Read Online Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy - Free Book Online

If it had not been for the calmer manner of James Byrne, Cathy would have feared that they were dealing with mad people who might never agree to the sale being closed. But there was something reassuring about this man. Something that made you feel safe, and yet who kept well at a distance at the same time. Neither she nor Tom had even dared to ask him where he lived or what company he had been with. They had his phone number from the strange cardboard notice, but Cathy knew that neither she nor Tom would telephone to hurry him up. They would wait until they heard his news. And in his perfectly courteous but slightly flat voice he had told them he was very sure that it would be sooner rather than later. Cathy wondered whether he had gone back to his house where his wife had prepared a lunch for him. Or would he take his family out to a hotel?
    Perhaps he had no family, and was a bachelor catering for himself. He had looked slightly too well cared-for: polished shoes, well-ironed shirt collar. It might take for ever to know such information about him. But after James Byrne had introduced them to the strange, elusive Maguires, then they would probably never see him again. She must take his address sometime, so that when Scarlet Feather was up and running she could tell him that he had been in there at the very start of it… It
would
be a success, Cathy knew this. They hadn’t spent two whole years planning it for it to end up as one of those foolish statistics about companies that failed.
    And Cathy Scarlet, businesswoman, would be able to take her mother shopping and to lunch in a smart restaurant. And soon the consuming wish to kill Hannah Mitchell would pass, and she would be able to regard her as just another ordinary and even pathetic member of the human race. Tom Feather badly wanted it to succeed for all of his reasons, and she wanted it even more badly for all of hers. Which were very complicated reasons, Cathy admitted. Some of them very hard to explain to the bank, to Geraldine and even at times to Neil. There was a general feeling that life would be much safer if Cathy Scarlet was to bring her considerable talents to work for someone else. The someone else taking the risks, paying the bills, facing any possible losses. Usually but not always Cathy was able to summon up the passion, the enthusiasm and the sheer conviction that she was totally sane and practical. Cathy at top speed was hard to resist.
    Sometimes during a wakeful night she had doubted herself. Once or twice when she looked at the opposition she wondered could she and Tom ever break into the market. At the end of long hours working in one of Dublin’s restaurants, she was sometimes tempted to think how good it would be to go home and take a long bath rather than spend a couple of hours with Tom trying to work out what the food would have cost to buy, and how they might have cooked it better, presented it more artistically and served it more speedily.
    But last night when she had seen the premises, and today when she had realised that they might possibly be within their grasp, she had no doubts at all. Cathy smiled to herself with all the confidence in the world.
    ‘Well there’s
someone
who had a nice New Year’s Eve, anyway,’ said a voice. It was Shona Burke, the very handsome young woman who was the head of Human Resources or whatever they called it at Haywards. Always very calm and assured, she was a friend of Marcella and Tom’s and had been very helpful in trying to seek out contacts for them. She was being tugged by an excited red setter, who wanted to go and find other dogs or bark at the sea – anything except have another dull conversation with a human being.

    ‘What on earth makes you think that?’ Cathy laughed.
    ‘Compared to everyone else I’ve met, you’re radiant. They are all giving up drink for ever, or they’ve been abandoned by their true loves or can’t remember where they’re meant to be going for lunch.’
    ‘They