Free Solace by Belinda McKeon Page A

its design was hailed as a triumph of modern sophistication, mainly, Elizabeth added, by the publicists
Rupert had hired to secure him ample coverage in the Dublin papers. But for her own part, she said, she had stood at her window and wept as she watched the brick walls come down and, later, the
glass walls go up; watched them carry into the place a ‘ghastly’ steel spiral staircase without a banister. It was her one small comfort, she said, that some people from the Health and
Safety Authority had forced Rupert to put a banister on the staircase after all, but it was still ghastly. And the restaurant was not a place into which she would ever venture; not that she would
ever be invited. She had declared her intention to sue almost as soon as the demolition crew had gone for lunch that very first day, and she and Rupert had not shared a civil word since. It was,
she said, a source of unspeakable pain to her. But she did not know what else to do.
    When she read that detail in the transcript, about the lack of an invitation, Joanne had hesitated over whether to include it in the case notes. Whether or not Elizabeth felt welcome in the
restaurant was, after all, beside the point. The question was whether Rupert Lefroy had tricked his mother into signing away her rights to keep the mews house the way it had always been.
    ‘And he’s put all these absolutely divine paintings on the walls,’ Mona said. ‘None of your Graham Knuttels.’
    ‘Right,’ Joanne said lightly, and typed a few nonsense words on to her screen, signalling with the clatter of her keyboard that the exchange was over, and that it was time to
disappear into the wordless hum of work in which they were both expected to be immersed every morning when Eoin and Imelda arrived.
    ‘Well, rather you than me, reading that old windbag,’ Mona said, and she turned back to her screen.
    *
    Waking up that morning had not been among the more pleasant experiences in Mark’s life. It wasn’t the hangover, though certainly that was bad enough; he had agreed,
after coming home from the party on Sunday morning, with Mossy’s suggestion that they postpone the inevitable by heading to an early-house. So, the hangover was atrocious, but the hangover
was not what was causing him to cringe: it was the fact of what he had done the night before, turning up plastered on Joanne’s doorstep, falling into her house, collapsing into Christ knew
what kind of a flailing, snoring, farting mess on her couch. He had no memory of having been awake on the couch the night before, even for a couple of minutes. Joanne had said, when she had brought
him in a cup of tea that morning, that they had talked for a while before he ‘dozed off’, as she so delicately, so sweetly, put it; but when he asked her what they had talked about she
had just given him a sort of teasing shake of the head, told him that she knew all his secrets, and then gone around the room, picking up folders and stuffing them into her handbag and cursing
about the creases in her suit. And then she had left.
    He had let himself out of the house half an hour later – there had been no chance of any more sleep: the self-loathing had already been too intense – and it was only when he hit the
fresh air that he realized how bad he smelled. When he had found Mossy asleep on the couch in their place he had woken him with a dig in the ribs and told him that they were never going to another
early-house, ever again, and Mossy had grunted and sat up and produced Mark’s phone from his jeans pocket, and then he had flopped back down on the couch. Then, in the shower, there had come
the next high point – throwing up all over the little corner gang of shower gels and shampoos, and for a moment Mark had considered leaving the clean-up to Mossy, as a sort of thank-you note.
But it would probably be bad karma, he thought, and he needed all the help he could get.
    Nor could he remember anything he had said to her at