‘But on the other hand, having had all this time to think about her bad behaviour, she might welcome the chance to heal the rift with us,’ Brigid pointed out calmly.

‘You’re far more forgiving than I am.’ Keelin made a face. ‘And more honest. But you’re right, Mère: it’s time I practised what I preach. Do you think she’ll come, though?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Oh she will. Don’t you worry. You leave that to me, Keelin. Imelda will come with us. You wait and see,’ Brigid said with a gleam of anticipation in her eyes at the challenge ahead.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

It was a bitterly cold day. There’d been snow the previous week. Marie-Claire felt glum and unsettled. According to Lizzie, Marc and Amelia were still seeing each other and Amelia had been promoted to assistant office manager and was, in her breathless, sycophantic way, passive-aggressively throwing her weight around. Marc was totally involved in setting up the New York office and Amelia often accompanied him on trips. It didn’t seem to Marie-Claire that he was missing her as much as he proclaimed in their infrequent online interactions, when she played the part of carefree girl about town. Why should she care anyway? She wouldn’t go back to him for all at the tea in China. But it was all his friggin’ fault that she was unsettled, unsure of her future, and working at a different career to pay the bills.

Oh for God’s sake, will you get over yourself and cop on, she thought irritably, photocopying a travel itinerary.

The job she’d taken as a tour rep in a company that specialized in organizing guided tours for French tourists was interesting enough, and the salary was good, but her manager, Chloe, a snooty blond from Foxrock who sported a Trump-like coiffeur, whiter than white veneers, and red shellac nails that could be seen from space, was hard going. ‘Networking and contacts are what it’s all about,’ she was fond of saying whenever she tottered into the office in her vertiginous Louboutins, a little the worse for wear after too many flutes of champagne over lunch.

‘Quite the pantomime,’ Ines drawled. ‘The r-rolling goes into overdrive when she’s pissed.’

Marie-Claire laughed. Ines was on a year’s exchange from the French head office, and was not greatly impressed by her manager’s manigances, as she so derisively termed Chloe’s carry on.

Ines wasn’t overly friendly. She had the Parisienne’s hauteur and her narcissistic navel-gazing was wearing. ‘I’m so fat,’ she’d wail, studying her thin frame critically in the bevelled mirror in the foyer. ‘I am mired in depression because of this fatness.’ All because she might have indulged in a Malteser.