‘Stop what? I’m merely passing an observation. And issuing an apology for assuming it would have been easy for you to walk away from your marriage.’
A waiter handed the dessert menus to them.
‘Lar always chooses Chocolate Heaven,’ Amanda said. ‘He says it’s aptly named.’
‘Not for me. I’ve to watch the calories these days.’
‘I noticed.’
‘There’s nothing much escapes you, Amanda. Just don’t fuck up my marriage, okay?’ He exhaled heavily as Marcus ran towards them, followed by Ella, who demanded triple dollops of ice cream.
‘Me too, me too,’ shouted Marcus and the boys, livening up, demanded chocolate brownies.
Sylvia checked her phone. A message had arrived. She must answer it immediately. As she hurried towards the entrance, she tilted her hat over her forehead to shield her face from the sun.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
‘Karl Lawson,’ said Eric. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve any idea where I can find him?’ He had joined Amanda in Quix Cafe for a coffee after Mandy Meets, and, as always, she was disconcerted by the unexpected mention of Karl’s name.
‘Whatever for?’ she asked. ‘Surely he’s yesterday’s news.’
‘He was in Danevale Prison with Killer Shroff,’ said Eric. ‘I heard they had a fight. Both were in a bad way afterwards. That must have been a first for Killer. Very few men would have the nerve to take that thug on. I’d like to find out how Lawson mixed it with the hard men and survived. But I haven’t been able to trace him.’
‘What makes you think I’d know where he is?’
‘You ran his campaign. I thought he might have kept in touch with you.’
‘He didn’t.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Eric’s glance was perceptive. ‘Don’t you think interviewing him is a good idea? You were fascinated by him at the time.’
‘Everyone in the media was.’
‘Not everyone,’ he said. ‘Some reporters had a different view.’
‘I don’t remember anyone holding back, especially you.’
‘But I never got the scoops,’ he said and leaned closer. ‘I was always curious about your source. I don’t suppose you’d care to whisper his name in my ear?’
‘I could, but I’d have to kill you afterwards.’
‘Ruthless as ever.’ He laughed and ran his finger along her arm. Danger signals that had sneaked up on her and were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
He returned to his office to finish a report that was going out that evening on Killer Shroff’s release from Danevale.
‘Stick to the facts,’ Amanda advised him before he left. ‘And don’t mention wedding dresses.’
She had broken the story of Killer’s arrest when she was with Capital Eye. Surfboards, she remembered, crammed with cocaine, discovered because of a glitch in the import documentation. Thanks to Hunter she had had the story before anyone else. Now Killer and the forger of the documents had been released from jail on a legal technicality.
‘A successful appeal,’ Killer’s barrister had claimed on the steps of the criminal courts, but Eric called it, ‘An almighty cock-up.’
She collected Marcus from his crèche and strapped him into his car seat. He was full of chatter as she drove home but she answered him absent-mindedly, her thoughts returning to Eric and then, unpleasantly, to Karl Lawson, who refused all her efforts to pigeonhole him. Was he still homeless? She watched out for him every time she walked the Liffey boardwalk but, apart from that initial sighting, she had never seen him again. Over dinner one evening, Lar had mentioned an unfair dismissal case Karl’s solicitor had brought against Richardson Publications. An outrageous claim, Lar insisted, and bothersome, which was why he finally agreed to settle it.
She watched Behind the Crime Line when it aired at nine-thirty. Nothing earth-shatteringly new on the Shroffs, she thought, just the usual regurgitation of established facts about the family and their notorious activities. Afterwards, she watched a books programme and spoke on the phone to Lar, who was entertaining potential investors in the Shelbourne Hotel. He would be late home and would sleep in the master bedroom.
‘See you in the morning, then.’ Amanda kept her tone neutral. Lar had an uncanny knack, even over the phone, of picking up on her responses, so she masked her relief carefully as they said goodbye.
Old hound dog, young bitch, a dangerous combination, he had said when Amanda told him she was pregnant with Marcus. If they married, her fidelity must be absolute. Her husband was calculating and ruthless in business but when it came to sexual mores, he had a Calvinistic morality that was intolerant of transgressions. She asked him once if he had ever been unfaithful to Rosalind.
‘Not once,’ he’d replied, emphatically. ‘Nor was I ever tempted to dishonour the marriage vows we took.’
‘And Rosalind?’
‘Of course she was faithful to me.’ He stared at her over his reading glasses. ‘Why would you even ask such a question?’
It was idle curiosity on her part and his anger had startled her. ‘It happens in marriage—’
‘Not in mine,’ he stated, flatly. ‘Not then, not now. Infidelity is something I’d never tolerate.’
His threats should not frighten her. But they did. To lose custody of Marcus… the idea was unendurable. Like Caesar’s wife, Amanda must be above suspicion and, so, she ignored the prickling rush of pleasure on her skin when she was with Eric and their knees brushed under the table in Quix Cafe, or their elbows touched accidentally – deliberately? She could no longer tell or pretend to be unaware of the tantalising but unspoken question hanging between them.
The book being reviewed was the latest thriller by Jackson Barr. Amanda turned up the sound. Her producer had tried unsuccessfully to persuade the crime writer to appear on Mandy Meets. His refusal wasn’t personal, his publicist apologised. The author was a recluse, who shunned the media yet, somehow, managed to produce two best-selling crime novels every year. He had moved to Ireland after three decades with the New York Police Department and lived in isolation on the summit of Howth Head. His new book received a scathing review on the show but that wouldn’t make a whit of difference, Amanda thought, as she switched off the television. It was already number one on the best-seller list.
She lay in bed and thought about Eric. Such fantasies were dangerous, yet she closed her eyes and imagined them dishevelled on the floor, against a wall, on the kitchen table… in a field of red poppies – anywhere but in the second-best bedroom with the curtains dutifully drawn and Lar’s laboured breathing in her ears. The risks with Eric were too high; but this decision only strengthened that clamping excitement, the careless rapture that could be satisfied so easily until it was forbidden. Then it became a thorn that must only be lanced in secret. And indulged in the dusk of her imagination.
Chapter Forty