Rangi came back with another beer for himself and a bottle of wine in an ice bucket for her. Frankly, he’d welcomed the breather.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Molly said politely as Rangi poured her a glass of chardonnay. ‘Were they all car rental uniforms?’
‘Oh, no,’ Rangi replied spiritedly. ‘He definitely had a thing for car-hire girls but bank tellers too. And once a parking warden. A young one.’
Molly suddenly thought of Jack’s delight when a letter had arrived from Avis inviting him to join their preferred customer client list. And his insistence they change from WestpacTrust to ANZ. And his great relish at getting off a $40 parking fine. She felt sick. She took another sip of wine.
‘There’s only one of his regulars who doesn’t wear a uniform,’ Rangi continued before looking at Molly’s pale, sickened face. ‘Do you want me to go on?’
‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ said Molly.
‘Only if you’re sure. She’s a bit different from the others, this one. Not blonde, for a start. A cut above the rest. Too good for Jack as well if you ask me. Really curvy and quite a bubbly personality. Lots of long red hair.’
Rangi’s voice trailed off as Molly stared in horror at something over his shoulder.
‘Jess,’ she moaned as she reached for the ice bucket and threw up.
Chapter 2
1967
‘The smell of you!’ scolded Mary Monaghan. ‘It’s enough to knock a woman out from a hundred paces.’
‘Aye,’ nodded Paddy, standing at her partially open doorway. ‘Sure, don’t they call it an occupational hazard these days, Mary?’
The widow eyed the newspaper parcel Paddy was holding in front of him, the way a shy visiting suitor might hold a bunch of flowers, but didn’t ask him in. If he wanted to play the shy visiting suitor, she thought, he could bring the flowers.
‘You wouldn’t have a spare cup of tea for a hard-working man, now, would you, Mary?’ Paddy pleaded. ‘Only I’ve driven all this way up that muddy lane of yours to bring you a little something out of the goodness of my heart and I’m gasping.’
Mary Monaghan had a hard look on her face but in truth she had been more than a little pleasantly surprised to open the door and find Paddy O’Riordan standing there with a sheepish look on his face.
Actually, she had been surprised to hear a knock on the door in the first place. Nobody much bothered her these days and that was the way she liked it. That was why she liked living here in the wooded valley away from the hustle and bustle (hah!) of Ballymahoe. Why she had stayed.
And she couldn’t in all honesty say that Paddy O’Riordan’s wasn’t a face she wanted to see. If anyone was going to knock on her door and beg for a drink then she would prefer it was him. But why, when he usually left his offering on her doorstep and slipped away unnoticed?
‘What have you got there, then, Paddy?’ she said, pointing at his package. ‘And does it have a head on it?’
‘I’ve only the most beautiful piece of cod you have ever seen, Mary Monaghan. And didn’t I get up at the crack of dawn and trawl the ocean myself until I found the one little fish in the whole ocean I thought was good enough for you?’
The fisherman’s eyes twinkled. She’d forgotten how he could talk, but it took more than a bit of twinkling and talking to thaw Mary Monaghan.
‘Well, if it’s that little, you can thrown it right back in that stinkin’ old van of yours, Paddy O’Riordan,’ she said. ‘And if it was the crack of dawn when you caught it, what would I be wanting with the rotten thing at four in the afternoon?’
Far from flinching at her words, Paddy twinkled all the more. Every lash of her viperous tongue thrilled him to the core.
‘You’re looking gorgeous this afternoon, Mary. Did I mention that?’ he said.
He’s after losing his mind, thought Mary. Not a word out of him for all these years and then he turns up with all the chatter in the world and some to spare.
‘That dress does wonders for your beautiful blue eyes and isn’t it the exact same shade of the tea cosy there on your kitchen table?’ Paddy was peering past her now into the farmhouse kitchen. ‘Is that a fresh brew, is it? I’m gasping for a cup of tea, if you must know. Did I mention that?’
Mary narrowed her eyes and looked at the pleading fishmonger.
‘And what exactly does your wife think of you begging on the steps of another woman’s front door, Paddy? I bet her eyes are the same colour as your own tea cosy if you think about it.’
The widow saw the twinkle depart from Paddy’s eyes and was it her imagination or did the big man visibly sag?
‘Well, I don’t see an awful lot of Maeve’s eyes these days, to tell you the truth,’ he said. ‘They’re closed a lot of the time, Mary, now you come to mention it.’ He suddenly looked embarrassed, as though he’d just woken up and found himself standing on a widowed woman’s doorstep badgering her for tea.
‘I’ll be on my way, then,’ he said, starting to turn. ‘I’m sorry to burst in on you like this but the fish is for you. I’ve had it on ice since this morning. Go on with you. Take it.’
Crossing her threshold, Mary stepped towards the fishmonger and reached for his catch. ‘Well, if it’s only a cup of tea you’re after,’ she said, ‘I suppose I can stretch that far.’
Chapter 3
Wednesday, 17 February 1999
‘Oh, man,’ said Rangi. ‘You two know each other?’
Molly wiped the corners of her mouth with the bottom of her wedding dress and nodded. ‘Rangi, this is Jess, my best friend who would have been my bridesmaid on Saturday in front of the tulips, although I didn’t realise she was having sex with my fiancé when I asked her.’
Jess looked stricken. ‘Moll, I am so sorry. Moll — can you forgive me?’ She moved slowly towards the bilious bride, who was staring at a spot on the floor.
‘Molly, are you okay?’ Rangi asked. ‘I should go. I didn’t mean to throw a spanner in the works, girl. I should go.’
Molly looked up at the poor bugger and smiled weakly. ‘You’ve probably saved me, Rangi,’ she said. ‘In fact, you are probably my new best friend. There is a vacancy, as it turns out.’
Jess winced as Rangi stood and scribbled his number down on the back of an old parking ticket.
‘I know you hardly know me but if you ever want to get in touch with me, that’s my number. Hope you find your groom. A better one, I mean. Sorry.’ The burly security guard picked up his jacket and left the bar.
Molly sat at one end of the leather sofa staring at the floor again while Jess sat at the other end, staring at her.
‘You’re better off without Jack, Molly. You really are. I could never have told you but I am glad you know. He’s a snake, Moll. A sleaze. Please, just look at me.’
Molly did. Jess had changed out of her gold satin and back into a pair of black bootlegs and a sheer stretchy body shirt that only just made it across her ample bosom.
‘Your butt did look enormous in that dress, you know,’ said Molly in a dull voice because it was the first thing she thought of. ‘Your butt looks enormous in most of your clothes, actually.’
Jess looked hurt but Molly didn’t care.
‘Am I really supposed to be grateful that my best friend and half the Hertz corporation were sleeping with my boyfriend while I was planning our wedding?’ she asked. ‘Am I?’
Jess hung her head.
‘Am I?’ she asked again, louder, her anger gaining momentum. Jess remained silent.
‘Am I, you — you — you Little Miss Piggy,’ she finally managed. ‘Well, that’s what Jack used to call you behind your back.’ Her heart was hardly in it but she just didn’t know what else to do.
‘Fuck you, Molly Brown,’ Jess shot back, her temper flaring. ‘Fuck you through and through. You were just so busy being perfect you failed to notice that you have the personality of a hall rug and your boyfriend was bored shitless with you. Jesus Christ.
You are so successful, so pretty, so perfectly formed, so fucking goody-two-shoes it makes me sick. It makes everybody sick. Why should you marry Jack? Why should you have it all? It’s not fair!’ And with that Jess collapsed into hysterical sobs while Molly gazed around her in astonishment.
‘Yeah, right, Jess. Enough about me, let’s talk about you for a while. I’ve got news and it’s all bad. You’re not going to be a bridesmaid. Gee, I hope that’s not going to be too upsetting for you.’
She slumped back in the couch and reached for the bottle of wine which Rangi had thankfully removed from the bucket before she used it as a hurling receptacle.
Perfect? Apart from the life-going-down-the-toilet thing, she thought.
She looked at Jess’ ginger hair falling over her face as her body shook with sobs. I feel sorry for her, Molly thought in surprise. I feel sorry for her. Jesus, that was no good. She was going to have to embrace further nastiness to get through this nightmare or she wasn’t going to make it.
If being perfect had got her chundering into an ice bucket while her fiancé frolicked across the street with a tart, maybe being nasty was the way to go. Hell, maybe she would get fat too.
‘Pull yourself together, you halfwit,’ she said to Jess, slapping her on her shaking shoulder. ‘Maybe you’ll find everything’s a bit more fair now that my life is ruined.’
Jess slowly looked up at her friend, tears streaming, her face twisted in pain.
‘I really am sorry, Moll. I feel like such a slut.’
‘Dressed like that? Quelle surprise!’ feigned Molly. ‘Listen, you may as well tell me about that fornicating fiancé of mine. It’s the least you can do as a former best friend.’
Jess’ eyes filled with tears once again but the sight of Molly’s stony face reined them in. She took a deep breath, got a grip, and started talking.
‘He’s slept with most of your friends, Moll. Not just me. I had actually decided I was going to tell you what a cheat he was when he rang me up one day and invited me to lunch. We got slaughtered on Krug and before I knew it we were up at the Cosmo and he was taking my clothes off. You know about me and champagne. I just felt sick when I woke up, Molly. Sick. I knew that things would never be the same between you and me if you knew but I didn’t know what to do about it.’
‘You could have tried keeping your thighs together,’ suggested Molly. ‘You complain enough about chafing.’
Jess started to sniffle again.
‘I swear he wooed me, Molly. Flowers at work. Little messages on my email. Champagne left on my doorstep. I couldn’t resist it. Each time I met him I swore I would call it off and then tell you but he was just so dead spunky. I couldn’t resist him. And I just wanted to know what it felt like to be you for a bit.’
Two stone lighter and not a slut, thought Molly, but without the enthusiasm to say it out loud.
She reached for the bottle of wine, which was empty. Well, that explained the numb feeling. Catching the barman’s eye she ordered two margaritas.
‘How did you find me here?’ she suddenly asked.
‘Oh, I went into the foyer of the Cosmo and asked the security guard if he had seen a gorgeous girl in a wedding dress and he told me to come here,’ Jess answered.
‘Did you know that Jack was upstairs screwing some bubblehead rental-car girl?’ she asked.
‘No,’ sobbed Jess, ‘but I suspected as much from what you told me in the shop. He ditched me for her. For Tiffini.’
At this stage Jess completely lost control, leaving Molly to wonder why she herself didn’t feel that heartbroken. Just numb. Slightly nauseous. And somehow ripped off.
‘For God’s sake, Jess,’ she said, exasperated. ‘Pull yourself together. You can’t really expect me to comfort you because Jack dumped you. I was supposed to be getting married to the cheating bloody bollocking bastard. Give me strength.’
Where were those bloody drinks? ‘Tell me about Tiffini,’ she demanded.
‘She works for Driveaway at the airport, that’s all I know,’ sniffled Jess. ‘I think Jack met her when you thought he was in Sydney last week.’
Is there no end to it? Molly wondered. ‘When I thought he was in Sydney?’
‘He doesn’t have a client in Sydney,’ whispered Jess. ‘That’s when he goes to the Cosmo.’
‘Margaritas! Now!’ Molly roared in the direction of the bar, to find that the barman was right behind her. He quickly put the drinks on the table.
‘Everything all right here?’ he asked. A lonely boy given to fantasies involving rubber, he’d been watching the scene unfold since Molly and Rangi arrived and was dying to know what was going on.
‘Two more margaritas and could you make it snappy?’ Molly said with all the politeness she could muster, which wasn’t much. She was getting the hang of being a bitch, all right.
‘What am I — blind?’ she asked turning to her blubbering friend. ‘Stupid? I can’t believe that all this has been going on and here I thought I was living such a great life. What have I done to deserve this?’
To outsiders, and to Molly Brown herself, she had been leading a great life. It hadn’t always been that way but Molly had worked hard to get herself to where she was.
When she was young, her father had abandoned her mother for a younger model and now lived in Queenstown where he worked as a ski instructor in the winter and bungy-jump operator in the summer.
Much of his life still revolved around bonking girls around Molly’s age or younger, but the two had managed to maintain a good relationship despite his having been in absentia for most of Molly’s life.
She loved her mum, Bobs, to bits. Ever since Peter Brown had scarpered, it had been Bobs and Molly against the world and despite being vaguely annoyed when her mother insisted to strangers that they were sisters, Molly realised they had a bond envied by many a mother and daughter.
Molly had been the daughter most women dream of. The pretty little girl had grown into a gorgeous young woman. She was tall and slender with the sort of long, straight, shiny, dark hair that people with short, frizzy hair immediately want to hack off. Her clear skin, brown eyes and beautiful cheek-bones had seen her on the receiving end of three different impromptu offers to sign up with modelling agencies — none of which she had taken up — but it was her smile that stopped people in the street. Molly couldn’t help herself, she was a naturally happy person and it showed. She had done her mother proud at the local Catholic college, and after a business studies course in which she excelled, had opened her own jewellery gallery, Paua to the People. It was never going to make her a millionaire but it made her a living and it made her happy.
When Molly was 25, Jack White had walked into Paua to buy some earrings for his mother and her life changed for ever.
By the end of the week she had gently finished with her childhood sweetheart, George Johnson, and by the end of the month she was seeing Jack on a regular basis.
She was in love.
Jack’s mother, Cynthia, absolutely adored her and his four younger brothers were the closest thing Molly had ever had to siblings. She loved going to their Sunday night dinners where the younger boys would rough-house and ridicule one another while Jack would tease his adoring mother and talk rugby and racing with his father.
Everybody had been delighted when Molly and Jack announced their engagement six months earlier.
Bobs and Cynthia, who got on well enough despite Cynthia finding Bobs a little theatrical, had been in a frenzy of organisation ever since. The wedding was going to be huge. The venue, the cars, the cake and the groomsmen had been confirmed within 24 hours of the nuptials being announced.
Molly took it all in her stride because she was so happy.
And when Jack suggested she sell her business because he had plans to move to Moscow for a year to start a branch of the White Board, his advertising company, there, she couldn’t have been happier. The sooner she started a family with her wonderful man the better.
She sold her
business, rented out her apartment and moved into Jack’s Ponsonby villa to wait for their perfect wedding and the rest of their perfect lives.
Yeah right. Well, that was a gone-burger.
Through a mild haze of margarita Molly suddenly had a thought. Where the hell was Jack? If her two-faced scheming wench of a bridesmaid had found her so easily, why hadn’t he?
‘Did you see him at the apartment building?’ she asked Jess, who was still snivelling into her cocktail. ‘Did you see Jack?’
‘No,’ blubbed the redhead. ‘Apparently they had just left.’
‘They? Jesus bloody Christ, is there no end to this?’ Molly cried. ‘I’ll kill him. I’ll find him and I’ll kill him. But first, I’ll kill her. I’ll find her and kill her.’ With this she grabbed her bag and lurched off the sofa.
‘But what about me?’ wailed Jess. ‘What should I do?’
‘You should pay the bill and get out of my face,’ said Molly, heading for the door.
Outside the crisp blue of the day had yet to blur into evening. Six o’clock, said the Rolex that Jack had given Molly as an engagement present, instead of a ring. Being in the jewellery business, she already had rings up to her elbows and Jack had joked about his gift being timeless. Really, Molly thought now, it was the opposite. The haze in her head was still there but as she stood outside in the shade of the empty alley, a sudden breeze did something to clear her pounding head.
Then she saw it.
And suddenly she had a plan.
Picking up the skirt of her dress, Molly hurried to the end of the alley and rapped sharply on the window of the airport shuttle bus parked across it.
‘Are you coming or going?’ she asked.
‘That’s rich coming from you,’ laughed the driver, eyeing her up.