The Matchmaker (22 page)

Sarah added a last coat of mascara to her eyelashes. Combined with the silver-grey powder and the slightly mauve-tinted eye-shadow she’d found at the bottom of her make-up box she had managed to make her eyes look huge. She grabbed a spray of perfume, realizing as she stood up that she felt just right.

‘You look beautiful, Mummy,’ affirmed her daughter, hugging her tight.

‘Oh, Sarah, you are such a stunner,’ declared her mother loyally. ‘You look amazing.’

Despite their obvious bias Sarah was delighted with the results of her efforts.

Evie was going to sleep at her mum’s for the night and there’d be treats and drinks and a big bedtime story. Was it any wonder Evie loved staying with Granny so much!

Sarah took a deep breath as she sat in Grace’s car. It was stupid but she felt nervous. Karen was one of her oldest friends. They’d been to school together and when Karen had got married two years ago, she’d insisted on Sarah being one of her bridesmaids. Her husband Mick was a great guy and they were one of the nicest couples you could ever meet. Going to their dinner party was going to be fun and she was an absolute nerd to be anxious about it.

‘You look fabulous!’ coaxed Grace as they turned into Sycamore Road and she dropped her outside the white house. ‘Have a lovely time!’

‘Sarah, it’s so great to see you,’ Karen welcomed her, her wavy dark hair pinned up, wearing a clingy black dress with showed off her narrow waist and tiny bump.

‘I got you some wine and choccies,’ said Sarah, giving her a hug.

‘My favourites! Chocolate-covered walnuts and almonds; I’ll be the size of an elephant before this baby’s born at the rate I’m going.’

‘You’d hardly know you were pregnant!’

‘Tell Mick that! I chucked up all over his car last Saturday on the way home from a party and I hadn’t had even a sniff of alcohol.’

‘Poor you!’ Sarah consoled her. ‘When I was expecting Evie I was fine except for whenever I got the smell of frying. I couldn’t walk past a chipper.’

‘But they’re worth it!’

‘Definitely.’

‘Come on into the living room. I want to introduce you to a few people. Rachel and her boyfriend Don are here and Mick’s cousin Ronan Dempsey is home from London for a few days.’

Sarah braced herself as Karen ensured she got to meet everyone and Mick offered her a glass of sparkling cava to start the night.

Rachel Donovan was another schoolfriend and they greeted each other enthusiastically.

‘I haven’t seen you since Karen’s wedding!’ She smiled, introducing her boyfriend. ‘How is everything going?’

‘Well, Evie started school and I’m still working at a few things. I’ve got a part-time job teaching art and helping in the school library three days a week which is handy.’

‘That’s great,’ said Rachel kindly.

‘What about you?’

‘I’m still breaking my butt in Goodbody’s.’

‘That’s where we met,’ interrupted Don. ‘Rachel’s been promoted to senior specialist in aircraft and rail leasing and I handle shipping and satellites.’

‘It sounds fancy,’ admitted her friend, ‘but it just means much bigger contracts!’

Sarah felt a pang of guilt that she wasn’t doing something more interesting but being a mother was as much as she could handle.

There was another couple, the husband Brian worked with Mick and his wife. Chloe was a tiny dark-haired girl who wasn’t particularly friendly. She worked as a media buyer in one of the big advertising agencies.

After two more drinks they all sat down at a large oak table with dark brown leather chairs. Karen served a salmon mousse for starters. Sarah was sitting beside Mick’s cousin and a friend of Karen’s called Susan; next to her was a guy called Sean who was about six foot tall and had red hair. She sipped at another glass of wine as the conversation ebbed and flowed around her. Chloe who was sitting across from her literally ignored her. There was a delicious beef encrusted with mustard and herbs, gratin potatoes and baby carrots for the main course and Sarah congratulated Karen on her prowess in cooking.

‘It’s one of my mum’s recipes,’ she confessed, ‘a family favourite.’

The talk turned to politics and Sarah wished desperately that she had made time to read the political section of the
Irish Times
more closely and had kept abreast of current affairs: American foreign policy; Democrats versus Republicans; was Ireland closer in tune to Washington or Brussels . . .

‘Sarah, what do you think?’ asked Ronan, good-naturedly trying to draw her into the conversation.

She could feel the skin on her neck redden and she wished she could think of something to say. ‘Obviously, when you have a child, it colours everything,’ she admitted, looking around the table. ‘Concern for the environment and healthcare and support for single parents seems better in the EU; also the fact that we have good free education and great support for kids to go to college here means Ireland is very different from America.’ She could see Karen nodding in agreement with her. ‘I suppose I want Evie to have the best and living here in Ireland gives her better opportunities than she might have anywhere else. Being a single parent is tough enough even at the best of times but one thing all parents, married or single, want is for their children to be happy and safe.’

‘Exactly.’ Karen laughed. ‘And I want all those lovely EU maternity and parental leave days due to me when junior appears!’

‘Hear, hear!’ they all agreed as Mick opened another bottle of wine and topped up everyone’s glass.

‘But our government must put in place policies that will protect our resources and cut back on energy usage like the rest of the EU,’ insisted Sean. ‘Buying credits for emissions from other countries with less productive economies than ours is hardly the way to go.’

‘Exactly,’ agreed Susan and Mick.

‘Hopefully the future will bring new forms of energy, heat and power and light. Who can say!’ argued Chloe. ‘But it’s important to protect the existing businesses and buoyant economy we have, not pie-in-the-sky future stuff that might never happen.’

Sean began to argue hotly with her about some politician and an energy bill that Sarah had never even heard of. She concentrated on the delicious food, promising herself that in the next few weeks she would make the effort and cook a big dinner for her family with all the proper trimmings.

There was a delicious hot treacle tart and vanilla ice-cream for pudding. Sarah had a really sweet tooth and lapped it up like a kid. It was only as she looked around the table she realized that most of the other female guests had demurred.

‘You liked that!’ teased Ronan. ‘I could tell.’

‘I guess when you are around six-year-olds as much as I am pudding and ice-cream is pretty much the main event after any meal!’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, kids are great, no pretensions.’

A man who actually liked kids and wasn’t put off by them – he was too good to be true. She told him a bit about Evie and they traded stories about growing up.

‘My big brother shaved my hair when I was six – gave me a blade five – and my poor mother almost broke down and cried when she saw my bald head, my first communion was only three weeks away.’

‘Oh no, what did you do?’

‘What could I do? I had to wear a knitted bainin cap on my head in the photos taken out in the open air but inside the church – well, I had to take the hat off! I looked like something that had escaped from a Russian gulag.’

‘Poor you.’

‘Certainly a day to remember,’ he confided. ‘That’s brotherly love!’

‘My sister Anna broke my big toe,’ she confessed.

‘How?’

‘We were staying in my granny’s house in Connemara. I remember it was freezing and Granny had put one of those ancient stone hot-water jars in the bed to heat it. We were sharing the bed and we must have been fighting over it when she gave the jar a huge shove. The pain of it! I could hear my toe break! Then I was stuck on crutches for the rest of the holiday wearing big goofy knitted socks as I couldn’t even put a shoe on.’

‘Family, you could kill them!’ he nodded, topping up her wine glass.

Sarah relaxed. Ronan was good company and attractive too, with his dark curly hair and blue eyes so similar to his first cousin; the family resemblance was strong.

‘How long have you been in London?’

‘Six years. Though some days it feels like a whole lot more!’

‘So you must miss Dublin?’

‘Yeah, I suppose I do, and it seems the older I get the more I want to come home for weekends, keep an eye on the folks, catch up with people. London’s great and it’s been good to me but I do miss the crack here!’

Sarah smiled. She was no expert on night life and the Dublin pub scene.

‘Where do you hang out, or is it always fancy dinners like this?’ he teased.

‘No.’ She reddened. ‘Karen was kind to invite me. My life is usually a lot quieter.’

‘That’s surprising,’ he said, obviously meaning it as a compliment.

Sarah responded to his gallantry and thanked heaven that he had been put down her end of the table. Over the next few hours she discovered that he worked in graphic design, loved authentic Indian curry, lived in a small mews development near Notting Hill and his passion was wildlife photography.

‘I save up all my holidays or, if I can afford it, take a month out of work and go exploring with my camera. Catching a lioness with her cubs or a humpback whale breaching in the Pacific Ocean or a group of elephants gathered at a watering hole, there’s nothing like it!’

‘Ronan, that sounds so exciting!’

‘Well, you watch all these amazing programmes like
Planet Earth
and then you realize you can just go see it! Go do it! Explore while there are still these amazing animals and creatures and places to see.’

Sarah was immensely impressed and while Chloe and Susan and Sean debated the merits of buying timeshares in Marbella or Portugal she made a mental vow to someday take Evie to Africa.

‘What about you? What gets you going?’

Sarah was taken aback. People weren’t usually interested in what she enjoyed. ‘Obviously my daughter is the most precious thing in my life but the other thing that I suppose I really like doing, though it’s not very exciting, is drawing and writing. I enjoy making kids’ books and illustrating them myself.’

‘Did you study art?’

‘Yes, I went to Art College.’

‘Talented lady!’

No one had ever said that to her before and Sarah could see by his eyes that he wasn’t slagging her but was actually interested. ‘I made a funny book about a little kitten called Mitten and its owner, and now I’m working on a sequel for Evie,’ she confessed, surprised to find she felt sure enough about the merit of her work to discuss it. ‘It’s based on a dog Evie’s mad about; I call him Mr Bones. I’ve made him into a curious dog detective who lives over a butcher’s. I have fun doing it. It relaxes me, makes me forget about bills and money and all that crap!’

As the evening wore on people began to drift away. Karen had tossed off her shoes and curled up on the couch in the living room. Sarah went and sat beside her.

‘I hope you’re enjoying yourself!’ Karen said.

‘Yes,’ Sarah replied, realizing that she was being entirely truthful. She had enjoyed the adult company, the great food and lovely wines and the fact that Ronan had actually talked to her, treated her like an interesting woman.

After a nightcap of Baileys, she wondered about calling a cab.

‘We’re going your way,’ insisted Rachel. ‘You can share with us and we’ll drop you en route.’

She glanced over at Ronan. He was engrossed talking to Mick and didn’t volunteer to join her or see her out. She stifled a pang of regret as she grabbed her handbag and jacket.

‘It was such a lovely night,’ she said, thanking Karen and Mick. Ronan politely stood up and gave her a quick hug as she said her goodbyes and raced outside to join the others.

Sitting in the back of the cab in the darkness as Rachel and Don held hands, Sarah suddenly felt more alone than ever.

Thirty, Grace decided, was an awful age – no, a
shitty
age that no woman with half a brain wanted to be; certainly not an age to celebrate, not even with her nearest and dearest. Staring at the wall of her bedroom, Grace considered it like a blank canvas. She had gone through it all: from babyhood via the fun of being a kid, to a lanky know-it-all teen, then enthusiastic care-free student, to qualifying and working and becoming a young professional woman. Now nothing she could say or do would change the harsh cold fact that she was a grown-up. Her life now stretched in front of her in monochrome. She could not predict what colour, if any, would invade the canvas of her life as she contemplated this first thirty years.

Today was her thirtieth birthday, and here she was alone in her expensive pristine-white waffle-print-covered bed: a situation she had never in her worst nightmare imagined. She’d always seen a husband or a partner and a baby or toddler in the picture she had painted a long time ago of herself at thirty, instead she was utterly alone! Being single as she sailed into her middle years was something she had definitely not planned. As she stretched her long limbs she tried to shrug off the feeling of gloom that threatened to overwhelm her on this of all days. Her schedule was pretty packed for the day – deliberately – and she was having lunch in Bang Café with Niamh and Claire and Roisin, who would do their best to cheer her up.

The phone rang on her bedside table: it would be her mother singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in time-honoured tradition, as she had since Grace was a little girl. It almost made her weep.

‘Happy birthday, Grace, darling,’ Maggie called. ‘I can’t believe it’s thirty years since I first held you in my arms in Holles Street. Such a beautiful baby, your dad and I as proud as punch with ourselves.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ Grace said sitting up, trying to sound positive and happy.

‘I have your present but I’ll give it to you when I see you later this evening.’

‘Great, Mum.’

‘Don’t forget now; don’t be late to Sarah’s as dinner in Havana is booked for eight thirty p.m. And don’t work too hard today,’ she advised. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t take the day off.’