Feels Like Maybe

by Claire Allan

  “Don’t make the same mistakes I did, Aoife. You don’t need me to go over it all – we both know what happened but I did love you. I do love you. Don’t let this little one question your love for even one moment.”

  I nodded and leaned over onto the bed to embrace her and Maggie, making sure I didn’t hurt her, and we sat there for a long time – saying nothing but for the first time ever enjoying the fact that there would be no more awkward silences.

  *******

  Once Mum was off the critical list, I had some tough choices to make. We knew she would be convalescing for a while and, God love my father, while he was a decent sort he wasn’t really the kind of person to play nursemaid to anyone. He would always have one eye on the clock, wondering what the weather was like on the golf course, or what time he could get away to the pub for a pint of Carlsberg.

  He told me that there was no need for me to stay, but said it in such a small voice that I knew he was hoping against hope that I would.

  When I told him I had no immediate plans to return to Richmond, the look of relief on his face was a picture.

  “Come and stay at home, Aoife,” he pleaded. “It would be nice to have you around.”

  I thought about it, for all of maybe two seconds, but declined. “Daddy, the last thing Mum will need when she is recovering is a young baby in the house. I’ll stay with Anna, but I’ll be over every day, I promise.”

  He nodded. He understood that while things had no doubt changed entirely in the last few days between me and my mother, my staying at home would be likely to kill her entirely.

  And besides I had grown quite fond of Anna’s floral spare room. My only concern was that when I eventually did make it back to London my designs would reflect this new obsession. Could I, I wondered, interest Elena Kennedy in a 1980s’ Poundstretcher Chic transformation?

  Now the only thing I had to do was break the news to Beth – who only a week ago I had promised to help by returning to work early from maternity leave. I wasn’t sure how she would react. Well, in fairness, I knew how she would react. She was Beth. She took things on the chin. She understood how important it was for me to be there for my mother and she wouldn’t do anything to make me feel bad about that. She wouldn’t need to. I would do a good job of that myself.

  “I’d better get this over with then, eh?” I told a cooing Maggie as I dialled the number of the shop.

  “Instant Karma. Heather speaking, how can I help you?” a sing-song voice answered.

  “Hey, Heather, it’s Aoife. Is Beth about?”

  “Oh hang on, she’s out in the yard with that hunky gardener man,” Heather answered. “I’ll bring the phone out to her.”

  I could hear her clip-clop on the wooden floors of the shop, the tinkle of the bell above the door and Tom’s low, earthy laugh.

  “Beth, it’s Aoife on the phone.”

  “Hey, gorgeous!” said Beth. “How are things? How is your mother getting along?” Her voice was laden with concern and I felt rotten that I was just about to land her in it.

  “She is getting better, but slowly,” I started. “Look, Beth, there is no easy way to say this. I’m going to have stay here for a while. They need me and Mum and I are making inroads into making things better between us.”

  She paused, while she fixed a smile on her face I imagined, and answered: “Aoife, do what you have to do, but you will be missed.”

  “It might be a week or two, maybe more, but I will be back,” I offered.

  “Take as long as it takes.”

  I wished I could jump down the phone line and hug her.

  “And Beth, could you do me a favour? Can you run upstairs and empty my fridge? I’m pretty sure I left some milk in there that will be growing legs by now, and feck knows what state I left the place in. And, if you can, can you see if I have any messages. Jake is probably wondering where on earth his daughter has disappeared to. And, Beth, could you tell Matilda I was asking for her?” I said this last one lightly and of course she replied that she would.

  “And Tom says hi,” she added. “The yard is looking wonderful. He’s done a wonderful job, even if he has been a little down in the dumps lately.”

  I wanted to think there was some subtle romantic subtext to what she said – that he was missing me – but maybe she was just talking about roses and herbs and him being a typical grumpy man.

  

  Chapter 47

  Beth

  If I was to say that I wasn’t hacked off to the bottom of my bottom that Aoife was staying in Derry I would be lying. I understood, of course I did, but the thought of holding the fort in sunny Richmond with only Heather for company was enough to drive me to drink.

  As I poured a glass of wine and sat down in our transformed yard at Instant Karma I thought about how much I was going to miss her.

  “Penny for them,” Tom said, sitting down beside me and sipping from the wine he had brought to celebrate finishing the garden. Dan had promised to join us later with a Chinese and a bottle of bubbly.

  “Nothing and everything,” I said, taking a drink and looking out over the lavender, jasmine and rosemary now gracing a raised flower-bed beside the iron steps.

  “This smells fabulous,” I said, nodding to the flowers.

  “It will be even better in the summer,” Tom said. “Hopefully Aoife will get some use out of it.”

  “I’m sure she will,” I smiled. “And I’m sure clients will love it too. It should generatesome work for you.”

  “Let’s hope; it’s been quiet lately,” Tom said, staring out across the yard.

  It seemed to me there was something on his mind but I wasn’t sure if I was the person who should be asking what that was. I didn’t really know him after all. We chatted each day when we met – mostly laughing over the fact I thought he was a mad stalker when we first met – but I wouldn’t say we really talked. Chat was very, very different to talking. I knew that more than most. I had kept my mouth shut for the past umpteen months and nearly driven myself mental in the process. All that time, I guess, I had been waiting for someone to read my mind (or my ovaries) and ask me what was wrong in a way that I knew I could trust them implicitly with my feelings and darkest secrets.

  “Penny for yours right back,” I said, sitting back against the railings and stretching my legs out in front of me. It might only have been early April, but there was a hint of warmth in the sun which felt glorious after the long, cold winter.

  “For my business? A penny would be a fair price,” Tom said miserably.

  “Is it that bad?” I said, trying to sound concerned but failing to hide the shock in my voice.

  He sighed. “Well, not really. It’s starting to pick up but I long for the day when work will walk in off the street and I can give up the damn floristry and concentrate entirely on gardens.”

  I smiled. “I didn’t think the floristry quite suited you.”

  “No, not my thing. It’s not very manly, is it? Every woman I meet seems to think I’m gay because of it.”

  “So you want to meet a woman then?” I said with a wink.

  Tom blushed and while I was very much a married woman who was exceptionally happy with the very gorgeous man she was married to, I couldn’t help but find Tom Austin – in that second – more than a little attractive.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I swore off women a while ago – in a completely non-homosexual way, of course. I was married,” he continued, “and it all ended horribly.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. If we had stayed together any longer than we did I’m pretty sure we would have killed each other. We wanted the same thing but it just wasn’t going to happen and we spent a lot of time resenting each other. In the end we broke it off as friends rather than keep going as partners and start hating each other. It was shit, but it was for the best in the long run.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated, wondering if he could actually in that moment read my thoughts. He jus
t smiled. “I know how you feel,” I said and took a deep gulp of my wine.

  “Oh, I doubt it,” Tom said. “I’m infertile. You’ve got to love the irony really. People think because I’m a florist I’m less of a man in some way – when it doesn’t even take working with flowers to emasculate me.”

  My heart started to thump and I tried to speak. I honestly tried to say something but the words wouldn’t come.

  “When we first had problems Kate said she still wanted me and we would work through it. We talked about adoption, even had assessments for fostering but in the end she had to be honest with herself. She wanted her own baby and she met someone who could give her that. I don’t blame her. I was angry, but I want someone to want me for me and not what I can or can’t give them.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said again, and Tom looked at me, realisation dawning as he heard my tone of voice. “We are trying, but it’s not happening. We’ve been trying for two years and we’ve had all the tests. There is nothing wrong. You’ve got to lovethat, nothing wrong – so where is our baby?”

  “I hear you,” Tom said and clinked his glass against mine.

  A bottle and a half of wine later, we had discussed the ins and outs of our lives, and had moved on to our hopes for the future.

  “And you are happier now then?” I asked him, wondering could it ever be possible to be happy knowing that you were never going to be a parent and that because of that very fact your other half didn’t want to know you any more.

  “In theory? Yes, I suppose. It gave me the impetus to move up here and set up in business but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the companionship I had with Kate, even if, by the end, most of the time I wanted to kill her.”

  “So you want companionship now?”

  He looked at me. “Beth, I know you and Elena are scheming to get Aoife and me together but who’s to say I wouldn’t make the same mistakes with her that I made with Kate? Except with Aoife it wouldn’t just be her, it would be Maggie too and that’s a big responsibility. That’s someone else’s child – I can’t hurt her if it goes wrong.”

  “But in theory you are interested in Aoife then?” I asked with a wicked glint in my eye, the wine making me giddy.

  “In theory. She is a nice girl. Slightly mad, very quirky, delicious accent,” he said – with his own wicked glint – before adding, “but only in theory and now that you and your mysterious womanly ways have made me confess all my sordid secrets, you’d better tell me what was on your mind after all.”

  *****

  When Dan arrived an hour later, Tom and I were drunkenly toasting our futures.

  “Baby,” I called out enthusiastically, “come and see the yarden! That’s what we are calling it. It’s a mixture between a garden and a yard. A yarden. Geddit?”

  “Your wife, sir, is a genius,” Tom said. “We’re going to start a new business. Yardens R Us.”

  I burst into uncontrollable giggles. “Will you be our mascot, honey?” I said, wobbling towards Dan and wrapping my arms around his neck. “We were thinking we could dress you up as a gnome or something.”

  “Are you drunk?” Dan asked, smiling broadly at me.

  “Only a little. We were celebrating the garden.”

  “Yarden!” Tom called out, adding, “I’m very sorry, Dan, for plying your wife with alcohol. I assure you my intentions are entirely honourable.”

  “Apart from the bit about wanting to sleep with Aoife,” I teased and he laughed.

  “You are a piece of work, Beth, you really are,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Dan, kissing the top of my head. “She really is a piece of work, and I love her to bits.”

  “Really?” I said, staring into his eyes.

  “Really,” he said back.

  “I think I’d better be off,” said Tom, kissing me on the cheek. “You can keep me some of the Chinese for tomorrow.”

  And then he left, and Dan and I christened the yarden and made love between thesensuous scented flowers and gently glowing candles.

  *****

  We slept in Aoife’s flat that night. After our outdoors session we came back in and ate our Chinese in her flat before I emptied the fridge, watered her plants and checked her answerphone. I wasn’t surprised to find Jake hadn’t called. He might have looked at Maggie as if she completed him, he might have promised both Dan and me that his intentions were honourable towards his daughter, but I knew he wouldn’t have called. He would never be the kind of man to be tied down to anyone or anything, even if thatanything was his own child. I sighed, and curled up beside Dan on the sofa. Yawning, my hangover starting to kick in, I snuggled to him and closed my eyes.

  “Can we just sleep here tonight?” I muttered sleepily.

  “’Course we can, darling,” he said, kissing my hair. “Anything you want.”

  ****

  The following morning, green with the after-effects of two bottles of Pinot Grigio, Dan and I walked up to Mrs Morelli’s for a cooked breakfast before we started work.

  “Beth, you look tired, my darling.” Mrs Morelli said, filling my coffee cup and feeling my head in the way a mother would to check the temperature of her sick child.

  “Over indulgence, Mrs Morelli. Too much wine and fattening food.”

  “Are you sure?” she smiled. “Have you something to tell me?” She rubbed her tummy and raised her eyebrow.

  I managed to keep my composure. Seems if you are a married woman of a certain age it’s fair game for people to assume you are up the duff at any given stage. I’d become used to it over the last two years. It always smarted a bit, but I’d realised that people didn’t mean to be insensitive and for the most part I could handle comments such as these.

  “No, afraid not, unless it’s a baby bottle of Pinot Grigio,” I smiled, as Dan reached for my hand under the table. I squeezed his hand back, in the universal sign language for “I’m okay, really”.

  As Mrs Morelli bustled away, clearly unconvinced by my hangover, I realised how lucky I was to have Dan sitting opposite me. Just a few weeks ago we had been at breaking point and now, even though we were no further forward, we seemed to have found each other again. I doubted the guilt about hitting him would leave me, not yet anyway, but with it came a deeper love for a man who could stand by me when I was being as horrid to him as I possibly could be.

  I was a very lucky lady indeed.

  *****

  By twelve noon I was on my third bottle of Lucozade and seriously considering sending Heather back down to Morelli’s for some bacon sarnies. The hangover did not seem to be abating at all, which made it all the more galling when Tom Austin walked in smiling and looking a picture of health.

  “How can you not be hungover?” I asked with a hint of disgust in my voice. “You didn’t even have the Chinese.”

  “What can I say? I’m a man, I can hold my drink. Constitution of an ox.”

  I smiled. “Don’t give me that, Mr Austin – you were like an old woman spilling her guts out after a couple of glasses of wine.”

  “Which is sort of why I’m here,” he said.

  I looked at him and the small hand-made sign he had made for our garden, advertising his business. “So you don’t want to talk about the ‘yarden’ then?” I teased.

  “Well yes, but Beth, if you could manage not to tell Aoife about those things I said last night I would really appreciate it,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Seriously, Beth. Okay, you know I’m interested in Aoife, but let me take this at my own pace, please?”

  I nodded again. “If you promise to at least send her a text or something.”

  He promised and I thought about the fact that, just ten minutes before, I had sent my best friend a text myself, letting her know the local gardener had taken a shine to her.

  Tom really should have called over earlier if he wanted to keep things under wraps.

  

  Chapter 48

  Aoife

  Tom
Austin liked me. In an official way. And Jake hadn’t phoned. Not even once. I sat on my mother’s eiderdown, staring at the fresh flowers I had arranged for her on the dresser and digested this information which had just arrived via text from Beth.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jake hadn’t called, and I wasn’t upset for me. But I felt for Maggie. She should have a daddy who loved her, just like my daddy loved me.

  And as for Tom, well, I didn’t know how to process that information. He was scared of getting hurt or hurting me, Beth said, but just a week ago he had told me he was not looking for love in any way, shape or form.

  I sighed. Was I interested in him? Of course I was. He was handsome, funny, tender – his gentle kisses on my cheek made me feel cherished. He listened to me, talked to me and he wasn’t afraid to push a pram. He was everything Jake Gibson wasn’t – everything I never thought I deserved. Jake had chipped away at my confidence. I could see that now. Even though I had thought he cared, even though he had jumped my bones at every given opportunity, he hadn’t cared at all. I realised that the night I had spoken to Anna about Billy. I had realised that when Tom had kissed me on the cheek, not expecting a blow job in return. Sighing I stood up and returned to my hoovering, If my mother was to come home in a day or two, I wanted her house to be as perfect as possible for her. Looking at the walls, seeing that they needed a lick of paint I decided to call past the DIY store and pick up a few new bits and pieces for her. Maybe it was time my mother saw just how great an interior designer I could be.

  ****

  I visited the hospital with some colour charts and a cheery Maggie – who despite being a source of shame to begin with – had taken a real shine to her granny. In turn Odhran had taken a real shine to his baby cousin and to all intents and purposes we looked like quite the happy family. There was even an uneasy calm between myself and Jacqueline, which Anna was struggling to come to terms with.