Happy Ever After (2 page)

The lights turned green, and the traffic moved a couple of yards before stopping again. He glanced in the mirror, approving of the way his tan made his eyes look a deeper shade of brown. He was a good-looking guy, he had to admit, and he turned this way and that, noting with dismay that he was beginning to get lines at the corners of his eyes. Hell, before he knew it he’d be thirty and Debbie would want children, and his life would be well and truly over. It was a daunting thought. Did other new husbands think like he did, or was it just him? He’d never been one for taking on responsibilities; it made him feel smothered. He would have quite happily lived with Debbie for the rest of his life with no marriage and no kids. Just the two of them, enjoying their freedom and having fun.

Debbie would be well into the city on the Dart by now, even though he’d left much earlier than she had. Bryan wondered how she would react if he told her he’d like to quit his job and open up an art gallery. Not too well, he figured as he surfed the radio channels, coming to Lyric FM. The strains of ‘Lara’s Theme’ from
Doctor Zhivago
floated across the airwaves, and he sat imagining how his art gallery would look until an impatient beep from the car behind brought him back to reality and he inched another few yards towards work.

Oh God, let me win the Lotto
, Connie Adams prayed silently as she knelt at the feet of Miss Eunice Bracken and eased a pair of tights over her spindle-thin, purple, varicose-veined legs.

‘Make sure they’re straight, Nurse. I don’t like wrinkles around the ankles. I’m not Nora Batty,’ Miss Bracken instructed bossily. She was an ex-headmistress, and she treated the staff in Willowfield Nursing Home like schoolgirls. Connie manoeuvred the tights up over Miss Bracken’s girdle and straightened the nylon slip down over her patient’s knees. She then slithered another nylon slip down over the old lady’s shoulders. Miss Bracken liked to wear two slips to keep out the cold, despite the fact that it was mid-summer.

‘My beige skirt, cream blouse and mint-green cardigan are hanging up in the wardrobe. I’ll wear them today.’ Eunice gave an imperious wave in that direction. ‘Lay them out neatly on the bed first.’

‘
Yes, Miss Bracken, no, Miss Bracken. Three bags full, Miss Bracken
,’ Connie thought irritably as she stood up and went to fetch the required clothes. What the hell was she doing being bossed around by a cantankerous old shrew at this stage of her life? Forty-eight years of age, twenty-nine of them a nurse, divorced mother of a newly wed twenty-five-year-old. Surely she was entitled to
some
respect?

‘And pass me over my amethyst brooch – it’s on the dressing table,’ came the next haughty instruction. Clearly, her patient thought she was there to wait on her hand and foot.

‘Certainly, Miss Bracken,’ Connie responded, amused in spite of herself. There was no point in going down the road of standing on her dignity. She had nursed the old trout before and knew the best way to deal with her was to ignore her bossiness and not let her get a rise out of her.

A box of Terry’s All Gold chocolates lay open beside the antique brooch, and Connie gazed at them longingly. She was dying for her tea break. She had her period, and salt and chocolate cravings had kicked in. She’d bought herself a packet of King crisps for her break; a chocolate would be lovely with them. But she knew better than to nick one. Miss Bracken was notoriously mean. She counted her chocolates daily, and woe betide the staff if any of them were eaten.

‘Stop dawdling, Nurse,’ Miss Bracken ordered brusquely, and Connie had to fight hard to restrain herself from giving a sharp retort. She didn’t know if it was a menopausal thing or not, but lately she was feeling thoroughly grumpy and exasperated, going so far, one Sunday morning, as to send in a furious email to a panellist on a radio show who had made light of the overcrowding problems in A&Es. It hadn’t been read out, and she hadn’t known whether to be amused or irritated by her behaviour. Miss Eunice Bracken was pushing her luck, if only she knew it. Connie’s patience was hanging by a thread. Thank God her days doing agency nursing were coming to an end for the foreseeable future. She was looking forward to her new job as a part-time nurse to an elderly lady in Greystones, not far from where she lived. And, before that, she had a week in Spain with her sister-in-law, Karen, to look forward to. It was badly needed; she felt whacked.

The stress of her daughter Debbie’s wedding had taken a lot out of her, more than she realized, she thought, stifling a yawn and sliding Miss Bracken’s beige skirt over her head. ‘Would you be careful what you’re doing, you’ve messed my hair,’ the elderly woman scolded, as her head emerged, hair slightly mussed, glasses awry, as Connie pulled the elastic-waisted skirt down over her thin frame. Miss Bracken suffered from arthritic hips and bad knees and couldn’t lift her right leg to step into a skirt.

‘Sorry,’ Connie apologized. ‘I’ll brush your hair for you when you’ve finished dressing.’

‘You needn’t bother. I can do it myself, thank you,’ Eunice Bracken snapped irritably as a dart of pain shot through her. ‘Get me my tablets, and be quick about it. I’m tormented with my arthritis today.’

‘It must be the rain we’ve had the past few days,’ Connie said kindly, suddenly feeling sorry for the old lady in front of her. What sort of a life did she have? An intensely proud and independent woman like her, having to be helped to get dressed – it must be humiliating – and then she had to contend with a life of chronic and disabling pain. No wonder the poor thing was crabby.

She handed the tablets and a glass of water to her patient and then resumed dressing her, closing the buttons on her blouse, a task Miss Bracken was unable to undertake because of her arthritic fingers.

‘You’re not the worst of them,’ her patient said grudgingly when Connie had finished her ministrations.

‘Thank you, Miss Bracken.’ Connie smiled, knowing she’d been paid quite a substantial compliment. ‘Let me walk you down to the day room and get you a nice cup of tea.’ She took the elderly lady’s arm, and they walked slowly from the room, down the hall, to a bright, airy, comfortable drawing room that looked out on to verdant lawns and massed beds of shrubs and flowers.

‘The chair by the window, quick now, before Mr McCall comes. He hogs it, you know. You’d think he owned it, the way he goes on,’ Miss Bracken declared, managing a little spurt as she triumphantly laid claim to the comfortable armchair. ‘Now you may get me my tea, and my
Irish Times
,’ she instructed, settling in comfortably and gazing with longing at the lovely garden. She’d been an avid gardener once, but her arthritis had put a stop to that. Now, all she could do was look and criticize the planting strategy of the lazy lump who looked after the gardens but was more often to be seen smoking and chatting to anyone who would listen to him. He could do with a haircut too. ‘That fellow looks like Worzel Gummidge,’ she sniffed when Connie handed her the newspaper, and couldn’t understand why she guffawed.

‘I’m glad I amused you,’ Miss Bracken said dryly.

‘If you didn’t have a sense of humour in this job, you’d be in trouble, believe me.’ Connie couldn’t keep the faint edge out of her voice.

‘Indeed,’ Miss Bracken agreed. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ Their eyes met, and there was the tiniest hint of a twinkle lurking in Eunice’s. It was a triumph of sorts, Connie felt as she made her way to the staff dining room to have the much-longed-for cuppa and crisps.

Connie was bone weary when she finally got home. Her eyes were gritty with tiredness, and her lower back ached, a dull, nagging pain which always accompanied her period. The early shift was a killer, but at least she had a long afternoon to herself. She was greeted lovingly by her little black cat, Miss Hope. ‘Hello, my little pet.’ Connie scooped her up and buried her nose in her soft, silky black fur. ‘Let’s have a bite to eat and a snooze,’ she murmured, heading for the kitchen.

Working weekends as well as weekdays really took it out of you, she reflected as she boiled the kettle, buttered a slice of brown bread and cut a wedge of red cheddar. She was trying to get her finances back on track after the expense of the wedding and her cash gift to Debbie and Bryan. And she didn’t want to be scrimping and saving on her trip to Spain.

Once, working seven days straight had been no problem to her, but her energy levels weren’t as good as they used to be, hard as it was to accept it. ‘Ah, stop acting like an ould wan, you’re in your prime,’ she muttered, dipping her teabag up and down in her mug. ‘Even if you are talking to yourself and sending off ratty emails.’ She grinned.

She headed out to the deck with the mug of much-needed tea and sat down gratefully at the table, kicking off her shoes. Her mobile rang, and she frowned. Was ten minutes’ peace too much to ask, she wondered crossly as she took it out of her pocket. She was surprised to see her ex-husband’s phone number come up.

What did he want? The wedding was over, and she wasn’t too anxious to be in constant contact with Barry. She didn’t want to be reminded of their night of passion. She didn’t exactly regret it, but it was a one-off, and he didn’t seem to realize that. Both of them had been shattered after Debbie’s showdown with him about her feelings towards him. Connie had been very shocked that she’d not realized how deep Debbie’s hurt went. Their kiss of comfort had turned into much more than a kiss, but it was emphatically
not
going to happen again.

‘Yes, Barry,’ she said briskly, wishing the sun would come out from behind a bank of cloud which was casting shadows over her back garden.

‘Hi Connie,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How are things?’

‘Things are good. Off to Spain next week with Karen. I’m looking forward to it.’ She kept her tone light, offhand almost. Barry seemed to think that, because they’d had a quick shag, in a moment of weakness for her, prior to the wedding, he was now her best friend and confidant. It was an assumption Connie was eager to dispel.

‘Yeah, so I heard. I bumped into her the other day. My sister told me she plans to sleep, eat, drink and read. Sounds deadly boring to me.’

‘Sounds perfect to me,’ Connie riposted.

‘If that’s what you want, enjoy it. You deserve it, that’s for sure.’

‘Thanks,’ she murmured. Barry had just made her forthcoming holiday sound dull and dreary.

‘Listen, I hope you don’t think I’m being pushy, but I’d really like to build on the momentum of the progress myself, Debbie and Melissa made coming up to the wedding. I don’t want to let things drift.’

‘Sure, I understand,’ Connie agreed with a hint of warmth. She’d been so happy that Debbie and her father had finally, after years of bitterness, reconciled, and it had given her great joy to see the two half-sisters take those first faltering steps towards real sisterhood.

‘I was thinking it would be nice if we could get together for a coffee or a brunch or something but . . . er . . . I know you and Debbie and Aimee aren’t exactly hitting it off, so that would be awkward. And I don’t want Melissa picking up on it. She’s very loyal to her mother, so I was wondering if we could sort of “bump” into you?’

‘That would be nice, Barry,’ Connie approved, ashamed of her earlier irritability at his call. Barry had become a good father over the years, she’d give him that. Her ex-husband was right: these new, unprecedented relationships should be nurtured. It was just such a nuisance that Aimee and her bad behaviour was now the cause of awkwardness and had to be pussyfooted around. Until the wedding, Connie had got on reasonably well with Barry’s second wife, but after Aimee’s strop outside the church, when she’d complained about the cost and said that it was
her
hard-earned money that was paying for it, relations were at an all-time low.

‘Melissa and I often go for coffee and a Danish on Saturday mornings. How about if we go to one of the outdoor cafés along the Pavilion, and you and Debbie casually wander by? Or is that too obvious?’ Barry asked.

‘Um . . . I could ask Debbie to meet me in Meadows and Byrne – I could let on I was thinking of changing my sofa or something and would like her advice,’ suggested Connie helpfully.

‘Would you, Connie? That would be great,’ Barry said enthusiastically, and she had to smile. Barry was so naive really. He thought all the past hurts could be made better in an instant. He wanted them all to be one big, happy family.

Maybe he was right to be like that, she sighed. Maybe it
was
that easy to let go. She wouldn’t stand in the way of it. ‘I’ll give Debbie a buzz and try and sort things,’ she assured him. ‘See you.’

‘Thanks, Connie, really appreciate it.’

‘You’re welcome, Barry,’ she said and hung up. She supposed she should be glad he was making the effort. God knows it had taken him and Debbie long enough to sort their differences. She’d do what she could to foster good relations between father and daughter. And, besides, she’d grown fond of Melissa, having eventually got through that prickly teenage façade. It was important that Debbie and Melissa developed their friendship. A close relationship with a sister was more precious than gold. Connie would have loved a sister. She hated being an only child. In days to come it would be good to know the two girls would have each other to lean on. Connie gave a wry smile. There she was again, trying to sort everybody out. Some things never changed. Once Debbie and Melissa were on track she was giving it up, she decided as she gave up on the sun and went inside and lay down on her sofa. She had her own life to lead. She was asleep in minutes.

‘Excellent game, Barry, most enjoyable. And I’m delighted we’ll be able to do business. A quarterly publication advertising our wine selections, gift hampers and special offers will undoubtedly increase sales and consumer awareness. Your package was competitive and high quality – my sales people were impressed, and so was I. We’ll let our people work out the finer details.’ Desmond Donnelly shook Barry’s hand before taking his leave.

Barry watched him stride out of the clubhouse and gave a deep sigh of relief. His stomach had been in a knot all morning, wondering if he was going to get the deal. With recession in the air, belts would undoubtedly be tightened, and contracts could be lost if companies felt that glossy publications were a luxury they could no longer afford.