My Husband's Wives (7 page)

‘You'll have to hand the crown back,' Gail was speaking quickly, the shock of red hair that she clung on to, despite its obvious thinness, a thorny crest threatening to degenerate on her creamy scalp at any moment. It moved manically about her pate as though controlled by some power even greater than Gail's. ‘I don't want to be associated with this kind of publicity – mud sticks,' she bellowed across the desk at the distraught Annalise.

‘Okay, so, what do I do?' She hadn't missed the implication, this was bigger than just giving the crown back.

‘Keep a low profile, talk to the pageant people, see if you can win them around, see if they have anything else to offer, but I doubt it.' Gail lit one of her long filtered cigarettes belligerently; she still smoked at her desk. There was no smoking ban for Gail, she made the rules and everyone stuck by them.

*

It was with a heavy heart that Annalise handed her crown onto the runner-up and made her way to the Liffey Medical Clinic. She cried the whole way. It felt as if she'd lost the one thing worth having. She went straight to the bathrooms on arrival. There was no fixing the mess her make-up had jellied into; she washed off what remained of it. Afterwards, staring at her bare face in the muted lights, she didn't even try to convince herself that things would get better. It was as if the sparkle had fallen from the glitterball of life. Still, she might as well keep the appointment. She wasn't sure if bigger boobs were the way to go, but anything had to be better than wallowing in the loss of her big chance.

*

Paul Starr wasn't the first man to tell Annalise Connolly that she was beautiful. The difference was, when he said it, she had a feeling he was telling her not to get anything from her, but rather to give her something for herself. That was just Paul. They'd met, quite by accident. She'd been hoping to get a little work done, discreet enhancement, just a little pick-me-up for her self-esteem as much as for her B-cups. David Rayner was the best surgeon in the business. Rumour had it that he'd done work on Katie Price, in her Jordan days – not that Annalise wanted to go that route. To be fair, she was very upset when she knocked on his door. Amazing the difference a couple of days makes. The crowning ceremony had been the best night of her life.

‘You think surgery is for you?' The doctor looked at her in a way that suggested that she was not quite in on the joke, but he made her feel as if she didn't need to be. He was tall, maybe twenty years older than she was, but still attractive. She could tell he didn't work out, but he was in great shape, without that completely buffed look that the fashion boys went for.

‘I'm not sure, I think it's the only thing to do now…' she said and, to her mortification, felt hot tears well up behind her eyes. The tale of the last couple of days came tumbling out and Paul handed over tissues while she blubbered about all she'd managed to mess up for almost half an hour.

‘I think you should count yourself very lucky. Who wants to be in a pageant when you could so easily be doing something far more worthwhile?' he said as he walked towards a small cupboard on the other side of the room. He made them tea. ‘Green or white?' he asked as he dropped bags into the boiling water. The smell revived her, just a little.

‘White is good,' she said, eventually looking around the office that she'd been too distraught to take in before. The silence of the place was a little unnerving, but there was no denying that money and taste had free rein on choosing the medley of cream, white and ash that acted only as a backdrop to the man himself and the drama of the canvases on the walls. ‘You have good taste,' she said, nodding towards a giant painting on the wall to her left.

‘No, I'm afraid that I'm just the lucky recipient. My wife.' His expression darkened, and a vague, shallow furrow creased his eyes. ‘She's a very talented artist.' The way he said it, Annalise had a feeling that maybe that was all she was.

‘Oh?' she studied the painting; it only took a moment to recognize that distinctive style. ‘Oh, my God, you're married to Grace Kennedy?' The delicate cup almost fell from her hand. ‘My mum loves her work – Dad bought a small print for their anniversary.'

‘Yes, well, marriage is a funny thing.' He said the words sadly, his eyes never leaving her face, and in that moment, she felt something tug at her heart. Maybe not all of her emotions had been wrenched from her?

‘Feel any better?' he asked her as she sipped her tea.

‘A little,' she whispered shyly.

‘Well, as a doctor,' he smiled at her, ‘I'm going to prescribe the following.' He took out a notepad and slipped a slim pen from his pocket. ‘First, I think you should forget about the Miss Ireland competition. None of the supermodels ever bothered with any of that, did they?' He smiled at her.

‘No, but they…'

‘Never mind “but they”,' he said, writing for a moment on the pad before him. ‘Next, I don't think I should perform the surgery on you for a number of reasons.' He locked eyes with her so she caught her breath; she couldn't break the contact even if she tried. ‘Number one, you clearly don't need it – unless you want to be a page three girl and, to be frank, I think you're much too classy.' He smiled at her. ‘Number two, even if you think it will make you feel better, I guarantee, it'll make you feel worse – ouch!' Even Annalise managed to smile at that. ‘And number three, I'm a heart surgeon, not a plastic surgeon, so I'd probably not make the best job of it anyway.' He took up a folder from the desk and pointed to his name, printed in bold caps across it. ‘Sorry.' He smiled again, almost apologetically, ‘but I couldn't let you leave here, not without making sure that you'd be all right; you were obviously so upset when you arrived.'

‘I must have been if I came into the wrong surgery.' Annalise found herself laughing, an unexpected outcome for the day.

‘So, at least you're smiling.' He got up to show her out. ‘Cosmetic Surgery is on the next floor, but really, my advice is for you to go home and get over this disappointment.' He handed her the slip of paper he'd been writing on the desk. Outside in the waiting room, two women sat beneath a giant oil painting of a serene lake in the midday sun. Annalise wondered about Grace Kennedy and what kind of a woman it took to captivate a man like Paul Starr. She knew men like him were way out of her league – they'd go for the smart girls, the talented girls, the successful girls. At the lift, she unfolded the piece of paper he had handed her. It contained only two words:
Good luck
and then his phone number beneath.

Twenty-six years of age, and she had a grey rib. Annalise Connolly couldn't figure why these things always happened to her. These days, life happened to Annalise, nothing she could do about it. That was half the problem though, wasn't it? That and the fact that she felt fat and manky and trapped! There, she said it. She peered closer into her bathroom mirror. It wasn't good. She was morphing into someone unrecognizable. She was wearing a scrunchy, for heaven's sake. Not a good scrunchy either; not one like Ralph Lauren featured in his Spring/Summer New York collection, where the models had their hair sculpted – yes, actually sculpted. God, Annalise thought to herself, I'd love that. There were probably livelier looking corpses up in Glasnevin cemetery. Paul had said it, at the time; lime green was not a good colour for a north facing en-suite. She should have listened to him; he was never wrong. Paul. They were, she knew, an unlikely pair. A Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones – only they were
both
ancient.

‘Come on you guys,' she yelled down the corridor at Jerome and Dylan. Two children, four years; how had that happened? ‘Dylan, take the saucepan off your head,' she said absently as she walked past the melee that permanently covered her kitchen floor. ‘Homes are for living in,' she had told Paul all the time. Anyway, she'd much rather spend time with the boys than all day cleaning as if she were some unfortunate Eastern European woman. The saucepan was stuck. She tugged it as hard as she could, but there was no moving it. Madeline would know what to do about this.

Madeline Connolly was still a young woman – early fifties, although she'd pass for skimming along the edge of her mid-forties. She was the polar opposite of her daughter. A qualified accountant, she wore her auburn hair neat, her clothes sharp, and offered her advice wisely and sparingly. She gave up work when Adrian was born, tried for baby number two and eventually conceded that it wasn't going to happen. Then, the adoption board made contact. They had a little girl, three years old, pretty as a picture, birth mother had died of a heroin overdose, father unknown. Her parents had been honest with her from day one, but they'd loved her as much, sometimes, she wondered, if not more, than her bookish brother. Adrian lived in the Emirates now, a successful engineer. She had at least managed to pip him to the reproduction post. Maybe, she thought, it was the only thing she'd managed to do well.

‘You have to come over, Madeline.' She rang out of desperation. Her mother wasn't due to visit for two more days, but… she couldn't ring Paul. True, he would sort everything out, but he made her feel as if she was hopeless. Not that he would say anything to make her feel bad; quite the opposite, it seemed he loved her even more when she was floundering. Funny, but even though he was still willing to rescue her, she had come to the point where being rescued wasn't as important as feeling capable and in control of things. ‘I can't get it off his head.' The saucepan had fastened tight; Annalise bent down and kissed him on his adorable nose; how could you get cross with such a cutie?

‘Have you tried butter, dear?' Always practical, cool as a breeze, Madeline Connolly had an endless reservoir of patience with her daughter.

‘I've tried everything but putting his face in cold water.' Dylan, for his part, seemed unaware of her distress and his head was lodged securely in one of – thank God – her cheaper saucepans. ‘But his ears are turning a dark blue,' Annalise wailed and she wiped a sodden cornflake from his forehead and wondered what else was lodged inside.

*

Friday in the emergency department was not as busy as Annalise had expected or rather dreaded. Her mum dropped her off at the front entrance.

The waiting was the pits, of course. There were people there much worse off than Annalise, Dylan and the saucepan which had taken on a personality of its own. The saucepan-helmet now had special powers that Dylan expanded on much to the entertainment of all around them. Annalise tried to keep their distance from anyone who looked downright contagious. It took three hours before they were called. It seemed that everyone else in the waiting room was either old enough to be dead already or young enough to belong in the maternity suite. There were two small babies; their pitiful cries had stirred something in her. She'd have loved a girl – she adored her boys of course, wouldn't change them for the world, couldn't imagine life without them – if only she could order exactly what she wanted; one, small pink cherub. She had enjoyed her pregnancies, the scans, the yummy-mummy massages in the local beauty parlour and the way everyone spoiled her. Even the birth – she'd had gas, air, and the offer of an epidural, but two pushes and it was all over. She'd never tell anyone that of course; it was something of a badge of honour if you suffered a little. Paul's first wife, Grace, had had a terrible time of it; not that he talked about it much. Same as her own mother; one child and that was it. ‘Funny how these things are easier for some people than others,' she'd said once to Madeline. If the barb hurt, Annalise hadn't noticed or meant it. No, she'd ridden on the excitable wave of each pregnancy. She'd even bagged a deal with one of the TV stations to front a healthy-eating campaign. The Duchess of Cambridge inspired it; Annalise loved every minute of it and people had loved her. ‘Maybe it's because they're getting to see what I see – the real you,' Paul had murmured in her hair as he'd picked her up from the studio one afternoon.

‘Amazing how the doctors know exactly what they're doing,' she said to one of the nurses. Two junior doctors applied a light lotion about Dylan's skull and then pulled sharply so the cornflakes Dylan had mysteriously put in the saucepan before putting it on his head splattered in a distasteful spray that could as easily have been vomit from the stench.

‘Was the milk sour?' An old battleaxe glowered at Annalise as though she might have stuck the pan on the child's head on purpose.

‘Of course not,' Annalise said defensively, but the wailing started again, so she bundled up Dylan and began to make her way out of the cubicle.

‘Don't forget your saucepan.' A younger nurse handed her the offending kitchenware.

‘At least it wasn't a good one,' Annalise said, popping it into her Coach bag. The nurse looked horrified and Annalise moved closer to her. ‘No, it's all right, really; this is an old bag. I'd never put a milky saucepan into anything this season.' As she was leaving the hospital, she spotted a familiar shape making its determined way towards her with a small child struggling to keep up.

‘Annalise,' mwah, mwah – Kate Dalton expertly air-kissed upwards, missing her mark by a calculated four inches either side. ‘What on earth are you doing here?'

‘Oh, just a minor household accident.' She nodded towards Dylan. Thank God she'd thrown the offending pot in her bag. Kate Dalton. She'd started out plain old Katie Prendergast. She got hitched in Castle Leslie – like Heather Mills, only with horse-racing celebrities instead of rock stars. She'd married a Cheltenham Gold Cup winning jockey, not much taller than herself. ‘One of those silly things. That's boys for you.' Annalise ruffled Dylan's sodden hair. ‘And who's this?' She bent down towards the little girl at Kate's side.