Hush Hush (20 page)

From Conor, this was a soliloquy.
She wavered.

‘Gimme a kiss,’
murmured Conor, transferring the grass stem to her ear-lobe.

‘What, here? In the church
car-park?’

‘More privacy than at my
place.’ Or yours, he could’ve added, haunted by the
spirit of St Robert. Uncharitable! He winced.

‘I don’t know.’

He kissed her. It was gentle,
exploratory stuff. Angela risked opening her eyes to make sure that
Conor’s were shut, his red-gold lashes perfect crescents
against his cheeks. One arm held her elbow lightly, for support. His
free hand tickled her hem-line and crept under it, but almost as a
courtesy to her femininity, describing fond little arcs on her thigh
as if she was a great big strokable kitten.

He unclasped her and brushed her
nose with his sandpapery chin.
‘
Do
you think,’ he murmured, resting his chin on top of her head,
‘
that a kid is
always better off with two parents, whatever the circumstances?’

Angela held her breath.
‘
What
circumstances?’

‘You know, if there’s
a legacy of a troubled marriage. Is it right to foist a nuclear
family on the kid again if he’s got used to the single-parent
set-up?’

‘Conor, I’m the last
judge of that sort of thing. But ‒ if the couple can make a go
of it, why not? Everyone wins.’

He jumped up and pulled her with
him. He smiled into her flushed face, his green eyes deepening
against the paler, winter-shrunk green of the grass around them.

Angela
suppressed an inward thrill. He was sounding her out about becoming a
family with Shane. His lack of subtlety was touching in its
transparency.

‘
Shane,’
Conor began, as they cruised onto the motorway,
‘w
ould
you mind if I went off for a weekend with Angela? I thought you could
stay at Matty’s.’

‘I’m hardly in a
position to refuse anything, seeing as I’m in the dog-house.’

‘Ach well, I’d still
like your blessing. I’m old-fashioned that way.’

A ghost of a smile lit Shane’s
face.
‘
As long as I
don’t have to be Crispin the frigging page-boy at a shotgun
wedding a few months later.’

Conor laughed, his rumbling bear
laugh that made Shane smile, whatever his underlying mood. He looked
down and
fiddled with the CD
player
, so Conor wouldn’t see it.

Conor gripped the steering wheel.
‘
I understand Mum’s
talked to you about the possibility she might return to England.’

‘Yeah,’ said Shane
casually, bony knuckles tightening.

‘Her suggestion is, we
divide the house into two flats, her living on one floor and me on
another, you moving freely between both. That would seem preferable
to her living nearby, and me farming you out for visits.’

‘A pass-the-parcel kind of
thing?’ muttered Shane.
‘
Yeah, sounds
well
rubbish
all right.’

‘So you’d go for the
house-sharing plan?’ sighed Conor.
‘
She
told me she’d sounded you out, and you were interested.’

Shane stared hard at him.
‘
D’you
still love her or what?’

Conor
changed lanes too abruptly. The car behind flashed its lights.
‘
Or
what,’ he chose in a flat voice.

Sadie was warming her slippered feet against the
lower bar of her fire. She accepted a cup of tea from Angela.
‘
You
look radiant, if I may say so.’

‘Oh.’ Angela put a
hand to pink cheeks.
‘
All
that fresh air.’

Sadie slurped her tea.
‘
The
kid wasn’t so bad. I was expecting Darren from
The Omen
.’

‘Damien, Ma.’

‘Whatever. Needs a good
dose of mothering. Shame you’re not the maternal type, but
effort can make up for natural inability.’

Angela stiffened.
‘
Thank
you, mother.’

‘Oh, don’t get me
wrong. You’re getting on with life. Conor McGinlay came looking
for you, remember, and you went out with him to try it for size.
There’s no disgrace in moving on, with your memories of the
dead fond and intact.’

‘So would you be looking
for another man if you were ‒ um
‒
younger?’

‘No,’ sniffed Sadie.
‘
But we’re
discussing you. I enjoy being on my own. You don’t.’

‘Talking of you being
alone,’ said Angela swiftly,
‘
what
about
getting you this mobile
phone
? Don’t look like that, Mum! I don’t want
anything happening to you. And come to think of it, shouldn’t
we be getting you a walking stick?’

Sadie gnashed her dentures.
‘
I
told you, I’m not ready for the bath chair and ear trumpet yet.
When’s your next date with Conor?’

‘He’s
ringing me,’ said Angela, sounding casual.

‘Just tell her you and
I
are going
off for the weekend,’ suggested Rachel, dunking a chocolate
finger in her tea.

She could do this elegantly. Bits
of biscuit never broke off and sank without trace.

Angela enjoyed a visit to
Rachel’s flat. Its elegant simplicity reeked of well-spent
money, much like Rachel herself. Angela had recovered from her
frisson of jealousy at the mini-market. Rachel, she now accepted, had
gone out of her way to be nice to Conor. Nothing more.

‘I’d rather be
straight with Mum than act as if I’ve something shameful to
hide,’ declared Angela boldly.

‘Not worth it with Catholic
parents,’ said Rachel briskly.
‘
It’s
like trying to explain electricity to a caveman. It’s much
kinder to collude in their blissful state of ignorance. My mother
still thinks I go on platonic dates with my
“
nice
young men
”
, kissing
goodbye on the doorstep after a night at the pictures. At
thirty-seven! I’m sure she doesn’t really think that, but
as long as no one forces her to confront the unpalatable truth, she’s
quite happy.’

‘But Ma’s a paid-up
member of the KGB,’ grumbled Angela.
‘
In
six months’ time, she’d pounce on one of us and ask some
apparently innocuous question about our weekend in Ireland. Then
she’d pounce on the other one, separately, ask the same
question, and compare data. Besides, as two thirty-something women,
it’s high time we stopped indulging her prejudices.’

‘OK,’ said Rachel.
‘
Come clean with
her. Tell her you’re off to trip the light fantastic with C
McGinlay Esquire, recently unwedded bachelor of the parish.’

Angela hesitated, then snatched
another chocolate finger.
‘
I’ll
think about it.’

Her mobile phone went off as the Tube emerged from
subterranean gloom and travelled above ground en route to the
airport.

Angela took a while to register
that her
Ode to Joy
ringtone (which had seemed like a safe bet
from the list of available options) was emanating from the front
pocket on her holdall, where she’d packed her pants.

She’d shoved everything in
the holdall, even her slimline shoulder bag, consigning ticket and
loose change to her coat pocket. The tap-dancing frogs bag, so very
‘her’, according to Conor, had been left at home. As a
coming-of-age gift, it now struck her as suitably silly and girlish
on its day, because she’d been a silly, girlish
twenty-one-year-old. She hoped that girl wasn’t the ‘very
you’ pinpointed by Conor.

‘Botheration!’ she
muttered now, hastily unzipping the holdall’s front pocket
before she missed the call. Overstuffed with grey-gussetted smalls,
her one and only thong leapt out on a rising crescendo of Joyfulness
and onto the shoe of an Outraged of Tunbridge Wells type, who lowered
his
Daily Telegraph
and blinked in alarm at what appeared to
be a dead, exotic jellyfish tentacled to his toe-cap.

‘Sorry!’ Angela
pounced on the strip of shocking-pink satin that now matched her
complexion.

Ye gods! The thong had been a
‘joke’ anniversary present from Rachel seven years ago.
Languishing ever since under balled socks and scattered hairgrips in
a bedroom drawer, it had taken advantage of its only outing to make
its debut in the Friday evening rush-hour.

She had managed to unsnag the
phone – complete with warbling choir invisible – from
some knicker elastic, bend down to scoop up her thong and press
‘answer’ on the Nokia’s fascia, when the ringing
abruptly stopped.

Typical! She flicked to ‘recent
calls’. Sadie!

Why was Sadie ringing her?

Instantly and predictably, she
was gripped by panic.

In
the end, Sadie had acquiesced to the idea of a mobile phone. ‘Your
mum’s well able to handle a bit of newfangled technology,’
Rachel had reasoned. ‘And you can enter all the essential
numbers into
“
Contacts
”,
then just tell her where to find the list. Simples.’

Well, yes and no.

She highlighted Sadie’s own
number and returned the call.

It was answered on the fourth
ring. ‘Hello, this is Sadie Carbery speaking,’ Sadie
enunciated crisply.

Relief swept through Angela.
‘Mum, you all right?’

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t
I be?’

‘Well, you tell me, seeing
as you called me.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yeah, just now.’

‘Oh – must have been
when I put the washing bowl down on the thing. Must have set it off.’
Sadie made her phone sound like a temperamental burglar alarm.

‘Well, you know, be careful
with it, Mum. And keep it with you at all times. Bring it to bed with
you.’

‘I dread to think what it
must be costing you, Ange.’

‘It’s OK, I told you,
it’s pay as you go. You only pay for what you use,’ she
added, knowing Sadie would grasp that concept more easily. ‘A
tenner every so often is hardly going to break my bank, and means you
don’t have to rely on the landline
‒
hang on.’ She’d become aware of a worrying development.

The Tube train had halted and was
now sliding backwards, rapidly, into the tunnel from which it had
emerged. ‘Mum, I’ll probably lose the signal in a minute,
so I’ll try and ring when I get back fro
…
botheration!’

As she did lose the signal, a
voice crackled over the Tannoy, announcing that, due to a ‘fault’,
the train would return to and terminate at Hyde Park Corner.

Hyde bloody Park Corner! Angela
glanced at her watch. She’d miss the plane!

She’d better ring Conor,
who’d be waiting at the airport – damn it, no signal!

Everyone
else seemed positively Zen
about this interruption to their
intended journey, except for apoplectically inclined Outraged of
Tunbridge Wells – and the source of his concern appeared to
still be the scandalously pink thong, which was, she noticed, still
clutched in her hand.

She stuffed it quickly back into
her holdall, regretting its last-minute inclusion for Dutch courage.
‘After all,’ she silently addressed Outraged, ‘I
know Conor’s booked a double room at the hotel in Wexford. I
told him to go right ahead. Not that sex was mentioned, you
understand; I said – get this – that it made sense
economically! This pink thong sums me up, really, all gesture and no
action. Pretending I’m a woman with racy underwear to call on,
when I’m a woman afraid to have sex with him in case I’m
useless at it, and equally afraid to deny him in case he gets bored
and moves on.’

Outraged, luckily, finally
returned to his paper to check how much his house was worth, so
Angela could return to the problem at hand.

She was going in the wrong
direction and her flight left in less than two hours.

To make matters worse, the Tube
train continued its crawlathon without stopping, holding its
passengers prisoner all the way.

At Hyde Park Corner, they were
turfed off and advised to stay on the platform to wait for further
announcements.

Angela paced and chafed,
considering her limited options.

She could hail a cab – too
pricey and it was the rush-hour.

Bus? She was hazy about London
bus routes.

When the message board flashed up
a Heathrow train in 10 minutes’ time, she decided her best bet
was to board it.

But by the time she’d
rolled above ground again, the plane looked a lost cause. She managed
to pull out her phone without detonating the coiled spring of smalls,
and called Conor. He was going to kill her. In fact, he was probably
going to leave without her.

He’d left her two messages.
The first one: ‘Where are you?’ Nervous laughter.
‘Changed your mind about coming?’

She hesitated before listening to
the second message: this was probably the one where nervous laughter
had turned to deep annoyance.

‘Ange,’ he said, ‘I
don’t know if you’re still coming, but just so ye know,
flight’s been delayed by two hours. So there’s still time
to change your mind back again.’ Pause. ‘If applicable.
See you shortly. Or not, as the case may be.’

She frowned. He was certainly
hedging his bets.

Reaching terminal one, she pelted
along the moving walkways as fast as she could, dragging her holdall
like a dead weight (who knew a few optimistically selected glad rags
could weigh so much?), bursting into ‘departures’
dishevelled and wild-eyed.

She
saw him by Costa Coffee. He looked up at the same moment, his
expression hard to read, but he covered the ground in a few strides
to wrestle the holdall strap from her shoulder. ‘Right. So. You
made it. Thunderbirds are go, as Shane would say. Right then. Good.’
And his face cracked slowly into it heart-tilting smile.