Always and Forever (23 page)

In this day and age too … scandalous it was.

‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs O’Gorman, sucking in her cheeks in a way that suggested she was trying to extract a bit of juice from a recalcitrant lemon. ‘She was crying in the taxi, they say, which is never a good sign. Although I’m shocked at Harry and Sheila Malin to throw her out. That doesn’t sound like them at al .’

‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ said Mrs Hanley, who’d heard it al and was disgusted at the gossipmongers.

‘They’re the closest family I know. There’s got to be more to it.’

By Friday, Cleo had eaten Mo’s chocolate and vanil a pudding for the third day in a row, and knew it would be hard to fit into her going-out jeans and the sparkly top that Eileen said was suitable for town-painting.

‘I don’t want to go out,’ Cleo said doleful y as they waited for Trish to turn up. ‘I want to stay here and watch TV and mope.’

‘Moping’s bad for your health,’ Eileen said.

‘So’s bucketloads of Mo’s pudding,’ Cleo sighed.

‘Medicinal. So it doesn’t count.’

‘Why don’t you and Trish go out and let me stay here?’

begged Cleo. ‘I’l be no fun. I’m not in the mood for partying.’ And she wasn’t. Neither Trish nor Eileen seemed to realise just how hurt Cleo was. They both brushed the whole incident off as a family tiff. But the Malins didn’t have tiffs. And this was much more. The Wil ow had been sold -

Cleo’s home. That was no tiff. It was like her childhood and her family being destroyed in a single move. And her father hadn’t tried to make her stay, that was the worst thing.

‘You need some chil ing-out time.’ Eileen was sanguine about it al . ‘An hour out with us and you’l feel better.’

At half-eight that evening, Cleo, Trish and Eileen congregated in Eileen’s smal but very warm bathroom and made themselves beautiful. The high cost of using the storage heaters meant that the rest of the flat was usual y cold, but the bathroom was tiny so that, once heated up, it stayed.

Eileen had pride of place on the loo seat where she could see herself in the huge mirror that covered half of one wal and gave any person showering a frightening glimpse of their naked self when they pul ed the shower curtain back.

‘That mirror could not stay if I was living here,’ said Trish firmly from her position on the floor where she was surveying an empire of bronzing products to tan up her freckled skin. ‘Who wants to see themselves getting in and out of the bath?’ ‘Cameron Diaz?’ suggested Cleo, who was perched on the edge of the bath with her make-up on her knees and a lip pencil in her hand. ‘Hal e Berry?’ Since Eileen’s pep talk, she was trying to be more cheerful but it was just a facade.

‘I don’t mind seeing myself,’ said Eileen in surprise. Cleo and Trish were struck momentarily dumb. Cleo thought of the very definite love handles on her hips and the way her boobs took over unless they were restrained in an industrial strength bra. Trish thought of her freckles and how, in some places, they seemed to join up to give her a green tinge rather than the tanned caramel colour a person might expect. ‘But seriously … without your kil er knickers and your uplift bra and al the rest?’ Trish said.

‘Naked is natural,’ shrugged Eileen. ‘The human body is beautiful.’ ‘You have to stop doing yoga,’ Trish said, shaking her head. ‘It’s changing you from the neurotic person we al know and love. I don’t know about you girls, but after the week I’ve had, I need a whole lot of slap.’

Hammerhead Jack’s, the town’s trendiest nightclub, was throbbing with activity by nine o’clock when the girls arrived.

Trish and Eileen were both out to have a great time, but in different ways. For a start, neither Cleo nor Eileen was a big drinker. Cleo had helped her father calm down too many drink-fuel ed arguments in the Wil ow to be interested in being a party animal. But Trish considered no night a success unless she’d had a couple of beers and at least one cocktail so she felt al swanky and cosmopolitan.

Eileen’s idea of a good time was to meet up with lots of her friends from the hospital and throw a few shapes on the dance floor when the DJ in Hammerhead Jack’s stopped playing

ambient music and put on a few decent chart hits. Eileen was not a gifted dancer. She was a great one for throwing her arms wildly out to the sides and twirling like a dervish, but she enjoyed herself too much to care.

Trish liked to hunt for gorgeous men and flirt like a woman possessed. To this end, she was wearing bel y-skimming trousers and a teeny little cotton T-shirt that looked as though she’d picked it up in Oxfam’s children’s section. The outfit was proving to be successful.

In the midst of such party spirit, Cleo knew she was being unusual y quiet but dancing and chatting up men al seemed so futile in comparison with what had just happened. She didn’t even feel in the mood for a glass of wine, because she knew it would make her feel even more miserable. And it was hard to get worked up about either the music or the talent. Trish, on the other hand, was definitely excited about the male talent. ‘I can’t believe I haven’t been in Hammerhead’s for this long,’ she kept saying in surprise.

‘I’d taken Carrickwel off the radar and I was wrong. There are decent men in this town. I mean, the TH count is quite high. Where are they coming from? Are they shipping men in or growing them like baby aliens in a warehouse somewhere? Oh, look,’ she swivel ed on her seat, her eyes fixing on a guy like a seagul ’s beady gaze locked on a trawler. ‘As I live and breathe, TH8, no less.’ Trish had a great line of abbreviations that helped their search for Mr Right. Nobody wanted to be heard saying, ‘Oh, he’s gorgeous!!!!’ out loud and having the object of their desire notice this and smirk, thereby ruining the whole thing, so her friends from business col ege had decided that it was easier to say THE or 7 or even, rarely, TH10. That meant Total Hunk with a score of ten out of ten. The ideal was a TH10 who promised to phone you the next day and actual y did. Unfortunately, these were few and far between, as Trish and Cleo had discovered. TH10s with nice manners went for other girls, while Cleo and Trish had a magnetic pul for W, MWNDCI or VD/SMWPWYH otherwise known as Weirdos, Men With Next Day Commitment Issues and Very Drunk/Stoned Men Who Play With Your Hair. Eileen, who had never wanted to play the game, eventual y began to flounder with this shorthand.

‘Wow, TH8 at seven o’clock,’ murmured Trish out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Very high on the SO and definitely not an MNO. No ring mark, see?’

‘Wha?’ Eileen asked Cleo in bewilderment.

‘Total Hunk, scoring eight, standing at the bar to Trish’s left.

She rates him very high on the Shag-ometer and says he’s probably not married as she can’t see a mark where he took his wedding ring off, so he’s OK and won’t be one of those guys who give you their Mobile Number Only.’

‘You’re sick,’ snarled a guy at the bar beside them. ‘No wonder you’re al on your own.’

Trish flipped him the bird and sauntered off to the loo. ‘The mystery bus has been,’ she said dreamily when she got back. ‘I feel so much better.’

‘The mystery bus,’ Cleo explained to Eileen, ‘is what Trish says happens when you have a few drinks, go to the loo so that the drink can go to your head, and come back to find that al the ugly men have magical y been whisked away on the mystery bus and al you’re left with is gorgeous ones.’

‘The mystery taxi is what happens when you wake up next morning with an ugly guy instead of the gorgeous guy you went home with,’ giggled Trish. ‘The mystery taxi has taken the gorgeous guy away and left some neanderthal who needs to shave his back.’

By eleven, Cleo could take no more and was fed up with Diet Coke. She wanted to be at home in her makeshift bed in Eileen’s broom cupboard so she could mul over everything in privacy. ‘Come on, Trish, let’s go. You’l thank me in the morning,’ she said to her friend, who was busy formulating a plan to go on to another nightclub where even finer men might be lining the wal s.

‘Meanie pig person,’ protested Trish, who, despite liking a drink, had no tolerance for it. ‘I want to stay out. Don’t be a spoilsport.’

‘Trish, I’m not in the mood, sorry. Come on, let’s go home.’

Trish threw her arms around her friend. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I am so sorry about everything, so sorry.’ And she burst into tears.

‘Home,’ said Eileen, who was as sober as Cleo. ‘Definitely home,’ replied Cleo.

Handbags, coats and big wool y scarves were col ected for the journey home, although Trish had been hit by the Vodka Jacket Syndrome, which meant she was both mental y and physical y warm and felt that wearing a coat over her skimpy halterneck was utterly unnecessary, despite the cold.

‘She’l catch pneumonia,’ groaned Cleo as she and Eileen linked Trish out of the club.

‘Pneumonia isn’t that easy to get,’ Eileen said prosaical y as they reached the taxi rank. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with Trish’s chest.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with your chest either, that’s for sure, love,’ roared someone from the head of the queue at Cleo, who blushed puce and clutched her coat closer.

‘You’l make some man very happy one day. Bags it be me, pleeeease … I’ ‘Ah, feck off,’ roared Trish back.

A group of people emerging from the elegant restaurant beside the taxi rank turned to stare and Cleo felt a surge of embarrassment. There were four men and a woman, al dressed up sedately and obviously not part of the usual Carrickwel nighttime scene. Cleo locked eyes with the tal est of the group, a crop-haired man in a dark coat with a face like stone, supercilious eyes over a hooked nose and a chin that said ‘I want it NOW. He was good-looking, if you liked that type of Alpha Male, but his expression was anything but friendly. ‘Feck off yourself,’ yel ed the voice from the top of the queue. ‘I was only tel ing her she’s a lovely girl.’

‘She doesn’t want to know, so you feck off …’ began Trish, with Cleo tugging at her to be quiet. She didn’t want a scene. It was bad enough having an audience, without it including some posh disapproving tourists.

‘Lovely town, pity about the locals,’ said a male voice.

‘Probably a hen party.’ It was the tal man. Alpha Male. He stared at Cleo, Trish and Eileen with disgust in his eyes.

Enraged by this, Cleo glared back. How dare he assume she was part of some awful boozing party?

‘We are not a hen party,’ she snapped, with a shake of her curls and a flare of her nostrils. The cheek of him. ‘You’re not married? None of you girls are married?’ slurred the drunk who’d started it al . ‘There’s hope for us al yet.’ The sole woman in the restaurant party clutched a camel haired coat closer about herself. The tal guy put a hand on her arm.

‘I must apologise,’ he said.

Cleo raised her chin regal y and prepared for his apology. ‘I apologise for the behaviour around here,’ he added to the people he was with. ‘It’s the laddish culture that makes women go out and get drunk. Not the ideal picture of Carrickwel , but otherwise it’s a lovely town, I assure you. I suppose every beautiful place has its downside.’

Sheer temper made Cleo feel momentarily weak. The arm holding Trish up flopped and so did Trish. She col apsed onto the pavement in a heap, making a mad clutch at Cleo’s legs for support. Unfortunately, Cleo was wearing her highest heels. (‘You must wear them,’ Eileen had insisted earlier. ‘High heels are empowering!’) On a damp pavement, with a drunken friend pul ing at her, Cleo’s heels ceased to be empowering and became toppling. She fel clumsily and grazed her hand on a paving stone.

‘Ouch!’ she said, half in pain, half in shock. Ever-practical, Eileen went in with a fireman’s lift to raise Trish, who was a bit unsteady on her feet after the fal .

A stranger’s hand reached out and pul ed Cleo to her feet, not unkindly, but not gently either. With shocked tears in her eyes, she had an impression of a soft dark coat against her face as she was righted. It was Mr Alpha Male, up close and personal. He was tal er than she was, and physical y very strong, from the way he held her as if she were a dainty little thing. And he was so very masculine, with that close-cropped haircut showing off a face that was al hard angles, dominated by a Medici nose and hooded, dark eyes.

‘I think,’ he murmured, his breath thril ingly close to her face,

‘that you shouldn’t drink so much.’

‘Party time!’ giggled Trish, weaving over to Cleo to hug her.

The man released Cleo, so she reached out and got a good grip of Trish again, then swivel ed her head to her prey, who was going to get the dressing-down of his life.

His nose would bleed with the shock of the words she would deliver … But he was gone. Al she could see was his sleek black head disappearing into an equal y sleek black car, and then the door clunked shut.

‘How dare you?’ she shrieked at the top of her voice at the departing car. ‘We are not a hen party; I am not drunk. I haven’t had a single bloody drink, not one, you, you …

meanie pig person!’

‘Oh, my head,’ moaned Trish, feebly reaching for her ears.

‘I feel funny al of a sudden. Please don’t shout, Cleo.’

‘Yeah,’ slurred a familiar voice: the drunk. ‘Don’t shout. If the police come, we’l al be in trouble.’

‘There is chocolate in the flat,’ Eileen said diplomatical y.

‘Those new Nestle things and Magnum ice creams in the freezer. Oh, and chocolate muffins from Mo’s Diner but they’re a few days old and they might be gone hard, so you wouldn’t like them.’ Cleo began to haul her half of Trish towards home. ‘Never say never when it comes to Mo’s muffins,’ was al she was able to trust herself to say. She would see that man again and have her say if it was the last thing she did.

Daisy sat with her handbag - a pink boiled wool, handmade work of art, because she wanted to look her best today - on her black-clad knees and tried not to look at the huge clock on the beige waiting-room wal .

It was ten past ten in the morning and their appointment with the doctor in the Avalon Fertility Clinic had been for half nine. There were lots of other couples waiting, some looking relaxed, most tense, and al trying to pul their eyes away from the clock. Nobody had gone up to the fresh-faced receptionist behind the desk and complained about how long they’d been waiting. It wasn’t that sort of place.