Amazon queen,’ she told him. ‘And I doubt I’m your type.’
‘I’d like to think you were my type, but I accept I might be punching above my weight.’ He reached into his pocket and took out a dog-eared business card, which he handed to her. ‘Still, I’d be grateful if you’d consider it.’
She looked at the card and knew that she was very definitely not a woman that Kenneth Harrington BA, MA, MPhil (Dublin) would be interested in. And that she’d be far too intimidated by his educational qualifications to want to spend time in his company either.
‘I hope you have a great stay in New York,’ she said, giving him her professional smile and putting his card in her jacket pocket before turning to the next passenger.
Naturally she didn’t call him. She wasn’t entirely convinced that he hadn’t been teasing her the whole time. And she hadn’t been brought up to phone men she didn’t really know. So before she went to bed that night, she threw the card in the trash and forgot about him.
She sometimes wondered if it was fate that put him on her flight again four months later. At first she didn’t recognise him, because the red-flecked beard had gone and his previously unruly mop of brown hair had been tapered at both sides while left curly on top, giving him a younger, more up-to-date appearance.
‘Hippolyta,’ he said as he showed her the boarding card already in his hand. ‘You never called.’
‘Welcome on board, Mr Harrington,’ she said. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
‘Your silence broke my heart,’ he told her.
‘Seat 37C,’ she told him. ‘Have a nice flight.’
The return from New York to Dublin was overnight. Ken pressed the call bell once the cabin lights had been dimmed and the passengers were trying to sleep.
‘I was pretty sure you wouldn’t get in touch,’ he said when she asked what she could do for him. ‘Although I’d kind of hoped you would. I was going to try to find you but I was too nervous. You’re so beautiful, you see. You have all the power.’
‘I find it hard to believe that I could possibly make you nervous,’ said Grace.
‘A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror,’ said Ken.
She smiled involuntarily.
‘I could pretend I said that first, but it was Jung,’ he told her. ‘He also said that as a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.’
‘I’m sorry if I’ve terrorised you or disappointed you,’ said Grace.
‘Your beauty terrorises me. The only disappointment is that you didn’t call. And I really would like to have coffee with you.’
‘I don’t know that I’d be interesting enough to have coffee with,’ she said.
‘You totally would be.’
‘We’ll see.’
Before he left, she gave him her number.
Two days later, he called her.
He wasn’t as intimidating as she’d expected, but he was very sure of himself.
He’d gone to the States, he said, as part of an exchange programme with an American professor. In New York, he’d shared his thoughts about the influences of Greek mythology on modern literature, while his counterpart discussed European influences on American novelists.
Grace told him that her favourite novelists were Maeve Binchy and Rosamunde Pilcher and she couldn’t honestly think there was much Greek influence there for him to talk about. He said that he’d never heard of either of them but that she should read the great American novelists. Everything you needed to know about life, he said, could be learned from Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Steinbeck.
‘I read The Great Gatsby in school,’ she said. ‘I hated it and all the characters in it. But Maeve and Rosamunde write about life and love, so I think I have the bases covered.’
‘Oh, Hippolyta.’ Ken took her hand in his. ‘I have so much to teach you.’
The weird thing, she thought now, was that he did teach her to appreciate things that she didn’t necessarily like, and she did fall in love with him too, even though he was her polar opposite in so many ways. Because beneath the arrogant intellect, Ken was a good man. Even if he hadn’t always put his family before his career, he was still a thoughtful father and a faithful husband. Perhaps he’d pushed the children a little too much, and perhaps he hadn’t always taken Grace as seriously as she would have liked, but they’d made it work, and she missed him.
She particularly missed him because she needed him to unlock this stupid folder.
It was almost eleven thirty, and she knew