Chapter 1
Lucy looked up from her client's ragged cuticles and sighed. Sunlight was beaming in the window, the sky was forget-me-not blue and 'Making Faces Beauty Salon' was the last place on earth she wanted to be. She was dying to get out of the hot, airless cubicle and into the fresh air. She'd arranged to go kite-flying with Max that evening to test his new baby - a
huge parafoil kite made of colourful pink and purple nylon. Lucy knew it was pink and purple as she'd chosen the colours
herself.
"I'm not making a pink kite," Max had grumbled when she'd suggested the colour scheme a couple of weeks previously. "Blokes won't want to fly a pink kite."
"Don't
be ridiculous. As long as it flies it doesn't matter, surely?"
"Don't call me Shirley," he said, "and, OK, if you want
pink, then pink it is. But I'll blame you if the only buyers are female."
"Hey, I said pink and purple, not just pink."
"Oh, that's all right then," Max smiled. "That makes such a difference. Pink and purple."
Lucy pushed
him into a roll of white sailcloth which fell to the ground
with a crash.
"Man,"
Mossy muttered. He'd been asleep on some spinnakers which
were waiting to be repaired. "Chill the noise."
"Mossy!"
Lucy practically yelled, just to annoy him. "Lovely to
see you! How's tricks?"
"Vibing,"
Mossy smiled lazily, before closing his eyes once more.
"Vibing?"
Lucy whispered to Max as they went back to the kite design.
"Don't
ask me. You went out with him."
"Thanks
for reminding me," she grimaced. "He wasn't even
good in bed."
"Really?"
"No,"
she admitted reluctantly. "I lie, he was good. Vacant,
but good."
"Pity.
Now pass me that tape measure, there's a good girl."
Lucy sighed
as she put the dark-haired woman's left hand into a small
bowl of water to soften her cuticles.
"Bad,
aren't they?" the woman said. She had short dark hair, a
faint American accent and looked remarkably like a young
Audrey Hepburn.
"Excuse
me?"
"My
nails. It's my job, I'm always breaking them."
"Sorry,
I was miles away. Your nails aren't that bad." Lucy bit
the inside of her lip. She was trying not to frown. The
woman's nails were pretty horrific, all ridges and white
bumps as if someone had smacked them with a hammer, and she
also seemed to have some sort of blue flecks on her hands.
"Paint,"
the woman explained, as if reading Lucy's mind. "The
blue bits."
"Painting
the house?" Lucy tried to inflect some interest into her
voice.
"No, I'm
working with a set-designer. I was painting a sky."
"Right.”
She wasn't really in the mood for making small talk.
"It's
for a production of Mary Poppins. In The
Olympia."
"That's
nice." A memory flitted into Lucy’s head of
watching the Disney film of Mary Poppins starring
Julie Andrews, in the old Forum cinema in Sandycove, sitting
on her dad's knee the whole way through. She must have been
small - all of four or five at the time, she supposed. She
turned her concentration to what her client was saying.
"I'm
building a merry-go-round next and then I have to source some
kites, it's non-stop - "
"Did you
say kites?" Suddenly Lucy began to pay attention.
Max sighed.
Another shitty day at the office. The 'office' in question
being a shared prefab at the back of Allen's Chandlery and
Sails. Mossy also worked there, making and repairing sails
for the Allen family when he wasn't off gallivanting at some
yacht-racing event or other. Mossy liked to think of himself
as a superstar of the Irish sailing world; Max liked to think
of him as pondweed. Because Mossy, like pondweed, was the
lowest form of life. Unfortunately he had rather a talent for
sailcloth.
A
six-foot-three blonde-haired Adonis, Mossy also had all the
charm and subtlety of a sledgehammer, a pneumatic one at
that. He had girlfriends strung along the coasts of Ireland
and England, and one or two in America. And the worst thing
was that, unless you knew Mossy as well as Max did, you'd
think he was one of the most charming, delightful, witty and
interesting men you'd ever met. Even Lucy had been taken in
by his snake-smooth tongue, although she said it was his tan
and his highly defined pecs that finally broke her resolve.
At least Max
was meeting Lucy that evening. He'd finally finished The
Lucy as he’d nicknamed his new kite, otherwise known
as Maxfoil Mark 7. Didn't have quite the same ring as The
Lucy though.
The loft was
baking hot. It was a long, thin wooden building, with two
large sewing machines along the left-hand wall and rolls of
multi-coloured sail and spinnaker cloth stacked to the right.
The cracked windows had stopped opening years ago and were
now held together with silver duct tape so ventilation wasn't
the best. Max had bought a fan, but Mossy complained that it
fluttered his spinnakers when he was trying to sew the seams,
so it was rarely turned on.
Three of the
walls were covered with posters of sailing events going back
many years and photos of Mossy in various states of undress
with various equally scantily clad women, and one was
scattered with pictures of multi-coloured kites flying in
azure skies.
But the rent
was dirt cheap, and Mossy liked it as he could use Max as a
social-secretary-cum-answering phone, to lie to his
girlfriends and to pretend to boat-owners that he was busy on
their new sails rather than 'catching up on zeds' as he liked
to call cat-napping. Still, it beat designing bridges and
tunnels hands down, he tried to tell himself as he fielded
yet another phone call. Even if he was always broke these
days.
"I might
have thrown some work your way this afternoon," Lucy
told Max as they laid the large kite out on the grass beside
Sandymount Strand.
"Really?"
Business was brisk but not all that profitable. There was
only so much that a customer would pay for a kite, no matter
how well made or expertly balanced it was. The Allens sold
them in their shop and the remainder were sold on his Web
site - maxkites@skyfree.ie.
"This
girl was in earlier - Daria, some sort of set designer. She
needs some kites made quickly. So I gave her your number. She
said she'd ring you tomorrow."
"Girl?
What age?"
"My age,
or a bit younger maybe."
"Girl?"
Max snorted.
"Less of
that, you," said Lucy, glaring at him. "I'm only
twenty-five, after all."
"Again?"
"I hate
you sometimes. You know too much."
"Like
your real age?"
"Exactly!"
"Was she
cute?"
"Typical!”
Lucy laughed, putting her hands on her hips. “And I
thought you were different!"
"Not at
all. Just your average, red-blooded male. So was she?"
"What's
that got to do with anything?" She lifted up the kite
and the string holders and ran down the steps towards the
sand.
"Come
back with my kite!" Max yelled, following her.
Lucy turned
and faced him, her long, dark, curly hair attacking her pale
face in the wind. "She was attractive, I suppose."
Max's face
lit up.
"You're
sad. You need to get out more, meet some new people. Get a
girlfriend."
Max ran along
the sand to catch up with her.
"I don't
need a girlfriend," he panted.
"I won't
always be around to fly kites with you," she said,
handing him the kite strings and walking into the wind with
the large pink rectangle. "Jamie will leave Jules soon,
you'll see."
Max laughed.
"As I keep telling you, Jamie Oliver doesn't even know
you exist."
"He will
- you wait and see. That's a promise."
“And you
call me sad?” Max grinned.
Lucy
and Max were sitting at her kitchen table that evening. Her
flatmates, Hopper and Alan, were at the Irish Film Centre
watching a strange sub-titled film with Bjork in it. They
hadn’t fancied it.
"How's
Brian?" Max asked, mopping up every last drop of the
cream sauce on his plate with a piece of French bread. Brian
was Lucy’s latest boyfriend and himself and Max didn't
exactly get on. In fact, they only just about tolerated each
other.
"Liked
the chicken, did you?" she laughed, pouring herself
another glass of Chardonnay. "More wine?"
"Mmm,"
he nodded.
"That
was a yes, I presume."
"Stop
changing the subject, I asked you about Brian.” He
swallowed the bread and looked at Lucy carefully. She was a
master of avoidance.
"I don't
really want to talk about it." She sipped her wine and
ran her finger along the top of the glass, trying to make it
sing. "It's boring."
"It's
boring or he's boring?"
Lucy stared
at him. "That's a little unfair. He's not boring
exactly, he's just - "
"Yes?"
Lucy
hesitated for a second before smiling. "OK, so he's a
bit boring, only a bit, mind."
"He's an
accountant."
"I know
lots of interesting accountants," said Lucy, raising her
voice.
"So do
I. And Brian Lynch isn't one of them."
She dipped
her finger into her wine and flicked it at him.
"I
wouldn't do that if I were you.” He picked up a glass of
water. "I'm armed."
"You'd
better not,” warned Lucy. “If I get wet you don't
get any ice cream."
"What
flavour?"
"Chocolate
Chip."
"You
win." He put the glass back on the table.
"I
always do," she said smugly. She stood up and padded
barefoot towards the fridge. The terracotta tiles felt cold
beneath her soles. "How much ice cream do you
want?"
"Bring
the whole tub over. You may as well."
She plonked
the tub and two bowls and spoons unceremoniously onto the
table.
"I
wonder will that girl ring," he said, digging his spoon
into the creamy surface and placing huge dollops into the
bowl in front of him. "About the kites."
Lucy sat up
suddenly. "I'm going to find you a girlfriend. This has
been going on too long."
"What?"
"This -
" she waved her hands in the air expressively.
"Leaving it all to fate. Taking a back seat. Not
chatting anyone up. Lack of initiative. Laziness. What would
you like me to call it?"
"I don't
want you to call it anything, thanks," he sniffed,
insulted. "I'm quite capable of finding my own
girlfriend."
"But
you're not! It's been two years since you broke up with
Marie. It's time to get back out there."
"I'm
happy this way.” He could sense trouble. When Lucy got an idea into her head there was no stopping her.
"You're
not!" Her eyes lit up. "I've got it - Jenny!"
"Who's
Jenny?" He tried not to sound interested.
She ignored
him. "I'll ask her over to dinner next weekend. Hopper
and Alan can come too." She frowned. "And Brian, I
suppose. To even out the numbers."
"But
Lucy, who's Jenny?"
"I'll
serve Ravioli with Prosciutto, Jamie has a wonderful recipe
for it in his first book, I've wanted to try it out for ages. I'm sure Jenny will be free on either Friday or Saturday
night - I'll tell you which when I've talked to her. Eight
o'clock at my house. And bring wine. Lots of it."
Max sighed.
He hadn't the energy to say no.
"She'd
better be pretty," he mumbled.
"Sorry?"
"Nothing." He turned his
attention back to his now melting ice cream.
