CHAPTER TEN
“It must be good for you if it hurts that much, mustn’t it?”
Aisling eased herself gingerly onto a bar stool in Larry Murphy’s on Baggot Street.
“Current exercising wisdom doesn’t recommend pain Jo said, as she picked up the bar food menu.
“I’ve never done Callanetics myself, but I’ve heard it’s brilliant for toning you up. I suppose it’s hard at first because your muscles aren’t used to the movements. What do you want to eat?”
“A cheese sandwich on brown bread and a cup of tea Aisling answered.
“That sounds good Jo replied, and proceeded to order a sandwich for Aisling and fisherman’s pie and chips for herself.
Aisling was going to say something about how that eating for two stuff was all old hat and just made you chubby as well as pregnant, but she thought better of it.
“You look good, anyway, even if your muscles are in agony Jo commented, taking in Aisling’s definitely less bulky shape.
In a long navy skirt and slim-fitting pink silk blouse, Aisling was looking better than she had for years, the long-hidden fine bone structure beginning to show on her face.
After years of wearing only the barest hint of makeup, she had started putting foundation, eyeliner and mascara on in the mornings as well as the usual eyeshadow and lipstick.
Seeing Vivienne so smartly dressed and perfectly made-up every day made Aisling realise that the barefaced look she’d worn for trips to the supermarket wasn’t suitable for the
Her indigo-blue eyes were fringed by darkened lashes, a careful smudge of eyeliner highlighting what had always been her best feature. The coral lipstick she’d always favoured had been thrown in the bin by a
disgusted Fiona who’d produced a pinkish-mauve one instead and insisted on painting it on with a brush.
“Fiona, I’ll never get to work in the morning if I have to use a brush to put my lipstick on protested Aisling during the mini make-up session on Wednesday night.
“You don’t have to paint it, but it does stay on longer that way,” Fiona said firmly, as she rooted through Aisling’s top drawer.
“I can’t believe you have silver eyeliner, Ash!”
“Jo and I bought loads of it in a discount shop when we were going through our Abba phase,” Aisling attempted to explain.
“It was supposed to make your eyes look bigger if you put it on the inside lower rim …”
“Give me strength! You’d look like a reject from a Seventies Top of the Pops Special if you wore that,” said Fiona.
“Why are you keeping it?”
“I can’t bear to throw anything out.”
Fiona held up a bottle of congealed bronze nail polish.
“Darling, I think this has to go. In fact, let me throw all of this out.” She poked around in the drawer with flawless oyster coloured nails, dislodging two Mary Quant eyeshadows in what looked suspiciously like glittering purple and sky blue.
“Very Charlie’s Angels, but not so good for anyone over seventeen, despite what they’ve been wearing on the catwalk lately. Dump this junk, Aisling, and I’ll bring over some decent stuff for you. I do tend to overspend at the cosmetics counter and you may as well get some use out of my binges.”
Aisling laughed.
“Tend to overspend.” she said.
“Famous last words, Mrs. Finucane!”
She was glad of Fiona’s expert advice though. Her own attempts to look made-up hadn’t been precisely successful.
Pumping the brush in and out of her elderly mascara tube had left her with lashes like tarantula legs. With the right materials, however what she reckoned was around thirty pounds’ worth of Fiona’s expensive Lancome stuff she was getting much better at applying subtle amounts of cosmetics and with excellent results.
“Fiona gave me this self-tanning stuff and I put some on last night.” Aisling revealed, as she poured a few drops of milk into her tea.
“It really does perk your complexion up.”
“Whatever it is, you look great,” complimented Jo.
“Maybe you should market the Dump Your Husband Diet.”
Aisling giggled into her tea. You could never stay maudlin for long around the irrepressible Jo.
“I think it’s too much of a crash diet Aisling pointed out. A bit too shocking to the system.”
“I’m on the Seafood Diet.” announced Jo, taking a bite out of a fat-glistening chip. “I see food and I eat it.”
She ate another chip, put her head to one side and stared at her friend with narrowed eyes.
“Your hair she announced after a moment.
“You should do something with your hair.”
“Like what?” asked Aisling selfconsciously, smoothing back the escaping tendrils from her pony tail. Her wavy curtain of light brown hair reached to about four inches below her shoulders and was too long and unruly to leave it loose when she typed. She never coloured it-and rarely used the hair dryer but Aisling knew her hair would have been nicer in something more elegant than a pony tail.
“James, my hairdresser, could do wonders with your hair Jo said enthusiastically.
“You need a little lift, a better shape or something. But it needs to be cut.”
“I’ve had it this length for years Aisling said defensively.
“It’s handy. I can tie it back.”
Ash, you need something career-womanish now, not handy.
Anyway, tying it back is the only thing you can really do with it at that length. It would take years off you if you cut it. You don’t need to do anything radical, you know.”
Aisling still wasn’t convinced.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Softer, shorter, more feathery.” Jo was getting into her stride
“With highlights.”
“I’m a bit old for highlights said Aisling morosely, remembering the Greek summer when she’d first met Michael. Her hair was longer then, longer and bleached gold in the sun. She was never going to look like
that again. “Do you want some more tea?” asked Jo.
“I’m so thirsty, I just have to have another pot. I’m off coffee for the baby’s sake.”
“No thanks.” Aisling could feel the tears coming. Damn, she’d been doing so well. She hadn’t cried since Wednesday when she’d opened her bedside drawer and found the snapshot of the family outside Kilkenny Castle two summers
Michael had been shading his eyes from the sun and an eager eight-year-old Phillip had moved away to talk to the friendly American woman who’d offered to take the picture for them. They’d looked such a family then, a unit. Staring at her own smiling round face as she held Michael’s hand and tried to hold onto Paul’s T-shirt, Aisling wondered if they really had been a happy family at all. Or if she had believed in the perfect family, while Michael had been planning his affair?
She’d cried. Bawled her eyes out in fact, and woke up with red, puffy eyes which didn’t go terribly well with the red blouse she’d carefully ironed the night before.
“I haven’t cried since Wednesday,” she said wetly, searching in her handbag for a tissue.
“Sometimes I feel so strong and determined to succeed, and sometimes I just cry.”
That’s allowed Jo sighed.
“I feel like sobbing my eyes out half the time, in between those moments when I dream of strangling Richard with his camera strap.”
“I’m sorry sniffled Aisling.
“I didn’t mean to whinge. Has Richard not got in touch with you yet?”
“Yes and no answered Jo flatly.
“Yes, he got in touch and no, I won’t be seeing him again. Ever. Unless I’m called up to identify him on a slab in the morgue, that is. A girl can dream.”
Shocked out of her tears, Aisling stared anxiously at her friend. Had pregnancy scrambled her mind?
“Richard is a little shit announced Jo after a moment.
“Correction, he’s a big shit. Another pot of tea, please.”
“He did come and see me she explained to Aisling.
“Bearing gifts and begging forgiveness. Or so I thought. That big
shit let me take him to bed. He let me think everything was wonderful, fine, hunky dory until I found out that he’s still going to London. With Sascha, the rocket scientist, I have no doubt,” she
“I have my suspicions about that bitch and my ex-beloved.”
“The pig!” Aisling was outraged.
“Oh I did better than “pig”, I can tell you that said Jo with satisfaction. That bastard had better keep away from me for the rest of his life or he’ll be getting dentures fitted!”
“Jo, you’re priceless! Tell me, what really happened?”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Do you know, my life is turning into one of those mini-series things from the States.
You know the sort of thing She loved him, but he had a deep, dark secret that rocked her to the very core of her being in a deeper voice than I can do, of course. I quite fancy Jaclyn Smyth in my part or should that be Jane Seymour? It needs one of those dark, sultry and depressed heroines anyway. I can’t imagine who should play scumbag himself.”
Jo took the tea from the barman.
“It’s nearly half one,” she said.
“When do you have to be back?”
Two. But it’ll only take me five minutes from here.”
“OK. Here goes. The story of my life: part twenty-six.”
Aisling only made it back to the office in time by the skin of her teeth. She’d thought things were bad for her. Poor, poor Jo. Imagine having the father of your baby dump you like a Christmas kitten that had grown bigger and less chocolateboxcute in January? Then, to add insult to injury, imagine finding out that he’d done it all before, that he’d already dumped another unwanted Christmas cat plus an unborn kitten. What a complete asshole.
“Thank God you’re back,” said Elizabeth gratefully when Aisling walked into their tiny top-floor office.
“I feel awful. I’ve just got to go home and lie down or I swear I’ll pass out!”
Of course you’ve got to go Aisling said automatically.
“Are you able to drive? Should I ring Pete and get him to collect
YOU?” Pete was Elizabeth’s husband, an accountant who sounded as though he cherished the ground she walked on, “No, I’ll be fine. It’s only to Stoneybatter. I’m just sorry for you, Aisling.” Elizabeth raised apologetic brown eyes to Aisling’s.
“I think I’m going to have to take my maternity leave from today. I don’t know if I could manage another week. I know there’s still loads I haven’t shown you …”
“Don’t be silly chided Aisling, trying not to think of what it would be like to have the horrible Leo all to herself from this moment on.
“You need to get home and look after yourself.
Richardson, Reid and Finucane will keep going even if I do forget to bring Leo his morning coffee and lose half his letters!
Don’t worry.”
By the time she’d walked Elizabeth slowly to her red Panda parked on Fitzwilliam Square and made sure that she was in a fit state to drive home, Aisling’s mind was in overdrive.
Not only was she terrified of losing vital documents on the bloody Apple, but she didn’t know if she’d be able to cope with Leo’s abrupt and demanding requests.
“Where’s the bloody Reilly file?” he’d screamed only that morning, forgetting that he hadn’t actually asked for it.
That wasn’t even mentioning his ability to make her stomach turn inside out when he got her alone in either office and asked her how she was getting on.
“Any problems?” he’d breathed the day before when she’d brought him his mid-afternoon coffee. (“Black and no sugar.
I’m sweet enough!”) “Fine, Leo.” she’d said breezily.
“Elizabeth is being great and I hope I make as good a secretary when she’s gone.”
Secretary, you big sleazeball, she thought to herself. Not a piece of meat in a skirt.
It did occur to her that she’d envied Jo for her ability to make men stare at her, dumbstruck by her sexy, totally natural charm. But there was a big difference between ogling and admiring. If any man ever dared to give Jo the same sort of insolent and undressing stare that Leo Murphy gave her, Jo would have cut him down to size in a moment.
No, Leo didn’t look he slavered and made her feel more uncomfortable than she’d ever have imagined possible. But what could she do?
This was the only job she was likely to get. She couldn’t leave just because of Leo. Women with two kids, an absent husband and no skills, bar the ability to make a perfect cheese souffle, couldn’t afford to be picky job wise She’d have to get used to Leo, his slimy looks, little grins and vaguely suggestive comments.
He was in subdued form all afternoon.
He barely registered the fact that Elizabeth had decided to go on maternity leave early, muttering “Hmm’ indifferently when Aisling told him. So much for loyalty.
“Get me the Wilkinson files he said finally. There must be at least three of them. And get Tom Wilkinson on the phone afterwards. By the way, I won’t be in on Monday, so cancel my appointments and leave my diary free on Tuesday afternoon.
That’s all.”
He wasn’t even looking at her, Aisling realised delightedly.
Yahoo. She hurried down to the file room with a light heart. I Maybe she’d been imagining him as a big bad wolf when he was just a bored boss who amused himself between cases by eyeing up the office temps.
When she went back into Leo’s office with the bulky Wilkinson files, he was on the phone. Obviously a private call, since he made her or Elizabeth call everyone for him, even his dentist.
“Don’t give me that.”
His strong fingers, covered with coarse black hair, played fiercely with one of the red office pencils, twisting it around and around rapidly, nearly breaking it. Snap! It broke.
Aisling dropped the files on his desk and almost ran to the door. If he was ringing Mrs. Murphy, God help her. For a brief moment, Aisling relished the fact that she didn’t have to endure any more of those cross phone calls from a husband irritated by work and determined to take it out on someone.
Safe in her office again, Aisling wished she could lock the door for
the rest of the afternoon. She decided to start working on the letters Elizabeth had been doing before lunch and prayed that he wouldn’t want her again. No such luck.
“Aisling, come down here.”
His voice on the intercom at a quarter to four made her heart sink. She’d been kept busy getting Elizabeth’s unfinished work in order and cancelling Leo’s appointments for Monday.
He hadn’t even told her where he was going to be so she’d tried to sound both firm and mysterious on the phone.
“Mr. Murphy has been called away on urgent business and won’t be able to keep your appointment she’d said several times in her best posh
Aisling didn’t know why, but she firmly suspected that she was lying for Leo. Instinct told her that his sudden change of plans had nothing to do with a crucial conveyancing case.
Leo’s face was still like thunder.
“Have you finished my dictation?” he snapped.
“Er, yes. Well, nearly.”
“How nearly?” he asked sarcastically. Aisling could feel herself getting red in the face and wished she was anywhere except in this office right now. Cleaning out the garden shed in the company of several spiders and a few wasps would be nice by comparison.
“I’ve done six letters and I’ve got two left,” she stammered;
“Is that all?” Leo’s heavy eyebrows were raised at least an inch as he stared contemptuously at her.
Aisling thought that doing six letters in an hour and a half as well as cancelling loads of appointments was pretty good for a novice. But she kept her mouth shut. ,;
“You’re not going to be much use to me if you can’t keep;’.
up he said nastily.
“I’m sorry, Leo. I’ll get faster, honestly.” She was begging and she knew it. She couldn’t afford to lose this job. Please don’t let him sack me, she prayed.
“Mmm. I hope so. Can you do shorthand? I’ve a letter to go, out this evening.”
“Yes.” She’d have said yes if he’d asked could she parachute out the top window. Shorthand had never been a requirement in the motor department, but dealing with lengthy phone calls from irate customers had taught her how to scribble at high speed.
This particular skill had not deserted her and after two attempts to decipher what turned out to be ‘contemporaneous’ which Aisling would have dearly loved to have changed to the more sensible and more suitable ‘at the same time’ she finished Leo’s letter in fifteen minutes.
He was longwinded, but maybe that was simply his legal training. If he could say something in ten words instead of two, Leo went for the ten words every time. Nobody in Leo’s world just did anything they gave it due consideration, previous problems notwithstanding, deliberated at length and finally reached conclusions, without prejudice, of course.
Once the letter was signed and in the post, Leo was a different man, charming, chatty. All glinting, admiring eyes.
After sprinting noisily up the stairs, he casually dropped a few files onto Aisling’s desk and settled himself comfortably against its side.
“So, what have you planned for the weekend?” he asked cosily, as though he hadn’t been bawling her out just half an hour previously. Aisling smiled nervously as she opened another document on her computer just to give her something to do other than look at him.
Had he been snorting some sort of recreational pharmaceutical down in his office? Or was his type of two-faced ness just part and parcel of office life? She was damned if she knew.
“Nothing much,” she said cheerily, hoping the conversation would stop there.
“You’ve two boys, haven’t you?” Leo loosened his red spotted tie and opened the top button of his cream shirt.
“Yes,” she said, surprised that he knew.
“So you’re rushing home to them, right?”
Jesus, she could see where this conversation was going. Leo was onto the second shirt button.
“Yes, they get so upset when I don’t get home on time,” she lied with as much sincerity as she could muster, thinking of the previous evening when Phillip and Paul had been so glued to a Power Rangers video in Fiona’s that they hadn’t wanted to come home at all.
“Pity.” Leo got up abruptly.
“We must have a drink some evening. I can’t have a new member of staff without bringing her out for a drink, now can I?” He smiled, baring a set of wolfish canines. She kept typing, wishing she could pull on her cinnamon coloured cotton cardigan and do up all the buttons. The pale pink silk blouse she’d had for years had been washed to that comfortable softness she loved but, precisely because it I’ had been washed to death, it was a bit on the see-through side.
She had that uncomfortable feeling that her white bra was visible through the pink silk. Guess who’d be looking.
She concentrated fiercely on her typing. Her fingers were clumsy.
“Gotta go,” he said after what seemed like an eternity.
“Be good.”
“Bye, Leo.” She smiled at him as he left. Please let him be gone for good. Please.
As she walked out the front door, Aisling felt like those military cadets she’d seen in movies, the ones who threw their caps into the sky with delight once they’d graduated despite the despotic sergeant who’d made their lives a misery. The week was over Finally. Thank you God! Suddenly fearful that Leo was lurking near the front door waiting to drag her off for a drink somewhere, she hurried to her car.
She was dog-tired, had a ladder creeping up her tights, ?
knew she had to stop and get milk, and had promised the boys she’d pick up a video for them. But she didn’t care. It was Friday. She could crash out in front of the TV because the week was over.
Aisling felt tired but good as she sat in her car on More-hampton Road. Five days ago, she’d been an outsider, the “( housewife masquerading
as a career woman. Now she was sone of them, bunions, paper cuts and all. The week had been hell but she’d got through it.
She picked up a bottle of wine for herself in Superquinn and crisps for the boys along with two lit res of milk. Hell, she needed a treat. In an ideal world, they’d never eat crisps, she wouldn’t drink wine and cellulite would only affect supermodels.
But it wasn’t an ideal world. If the boys were happy watching TV and stuffing their faces with crisps while she crashed out with a book and a bottle of 4.99 plonk from somewhere unpronounceable in Spain, then the evening would be going pretty well.
Phillip and Paul were like two athletes on performance enhancing drugs on Saturday morning.
“You’re only going for one night,” exclaimed Aisling, taking Paul’s swimming togs and three squashed-up Tshirts out of his bag.
“I might need them.” He tried to stuff it all back in along with his Independence Day alien spaceship and the dog-eared Paddington book he’d loved since he was four.
“You won’t, darling,” Aisling said again.
“Let me do it. Daddy will forget to pack all this stuff back again tomorrow morning and you’ll go mad if you leave anything behind.”
“I can go back and get it the next day,” Paul pointed out.
“I suppose you can.”
Aisling wondered how Ms Carroll would cope with two energetic ten-year-olds spreading muck through pale carpets and squabbling over the remote control.
For a few gleeful minutes, she thought how thoroughly enjoyable it would be to sabotage the trip. She could almost hear herself telling the boys that Daddy would want them to make themselves at home in his new house, that they should behave exactly the way they did here.
“Daddy would be upset if he thought you weren’t having fun, boys, and I’m sure Jennifer wouldn’t mind you bringing your soccer ball, your Oasis tapes and your Power Rangers videos.”
Stop it, she warned herself. The only damage you’d do would be to the twins. Don’t turn into one of those bitter women who use the children as ammunition.
“Behave yourselves, won’t you?” she said as she packed their toothbrushes and the peppermint toothpaste they liked into a small sponge bag
“Yeah,” muttered Paul from the depths of the bottom of the wardrobe. He was rooting around among the books, toys and plastic cars he insisted on keeping.
“I’ll miss you, you know she said quietly. He didn’t hear.
It was five past one when she drove up to the house after picking the boys up from their soccer match. Michael had parked his car on the road, not in the driveway. It was at once both frighteningly familiar and terribly strange to see the silver gleaming Saab outside the house
“Dad’s home!” yelled the twins in unison from the back
Aisling felt a prickle behind her eyes at the sight of the car, a painful memory of those days when it had belonged there.
He climbed out of the driver’s side when she drove in, tall and rangy in chinos and a cream and blue striped casual shirt she didn’t recognise.
“Paul, Phillip, come here!” he yelled unnecessarily as the boys launched themselves at him.
“Dad, Dad, we missed you!”
“We won at soccer!”
“I got a medal in judo in summer camp!”
Michael picked Paul up and swung him around rapidly, releasing him suddenly into a giggling heap on the drive before grabbing Phillip in the same way.
They tussled for a few moments and then Michael picked up the soccer ball Phillip had dropped and ran onto the grass with it.
Whooping with joy at playing with Dad again, they followed him happily, tackling clumsily, tripping up and shouting at each other.
Aisling left them to it. They didn’t need her. It wasn’t right to
think of the boys as her private property, but that’s what she’d been doing. She had to face the fact that they didn’t belong to either her or Michael. They were their children, not their possessions.
She walked into the kitchen, flicked on the kettle automatically and opened the washing-machine door.
Might as well get the clothes dry.
“How are you?”
Michael leaned against the jamb of the kitchen door, hands in his pockets, a relaxed look on his dark face. He stared at her, dark eyes blank. Blast him! Here she was hyped up and nervous about seeing him for the first time since that horrible Friday and he was looking at her as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The shirt was definitely new. Obviously expensive. He hadn’t been sitting home trawling through his wardrobe looking for suitable things to wear. He’d been shopping with Bitch.
“Fine,” she answered curtly.
“You’re looking well, anyway. Have you lost some weight?” , She allowed herself to smile at him. “I don’t know. I’ve just been so busy. Maybe I have.”
“It suits you.”
His voice was admiring. What was he up to? Flattery wasn’t going to get him anywhere. “I hope you’ve figured out what to tell the boys,” she said,!
determined to burst his bubble. “I have.” A wary look appeared on his face. “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with everything. I didn’t want it to work out this way, you must understand that, Aisling.”
Oh God, she was going to cry. She’d been fine until he started this.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Michael,” she said, turning away and bending down to drag the washing out of the machine.
“Make sure nobody gives them Coke before they go to bed, all right?” She couldn’t bring herself to say Jennifer.
“When will you bring them back?”
“Is six OK?” he asked.
Fine. “She didn’t turn around, she couldn’t. She just wished he’d go out to the car and let her say goodbye to the boys on her own.
“We have to talk sometime, Aisling.”
“I know, I know. Just not now.”
“See you tomorrow then. I’ll leave my phone number on the pad in case you need to contact me.”
She heard him searching through the jam jar where she kept odds and ends, looking for a pen that worked.
“I’ll wait outside, Aisling. Bye.”
She slammed the door of the washing machine viciously and straightened up. The boys waved at her from the back seat, not a shred of sadness on their happy, laughing faces. She waved just as happily, a grin super glued onto her face.
When they were gone, she felt her entire body sag miserably.
Whatever would she do until Sunday at six?
“Have dinner with us,” begged Fiona on the phone five minutes later.
“I’d love to,” said Aisling tearfully, glad that Fiona hadn’t dropped over to witness her sobbing into a tea towel. She couldn’t imagine being even vaguely hungry and the last time she’d had dinner with the Finucanes, Michael had been by her side. But anything was better than an evening on her own, an evening of remembering.
Dinner turned out to be Fiona’s favourite menu, the simplest and quickest thing she could cook or reheat.
Smoked salmon and brown bread “No cooking,” she said triumphantly followed by chicken Kiev straight from Marks and Spencer’s with a few wilting bits of broccoli and baked potatoes cooked by herself.
That was lovely, darling,” Pat told his wife afterwards, before sinking into an armchair, exhausted after an energetic round of golf.
The two women sat at the dining-room table picking at the chocolate mousse which had turned out miles lumpier than it had looked on the packet.
“I wish you’d teach me how to cook.” Fiona lit up a cigarette and
inhaled deeply. “You can cook, Fee,” Aisling pointed out.
“You know you can follow a recipe book as well as anyone else can, you just get bored in the middle and forget about it all until it’s too late.
Anyway, there’s just no point killing yourself cooking gourmet dinners to the exclusion of all else. I can vouch for that,” she added somewhat bitterly.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to moan.”
“You’re allowed,” the other woman answered.
“Shirley Conran said something about life being too short to stuff a mushroom. I wish I’d realised that long ago,” Aisling sighed.
“She also said that she’d prefer to lie on a bed than hoover under it laughed Fiona.
“I like that one!”
After this last week, I’m a convert to that way of thinking Aisling said with a smile.
“Life is certainly too short to stuff mushrooms when you’re working and looking after two kids. I finally tidied up the twins’ room this afternoon and you’d swear it hadn’t been done for a month. I’ve no idea how they can make the place that messy in such a short length of time.”
They chatted, drank coffee and retired to Fiona’s Scandinavian white kitchen to stow the dinner dishes in the dishwasher.
By eleven, Pat was snoring in front of the TV and Aisling said her goodbyes.
Thanks, Fee.” she said sincerely.
“I’m not sure I could have faced an evening of unadulterated aloneness.”
“Well, you got an evening of unadulterated excitement!”
laughed Fiona.
“Plus an haute cuisine microwave-inthreeminutes dinner and a sleeping host. What more could you ask for?”
That night Aisling slept fitfully. She awoke in a cold sweat at five past seven and knew she’d never get back to sleep.
Punching the pillows didn’t help.
Tomorrow, she’d doubtless sleep through the alarm. Today, when she could stay in bed for hours, she was wide awake.
Plenty of time to clean, polish and hoover meant that the house was spotless when the doorbell rang a little after six that evening. You could have licked your dinner off the floor, Aisling decided, if you
felt that way inclined, that was. She opened the door gratefully and the boys exploded into the house, dragging their luggage after them like dead bodies.
Michael hadn’t come in, he just waved at her from the car.
“Darlings, I missed you so much,” she said tearfully, hugging them both tightly.
Paul shrugged her off and headed for the kitchen. At least Phillip gave her another hug before he followed his twin.
“How did you get on?” she asked as brightly as she could.
Please say she was a hideous old cow and the house was like a pit, she prayed unfairly.
“Jennifer is really nice,” announced Paul with all the tact of a traffic warden.
“She’s got this great car, a Nissan 100X Tbar.” he added.
“Black. And she’s brilliant at Quasar.”
Aisling felt about two feet tall. Two feet tall and stupid.
And ugly. Not content with taking her husband, this bloody woman had managed to charm her boys as well. What a pity she hadn’t taught them to hate the cowl “She can’t cook, Mum,” said Phillip loyally.
“Yeah, we’re hungry.” Paul threw open the fridge door and peered inside anxiously.
Bread and water for you, Aisling wanted to say angrily, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t their fault.
“I’ll make you something,” she said. Tell me …” she hesitated, ‘what was she like? What’s the house like?”
The How to Split Up Nicely books probably didn’t recommend pumping your ten-year-old sons for information on their father’s new girlfriend but she just had to find out something.
“She’s got this great garage door that opens when you press this thing in the car,” Paul said enthusiastically.
Yeah, it’s called somebody else’s husband, thought Aisling sourly.
“But is the house nice?”
“It’s OK. She’s got a big telly.”
Great. What do you expect from kids who wouldn’t notice dry rot if they saw it. Aisling wanted hard facts, modernist or romantic, all
muslin curtains and brass headboards or Philippe Starck lemon juicers and icy white sofas?
“She’s got a conservatory volunteered Phillip.
“And lights in the back garden.”
For candlelit dinner parties, no doubt. Aisling ripped the plastic off a frozen pizza and jammed it under the grill.
“You can’t have chips. Will you eat baked beans?”
“Yeah,” they chorused.
God, the food must have been awful. Beans were not high on the dinner excitement-ometer. Aisling cursed the rusty tin opener for the millionth time and reminded herself to get a new one. She slopped the entire can into a saucepan and stirred it angrily with a wooden spoon. She should have shares in Heinz by now.
“How’s Daddy?”
“He brought us to McDonald’s and got us a new video. I said I missed him, but he won’t come home.” Phillip carefully poured orange juice into a glass and drank the contents in one gulp.
Aisling’s spoon stopped stirring.
“What did you ask him?”
“I said we wanted him back and he said you and he had rowed and decided to be away from each other for a time,” Phillip said quickly, obviously repeating what he’d been told verbatim.
“He said you didn’t love each other any more.”
He looked up at her, big dark eyes welling up with tears. Aisling cursed Michael and his truthfulness. How the hell did he expect two ten-year-olds to understand what she couldn’t?
Beans forgotten, she pulled Phillip to her and held him tightly. His green sweatshirt smelled of Michael’s aftershave and another scent she couldn’t identify. Something heavy and cloying. Her perfume.
“Why can’t he come home, Mum?” Phillip asked.
There was no answer to that one.
“Daddy needs to be away for a while. Not away from you boys,” she added hastily. Away from me. Mums and dads who’ve been married a long
time sometimes need to have a break, you know. Lots of people do it. It can be good for everyone.” She faltered.
“People get very bored stuck together for ever. You wouldn’t want to be friends with just Greg and no one else, now would you?”
“No.” Paul had stopped poking around in the fridge and was looking mutinous.
“But that’s different!”
“Why?”
“We’re boys. Boys don’t stay with boys. They’re just friends.
Not like girls and boys.”
Oh well, thought Aisling. She wondered how to explain that boys sometimes ended up with boys, and girls with girls.
But that particular version of the birds and the bees would have to wait until they’d got a grasp on the whole concept of mummies and daddies breaking up.
“It’s not that simple, boys,” she said.
Phillip gave her a hard, inquisitive stare so like Michael’s that she felt her jaw drop.
“Why not?”
Ask your bloody father, she wanted to yell. The beans began to bubble.
“Get plates, Phillip.” she commanded in a voice that left no room for arguments.
“Paul, lay the table.”
For once, they just did what they were told. She waited until they’d washed their hands and were sitting quietly at the table, cutlery at the ready, before she said anything.
“Boys, it’s not easy for any of us. But your dad and I have split up for a while. It’s very difficult for me, I miss Dad too.
But he’s gone for a while and we’re just going to have to live with that. It’s not your fault. He loves you both just as much as ever. So do I.” she added.
This is a grown-up thing and we’ve got to get on with life.
I don’t want you getting miserable thinking he’s never coming back or that he doesn’t want to see you. Of course he does.
That’s why he brought you to see Jennifer today.” Even saying her name hurt.
“For the moment, you’ve got two homes. Isn’t that great?”
she added brightly. “Yeah,” said Paul, ‘and three cars. I want Jennifer to pick me up from camp in her car.”
“Great idea said Aisling from behind gritted teeth. Little turncoat.
“Here’s your beans.”
She slopped a puddle of beans onto his plate and wondered was it too late to stick her head in the oven. The prospect of Leo Murphy, two irritable children and a glamorous rival turning up with a size eight bum and a sports car to pick up the kids was just too much for one
woman to bear.