A Posy of Promises

by Sharon Dempsey

  Ava hadn’t asked how he died. It was bad enough to know that such grief existed without sharing in the details. She sighed as she cleared up for the day then decided to send Joseph a text.

  Ava: Hey, how are you? Long-time no hear.

  Joseph: Cool. Working hard.

  Ava: How’s my damp squib emoji coming on?

  Joseph: In production as I text. Should be coming to an iPhone near you, any day now.

  Ava: So, still living like an American?

  Joseph: What you mean working twelve-hour days, eating clean and going for a run at lunchtime? Yeah. Still living like an American.

  Ava: I won’t recognise you when you come home next. You’ll be all fresh faced, glossed and groomed.

  Joseph: Nah, I still look like an Irish reject. I swear to God my accent gets stronger the longer I’m here. I think I do it unconsciously to wind the Yanks up, you know?

  Ava: Does it work?

  Joseph: Nope. I think they like it. How’s Maggie doing? My mum said she’s not been too well.

  Ava: Not bad. The stroke has affected her down one side but she still manages to give out orders and boss me around.

  Joseph: God, do you remember the time she nearly caught us drinking cider? I thought she’d skin me alive. Her precious Ava could do no wrong. I would’ve definitely got the blame.

  Ava: Thank God she bought your story that it was a new type of soda stream. What was it you called it?

  Joseph: Apple Jumping Jack. I should have gone into marketing.

  Ava: Got to run – a customer’s popped in. Talk soon.

  Hazel would be back shortly to add up the day’s takings and lock up for the night. Since she had come back from Sorrento, she had been acting kind of strange.

  At times, Ava wondered could Hazel have found out about her and Ben, but she felt sure Hazel would have had it out with her rather than sulk over the matter. Besides, Ben had sworn that she wouldn’t hear anything from him or Daniel, who’s secrecy had been secured with the threat of having his stash of cannabis, which was hidden under his floorboards, uncovered.

  The over doorbell jangled as Hazel came dashing in, her hair messed up and her face without a scrap of make-up. Ava could never remember seeing Hazel without her usual covering of foundation, bronzed cheekbones, peachy-coloured lips and lashes of mascara. Something was definitely not right. She bustled about the shop as if she had a purpose but seemed to be doing nothing more than tweaking displays and moving the squat jars of delicious-smelling candles around without even taking her coat off.

  ‘Right you, sit down and tell me what’s up,’ Ava instructed, locking the door and turning the sign to closed.

  Hazel didn’t even try to deny there was a problem. Her shoulders quivered and she suddenly filled up, her eyes looking tired and piggy small without their usual cosmetic enhancement.

  ‘Oh, Ava. I don’t know what to do.’ She took off her expensive camel-coloured mohair coat and draped it over the shop counter, not caring that it could be stained by the sodden block of oasis or the ends of greenery still waiting to be cleared away.

  She sat down on the seat behind the till and began crying nosily. She honked her nose into a tissue as Ava put her arm around her.

  ‘What’s wrong? Please tell me. If it’s Ben then I’ll understand if you want me to go, but just hear me out first.’

  ‘Ben? What’s it to do with our Ben? No. Robert. My Robert has only gone and… and...’ She broke off into another sobbing fit.

  ‘What’s Robert done? Sure, haven’t the two of you just come back from a second honeymoon in Sorrento? You were full of the joys of spring.’

  ‘You see that’s what he would like me to think too. Oh, typical tactic, spoil the little wife with presents and compliments to stop her being suspicious, but I’m onto him,’ she said, her eyes gleaming with sadness and hurt and a definite edge of bitterness.

  ‘And what’s more he waited ‘til I had hit my time before he went and did it. He knew I was worried and feeling sensitive about it, when all along he had been thinking that it was time for him to find a replacement,’ she howled.

  ‘Hazel you aren’t making any sense. What time have you hit and what has your Robert done?’ Ava asked, wondering where on earth this was going.

  Hazel blew her nose again and tried to steady herself. ‘I’ve reached that time in a woman’s life when it is starting to pass.’

  Ava looked at Hazel’s blotchy red face. ‘I might sound a bit dense here, but what the hell are you on about?’

  ‘I’m starting to dry up. I’m past it. I’m going through the menopause,’ she whispered as if in mortal fear of causing offence to delicate ears.

  ‘But that isn’t the end of the world. Sure, can’t you get HRT off the doctor?’ asked Ava, trying to sound sympathetic.

  ‘That would be all well and good except my husband knows that I’m reaching the Helen Mirren stage of life, and instead of being supportive, he’s looked elsewhere to trade up. He’s probably with some Jennifer Lawrence or Margot Robbie lookalike right now,’ she wailed.

  Ava handed her another tissue and let her continue.

  ‘You see, I was the fool who confided in him. Told him I was losing my monthlies, I had put on a bit of weight and getting the hot flushes, so I was. I could see myself going like my poor mother who lost her figure overnight when she went through the change. Says he, I’ll take you on a wee holiday to lift your spirits like and you’ll feel like a new woman, when all along it was him that felt like a new bloody woman, and then he only went and took one back to my marital bed!’

  ‘No! Robert would never do that. He loves the bones of you, Hazel,’ said Ava, stunned to think that the rotund Robert could pull anything let alone would be stupid enough to try to cheat on the glamorous and attractive Hazel.

  ‘You would think that but I have proof!’ She looked up with a crazed look in her wet eyes. ‘I found a cheap-looking necklace in my bed. Explain that to me, ha! Takes me on a romantic holiday to ease his conscience and while I’m working away all the hours of the day here, he has had some wee bit of fluff in my bed.’ She wailed like a banshee on the brink of midnight, throwing her manicured hands up into the air in anger.

  ‘To think I put clean sheets on the bed for some wee harlot to have her way with my husband on my lovely John Rocha cotton percale sheets.’

  Ava blinked rapidly in horror as she suddenly remembered how Niamh had complained that Ava had lost her necklace, lent as part of the operation recovery makeover. She shuddered as she realised it must have been Hazel’s bed she had slept in with Ben.

  Shit, shit, shit. She would have to come clean to save her friend from thinking her husband had done the dirty on her, but her heart lurched at the thought of confessing to her fling with Ben.

  ‘Now, Hazel, be realistic. There is bound to be a reasonable explanation. You shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions. Marriage is about trust, after all. Don’t tell me you are going to doubt the man who worships the ground you walk on,’ said Ava, trying to keep her voice calm while wracking her brain to come up with an explanation that wouldn’t involve her having wild, messy, dirty sex with Hazel’s son, in Hazel’s two hundred thread count Egyptian sheets.

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t say anything to Robert yet. Let’s think about this and get all the angles covered before you accuse him of something he hasn’t done,’ reasoned Ava, ‘and book yourself an appointment with the doctor. No point going through the change without finding out if you can take something to help with all the symptoms. I promise you that there is no way that Robert has slept with someone else. Trust me.’

  Ava was racked with guilt. How could she have let this happen? It was practically divine retribution — she had to watch her dear friend break her heart, devastated to think that her husband was having an affair.

  Ava was the guilty party. She didn’t know which would be worse for Hazel, thinking that Robert had strayed or that her precious son had slept with the hired help. Oh Go
d, why did she let this stupid mess happen, and how was she going to resolve it?

  10

  Now that Ava knew Scarlett had bought Mount Pleasant Square for her and her gran, she was more determined than ever to live in it. She spent every spare minute there, sanding down wood panelling and scrubbing windows. It consumed her. Niamh and Cal knew she had inherited an old house, but they didn’t know anything beyond that. Ava wasn’t ready to tell them that Scarlett had been the mysterious benefactor.

  Ava had followed Amanda’s advice to take out a smallish mortgage on the property to cover the necessary work to make it habitable. The mortgage had come through, and she had instructed the builder, Phil, to start with the renovations. So far, he had gutted out the kitchen and the main bathroom, replaced some missing roof tiles and plastered some of the worst of the walls. Already it felt different, more like a home than the run-down house it was. Money was tight but she was determined to make it habitable.

  Meeting Ben at Mount Pleasant Square had been the safest way of ensuring that no one saw them together. Belfast was a small town in many respects, and Ava didn’t want Hazel to hear about their liaison from anyone but herself. But before she went ahead and told all, she needed to clarify the story with Ben or try to at least find a good cover.

  There had to be a way of explaining how the necklace had ended up in Hazel’s bed without giving away the whole truth. If they could make her see reason, that Robert had not cheated on her, then it would be worth the risk of their exposure but having witnessed the wrath of Hazel’s heartbreak, Ava did not wish to put herself in the firing line unless she absolutely had to. Besides, nothing had happened with Ben since then. She had resisted his sexy texts and late-night phone calls and had chalked it up to experience — of which she had had little to make comparisons. How Niamh managed to weave her tangled web of relationships was so far outside of Ava’s reality that she cringed at the thought of the lies, the messy cover-ups and the guilt involved. She couldn’t lead Niamh’s life no matter how adventurous she made it seem.

  Niamh and Cal had thought it was the perfect remedy to getting over Finlay. Their only lament had been that they were sworn to secrecy and couldn’t spread the gossip about town for it to run Finlay’s way, and make him jealous to know Ava had pulled a gorgeous fella, almost ten years her junior.

  When Ava had berated Niamh yet again for allowing her to get in such a state that she had gone home with Ben, Niamh had merely chuckled and said, ‘Ava, you were all over him like a bad case of herpes.’

  Ava had put her hands to her face in shame, saying, ‘I’m a bad person. I’ve slept with my employer and friend’s son and to make it worse he’s near enough ten years younger than me.’

  ‘Honey pie, when you get to our age — and I know we don’t feel old at almost thirty — there is a national shortage of available livestock. You see the best ones are usually in the first flush of marital bliss, still shagging on a weekly basis, and thinking this is forever.’ She paused to take a dramatic drag on her cigarette like Joan Collins in her heyday. ‘So that leaves the over forties to which I admit, I’m partial to myself. True they have been round the block and usually have one failed marriage behind them, or are at least in the throes of the martial demise, but still they are out there for the taking. But you, darling girl, struck love gold. You managed to get yourself a bit of live bait, still fresh and unburdened by a mortgage and two kiddies. So, don’t come moaning to your Auntie Niamh.’ She flicked her ash into the saucer which Ava had left out for that very purpose.

  Ava huffily lifted the saucer to empty it of its smouldering contents.

  She would just have to accept that Niamh wasn’t going to be sympathetic to her predicament.

  Ava stopped off to buy candles on the way to number ninety-seven. The electrician, Ted, was in the middle of the rewiring job and the electric was still off. She was filled with anxiety every time she checked her bank account. The normally thrifty Ava was haemorrhaging money like she had never done before. It wasn’t that she was usually tight with her finances, it was just that previously she had never found anything too big to buy. When she lived at home with Maggie, the pair of them required very little to live on. Ava wasn’t one for shopping and buying stuff she didn’t need despite the fact that Niamh implored her to spend like money was going out of fashion. She could never get her head around how Niamh required a new outfit every other week, accessories and all. No wonder her apartment was coming down with handbags, jewellery and clothes, and most of them only ever saw the light of day once before being cast off as last season. Still, Ava couldn’t complain as many of the less outrageous items found a home in her own wardrobe.

  She had yet to buy any furniture seeing as every penny she had ever saved was going into the big remodelling and fixing up jobs, so she spread an old tartan blanket on the woodblock floor in the living room and placed the candles in the fireplace to give them a bit of light to chat by. The candles burning in the grate cast a cosy golden glow around the room, hiding the fact that it was actually very dusty and shabby. No matter how many times she swept a yard brush over the floor, dust would settle again as soon as the workmen left for the day. The wallpaper had been ripped off in patches, exposing the powdery plaster underneath. The bare pinky-coloured walls made Ava think of a newborn baby waiting to be clothed. She hadn’t even considered paint colours yet but she was sure Niamh and Cal would have plenty of ideas, desperate as they were to sway her away from neutral greys and soft natural tones.

  She had phoned Ben earlier in the day telling him she needed to see him. It wasn’t until later that evening that she realised he could have assumed that she wanted to see him for all the wrong reasons, but she would risk hurting his pride to discuss how they could best present the situation to Hazel.

  Since Hazel’s hysterics over her fears of Robert having an affair, Ava had been eaten up with guilt. It was bad enough to have shagged Ben, but for poor Hazel to believe her beloved Robert had strayed and to do so in her own bed was just beyond cruel. Why Ava hadn’t ’fessed up immediately she didn’t know. It would have been the right thing to do, but these days Ava surprised herself by not always instinctively doing the right thing. She was a mixed-up mess of late.

  At least the whole Ben encounter had helped distract her from Finlay. Niamh had heard from someone in the Gaelic club that he was seeing a girl called Rose. She was a secretary in the same building he worked in and apparently modelled part-time. Ava had picked over the scant details torturing herself, imagining them together in a sexy clinch. Most likely she was the same blonde girl Ava had seen getting out of Finlay’s car that night.

  One night, in a moment of weakness, Ava had called him. Just to chat she had said, see how he was doing. He had asked about Maggie, talked about work. He had been friendly enough but hadn’t mentioned any Rose. They had ended the call, promising to get together for drink sometime but no firm arrangement had been made. It was like talking to an old friend, not someone she had been intimate with and had considered spending the rest of her life with.

  Ava looked around the room. She had brushed the worse of the dust and the cobwebs away. It was funny to think number ninety-seven was still a secret of sorts. She had told Maggie that she had inherited a wonderful, old falling down house and was thinking of moving out of Moonstone Street, but she wasn’t sure how much Maggie understood these days. She had sat smiling, her face sunken and contorted and had reached over to pat Ava’s knee. Ava had chosen to take the gesture as a sign of approval.

  Ben would actually be one of her first visitors. She sat down on the blanket and hugged her knees into her chest, trying to imagine how one day she would be sitting on a real sofa in front of a proper fire on this very spot.

  ‘Did you win the lotto or something?’ Ben asked as Ava led him into her entrance hall a short while later.

  ‘It’s a long story. Come on in. I haven’t actually moved in yet as I haven’t any furniture and there is a lot of work needs doing, but
I thought it was better to meet you here just in case your mum would turn up at my house or someone would see you,’ Ava explained in a stammering rush. The sight of his broad shoulders was enough to make her smile with delight. She tried to keep herself in check and to not let her imagination stray.

  ‘Here, I bought you some wine. I figured the last thing you would want would be a bunch of flowers seeing as you work with them all day.’ He handed Ava a bottle of Chablis. Probably nicked out of his father’s wine collection, thought Ava, accepting the bottle graciously.

  ‘Thanks, but I’m not sure if I have anything we could drink out of, and I probably don’t even have a bottle opener,’ said Ava, going into the kitchen to see if she could find anything. She unearthed two mugs probably left by the electricians while Ben tried to uncork the bottle with an attachment on his key ring.

  They made their way back into the living room where the flickering candles and the blanket spread out on the floor suddenly looked like a scene of hot seduction.

  ‘To us,’ said Ben, grinning as he raised his mug in a toast and settled himself down on the blanket.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t. I’ve told you there is no us,’ said Ava. ‘This is strictly business, mister. We’re in trouble and I’ve asked you here to see if we can conjure up a plausible story between us.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Ben asked.

  ‘It’s your mum. She found my necklace in her bed and now she thinks your dad is having an affair. You need to convince her that it belongs to one of your girlfriends and not to some wee bit of strumpet your dad has picked up.’

  Ben snorted. ‘But it does belong to one of my girlfriends — you.’ He took Ava’s face in his hands and moved in to kiss her.

  ‘Ben, I’m not your girlfriend. We had one drunken night which is best forgotten.’ She pushed his hands away and saw a flicker of hurt pass over his oh-too-good-looking face.

  ‘Hey come on, you know I’d be up for it if I weren’t friends with your mum, but really put yourself in my position. How can I work with her knowing? She would be furious if she had any idea I’d had sex with her precious son,’ said Ava trying to let him down gently and convince herself all over again that this was a bad idea. He was so attractive in the soft candlelight. His jawline had a light rough-to-the-touch shadow and his hair a shade of dirty fair, verging on butterscotch, was cut short.