The O’Hara Affair. Kate Thompson

Yeah. Slainte! Hey – there’s an Irish pub here you know.

       Cool! Maybe we should visit it together next time?

       I’d like that!

       It’s a date. Bye for now.

       Bye.

       Take care.

       I will.

      Bethany watched as Hero disappeared. She wondered where he was off to next. Back to real life? Or maybe he’d teleported to somewhere more interesting in Second Life. Maybe he’d found her boring, and had just made up an excuse to leave. Maybe he wouldn’t contact her again. But he was special – she knew he was! He had been the first person to offer her friendship on Second Life, and it had been the first time Bethany had had a half decent conversation with anyone apart from Tara. And he loved theatre! The only way to find out that he was genuine, she supposed, would be to come back tomorrow and see if he showed up.

      Moving Poppet towards the stage, she wondered what it would be like to have someone watch her from the balcony. If she used her microphone rather than instant messenger, she could perform a soliloquy for her spectator, do a virtual audition! She could recite her favourite speech of Juliet’s:

      Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night, Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars…

      Little stars. For some reason the words of the fortune-teller she’d visited last week came back to her. That special boy is out there somewhere, Bethany, waiting for you. But you must be patient…That special boy. Her Romeo! Her Hero!

      Oh – don’t be so stupid! she scolded herself. Don’t be such a dreamer! One offer of friendship on Second Life hardly constituted a romance. But if – just if – she and Hero met up again and got on – well, why shouldn’t things develop further? She’d heard loads of stories about people meeting up in cyberspace and then afterwards in real life: she’d even read a magazine article recently that had related the stories of three couples who’d met online and gone on to get married. She’d heard the horror stories, too, of course, about the paedophiles who preyed on young kids and groomed them over the internet, but she was a grown-up. She was, as Hero had said earlier, ‘legal’. And she wasn’t stupid.

      Moving her cursor, Bethany selected an action, and Poppet started to dance. She lay back against her pillows, watching her avatar through half-closed eyelids. She’d seen couples dancing together on Second Life, locked in a tender embrace. It would be nice to think that one day she and Hero might dance together like that…

      Ten minutes later, a cloud had obscured the face of the moon, the stars were washed out, the waves had worked their lullaby, and Bethany was fast asleep. But Poppet was still in motion, swaying all by herself on the stage of the timberframed, cavernous theatre on Second Life’s Shakespeare Island.

       Chapter Seven

       Decluttering must be your number one priority. When it comes to decluttering, be ruthless. Declutter, declutter – then declutter some more.

      Hell. This was useless. Dervla was bored by her own book, and if she was bored by it, it stood to reason that the reader would be bored by it too. She’d looked at the word ‘declutter’ for so long that it no longer made sense. Was it even a word? Should there be a hyphen between the ‘de’ and the ‘c’? Should she put ‘unclutter’ instead? She was utterly clutterly clueless. She wished she hadn’t accepted the commission to write the damned thing. But the contract was signed and the advance spent, and she could hardly back out now.

      She stood up from her desk and moved over to the window, easing herself into a stretch and trying to think positively. Fleur was a great one for positive thinking. Dervla remembered how, way back when she and Fleur had first met, Fleur had shrugged off the break-up of her marriage with the words: ‘What can I say? The Mountie always gets his man. In this case, it just happened to be my husband.’ It had been a fantastic icebreaker, and Dervla and Fleur had kept in touch ever since. Now that Dervla had moved back to Lissamore, she was glad to have Fleur to turn to if she needed guidance. Río couldn’t be relied upon for objective advice, because Río was family.

      So. What were Dervla’s alternatives – faute de mieux, as Fleur would say? If Dervla hadn’t accepted the commission, what would she be doing with her life instead? Everybody knew that writing was a solitary occupation, but she’d be even more solitary, rattling around in the Old Rectory with nothing to keep her busy. Christian was at work most of the day, so she had no company apart from the dog, and there was only so much dog-walking a gal could do. The decorators were finished, so there was no home-decorating to be done, and – because there was so little furniture – there wasn’t even much housework to contend with. Because Dervla’s passion for property had been so all-consuming in her auctioneering days, she had few hobbies or pastimes. Her gardening knowledge was rudimentary, and she didn’t enjoy cooking much – Christian had more culinary nous than she. How could she – a woman in her prime – be such a waste of space?

      Hello? Wasn’t she supposed to be thinking positively? Maybe she should put in a call to Fleur – Ms Positivity Personified – or better still, meet up with her friend face to face.

      Moving back to her desk, she was just about to reach for her phone, when it rang.

      ‘Christian!’ she said, into the receiver. ‘Thank God! I’m having a horrible day, and I need someone lovely to talk to!’

      ‘I’m afraid this won’t be a lovey-dovey call, sweetheart. I need to ask you a favour.’

      ‘What might that be?’

      ‘Can you come and take over in the shop for an hour or so? Something’s come up that I need to take care of, and I can’t man the till.’

      ‘Isn’t Lisa there to do that?’

      ‘Business was slack, so I gave her the afternoon off.’

      ‘Sure I’ll do it. I’d be delighted to have an excuse to skive off. But you do know that my wine savvy doesn’t extend much beyond The Bluffer’s Guide.’

      ‘No worries. You’ll be lucky to shift a bottle of house plonk the way things are going today.’

      ‘So. What’s come up?’

      ‘Julian’s broken his pelvis, and won’t be able to do the tasting tour.’ Julian was Christian’s partner, who ran the Dublin branch of the business.

      ‘Oh, shit! How did that happen?’

      ‘He was in a prang with an SUV.’

      ‘Oh, how horrible! Poor Julian. I’ve always said those things should be banned. I’m going to write to the Minister for Transport.’

      ‘Atta girl!’

      ‘How long’ll he be out of commission?’

      ‘Fucking forever. There’s no way he’ll be accompanying our oenophile friends to France next month.’

      ‘Oh, Christian – what a bummer.’

      ‘I’m going to have to spend the afternoon confirming reservations. If enough people haven’t confirmed, we can refund those who have already paid, and cancel.’

      ‘But isn’t that wine-tasting tour one of your biggest earners?’

      ‘Sadly, yes. And we’re going to lose a lot of goodwill as well as money.’

      ‘Hey – hang on. What’s there to stop you going instead of Julian?’

      ‘Have you forgotten what else