by Claire Allan
Breathing in, I sat taller.
“We have some good ideas here, Elena,” said Beth. “Why don’t you take a seat and have a look?”
She was already crouched down in front of Maggie, cooing at her while my daughter smiled appreciatively back. That’s my girl, I thought, keeping in with the rich folks.
I stood up to offer my seat and she glanced at me.
“Oh goodness, Aoife. That’s not your best look, is it?”
It crossed my mind that Elena, her bluntness and my mother would get on very well together.
“She is still on maternity leave, Elena,” Beth said. “This commission is a special favour for you.”
Elena smiled. “Well, I am honoured, but she still needs to smarten herself up a little more.”
Was I not in the room any more?
Elena flipped open her mobile phone and hit a speed-dial button.
“Maria, Elena here. Could you bring a few things over to Instant Karma? Yes, new mummy, size 12 to 14, I would say. Smart casual, maybe something a little sexy too and, Maria, bring some of those magic pants things. She needs a little help around the tummy area.”
I stood, mouth gaping open. First Elena had sent a mysterious gardener to keep an eye on me. Then she had given my daughter an overly generous present and now she was dressing me. It all felt a little weird. I looked to Beth for some sort of silent signal that I wasn’t losing the plot and the bemused look on her face offered me some form of comfort.
“Elena, seriously. There’s no need for this.”
“The way I see it, Aoife, there is every need,” she answered calmly. “Now show me your ideas for my bedroom.”
Maria – a pleasant girl in her mid-twenties wearing a pair of those very stylish heavy framed glasses and a silky neck scarf – arrived about an hour later. She bustled into the shop laden with carrier bags and air-kissed Elena. Looking at me, Heather and Beth, she then looked back at me again.
“This must be the new mummy,” she said.
Yes, it was that obvious.
She unloaded her bags, revealing gorgeous wrap dresses, slouchy jeans and body-skimming T-shirts, not to mention some impossibly high heels and a pair of pants which started just below the bra line and extended to just above the knee.
“Just one question,” I said. “How on earth do you pee in those things? My bladder is weakened considerably these days.”
“You’ll manage,” Elena answer. “Now off and get changed and come back down when you look more like the old you.”
I nodded. For some reason I could not speak up to Elena, no matter how much I wanted to tell her to butt out. Her heart (and wallet) were in the right places.
I came back down a while later, having tried on this and that, in the wrap dress which disguised my jelly belly, and with my hair swept up in a smooth chignon.
“Now that is much, much better,” Elena said, glancing at her watch.
Beth seemed to have a smug kind of smirk on her face now but my reticence about telling Elena to butt out also extended to asking my best friend what on earth she was smirking about in front of our number-one client.
“Right,” I said, casting a glance at a now-sleeping Maggie, “have we decided between the extra wardrobe or the dressing- screen?”
“I’m not sure,” Elena said, glancing at our mood boards. “I love the wardrobe, but I’m not sure I need it – but then the screen would just be for decoration, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s what we are all about, Elena,” Beth said, sipping from her coffee cup and glancing over my head at the door.
I turned around in time to see Tom walk in with his folder and smile directly at me.
“Aoife,” he said before looking at the other two women in my company.
I smiled back and in spite of myself I felt a little flutter.
He was handsome. Feck that, he was sexy in his own way. He was standing in rugged jeans, a white T-shirt and a Barbour jacket. His face was sun-kissed even though it was only March and freezing outside. For a second – only a split second – we were the only two people in the room. I was then aware of Elena standing up and running to share an air-kiss with him.
“Tom, how gorgeous to see you here today! How are things? Are you here to work? Doesn’t our Aoife look fabulous?” She stared at me and I felt like a child being shown off in her Sunday best to a proud granny.
“She always does,” he said, looking straight at me, and I heard Beth giggle in the background.
Swinging round, I looked at her and she looked at Elena and then shrugged her shoulders back at me.
Oh. My. God. The new clothes suddenly made sense and I realised that Elena had not only sent the handsome gardener to look out for me but she was trying to pimp me out as well. And my best friend was in on it – Elena must have filled her in on the scheme while I was upstairs.
I didn’t know why Elena was doing this. I didn’t really care at that stage. I was suddenly so very tired of everyone thinking they owned a piece of me. A seven-week-old baby was enough to be going on with.
“If you will excuse me,” I said, mustering as much dignity as I could, “I’ve recently had a baby and I’m very tired. I’m going to go upstairs now and have a sleep. Beth, could you finish off with Mrs Kennedy and then have a chat with Tom about the yard?”
I stumbled upstairs, returning downstairs just once when I realised Maggie was still down there in her bouncy chair. Fuck the lot of them.
I had stripped off my fancy new wrap dress, and slipped on my pyjamas when a knock came to the door.
“Go away!” I yelled. “I’m going to sleep.”
“Aoife” a voice called out, “please let me in!”
It was Tom.
When I didn’t answer the handle turned, the door opened cautiously and there he was.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I looked at him rather blankly. “I’m not quite sure. I think Elena Kennedy may be trying to pimp me out to you. She brought all these clothes over today. I might just be her latest project. We might just be her latest project.”
He blushed. “I thought something odd was going on. When I came in today and saw you looking so – well – dressed up.”
I had the good grace to laugh. “Are you trying to say I usually look like shit?”
“Not at all,” he said, his cheeks reddening further. “You look good to me all the time, but today you had a certain something.”
“It was the magic pants,” I muttered and sat down, aware that the magic pants were now gone, replaced by belly warmers and cosy jammies.
Tom sat down too and rubbed his eyes. “Look, I think she has our best interests at heart.”
“Yes, but what does she know about our best interests? I’m so messed up, Tom, you know that. Jake is coming around tonight and he wants to try again. Elena knows how much I love him. So, much as I’m flattered, I’m not really in a position to be in a relationship with anyone else.”
Tom smiled a sad smile. “Aoife, much as I’m flattered, neither am I. My divorce has only just been finalised. I just want to make a fresh start. That’s not to say that if I wasn’t so messed up I wouldn’t be interested in you. I would be, but it’s not a good time for me either.”
“Elena never said you were divorced,” I said, my face flushed with embarrassment.
“No, she wouldn’t. She likes to pretend my ex never existed. I don’t talk about Kate much so I imagine Elena thinks I’m ready to move on.”
“But you aren’t,” I said, more of a statement than a question.
“I don’t think so. I’m too busy just trying to hold my head above water. I’m relatively new to the area. I lived down in Devon with Kate. When we split up I wanted a fresh start so I moved up here and started doing some freelance work – a few gardens here and there. I met Elena and when I finally decided to set up shop in Gardiner Street she told me all about you. She said we could work together and she told me you might need a friend.”
“I�
��ve been horrid, haven’t I?” I said.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I feel pretty pissed off myself. As I said, I like to keep myself to myself and I don’t like my every move to be watched by anyone.”
“Her heart is in the right place, I suppose,” I said.
“You’re probably right, but nonetheless we’re both here now feeling very awkward and I guess that probably means any chance we did have at a friendship is blown.”
By the tone in his voice I knew he wasn’t looking for me to assure him otherwise.
We sat in silence for a few seconds before he spoke again.
“I suppose I should go downstairs. They’ll be thinking we’re making mad passionate love up here,” he said with a wry smile. “Are you going to come down?”
“No, I could do with a sleep,” I replied before seeing him out and going to bed to dream about making mad passionate love with Tom Austin.
****
“I’m sorry, Aoife,” Beth said as she perched on my sofa. “I thought you might enjoy a bit of flirtation and when Elena told me she was dressing you up because Tom was coming over, I thought you’d be delighted. It’s quite romantic really.”
“But no one asked either me or Tom if we wanted romance,” I said. As I saw Beth raise her eyebrow and smile, I added: “Which, by the way, we don’t. I’m happy. He’s happy and besides, in case you had forgotten, Jake is coming over later and I’m pretty sure we’re going to be talking about getting back together.”
Beth sighed. “Aoife, are you sure that is sensible?”
“He is the father of my child,” I said, “and I still love him.”
“Elena was right,” she said as she walked out of the room. “You seem to want to make yourself as miserable as possible.”
*****
“Do I crave misery?” I asked Anna, as I rubbed Maggie’s back, trying in vain to release an elusive burp. It seemed I spent most of my life these days either clamping her on to my boobs or rubbing her back for dear life.
“What are you on about?” she answered, vaguely amused.
“Am I a misery guts? Do I love drama? Am I, to put it finely, turning into my mother?”
Anna laughed, her throaty laugh ringing down the line. “Have you been drinking?”
“No, I’m serious, Anna. Help me out here.”
“What has you asking such a buck-stupid question?”
“Something Beth said today. One of our clients said she thinks I crave misery. From Beth’s storming out of the room, I’m thinking Beth agrees with her.”
“I think you two need your heads banging together,” Anna said and I could tell she was vaguely amused by the whole sorry scenario.
“Anna, please, I need you to be honest with me. Am I a misery guts?”
“We all have our bad days, pet, but no, if you want me to be honest I don’t think you are any more miserable than the rest of us miserable feckers.”
I changed position slightly, and resumed rubbing.
“Now your mother,” Anna continued, “there is one miserable beggar. I saw her today – bumped into her in Foyleside – and she was wearing a face like she’d just had a slap. I asked what was up and she answered ‘Ach, you know,’ and nodded like I’m meant to be fecking psychic or something.”
“It’ll be the Deep Freeze she’s talking about no doubt. Her letdown of a daughter,” I sighed.
“Aoife, pet, you need to realise, your mother doesn’t need people to do anything to make her do her best Pauline Fowler impression. She was made that way.”
“But nonetheless, Anna, I do give her all her best material.”
“And God love her, the woman wouldn’t know suffering if it came up and bit her on the arse.”
The change in her tone was subtle, but I noticed it immediately.
“Are you okay, Anna?” I asked.
She paused and replied: “Not really, love, but you don’t need me being a misery guts. Not when you are enough of a sour-head yourself.”
There was an air of forced jollity to the end of her sentence. It didn’t fool me one bit.
“Anna, what’s wrong?”
There was another pause and then I heard her sniffle. Next thing she was crying softly.
“Anna, you’re scaring me now. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, pet. Only it’s the anniversary of Billy’s death. I should be over it by now, but it catches me unawares sometimes. God, he was a right royal pain in the arse when he was alive, but I would give anything to have him bug the shite out of me for one more day.”
We talked on. She cried and I soothed as best I could, which wasn’t much given the distance and then she hung up, promising me that she wouldn’t drink herself into oblivion. She said instead she would probably just take a drive down to Moville and howl into the wind for a bit.
After I hung up, I texted Maeve and told her check in on her mum. At least that was something positive, but I wished there was more I could do.
****
Billy was a larger than life character. Being that my relationship with my mother had been on the shoddy side, I spent a lot of time at Anna’s, and Billy was always there to make me laugh and chat with. I was nine when Maeve was born and by the time she reached five or six, I became the regular baby-sitter.
Anna and Billy were always out at one thing or another and the pocket money came in handy. They would come in from their business functions or nights in the pub and sit at the kitchen table cooking loaves of toast and brewing pots of tea and we would chat into the wee hours before I would crawl up to bed in the spare room.
I may only have been fifteen or sixteen, but they treated me like an adult.
I used to be envious of them, of the love they so clearly shared. Every time I visited, there was a new card or a new gift on the mantelpiece. Each made public declarations of love – “To My Soulmate” –“To My One and Only” – and I could never resist snooping at the handwritten messages inside.
Some of the cards were from Anna, the majority were from Billy and I hoped and prayed with all my heart I would find a man who would love me the way he loved her.
Billy died in a car accident. There had been snow showers and his car had simply glided off the road and into a brick wall. He had died instantly. I was with Anna when the police called to the house to break the news. I sat in shock, my heart thudding in my chest, my mouth dried, as I saw Anna collapse to the floor and scream out in raw, animal pain. I watched as the policewoman lifted her to her chair and then I ran upstairs to make sure Maeve was still asleep. If I’m honest with myself, I think I ran away because I could not bear to see Anna in so much pain. I’d seen people react on TV like that – to fall into a screaming rage at what had just happened – but I had never seen my Anna act like that, and I wanted to block the sound of her cries out of my ears.
I sat on my bed in the spare room, hands over my ears, rocking back and forth until the door opened and my father walked in. And then he held me in his arms while I screamed until my throat was sore.
*****
“Could the message be, ‘Thinking of you. Love you loads. Aoife’?” I said to the helpful florist on the other end of the line. (Not Tom, in case you wondered. Tom didn’t do Interflora.)
I then hung up and set about bathing Maggie and making sure she was looking her absolute cutest for when her daddy would arrive. Jake was due to be here in just over an hour and I wanted to make sure both mother and daughter were looking their best.
Once Maggie was bathed, dusted in baby powder and put into her finest sleepsuit, I jumped in the shower myself before dressing in the new slouch jeans and tunic top Elena had left behind. Sure, Jake may not have been the person she intended me to wear the clothes for, but needs must. After spending an afternoon lost in the memories of Billy and Anna, I felt a need just to hold someone close – and if Jake were to walk into the room and reach out for me I knew I would fall into his arms.
When the doorbell rang, I almost tripped over myself to g
et there. Jake stood, a wide smile on his face, his sunglasses perched on his balding head and a bunch of carnations in one hand.
“Hey, babes,” he said, walking past me, passing the flowers to me like a baton in a relay race.
“Hey,” I said back, following him upstairs.
“Is Mags in here?”
I bristled at the use of the word Mags, but chided myself. Sure he was allowed to have a pet name for her. He was her father. Her daddy – that gave him a right to call her just about anything he wanted.
He walked in to where she was sitting in her bouncy chair and lifted her.
“Careful, mind her wee head,” I said and he lifted her to his shoulder.
“She’s great, isn’t she?” he said.
He smiled at me and I felt myself relax a little. Sure he had run up the stairs to see her, and run past me to get there, but now that he was there and we were our little family unit again, I knew it would be okay.
He walked around singing to her, smiling at her and proudly telling me how much like him she was.
I sat down and waited for him to ask me how I was. I waited some more and then I went to the kitchen to put on the kettle for me, and open a beer for him. I lifted a vase from under the sink and filled it with water for the carnations. I tried my best to ignore the reduced price sticker on them. It’s the thought that counts.
When I walked back to the living-room he was sitting with his feet on the sofa, our daughter back in her bouncy chair and the TV blaring Tonight with Jonathan Ross across the room.
As I handed him his beer he glanced at me: “Cheers, babe,” he said before turning his attention back to the interview on screen.
As I sat down, he looked at me again.
“Not drinking, babe?”
“Erm, no. I’m still breast-feeding.” I flushed slightly at the mention of breast-feeding – perhaps because of the last unfortunate leaking nipples incident or perhaps because this man and me were basically all about good sex and any sexual word at all – even breast out of context – was enough to send me into a fit of excitement.