Woman to Woman (26 page)

Aisling left them to it. They didn’t need her. It wasn’t right to

think of the boys as her private property, but that’s what she’d been doing. She had to face the fact that they didn’t belong to either her or Michael. They were their children, not their possessions.

She walked into the kitchen, flicked on the kettle automatically and opened the washing-machine door.

Might as well get the clothes dry.

“How are you?”

Michael leaned against the jamb of the kitchen door, hands in his pockets, a relaxed look on his dark face. He stared at her, dark eyes blank. Blast him! Here she was hyped up and nervous about seeing him for the first time since that horrible Friday and he was looking at her as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The shirt was definitely new. Obviously expensive. He hadn’t been sitting home trawling through his wardrobe looking for suitable things to wear. He’d been shopping with Bitch.

“Fine,” she answered curtly.

“You’re looking well, anyway. Have you lost some weight?” , She allowed herself to smile at him. “I don’t know. I’ve just been so busy. Maybe I have.”

“It suits you.”

His voice was admiring. What was he up to? Flattery wasn’t going to get him anywhere. “I hope you’ve figured out what to tell the boys,” she said,!

determined to burst his bubble. “I have.” A wary look appeared on his face. “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with everything. I didn’t want it to work out this way, you must understand that, Aisling.”

Oh God, she was going to cry. She’d been fine until he started this.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Michael,” she said, turning away and bending down to drag the washing out of the machine.

“Make sure nobody gives them Coke before they go to bed, all right?” She couldn’t bring herself to say Jennifer.

“When will you bring them back?”

“Is six OK?” he asked.

Fine. “She didn’t turn around, she couldn’t. She just wished he’d go out to the car and let her say goodbye to the boys on her own.

“We have to talk sometime, Aisling.”

“I know, I know. Just not now.”

“See you tomorrow then. I’ll leave my phone number on the pad in case you need to contact me.”

She heard him searching through the jam jar where she kept odds and ends, looking for a pen that worked.

“I’ll wait outside, Aisling. Bye.”

She slammed the door of the washing machine viciously and straightened up. The boys waved at her from the back seat, not a shred of sadness on their happy, laughing faces. She waved just as happily, a grin super glued onto her face.

When they were gone, she felt her entire body sag miserably.

Whatever would she do until Sunday at six?

“Have dinner with us,” begged Fiona on the phone five minutes later.

“I’d love to,” said Aisling tearfully, glad that Fiona hadn’t dropped over to witness her sobbing into a tea towel. She couldn’t imagine being even vaguely hungry and the last time she’d had dinner with the Finucanes, Michael had been by her side. But anything was better than an evening on her own, an evening of remembering.

Dinner turned out to be Fiona’s favourite menu, the simplest and quickest thing she could cook or reheat.

Smoked salmon and brown bread “No cooking,” she said triumphantly followed by chicken Kiev straight from Marks and Spencer’s with a few wilting bits of broccoli and baked potatoes cooked by herself.

That was lovely, darling,” Pat told his wife afterwards, before sinking into an armchair, exhausted after an energetic round of golf.

The two women sat at the dining-room table picking at the chocolate mousse which had turned out miles lumpier than it had looked on the packet.

“I wish you’d teach me how to cook.” Fiona lit up a cigarette and

inhaled deeply. “You can cook, Fee,” Aisling pointed out.

“You know you can follow a recipe book as well as anyone else can, you just get bored in the middle and forget about it all until it’s too late.

Anyway, there’s just no point killing yourself cooking gourmet dinners to the exclusion of all else. I can vouch for that,” she added somewhat bitterly.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to moan.”

“You’re allowed,” the other woman answered.

“Shirley Conran said something about life being too short to stuff a mushroom. I wish I’d realised that long ago,” Aisling sighed.

“She also said that she’d prefer to lie on a bed than hoover under it laughed Fiona.

“I like that one!”

After this last week, I’m a convert to that way of thinking Aisling said with a smile.

“Life is certainly too short to stuff mushrooms when you’re working and looking after two kids. I finally tidied up the twins’ room this afternoon and you’d swear it hadn’t been done for a month. I’ve no idea how they can make the place that messy in such a short length of time.”

They chatted, drank coffee and retired to Fiona’s Scandinavian white kitchen to stow the dinner dishes in the dishwasher.

By eleven, Pat was snoring in front of the TV and Aisling said her goodbyes.

Thanks, Fee.” she said sincerely.

“I’m not sure I could have faced an evening of unadulterated aloneness.”

“Well, you got an evening of unadulterated excitement!”

laughed Fiona.

“Plus an haute cuisine microwave-inthreeminutes dinner and a sleeping host. What more could you ask for?”

That night Aisling slept fitfully. She awoke in a cold sweat at five past seven and knew she’d never get back to sleep.

Punching the pillows didn’t help.

Tomorrow, she’d doubtless sleep through the alarm. Today, when she could stay in bed for hours, she was wide awake.

Plenty of time to clean, polish and hoover meant that the house was spotless when the doorbell rang a little after six that evening. You could have licked your dinner off the floor, Aisling decided, if you

felt that way inclined, that was. She opened the door gratefully and the boys exploded into the house, dragging their luggage after them like dead bodies.

Michael hadn’t come in, he just waved at her from the car.

“Darlings, I missed you so much,” she said tearfully, hugging them both tightly.

Paul shrugged her off and headed for the kitchen. At least Phillip gave her another hug before he followed his twin.

“How did you get on?” she asked as brightly as she could.

Please say she was a hideous old cow and the house was like a pit, she prayed unfairly.

“Jennifer is really nice,” announced Paul with all the tact of a traffic warden.

“She’s got this great car, a Nissan 100X Tbar.” he added.

“Black. And she’s brilliant at Quasar.”

Aisling felt about two feet tall. Two feet tall and stupid.

And ugly. Not content with taking her husband, this bloody woman had managed to charm her boys as well. What a pity she hadn’t taught them to hate the cowl “She can’t cook, Mum,” said Phillip loyally.

“Yeah, we’re hungry.” Paul threw open the fridge door and peered inside anxiously.

Bread and water for you, Aisling wanted to say angrily, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t their fault.

“I’ll make you something,” she said. Tell me …” she hesitated, ‘what was she like? What’s the house like?”

The How to Split Up Nicely books probably didn’t recommend pumping your ten-year-old sons for information on their father’s new girlfriend but she just had to find out something.

“She’s got this great garage door that opens when you press this thing in the car,” Paul said enthusiastically.

Yeah, it’s called somebody else’s husband, thought Aisling sourly.

“But is the house nice?”

“It’s OK. She’s got a big telly.”

Great. What do you expect from kids who wouldn’t notice dry rot if they saw it. Aisling wanted hard facts, modernist or romantic, all

muslin curtains and brass headboards or Philippe Starck lemon juicers and icy white sofas?

“She’s got a conservatory volunteered Phillip.

“And lights in the back garden.”

For candlelit dinner parties, no doubt. Aisling ripped the plastic off a frozen pizza and jammed it under the grill.

“You can’t have chips. Will you eat baked beans?”

“Yeah,” they chorused.

God, the food must have been awful. Beans were not high on the dinner excitement-ometer. Aisling cursed the rusty tin opener for the millionth time and reminded herself to get a new one. She slopped the entire can into a saucepan and stirred it angrily with a wooden spoon. She should have shares in Heinz by now.

“How’s Daddy?”

“He brought us to McDonald’s and got us a new video. I said I missed him, but he won’t come home.” Phillip carefully poured orange juice into a glass and drank the contents in one gulp.

Aisling’s spoon stopped stirring.

“What did you ask him?”

“I said we wanted him back and he said you and he had rowed and decided to be away from each other for a time,” Phillip said quickly, obviously repeating what he’d been told verbatim.

“He said you didn’t love each other any more.”

He looked up at her, big dark eyes welling up with tears. Aisling cursed Michael and his truthfulness. How the hell did he expect two ten-year-olds to understand what she couldn’t?

Beans forgotten, she pulled Phillip to her and held him tightly. His green sweatshirt smelled of Michael’s aftershave and another scent she couldn’t identify. Something heavy and cloying. Her perfume.

“Why can’t he come home, Mum?” Phillip asked.

There was no answer to that one.

“Daddy needs to be away for a while. Not away from you boys,” she added hastily. Away from me. Mums and dads who’ve been married a long

time sometimes need to have a break, you know. Lots of people do it. It can be good for everyone.” She faltered.

“People get very bored stuck together for ever. You wouldn’t want to be friends with just Greg and no one else, now would you?”

“No.” Paul had stopped poking around in the fridge and was looking mutinous.

“But that’s different!”

“Why?”

“We’re boys. Boys don’t stay with boys. They’re just friends.

Not like girls and boys.”

Oh well, thought Aisling. She wondered how to explain that boys sometimes ended up with boys, and girls with girls.

But that particular version of the birds and the bees would have to wait until they’d got a grasp on the whole concept of mummies and daddies breaking up.

“It’s not that simple, boys,” she said.

Phillip gave her a hard, inquisitive stare so like Michael’s that she felt her jaw drop.

“Why not?”

Ask your bloody father, she wanted to yell. The beans began to bubble.

“Get plates, Phillip.” she commanded in a voice that left no room for arguments.

“Paul, lay the table.”

For once, they just did what they were told. She waited until they’d washed their hands and were sitting quietly at the table, cutlery at the ready, before she said anything.

“Boys, it’s not easy for any of us. But your dad and I have split up for a while. It’s very difficult for me, I miss Dad too.

But he’s gone for a while and we’re just going to have to live with that. It’s not your fault. He loves you both just as much as ever. So do I.” she added.

This is a grown-up thing and we’ve got to get on with life.

I don’t want you getting miserable thinking he’s never coming back or that he doesn’t want to see you. Of course he does.

That’s why he brought you to see Jennifer today.” Even saying her name hurt.

“For the moment, you’ve got two homes. Isn’t that great?”

she added brightly. “Yeah,” said Paul, ‘and three cars. I want Jennifer to pick me up from camp in her car.”

“Great idea said Aisling from behind gritted teeth. Little turncoat.

“Here’s your beans.”

She slopped a puddle of beans onto his plate and wondered was it too late to stick her head in the oven. The prospect of Leo Murphy, two irritable children and a glamorous rival turning up with a size eight bum and a sports car to pick up the kids was just too much for one

woman to bear.

Jo climbed out of the car slowly, grateful for the chance to stretch her legs after so long in the driving seat. Her back ached and her shoulders were stiff from continually crunching gears as she passed trundling juggernauts and carloads of tourists meandering along the road west. It had taken two weary hours to reach Longford, the half way point between Dublin and Jo’s home town in the West. Holidaymakers enjoying the June sunshine had dawdled along the road all the way from the Naas Road, admiring cows, lamb-filled fields and the lush green countryside.

Fifteen years of travelling from Dublin to Sligo had made Jo immune to the charms of the N4. She didn’t want to gaze at cows, so once she left the outskirts of the city, she just put her foot down and drove, eager to get the four-hour journey to Innisbhail over with.

By lunchtime, the rumbling in her stomach meant she just had to stop somewhere for something to eat and a break.

How do you expect to grow if you won’t let Mummy eat properly? she addressed her tiny bump as she walked into the Longford Arms from the car park, massaging her aching neck with one hand. Proper lunch or just a. sandwich? she wondered when she reached the reception area.

A handsome man standing at the desk followed her with his eyes, openly admiring the tall, leggy brunette in the flowing saffron-coloured dress.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jo saw him look and couldn’t resist giving him a come-hitherish little smile. Then she casually flicked back her curls with one hand and walked into the dining room, her dress swirling around slender tanned ankles. She couldn’t be bothered with men right now, but it was still nice to know that she hadn’t lost her

touch. Fortified by a huge chicken salad, cheesecake and a Lucozade for energy, she was back in the car by two and overtaking tourists’ cars at five past.

As she drove past the villages and hamlets which had signposted every journey home since she’d been nineteen, Jo felt a growing sense of excitement.

She couldn’t count the number of times she’d travelled down this road, dying to see her mother, Shane and Tom full of news and eager to hear theirs. She certainly had some amazing news for them this time. But Jo had decided not to tell anyone until after Shane’s birthday party. You’re only forty once, she thought and it wouldn’t be fair to disrupt the surprise party her sister-in-law, Mary, had been painstakingly planning for weeks by announcing the existence of another addition to the Ryan family.