Chapter 10: The Yellow Door

Nine silversmiths were looking at Cian as if he'd walked on water up the stairs.

Fintan was looking at him as if he'd like to push him back down them.

I didn't look at him at all.

I turned around and walked out of the workshop, down the back stairs and into the lane.

He didn't follow me. He was smart enough for that.

At nine that night someone knocked on Ottoline's yellow door.

It was raining, the soft endless Dublin kind that soaks you without seeming to fall.

The whippet barked once from his basket, out of duty, and lay down again.

"That'll be your Corkman," Ottoline said from the sofa, without looking up from her crossword.

"Do let him in or send him away. The draught is murder."

I opened the door.

Cian stood on the step with no umbrella and rain running off his cropped hair.

He had a bottle of wine in one hand and the look of a man who expected to have it thrown at him.

"You can say it on the step," I said, and pulled the door to behind me.

"Say what?"

"You bought them."

"I paid them."

"It's the same thing, Cian. You walked in with nine envelopes and now they're yours."

I folded my arms against the cold.

"Fintan let me pay for six years and then sent me the bill. What will yours be?"

He actually flinched.

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it? You want that company. You told me so yourself. Now nine people who work in it think you're Santa Claus."

"They were frightened," he said.

"That young lad's got a baby due in December. He told me on the stairs."

"So?"

"So I wasn't going to let him go home and tell his girlfriend there's nothing on the thirtieth because two rich families are fighting."

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