return flight home.
‘So there I was with a gang of guys from college,’ says Damien, ‘and we were in fantastic form because Ireland had just done the unthinkable and beaten France 22–10 at the Stade de France that afternoon. As you can imagine, there were more than a few pints of the black stuff involved.’
‘And that’s when you first spotted Kate?’
‘Course I did, like just about every other red-blooded male there. You couldn’t miss this knockout beauty bawling her eyes out in the middle of the airport concourse.’
Kate for her part says she barely even took notice of anyone around her, but all of a sudden she was aware of a guy hovering close by and looking worriedly down on her. Tall, classically good-looking, with dark hair and a light tan, dressed in an Irish rugby jersey and with the rugby supporter’s obligatory pint of beer clamped to his hand.
‘So, egged on by the lads, I walked right up to her and came out with probably one of the cheesiest pick-up lines of all time,’ Damien grins.
‘I realise this is probably a stupid question,’ they say together, looking adoringly at one other, ‘but is everything OK?’
It seems that Damien then sat down on a free plastic seat beside her and when Kate looked at him she tells me she had an overwhelming feeling that she could trust this guy. He had soft eyes, for starters, and she shyly confesses that she’s always been a sucker for soft eyes. So she found herself telling him everything. He nodded, and listened to her tale of woe.
‘But he said absolutely nothing.’
‘Instead I just strode over to the ticket desk and paid for her return flight home—’
‘—So of course I insisted that I’d have to reimburse him the minute we got back home, but he was having none of it.’
At this point, the pair of them almost overlap each other in their eagerness to get the story out.
‘Anyway, I invited Kate to join my friends at the bar and they instantly took her under their wing. As you can imagine only too delighted that this stunningly beautiful, leggy blonde model had deigned to join us—’
‘—Damien had even managed to wangle seats on the flight so we were beside each other the whole way home.’
‘And when we’d landed safely—’
‘—Ever the gentleman, he insisted on dropping me right to my parents’ house – and he even managed to charm my mum over a mug of tea—’
‘—Like I always say, get the mother onside and it’s all plain sailing from there!’
But after I’ve switched off my tape recorder, Kate confides what really happened next. Befuddled and still punch-drunk from her emotional roller coaster of a day, it was only when her handsome saviour was leaving that she finally got around to asking him his full name.
‘It’s Damien King,’ he apparently grinned at her. ‘A lovely, warm, open smile too,’ she adds in that soft voice. ‘And I can’t tell you, after the day from hell that I’d just been through, how grateful I was to meet such a gentleman who looked after me and took care of me and who was … just so completely wonderful, really.’
Then came the clincher.
Instead of letting her pay him back for the ticket, Damien apparently insisted that instead she let him take her out to dinner. Only it had to be the following night and that wasn’t negotiable.
‘Before she’d time to change her mind.’
‘And he wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
The present
Thursday night, dinner with the Pritchards. Did I tell you about my in-laws to be? Because not many people can say that they’re genuinely fond of the family they’re about to marry into, but I can. Deeply fond of them.
Honestly.
Bernard’s parents, Desmond and Beatrice, are Anglo-Irish and now live in Donnybrook, the posh end of Donnybrook that is, in a once beautiful but now slightly dilapidated Victorian redbrick, surrounded by copper trees and with a banged-up Honda Civic sitting in their driveway on four blocks of cement. Untaxed, uninsured and ignored, much like the house itself.
True, their home could be beautiful if the Pritchards only tidied it up a bit, hoovered and maybe ran a duster over the place every now and then, but then that’s all part and parcel of the Pritchard family charm. And we’ll just skate over the wilderness that’s their front garden, which right now is looking not unlike the set of I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! In fact the one time my mother was here, her only comment was, ‘well, we may not live in a house that grand but still, I think I’d rather die of shame than invite guests into my house if it was that filthy. The Pritchards may well act like they’re posher than the Queen, but you’d want to see the state of their downstairs loo.’
You can tell everything you need to know about a person, according to Mum, by just a single glance at their bathroom. I tried in vain to convince her that she was missing the point, because that’s the whole thing about the Pritchards; they seem to live their whole lives in chaotic squalor and it doesn’t bother them in the slightest. It’s all part and parcel of their whole ‘take us as you find us’ vibe.
Beatrice and Desmond, you see, not unlike Bernard himself, could best be classed as ‘eccentric’. In an endearing way though, you can only admire them for all their warm-hearted, unaffected battiness. Desmond is a retired university professor (History of Art and Classics, just like Bernard himself). Meanwhile, his mum, Beatrice, used to work as a senior librarian and is now researching a non-fiction book, in her own words, ‘all about Oliver Cromwell, politics and religion in the English Civil War, 1642–1651. Not your thing at all, my darling’.
In fact, I’ve a recurring nightmare that she invites me to her book club to discuss it and I am only hoping against hope that she doesn’t give me an early copy to read then start grilling me on it.
I pull my car into the Pritchard’s driveway, narrowly avoiding the same pothole that’s been there ever since Bernard and I first started dating. There’s a gentle thud on the roof of my car and I realise that it’s Magic, the family’s jet-black tomcat and officially the unfriendliest animal in the world, who’s just jumped down from the branch of a tree to come and intimidate me.
‘Hi, Magic,’ I say, hopping out of the car and instinctively going to pet him, but he just squeals like I’ve actually done him physical harm and instead leaps up onto the bonnet of my car, tail pointing sharply upwards and hissing. Same as the big eejit does every single time he sees me.
‘Come on, Magic,’ I say soothingly, reaching out to placate him. ‘Can’t you and me be pals?’
He responds with a cross between a yell and a squawk that’s so loud, next thing Beatrice is at the front door, still in her dressing gown and with a towel wrapped around her head. Almost as though I’ve arrived hours early for dinner and caught her off-guard, whereas actually I’m bang on time.
‘What’s that God-awful racket? Oh it’s you, Tess dear, how lovely to see you. Now, Magic, shut up you silly puss, Tess is our guest and you’d better play nice.’ Then she kisses me lightly and gratefully takes the bottle of wine I hand over.
I think it’s worthy of note that it’s only half six and as she air-kisses me, I can’t help noticing that Beatrice already has a whiff of one G&T too many wafting from her. But then that’s the Pritchards for you. No exaggeration, but in this house they generally start Happy Hour at mid-afternoon and keep on drinking till it’s last man standing.
‘Oh and just ignore Magic; I know we all do. The idiotic animal actually