Woman to Woman (2 page)

“I’m afraid I can’t leave for another two hours at least,” he said apologetically when he rang moments before Aisling left for the school.

“I’m sorry. Give them my love, though, won’t you? Tell them I’ll bring them to McDonald’s at the weekend,

OK?”

Daddy had to work, darlings,” she comforted her two small apostles when the applause had died down and the cast were being hugged and kissed by proud parents.

Thinking about the boys, two mirror images of their darkhaired father, she began to feel better. Michael loved the boys with all his heart, he wouldn’t cheat on them. He wouldn’t cheat on her. She just knew it.

There had to be an explanation for the Visa receipt. Yes, of course there was. She felt better now, on firmer ground when she thought about their family and what it meant to him. There was no way he’d risk losing his family for a fling with some floozie. Hell, she couldn’t even imagine Michael in a bloody underwear shop. He hated shopping.

He’d always urged her to spend money on herself, to splash out on lacy little camisoles and those French knickers she’d bought years ago when her flat mate Jo, had dragged her into Clerys for a rummage around the bargain bins.

“You never wear anything like that any more, darling,” Michael used to say when he spotted a sexy underwear feature in a magazine or paper. But he’d never gone into a lingerie shop to buy her a present himself in their entire marriage.

“How am I supposed to know you want sexy underwear if you don’t tell me?” he demanded one Christmas Day when Aisling laughed out loud as she ripped the wrapping paper off another Delia Smith cookbook. Tog heaven’s sake, it takes you two hours to buy one bloody shirt! How am I supposed to pick out something you’d like? And underwear at that!”

Aisling never pointed out that she knew exactly what he’d like for Christmas because she listened to him and carefully planned her gifts in October. But then she had time to meander around Henry Street, slipping in and out of shop after shop. Michael was always too busy for that.

Instead of turning up with the wrong size blouse or the wrong colour jumper, he simply thrust money into her hand.

“Go on, spoil yourself, Ash, and buy some nice clothes, won’t you? Bring Fiona with you; she has great taste.”

Accepting the implied criticism meekly, Aisling duly ventured off on those hateful shopping trips with her svelte and aerobically toned

neighbour. She blindly rattled through rails of lovely clothes looking for something that Michael would like and that would actually flatter her figure.

Just when she had steeled up the courage to try it on, a size ten salesgirl with a degree in arrogance would sidle over and ask did she need any help. Aisling was sure that these nasty nymphets waited until there were at least ten other people in the shop before loudly asking the girl at the cash register if they had the pink shirt or whatever in a size sixteen.

Crimson with embarrassment, Aisling would then stand there selfconsciously as the assistant looked her up and down with an expression of superiority written all over a face free of crow’s feet and laugh lines.

Sometimes Aisling felt like slapping those girls across their insolent little faces and yelling that she had been a sexy size ten herself once. Before two kids and ten years of day-long access to the fridge had changed her figure. But what was the point?

Instead, she kept silent while an enraged and loyal Fiona went into Bitch Shopper overdrive, demanding to see their good stock since she ‘… couldn’t possibly wear this sale rubbish’. Fiona could find snagged threads and missing buttons on anything the increasingly harassed assistants produced for her supercilious gaze.

Thank God for Fiona, Aisling thought when the sight of buttons straining reproachfully on tailored trousers and elegant blouses plunged her into gloom and they had to abandon the shopping expedition for a consolatory doughnut in Bewley’s.

“Belfast.” announced Fiona, after one depressing afternoon when everything Aisling tried on looked either tent-like or too tight.

“That’s where we should go. I love the shops there, they have lots of marvelous shops in the Castle Court centre and you’d love it. We could drive up on Monday, what do you think?”

Brilliant!” Aisling felt better already.

“I’ll start a diet tomorrow, she vowed with sugar on her top lip and a cup of frothy cappuccino in front of her. But when tomorrow came, and

she was serving up Michael’s favourite shepherd’s pie, she couldn’t resist having a bit along with the Weight Watchers baked beans she’d cooked for herself. And well, a bit of Black Forest gateau would hardly hurt.

She’d always loved Black Forest gateau. In fact, she’d insisted on having it as her wedding cake despite her grandmother’s outraged disapproval. She could still hear that frail voice grimly prophesying disaster for the young couple who had ignored tradition in favour of modern ideas.

Aisling could have laughed at the irony of it all. Granny Maguire had no doubt been smirking at her granddaughter’s predicament from whichever outpost of the dearly departed she’d been sent to. Straight to Hell, Michael always joked after listening to a few minutes of Granny’s vicious gossip.

Aisling thought of Michael and the Paul Costelloe silk tie she’d proudly left on his side of the bed for their anniversary the week before. She put the Visa receipt carefully on the table, sank her head onto her hands, and closed her eyes.

Twelve years ago this month, on a glorious sunny morning, Aisling Maguire had carefully dressed in a white lace gown and placed a coronet of white roses on her hair for her marriage to Michael Moran, the ambitious young journalist she’d adored since the first time she set eyes on his handsome

It had been a wonderful wedding. Mam had held her tight, tears in her eyes as she whispered, “I hope you’ll be happy, darling.” She and her new husband had run out of the hotel to find Michael’s rusty old Renault carefully decorated with toilet rolls and tin cans, courtesy of his pals on the paper’s soccer team.

That had been the best day of her life, until the crisp November morning Phillip and Paul had been born after ten difficult hours of labour. Exhausted and drained, she lay back in the bed with her babies in her arms while Michael smiled down at her, an expression of amazement on his face.

When Phillip’s tiny hand curled around his father’s little finger,

Michael had actually cried before sitting down on the ‘bed and putting strong arms around his family, his wet cheek against Aisling’s. Babies grasped fingers instinctively. She knew that. She’d read reams of mother-and-child literature. But she didn’t say a word and let her husband believe that Phillip was holding his father’s hand.

Just a few days before, she had dusted the ornate silver frame holding a group picture of the wedding. Her parents stared stonily at the camera in contrast to Michael’s father and mother who had both developed a fit of the giggles during the photographs. Who’d have guessed that the Morans would stick it out for only twelve years instead of “til death us do part’. Yes, death, or another woman.

“I knew you’d make a mess of your marriage,” she could hear her father saying maliciously, his gaze contemptuous as he looked at the daughter who never. quite managed to please him.

“You never could do anything right.”

Tears welled up in Aisling’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks onto her faded blue sweatshirt. It had belonged to Michael and she could remember him wearing it the summer he laid the patio himself after getting expensive French windows installed. She could see him now, sweat dampening his dark hair, a look of concentration on his face as he lifted another slab into place, expertly tapping it in with a hammer.

Maybe this is all a mistake, she thought helplessly. She got up to clear the breakfast table as she did every morning.

Mechanically she wiped the toast crumbs onto a plate and carefully pushed the expanded packet of Rice Krispies back into their box. No matter how hard she tried to convince the boys to eat porridge, they insisted on Coco Pops or Rice Krispies day in, day out. Don’t forget to buy cereal, she reminded herself, her mind slipping into housekeeping mode.

Once, she knew more about motor insurance than breakfast cereals, more about the age loading on a ten-year-old Porsche than on the dietary requirements of ten-year-old boys. Thirteen years ago, in the bustling insurance company on O’Connell Street, she had practically run one

section of the motor department for months. When the department supervisor left abruptly for a better job, Aisling was asked to take over and she didn’t hesitate.

Now, she sometimes wondered how she’d done it all. How she’d run her division calmly and capably, responsible for twelve people and thousands of accounts. She’d actually enjoyed it into the bargain. It had been a challenge for Aisling Maguire, career girl, but a terrifying prospect for Aisling Moran, housewife. She had always planned to go back to work when the twins were old enough but somehow, the longer she stayed at home, the harder it was to think about entering the job market again.

Delighted with his well-run home, beautifully cooked meals and happy, well-turned-out boys clamouring for fatherly attention when he got home from work, Michael never gave Aisling the push she required to get her back at work. As the years went by and their money problems shrank, there was enough money to pay for a child minder should Ash want to get a job. But why bother?

The boys need you, darling he’d said every time she mentioned getting a job.

“Just because they’re at school doesn’t mean they don’t need their mother when they get home, does it? Anyway, my secretary never stops moaning about leaving her three to her mother and every second Monday she’s in late because one of them has a temperature or a cold or something. Be grateful you don’t have to work!”

he’d invariably add, obviously not counting running a house as work.

He was probably right, Aisling would sigh, familiar with the problems of working mothers courtesy of the magazines she loved to read. Every second page had a different story about women stuck in the endless cycle of work, kids and housework, with Saturdays spent cooking giant las agnes to jam into the freezer. Michael was right. She was lucky he earned enough so she didn’t need to work.

They only argued about it once, when Aisling’s sister Sorcha,

unbearably smug thanks to a recent promotion in the London bank where she worked, asked why Aisling was letting her brain rot by sitting at home every day.

“I can’t believe she said that to me,” Aisling said angrily in the car on the way home.

“She treats me like a second-class citizen because I’m not managing a bank or something. How dare she say that! I’d like to see her running a home and looking after the boys. I was working when that little bitch was still in primary school!”

“Don’t mind her,” Michael said evenly.

“She’s just jealous because you’ve got a husband, two lovely sons and a nice home. She’d kill to be married, not that any man would be stupid enough to take her. Anyway. he took a hand off the steering wheel to pat Aisling’s knee, ‘you’d hate to go out to work. Everything’s changed since you worked. I mean, where would you start?”

Aisling was incensed.

“What do you mean “where would you start”?” she demanded.

“You couldn’t expect to just walk into a good job after seven years of housekeeping,” he said bluntly.

“You haven’t any office skills any more, have you? Being able to make a perfect quiche isn’t much good when you need a degree to get any job these days.”

She didn’t speak all the way home, silently fuming. Michael waited until she climbed into bed before attempting to make up.

“Darling, you know the twins would hate a child minder don’t you? Just because they’re at school, doesn’t mean they don’t need their mum.” He nuzzled her neck, planting soft kisses on her collarbone before moving down to kiss the sensitive skin between her breasts.

“You don’t need to work, darling,” he murmured.

“I’ll look after you.”

Aisling resigned herself to being a full-time housewife.

When the twins were older, she dedicated herself to a series of gourmet cooking courses until she could whip up salmon en croiite with the best of them and make strawberry millefeuilles with her eyes closed. When she’d had her fill of cookery, she turned her hand to needlework and,

within a year, the dining-room chairs boasted intricate tapestry seat covers of golden sunflowers glowing in a midsummer sun.

By the time she’d finished the decorating techniques course, the house was a riot of rag-rolled walls, sponged radiators and ivy-leaf stencilling. Michael liked to joke that she’d stencil him if he sat still for long enough. Short of doing a brain surgery course, there wasn’t much else that the adult education syllabus could offer her.

And here she was, still stuck in the kitchen with a mountain of ironing, the breakfast dishes to do and the knowledge that her husband was cheating imprinted on her brain. Being a dab hand with hollandaise sauce didn’t stop your man from straying.

Please let it be a mistake, God. Of course, it could be some silly misunderstanding. I mean, I’d know if he was seeing someone else, wouldn’t I?

He could have bought the underwear for her as a late anniversary present. He could be planning a surprise and, maybe, he meant her to find the receipt as a teaser. Then she remembered the flowers and the large box of chocolates he’d given her.

Flowers from a garage shop. He’d thrust them into her hands with a quick kiss on the cheek. Those multicoloured, bouquets with not enough chrysanthemums or carnations to make a decent arrangement were always stacked outside garages for last-minute gifts. And that’s just what her anniversary present had been a last-minute gift.

Well, she could certainly arrange even the most stingy bouquet beautifully with the help of her last Christmas present, a large book on flower arranging which had obviously been at the top of the Christmas-gift-for-Granny pile in Eason’s when Michael had raced in to do his last-minute shopping.