A Gift to You (29 page)

‘What time is it?’ Hilary groaned, pulling the duvet over her shoulders and burying her head in the pillow.

‘6.35,’ he murmured and then he was gone, his footsteps fading on the stairs. She heard the sound of the alarm being turned off, heard the front door open, then close, and the sound
of the car reversing out of the drive.

Hilary yawned and stretched and her eyes closed. I’ll just snooze for ten minutes, she promised herself, before drifting back to sleep.

‘Mam, wake up, we’re going to be late for school.’ Hilary opened her eyes to see Sophie, her youngest daughter, standing beside the bed poking her in the ribs.

‘Oh crikey, what time is it?’ She struggled into a sitting position.

‘8.12,’ her daughter intoned solemnly, reading the digital clock.

‘Holy Divinity, why didn’t you call me earlier? Where’s Millie? Is she up?’ she asked, flinging back the duvet and scrambling out of bed.

‘She’s not up yet.’

‘Oh for God’s sake! Millie, Millie, get up.’ Hilary raced into her eldest daughter’s bedroom and hauled the duvet off her sleeping form.

‘Awww, Mam!’ Millie yelled indignantly, curling up like a little hedgehog, spiky hair sticking up from her head.

‘Get up, we’re late. Go and wash your face.’ Hilary was like a whirling dervish, pulling open the blinds, before racing into the shower, jamming a shower cap onto her head so
her hair wouldn’t get wet. Ten minutes later, wrapped in a towel, she was slathering butter onto wholegrain bread slices onto which she laid cuts of breast from the remains of the chicken
she’d cooked for the previous day’s dinner. An apple and a clementine in each lunch box and the school lunches were done. Hilary eyed the full wash-load in the machine and wished
she’d got up twenty minutes earlier so she could have hung it out on the line seeing as Niall hadn’t bothered.

She felt a flash of irritation at her husband. It wouldn’t dawn on him to hang out the clothes unless she had them in the wash basket on the kitchen table where he could see them.
Sometimes she felt she was living with
three
children, she thought in exasperation. Typical that it was a fine day with a good breeze blowing and her clothes were stuck in the machine and
would have to stay there until she got home.

Millie was shovelling Shreddies into her mouth while Sophie calmly sprinkled raisins into her porridge. Sophie was dressed in her school uniform, blonde hair neatly plaited, and yet again Hilary
marvelled at the dissimilarity of her children. Millie, hair unbrushed, tie askew, lost in a world of her own, oblivious to Hilary’s hassled demeanour. At least they’d had showers, and
hair washed after swimming yesterday, she thought, taking a brush from the drawer to put manners on her oldest daughter’s tresses.

Twenty minutes later Hilary watched the lollipop lady escort them across the road, and smiled as Sophie turned to give her a wave and a kiss. It was hard to believe she had two children of
school-going age. Where had the years gone? she wondered as she crawled along in the school-run traffic.

It shocked her sometimes that she was a wife and mother to two little girls and settled into the routine of family life that didn’t seem to vary much when the girls were at school. At
least she’d spent a year au pairing in France after leaving school, and she’d spent six weeks on the Greek Islands with Colette O’Mahony, her oldest friend, having an absolute
blast the following summer! That had been fun. Hilary grinned at the memory, turning onto the Malahide Road, and groaning at the traffic stuck on the Artane roundabout.

Colette would never in a million years be stuck in school-run traffic, she thought ruefully. Colette had a nanny to bring Jasmine to school in London. No doubt her friend was sipping Earl Grey
tea in bed, perusing the papers before going to have her nails manicured or going shopping in Knightsbridge. Their lives couldn’t be more different. But then, even from a very young age, they
always had been.

Colette, the only daughter of two successful barristers, had had a privileged, affluent childhood. Her parents fulfilling her every wish, but handing her over to the care of a succession of
housekeepers, as they devoted themselves to careers and a hectic social life, before packing Colette off to a posh and extremely expensive boarding school.

In contrast, Hilary’s mother Sally had been a stay-at-home mother, although she did work a few hours on Saturdays in the family lighting business. Hilary’s dad, Mick, owned a
lighting store and electrical business and Hilary had worked there every summer holiday, either in the large showrooms, that stocked lights and lamps and shades of every description, or in the
office working on invoices and orders and deliveries.

Her parents, unlike Colette’s, were extremely family orientated. Hilary and her older sister Dee had grown up secure in the knowledge that they were much loved. Sally and Mick enjoyed
their two girls and had bought a second-hand caravan so they could all spend weekends and holidays together. Hilary’s abiding memory of her childhood was of her mother making scrumptious
picnics in the little caravan kitchen, and her dad lugging chairs and windbreaks and cooler bags down to the beach and setting up their ‘spot’. And then the games of rounders, or
O’Grady Says, with their parents and aunts, uncles and cousins joining in, a whole tribe of Kinsellas, screeching and laughing. And then the sand-gritted picnic with tea out of flasks, or
home-made lemonade, and more often than not, a gale whipping the sand outside their windbreak as clouds rolled in over the Irish Sea, the threat of rain somehow adding to the excitement. And when
it did fall, all hands would gallop back up the bank to the caravans, and Mick would laugh and say, ‘That was a close one,’ when they’d make it inside before the heavens
opened.

Sally enjoyed the company of her girls and, when time and work permitted, they would head over to Thomas Street, and ramble around the Liberty Market, browsing the stalls, especially the
jewellery ones, oohing and aahing over rings and bracelets. Kind-hearted as ever, Sally would fork out a few quid for a gift for Hilary and Dee. Their mother had steered them through the ups and
downs of their teen years and had urged her daughters to spread their wings and see the world and follow their dreams. She had been fully behind Hilary’s decision to go to France after her
Leaving Cert and be an au pair and become fluent in French.

After her year of au pairing and her six weeks roaming the Greek Islands with Colette, Hilary had planned to do an arts degree with a view to teaching languages but Mick had suffered a heart
attack the August before she was to start university, and she had felt it incumbent on her to put aside her own plans for her future, especially as she’d been abroad for more than a year,
enjoying the freedom to be carefree and unfettered. She had stepped up to the plate to help her parents in their hour of need. Her older sister Dee was in the middle of a science degree and there
was no question of her dropping out of university.

Hilary was desperately disappointed at having to postpone her degree course; she had been so looking forward to going to university and enjoying the social side of life. Dee might study hard,
but she partied hard too and lived on campus, free of all parental constraints.

Hilary had been looking forward to moving out of the family home. Having spread her wings in France, she was keen to have the freedom to live her own life but her father’s illness put paid
to that. She buried her regrets deep and put her shoulder to the wheel to keep the showrooms ticking over, while Bill O’Callaghan, Mick’s senior electrician, looked after that side of
the business.

Hilary had taken a bookkeeping and accounts course at night school soon after, and it was at a trad session one sweltering bank holiday weekend, in the college grounds, that she had met
brown-eyed, bodhrán-playing Niall Hammond. She had tripped over someone’s handbag and tipped her Black Velvet Guinness drink down his back.

He’d given a yelp of dismay and jumped to his feet and then started to laugh when he’d turned round and seen her standing, hand to her mouth in horror, her glass almost empty.

‘I . . . I’m terribly sorry,’ she stuttered; dabbing ineffectually at his shirt with a tissue, while his friends guffawed.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said easily. ‘I was getting too hot anyway.’ He pulled the soaking shirt over his head, exposing a tanned torso with just the right
amount of dark chest hair to make her think:
Sexy!

Students were in various states of undress because of the sultry heat, so being shirtless wasn’t a big deal, she thought with relief, trying not to gaze at her victim’s impressive
pecs while he wrung out his shirt and slung it over his shoulder.

‘You are such a
clutterbuck
, Hilary.’ Colette materialized behind her and gave a light-hearted giggle. She rolled her eyes heavenwards and held out her dainty hand to the
hunk in front of them. ‘Hi, I’m Colette O’Mahony, and this’ – she made a little moue – ‘is Hilary Kinsella who has two left feet as you’ve just found
out.’

‘Well, hi there, ladies. Niall Hammond is my moniker and I guess we should have a round of fresh drinks to get us back on track.’ He waved politely at a waitress and she nodded and
headed in their direction. ‘Guinness for you, Hilary? Did you have anything in it?’

‘Um . . . it was a Black Velvet,’ Hilary managed, mortified, and raging with Colette for saying she had two left feet. Her friend could be so artless sometimes.

‘Brandy and ginger,’ Colette purred gaily, fluttering her eyelashes at him.

Hilary saw Niall’s eyes widen slightly. Typical of Colette to go for an expensive short when someone else was paying.

‘Er . . . mine’s with cider, not champagne,’ she added hastily in case he thought they were way OTT.

Niall winked at her and gave the order and added, ‘A pint of Harp for me, please. So, ladies, are you students here?’ he asked, smiling down at Colette. Hilary’s heart sank. It
was always the way. Once men saw blonde, petite, dainty, effervescent Colette, she was forgotten about.

‘Hilary is. She’s doing a boring bookkeeping course; I’m just here for the craic! I’m studying Fine Arts in London. I’m home for the weekend.’

‘Interesting! Fine Arts. How did that come about?’ Niall leaned against a pillar, thumbs hooking into his jeans, and Hilary thought how typical of her luck to encounter a hunky guy
when Colette was home from London on one of her rare jaunts across the Irish Sea. Since she had moved to London to live with her father’s widowed sister, her friend rarely came home, and
wasn’t great at keeping in touch either. She was having a ball going to polo matches, and weekend parties in the country, and drinking in glamorous pubs in Kensington and Knightsbridge and
shopping in Harvey Nicks and Harrods.

‘My parents wanted me to study law. They’re both barristers,’ Colette added, always keen to slip that bit of information into any conversation. ‘I couldn’t bear the
idea,’ she trilled, throwing back her head so that her blonde hair fell in a tumbling mane over her shoulders, and giving a gay laugh. ‘My dad’s sister has a big flat in Holland
Park, and her husband died and they have no children so I went to stay with her for a while and she knew someone in Dickon and Austen’s Fine Art and I worked there and did my degree and
that’s where I’ve fetched up.’

Fetched up
, thought Hilary irritably. Colette was becoming more English than the English themselves.

‘And yourself?’ Niall’s heavy-lidded brown eyes were focused on Hilary. But there was a twinkle in them that she liked and she found herself responding with an answering
smile.

‘I work in my dad’s lighting and electrical business—’

‘She’s a shop manager,’ interjected Colette brightly. ‘Oh look, here’s our drinks.’

‘Let me pay,’ Hilary urged. ‘After all I’ve ruined your shirt.’

‘Another time,’ Niall said firmly, taking his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans and extracting a twenty.

‘And what do
you
do apart from playing the bodhrán fabulously?’ Colette arched a perfectly manicured, wing-tipped eyebrow at him, before taking a ladylike sip of her
brandy and ginger.

‘I work in Aer Rianta International, in travel retail. And in my spare time I play gigs with these hoodlums.’ He indicated his three band buddies in the background.

‘Really? An interesting job, I’d say?’ Colette was impressed. ‘Do you travel much?’

‘I do indeed.’

‘I
love
to travel,’ Colette commented gaily.

‘What’s your band called?’ Hilary interjected, knowing that unless she steered her off track, Colette would launch into a description of her travels and Hilary would end up
feeling like a real gooseberry. She was beginning to feel like one already!

‘We’re called Solas, which I’m sure you know is the Gaelic for “light”. Somewhat of a synchronicity, Hilary, wouldn’t you think? Both of us work with
light!’

‘Umm.’ Hilary was caught mid-gulp of her Black Velvet and was afraid she had a creamy moustache. ‘I guess so.’

‘Well, I should get back and play another set, or Solas won’t get paid tonight. It was nice meeting you both.’

‘Are you playing anywhere else over the weekend?’ Colette asked casually.

‘We are. Are you into trad? I wouldn’t have thought that would be your scene,’ Niall remarked.

‘Oh I
LOVE
it,’ Colette fibbed. ‘I adore The Dubliners and . . . er . . . um . . . eh . . .The Clancy Brothers.’

‘And yourself, Hilary?’ Niall turned to look at her.

‘I like trad.’ She nodded. ‘I like the liveliness of it, the buzz of a good session.’

‘And who do you like?’ he probed.

‘I like The Bothy Band, Planxty, De Dannan, and The Chieftains are amazing.’ She shrugged.

‘A woman after my own heart. They’re all unbelievable musicians, aren’t they?’ he said enthusiastically.

‘The best,’ Hilary agreed.

‘So where are you playing tomorrow?’ Colette persisted, annoyed that she hadn’t thought of naming any of those bands, although she only vaguely knew of them. She was more into
The Rolling Stones and The Eagles.