Woman to Woman (25 page)

Aisling only made it back to the office in time by the skin of her teeth. She’d thought things were bad for her. Poor, poor Jo. Imagine having the father of your baby dump you like a Christmas kitten that had grown bigger and less chocolateboxcute in January? Then, to add insult to injury, imagine finding out that he’d done it all before, that he’d already dumped another unwanted Christmas cat plus an unborn kitten. What a complete asshole.

“Thank God you’re back,” said Elizabeth gratefully when Aisling walked into their tiny top-floor office.

“I feel awful. I’ve just got to go home and lie down or I swear I’ll pass out!”

Of course you’ve got to go Aisling said automatically.

“Are you able to drive? Should I ring Pete and get him to collect

YOU?” Pete was Elizabeth’s husband, an accountant who sounded as though he cherished the ground she walked on, “No, I’ll be fine. It’s only to Stoneybatter. I’m just sorry for you, Aisling.” Elizabeth raised apologetic brown eyes to Aisling’s.

“I think I’m going to have to take my maternity leave from today. I don’t know if I could manage another week. I know there’s still loads I haven’t shown you …”

“Don’t be silly chided Aisling, trying not to think of what it would be like to have the horrible Leo all to herself from this moment on.

“You need to get home and look after yourself.

Richardson, Reid and Finucane will keep going even if I do forget to bring Leo his morning coffee and lose half his letters!

Don’t worry.”

By the time she’d walked Elizabeth slowly to her red Panda parked on Fitzwilliam Square and made sure that she was in a fit state to drive home, Aisling’s mind was in overdrive.

Not only was she terrified of losing vital documents on the bloody Apple, but she didn’t know if she’d be able to cope with Leo’s abrupt and demanding requests.

“Where’s the bloody Reilly file?” he’d screamed only that morning, forgetting that he hadn’t actually asked for it.

That wasn’t even mentioning his ability to make her stomach turn inside out when he got her alone in either office and asked her how she was getting on.

“Any problems?” he’d breathed the day before when she’d brought him his mid-afternoon coffee. (“Black and no sugar.

I’m sweet enough!”) “Fine, Leo.” she’d said breezily.

“Elizabeth is being great and I hope I make as good a secretary when she’s gone.”

Secretary, you big sleazeball, she thought to herself. Not a piece of meat in a skirt.

It did occur to her that she’d envied Jo for her ability to make men stare at her, dumbstruck by her sexy, totally natural charm. But there was a big difference between ogling and admiring. If any man ever dared to give Jo the same sort of insolent and undressing stare that Leo Murphy gave her, Jo would have cut him down to size in a moment.

No, Leo didn’t look he slavered and made her feel more uncomfortable than she’d ever have imagined possible. But what could she do?

This was the only job she was likely to get. She couldn’t leave just because of Leo. Women with two kids, an absent husband and no skills, bar the ability to make a perfect cheese souffle, couldn’t afford to be picky job wise She’d have to get used to Leo, his slimy looks, little grins and vaguely suggestive comments.

He was in subdued form all afternoon.

He barely registered the fact that Elizabeth had decided to go on maternity leave early, muttering “Hmm’ indifferently when Aisling told him. So much for loyalty.

“Get me the Wilkinson files he said finally. There must be at least three of them. And get Tom Wilkinson on the phone afterwards. By the way, I won’t be in on Monday, so cancel my appointments and leave my diary free on Tuesday afternoon.

That’s all.”

He wasn’t even looking at her, Aisling realised delightedly.

Yahoo. She hurried down to the file room with a light heart. I Maybe she’d been imagining him as a big bad wolf when he was just a bored boss who amused himself between cases by eyeing up the office temps.

When she went back into Leo’s office with the bulky Wilkinson files, he was on the phone. Obviously a private call, since he made her or Elizabeth call everyone for him, even his dentist.

“Don’t give me that.”

His strong fingers, covered with coarse black hair, played fiercely with one of the red office pencils, twisting it around and around rapidly, nearly breaking it. Snap! It broke.

Aisling dropped the files on his desk and almost ran to the door. If he was ringing Mrs. Murphy, God help her. For a brief moment, Aisling relished the fact that she didn’t have to endure any more of those cross phone calls from a husband irritated by work and determined to take it out on someone.

Safe in her office again, Aisling wished she could lock the door for

the rest of the afternoon. She decided to start working on the letters Elizabeth had been doing before lunch and prayed that he wouldn’t want her again. No such luck.

“Aisling, come down here.”

His voice on the intercom at a quarter to four made her heart sink. She’d been kept busy getting Elizabeth’s unfinished work in order and cancelling Leo’s appointments for Monday.

He hadn’t even told her where he was going to be so she’d tried to sound both firm and mysterious on the phone.

“Mr. Murphy has been called away on urgent business and won’t be able to keep your appointment she’d said several times in her best posh

Aisling didn’t know why, but she firmly suspected that she was lying for Leo. Instinct told her that his sudden change of plans had nothing to do with a crucial conveyancing case.

Leo’s face was still like thunder.

“Have you finished my dictation?” he snapped.

“Er, yes. Well, nearly.”

“How nearly?” he asked sarcastically. Aisling could feel herself getting red in the face and wished she was anywhere except in this office right now. Cleaning out the garden shed in the company of several spiders and a few wasps would be nice by comparison.

“I’ve done six letters and I’ve got two left,” she stammered;

“Is that all?” Leo’s heavy eyebrows were raised at least an inch as he stared contemptuously at her.

Aisling thought that doing six letters in an hour and a half as well as cancelling loads of appointments was pretty good for a novice. But she kept her mouth shut. ,;

“You’re not going to be much use to me if you can’t keep;’.

up he said nastily.

“I’m sorry, Leo. I’ll get faster, honestly.” She was begging and she knew it. She couldn’t afford to lose this job. Please don’t let him sack me, she prayed.

“Mmm. I hope so. Can you do shorthand? I’ve a letter to go, out this evening.”

“Yes.” She’d have said yes if he’d asked could she parachute out the top window. Shorthand had never been a requirement in the motor department, but dealing with lengthy phone calls from irate customers had taught her how to scribble at high speed.

This particular skill had not deserted her and after two attempts to decipher what turned out to be ‘contemporaneous’ which Aisling would have dearly loved to have changed to the more sensible and more suitable ‘at the same time’ she finished Leo’s letter in fifteen minutes.

He was longwinded, but maybe that was simply his legal training. If he could say something in ten words instead of two, Leo went for the ten words every time. Nobody in Leo’s world just did anything they gave it due consideration, previous problems notwithstanding, deliberated at length and finally reached conclusions, without prejudice, of course.

Once the letter was signed and in the post, Leo was a different man, charming, chatty. All glinting, admiring eyes.

After sprinting noisily up the stairs, he casually dropped a few files onto Aisling’s desk and settled himself comfortably against its side.

“So, what have you planned for the weekend?” he asked cosily, as though he hadn’t been bawling her out just half an hour previously. Aisling smiled nervously as she opened another document on her computer just to give her something to do other than look at him.

Had he been snorting some sort of recreational pharmaceutical down in his office? Or was his type of two-faced ness just part and parcel of office life? She was damned if she knew.

“Nothing much,” she said cheerily, hoping the conversation would stop there.

“You’ve two boys, haven’t you?” Leo loosened his red spotted tie and opened the top button of his cream shirt.

“Yes,” she said, surprised that he knew.

“So you’re rushing home to them, right?”

Jesus, she could see where this conversation was going. Leo was onto the second shirt button.

“Yes, they get so upset when I don’t get home on time,” she lied with as much sincerity as she could muster, thinking of the previous evening when Phillip and Paul had been so glued to a Power Rangers video in Fiona’s that they hadn’t wanted to come home at all.

“Pity.” Leo got up abruptly.

“We must have a drink some evening. I can’t have a new member of staff without bringing her out for a drink, now can I?” He smiled, baring a set of wolfish canines. She kept typing, wishing she could pull on her cinnamon coloured cotton cardigan and do up all the buttons. The pale pink silk blouse she’d had for years had been washed to that comfortable softness she loved but, precisely because it I’ had been washed to death, it was a bit on the see-through side.

She had that uncomfortable feeling that her white bra was visible through the pink silk. Guess who’d be looking.

She concentrated fiercely on her typing. Her fingers were clumsy.

“Gotta go,” he said after what seemed like an eternity.

“Be good.”

“Bye, Leo.” She smiled at him as he left. Please let him be gone for good. Please.

As she walked out the front door, Aisling felt like those military cadets she’d seen in movies, the ones who threw their caps into the sky with delight once they’d graduated despite the despotic sergeant who’d made their lives a misery. The week was over Finally. Thank you God! Suddenly fearful that Leo was lurking near the front door waiting to drag her off for a drink somewhere, she hurried to her car.

She was dog-tired, had a ladder creeping up her tights, ?

knew she had to stop and get milk, and had promised the boys she’d pick up a video for them. But she didn’t care. It was Friday. She could crash out in front of the TV because the week was over.

Aisling felt tired but good as she sat in her car on More-hampton Road. Five days ago, she’d been an outsider, the “( housewife masquerading

as a career woman. Now she was sone of them, bunions, paper cuts and all. The week had been hell but she’d got through it.

She picked up a bottle of wine for herself in Superquinn and crisps for the boys along with two lit res of milk. Hell, she needed a treat. In an ideal world, they’d never eat crisps, she wouldn’t drink wine and cellulite would only affect supermodels.

But it wasn’t an ideal world. If the boys were happy watching TV and stuffing their faces with crisps while she crashed out with a book and a bottle of 4.99 plonk from somewhere unpronounceable in Spain, then the evening would be going pretty well.

Phillip and Paul were like two athletes on performance enhancing drugs on Saturday morning.

“You’re only going for one night,” exclaimed Aisling, taking Paul’s swimming togs and three squashed-up Tshirts out of his bag.

“I might need them.” He tried to stuff it all back in along with his Independence Day alien spaceship and the dog-eared Paddington book he’d loved since he was four.

“You won’t, darling,” Aisling said again.

“Let me do it. Daddy will forget to pack all this stuff back again tomorrow morning and you’ll go mad if you leave anything behind.”

“I can go back and get it the next day,” Paul pointed out.

“I suppose you can.”

Aisling wondered how Ms Carroll would cope with two energetic ten-year-olds spreading muck through pale carpets and squabbling over the remote control.

For a few gleeful minutes, she thought how thoroughly enjoyable it would be to sabotage the trip. She could almost hear herself telling the boys that Daddy would want them to make themselves at home in his new house, that they should behave exactly the way they did here.

“Daddy would be upset if he thought you weren’t having fun, boys, and I’m sure Jennifer wouldn’t mind you bringing your soccer ball, your Oasis tapes and your Power Rangers videos.”

Stop it, she warned herself. The only damage you’d do would be to the twins. Don’t turn into one of those bitter women who use the children as ammunition.

“Behave yourselves, won’t you?” she said as she packed their toothbrushes and the peppermint toothpaste they liked into a small sponge bag

“Yeah,” muttered Paul from the depths of the bottom of the wardrobe. He was rooting around among the books, toys and plastic cars he insisted on keeping.

“I’ll miss you, you know she said quietly. He didn’t hear.

It was five past one when she drove up to the house after picking the boys up from their soccer match. Michael had parked his car on the road, not in the driveway. It was at once both frighteningly familiar and terribly strange to see the silver gleaming Saab outside the house

“Dad’s home!” yelled the twins in unison from the back

Aisling felt a prickle behind her eyes at the sight of the car, a painful memory of those days when it had belonged there.

He climbed out of the driver’s side when she drove in, tall and rangy in chinos and a cream and blue striped casual shirt she didn’t recognise.

“Paul, Phillip, come here!” he yelled unnecessarily as the boys launched themselves at him.

“Dad, Dad, we missed you!”

“We won at soccer!”

“I got a medal in judo in summer camp!”

Michael picked Paul up and swung him around rapidly, releasing him suddenly into a giggling heap on the drive before grabbing Phillip in the same way.

They tussled for a few moments and then Michael picked up the soccer ball Phillip had dropped and ran onto the grass with it.

Whooping with joy at playing with Dad again, they followed him happily, tackling clumsily, tripping up and shouting at each other.