only small tumblers. While that had seemed strange to a teenager exposed to all manner of sophistication, when Frankie stayed in Italy for several months during the filming of one of her movies, she quickly realised that most Italian families drank their wine that way and of course then remembered the tumbler-drinking family had been the de Nozzios!

  Jo always used fabric napkins, even on a picnic. Everyone had their own napkin ring and depending on how messy an eater one was, the napkin would get used for several days before being thrown in the wash. She had a seemingly endless supply of them and regularly bought pretty new ones when abroad on holidays. Frankie felt a rush of such affection for Jo as she placed a napkin in its ring at each place setting, and laid out the knives, forks and spoons. Such an ordinary chore, but for Frankie it was the essence of this family.

  Routine and familiar.

  A sense of belonging and security.

  A simple daily tradition that probably all the Fitzgerald siblings themselves would do in their own homes, with their own families, without even being aware of the small significance of bringing a little tangible piece of their childhood with them wherever they went. Frankie paused and, remembering all the meals she’d shared with Dev at the lodge over the last few weeks, realised that when he was on table-setting duty he had, indeed, used the old faded chintz napkins. They must have been twenty years old and, though well-worn, were still serviceable. She smiled, knowing that she had used them, too. Perhaps she really was a Fitzgerald!

  “Will Flynn and Dev be in for dinner?” she asked, her stomach suddenly jittery at the thought of seeing Dev again.

  He’d texted her every day – his way with words never ceasing to amaze her. Every evening about 10 p.m. her phone would beep and she would see his name – and every evening her stomach would lurch at the sound. And every evening the exact same text would appear on her screen: Okay? Yes, a man of the literati, Devlin Fitzgerald was not.

  At first, Frankie had typed out a long, descriptive version of her day, but on rereading, deleted it. She decided that two could play that game and on day one sent back, Fine, followed every evening thereafter by answers like grand, super, dandy, reasonable, adequate, good, but always a different word to answer his steadfast Okay? But that was Dev. Steadfast despite his crazy world-travelling career, not unlike her own.

  She had numerous postcards from all over the world, from wherever his assignments took him. Sometimes she’d get back to her New York apartment after several months of travelling to find maybe three different views – all simply signed with the initial D. Just like all those flowers that always appeared on her opening nights at film premieres, Dev had been the one staying in touch, reliable. There.

  Why had she never appreciated that before?

  Or had she taken it for granted? Flynn was always thought of as the steadfast one, but now she realised that Dev was, too. Yes, she’d definitely taken it for granted, she thought now. Not in a casual or uncaring way, but in a way that made her feel grounded and safe. And, she admitted, cared for. And what had she done in return?

  Exactly nothing.

  She’d kept every postcard, but he didn’t know that. His flowers were the only ones she ever brought home, and from each bouquet she kept one daisy to press in her work diary. The other massive and expensive ones were all donated to hospitals for the elderly, to be given to those who had no visitors, but he didn’t know that, either. For all Dev knew, each of his thoughtful gestures went unnoticed, unacknowledged. How could she have been so selfish?

  Pretty easily, actually. When one is on a ridiculously tight schedule, from movie to movie to a play, it was all too easy to be very wrapped up in oneself and allow the secretaries and assistants to take care of the daily running of your life. These last few months since Stephen’s death was Frankie’s first time to “do” for herself and she was ashamed to realise how much she’d taken for granted, whether intentionally or not.

  “No, pet, no boys tonight.” Jo interrupted her musings. “Flynn’s off on some case, I gather, and Dev’s up to his tonsils with the opening only a couple of days away, so he’s staying put in town. Patrick!” She shouted to her husband. “Dinner’s on the table.”

  Since it patently wasn’t, Molly poured a shot of whisky into a glass and headed out. “I’ll get him; you know what he’s like.”

  The background sound of a Mozart sonata interspersed with a bit of rag time and the odd Carole King number had been very pleasant listening.

  “Molly doesn’t really get it,” Jo said when her daughter left the kitchen in search of her father, “but listening to Patrick’s playing is a great way of him helping! He’s not going to start helping in the kitchen at his age and truth be told, I don’t want him under my feet. I know,” she continued as she placed a large pot of pasta onto a tile in the middle of the table, “that couples today share all the household jobs for the most part, but we divide the work how it suits us. Each to their own, I suppose.” She wiped her hand over her brow to push back a strand of hair.

  “Mum, I think you’re mad,” Ali said as she placed the Bolognese sauce on another tile and reached for the grated Parmesan. “Dad doesn’t do nearly enough to help you in the house. There’s no way I’d let my partner, if I ever have one, get away with that,” she announced.

  “Get away with what?” asked the professor at the kitchen door, glass in hand.

  The four women and Toby just started laughing as he took his seat and smiled innocently at them all.

  “Let’s eat,” Jo said.

  Frankie spent the next day – opening night minus one, she was calling it in her head – doing personal chores and emailing. She contacted Jason again and set up a meeting with him for the second week of September.

  Her life was at such a crossroads that she felt a bit lost. If the writing was to be her new career – no, strike that – now that writing was her new career, where should she base herself? Back in her lovely roomy apartment in New York? Or maybe move here, to Dublin. She had such a good support network h
ere with the Fitzgeralds and, indeed, a few friends from her college days still lived locally, but was that quite mad?

  New York had been her base since her early twenties and she loved her home on the Upper East Side. Maybe she should stay in New York while she took up new assignments and then, depending on if most of them were around Europe, she could get a place this side of the pond, too – God knows she had enough funds to last her a lifetime. She’d made some very shrewd investments, thanks to her “uncle” Enzo in LA, who gave great financial advice when she was just starting out.

  Her mother, the infamous Carolina, had left quite the fiscal portfolio, which Enzo had managed diligently on her behalf until she was twenty-one and then insisted she take a business course, albeit online, to give her a grounding in her assets. She now left most of her funds to “do their thing” and accumulate nicely, thank you very much. She had various charities she sponsored and at times she was the “celebrity du jour” at one or other of them. But for the most part, Frankie preferred to stay in the background – an odd thing for such a famous actress to say, no doubt, but in her mind, her job was to be “the star”, her private life kept private.

  She didn’t mind when the Inner City Children’s Education Fund people used her as their voice and she’d donated a lot of her time to various groups of young aspiring disadvantaged actors over the years. It was something she might do more of in the future, another thread to pull on as she faced her blank slate.

  Hmm, New York was sounding more realistic as a base and the two magazines that had contacted her both operated from there, too. Oh, God, decisions . . . ! That’s why she paid her agent so much damned money – he wasn’t going to like taking such a back seat. She was one of Jason’s major clients but her success had brought others to his door, so she didn’t feel guilty considering keeping him on a basic retainer. He wasn’t going to be booking her work any more, now that she was controlling the work herself, but he was good for the odd lucrative print advert. A major cosmetics company had asked her to be their “face” and she had yet to decide. But Jason could work on those details and it would keep him off her back until she was established as a regular contributor to the travel-writing business.

  Frankie’s stomach turned over as she sorted clothing into piles – some of which she’d take with her when she left for New York the following week and some could stay in her closet here. While her mind calmly tried to sort through her options, her stomach, always a true barometer of her anxiety level, did some pretty good loop the loops. And now the big decision of the moment – to go see Dev in his studio or not? To confront him about her own feelings or not? To perhaps create a tension or barrier between them if she asked him what his feelings were, or just leave well enough alone.

  Who was she kidding? She knew he had feelings for her – or at least his body did – but with her history, she didn’t trust, for one second, a man’s attraction to her. Men had been swooning over her since she was about fifteen and had been trying to get her into bed almost as long. If having a man find her beautiful was a criterion by which she measured her own worth, she only had to stand out on the street and wait.

  Stephen had been a bit of a financial nerd and hadn’t even seen her movies, which had been so attractive to her. At first. After dating for a while he began to watch some of them but was quietly underwhelmed by her success. His family was very wealthy, so the money had never been an issue, and even though they hadn’t discussed it in detail, she knew he’d have expected her to curtail her acting dramatically when they were married.

  It had worried her a bit. Well, a lot. Along with a number of other small details they were to decide upon when married. So many things that had started to pile up in her head as the days of her engagement added up. So many things that began to itch at her, to make her stomach tighten as she let her thoughts dwell on them during her normally busy days.

  Frankie sat down suddenly on her bed, holding a black dress in her hands, as a particularly strong memory returned. It was a few days before the fateful opening night when disaster had struck. They were in her apartment getting ready to go out for dinner with some of his clients. The dress rehearsal had been scheduled for the following day and Frankie had been a bit on edge, her responses a bit sharp to his. At the time he’d been quizzing her as regards her knowledge of the couple with whom they were to dine – a couple whose ancestors had sailed over on the actual Mayflower, or so she was informed.

  Her make-up was flawless, her hair its usual glossy curtain about her face. The dress she’d chosen was high couture – a little black number, the one she now fisted into a ball. It was a shift dress that skimmed the hips and then flared to the top of her knees. The neckline was demure, a simple boat shape. She was carrying a long string of pearls from the Roaring Twenties and her heels were classic Louboutin.

  “Stephen, would you mind fastening these for me – the clasp is a bit tricky?” she’d asked as she turned her back to him, holding the pearls about her neck.

  “Of course, darling,” he’d begun and then stopped – only silence filled the space.

  “What’s the matter?” She turned her head to see why he wasn’t reaching for her necklace. He was staring at her back as if he’d seen a ghost.

  “You can’t . . . you really can’t wear that,” he’d sputtered.

  Frankie was stunned. It was incredible fabric, draped to fit like a dream, and it cost a fortune. “What’s the problem?”

  “It has no back,” he said, as if telling her something new.

  Of course it had no back! That was the whole point of this dress – practically nun-like from the front and quite the opposite when you turned round. The material hung in a wide deep cowl to below her waist at the back, exposing her beautifully toned body. It was a masterpiece of elegance and design construction, complete with invisible cups for her breasts. It was her favourite new item and this was the first time wearing it.

  “Take it off!” he ordered, striding across the room as if he couldn’t bear the sight of her.

  “Why?”

  “You . . . you’re not wearing a bra and God knows what underwear you have on!” He took a deep drink from his tumbler of Scotch. “It’s not appropriate for this meeting. These people are respectable pillars of society. I haven’t even told them you’re an actress and this, this display of . . . of indecency is just, well, just not acceptable.”

  Frankie stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. He was flushed with anger and, she thought, mortification. He genuinely thought his clients would object to her dress. That she’d be judged wanting and therefore he’d be judged as somehow less.

  He glanced at his watch and looked pointedly at her. Without pausing for further discussion, she pivoted and marched back into her bedroom, where she yanked off the dress, and grabbed a bra and a demure knee-length, sleeveless silk dress in slate grey. It was one she’d bought to match the exact colour of her eyes on certain days, its neck and back both high enough for even the most prudish in society. She buckled a silver belt at the waist, kicked off her shoes, dragged on a pair of silver sandals, dumped the contents of her evening bag from her black to a silver, and marched back out to her awaiting fiancé.

  The whole wardrobe change had taken about six minutes – six minutes where she’d shoved her temper back in its box. Now wasn’t the time to argue, as she knew these so-called friends or clients were important to Stephen, but she’d so be bringing this little contretemps out to be aired later in the taxi home.

  And what had happened? The couple were delightful. Perhaps a little stuffy at the beginning, but they warmed to her “professional” personality. Thrilled to discover who she was, they weren’t afraid to admit they’d seen several of her movies and were huge fans. Stephen had taken his cue from them and had been the attentive, adoring, supportive mate.

  Later that night, he told her his jealousy had kicked in and he just didn’t want others ogling her in such a sexy dress. He’d used every ounce of his consi
derable charm to convince her he was sorry but that it was her fault for being so incredibly sensual. He’d been kissing his way up her neck at the time, so she’d forgiven him – then.

  Frankie unravelled the poor unsuspecting garment and shook it out. It was beautiful and needed to be worn. She got up and reached for a hanger then hooked it over the closet door. “You,” she said to the dress, “are getting an outing tomorrow night!”

  The DART train from Dalkey station took about thirty-five minutes to Connolly Street, where Frankie alighted with increasingly less eagerness and hopped onto a Luas tram heading across town. Yes, she could have walked, but her nerves were tightening by the minute. She’d told Jo that she was heading into the city to meet friends and may stay over. She knew the address of Dev’s studio – it was a big loft-type space that doubled as his apartment in the Smithfield district near the Four Courts.

  God, was she mad?

  Frankie walked down the narrow lane and studied numbers on doorways. She stood in front of Dev’s building, smoothing her hands down over her worn jeans. She’d tucked a black chiffon blouse into the jeans and black ballet pumps covered her feet. Make-up was at a minimum, as the last thing she wanted to do was show off her somewhat famous face in public. She’d debated with scrunching her hair into a ponytail, but vanity won out, and it hung loose and shiny about her shoulders. She pocketed the large sunglasses – her idea of a disguise – and reached up to ring the Fitzgerald doorbell.

  Chapter 13

  With several large framed photographs strewn about the floor, Dev prowled between them, choosing, discarding, debating. All of his pieces for tomorrow night’s opening were already hanging in the swanky gallery across town, but he just wanted to be really sure he’d made the exact right decisions.

  The show, titled Faces and Feelings, was his biggest yet. He had work in private collections around the world and had shown in galleries in various cities over the years. His work was acknowledged as art, his peers applauded him, critics praised him.