It's Got To Be Perfect

by Claire Allan

  “Honestly?” he said with a hint of modesty most unlike him. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”

  The wine was in full flow. The dates had been completed and now the eager datees where waiting to see who wanted to take things further with whom. Pearse had pulled a blinder by offering a free glass of champagne for everyone – and by champagne I mean actual champagne, not some cheap fizzy plonk masquerading as champagne. And it was delicious. I allowed myself one tall, chilled glass and as I sipped I beckoned Fionn over.

  “The next time we’ll drink champers will be at your wedding! Oh, won’t it be lovely!”

  Her eyes misted over. “Yes. Yes, it will. I can’t wait, Annie. I just can’t wait.”

  We clinked our glasses together.

  “To happy endings!” I cheered.

  She smiled, leaning in towards me for a hug. “I hope you get yours too, darling. I really do.”

  I nodded, unable to speak, and was grateful when the compère announced that the final date swaps were ready.

  One by one he called each eager participant to the front and handed them a silver envelope with their matches inside. There were squeals of approval and squeals of disappointment and lots and lots of laughter. Bob gave me the thumbs-up and I raised my thumbs back at him.

  “Annie Delaney!” a voice called, and I looked around trying to locate it.

  “Annie Delaney!” it repeated as I tried to find my focus point.

  “It’s your man,” Fionn said pointing to the compère. “He wants you on stage. Go on, girl!”

  I didn’t really want to. I didn’t do standing on a stage in front of a crowd very well. And I certainly hadn’t speed-dated anyone. This did not feel right. Not one bit.

  I walked up, expecting something Very, Very Bad to happen. But it didn’t. He just handed me an envelope. I expected some big announcement – some flash of lights or a thunderbolt or something. It was, however, just an envelope and I walked down again, feeling very confused and more than a little subdued.

  “Open it,” Fionn urged as everyone around me resumed their hi-jinks.

  So I did. I read the words before me, trying to make sense of them.

  Owen Reilly would like to date Annie Delaney.

  I looked around and I knew he was there. I just wanted to see him. I needed to see him. I looked around, blinking under the bright lights and the camera flashes, until I saw his smile. I looked straight at him and everything else didn’t matter. I smiled back – and crossed the room to where he pulled me into a hug.

  “How about we get out of here?” he said and I nodded.

  I woke as the sun streamed through my bedroom window. I sighed, breathing in the fresh morning air and staring at the clock. It was time to get up for work. Bob was taking me out for coffee and a debriefing session and we were going to plan how to take things further for NorthStar.

  First, though, I just had to double-check. I reached across the bed, feeling around and finding the empty space beside me.

  I smiled – relieved. I hadn’t slept with Owen!

  I had remained rational and in control. We had shared a rather amazing toe-tingling snog and he had even agreed to attend Fionn’s wedding as my plus one but I hadn’t made a mistake. I had taken it slow, and it had been lovely.

  When we left Manna, he had taken me back to his hotel – and we sat in the lobby sharing a bottle of wine and laughing as if we had known each other all our lives.

  “Why did you come to Manna?” I asked as I sipped the last of my wine and got ready to leave for my taxi.

  “Some things I just didn’t want to leave to fate,” he said.

  And that’s when I kissed him.

  39

  I slipped into the most gorgeous dress in the world ever and stopped to look in the mirror. Hair perfect – a glittering rose clasp glinting amidst a sea of curls. Make-up perfect – complete with false lashes. Fake tan – done to perfection. Nails – manicured to within an inch of their lives.

  If this was how amazing I felt, I could barely imagine how amazing Fionn must feel. I looked at her – glowing in her dressing gown. She could walk down the aisle wearing that robe and those slippers and she would be simply breathtaking. Her beauty ran so much deeper than the dress she was about to wear. She glowed from the inside out and my heart swelled with love and pride for her.

  Her flowergirls, Emma and her friends Camille and Lucia, danced around at her feet – their chiffon skirts bouncing up and down as they twirled.

  “Oh Fionn! You look just like a princess. You look just like Cinderella. Daddy is going to love you so much,” Emma trilled while her friends squealed with delight.

  For a five-year-old precocious madam she sometimes got things absolutely spot on.

  “Oh, and he is going to think you girls are the most beautiful on the planet,” Fionn beamed, reaching down to kiss each of the girls on the top of their heads.

  Camille giggled, her bright blue eyes flashing with sheer joy, while Lucia grabbed Emma’s hand and the pair danced, their curled hair bouncing up and down, as they jumped around in a circle singing a dazzling rendition of “Ring O’ Roses”.

  Lucia and Camille’s mother, Hayley, walked into the room, her own eyes misty with emotion at the sight of her girls, entranced on their magical day.

  “Come on, Camille, come on, Lulu, and you too, Emma! Let’s leave Auntie Fionn alone to get her head together!”

  The girls left in a mass of chiffon and glitter, their laughter echoing around the house.

  “It’s happening, isn’t it?” Fionn asked in my direction as her mother fussed around, smoothing down the sparkling gown and preparing it for the big moment when Fionn would transform into the world’s most beautiful bride.

  “Yes,” I nodded, my voice choked with emotion. “It most certainly is.”

  We stood at the back of the church – Emma, Camille and Lucia solemnly holding their baskets of rose petals as if they were the most precious cargo in the world.

  I straightened the back of Fionn’s gown, smoothed down her veil and then stood back as I watched her daddy squeeze her arm and mutter, “Okay, sweetheart. Let’s go.”

  The music started up – “Canon in D” played by a string quartet – and I had to bite back a swell of emotion. They started walking – slowly – step, pause, step, pause. After a suitable time I started to follow. Step, pause, step, pause. I smiled as I walked, aware of Alex standing at the top of the aisle, his face beaming with love, but more conscious of those who stood either side of me in the pews, smiling as I walked by.

  Darcy stood, her arm looped in Gerry’s. His head rested gently on hers and it was such an intimate pose that I believed it would be okay for them too.

  And then I saw Owen, grinning at me, winking slowly. He gestured to his head – and I laughed. Just the night before he had told me how this wedding invite had forced him to reconsider his entire male-grooming routine. Not only had he suffered the indignity of shaving, he had also had his hair cut. I should remember that, he said, if ever I felt like we women had a tougher life than men.

  Before I knew it, we were there at the altar. Fionn was crying happy tears. Alex was overcome with emotion. Emma was smiling, sitting on her mammy’s knee (and her mammy didn’t look suicidal).

  They made their promises in unfaltering voices and they smiled before they shared their first man and wife kiss.

  They were married. She’d done it. They’d done it.

  The room was dark – lit by the softest of lights and the gentle glow of a hundred tea-lights, set on mirrors dusted with crystals. The crisp white linen on the tables matched the crisp white linen on the chair covers while just across from where we sat an iron arbour bedecked with fairy lights showed off the most magnificent chocolate cake I had ever seen.

  “If I was a cheesy fecker and I could sing, I’d start singing that Eric Clapton song now,” Owen said as he handed me a glass of sparkling wine and sat beside me.

  I was taking a breather (af
ter a particularly energetic dance to “Tragedy”) while Fionn and Alex, and every couple in the place – including Darcy and Gerry – were wrapped around each other doing a slow and steady shuffle to “Angels” by Robbie Williams.

  “‘I Shot the Sheriff?’” I responded with a grin.

  “No,” he said, smiling, but almost embarrassed with it. “‘Wonderful Tonight’.”

  I blushed. “Gosh, Mr Reilly, you say the nicest things.”

  “But I don’t lie. You look wonderful – amazing.”

  “Great what a bit of slap and some false nails can do,” I said, wagging my talons in his direction.

  “Annie, one of these days you will realise that even dishevelled and lying in a heap in Dublin, with a bruised ankle and your hair all out of place, you still looked wonderful.”

  I stared at him, waiting for the punchline, but there wasn’t one. He meant it. I knew he meant it.

  “Fancy a dance?” he asked and I nodded, letting him lead me to the dance floor.

  It felt delicious in his arms. I felt as if we fitted, as if our bodies were moulded to be together. I rested my head on his shoulder and I didn’t feel the need to speak. I just felt the need to be with him.

  “Perfect,” he said and I looked up to meet his eyes. “Everything about today. Everything about you. It’s just perfect.”

  THE END

  If you enjoyed It’s Got to be Perfect

  by Claire Allan why not try

  Jumping in Puddles also published by Poolbeg?

  Here’s a sneak preview of Chapter One.

  1

  Niamh

  Things I hate about my husband:

  * He likes pea and ham soup – I mean, who in their right mind eats something which looks like snot?

  * He waits until he gets to work to shave, so that when he kisses me goodbye in the morning I get stubble rash.

  * He drives too fast.

  * He died because he drove too fast. Stupid bastard.

  * No one else has bought pea and ham soup from our local shop since he died. And I’ve no way of telling him I was right that he was the only person in Donegal who ate the blasted stuff.

  * He never said goodbye. And the last kiss we had was a stubbly one . . . and I had morning breath.

  * He makes me cry.

  * * *

  Things I hate about my ex-best friend:

  * Caitlin hasn’t spoken to me since Seán died.

  * She doesn’t answer the phone when I call.

  * She is a bitch.

  * She won’t tell me why she has become a bitch.

  * * *

  Niamh had doodled on the top corner of her page. It was a strange picture – her artist’s impression of a tin of pea and ham soup. She knew she was obsessed but if she stopped thinking about tins of soup she might just have to think about everything that was so terribly wrong in her life.

  Like the fact her husband was dead – and she was now a widow with three-year-old twins. And that her best friend in the whole world had turned into a psycho-bitch from hell precisely half an hour after her husband was buried in a graveyard in the arse-end of nowhere.

  And, of course, she now lived in the aforementioned arse-end of nowhere – their dream home, where it was all to begin and become fabulous. Except it hadn’t begun at all, it had ended.

  This was to be her Wisteria Lane. She was happy to leave the rat race of Derry behind and become a kept woman in their perfect home, with the porch swing and the designer kitchen island. But this wasn’t so much Wisteria Lane as Elm Street and her life was the nightmare. The fact that there wasn’t actually some psycho with knives for fingers ready to claw her to pieces in the middle of the night was no comfort. She would have quite liked that – at the moment.

  Niamh scored through the picture, looked up at three heads bowed over their own notebooks, writing furiously, and she fought the urge to push her pen through her nose till it hit her brain. She didn’t even know if it was a painless way to commit suicide, but looking around at her options she thought it might be worth a try.

  “Niamh, are you okay?” a ridiculously smiley woman in a long flowing skirt with, Niamh imagined, long flowing underarm hair, asked.

  Rolling her eyes like someone half her age in a teenage strop, Niamh nodded. She didn’t have the energy to answer that question any more and anyway she had very quickly learned that people didn’t really want to know the answer. They expected her to say she was fine. She could occasionally get away with “fine, all things considered” or “fine, given the circumstances” but no one wanted to know that at this stage, three months after her life had changed irrevocably and not in a good way, she woke up every morning seething with rage and confusion wanting to scream at the world and everyone in it.

  Nor were they particularly interested in her obsession with pea and ham soup. Even Robyn, the new best friend who had stepped into the shoes of the psycho ex-best friend, had started to openly avoid all discussions on any kind of soup, never mind Seán’s favourite flavour.

  “I’m grand,” Niamh said, and went back to doodling, hoping that Detta O’Neill, the group facilitator, would leave her alone if she looked busy enough.

  She hadn’t wanted to come here. She’d done it to keep Robyn, her mother and her GP happy. All had been understandably concerned that Niamh had seemed to give up the day Seán died – putting her life on hold in a haze of grief and anger.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Robyn had said, almost afraid to meet Niamh’s eye, “but you should think about some form of counselling, or support.”

  “I thought that is what I had you two for,” Niamh said, looking at her friend and her mother as if they had betrayed her. Had they become tired of her grief? Should she have moved on by now? Surely three months was wee buns when it came to loss and longing?

  “Of course you have us,” her mother had soothed, “but, darling, we feel we can’t reach you sometimes. And it doesn’t help that we’re up in Derry and you are all the way down here.”

  “It’s only an hour away,” Niamh pouted.

  “That’s a long way when you are worried about someone,” Robyn said, “and you seem to have become a hermit since – you know – since. And you never get out and talk to anyone.”

  “These two keep me busy,” Niamh said, gesturing to the corner of the room where Connor and Rachel were playing contentedly with their Bob the Builder toys. “I don’t need anyone else.”

  “Of course you do,” her mother said. “You must be lonely.”

  It would, Niamh realised, have been churlish to reply “No shit, Sherlock” to her mother’s concern, but counselling wasn’t going to ease her loneliness – not unless the counsellor was planning on coming home and stroking her back gently each night in bed just as Seán had done. That kind of loneliness wasn’t going to go away.

  “Look,” her mum said, standing up and moving to switch on the kettle, “I’ve been talking to Dr Donnelly and she has given me the name of a woman here in Rathinch who is starting a support group for lone parents.”

  “But I’m not a lone parent!” Niamh shouted. How she hated that title. She was a married woman, who along with her husband had planned her family with scary precision. The twins were conceived in May, born in February, raised in Derry until they were two and then the family moved to their dream home on the Donegal coastline. It was a home she and Seán had designed together, built together and were ridiculously proud of. They had pored over interior-design magazines, taped every episode of Grand Designs and made their house the envy of the village. They had done it all together.

  Niamh hadn’t made any decisions as a “lone” anything and she shrugged off the title now. It was right up there with “widow” in her most hated terms in the world ever.

  “Look, we’ll leave you her number. She’s Detta and Dr Donnelly said she’s a dote. Think about it, pet. What harm can it do?”

  Niamh shrugged, walking out into the perfectly manicured garden and sta
ring out at the grey sea at the bottom of the path. As the wind whistled around her, she hugged her cardigan and her grief around her.

  Talking to Detta couldn’t do any harm. After what she had been through lately, nothing could ever harm her again.

  And of course her options were limited. She knew her mother was like a dog with a bone and wouldn’t leave her alone until she was joining in nicely with village life and at least putting forward an impression of calm and happiness to her new neighbours. It was either the Lone Parents Support Group, Niamh had realised with a sinking feeling, or the knitting club. And Niamh didn’t do knitting.

  s

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  Jumping in Puddles by Claire Allan

  why not download the full book online

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