A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy

place.’
    ‘I don’t know . . . it’s only a thought.’
    ‘Well, banish that thought.’ Brigid was very definite. ‘You’d only be back twenty minutes before you were on all fours trying to get out of it again. And where would you work, for God’s sake? The knitting factory?’
    ‘No, I might go in with Chicky.’
    ‘But that place is doomed, I tell you. It won’t last for two seasons. Then she’ll have to sell it and lose a packet. Everyone knows that.’
    ‘Chicky doesn’t know that. I don’t know that. It’s only your uncles who say that because they wanted to buy it themselves.’
    ‘I’m not going to fight with my bridesmaid,’ Brigid said.
    ‘Swear you aren’t thinking of mauve taffeta,’ Orla begged, and they were fine again. Apart from Orla’s disbelief that anyone could want to marry Foxy Farrell.
    As she often did at times of change, Orla wrote to Miss Daly for advice.
    ‘Am I going mad, sort of wanting to go back to Stoneybridge? Is it just a knee-jerk reaction to Brigid deciding to marry this eejit? Were you bored rigid when you were there?’
    Miss Daly wrote back.
    I loved the work. You were great kids in that school. I adored the place. I still look back on it with pleasure. I’m in the mountains here. It’s lovely, and I can drive to the sea but it’s not the same as Stoneybridge, where the sea was there at your feet. Why don’t you try it out for a year? Tell your aunt that you don’t want to sign up for life. Thank you for not asking about Shane. He’s having a little time out with something marginally more interesting than me, but he’ll be back. And I’ll take him back. It’s a funny old world. Once you realise that, you’re halfway there .
    In Orla’s office, James and Simon were very tight-lipped these days. Business was not good. The economy was sluggish, it didn’t matter what politicians said. They knew. People weren’t booking stands at exhibitions like they used to. Trade fairs were smaller than last year. The prospects were dire. They were placing all their hopes on Marty Green, who was very big in the conference business. They were having drinks in the office to impress him.
    ‘Ask that sexy redhead friend of yours to come and help us dress the set,’ James suggested.
    ‘Brigid’s just got engaged. She won’t want to be a party-party girl these days.’
    ‘Well, tell her to bring her fiancé. Is he presentable and everything?’
    ‘You’re worse than my mother and her mother put together. Very presentable, richer than God,’ Orla said.
    Brigid and Foxy thought it would be a laugh and turned up in high good form. Marty Green was delighted with them all and seemed to be taking the sales pitch on board. He was also very interested in Orla, who had dressed to kill in a scarlet silk dress she had found in a charity shop and really expensive red and black shiny high heels. She passed around the white wine and the tray of canapés.
    ‘These are very good,’ Marty Green said appreciatively, ‘who’s your caterer?’
    ‘Oh, I did these myself,’ Orla smiled at him.
    ‘Really? Not just a pretty face, then?’ He was definitely impressed, which was what this reception was all about. But Orla felt he was rather too impressed with her and not enough with the company.
    ‘That’s very nice of you, Mr Green, but I wasn’t hired here to make canapés and smile. We all work very hard, and as James and Simon were saying, this has paid off. We know the market and the situation very well. It’s good to get a chance to tell you about it personally.’
    ‘And very pleasant it is to hear about it personally.’ His eyes never left her face.
    Orla moved away but knew he was watching her all the time. Even when James was giving statistics, when Simon was talking about trends, when Foxy was braying about great new restaurants and Brigid was asking if Mr Green was interested in rugby, as she could get him tickets.
    Marty Green wondered if Orla would like to have