Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [39]
The photographer wrote it down, and out of the corner of her eye Lisa could see April’s disapproval. She smiled all the more broadly.
“You’re really gorgeous, you know.” Anton was admiring Lisa openly. “And you wore my colors too.”
She savored the praise. She knew there would be times when she would play this scene over and over again in her mind. But she mustn’t dwell on herself and her dress.
Lisa blessed Noel and his cousin Emily’s thrift shop. She had paid so little for this outfit and she was one of the most elegant women in the room. More photographers were approaching her. She must try to look as though she wanted to deflect attention from herself.
“There’s a great crowd here,” Lisa said. “Did all the people you wanted turn up?” Across the room she saw that April had a face like a sour lemon. “But I mustn’t monopolize you,” she added as she slipped away, knowing that he was looking after her as she went to mingle with the other guests.
Miranda was slightly drunk.
“I think it’s game, set and match to you, Lisa,” she said unsteadily.
“What do you mean?” Lisa asked innocently.
“Oh, I think you’ve knocked April into Also-Ran.…”
“What?”
“It’s a saying, you know, in a horse race. There’s the winner and there’s Also-Ran, meaning the ones that didn’t win.”
“I know what it means,” Lisa said, “but what do you mean?”
“I think you have the single, undivided attention of Anton Moran,” Miranda said. It was a complicated phrase to finish and she sat down after the effort.
Lisa smiled. What should she do now? Try to outstay April or leave early? Hard though it was to do, she decided to leave early.
His disappointment was honey to her soul.
“You’re never going? I thought you were going to sit down with me afterwards and have a real postmortem.”
“Nonsense! You’ll have lots of people. April, for example.”
“Oh, God, no. Lisa, rescue me. She’ll be talking of column inches of coverage and her biological clock.”
Lisa laughed aloud. “No, Anton, of course she won’t. See you soon. Call me and tell me how it all went.” And she was gone.
There was a bus at the end of the lane and she ran to catch it. It was full of tired people going home late from work. She felt like a glorious butterfly in her smart dress and high heels, while they all looked drab and colorless. She had drunk two cocktails, the man she loved had told her that she was gorgeous and wanted her to stay.
It was only nine o’clock at night. She was a lucky, lucky girl. She must never forget this.
Chapter Five
For Stella Dixon the time just flew by: there was so much to see to every day. There was a lawyer to talk to, a nurse from the health authorities, another nurse—this time from the operating theater—who tried to explain the procedure (though Stella was having none of it; she was far too busy, she said). Once she got her anesthetic “that would be curtains” for her. While she was still here she had to try to deal with everything.
Her doctor, Declan Carroll, came in to see her regularly. She asked after his wife.
“Maybe the babies will get to know each other,” Stella had said wistfully one day.
“Maybe. We’ll have to work on it.” He was a very pleasant young man.
“You mean you will have to work on it,” she said with a smile that broke his heart.
For Noel there weren’t enough hours in the day either. Anytime that he was not slaving in Hall’s, going to twelve-step meetings or catching up on his studies, he spent surfing the net for advice on how to cope with a new baby. He had moved into his new place in Chestnut Court and was busy making preparations for her arrival.
He had AA meetings every day, since the thought that most things could be sorted out by several pints and three whiskeys was always with him. He managed to stay away from the bar at his father’s retirement party. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place as they presented a watch to Charlie that he said he would wear every day.
Noel began to wonder how he had ever found time to drink.
“Maybe I’m nearly over it,” he said hopefully to Malachy, whom he had met