Once in a Lifetime. Cathy Kelly

hearing about this new brasserie in Dun Laoghaire near the pier. Want to try it?’

      ‘Beside the fish place? Tonio’s or Tomasio’s or something? Count me in. Meet you in Dun Laoghaire at one?’ Marcella said.

      ‘Perfect.’

      She dropped off the dry cleaning and arrived at the restaurant at exactly the same time as Marcella. Lunch was hugely enjoyable. They generally tried not to talk too much shop. It would have been wrong to discuss which client Marcella was working with because chances were, sooner or later, he or she would end up on one of the navy-blue leather chairs on Ingrid’s set with Ingrid as high inquisitor. They talked politics, policy, and about people.

      It wasn’t gossip, Marcella always pointed out. Gossip implied a nastiness about the discussions and there was never nastiness in their talks. They were interested in human nature, that was all. And they met all human life in their work. In the middle of all the policy talks, business meetings and sound bites, were people who worked hard, got passionate about their jobs, made mistakes, made deals, fell in and out of love.

      Marcella and Ingrid were fascinated by the people behind the public façades: who had to make a speech in the Dáil chamber after being up all night with a colicky baby but would never mention it, and who’d use every nugget from their personal life for their own gain while not really caring about their family at all. It was no surprise that they both loved The West Wing, but wonderfully, they also both loved Neil Diamond, dancing and clothes.

      Marcella had the knack of wearing layers well. Expensive layers. It never worked when they were cheap layers, Marcella explained, because two cheap T-shirts and a little top worn at the same time looked bulky on anybody. Only the flimsiest fine layers that cost the earth and looked as if they’d been boiled for years in a washing machine, hung with the right sort of casual elegance.

      Ingrid, who had a more formal style for television and was used to fitted suits for work and elegantly cut jeans and jackets for weekends, envied Marcella’s exquisite wardrobe.

      ‘It all looks like you just threw it on effortlessly and yet you look fabulous,’ she said in exasperation.

      ‘Effortless is very hard,’ Marcella responded, looking down at her layered vest-tops, wrap top, and long, slender skirt in varying shades of silver grey. ‘And expensive. Have you any idea how much these little vest-top things cost? I could buy a Fendi handbag with the cash I spent on this outfit.’

      ‘That’s obscenely expensive,’ said Ingrid, shocked.

      Marcella laughed. ‘You sound just like Molly when she was going through her second-hand stage,’ she said.

      ‘She still is. Mind you, it’s better than spending millions on clothes.’

      ‘You old Leftie! You’ve only yourself to blame. You and David gave her a social conscience so she wouldn’t be another spoiled brat celebrity child. It’s nice that she prefers to give money to developing countries than to spend it on clothes.’

      ‘You’re right,’ Ingrid said proudly. ‘There aren’t many people as kind as Molly out there. Although I’d love her to come round to the idea that you can feed the world and wear nice things. Still, she borrowed a dress of mine for a wedding, so perhaps she’s moving out of the all-second-hand stage.’

      ‘There must be a man on the scene.’

      ‘No.’ Ingrid was thoughtful. She rather wished there was. Not that she desired her daughter married off for any reasons of propriety, but because she wanted to think Molly was happy being loved the way Ingrid and David loved each other. Love and honest partnership with someone you cared for and respected: what a joy that was.

      It was Ingrid and David’s thirty-year anniversary later that year and they’d talked, idly, about a party and a cruise in the Indian Ocean. They were so lucky, Ingrid thought every time she heard of another marriage going belly-up. And luck was involved, no doubt about it. They worked at their marriage for sure, but it had been luck that had brought them together in the first place, two people so instantly compatible.

      Lots of break-ups came as no surprise to Ingrid. As a person wildly interested in human behaviour, she couldn’t be shocked when Laurence and Gillian, old friends of hers from college and married twenty-seven years, separated abruptly. The only surprise was that they’d stuck with each other for so long. Laurence was at his happiest sitting in his garden doing the crossword and planning, some day, to mow the lawn. Gillian played badminton competitively, worked full time and was never home.

      She and David, on the other hand, were very different in many ways but they complemented each other. She felt a rush of love for him and wished he’d confide in her over whatever was wrong. He might not understand the fierce, feral passion of a mother’s love, but then, could any man? And she loved him with all her heart, no doubt about it.

      When she got home at three o’clock David was back and with a small gift: a tub of goose fat from Kenny’s exquisite food hall.

      ‘For me?’ she asked in amusement, turning it over in her hands. ‘Am I supposed to rub myself in it…?’

      ‘It’s for the potatoes tomorrow,’ David said, planting a kiss on her cheek. ‘I know, a tub of bath oil would be better, but Molly’s coming for Sunday lunch and you know what she’s like about roast spuds. This is a present for all of us, not just you. Although,’ he was smiling, ‘you can rub yourself with it if you’d like to…’

      He seemed in such good humour that Ingrid knew she must have been entirely mistaken to worry about him earlier. She put her present down, grinning. Many women would have thrown the tub at him, but Ingrid had always been realistic about romance. David, despite working in a store overflowing with feminine gifts, had never been the sort of man who came home every week with perfume and flowers. And Ingrid could cope with that: if she wanted flowers, she bought them herself.

      ‘There’s nothing like goose fat for proper roast potatoes,’ he went on, opening the fridge and poking in it for a snack.

      ‘Did you not have lunch?’ Ingrid asked.

      ‘I had brunch,’ he said from the depths of the fridge. ‘I woke up very early and thought I might as well go into work and get it over with, and then Stanley came in with a BLT

      and it smelled so good, we all had them. From O’Brien’s Deli–the place is booming since they got that new cook.’

      Ingrid relaxed some more. She knew there was an explanation for his early start. She was right not to have said anything to Marcella.

      ‘You must be tired, darling,’ she said now. ‘We can skip dinner out tonight if you want.’

      They’d planned a pizza out, just the two of them in the place down the road.

      ‘Well…’ he said and he looked a bit shamefaced. ‘We can’t. Jim Fitzgibbon is over from London, he was on to me this morning, and I’d forgotten I’d promised him dinner next time, and he insists it was tonight we set it up for–’

      ‘Dinner with Jim and Fiona?’ Ingrid gulped. Fiona was a sweetheart but Jim, one of David’s oldest friends, was a property-obsessed bore.

      ‘Not Fiona, no,’ said David reluctantly. ‘He and Fiona are going through a bad patch. It’s someone else.’

      ‘Someone else? Are they getting divorced?’

      ‘I think that might be on the cards. They’ve separated. He’s very cut up about it. Sorry, love, I know it’ll be a pain for you, but I can’t let him down. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I can say you’re not well or…’

      ‘I’ll come.’

      Solidarity was another vital ingredient in a marriage, Ingrid thought. Women’s magazines from years ago used to go on about how romantic gestures were the be all and end all of a relationship, but Ingrid, recipient of a lovely tub of goose grease, knew there was a lot more to it than that. If David wanted to comfort his old friend