‘I’d like to live like that,’ said Trinity, sitting down on the couch too. Toni wished she was as laid-back as Trinity. It must be a twenty-something thing, she realised.
Cormac had once said that she was a type-A personality: always working, thinking and planning. If she was type A, then Trinity was the complete opposite. Was there a Type Z?
‘You must tell me all about yourself,’ announced Renata with a certain imperiousness.
‘It’s been wild,’ said Trinity ruefully. ‘My life’s been crazy over the past month. A week ago, I was in Boyle in Ireland.’
‘You have strange names of places in Ireland,’ remarked Renata.
‘They’re often translated from Irish,’ said Toni, determined that no hint of weirdness should attach itself to Ireland, although Lou turning up to find her real father had probably pushed the whole encounter into weird.
‘Boyle possibly comes from an old Cistercian monastery and might mean pasture.’
‘We have an Emo too,’ said Trinity.
‘It means somewhere to lie down, I think,’ translated Toni.
‘We do have weird names.’ Trinity shrugged. ‘Ireland’s fabulous, Renata. We’ve got a place called Hospital and even a Heavenstown. Irish people are eccentric and can be dotty, my aunt Dara says, but we’re a very kind people. Where else would someone like me get picked up by two lovely people like Toni and Lou just minutes after I began to hitch? They saved me because I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do next.’
Really, thought Toni, looking at Trinity with interest.
‘Have you been to Ireland?’ Trinity went on.
‘To funerals,’ said Renata.
‘Ah.’ Toni nodded. If Renata had been to any Irish funerals, then she had the gist of the place all right, but possibly a slightly warped view because funerals were such archetypes and made people behave strangely.
‘We know how to bury people,’ she admitted. ‘It can descend into a party, which some visitors find unusual, but at least we accept the whole birth, life, death cycle.’
‘In Italy, we do too,’ agreed Renata. ‘You did not know each other until a week ago?’
Toni nodded. ‘There’s a lot to tell. It’s been quite chaotic over the past week. Lou found out that our father was not her real father. And I found out that my husband had gambled away all our money.’
Trinity swivelled to look at her in astonishment.
Toni bit her lip. The words had just popped out without her even thinking. She had told nobody else apart from Lou and Cormac. The spill-your-guts thing must be catching.
Renata, however, just nodded sagely.
‘Interesting times,’ she remarked. ‘As the Chinese say.’
‘Yeah, very interesting,’ Toni agreed, feeling an almost overwhelming desire to giggle.
‘We’re the Three Musketeers,’ said Trinity, moving to sit beside Toni and patting her hand comfortingly. ‘It’s an adventure and we’re all dealing with weird stuff.’
Toni knew that if she asked Trinity what her weird stuff was, the younger woman would probably tell her, but now was not the time. She didn’t want Angelo’s wife to think that his newly found daughter’s family were total lunatics.
They were strong women.
Women.Women in Business.
A lightning bolt of an idea sparked into Toni’s head. How had she forgotten about all the women she’d mentored over the years in her daily life and now in her role in WIB. She could not be the only woman who’d been bullied by Gerry Lanigan. He must have form in this regard. She would ask her women colleagues to help. They would help her. The White Older Rich Men would not win.
‘Renata, I am in the middle of a work situation and I need to go outside to make a few phone calls.’
‘No need to go outside,’ said Renata easily. ‘There’s a seat and desk in the salon off this room. Help yourself to pens and paper.’
Toni smiled. She loved nothing more than fresh paper on which to make notes.
