Desperately Seeking - By Evelyn Cosgrave Page 0,76
out and leave the box behind?’
‘No way! It would get crumpled – it would get completely wrecked. And it’s not even my hat, it’s only hired.’
‘You’ve hired a hat?’
‘It’s what everybody does for weddings. Hats are far too expensive for just one wear.’
I was getting quite annoyed with him; I had made a real effort with my outfit. I wanted his family to look at me and think, Wow! Keith’s done well for himself. And it was fabulous – a long purple dress that hugged the body with a long deeper purple coat in the same fabric to drape over it. I had decided on the big hat, even though hats were on the wane. But that was merely fashion. I’ve always loved hats and there’s nothing like a great big hat to make a great big statement. So I chose a large wide-brimmed one that picked up the colours of the dress and the coat and sent out an air of elegant mystique with every feather that dived from its crown. It was a fucking great hat and Keith was dismissing it as if it wasn’t important. I wasn’t having it.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘it can go in the boot. You won’t even have to look at it.’
He sighed loudly. ‘There’ll be nobody else wearing a hat.’
‘I don’t care!’
‘I’m only trying to help.’
‘Well, you’re not. Look, I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you in a while.’
‘Good! You could do with cooling off.’
‘Would you like me to tell you what you could do with?’ I stormed off.
This whole family-wedding business was a strain. I thought Keith wanted me to make a fuss of his family – after all, he had been exposed to so much of mine, and I was curious about his. But as it drew closer he seemed less and less keen on the whole thing. If it weren’t for the fact that his mother could talk about nothing else every time he saw her or spoke to her on the phone, he would probably have cried off. They had wanted us all to travel together but Keith was adamant that that wasn’t a good idea. He was torn between saving his father the drive and saving me the over-exposure (so he claimed). I tried to tell him I didn’t mind, but he wouldn’t listen. Eventually his brother agreed to drive their parents. I thought that would put him at ease but he still seemed bothered about something. I was weary of trying to work out what it was.
I headed in the direction of O’Connell Street; something was drawing me once more to the front steps of O’Sullivan and Woulfe. It was right to move on, but I couldn’t deny what a large part the firm had played in my life. Mostly it was a lesson in denial and how to deal with a mild-to-middling case of self-inflicted misery but there had been the odd good time. At least, that was how I was choosing to remember it.
They had given me a bloody good send-off. At three o’clock on my last day (the hour when I habitually shut down mentally) my boss came into the office area and announced to everybody that in honour of my leaving we were going to have a party. Then he rolled in the drinks trolley – several bottles of moderately good wine and a truckload of beer, followed not too much later by the food trolley with drumsticks, cocktail sausages and sandwiches. He wasn’t being mean, just lacked imagination. Once we’d all had enough to loosen us up he made a speech about the bravery in trying new things and the excitement of taking on a new challenge. For a moment he sounded almost wistful and his gaze was fixed on something indefinable at the end of the room. He quickly sobered up – he probably made a mental tot of his salary and decided things weren’t so bad after all. However, I believe his sentiments were genuine, and when he held my hand and kissed me, then presented me with a substantial Brown Thomas voucher, a lot of warmth emanated from him. If I had met him in any other circumstances I’d probably have liked him.
He set the tone for everybody else; even people I knew had never liked me were full of good wishes and sadness that I was leaving. I wondered if I’d underestimated them, but when I saw them eyeing up my desk (and its prime location by