Always and Forever (4 page)

‘Oh,’ Adrian said.

Mel could feel him looking at her sympathetical y over Sarah’s blonde head, and she flashed him a comforting look that said that she was fine. And she was, if the definition was Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.

‘But Mummy is only at work sometimes. The rest of the time she’s here, looking after al of us. She’s a super mum,’

Adrian insisted. ‘She should be the star of the family picture, shouldn’t she?’

Sarah nodded and snuggled up to her father, one delicate finger tracing her granny’s lurid yel ow hair. Granny was in the family picture but not Mummy. Mel felt another stab of bitterness, this time directed at her mother.

An energetic sixty-one-year-old, Karen Hogan was both Mel’s secret weapon and the source of enormous resentment. Karen was ready to leap into the breach if the girls were sick so Mel didn’t have to take time off work, and unwittingly ready with remarks about how they’d sobbed for their mummy - or hadn’t.

It wasn’t that Karen didn’t support her daughter’s decision to work. She did. But without her, the whole show would have fal en apart, and somewhere in Mel’s head was the notion that this wasn’t quite the way it was supposed to be.

She was supposed to be ultimately responsible for Carrie and Sarah not their grandmother. Take Carrie’s tonsil itis a month ago. Mel had taken her to the emergency surgery at the weekend, but when she hadn’t improved by Monday, Granny Karen had taken her to their regular GP.

‘The doctor says you might have to consider getting her tonsils out,’ Mel’s mother had reported on the phone that morning, as an anxious Mel stood outside the health forum conference that she just hadn’t been able to miss. ‘He says he needs to see you if you have the time.’

Mel bridled at the tone. If she had the time. Who’d sat up with Carrie al Friday night? Who’d driven to the emergency surgery and sat in anxiety, singing Bob the Builder tunes for two solid hours on Saturday until they saw a doctor? ‘How dare he?’ she snarled. ‘I bet he never thinks how he can go out to work because he has a wife at home doing everything for him.’

‘Mel, love, he didn’t say it that way.’ Her mother was defensive. ‘You’re a great mum; we al know it.’

Do we? thought Mel. And who’s ‘we’?

‘He just meant that you should have a chat about the possibility of getting Carrie’s tonsils out while she’s stil so young. Now that she’s over two, they can do it and you wouldn’t want to leave it too long. The older they are, the harder the recovery is.’ Her mother knew everything. Where does this maternal wisdom come from? thought Mel. And when was she going to get it?

‘That’s a lovely picture, Sarah,’ Mel said evenly. ‘Wil we pin it up on the fridge?’

Sarah nodded happily and Adrian smiled up at his wife.

Another difficult moment over, Mel thought. Everyone thought she was managing everything so wel . What would they say if she revealed that sometimes she felt she barely coped?

The bathtime routine took for ever that evening. Carrie loved her bath and always played with her plastic duck as if she’d

never set eyes on it before, gleeful y pouring water into the head so that it poured out of the bottom, making the plastic wings flap.

‘Mama!’ she squealed delightedly as the wings worked faster and faster. ‘Mama!’

Mel laughed too, feeling some of the tension of the day subside. How wonderful toddlers were - always excited, always ready to be happy. In contrast, Sarah was miserable and sat amid the lavender-scented bubbles looking like an abandoned child, her big blue eyes fil ed with sorrow.

‘Wil you come to the zoo tomorrow, Mummy?’ she asked as Carrie splashed in frantic excitement.

Mel felt her heart constrict. Poor Sarah.

‘You know I can’t,’ said Mel brightly. ‘Mummy has to work but she wishes she could be at the zoo with you.’

‘I want you to come.’ Sarah aimed one of Carrie’s floating fish at the duck and threw it. The fish missed the duck but landed on Sarah’s foot, making her squeak with surprise and hurt. Her bottom lip wobbled precariously.

‘Would you like to go to the farm with Mummy and Daddy at the weekend?’ wheedled Mel, in desperation. The farm, complete with goats, sheep and a couple of Shetland ponies you could pet and feed, was a few miles away on the slopes of Mount Carraig, and both children loved it.

Needless to say, going to the farm wasn’t part of Mel’s plan for the weekend, but they could manage it if she did the grocery shopping late on Friday instead of Saturday.

‘Don’t want the farm.’ Sarah’s damp head shook obstinately. ‘Want Mummy and zoo.’ She reverted to more babyish speech patterns when she was tired and fed up.

Mel knew she should have come up with some better explanation as to why she wouldn’t be at the zoo but she just couldn’t. Her energy had drained away.

‘Sarah, I can’t go with you. Dawna is going and you love Dawna.’

For a brief second, mother and daughter’s eyes met, the same candid blue with glints of darkest violet near the irises giving them remarkable depth. In that moment, Mel thought her daughter looked old and knowing, as if she could see the exhaustion and guilt in her mother’s eyes, and knew that Mel would have done anything to be in two places at the one time if it would make Sarah happy. Then it was gone, replaced by the childish incomprehension that Mummy was once again choosing work over Sarah’s world.

Mel wondered why Adrian told the children she was a super mum. She was a crap mum.

‘You were a long time,’ Adrian remarked when she final y arrived downstairs at ten past eight, carrying dirty clothes, wet towels and a half-eaten baby rusk that she’d found squashed into the landing carpet.

‘Sarah didn’t want to go to sleep,’ muttered Mel. She dumped the laundry in the basket, which managed to look horribly ful again, and headed for the fridge and a glass of wine. There was none. Hadn’t that been last week’s plan?

No wine was to be opened during the week because then she had a glass every evening and surely it was bad for her. Bad, schmad. Where was the corkscrew?

The booze was locked in a cupboard in the dining room.

Mel took out a bottle of the expensive Chablis that Adrian loved. She handed him a glass, which he took without looking up from his books. A plate of half-finished beans on toast lay beside him. His exams were in May and he was studying hard. ‘Lovely wine,’ he muttered, head back in his coursework. ‘Mm,’ she said, taking a deep gulp. Better than the old screw top bottles they used to drink before they both had good jobs. There had to be some compensations for work. A thought drifted into Mel’s mind: was that what her job was al about - making money? She went out to work and paid someone else to bring up her children so that she and Adrian could afford good wine? Mel had eaten her beans on toast and was half reading the paper and half waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle so she could put on another load, when Adrian said,

‘Oh, forgot to tel you but Caroline phoned when you were doing the baths to remind you that you’re al meeting up in Pedro’s Wine Bar at half-eight on Thursday night, and if you’re driving can you pick her up?’

‘Oh, damn,’ muttered Mel. ‘It’s the last thing I feel like this week. And she should know I don’t drive to work.’ Caroline was a very old friend who lived in Dublin’s suburbia, and the party was their delayed Christmas get-together with a group of other old friends - cancel ed so many times that they’d final y decided to have it in January. Once, Caroline and Mel had shared an apartment and worked in the same company, going on wild nights out, comparing notes on unsuitable men and planning how they’d run the world when their time came. Now Caroline was a ful -time mother of three and dedicated herself to the job.

She was, as Mel and everyone else recognised, fabulous at it. Being a mother was her true vocation, and not drinking triple vodkas in shady clubs, as Mel loved to tease her.

Mel knew that her friend’s three smal sons had never eaten a single thing out of a jar when they were babies. If this had been anyone else but the tactful Caroline, Mel would have been made to feel hideously guilty. Her plans to mush up organic carrots had fal en by the wayside when she went back to work and discovered that huge organisation was involved in buying and mushing organic stuff, when it was easier to just buy cute baby jars with nice pictures on the outside. Anyway, the kids liked the jars more than they’d ever liked any of her painstakingly sieved mush.

It was al down to choice, Caroline said serenely. She liked being at home with her children making fairy cakes and having other rampaging toddlers round for tea, but that wasn’t for everyone.

‘You’re out there talking the talk and walking the walk, Mel,’

she said. ‘One of us has to be a captain of industry, and since it isn’t going to be me, I’d like it to be you. Just don’t forget us humble old pals when you’re getting the Nobel Prize for Services to the Business Sector or whatever.’

‘Stop it,’ begged Mel. ‘You’re making me cry.’

What she didn’t quite understand was why Caroline hadn’t gone back to work now that the boys were al in school. Not that she’d ever said that to Caroline, she thought as she tapped out her friend’s number.

‘Hi, Caroline, sorry I missed you. I was on bath duty.’ ‘Mel, I know, I phoned at the wrong time. It’s just that I didn’t want to bother you at work. So, how are you?’ Caroline sounded relaxed and happy, and for some reason this vexed Mel more than she could say. Caroline had given up her high-powered job to sit at home and watch the Disney Channel -

she should be bored and irritable, not happy. ‘We’re al great,’ Mel lied. ‘Just great.’ She paused, hoping that a sudden change of plan meant that the night out on Thursday had been cancel ed. She daren’t cancel again, although she longed to. How could she have agreed to a night out midweek, such a horribly busy week at that? She’d have to go straight to the restaurant from work, then get the late train home, and she’d miss seeing Sarah and Carrie.

‘About Thursday night … ?’

‘Val’s coming, and Lorna’s dying to get out,’ Caroline said.

‘You’d think she never left the house when I know for a fact that they were away for New Year. It’l be fabulous. I think I’m going to wear my new pink shirt - you know, the one I told you about. It’s gorgeous, but it’s a bit silky, so I probably should wear a camisole under it because if I wear a normal bra, you could see it through the shirt. I’ve tried it on twice already today and I’m stil not sure. Although I tried on that cream printed one I told you about, and that might do. It’s not as dressy but … I do love the pink one, though.’

Briefly, Mel imagined what it must be like actual y to have time to decide what to wear on a night out instead of having the usual, last-minute panic in the morning where she ran upstairs and hastily dragged something sparkly from the wardrobe to take into work so she could brighten up her office clothes later.

‘Would the pink be OK or wil I be total y mutton dressed as lamb?’ Caroline was asking.

Did other people ever want to kil their friends with their bare hands or was it just her? Mel thought. Had she turned into a fearsome old harpy now that she had al the things she’d said she’d ever wanted, like children and a good job? ‘What do you think? Pink might be the navy blue of India or whatever, but baby-pink silk on a woman of thirty-nine, is it asking too much?’

‘Pink sounds great,’ Mel said evenly.

‘OK, I’l wear it. I’m real y looking forward to it, I can tel you.

Sometimes you do need to get out of the house and realise there’s a whole world out there, don’t you?’ ‘Absolutely,’

said Mel, ‘absolutely.’

‘Any wine left?’ asked Adrian when she hung up. ‘Yes, but we shouldn’t have too much midweek. We can finish the bottle tomorrow,’ Mel said, and realised in a horrified moment that she was using the same placating voice she used for the children. Worse, Adrian didn’t appear to notice.

Pedro’s Wine Bar was the type of place where the people in Lorimar Health Insurance went on their lunch breaks when they wanted more than the usual half an hour for a snatched sandwich. It was a modern Italian establishment with shadowy candle-lit tables where plots were hatched, affairs were conducted, and people occasional y ordered too much wine because of their job/their home life/their credit card bil /al of the above.

Caroline, Lorna and Val loved it because it reminded them of their lives pre-children when they’d gone for long lunches in town and planned coups with their col eagues while handsome young waiters hovered in the background wielding bottles of Frascati and scenting large tips. Al of which was exactly why Mel didn’t like it.

‘Ooh, cocktails,’ squealed Lorna, as soon as they got through the door on Thursday evening. Grasping the laminated cocktail menu, she read out the list excitedly.

Halfway down it, she began to laugh.

‘Who wants a Slippery Nipple?’ she said with glee.

Caroline and Val joined in the laughter.

‘Wine for me,’ said Val rueful y. ‘Or I won’t get up in the morning.’

‘And me,’ said Caroline, mindful of doing the school run.

‘Oh, go on, let your hair down. Have a …’ Lorna scanned the list, ‘Vodkatini, Manhattan, no! a Pink Lady, to match your shirt. What about you, Mel? I’m sure you’re out at events al week with your job. What’s the fashionable drink now for us boring old mums?’

Mel found that she was stil holding on to her handbag very tightly, the tendons in her hands standing out like vines. She was keyed up after the stress of the day with no numbingly familiar train journey to soothe it away. Gently, she put her bag on the seat beside her and tried to enter into the spirit of the night. She would not let Lorna get to her. ‘Corporate events are few and far between these days,’ she said evenly. ‘And I never drink at them, so I’m the wrong person to ask advice about the hip new drinks. I’l have wine too, but only one glass. I’ve got an early meeting ‘

‘You executive types don’t know how to let your hair down,’

interrupted Lorna. ‘Just one cocktail each and then we’l be sensible, OK?’

After the cocktails arrived, the conversation moved on to schools. Lorna was heavily involved in the parent/teacher association in her children’s school and over their second cocktail,