brought against Kate King over this painting she allegedly refuses to give back, and it being a huge story at the time. The press had a field day with it. It was everywhere, even made headlines on the TV news, that’s how dominant the story was. Everyone was talking about it and from the sounds of it, they still are.
‘You know, I heard that Kate King is refusing to leave that big Wicklow mansion they live in,’ another caller chimes in, yet another woman all-too anxious to stick the knife into Kate King. ‘She’s holed up there without a stick of furniture in the place, and she still won’t budge. Damien King will probably have to get another court order just to sandblast her out of there.’
‘She’ll get a right shock when he divorces her and she ends up in emergency accommodation somewhere,’ another quips, a bit cruelly.
‘Damien King bought that painting and he’s saying he’s the rightful owner, so what makes that ridiculous woman think that she can just cling on to it like this?’ says another.
Then a taxi driver calls in and thankfully his is the first reasonable voice I’ve heard on the show so far.
‘Here’s what I don’t get,’ he says as the host invites him to throw in his two cents worth. ‘We all know Kate King has been charged over this, and we all know she’s in breach of court orders and that this isn’t going to end well for her. But what I don’t understand is this: why doesn’t she just give the shagging painting back to Damien King, if he wants it that badly? She’s the ex-wife of a billionaire, so she can’t be short of a few bob. Why is she bringing all this press attention and humiliation on top of herself when she could get out of it in the morning?’
‘Because she wants the money, of course,’ another caller on the line shouts over him. ‘That’s all she’s ever been after, that’s the only reason she even married him in the first place. Everyone knows that. That’s a Rembrandt you know, worth €95 million. So wouldn’t that set her up very nicely for life?’
‘She’s also trying to get back at Damien King too, never forget that,’ says another. ‘He’s got a new girlfriend now and apparently they’re engaged, that’s what I heard. So if you ask me, Kate is clinging on to the painting for no other reason than to get back at him. He’s dumped her, he’s traded her in for a younger model, and that painting is the thing that he loves most in the world. So she’s determined he’ll never have it, because that’s the vindictive type she is. Sure you’d know by the look of her.’
None of these people have ever even met Kate King, I think. And yet they can be this vicious about a complete stranger, without hearing her side of the story first?
I glance over to Bernard wishing he were awake so we could have a proper gossip about it. Because there’s a mystery here alright. Why would the woman invite all this trouble into her life and all of this negative press, when it could so easily be avoided?
It starts to rain now and as I switch on the windscreen wipers, my mind wanders back to another rainy night, oh, it must be about two years ago now. There I was, scurrying across the Ha’penny Bridge in bucketing rain, when I accidentally stumbled upon Kate King herself. But the woman I came across seemed absolutely nothing like the she-devil they’re all so freely having a go at on the radio.
In fact, what I remember is a sad, lonely woman standing all alone on the bridge, soaking wet and with tears pouring down her face.
And so I switch off the radio.
Conflicted.
July 2001
With just a few weeks to go to the big day, as you can imagine for a wedding on such a titanic scale as this one, it had been panic stations. Kate and Damien’s wedding was to be held at Castletown House, which had been gifted to Damien as a twenty-fifth birthday present and which could comfortably seat a guest list of three hundred with ample room to spare. Which was just as well given that the final, confirmed list of guests was rapidly escalating by the day.
Damien was not only an eldest son, but also the first of the King siblings to get married, so his family were determined to really push the boat out. The President was expected, along with no fewer than four other members of cabinet as well as the country’s honorary consul to Monaco, where the Kings held a villa purely for ‘tax status’.
A giant marquee was to be erected on the sprawling south lawn at Castletown House for the reception and local florists in County Wicklow were working on high overdrive to have everything ready in time. Not only that but Robbie Williams, Damien’s favourite singer, had been booked to play at the reception.
Meanwhile, about a week before the wedding, Kate herself was just in the middle of a pre-nuptial panic attack over her wedding dress. She’d lost so much weight in the run-up to the big day that during her final fitting the dress almost threatened to drown her. The dress was utterly stunning in every sense; a close replica of the wedding dress worn by Princess Grace on her marriage to Prince Rainier, made of crushed cream silk taffeta, encrusted with delicate pearls and with a twelve-foot lace veil, held in place with a simple wreath of cream tea roses.
Next thing, out of the blue, Damien’s father called her.
Instant panic stations. But then ever since she’d started dating Damien, Kate had only ever met his father on a handful of occasions. On every one of which he was dismissive of her almost to the point of rudeness. And never once had she been invited to call him by his first name, Ivan, so of course in her head she immediately gave him the nickname Ivan the Terrible.
‘Mr King, is that you?’ she said, answering her mobile in a froth of underskirts and taffeta at the designer showrooms where she was having her fitting. ‘How are you?’ Her tone was so respectful and over-polite that to hear her, you’d swear she was on the phone to a mortgage arrears company she owed a fortune to.
‘Kate, there you are,’ her father-in-law-to-be said gruffly while she strained so she could hear him properly. There was the deafening sound of engines roaring in the background, as if he were calling her from the airport.
‘How are things with you, Mr King?’ she asked nervously, not having the first clue what this could be about, and almost feeling like she might need to sit down to take this call. Ivan King terrified her, as he did most people. But of course that was something she could never even discuss with Damien, who idolised his father and who wanted so badly to emulate him. In fact you could almost say that everything Damien did and every success he scored in business was done with the sole purpose of impressing his dad.
‘I’m fit and well,’ Ivan said gruffly, ‘but then I’m always well. In fact, I’ve just touched down at Dublin airport and I’m on my way to see my solicitor in town. I’d like you to meet me there in one hour, please.’
There was no ‘are you free?’ or ‘does that even suit you?’ Just the presumption that she’d drop everything and rush to meet him. Which as it happened was exactly what Kate did, too terrified not to.
Exactly an hour later, with many rushed apologies to her designer, Kate found herself pulling up at McNally Ross solicitors just on the quays, right across the river from the Four Courts in the heart of the legal district. For about the fifth time, she tried calling Damien, to alert him to what was going on and to see if he had any idea what all this might be about. As bad luck would have it though, he was away in Brussels on business and his phone had been switched off all morning.
Ivan the Terrible was already in the solicitor’s office ahead of her, waiting in the conference room, sitting at the head of the table as if he owned the place. Which, knowing him, he probably did. A grey-looking, bespectacled lawyer was introduced to Kate as a Mr Ross and Kate was invited to sit down in front of a legal document, with a pen strategically positioned right beside it.
‘You’re exactly seven minutes late,’ said Ivan the T, who Kate knew to be