Authors: Kate Thompson
Fleur examined the zip, and as she did, she detached the price tag. ‘
Voilà!
Go try it on.’
‘Thank you.’ Bethany took the dress from her and slipped into the changing cubicle, and Fleur returned to her finances.
Moments later, Bethany emerged from behind the curtain.
Fleur looked up, then blew Bethany an extravagant kiss. ‘I was right,’ she said. ‘It
is
perfect.’
Bethany looked like something out of a story book. She was barefoot, barelegged. Her hair tumbled artlessly over her shoulders, and diminutive, pointilliste dots of golden skin were visible through the eyelet embroidery.
Fleur put her head on one side, and considered. ‘Quite, quite perfect! There is just one thing amiss,’ she said. ‘You must not wear a bra with this dress.’
‘But it’s a white bra I have on!’ protested Bethany.
Fleur shook her head. ‘No matter. Better a flesh-coloured bra than white under a semi-diaphanous garment – but flesh-coloured bras are
so
unsexy! White panties you can get away with, sure – but no bra with this dress. Don’t you know how lucky you are not to need a bra, darling? Look at yourself.’
Bethany did. She regarded her reflection in that way teenage girls do, questioningly, uncertainly, as if trying to work out who she was, as if hoping to forge an identity for herself. And then she smiled. ‘You’re right,’ she said to Fleur. ‘It
is
perfect. But can I afford it? There’s no price tag.’
‘That’s because there is no price,’ lied Fleur. ‘Designers often send me samples for free, to induce me to stock them. You can have it for nothing.’
‘I don’t believe you!’ said Bethany.
Fleur shrugged. ‘Take a look around. Can you see another one like it? It’s a one-off. You’re lucky you are so slender. Samples only ever come in size eight.’
‘But – I can’t accept this, Fleur!’
‘If you don’t, I shall have to keep it for my niece Daisy and give it to her when she comes back from Africa. And by then it will be too wintry to wear a dress like this.’
Bethany bit her lip. ‘Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Yes, sweetheart, I am absolutely sure. You picked a good day to come into my shop, didn’t you?’
‘I did. Oh, I did!’ And Bethany dance-stepped up to Fleur and flung her arms around her. ‘Thank you so, so much! I was scared I’d have to blow a big chunk of my earnings on an outfit for tonight, and I so want to look good.’
‘And you will, that’s for sure. Now. How about shoes?’
That dubious look came over Bethany’s face again. ‘I don’t really have anything dressy,’ she said. ‘Would I get away with flip-flops?’
‘Flip-flops are perfect! What colour?’
‘I have some blue ones?’
‘No,’ said Fleur categorically. ‘Blue will not work. I have a pair of ecru leather ones upstairs. I can lend them to you – we’re about the same size. And I have a mother-of-pearl necklace, which would go perfectly.’
‘I honestly don’t know how to thank you, Fleur,’ said Bethany. ‘You’re like the fairy godmother in
Cinderella
.’
Fleur waved an imaginary magic wand. Then, ‘Shoo, shoo!’ she said. ‘Here comes Anastasia Harris, to whom I must devote all of my attention! She must be in need of a gown for this evening.’
‘Oh! I’ll scarper, so, and leave you to her. Thanks a million, Fleur – you’ve been legend!’
‘Come back in half an hour, and I’ll have your accessories ready for you.’
‘Thanks so much! And –’ this in an undertone ‘– good luck with Nasty!’
As the smiling extra shimmied out of the shop and the starlet made her entrance with her bodyguard, Fleur already knew which gown Nasty Harris would be wearing this evening. It would be the baby pink frilled silk, the one with the skirt slit to the crotch. And it would cost her a cool €890.
Bethany’s would have been better value, Fleur thought, as she welcomed Ms Harris into her humble premises. The price tag on that one had been only €340.
Fleur was showered and shampooed and had applied a little
maquillage
: MAC’s Pink Nouveau to her lips, a dusting of LeClerc’s Orchidée to her face (it was perfect for evening; a luminous lavender pink – which sounded awful, but looked fabulous). She spritzed herself with
Vent Vert
– having changed allegiance from
Narcisse Blanc
, hating the fact that Corban had liked it – twisted her hair into a chignon, and set off for the wrap party.
Parking her little Karmann Ghia between a Lexus and a Maserati (Recession? What recession?), she sashayed into the marquee that had been set up in the grounds of Arnoldscourt House. Fleur knew the value of making an entrance, and she was pleased to see that she could still make an impact. Men looked at her with interest and women checked out her style, hoping maybe that they could steal some of it. But Fleur’s style was innate, unique and inimitable, and she knew it.
The marquee was draped and swagged in bog-standard ivory tat. The dining chairs even had those horrid stretch covers on that – when taken off – looked like some kind of old-lady underpinning. Fleur gave a sigh of irritation. The production company had a genius on their hands: Río could have transformed the place into a pleasure dome worthy of Coleridge if she’d been given the remit.
However, the partygoers crowding into the palatial marquee were truly beautiful. All the guys and gals involved in the making of
The O’Hara Affair
had come forth tonight in hummingbird silks and raven-sleek suits. They glistened, they gleamed, they shimmered, they sparkled. And yes – Fleur
was delighted to see – Elena Sweetman outshone them all in her plain silk sheath, courtesy of Fleurissima.
Fleur wandered between tables, taking everything in. She scanned the crowd to see if Mr Bastard O’Hara might have had the nerve to attend, and was glad to see that there was no sign of him anywhere. His baby love was there, though, with her husband, Jay David. Mr David was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Fleur wondered what his reaction might be if he knew that one of the film’s executive producers had been screwing his wife. If she, Fleur, had been able to immobilize Corban with her amateur kick-boxing skills, how might her ex fare when faced with the wrath of the actor who was famous for playing superheroes? But then she remembered what Shane had told her – that his last wife had kept ‘walking into doors’, and she knew that the DVD she’d purloined would never make it onto YouTube.
Fleur wondered what on earth had induced the starlet to go to bed with Corban. Had it been the promise of another leading role? Maybe. After the footage of her on-set tantrum had been aired on the internet, Nasty Harris’s future as the new Julia Roberts had been seriously jeopardized. Perhaps she’d deemed it advantageous to sleep with someone who was in a position to help put her career back on track? Fleur had heard through the grapevine that Corban’s next project was to be a screen adaptation of
Zuleika Dobson
– and the role of the eponymous heroine would score a to-die-for rating on any Hollywood wannabe’s wish list. Or maybe Corban had simply charmed her, the way he seemed to charm everybody? Shane had called him a sociopath, and Fleur had read somewhere that sociopaths were game players, skilled at winning people over, and expert manipulators. She’d witnessed Corban in action dozens of times. He’d even charmed Dervla – and Dervla was no pushover. As for pretty
little Anastasia Harris? She had been just another conquest for him to add to the list of people he’d suckered – including foolish, foolish Fleur O’Farrell.
Nasty and Jay, both of them with scowls on their faces, were sitting behind a velvet rope that segregated them from the hoi polloi. Silly girl, thought Fleur. She should be out there in the thick of things, working the room, instead of trying to maintain her unsustainable princess status. Her PR person had issued an apology to the press, and implied that Ms Harris was undergoing therapy for anger management: however, to judge by the expression she was wearing, the anger management wasn’t working.
Unsurprisingly, really, since she’d been dissed by Perez Hilton, appeared in
Heat
magazine’s Hoop of Horror, and TMZ was breaking news about her low-life drug dealer brother. It looked as if Nasty Harris’s fifteen minutes were up.
At another table, locals who had worked on the film were filling half-empty pints of Guinness with champagne to make Black Velvets. Lissamore would suffer from a massive collective hangover tomorrow, Fleur conjectured. Still, the lean season would soon be upon them, so it made sense to party like it was 1999.
There was Paddy Lonergan, who had worked as an assistant to the voice coach on the film, and who was already selling pilfered
O’Hara Affair
memorabilia on eBay. There was Noreen Conroy, who had cleaned Elena Sweetman’s trailer, and collected all the tissues that bore lipstick kisses. Ms Sweetman had very obligingly agreed to sign them so that Noreen could frame them and auction them at a Cancer Research coffee morning. There was Vinnie McGinley, who had advised the set designer on the building of dry-stone walls, and who was – according to Sean the Post – working undercover for the
National Enquirer
.
And, joy! There was Río, and there was Dervla, along with Shane and Finn, all sitting together at a big round table. As she drifted across the floor to join them, she apologized to a man whose face had been brushed by the end of her trailing chiffon scarf. ‘No apology necessary,’ he told her with a smile.
‘How do you do it?’ asked Dervla, as Fleur sat down.
‘Do what? Ooh! Goodie bags!’ A silk beribboned bag was waiting by each place setting.
‘You have a kind of aura about you that makes people look twice.’
Fleur laughed. ‘It’s like Dolores del Río once said. “So long as a woman has twinkles in her eyes, no man notices whether she has wrinkles under them.”’ She reached for a bread roll from the basket, and spread it generously with butter. ‘Is Christian not with you, Dervla?’
‘He’s actually working. The caterers underestimated how much wine would be consumed, so he’s in Bacchante, filling an order.’
‘Imagine underestimating the amount of booze that film people put away,’ scoffed Shane. ‘Actors are the biggest liggers on the planet. I remember a PR event for the Galway Arts Festival once, where none of the actors wanted to be photographed because it meant they’d have to be dragged away from the buffet table. You know, there are just four words that can make an actor the happiest man on the planet.’
‘And they are?’ prompted Fleur.
‘Free food and drink,’ said Shane.
‘But you’re rich now, Dad!’ protested Finn.
‘That doesn’t mean I don’t embrace my inner out-of-work actor. I steal stuff from hotels all the time. Have a gander at what’s in the goodie bags, Fleur.’
Fleur pounced, and riffled among the contents of the glossy bag. First up was a T-shirt with
The O’Hara Affair
emblazoned upon it in a blood-red font. ‘Well, that’s one T-shirt I won’t be wearing,’ she said, waspishly.
‘Give it to me then,’ said Shane, reaching for it. ‘Girls love it when I give them souvenir T-shirts, and I love signing them.’
‘I suppose you sign across their tits,’ said Río, crossly.
‘Of course. They love it nearly as much as I do.’
Next up were signed photographs of the principal stars of the movie.
‘Give me the one of Shane, please,’ said Río, ‘so that I can draw spots and facial hair and squinty eyes on it.’
‘It’s more juvenile every day you’re getting, Río Kinsella,’ Shane told her.
Río gave him an arch look. ‘A van with four actors in it goes over a cliff,’ she challenged. ‘Where’s the tragedy in this?’
Shane heaved a sigh. ‘OK, where’s the tragedy?’
‘You can fit a lot more than four actors in a van,’ replied Río, tartly.
‘Ma! Pa! Cut it out,’ Finn rebuked them.
‘What’s this?’ said Fleur, holding up a small statuette of an emaciated man in rags.
‘I suppose it’s to commemorate the famine,’ said Shane. ‘It’s in massively poor taste, considering we’re all sitting here stuffing our faces and swigging back wine.’
‘How many actors does it take to wallpaper a room? asked Río.
Shane shot her a look of exasperated enquiry.
‘Only three,’ came the response, ‘if you slice them very thin.’
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ said Shane, turning to a passing waitress. ‘Could you bring us some more wine here, please?’
‘Certainly, Mr Byrne.’ The waitress dimpled at him, then shimmied away.
‘Ma Branagan’s Barmbrack,’ announced Fleur, who was continuing to root through her goodie bag. ‘Handmade Irish chocolates, miniature Baileys – you can have that, Finn – Mother McGuire’s shortbread biscuits, Carrageen Candy, Shamrock Soda Tasties.’
‘It looks like it’s far from a famine we Irish were raised,’ remarked Shane. ‘Can I have your Carrageen Candy, Fleur? I love it, and you can’t get it in LA.’
‘Certainly,’ said Fleur, sliding the bag across the table to him. ‘You can have all my stuff, apart from the chocolates. How come you’re not hobnobbing with the stars, Shane?’
‘Fuck the stars. Sure, don’t I hobnob with them every day? I’d rather hobnob with my family and friends.’
On a podium in the middle of the marquee, a girl in Irish costume started playing a lament on a fiddle.
‘Riverdance has a lot to answer for,’ observed Río, draining her wineglass. ‘Before you know it, there’ll be a musical about the Irish famine, and Michael Flatley’ll have to go on a crash diet.’
‘Will there be dancing later?’ asked Dervla.
‘There will.’
‘Shame I’ve forgotten all my moves.’
‘Hop on left foot, point right toe.’ Fleur demonstrated on the tabletop with her fingers.
‘I’d forgotten you did Irish dancing as well as kick-boxing,’ said Dervla.
‘You’ve taken up kick-boxing, Fleur?’ said Río. ‘Nobody ever tells me anything.’
‘She’s very good at it,’ said Finn and Shane simultaneously.
‘How do you know?’
‘She – erm – did a demonstration for us in Fleurissima one day,’ improvised Shane.
‘That must have drawn quite a crowd,’ remarked Río.