Reluctantly, guiltily, she kept those frivolous things and said goodbye to female companionship.
Her detached, otherworldly air earned her huge credibility in the New York publishing community. In a city where every other person had talent to spare, personality counted for a lot. After only five years in the business, she was the editor-in-chief of a high-quality magazine dedicated to upmarket and artistic interiors. Antique four-posters in New England mansions, collections of valuable paintings in million-pound apartments in London. Paris lofts full of movie memorabilia and artists’ easels, and unmade beds with white sheets in fishing villages in Cornwall – with headboards made out of driftwood. That’s what got Clare Fitzgerald interested.
Celebrities and millionaires were falling over themselves to get their lavish homes featured in her magazine, but if Clare didn’t think they were special enough, they didn’t get in. The vulgar mansions favoured by pop stars and glamour models were not even considered. Clare Fitzgerald had the kind of taste that money alone just couldn’t buy.
She sat in her cosy office in New York selecting the locations for shoots, and sending her assistants out for deli and wine and cappuccinos, and sometimes dreaming of her lost love, Peter. Peter was the only man she had ever loved. They had spent one night together, in a tiny flat on Mulberry Street in Belfast. She had only known him for nineteen hours altogether.
She was a student then and the flat was the first home she had created for herself. A tiny little cupboard of a place, barely twenty feet square, but it was better than having to share a house with other students and the legendary squalor they lived in. Even as a teenager, Clare wanted to live in a nice place. The day she moved in, she cleaned the flat from top to bottom, and decorated it with colourful throws and cushions, free postcards from an art gallery, three houseplants, two lamps donated by her mother, a small bunch of flowers and two cheap rugs. She bought a new mattress for the bed and threw the old one in a skip. She hung Indian scarves and strings of glass beads on the Victorian headboard. She felt very grown up, buying her groceries at the supermarket, remembering to buy carpet cleaner and bleach, as well as soap and shampoo and toothpaste. She wasn’t a typical student.
The flat was next door to a cafe called Muldoon’s Tea Rooms. That was the best thing about the flat. If she had a lot of work to do, she could buy coffee and a salad roll on the way home from college, and be sitting at her desk a minute later, enjoying her supper. She could smell the aroma of coffee coming through the walls as she lay in bed in the early morning, listening to the rain hammering down on the skylight above her.
Peter was pale and quietly-spoken, but very intense. She liked that. He had a fringe of black hair hanging in his eyes and he had to flick it to one side to see her. He wore a T-shirt with the name of a pop group on it: The Human League. She liked the group too. That’s how they met. Through music. At a nightclub near the docks. Clare saw him looking at her, and she smiled at him, and after a while he came over to talk to her. That’s how it began. That’s how easy it was.
She asked him if he liked the band and they both laughed because he was wearing the T-shirt, and two badges as well.
One song in particular, she loved: “Don’t You Want Me?” She blushed sometimes because she could still remember the name of the song. Even now. (It was just a simple pop tune but at the time she thought it was fabulous.) He said he knew it well, and it was very good.
They danced together when the floor began to fill up, and when the night was over, he offered to walk her home. Twenty minutes could be a long walk when you were on your own, in the dark, Clare thought. She said yes. It was cold and windy. He held her hand.
She was only nineteen. He was older than Clare at
Her detached, otherworldly air earned her huge credibility in the New York publishing community. In a city where every other person had talent to spare, personality counted for a lot. After only five years in the business, she was the editor-in-chief of a high-quality magazine dedicated to upmarket and artistic interiors. Antique four-posters in New England mansions, collections of valuable paintings in million-pound apartments in London. Paris lofts full of movie memorabilia and artists’ easels, and unmade beds with white sheets in fishing villages in Cornwall – with headboards made out of driftwood. That’s what got Clare Fitzgerald interested.
Celebrities and millionaires were falling over themselves to get their lavish homes featured in her magazine, but if Clare didn’t think they were special enough, they didn’t get in. The vulgar mansions favoured by pop stars and glamour models were not even considered. Clare Fitzgerald had the kind of taste that money alone just couldn’t buy.
She sat in her cosy office in New York selecting the locations for shoots, and sending her assistants out for deli and wine and cappuccinos, and sometimes dreaming of her lost love, Peter. Peter was the only man she had ever loved. They had spent one night together, in a tiny flat on Mulberry Street in Belfast. She had only known him for nineteen hours altogether.
She was a student then and the flat was the first home she had created for herself. A tiny little cupboard of a place, barely twenty feet square, but it was better than having to share a house with other students and the legendary squalor they lived in. Even as a teenager, Clare wanted to live in a nice place. The day she moved in, she cleaned the flat from top to bottom, and decorated it with colourful throws and cushions, free postcards from an art gallery, three houseplants, two lamps donated by her mother, a small bunch of flowers and two cheap rugs. She bought a new mattress for the bed and threw the old one in a skip. She hung Indian scarves and strings of glass beads on the Victorian headboard. She felt very grown up, buying her groceries at the supermarket, remembering to buy carpet cleaner and bleach, as well as soap and shampoo and toothpaste. She wasn’t a typical student.
The flat was next door to a cafe called Muldoon’s Tea Rooms. That was the best thing about the flat. If she had a lot of work to do, she could buy coffee and a salad roll on the way home from college, and be sitting at her desk a minute later, enjoying her supper. She could smell the aroma of coffee coming through the walls as she lay in bed in the early morning, listening to the rain hammering down on the skylight above her.
Peter was pale and quietly-spoken, but very intense. She liked that. He had a fringe of black hair hanging in his eyes and he had to flick it to one side to see her. He wore a T-shirt with the name of a pop group on it: The Human League. She liked the group too. That’s how they met. Through music. At a nightclub near the docks. Clare saw him looking at her, and she smiled at him, and after a while he came over to talk to her. That’s how it began. That’s how easy it was.
She asked him if he liked the band and they both laughed because he was wearing the T-shirt, and two badges as well.
One song in particular, she loved: “Don’t You Want Me?” She blushed sometimes because she could still remember the name of the song. Even now. (It was just a simple pop tune but at the time she thought it was fabulous.) He said he knew it well, and it was very good.
They danced together when the floor began to fill up, and when the night was over, he offered to walk her home. Twenty minutes could be a long walk when you were on your own, in the dark, Clare thought. She said yes. It was cold and windy. He held her hand.
She was only nineteen. He was older than Clare at
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