Always and Forever (17 page)

Dipping into them was like eating shortbread in bed but without the crumbs: delicious and comforting.

‘Why do you read this muck?’ asked Trish the first time she’d spotted her friend’s wel -thumbed col ection. Trish was a fan of the slice-and-dice thril er herself.

‘They’re fun and I like historical fiction,’ Cleo had said primly. Trish grabbed one and read a few paragraphs from a page at random. Her mouth fel open. ‘Historical fiction, be blowed,’ she laughed delightedly. ‘This is historical porn.’ ‘It’s not porn,’ objected Cleo defensively.

‘“He dropped his sword to the floor and laid one cal oused hand reverently upon her chemise, the silken nub of her breast springing to life underneath …”’ read out Trish. ‘OK, wel , just a bit sexy. It was a romantic era - that doesn’t make it porn. It’s not dirty, right?’

‘So a guy touching a woman’s nipple is porn if it’s happening in a lift in the meat-packing district of Manhattan but not if they’re wearing period costume?’ giggled Trish.

‘There’s no point trying to explain it to you,’ Cleo said fiercely, hurt at the suggestion that there was anything sordid about her beloved historical sagas. Yes, there was some bodice-ripping, but it was utterly tasteful. People didn’t jump into bed with other people just for the fun of it; in these books, they loved each other. There was morality, decency and honour. The only pity was that the modern world wasn’t more like that. Now, she curled up into the comfort of her bed with the first Rodriguez book: The Graciela Conquests.

There was something soothing and escapist in reading about a time when the men were men and the women loved it. Although it depressed Cleo beyond belief that such real men didn’t seem to exist any more.

She opened the first page and sank into Graciela’s world, where the arranged marriage with a steely-eyed duke was ready to take place, even though Graciela had vowed she’d die rather than submit to the ceremony.

As she lay imagining herself in Graciela’s place, with her wedding gown laid out on the bed and her passionate heart with another man, Cleo was final y able to forget about poor Nat.

Mary stuck the sign up on the door of the shop: ‘Closed for stocktaking’, double-locked the door and walked to where Daisy was sitting in the car with the engine running.

‘What are the odds,’ Mary asked, settling herself into the passenger seat, ‘that ten customers turn up this morning in a tizzy because they need something new now, only to discover that we’re shut?’

‘They won’t,’ laughed Daisy. ‘Tuesday mornings are quiet as the grave. And we need girlie/bonding/relaxation time.’

She edged out into the traffic.

‘You’re right.’ Mary inspected her face in the sun visor’s pul out mirror and grimaced. ‘Not to mention a total face overhaul.’ ‘Doubt if they do that in this spa,’ joked Daisy.

She was in a marvel ous mood. She’d been eating healthily, as per her new bible, The Smart Woman’s Fertility Guide, and she felt glowing with anticipation of the rewarding, baby-fil ed life that awaited her. Alex was a bit grumpy, sure, but there was an office audit going on and that always made him edgy. He was drinking Daisy’s special morning fruit smoothies without a quibble, although Daisy hadn’t mentioned that there were herbs in with the blueberries and yogurt. Herbs that did great things for male fertility.

‘True.’ Mary flicked through the brochure for Cloud’s Hil Spa. It was beautiful y printed in olive green and vanil a, with listings for treatments and massages, photos of the spa in the same colours as the brochure itself, and - source of great amusement to Mary - a mission statement.

Proprietress Leah Meyer wrote that she hoped the spa would provide ‘tranquil ity, rest and beauty from within’.

‘Does that mean they aren’t too pushed about beauty on the outside?’ fretted Mary. ‘Beauty from within sounds like the concept of some supermodel type who eats al the right stuff, spends an hour standing on her head in the morning and looks like a goddess. People like that are always banging on about inner beauty. Some of us need help with the outside.’ ‘You look great,’ said Daisy loyal y. ‘You’re a wonderful woman at her sexual peak, looking for a new lover, preferably some modern young man who knows how to adore a more mature woman.’ Mary snorted. ‘I wish. I don’t have the energy to be at my sexual peak and the only young fel as I meet are the ones at the petrol station who ignore me and look lustful y at passing babes twenty years my junior.’

‘Stop it. Faint heart never won fair nice young handsome boyfriend,’ insisted Daisy.

‘Oh, I don’t want a man anyway.’ Mary waved a hand dismissively in the air. ‘Manless, I can sit up in bed with my facemask on and watch Extreme Makeover on satel ite TV

al night while getting chocolate slivers in the bed, and nobody can complain. You couldn’t do that with a young lover, could you? No, you’d be waxing every inch of your body morning, noon and night; you’d be existing on nothing but grapefruit; and you’d have anti-cel ulite cream coming out of your ears. No thank you. Who needs the hassle?’

At Paula’s, they had to go in and admire the nursery. Newly decorated by Paula’s husband, Enrico, in shades of yel ow, with Beatrix Potter pictures on the wal , the former boxroom was baby heaven. There was a cot, a Moses basket, a zoo of soft cuddly toys, and a dresser ful of fabric-conditioned baby garments folded with exquisite neatness as if by a team of crack Benetton staff.

‘Oh,’ sighed Daisy and Mary together, as the three of them squashed into the room and inhaled the scent of baby products. ‘It’s gorgeous.’ Daisy hugged Paula. It was lovely to be able to feel real y happy for Paula’s good fortune, she thought. Until she’d made the appointment with the clinic, it would have been hard for her to stand in a nursery and admire it without feeling as if her heart would shatter like glass.

Back in the car, Paula turned out to be keen on the beauty from within concept, and thought the spa’s mission statement was a wonderful idea.

‘What we are is more important than how we look,’ she said earnestly.

Mary, who’d moved into the back seat to let Paula have the expanse of the front, roared with laughter. ‘So says the woman with a heated eyelash curler!’

‘That was the old me,’ said Paula loftily. ‘The new me is going to be a better person and not be so concerned with stupid things like my hair or stretch marks.’

‘You’re afraid you’re going to have a baby with Enrico’s ears, aren’t you?’ Mary said suddenly.

They’d al heard how poor Enrico could stil remember being cal ed Dumbo at school.

Daisy smothered a grin. Trust Mary to get straight to the point.

‘You’re right. I’d love the baby to have Enrico’s eyes, skin tones, hair, anything …’

‘But not the ears.’

‘Not the ears,’ agreed Paula. ‘It sounds so shal ow to even talk about it.’ She patted her bump to ask forgiveness. ‘You can love someone and stil not like their ears,’ Mary said.

‘And there’s nothing shal ow about wanting the best for your kids. The world is shal ow because sticking-out ears matter and make kids tease other kids. You’re just reacting to that.

We’re back to Extreme Makeover, I’m afraid. Nobody would want to lose fifty pounds, have their teeth straightened and have liposuction on their chin if how they looked didn’t matter. The world sucks: we just go along with it.’

They were on their way out of Carrickwel now, past the road to the Wil ow Hotel, past Abraham Park, and on to what was known as Hil Road, a leafy, treelined lane that wound along for three miles before coming to a tiny hamlet and Cloud’s Hil Spa.

Spring was pushing up enthusiastical y everywhere, dotting the trees with acid-green buds and painting the hedgerows with baby shoots. Rain sparkled on the roadside grass, the air was fil ed with the smel of new growth, and the val ey hummed with burgeoning life.

Daisy felt her spirits rise. She knew these roads wel from her teenage years and had often peeped through the gates of the old Delaney place. ‘My mother lives near here,’ she said idly. ‘Wil we drop in?’ said Paula, who didn’t know much about Daisy’s background.

‘No,’ said Daisy, shocked. ‘I mean … she might not be there,’ she finished limply.

Mary helped her out. ‘My family are just like that too,’ she said. ‘They like a bit of a warning before anyone brings visitors in case they’re al stil faffing around in their pyjamas.’ ‘Yes, that’s it,’ added Daisy grateful y, as though the idea of her mother in any state of undress in the daytime was a possibility to be imagined. Control was Nan Farrel ’s favourite word and being in her nightclothes after seven in the morning would be very out of control. Daisy realised Mary was probably being tactful because she had met Daisy’s mother on the very rare occasions she had crossed the threshold of Georgia’s Tiara.

The first time, Nan Farrel had brushed her fingertips along rails of the shop’s stock as if it was muck of the lowest order, instead of beautiful garments hand-picked by her talented daughter. Mary would not have needed psychiatric training to work out why Daisy was so hopelessly convinced she was useless at everything.

‘Anyway, we’d be late if we dropped in to see your mum,’

added Mary cheerily. ‘We’ve got to be at Mount Carraig at ten and it’s five to. Put your foot down, Daisy.’

‘Isn’t it lovely out here?’ sighed Paula, as they raced along, the gleam of Lough Enla to the left, and a meadow dotted with sheep to the right.

‘Gorgeous,’ said Mary. ‘I remember Bart and I looking at a house here years ago, but it was too far out of the town and it would have been hard for the kids to get to school. Lovely house too, much bigger than ours and on two acres. We could have had a pony for Emer. Mind you, it’s as wel we didn’t. How could you split up a pony? One half for me and the other for Bart. Bet you I’d get the tail end.’

Mary and Paula started talking about schools and Daisy let the conversation slide over her as she drove along, thinking her own thoughts. She’d been sixteen when she and her mother had moved from the centre of Carrickwel to the cottage off Hil Road. It had been postcard pretty with a red-tiled roof, a herbaceous border and a moss-covered stone wal out front, but Daisy couldn’t wait to move out of it. Her mother had seemed glad when Daisy left to go to col ege in Dublin too. With the hindsight of adulthood, Daisy could see that being a parent was not a role her mother had ever wanted.

It was odd that the great tragedy of her own life was not having children, while having a child - Daisy - at age seventeen, had proved to be the great tragedy of her mother’s life. And sad too. If she and her mother had been close, she’d have been able to talk about how much she wanted a baby, and how happy she was now that she was final y going to do something

about it. Instead, they spoke occasional y on the phone, restrained conversations when nothing that mattered was real y discussed.

Mary was explaining how her thirteen-year-old daughter, Emer, was enjoying school. Daisy al owed herself the pleasure of imagining choosing a school for her baby. She and Alex would visit them al , of course, weigh up the options, make lists of pros and cons, and only then would they decide.

Alex had been so sporty when he was younger that he’d probably love a boy to fol ow in his footsteps and be a rower. St Cil ian’s School sounded good for that. But there was a part of Daisy that yearned for a little girl so she could right al the wrongs that had been done to her when she was a child. She would make sure nobody ever said things to her like, ‘Keep out of the fridge, Daisy. You’re turning into a proper piglet with your nose in the trough.’ Although she knew it wasn’t fair to have a child in order to relive your own childhood. Suddenly, there was the sign for Cloud’s Hil Spa and Daisy was pul ed out of her thoughts.

‘Would you look at this,’ said Mary as they drove in the big iron gates and saw the old house. ‘I have died and gone to heaven.’

Gone was the overgrown garden Daisy remembered as a teenager and in its place was one of the most beautiful landscaped gardens she’d ever seen. They were halfway up the mountain here, and from the drive they could al see the town, with the spires of St Canice’s Cathedral reaching up to the heavens, and the ancient druidic settlement in the distance.

The house itself was no longer a crumbling Georgian wreck, but a graceful building beautiful y restored, and behind the house they could just see the tasteful y converted stables. ‘I’m going to sel the shop and come to live here for ever,’ Mary said in admiration.

‘You wouldn’t make enough money from sel ing the shop,’

Paula pointed out.

‘I’l sel the children too. I can just see myself here for the rest of my days.’

‘Like living in a high-class nursing home?’ teased Daisy.

‘Yes, please.’

They parked on the gravel forecourt, with Mary remarking that they ought to be driving up in a carriage and four in order to ful y fit in with the grand theme of the place. ‘I think I’m underdressed,’ murmured Daisy as they headed for the door. She’d gone for work-out chic in a grey marl tracksuit.

‘This is the only thing that fits me any more,’ Paula murmured back, gesturing to her enormous blue maternity T-shirt and marquee-sized skirt, ‘so if I’m underdressed, they’l have to put up with me.’

Inside was an oasis of calm. The threesome were checked in and brought to a large changing room tiled with Italian stone. Then they were whisked off to a relaxation room that turned out to be a library overlooking the gardens. There were books, magazines, newspapers, a fridge ful of juices, and a platter of fruit, as wel as soft couches, easy chairs and some gentle background music that made Daisy instantly want to lie down and sleep.

‘I could definitely live here,’ Mary said again as they flopped on the couches with the latest magazines for a self-indulgent blob. ‘Imagine when this place was some family’s actual home?’ At that moment, the door opened and a tal woman with dark hair swept up into a knot walked into the room. ‘I’m Leah Meyer. Welcome to Cloud’s Hil Spa,’ she said. Suddenly a mobile phone buzzed. ‘Tranquil ity ruined,’

she said wryly, scooping the phone from her pocket.