Lar’s respect for her business acumen had grown throughout her negotiations with Ben. The portrait of Rosalind disappeared from the hall. He hired decorators to paint the master bedroom and commissioned Rebecca to change the decor in the downstairs rooms. Finally, he said goodbye to his late wife. The sky was clear when he lifted the urn containing her ashes and leaned over the side of his yacht. The thin grey stream floated like Chinese ribbons past the stern. They rounded the curve of Dublin Bay and the wind took her away. The sun rested its reflection on the water and the waves danced, as if jigging to invisible golden strings.
The plinks grounded her. They controlled her dizzying excitement, the heat on her skin when Eric was near. They kept her from arranging dangerous trysts until Lar flew to Hong Kong for a plink meeting with investors. Marcus was asleep on the night Eric arrived to Shearwater. The breeze was balmy, silky with promise when they slipped from the house and climbed down the beach path to the strand below. The tide was about to turn when they stripped and ran into the water. The shock of the cold, the exhilaration as Eric swam behind her, knowing he would catch her and carry her back to the rug they had left on the sand.
Suddenly, like a warning beacon, headlights flared across the sea. The boom of a car horn sounded like the song of a lighthouse. A car, driven on to the beach, came close to the water’s edge. The windows were down, hard metal rock blasting, young men in the front and back. Probably joyriders, Amanda thought, as the driver swerved, sand aquaplaning from the wheels; and there, in the dazzling glare, she spotted Marcus running across the beach. The driver swerved and narrowly missed him, the young man leaning from the window, his arm waving Marcus out of the way. She was screaming as she ran towards her son, sweeping him up in her arms and drying his tears. He clung to her, his thin frame shivering. The car left the beach, plunging them back into darkness, and she vowed that night, as Eric hid from view behind the rocks, that it was over… over… over. The thought of Marcus searching the house for her and then making his perilous way down the beach path horrified her. She wrapped a towel around her nakedness and carried him back to Shearwater. She lay on his bed beside him and read his plink books until he stopped shivering and fell asleep.
Amanda didn’t cry on the morning Marcus started school, although, inwardly, she grieved over the sundering that was about to take place. She used to cry in front of her father, until she learned that tears only exacerbated his anger. Action, not tears, achieved results, and she remained dry-eyed as she approached the entrance to St Bede’s Junior Academy with the other mothers, some weeping openly, others dabbing their eyes as their children were weaned from them. Fathers, too, equally emotional, as Lar had been when they stood together with Marcus – looking so grown-up in his new school uniform – to be photographed by Mrs Morris. He was photographed again with Josh, the two of them with their arms around each other, outside the school. Amanda was still unsure how Rebecca felt about Lar’s offer to pay Josh’s school fees. The journey to St Bede’s was longer than the journey to Josh’s local primary school but the opportunity of being educated at the exclusive academy had proved impossible for his parents to turn down. The boys were inseparable and St Bede’s would offer Josh a fantastic start in life. Rebecca wasn’t crying either when they waved goodbye to their sons. Hard training pays off.
Amanda drove directly to LR1. The journey was short, ten minutes if the traffic was light, fifteen at peak. She dropped into Lar’s office to tell him the transition to St Bede’s had gone smoothly. His phone kept ringing and she left him when a call came through from a film company in Hong Kong, who were interested in buying Asian rights to the animated plinks.
Marcus had been upset when the Plinkertown set was dismantled. He hated the animated plinks and refused to watch them. Rebecca said he was ‘a credulous child’. She made it sound like an accusation, albeit an indulgent one. She believed Marcus, unlike Josh, who was already accompanying his father to football matches, was ‘given to too many flights of fancy.’ The plinks, for instance, all those dolls at the bottom of his bed and the posters on the walls of his bedroom.
On his fourth birthday, Marcus had refused to consider a magician, a clown or a bouncy castle. He wanted Super Plink to entertain the children, who would come to his party dressed as their favourite plink. He had his way in the end and the guests arrived to Shearwater in their costumes – Gutsy, Hero and the others. Such excitement when Super Plink drove into the courtyard in his magical van! They ran behind him as he led them through the trees at the end of the garden, weaving in and out of the shrubbery, disappearing from view then re-emerging. All he needed was a flute, Amanda thought. The Piped Piper of the plinks.
Later, when the children had been collected by their parents, and Marcus was in bed, exhausted from the afternoon’s activities, she had invited Ben to stay for dinner.
‘I’ve other arrangements made,’ he said. ‘But thanks for the invitation.’
What other arrangements, Amanda wondered. Was there a woman in his life? She had checked his address in Lar’s files. An apartment in a north inner city complex. She was surprised he hadn’t moved somewhere more upmarket, yet, she thought, the anonymity of his living space tied in with his closed-off personality.
He had removed his costume as soon as Marcus went upstairs. He looked pale, sickly, his long, black hair lank from the heat of his exertions. His scar seemed rawer than usual against his ashen complexion. He dropped hints occasionally about his life before they met. The scarring was the result of a street fight, sudden and unprovoked. Had he ever considered plastic surgery, she asked him once. She could recommend names if he was interested.
‘Maybe in the future,’ he’d said. ‘For now, it’s a reminder of what it’s like to lose everything.’
‘You must have been terrified when you were attacked,’ she said.
‘Not terrified.’ He shook his head. ‘Diminished. I realised I could be killed and no one would even notice I was missing.’
In Quix Cafe, her finger had tingled when she touched his cheek. At the time she wondered if she had struck a nerve, as she did so often with her guests…or caused a brief sexual frisson to flare between them. She was wrong on both counts. What she had stirred in Ben Carroll was much more intangible. She had given him a future. Encouraged him to look up from the pavement to a broader canvas. His gratitude took them beyond sex or friendship, and could even be a cause for resentment. Who wanted their soul to be in hock to another? Certainly not Ben Carroll, with a troubled past that had left him wary of affection and only able to express it when he assumed another identity. Touching his scar had been an invasion that went beyond the surface of his skin; as if she had touched something sulphuric in him and ignited sparks.
Chapter Forty-Four