Chapter 5

      Lunch service was over and Ben was just about to go home for a few hours before coming back for the evening shift when the phone in the office rang. It was Vincent Maguire, an accountant who’d worked for his father for years.

      He got straight to the point. ‘Ben, I’ve just heard that Calico Design’s gone into administration.’

      Ben sat down. ‘When?’

      ‘Two days ago.’

      If it had been anyone but Vince on the end of the phone, Ben would’ve doubted his word. Ben had talked to Bronagh Kearney, the designer, only last week and everything had been rosy. ‘Voluntary?’

      ‘No. Creditors forced it. Shame really. They had a big contract for that new chain of nursing homes – McClure and Esler. When they went bust Calico were left high and dry. As soon as the creditors heard, they were onto them like a pack of wolves demanding payment. And of course, they couldn’t cough up. You haven’t paid any money over to them, have you?’

      Ben shook his head, then remembered that Vincent could not see him. ‘No, not a penny. Invoice on completion.’

      ‘That’s a relief.’ Vince lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘The insolvency practitioner’s a good pal of mine – we go way back – and he thinks they’ll go into liquidation. If I was you I’d be looking pronto for someone else to do up that restaurant of yours.’

      After he’d put the phone down, Ben sat quietly for a few minutes considering his options. It was bad news, for sure, but they’d been lucky too. At least they wouldn’t lose any money. Not like Calico’s creditors, poor buggers, some of whom themselves would go bust because of Calico’s demise.

      It did, however, leave him with the pressing problem of finding another interior designer to replace Calico at short notice. And he knew just the person: Jennifer.

      He sat up straight, feet planted firmly on the ground, amazed that fate had landed this chance in his lap. Not only would he see her again, he’d get to spend time with her, get to know her. He tapped his fingers on the table, thinking how he would sell this to his father. Because he would not like Ben using someone he didn’t know. Alan’s intricate network of business contacts, immense and complex, like neural pathways to the brain, connected him to all corners of the province and beyond. Alan would see Jennifer as a risk. He would not like it; but on this, Ben decided, he would prevail, just as he had done with Matt and the commis chef job. Jason had been cross with him for offering the lad the job and he’d only agreed to the appointment as a personal favour for Ben.

      This was the silver lining his mother, Diane, used to talk about when they were little and a toy broke or he fell over and skinned an elbow. Of course, he’d since learnt that sometimes bad things happened that were so awful, so wrong, no good could ever come of them. After Ricky, his mother didn’t talk about silver linings any more.

      Ben closed his eyes briefly and let out a loud sigh. He mustn’t go there, he mustn’t let his thoughts dwell on Ricky, because it only led to one thing – black depression. He shook his head and picked up the big rectangular board sitting upended in the corner. Calico Design had put it together – a story board, Bronagh had called it. Swatches of fabric and wallpaper were glued haphazardly to it. Paint colour charts, the size and shape of bookmarks, fanned out like playing cards. Photographs torn from brochures and magazines were artfully displayed at angles, so completing the collage. Ben and Alan had agreed on exactly how they wanted the restaurant to look, for once working in rare harmony, and Bronagh had delivered it – in concept at least.

      He set the board behind the chair once more and, one quick Google search later, Jennifer’s phone number was at his fingertips.

      Jennifer pulled nervously into the car park beside Peggy’s Kitchen, fifteen minutes early. She parked between two cars, facing the front of the old café, and switched off the engine. She slid down in the seat, thankful for the light rain pattering softly on the windscreen, blurring her view and providing her with welcome camouflage. She’d wait a bit. Best not to look too keen – on both a business, and a personal, front.

      She’d received the call from Ben a few days ago and her stomach had immediately gone into a spasm, churning like a washing machine. And even now, while she tried to talk sense to herself, she was like a love-struck teenager. Butterflies played tag in her stomach and her heart raced like a train.

      ‘Catch yourself on, Jennifer,’ she said out loud. ‘Ben Crawford has a girlfriend, remember?’

      Her mobile phone vibrated in her jacket pocket. She pulled the phone out and read the text message. It was from Lucy, saying that she would be getting the train home the following night. She finished with ‘Luv L xo’. Was this text an olive branch? She hadn’t seen or spoken to Lucy since last Friday when she’d stormed out of the house with her father – Lucy hadn’t answered her calls or returned her messages. But clearly they were back on texting terms and she was coming home, which had to be a good sign.

      But, in spite of this apparent truce, Jennifer was troubled by her daughter – or, more accurately, by her conflicting emotions towards her. A mother was supposed to love, wholly, fully, unconditionally. And Jennifer did love her daughter. But Lucy had a knack of arousing a whole raft of other, not so benign, emotions. Feelings Jennifer could hardly bring herself to acknowledge – irritation, intolerance, dislike, anger even. She blushed, ashamed to own them in herself. She reminded herself sternly that it was Lucy’s behaviour that sometimes induced these sentiments – not Lucy herself. She’d been telling herself this ever since Lucy, aged seven, had a temper tantrum on Christmas morning because she didn’t get a particular, expensive doll that she coveted. But Lucy was twenty now – an adult capable, in theory anyway, of marriage, motherhood, emigration, relocation, complete independence. Jennifer fretted that the behaviours she observed were, like the foundation stones of a building, an integral part of Lucy’s character now.

      And there was something else too – a vague uneasiness that, when it came to Lucy, everything wasn’t quite as it ought to be. It was more intuition than a concrete thought, for when she tried to pin it down, it bobbed away like a Halloween apple in a barrel of water.

      But she had no wish to spend another weekend locking horns with Lucy. She would put last Friday night out of her mind and try and make a fresh start. She keyed a short, warm reply to Lucy and slipped the phone back in her pocket.

      Then she played with the zip on her brown leather jacket, wondering briefly if her choice of casual chic – dark jeans, a crisp white shirt, and cowboy boots – was flattering. Then she tried to convince herself that she didn’t care what Ben thought of her, except in a professional capacity.

      Switching to designer mode, she flicked on the windscreen wipers and stared at the unprepossessing building opposite. It was single storey, of indeterminate age, with a steeply pitched slate roof. It might have been a workshop once. The harled, pebbly exterior was grey and streaked with water stains from a leak in the guttering and a yellow skip rested on the tarmaced forecourt. One of the front windows was boarded up and a huge, plastic-shiny sign announcing ‘Peggy’s Kitchen’ in yellow and red hung right across the width of the shopfront. But