She entered the breakfast room and surveyed the beer bottles arranged in a semi-circle on the bay windowsill. Band practice had ended late last night. Afterwards, they had ordered pizzas and opened a few beers.

‘That brings me back to your youth,’ she said. ‘I feel quite nostalgic looking at the chaos of your life.’

‘I’ve been up since eight working on a new song,’ Jake protested. It should not have sounded like an apology but it did.

‘A new song.’ Her eyebrows lifted. ‘Wouldn’t it be a better idea to look for a new job.’

‘I have a job. I’m playing professionally as a session musician and teaching guitar in HiNotes.’

She impatiently swept his excuses aside. ‘Did you follow up on that contact number I gave you?’

‘I told you, I’m not interested in a retraining course. I’m reforming the band – ’

She lowered herself into an armchair, her face settling into the obdurate lines he knew so well. ‘For goodness sake, Jake! You’re not a teenager any more, so stop behaving like one.’

‘I’m not behaving – ’

‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten how I was pilloried by the media the last time you were in that band. I still shudder when I remember that dreadful publicity… the time you urinated on stage.’

‘That was lime juice… a syringe… illusion.’

‘And when you ended up in jail… those dreadful Satanic lyrics.’

He almost laughed out loud, remembering. ‘When fucked about by Mum and Dad, Fuck them back and be as bad…’ The passion with which he sang those lyrics. A defiant pastiche on Philip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’, it caused a riot when the guards invaded the club where Shard were playing and arrested them under some obscure obscenity act. The media loved the story. Talk radio had lit up with parents protesting, demanding that Shard be banned from ever appearing in public again. Jake was back on stage the following week, the toned-down version rippling with subtle undertones that created even more impact among his fans. How could he have known that a year later he too would be struggling with the reality of being a parent?

‘We’ve calmed down a lot since then,’ he assured her. ‘We’re middle-aged, for goodness sake. Anyway, who’s going to drag that up again?’

‘The media have long knives and even longer memories.’

‘I can’t be responsible for your reputation.’

‘But you can protect it by accepting my invitation to the conference.’

‘What conference?’

‘Didn’t you read my email? I sent it to you last week.’

‘I don’t remember receiving it.’

‘That’s probably because you never checked. This conference is important. We’ve a number of influential guests from abroad speaking at it. When I deliver the keynote address, I want you and Nadine there supporting me.’

‘In other words, you’d like us on our feet for the spontaneous ovation.’

‘If a spontaneous ovation occurs then, yes.’ Irony was lost on Eleanor.

‘We won’t be there. It’s too hypocritical.’

She was on her feet before he finished, flushed and angrier than he had seen her for a long time. ‘Is this how you thank me?’ she demanded. ‘I came to your assistance when you needed my help. I gave you and your wife a roof over your heads when you were homeless and broke. The least you can do is support me on one of the most important days of my life.’ She pressed her hand against her heart and exhaled heavily. ‘Have you any idea of the effect your decision has had on me? Sleepless nights, palpitations, anxiety. I’m terrified the members of the party will find out about you and Nadine. Our core values are based around the sacredness of the marriage vow.’

‘They won’t.’

‘Please, Jake, I need my family around me. Be there for my speech, that’s all I’m asking.’

‘I’ll talk to Nadine,’ he promised.

‘She’s already responded to my email. I didn’t like her tone. I’m sure you can persuade her to change her mind.’

No sense trying to work after she left. Her visit had drained his creativity. What was the catalyst that drove her to devote her life to a single issue? Why not take on the health service, bankers, political corruption, land speculators? Why not protect stray dogs, endangered snails, battery hens, exhausted foxes? Why the determination to impose her idealised view of family values on society?

He was convinced that early widowhood had left her with a romanticised belief that the bloom never faded from a marriage. Her years with Adam Saunders were the happiest of her life, she claimed. He died from a brain haemorrhage when Jake was eight. His strongest memory of that time was the hush that descended over the house when the music stopped. His father used to play the piano in the evenings when he came home from work and Jake’s favourite memory was his manic imitation of Jerry Lee Lewis. Eleanor, unable to look at the piano without crying, sold it shortly after his death and joined First Affiliation. Jake had filled that silent space with his own music, distancing himself from her disapproval with small acts of rebellion that led eventually to Shard and all that post-punk aggression played out on stage.

He showered after she left and headed to HiNotes. Susanna kept increasing his classes and he was teaching guitar three afternoons a week. He dropped a note about the conference through Nadine’s letterbox.

Karin had tickets for an outdoor film screening in Meeting House Square. HiNotes was only a short distance from the square and she was waiting for him when he arrived. After the screening, they walked through Temple Bar. They stopped to buy ice cream and listen to buskers. Her heels were high, treacherous on the cobblestones, he thought, but she walked gracefully, her arm lightly linked in his. He still found it difficult to be with her in public.

What if Nadine saw them together? She could be out with friends from the magazine, sitting by a restaurant window watching the crowds passing by. What would she say… do… should such an encounter occur? Would she feel betrayed? And, if so, why? Broken friendships happened all the time. Ali’s childhood had been dominated by the drama of fallouts and make-ups. Karin had given him a glimpse of the fractures that had ended their friendship. A summer of discontent, spoiled by their infatuation with the singer in the band. He had laughed self-consciously when she hinted that he was the reason for the jealously that had pulsed between them. Was it that memory that had caused Nadine’s face to flush with such unguarded animosity the night she discovered Karin’s business card? Women. Jake shook his head. He would never understand the elephantine nature of their memory cells.

The following morning when he returned to Sea Aster Nadine had dropped her reply about Eleanor’s conference through his letterbox. It consisted of two words, heavily underlined. No way!

Chapter 24

Nadine

It’s after one in the morning when my mobile phone rings. The number is unfamiliar, the female voice clipped with authority. She’s calling from Emergency in the Mater Hospital. Eleanor Saunders has been admitted by ambulance after suffering ‘a sudden turn.’ The nurse is unable to contact Jake and I’m second on the list of Eleanor’s next of kin.

I’ve never known Eleanor to be ill. Her redoubtable nature is capable of scaring off the most persistent germs. What does ‘a sudden turn’ imply? And where is Jake? His van is missing…as usual. I leave a message on his mobile and drive to the hospital. Eleanor is still on a trolley in Emergency, ashen-faced, her voice muffled behind an oxygen mask.

‘Such a fuss about nothing.’ She pulls the mask aside and squints at me. Her lips are drained of colour. ‘It’s a total overreaction. Where’s Jake?’

‘I don’t know. What happened to you?’

‘A touch of indigestion. I called my doctor. Before I knew what he was doing there was an ambulance outside. I’m furious with him.’