Nick told Ella that Don Richardson must have a filing system in his head. At least twice a week they got a call from someone saying that Don had given them the name of Firefly Films. It was like a seal of approval.
And finally, the last citadel fell, and Deirdre said she liked him. "You don't have to tell me this, Dee. I'll survive even if you don't," Ella said with a laugh.
But no, Deirdre wanted to make her position clear. She had been in a trendy nightclub and Don had come up to her. "Very far from all your domestic fronts tonight," Dee had said to him.
"I know you disapprove of me, Deirdre, and in many ways
I respect you for looking out for a friend. All I can say is that I love her, but I wouldn't be helping anyone or anything by leaving Margery and the boys now. Ella knows everything there is to be known."
Deirdre looked almost embarrassed. "I believed him, Ella. I bloody believed him. I even believed him when he told me he was entertaining people from Spain and they had insisted on coming to the nightclub. He does love you. You do have everything."
"Not everything, Dee. Not the home and the babies," Ella said.
"Don't worry about it. Women can have babies at sixty these days," Deirdre had said cheerfully. "You have over thirty years before you need to start getting broody." As the months went by, Ella felt she had known no other life. Soon those boys would grow up and they could think again seriously. But now? It was all fine, so why upset what was working well?
Don's part of the study "was as tidy as he was. He used a mobile phone and got in the habit of moving out into the hall when he answered a call. The reception was better and he didn't interrupt the television or the music that they listened to. He had a few books on the wall shelves, and business magazines in the rack, but everything else was in a small laptop.
"Suppose you lost it?" she teased him once. "Suppose we had burglars, or it was snatched from you in the street?"
"Backup," he said simply. "House rule: we all copy every single thing from that day's transaction on to a disk every evening."
"And what do you do with the disks?" She was interested. "Surely you could lose a disk just as easily?"
"What have we here, Ella? An investigation, a tribunal?" He laughed, but his eyes weren't smiling.
Ella was annoyed with him and showed it. "Sorry, Don. Didn't know the little woman wasn't allowed to be interested. Forget it. Forget I even spoke."
"Hey, Ella angel, you're being a little bit heavy," he began.
"No, I'm not. If you asked me a question about school, I'd think you were interested and I'd answer you. I wouldn't accuse you of being part of a Department of Education hit squad."
"I apologise."
"No need to. Message received. Don't ask Don about his work. Okay, I'll remember."
"You're very hurt," he said.
"No, just a bit pissed off. I'll get over it."
"Come here, please ... I beg you." His eyes were pleading.
"What?"
He opened his little computer. The one that fitted in his briefcase. "First my password. I want you to know that." His face was very serious.
"Don, this is silly."
"My password is "Angel". It has been since I met you." He typed it in and the program sprang to life. "Please, Ella, look at the headings. My life is your life. You are welcome to look at any of these at any time."
"That wasn't what I wanted ... you were short with me, that's all."
"See, here's Killiney, all the details about bills and expenses are there. Here's the boys" school fees and trust funds under their names, James and Gerald ... and here's travel, and here's Ella."
"You have a file on me?" Her voice was a whisper.
"Angel, of course I have." He pointed to a file called "Brady".
She was in tears now, but he took no notice. He was determined to explain everything, show her how open he was being with her.
"These are the day-by-day transactions in these files. These are the ones we put on disk, and since you wanted to know what we do with the disks, we post them back to the office. We all have little ready-stamped envelopes. Now, Ella, you know the password, anything you want to know is there, but don't ever tell me again that I am secretive. That's the last thing I am."
"How can I tell you how sorry I am?" she asked through tears.
He stroked her hair. "Angel Ella, I'm the one to be sorry if I sounded sharp to you. I get people asking me questions day and night. It's such a relief to be with you, you don't." His face was full of remorse.
"I'm such an idiot," she sniffed.
"I love you, Ella."
I know," she said. I don't deserve you." "Your father wouldn't dream of asking you, but then you know me. I'm such a busybody, Ella. It's just that we wondered, do you see a lot of that Don Richardson?" Barbara Brady's voice trailed away with the enormity of her intrusion into her daughter's life.
"Oh, I run into him a lot around the place, yes. Any problem with that?" Ella looked a long, clear look at her mother.
"No, no, none at all. It's just that he is married, and all that sort of thing."
"What sort of thing exactly?"
"Well, married, I suppose, and with children. Two sons, I heard."
"Ah, that's nice for him then."
"Ella, you know we want the best for you."
"As I do for you and for Dad, too." Ella's smile was radiant. "Will you come to Spain at half-term?" Don asked her.
"I'd love to, but won't it be ... difficult?"
"No, not remotely. I'd love to show you the coast."
"I'd love to see it. I pay for my own ticket, though."
"That's silly, Angel. I have a ticket for you."
"Leave me my pride and dignity. Won't I be staying in your house? Isn't that enough?"
"Well, no, I thought we'd stay in a hotel. Easier."
"Sure." But Ella was quiet.
I chose it for you in case you "were uneasy about staying in what is in many ways a family house."
"No, I mean it, sure, that's very sensitive of you, but I have my own money, Don. I'd prefer to pay for the ticket." Tine, Angel," he said. "How many days?"
"You said you had six days. I booked for that." He smiled at her. "God, I love you, Don Richardson," she said. The airport was crowded with families, couples, lovers, groups of girls on package tours. None of them were remotely as happy as Ella. She had six days here. Like a honeymoon.
She almost hugged herself at the airport as they came out among the other passengers into the sunshine towards all the hoteliers and travel agents waving banners and shouting out names.
Don had booked a car in advance.
"Sit here, Angel. I'll go and do the boring bit," he urged. So Ella sat minding their cases and Don's briefcase. She admired him as he walked relaxed and easy to the car desk, his jacket over his arm.
She thought she saw him paying in cash. He seemed to have a fistful of notes. But that was unlikely. Maybe he was just changing money. He was coming back to her, smiling.
"Enjoy your vacation, Senor Brady," the man at the car desk called to him.
"I put your name on the rented car too. He obviously knows who is the important one here," Don said with his arm around Ella's shoulder.
She was childishly pleased. "I've never driven on the wrong side of the road," she began.
"A bright girl like you, of course you can do it," he teased.
"It's very good of you, Don."
"Not a bit of it. Anyway, nice for you to have the car if I have to do a little work. Come on now, let's go find it and we'll toss a coin for who drives."
"I think we've tossed it and you won," she said, laughing and taking him by the arm.