Always and Forever by Cathy Kelly Page B

fashion fairs in Germany and London, having champagne in club class, and a man like Alex Kenny. Some women had al the luck.
    ‘Don’t tel them that it’s just down to having an eye for fashion. You make it sound too simple,’ Alex chided. ‘Tel fashion. You make it sound too simple,’ Alex chided. ‘Tel them it’s bloody hard work and there’s no guarantee you’l sel a single thing you buy.’
    Alex worked in investment banking in Dublin city, a job where it was mandatory to blow your own trumpet. Even after fourteen years with Daisy, Alex stil couldn’t understand her natural reticence. She was bril iant at what she did - what was wrong with tel ing people? And Daisy, safe in the love of the one person in the world who made her feel good about herself, laughed and said that being a fashion buyer was impossible to explain to the uninitiated. It was like wearing Prada and looking effortlessly cool, so effortlessly cool that nobody would ever guess al the hard work that went into the whole outfit. Besides, Daisy, like al people who doubted their worth, had a horror of boring other people. She felt she’d bore everyone rigid if she told them about the years of fol owing fashion from the sidelines and of how she’d tried to make clothes from odd scraps of fabric almost before she was old enough to sew. Daisy might have been blessed with an eye for fashion, but her lengthy apprenticeship had sharpened it.
    ‘It’s a female thing,’ she added. ‘Women don’t like showing off.’
    ‘It’s a Daisy thing,’ Alex replied. ‘My office is ful of women who have no qualms about tel ing people how talented they are.

    ‘Only because they’re trying to impress you,’ Daisy laughed. And it was true. At thirty-six, Alex stil had the physique of the col ege rower he’d once been. Long and lean, he looked good in his office suits, even better out of them, and his glossy wolf’s pelt hair and strong, intel igent face meant that women noticed him. One of the many, many things Daisy loved about him was that Alex didn’t notice them back.
    It never occurred to her that he might ever have to worry about men noticing her. Daisy had no il usions about her own beauty. A person didn’t grow up overhearing their mother cal them an ugly duckling, like Daisy’s mother did, without drawing their own conclusions. But she had style, fabulous shoes, and Alex, the man she’d adored since their first meeting in a dingy col ege pub a lifetime ago.
    Her beloved Alex was linked to the three questions that Daisy real y hated. First up was, ‘Are you and Alex ever going to get married, Daisy?’
    Short answer: ‘Perhaps,’ delivered with a little smile that hinted at plans for something elegant on a far-flung beach where the party could pick exotic blooms to hang behind their ears as they stood, barefoot, in the sand. A Vera Wang dress, privately

    designed rings, and a select beachside party for their smal group of friends, fol owed by a relaxed gathering in a restaurant when! they got home from the honeymoon.
    Daisy’s real answer was: ‘I’d love to but Alex’s not interested, we’ve talked about it but he’s not real y into marriage. Why fix what’s not broken,’ he says.’ She’d said it to Mary Dil on, her partner in the shop.
    That’s such a man thing to say,’ remarked Mary, who was just divorced and stil inhabiting the al -men-are-pigs zone.
    Mary had started Georgia’s Tiara ten years before, and Daisy had § come on board shortly afterwards. Together, they made a great team.
    ‘Getting married isn’t about not fixing anything. It’s a bigger commitment, that’s al ,’ Mary went on. ‘It’s Alex saying he wants the world to know he’s going to be with you for ever.
    Living with someone can’t do that. Mind you,’ she added gloomily, ‘if I’d just lived with Bart instead of being stupid enough to marry him, we mightn’t have ended up paying the lawyers so much.
    Every time I see my lawyer in his new