Once in a Lifetime. Cathy Kelly

thing,’ Lena confided. ‘Nobody had heard of Organic Belle when he brought them in two years ago; now they’re big in Los Angeles and some famous hotel chain wants the range in all their spas. They’re going to be huge. You should try the products. We’ve a lovely woman who works there, Charlie Fallon. She could help you.’

      Star sensed that Lena thought she was the epitome of an eccentric artist, partly because she lived in such a remote spot, and partly because Star had said she rarely visited Kenny’s. Lena, who lived and breathed the store, and didn’t see how anyone else could fail to adore the place, was shocked.

      ‘You mean, you don’t shop there?’

      ‘I was there twice last year,’ Star pointed out.

      ‘But that was to see me,’ Lena said.

      Consequently, she did her best to sell the notion of Kenny’s to Star, highlighting bits she thought Star might like, which included anything vaguely natural.

      Passing the Organic Belle counters, Star inhaled the subtle scent of the brand’s best-selling balm: an instantly relaxing combination of lemongrass and lavender.

      Star had seen Charlie, the woman Lena had spoken of, on one of her earlier visits. Although she didn’t exactly resemble her mother, Star was pretty sure that Charlie was the younger daughter of Kitty Nelson, a stalwart of the women’s feminist movement in the seventies and someone Star had known many years ago. It was the eyes: ever so slightly cat-shaped. But while Kitty’s eyes had been feline in every respect, particularly when it came to men, Charlie’s were soft and gentle. She would be a very different sort of woman to her feisty, femme fatale mother, Star instinctively felt.

      Beyond the Organic Belle counters, lay the entrance to the food hall, and even though all the boxes of sweets and cookies were packed away, the lingering aroma of caramel and butter filled the air.

      ‘I love the food hall,’ Lena had explained, determined to make Star into a Kenny’s fan. ‘We sell proper food there. David realised there was a vast market for ready-to-eat gourmet food and since we’ve started selling the locally produced “I Made It Myself, Honest” range, sales have been enormous.’ People loved the food, Lena went on: simple produce expertly cooked with zero additives.

      On her previous visits, Star had been into the homes department, which sold Irish pottery and glass. Star could never resist pottery, but she hadn’t been into the lingerie department, despite Lena explaining about their biggest seller: a range made by a former home economics teacher from Dublin who was fed up with trying to get comfortable suck-it-all-in underwear for women over size 18, and had designed her own range.

      ‘Fabulous idea,’ said Lena. ‘She made it all on her sewing machine, but when she went round the shops trying to get business, David was the only one to bite. And now look at it. We can’t keep it on the shelves and all the big stores in London want it too. What other man would see that there was a need for that?’ Lena asked.

      Star smiled. Lena would have died with embarrassment if she’d thought she was implying that slender Star needed control pants.

      ‘And it’s not as if he has any experience with a wife at home looking for control pants every time she needs to dress up,’ Lena went on. ‘He’s married to Ingrid Fitzgerald, for heaven’s sake–she’s only a size 12. Has an incredible figure. So it’s pure business sense on his part. You have to admire that, don’t you?’

      Star rarely watched television. She had one, but it was ancient and she really only turned on for the news. Even so, she knew who Ingrid Fitzgerald was. In a world where many political television interviewers were male, Ingrid stood out as the best of them all: highly intelligent, poised and adept at getting answers to the hard questions. And beautiful, too. Not the fleeting type of beauty that came from fluffed-up hair and a carapace of make-up, but a real, deep-down kind–lovely bone structure, intelligent eyes and an expressive, warm face.

      And the thing was, Ingrid looked as if she was as lovely inside as she was out. Star had always been a very good judge of that. They were similar in age too, although Ingrid might be younger, Star thought. In another world, they might have been friends. Ingrid had two children, grown-up now, and her daughter, Molly, shared a flat with a girl Star had known when she was just a baby. Natalie was twenty-three now: Star kept count.

      Natalie had nearly been born in Star’s house, and Star would never forget the frantic dash to hospital with Des, while Dara lay on the backseat howling in pain. Star had been one of the first people to hold the tiny baby with the head of curly dark hair and she’d felt what she always felt when she held a newborn–that they knew all the wisdom of the world.

      Star had been part of Natalie’s world for little more than three years before Dara had died. Star, like everyone else in Dara’s circle of friends, had sworn to abide by Dara’s rules about her little daughter.

      ‘Let me go, don’t try to hold on to the past,’ Dara had insisted, fearing that the memory of her dead mother would darken Natalie’s future.

      ‘She deserves to know who you are,’ Star had pleaded. ‘Were,’ she amended sadly.

      Dara had shaken her head fiercely. ‘It’s better this way,’ she said. The past could destroy people, and she didn’t want that for Natalie. What she wanted for her daughter was a new life with her father. ‘Des is wonderful, he’ll bring her up so well. Perhaps he’ll marry again, and they’ll be much happier without me like a spectre in the background.’

      And so everyone who loved Dara had promised her that they wouldn’t be a part of little Natalie’s world, telling her how like her mother she was or recounting tales of the days before she was born. Though Star had only known Dara a few years–since that rainy day she’d found her lying in utter despair on the coast road–she was one of the few people who’d heard the heartbreaking story of Dara’s earlier life.

      ‘The past hurts,’ said Dara, determined to spare her beloved daughter the pain.

      ‘But knowing can bring about healing,’ Star replied. ‘You can transcend the misery: you have.’

      But Dara was firm. For Star, who lived on instinct, staying out of Natalie’s life as she grew up had been one of the hardest vows she’d ever kept.

      Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the double doors on to the street swinging shut. A blast of icy February air whirled in, along with a man in a long grey overcoat, the collar turned up. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and he walked at speed, as if there wasn’t enough time to do all he wanted in life.

      From her position beside a display of jewelled clips and silk-flower hairclips, Star watched David Kenny pass though his department store. He didn’t survey his surroundings the way she imagined he normally did, those clever eyes noting every detail and marking it down in his memory if something needed to be changed. His eyes were focused on something else entirely, something inward. The closer he got, the more she could see the tension in his face. His hair was greying, salt and pepper around the temples. Distinguished, Star thought; that was the word for it. He reached the stationary escalator in the centre of the store and instead of climbing up, showing how fit he undoubtedly was, he jabbed a red button. The escalator hummed to life and he stood in perfect stillness as it bore him up to the next floor.

      Star had heard that David Kenny, like his father before him, made a practice of walking through his beloved store every day, making sure all was well. All might have been well in the store this morning, but watching him now, Star was certain that all was not well with David Kenny.

      Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Only someone who knew him well could detect the strain on his carefully composed face. Once, she’d known David Kenny better than she’d known any other human being. Now, the closest she got to him was when she reached a hand out in her garden and touched his tree, a rowan that had grown tall and strong in the thirty-five years since she’d planted it. She hadn’t talked to him since then, though she was sure he was well aware that she was Bluestone Tapestries. Lena’s initial attempt to arrange an introduction had been gently brushed away, with Star explaining that