Woman to Woman (38 page)

Aisling and Vivienne laughed at the same time.

“What did I say?” asked Pat.

“Aisling maintains that men love mashed potatoes and she’s obviously right explained Vivienne. She slid her shoes back on and winked at

“You must come over to my house for dinner some night next week and we’ll continue our moan, right?”

“I’d love to said Aisling warmly. Maybe that would be just the right occasion to talk to Vivienne about Leo.

“It’ll be spaghetti or something equally simple added Vivienne quickly.

“Or I could always ask Debbie to rustle up some fish …”

“Well done Edward Richardson stood up and clapped when Aisling arrived at the boardroom door. The guests looked totally relaxed, with pink faces and loosened ties evidence that the wine was going down a treat.

“Gentlemen, I give you the estimable Aisling Moran.” He smiled, his pale blue tie still knotted in a perfect Windsor knot.

“When you open your own restaurant, my dear, I want to eat there every night. And you could teach my darling daughter to cook while you’re at it!”

“Do you do dinner parties?” asked one man, as Pat offered Aisling a glass of wine.

“Well,” Aisling said slowly, “I’ve never cooked for anyone but myself and my family …”

“It’s just that my wife hates cooking and she’d jump at the chance to have someone like you come in and rustle up a dinner party the man insisted.

“It’s a great idea, Jim,” said Pat seriously.

“You’d be wonderful at it, Aisling.”

“Absolutely.” agreed Vivienne, accepting a glass of champagne.

“You never panicked once.”

“You could certainly cook for my parties added Tom Reid, Caroline’s boss.

“It really would be a marvelous business venture said Edward encouragingly.

“Your talent and my tasting skills. You’d cook and I’d test everything!”

They all laughed.

“A toast said Edward, raising his glass, ‘to Richardson, Reid and Finucane, to our new partners he smiled at the two new lawyers, ‘to our continued business success and, to Aisling, who made our lunch wonderful. Cheers.”

“I’m serious about that said Jim. He grabbed Aisling’s arm as she and Vivienne left. “I’m Jim Coughlan and I’d love you to cook for us. My wife, Rachel”, has just set up a small public relations business and she plans to do a lot of entertaining in the future. Can I tell her she can call you?”

Startled and flattered, Aisling thought for a moment.

“Sure.” she said finally.

“But I could only cook after office hours. I couldn’t compromise working here.”

“No problem. Here’s my number.” He handed her a cream and black embossed business card.

“I’ll get Rachel to ring you here and you can call back when it’s convenient.”

The men were still chatting around the boardroom table at half four, all notions of work abandoned.

“I just want to go home and lie down sighed Vivienne, pouring a mug of coffee for herself and Aisling in her office. “Mhe too. But I’ve got to send out two letters by courier this evening. All they need is Leo’s signature, but I doubt if I’ll be able to get him out of the boardroom.”

“I’ve got to ask Edward something Vivienne said, ‘so I’ll mention the letters to Leo.”

Aisling brought her coffee upstairs, wishing it was half five and she could go home. She was tired and the idea of a hot bath was very appealing. Yet she felt elated by the way she’d coped today, flattered by what everyone had said.

She printed out the letters Leo was to sign. She’d love to cater for dinner parties. But it’ would be a big thing to take on. Where would she start? And how could she do it all on her own?

“Very tasty, Mrs. Moran,” said Leo’s deep voice behind her.

Aisling whirled around in surprise. He was standing in the doorway grinning at her. Leering, actually.

“The food was tasty as well he chuckled, delighted with his little joke. Aisling could feel the anger she’d been hiding simmer up inside her. Steady, don’t do anything, she cautioned herself. He’s just drunk, he’s harmless. Don’t say anything you’d regret, Aisling, just because you’ve had a few glasses of wine. You need this job, remember.

“I wanted you to sign these,” she said as calmly as she could, holding out the letters. He didn’t move. She walked towards him and handed him the two sheets of paper.

Thanks, Aisling.” He took the letters, keeping his eyes on her. She leaned over her desk and picked up a pen from the other side. As she did so, he slid one arm around her waist and let it move quickly down to brush her behind.

Enraged, she swung around and screamed at him.

“How dare you touch me, you pig! How dare you!”

“Don’t give me that rubbish he snarled.

“You know you want it. Don’t be all coy.”

He stepped towards her again, a half-grin on his face. He was going to grab her, to touch her, she just knew it. And she knew that she’d had enough.

When her right hand connected with his jaw it made a satisfying noise.

“Listen, you pervert, you can stick your job Aisling yelled.

“I’ve had enough of your comments, your salacious remarks and your appalling behaviour. You’re an asshole, Leo Murphy, and I’m leaving!”

With that, she grabbed her handbag from behind her desk and ran out the

door. “I can’t believe I did that!” Aisling said at half eight that night when Jo called round.

“I was totally furious at the time, a mixture of red wine and release at having stopped that chauvinistic pig. But now …” She broke off, rubbing the bridge of her nose to relieve the throbbing headache which was threatening to explode in her head.

“Aisling!” said Jo angrily.

“Don’t you dare feel sorry for what you did. I can’t believe that bastard.. I only wish you’d said something to me and I would have told you exactly what to do a lot sooner. Who the hell does he think he is? That’s sexual harassment and it’s illegal. He can’t get away with this, he can’t! The Employment Equality Agency will tell us exactly what to do and believe you me, he’ll rue the day he ever abused his position!”

That’s all very well, Jo,” sighed Aisling, ‘but I still need a job right now. Anyway, who the hell is going to believe my side of the story?” she demanded.

“Leo is a lawyer, after all. He spends his life dealing with the law. By the time he’s finished with me, my name will be mud. I’ll have been “asking for it” or something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Jo.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just so angry that you never told me about it. I could have told you what he was doing was wrong, that you don’t have to suffer that sort of crap.”

“I know,” Aisling said miserably, “I know I should have done something sooner. It was all so strange and difficult. Getting a job in the first place seemed such a huge thing, I just didn’t know how to handle myself, or him,” she added despondently.

“I was so pleased with myself when I hit him, but that wore off. All I’ve been thinking about since is why I did do it.”

“You should have done it weeks ago,” Jo pointed out.

“Look, Ash, ring Pat Finucane and tell him what happened. Ask him what he thinks. I could be wrong, but I doubt if he’ll let this end here.”

“I can’t drag Pat into this,” exclaimed Aisling.

“He’s in it. He is a senior partner in a firm where one of his Wendy houses. She looked at the next prospectus, a small, whitewashed cottage in Dalkey which looked beautiful in the estate agent’s photo. But she hadn’t actually seen it yet and the descriptions, written in eloquent estate agent language, did not always match up with the actual premises once you got there.

On Monday, she’d seen one ‘bijou des res with one rec, three beds, one bthrm, ofch and Ige grdn. Nds sin modernisation,” and found a poky little house with zero charm, damp walls, three mouldy bedrooms that could have been used for a drug den and a wasteland out the back that looked suitable for botanic experiments into rampant weed growth.

“It needs some work admitted the weary-looking estate agent when he noticed Jo pulling her skirt close around her legs so it wouldn’t brush against anything particularly virulent in the kitchen.

“If I was married to the person who ran Rentokil, and owned a builders’ providers, I might consider it,” she replied. Then, sorry she’d sounded so sharp, she added, “I need something that doesn’t need too much work because I’m having a baby.”

After a lengthy conversation about first babies Colm, the estate agent, had two and the second was only nine months and had never slept longer than four hours in his life Jo drove off to see a ten-year-old mews house which didn’t mention anything about modernisation in the prospectus.

As beautiful as the last place had been awful, Jo fell utterly in love with it and was disappointed to find out that someone had put in a successful bid for it that morning. Too depressed to even complain to the estate agent who could have rung up and told her not to bother coming, Jo flounced out to her car and drove home crossly. Two Twix bars sort of comforted her at home that evening while she watched The Bill.

After Monday’s disasters, she decided to give house-hunting a miss on Tuesday evening. Instead, she’d gone to a reception for the launch of a new variety of eyeshadow and had eaten far too many vol-au-vents while watching four stick-thin models covered in body paint sashay

elegantly around the room, leaving the waiters slack-jawed with amazement.

“They must be anorexic muttered Rhona, lighting another cigarette so she wouldn’t break her diet and succumb to the lure of the Chinese sesame prawn toasts displayed invitingly on a nearby table.

“You’d be amazed at how many models eat like horses,” remarked Yvonne, the equally stick-thin fashion editor of a rival magazine.

Rhona raised one eyebrow sceptically

“Yvonne, I’ve been on two press trips with you and I know that you think having more than half a grapefruit and one slice of toast for breakfast is sheer gluttony. You can hardly talk.”

Jo took a sneaky look at Yvonne’s pert little behind encased in body-skimmiing lycra and swiped another two vol-au-vents from a passing waiter.

“I do love vol-au-vents,” added Rhona, inhaling deeply, ‘but they’re so fattening.”

Jo swallowed quickly and took a deep draught of orange juice.

“Goodies, girls.” Nikki appeared in front of the three of them waving elegant gold carrier bags.

Driving home, Jo examined the eyeshadow quartet, lipstick and nail varnish that the make-up company had given everyone who’d attended the launch. The lipstick would make her look like Morticia out of The Addams Family. She should have gone house-hunting, she reminded herself, but she’d needed cheering up and an evening with Rhona was the perfect antidote for misery.

The next day she skipped lunch well, eating a McDonald’s in the car was practically skipping lunch and went to see a Sixties bungalow in Dun Laoghaire. Jo had felt suddenly tearful when she was elbowed painfully in the back by a tall blonde on the way to the tiny avocado-green bathroom. She hated bloody avocado green anyway. It was so Seventies. She’d been too busy at work on Thursday and Friday to do any house-hunting but today she planned to spend the afternoon viewing properties.

She’d got a list of three houses to visit and that would probably take most of the afternoon. And she needed to go grocery shopping because she was nearly out of tuna. Her current pregnancy fetish was for tuna and peanut butter sandwiches.

Shuffling through the property supplements, Jo came across one advert that fascinated her. It wasn’t so much the description of the house in the Dublin mountains that did it.

In fact, Number two Redwood Lane definitely sounded the worst out of all the properties she’d considered, especially when you read between the lines and realised that solid fuel heating probably meant dragging in turf for the fire. More worrying was the fact that there was no mention of a bathroom at all.

The words ‘in need of enthusiastic restoration’ would have put off all but the most dimwitted DIY fanatic and, since Jo’s entire tool collection consisted of an oddly shaped 99p screwdriver with three different ends for different types of screw, it didn’t make any sense for her to even look at the house.

But she didn’t feel very sensible just then. Jo didn’t know why, but the house fascinated her, more for the description of the view than for anything else.

“Set in a scenic spot in the Dublin mountains, the property is bordered by sycamore and beech trees and overlooks farmland. With a superb view of Dublin Bay, it has to be seen.”

Don’t be silly, she told herself as she pulled on the red brushed-cotton tracksuit bottoms she seemed to live in these days. What in the hell would you want with a dilapidated old house halfway up the mountains when you don’t have a clue how to do any of the renovation work yourself, probably couldn’t afford it anyway, and are expecting a baby in four months?

It was no use. She put on the matching red baggy sweatshirt and brushed her still damp hair, a picture of a lovely cottage bathed in

golden evening sun in her mind. A cosy kitchen, its window seat filled with plump gingham cushions, where you could sit to look out at Dublin spread below in a vast valley. A pretty cottage garden with lavender and rosemary growing fragrantly outside the kitchen door ..

And a brass bed in a bedroom decorated with a pretty Victorian wallpaper, a pine wardrobe well, maybe two pine wardrobes and a dressing table with a bowl of coral pink roses on top, roses from her own garden … She could see it all.

Jo parked the Golf neatly outside the office, wondering what Mark’s Porsche was doing there on a Saturday morning at half twelve. She’d dropped by the Style offices to pick up some papers she’d forgotten to bring home the previous evening.

On Monday morning at ten, she was interviewing a TV fashion stylist about how to pick clothes for people to wear in various programmes and series. The RTE press office had faxed in a list of programmes the stylist had worked on and, while Jo knew she’d be able to talk to the stylist without this background information, she still preferred to have a person’s accomplishments fresh in her mind before interviewing