Always and Forever. Cathy Kelly

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       CHAPTER THREE

      Daisy Farrell had thought that tidying out her wardrobe was the perfect way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon when Alex was away in London for the weekend working. But the task had palled somewhat as the day dragged on. Five o’clock and dusk arrived at the same gloomy moment, and every single item of clothing Daisy owned was still piled on the bedroom floor in their normally immaculate apartment, in so many tottering piles. All black, of course. Despite the fashion bibles screeching that red or pink or white were the new black, Daisy knew – like every fashionista worth her salt – that black would always be the new black.

      Black made every lump and bump disappear and turned slender into skinny. Who needed bulimia when you had black?

      She had so much stuff, she reflected, wishing she’d never started. How was it that a woman whose very job was picking clothes for other people – she was a buyer for Carrickwell’s chicest designer shop, Georgia’s Tiara – seemed to have so many fashion mistakes in her own wardrobe?

      ‘This will have to go,’ Daisy decided, holding up a tweedy skirt that had never quite suited her. ‘And this.’ Drapey chiffon shirts had never been her style, yet she loved them. They’d sold buckets of them in the shop, though. Daisy’s style might waver when it came to dressing herself, but her instinct was spot on when it came to her job.

      ‘How do you do it?’ asked people, fascinated at how she knew the shop’s customers would buy the clothes she bought at the fashion fairs six months in advance of stocking them.

      ‘You pick clothes in January and then when summer comes, you hope they’re in fashion and that women here buy them?’ was the usual question when Daisy explained what being the fashion buyer for Georgia’s Tiara meant. ‘How do you know they’ll like them?’

      ‘I don’t,’ Daisy would say pleasantly. ‘I’ve been doing it for years and it’s a combination of experience, skill and, well…you’ve got to have an eye for it.’

      ‘Ah.’ That answer pleased most of the crowd because an eye was the same thing as luck: you either had it or you didn’t. They could not be blamed for not having an eye, and therefore not having the apparent good fortune of Daisy Farrell. A nice apartment in the restored old mill in the centre of Carrickwell, a lovely red sporty car, two decent holidays a year, not to mention all that flying to fashion fairs in Germany and London, having champagne in club class, and a man like Alex Kenny. Some women had all the luck.

      ‘Don’t tell them that it’s just down to having an eye for fashion. You make it sound too simple,’ Alex chided. ‘Tell them it’s bloody hard work and there’s no guarantee you’ll sell a single thing you buy.’

      Alex worked in investment banking in Dublin city, a job where it was mandatory to blow your own trumpet. Even after fourteen years with Daisy, Alex still couldn’t understand her natural reticence. She was brilliant at what she did – what was wrong with telling people? And Daisy, safe in the love of the one person in the world who made her feel good about herself, laughed and said that being a fashion buyer was impossible to explain to the uninitiated. It was like wearing Prada and looking effortlessly cool, so effortlessly cool that nobody would ever guess all the hard work that went into the whole outfit.

      Besides, Daisy, like all people who doubted their worth, had a horror of boring other people. She felt she’d bore everyone rigid if she told them about the years of following fashion from the sidelines and of how she’d tried to make clothes from odd scraps of fabric almost before she was old enough to sew. Daisy might have been blessed with an eye for fashion, but her lengthy apprenticeship had sharpened it.

      ‘It’s a female thing,’ she added. ‘Women don’t like showing off.’

      ‘It’s a Daisy thing,’ Alex replied. ‘My office is full of women who have no qualms about telling people how talented they are.’

      ‘Only because they’re trying to impress you,’ Daisy laughed. And it was true. At thirty-six, Alex still had the physique of the college rower he’d once been. Long and lean, he looked good in his office suits, even better out of them, and his glossy wolf’s pelt hair and strong, intelligent face meant that women noticed him. One of the many, many things Daisy loved about him was that Alex didn’t notice them back.

      It never occurred to her that he might ever have to worry about men noticing her. Daisy had no illusions about her own beauty. A person didn’t grow up overhearing their mother call them an ugly duckling, like Daisy’s mother did, without drawing their own conclusions. But she had style, fabulous shoes, and Alex, the man she’d adored since their first meeting in a dingy college pub a lifetime ago.

      Her beloved Alex was linked to the three questions that Daisy really hated. First up was, ‘Are you and Alex ever going to get married, Daisy?’

      Short answer: ‘Perhaps,’ delivered with a little smile that hinted at plans for something elegant on a far-flung beach where the party could pick exotic blooms to hang behind their ears as they stood, barefoot, in the sand. A Vera Wang dress, privately designed rings, and a select beachside party for their small group of friends, followed by a relaxed gathering in a restaurant when they got home from the honeymoon.

      Daisy’s real answer was: ‘I’d love to but Alex’s not interested. We’ve talked about it but he’s not really into marriage. Why fix what’s not broken, he says.’

      She’d said it to Mary Dillon, her partner in the shop.

      ‘That’s such a man thing to say,’ remarked Mary, who was just divorced and still inhabiting the all-men-are-pigs zone. Mary had started Georgia’s Tiara ten years before, and Daisy had come on board shortly afterwards. Together, they made a great team.

      ‘Getting married isn’t about not fixing anything. It’s a bigger commitment, that’s all,’ Mary went on. ‘It’s Alex saying he wants the world to know he’s going to be with you for ever. Living with someone can’t do that. Mind you,’ she added gloomily, ‘if I’d just lived with Bart instead of being stupid enough to marry him, we mightn’t have ended up paying the lawyers so much. Every time I see my lawyer in his new Porsche, I feel like saying I own an eighth of that car, so when can I borrow it?’

      ‘Yes…’ said Daisy, wishing she hadn’t started this. Mary was not the sort of woman to call a spade a metal digging implement and Daisy had just broken her own steadfast rule about couple loyalty. Never speak about your loved one in a negative way. Anything else was too like what she’d grown up with. ‘I suppose I can see Alex’s point,’ Daisy went on untruthfully, backtracking out of guilt. It had been a private conversation with Alex. What on earth had made her spill it all out to Mary? ‘We are happy as we are. I must be premenstrual, that’s it. Ignore me.’

      The only plus about not having plans to get married meant that Daisy didn’t have to think about the dilemma of inviting both her parents to the wedding. It had been years since Daisy’s mother СКАЧАТЬ