The O’Hara Affair. Kate Thompson

table, two yummy mummies were looking sideways at them, and talking in undertones. At another table, a middle-aged couple was sending Dervla sympathetic smiles. Was this inevitable when you got old? Dervla wondered. Did hitting a certain level of decrepitude mean that every time you emerged into public you were gawped at like something out of a freak show? She imagined the entrances that Daphne might once have made into restaurants, in her modelling days, when maîtres d’ would bow and scrape, and diners gaze in admiration.

      Although – she saw now – one person was regarding her with an engaging smile. It was a man she realized she knew. As Shane Byrne rose from his table and strolled over to her, diners did indeed gaze in admiration, for this was Hollywood royalty incarnate.

      ‘Dervla! How lovely to see you. It’s been a while.’

      ‘Shane!’ Dervla stood up and presented her face for a kiss. ‘Río told me you were in town. You look great. How does it feel to be coming back as a hotshot movie star?’

      ‘Not half bad. Apart from the camera phones. I can’t go anywhere without someone sticking a phone in my face.’

      ‘Remember your manners,’ came the magisterial tones of her mother-in-law, ‘and introduce me.’

      ‘I beg your pardon. Shane, this is my mother-in-law, Daphne Vaughan. Daphne, this is Shane Byrne.’

      Shane took Daphne’s hand and raised it to his lips. ‘Enchanté,’ he said, smiling directly into her eyes. ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance. And I hope you won’t think it forward of me if I compliment you on the exquisite perfume you are wearing, madame.’

      ‘Thank you. It’s Je Reviens, you know. That means “I will return”. I’ve worn it since I was a girl.’

      ‘Not so long ago, then,’ remarked Shane.

      Daphne gave him a coquettish look. ‘Ha! I can tell you are a Casanova.’

      ‘Only around beautiful women,’ said Shane.

      ‘It’s Daphne’s birthday today, Shane,’ Dervla told him.

      ‘Twenty-one again?’

      Daphne gave a tinkling laugh. ‘You are a Casanova! Would you care to join us for a glass of champagne?’

      ‘There’s nothing I would enjoy more. I am, alas, otherwise engaged. It was a pleasure to have met you, Madame Vaughan. And may I wish you all the compliments of the day.’

      Shane turned back to Dervla, who was regarding him with admiration. What an awesome performance! And then she remembered how adroitly he’d charmed her when they were little more than teenagers, and her sister after her, and – if the tabloids were to be believed – a bevy of beauties in Tinseltown.

      ‘So you’re playing the lead in The O’Hara Affair?’ Dervla said. ‘That would be Scarlett’s father?’

      ‘I am not playing Scarlett’s father,’ replied Shane, with some indignation. ‘Gerald O’Hara is short and bow-legged. I’m playing the wicked landlord who practises droit du seigneur and gets to tup all the local totty.’

      ‘Nice work.’

      ‘I can’t complain. How’s your line of business, Dervla?’

      ‘I’ve given up auctioneering. Or rather, it gave me up. And I’m writing a book.’

      ‘You’re writing a book!’ said Daphne. ‘What nonsense.’

      Shane raised an eyebrow at Dervla, and she shrugged. ‘What can I tell you?’ she said. ‘Life’s a little rough around the edges these days. And I am writing a book, actually. On how to sell your house.’

      ‘Hey! Congratulations.’

      Dervla gave a rueful smile. ‘Unlikely to be a bestseller, but it’s keeping me busy.’

      ‘Congratulations!’ said Daphne. ‘And celebrations. We’re celebrating something, aren’t we? What, exactly, are we celebrating?’

      ‘We’re celebrating your birthday,’ Dervla told her.

      ‘I’ll let you get on with it,’ said Shane. ‘Good to see you, Dervla.’

      ‘Likewise.’

      Dervla resumed her seat, and watched Shane move back to his table, where a handsome, rather saturnine man was studying the wine list. She hoped it would impress – Christian had taken such care compiling it. Picking up a menu, she felt her stomach somersault when she saw the prices. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d told Shane that life was a little rough around the edges. The proposed expansion of Christian’s wine importing business had coincided with the recession: people weren’t buying much fine wine these days. He’d taken to stocking more downmarket stuff to supply those customers who’d taken to drinking at home instead of the pub, where a couple of glasses of wine could cost nearly as much as a full bottle from the off-licence. Sales of accessories like electric corkscrews and wine coolers and silver champagne stoppers had plummeted, and sommelier kits remained on the shelf, gathering dust. Christian’s efforts to get night classes in wine appreciation up and running in the community centre had met with a dismally poor response.

      Luckily, there was income from the renting out of Dervla’s apartment in Galway, and from the cottage – Christian’s sister had insisted that if Daphne was to live with the newlyweds, it was only fair that they receive rent in return from the income that Daphne’s investments brought in. It wasn’t a whole lot, but it kept things ticking over – just.

      Dervla remembered how things had been at the height of the property boom, when she could have afforded to eat out every night if she’d felt like it. She remembered how she’d fantasized about sitting with Christian on the bench by the door of the Old Rectory, sipping chilled Sancerre and sharing with him her dreams of planting fruit trees and keeping chickens and maybe – if they were lucky – having babies. She’d pictured herself drifting around the garden in a wifty-wafty frock, carrying a trug full of vegetables she had grown herself, vegetables that she would whizz up into a delicious purée, to be served later with roast rack of lamb at the dining table around which a dozen friends would have congregated, all laughing and swapping gossip and repartee. The women would be dressed in Cath Kidston florals, the men in Armani casuals. Kitty the Dalmatian would sport a fringed suede collar, and there’d be Mozart on the sound system.

      How ironic, she thought, that now she’d made the definite decision to grow her own fruit and veg, it wasn’t for trendy ecological reasons: it was because it was cheaper. Ironic that – now she was actually installed in her dream house – she couldn’t afford to furnish it. Ironic that the only Cath Kidston florals within her current budgetary remit would come second-hand from eBay. But it was terribly, terribly sad that, instead of Mozart, the accompanying soundtrack to her life was Des O’Connor.

      ‘What does that funny-looking person think he’s doing?’ Daphne was glowering at the maître d’.

      ‘He’s showing Christian to our table,’ Dervla told her. ‘Now. What’ll we have to eat?’

      ‘What is there?’

      ‘I’ll read the menu to you. Potted crab—’

      ‘Potted what?’

      Oh, God. Dervla resisted the temptation to sling the menu on the table and leg it out of the restaurant. Instead, she smiled at Christian as he joined them.

      ‘Hi, darling,’ she said.

      He gave her a brief kiss on the cheek before dropping into his chair. ‘Is that Shane Byrne I see over there?’ he asked. ‘That’s him. I felt very chuffed to be seen hobnobbing with him: he came over to say hello.’

      ‘This place must be good if it’s frequented by film stars. He’s a bit older in real life than he looks on the screen, isn’t he?’

      ‘Stop gawking at him. He says he can’t go anywhere these days without