Finishing Touches (28 page)

She spent the entire weekend fantasizing about him, so the following Wednesday when he arrived downstairs to where she was filing her loathed pink forms, she practically fell into his arms. They
kissed hungrily in the dusty dim room, touching and caressing each other in a frenzy of desire.

‘I want you now,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘I want to make love to you standing, sitting, kneeling, lying. I thought about it the whole weekend. It’s all I can think about.
Aileen, you’re driving me crazy. If I don’t get rid of this,’ he pressed hard against her, ‘I’m going to explode.’ Leaning against a filing cabinet with his body
thrusting against her, Aileen thought she was going to explode herself. Unbuckling his trouser-belt she arched her leg around his hip and drew him to her. Today she was wearing ivory French
knickers and a matching camisole top and silk stockings and suspenders. Like the boy scouts, she had come prepared!

It was the most satisfying lovemaking of Aileen’s entire life. Hungry for each other, they writhed wildly between the filing cabinets in the windowless basement that was the filing-room.
Moaning and groaning, panting with desire, Aileen couldn’t have cared less if the City Manager himself had stood in the doorway watching them. Not that there was much likelihood of that.
No-one ever ventured into the filing-room of their own free will. Aileen was the only person who had to work there. She doubted if her boss even knew how to find the place.

‘That was something else!’ Liam gave her a great bearhug as their breathing returned to normal and they stood clinging to each other. ‘Come on. We’re getting out of here.
You go and say you’re taking the day off sick or something and follow me out to the Killiney Court Hotel.’

Aileen stared at him. ‘Now?’

‘Now!’ he ordered, laughing.

He could have told her to follow him to the moon and she would have gone. She had just sampled paradise and she wanted more.

They parted at the top of the stairs, he to get his car in the car-park, she to visit the ladies’ room. Down the hall in the kitchen she could hear Mrs Hardy and Kevin arguing the toss
about how much he was behind in his kitty payments. Mr Alden would be down for his elevenses soon and she wanted to be gone by then. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her hair was tumbling
over her shoulders in glorious disarray; Liam had buried his face in it to stifle his groans. Her eyes were sparkling with pleasure, cheeks flushed with passion. The healthiest-looking specimen she
had ever seen! Tidying herself up and composing herself as best she could, she marched down the hall to Mr Alden’s office and knocked on the door. Her boss was sitting shuffling papers around
the desk, listening to Gay Byrne on his little transistor. Of course,
she
wasn’t allowed to have a radio in her office!

‘I’m going home sick. I don’t feel well,’ Aileen announced.

‘Aah!’ said Mr Alden, who didn’t like to be bothered with such things. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to resume duty tomorrow?’

‘I don’t know,’ Aileen said truthfully. If Liam did half the things he planned to do, she mightn’t be able to walk tomorrow. The thought of it sent a hot spurt of
pleasure coursing through her veins. ‘I’ll ring in,’ she said hastily, anxious to be gone.

‘Well, leave a sick note and send in a doctor’s certificate if you’re out longer than two days!’

Typical, thought Aileen, closing the door none too gently after her. You could be dying on the spot and all they’d care about would be their blooming sick notes and certs. She had a good
mind to take a week off. God knows she deserved it. Mr Alden sat on his arse from Monday to Friday doing next to nothing while she was swamped with work. Well, today she was going to forget such an
entity as Mr James Alden existed. Not stopping to chat, she told Mrs Hardy she was going home sick. ‘You know yourself,’ she whispered.

‘You should take a glass of brandy for them period pains. It could be your Ethiopian tubes. That’s what was wrong with me!’

Not wishing to get into a discussion about Mrs Hardy’s Fallopian tubes, Aileen just nodded and flew out the door. She drove to Killiney where Liam was waiting in the foyer of the Killiney
Court Hotel.

They spent the rest of the day in bed!

Restlessly Aileen got up from her lounger. ‘I’m going for a swim,’ she told Cassie and Laura, who seemed engrossed in their books. If Liam were here now, she knew they’d
be making love. But it wasn’t enough any longer. She was fed up waiting for the phone to ring, fed up with plans being suddenly broken because Monica, his menopausal wife, wanted to visit her
parents, or go shopping, or was having friends over and he just couldn’t get out of it. She was fed up going to hotels or making the most of the occasional night when Laura and Cassie would
not be staying in the flat. She was fed up being accommodating and having to make sacrifices. She had even given up her drama nights on many occasions when Liam was free to see her. Most of all she
was fed up waking up alone. Not once in their relationship had Liam been able to spend a whole night with her. Surely if he loved her as much as he said he did he would want to leave his wife and
live with her, especially if Monica were the pain he made her out to be. His children were practically grown up. They’d be doing their own thing soon enough and Monica would be free to watch
Dallas
and
Dynasty
and
Knots Landing
and
Coronation Street
to her heart’s content.

They couldn’t go on like this. He
must
want to change things. The thing that frightened Aileen was that she wasn’t sure if he wanted to change things or not. From his point
of view he had the best of both worlds: her to make him feel young and good about himself and a wife to look after him. Diving into the surging surf, Aileen promised herself that things were going
to change when she got back from her holidays. Liam was going to have to make a choice!

Reluctantly Laura closed the covers of her book. She hated coming to the end of a novel that she was really enjoying and Brian Cleeve’s
Cry of Morning
was an
engrossing read. It was a real page-turner about life in Dublin in the boom times of the Sixties and she was sorry to finish it. Beside her, Cassie was up to her ears in
Valley of the
Dolls
, while Aileen had gone for a swim. Maybe she’d go for one herself in a minute.

The warm breeze rippled across her tanned body. Even though it was very hot, there was always a lovely island breeze to help cool you down. Laura was really glad they had come to Greece. She had
been a bit worried when Aileen was talking about going to Egypt. She’d never have been able to afford that. This holiday was her treat to herself for the last two years of slogging and, God,
she had slogged her guts out. But it had paid off. Laura smiled broadly. She had done really well in her exams, second class honours, grade one. Only Ted Nolan had done better than her. Maybe if
she didn’t have to work part-time and could have spent more time studying, she would have done better. But it couldn’t be helped. She had to work to supplement her grant, unlike Ted,
whose father was a gynaecologist and who was absolutely rolling in money. Well, her finals were coming up next year and she was aiming for a first.

It would be tough going from now on. Financially as well as academically. She wouldn’t be able to go and work in the States next summer. That time would be spent studying for her autumn
finals. That was why she had worked from dawn until dusk this year in America. It had been one hell of a summer and she had come back home worn out but happy with the amount she had earned. With
careful budgeting she’d manage fine. This holiday was a godsend though. It was great to forget about studying and working. And it was such a treat to eat out and for her to be waited on for a
change. Waiting on tables was no easy job, especially in America. People there wanted service – and fast. She had been run off her feet. Fortunately she was used to waiting tables in her
waitressing job at Capri, the Italian restaurant she worked in at home, although the pace wasn’t as hectic as it had been at Jacques, the seafood restaurant where she worked on Nantucket
Island. That had been an experience and a half! Exhausting wasn’t the word for it. Nantucket was a lovely place, though. She was glad not to have spent another season in New York. The
humidity in August in New York had almost killed her the first year. At least there was a sea breeze in Nantucket. She had been lucky to get the job.

She was waitressing in Boston when a girl she knew from college had bumped into her one day and told her that her brother-in-law had opened a new restaurant in Nantucket and was looking for
waitressing staff. Laura jumped at the opportunity. She had heard so much about the beauty of Nantucket Island, situated twenty miles south of the southeast tip of Cape Cod. Shaped like a pork
chop, it was only fifteen miles long and two and a half miles wide. All she’d need was a bike to explore it.

She had taken the bus from Boston and the steamship from Hyannis Port and found herself in a whole new world.

Jacques was divided into two sections, a very exclusive restaurant where gourmet food was the order of the day and the clients wore only designer label clothes, and downstairs where Laura
worked, which was less expensive, more informal and more family-orientated. The food was fabulous and Philip, the owner, made sure his staff ate well, because they sure as hell had to work hard.
Laura had never tasted anything to equal the chowder and the succulent Nantucket Bay scallops.

Despite working from early morning until after midnight, Laura managed to explore the whole island during her time off. There were no buses and everybody cycled around on those cute old bikes
with the baskets on the front. For some reason, they always reminded Laura of Katharine Hepburn. The island was a cyclist’s dream with special bike paths and she particularly liked the Cliff
Road and Hummock Pond Road. The names fascinated her, especially the street-names in the town: Easy Street, India Street, New Whale Street. Quince Street with its quaint old houses was her
favourite. Exploring the town itself had been a pleasure.

Nantucket was once a great whaling port and thriving commercial centre. Retired whalers had built fine mansions that retained their elegance. She had visited the Whaling Museum, the Jethro
Coffin house, the oldest house on the island, built in 1686, and the old mill dating from 1746. It was all fascinating and Laura promised herself that some day when she had money she was going to
come back as a tourist, with nothing else to do but explore this lush, beautiful island with its long sandy beaches and low undulating hills, carpeted with heather and blueberry bushes and
flowering plants.

All in all it had been a pretty good summer, she decided, sitting up and looking at Aileen swimming up and down. She had worked damn hard and saved a lot of money, but she had really enjoyed
Nantucket and was relishing her holidays. It was just like old times with the girls, before they had started their romances. Laura sometimes envied Aileen and Cassie their carefree existence. They
had their jobs and secure salaries while she had a further year of study and she wasn’t even sure of getting a job then. It would be nice to have a boyfriend, too. Sometimes she felt a little
lonely when she heard them making plans, but although she had been asked out many times by guys at college and clients from the restaurant where she worked, Laura knew that nothing must stop her
from achieving a first. She had done well in her exams this year; she must do better at her finals. After that she could have all the romances she wanted.

Standing up, she smiled at Cassie, ‘Come on, let’s dunk Aileen for the crack.’

‘You’re on!’ grinned her friend, laying aside her book. Laughing, they ran down the beach and dived into the sea after their shrieking flatmate.

‘Where will we go tonight?’ Cassie asked as she concentrated on trying to get the varnish on her toenails and not on her toes. She was sitting on the balcony with
Laura and Aileen, wrapped in a fluffy white bath-towel. They had all had showers and were beautifying themselves for their night on the town. It had become a ritual they enjoyed, relaxing after
their showers rubbing lashings of moisturizer on their tanned bodies as they chatted and laughed about the day’s events. Then when they were dressed, they would sip a cool drink and watch the
sun sinking into the Aegean, a spectacular sight that never failed to delight them.

‘I think we should go to Vasileo’s,’ Aileen said, as she twirled around in front of the mirror to inspect her tan.

‘Fine,’ agreed Laura, who was, as usual, the first to be dressed. ‘Is that OK with you, Cassie?’

‘Sure, the food there is scrumptious.’

‘So are the waiters,’ giggled Aileen, remembering the flirtation she had carried on with a gorgeous brown-eyed hunk a few evenings previously.

‘Aileen O’Shaughnessy, you behave yourself tonight,’ warned Cassie with mock severity.

‘Huh! Do you hear who’s talking?’ Aileen sniffed indignantly as she covered herself from head to toe in Johnson’s Baby Lotion. ‘You and Stavros weren’t doing
too badly. Wait until I get home and tell Robbie all about it.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Cassie exclaimed in horror. Robbie wouldn’t like it to think she had been flirting with another man.

‘That’s changed your tune, miss,’ laughed Aileen. ‘Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.’

Cassie gave a sheepish grin. ‘It’s just that Robbie’s special.’

‘Do you hear that, Laura?’ Aileen arched an eyebrow. ‘Robbie’s special. We’d never have guessed, would we?’

‘Oh never!’ grinned Laura, pouring out their drinks. ‘You’d never think that for a minute.’

‘Funeee!’ Cassie waved her fingers in the air to dry her nails.

Aileen flopped into the chair beside Cassie, eyes glinting mischievously. ‘Are we talking about walking-up-the-aisle special?’

In spite of herself, Cassie blushed scarlet.

Aileen sat bolt upright. ‘Laura, did you see that? Look at her! Cassie Jordan, what’s going on here? There’s more to this than meets the eye, or I’ll eat my
hat.’