A Few of the Girls by Maeve Binchy Page A

thought that people might describe him as perfectly pleasant. Which was fairly damning these days. It was funny that he could not get Fiona and her phone-in show out of his mind. He would love to do something to impress her, something where she would have to take notice of him. But he couldn’t think of anything. Not anything that didn’t need an accomplice.
    Like suppose he had a friend…He could say to her that she should pretend to be burning to death in her house and that Rory would run in and save her. There wouldn’t need to be a fire at all. And he would be a hero.
    But that wouldn’t work, even if he could find an accomplice.
    Fiona had fleets of people checking that calls were genuine. He would be unmasked at once. Maybe if he could meet her socially and tell her that he had minded the cats and set the video…but they didn’t seem very brave things to have done. In fact, they seemed a bit wimpish. Yet he would dearly love to meet her. He might get some more life in him just by talking to her, some sense of purpose, a share in her electricity.
    It was perfectly possible that he could meet her. This was Ireland, not New York; he could say hello to any celebrity in Grafton Street, thinking he knew her and she had said hello back.
    Why shouldn’t he meet Fiona of the afternoon phone-in?
    Rory worked from nine to five so he couldn’t lurk outside RTÉ at four-thirty when Fiona’s show ended. But his holidays were coming up and Rory had nothing better to do with his time. He had painted Katie’s room for her since she now stayed over at least one night a week. He had toured bookshops and even gone to children’s book events to know what normal nine-year-olds would like.
    He didn’t like going off to a hotel for a holiday by himself since he always looked odd, he thought, and if he did approach people he seemed to do it wrong and they thought he was making advances or trying to go home and live with them. He really was a sad sack, Rory admitted to himself. Helen had been right to make her own life without him.
    Three days hanging outside the entrance to the radio and television station did him no good. There wasn’t a sign of Fiona. He watched the cars, the bicycles and pedestrians come in; he saw a lot of famous faces but nowhere the frizzy hair and big glasses of Fiona, solver of the nation’s dramas.
    He didn’t like to ask the security guards or people at the information desks. They might suspect he was some kind of pervert or nutter. And there was no point in writing to her saying he was a constant listener and would she like to join him for a supper one evening. No, it would have to be an accidental meeting or nothing. But what kinds of places did she go? She sounded as if she must know all sorts of people in every different class and age group. Nothing was alien or difficult to Fiona. She might be having a hamburger or she could be in a big posh restaurant. Was she at the theater or the cinema? At a party with her boyfriend? He didn’t think of her as married—a husband had never been mentioned.
    But then he began to wonder if he was becoming fixated on her. It was bad enough to be dull and sad and ordinary—he didn’t want to end up like something from
Psycho.
    He had half his holiday left and he would go around Dublin as if he were from a different place altogether and he might well bump into her somewhere. He went to gyms and leisure centers in the early mornings to ask for brochures. Lots of these broadcasters did workouts, he heard. Maybe he might see her in the foyer or something. He saw a lot of glowing healthy people, but no Fiona.
    She might have breakfast in health food places or lunch near Donnybrook. She would be invited to poetry readings or art exhibitions. It wasn’t hard to get invited, if you went about it cleverly. Rory had a full week and indeed a happy week, even though he never laid eyes once on Fiona of the
Afternoon Talk Show.
    “Are we looking for anyone?” Katie asked