Second Hand Jane (2 page)

A few moments
later, heavy breathing signalled Harry had taken over possession of
the phone.

“Hello, sweetie
pie, how are you today? Are you being a good boy for your
Mummy?”

The heavy
breathing stopped. “Yes but she’s not being a very good Mammy.”

Jess choked
back a laugh. “Why’s that then, Harry?”

“
I
need
to
use Daddy’s razor or I will get prickles.”

Brianna’s voice
trilled in the background, “You won’t get prickles, Harry, because
you are not in the throes of puberty just yet even though some days
I could swear I am living with a hormonal teenager in the body of a
five-year-old. Now give the phone back to Mammy and say cheerio to
Aunty Jess.”

There was a
thunk as he dropped the phone in protest and then the line went
dead. Jess smiled to herself and shook her head. It really was
lucky for Harry that he was such a cutie. Hanging up her end, she
waited for it to ring again. She didn’t have to wait long.

“Sorry about
that. His Highness is being a right sod this morning. We’ve both
got cabin fever, so I’d better keep it short before he gets himself
into some real mischief. Now I know it’s a bit of a crap day and
you’d never know it was supposed to be the tail end of an Indian
summer, but we do live in Ireland after all and if I don’t get out
and about with Harry, I will go mad!”

“I take it
Pete’s at work then?” Jess interjected. Despite having the look of
a builder about him, Brianna’s nearest and dearest actually worked
in IT, doing that cryptic kind of stuff that IT people do. She had
once asked him to explain to her in layman’s terms exactly what it
was he did do for a living. To which Pete had replied in
painstaking detail and in slow, drawn-out syllables as though
talking to a simpleton. The thing was, he might as well have been
because her eyes had glazed over halfway through his explanation
and she was still none the wiser when he’d finished. It was
something or other to do with contracting his computer skills out
to a major retail outlet, for which he got very highly paid. Well
paid enough for Brianna not to have to work and for them to live in
a lovely home with all the latest mod cons.

“Yeah, he’s
finishing off an urgent job and won’t be home until late. So how do
you fancy a trip to Bray? We could do the Greystones walk, followed
by a glass of wine in the pub. A lemonade and bag of crisps will
keep Harry quiet and then we could all hop on the Dart back to mine
for a BBQ dinner. Nothing flash—sausages in bread with salad—but
I’ve managed to entice Nora, so long as they’re the low-fat chicken
sausies, mind.”

Brianna lived
in a pretty red brick, two-storey house in the bustling seaside hub
of Bray, a mere thirty minutes outside of Dublin. With the hills of
North County Wicklow surrounding it, there was no better place for
a Saturday afternoon ramble. Jess glanced out the window at the
grey old day. Exercise hadn’t been on her agenda but a spot of
fresh sea air, some good company followed by an ice cold glass of
sav—well, it would do her the world of good, she decided. Besides,
if it meant she didn’t have to cook a dinner for one, she was all
for a BBQ!

“You can’t beat
a good old banger, even if they are low-fat, so count me in. Meet
you at the station around two?”

“Perfect! We
can head off from there. I’ll let Nora know and we’ll see you
then.”

Jess hung up
the phone and twiddled her toes inside the soft fleece lining of
her slippers. She’d have to take them off in a minute but not just
yet—they were so comfy.

The slippers
were a Valentine’s Day gift from her mother last February. For as
long as she could remember—or at least since Jess had been of a
marriageable age—she had been buying her a little something on
Valentine’s Day. She said it was her way of making her daughter
feel loved and once upon a time, the gifts had been saucy knickers.
Inappropriate items for one’s mother to be buying her daughter,
perhaps, but when your mother worked on the lingerie counter of
Auckland’s iconic Smith & Caughey department store, she got to
buy them at cost. Hence, Jess was sure she boasted a more exotic
underwear drawer than most red-light workers!

More years ago
now than Jess cared to remember, she had really pushed the boat out
and given her a pair of lace-topped stay-up stockings. She’d
volunteered a demo on how to put them on, too, but Jess declined
the offer as sexy stockings were not really the kind of thing she
wanted to see her Mum in. Yes, indeedy, the sight of that would
have been enough to make her hoist her pantyhose as high as she
could get them for the rest of her days!

These little
gifts were given on the annual day of romance in the hope that Jess
would use her feminine wiles to maximum capacity in order to seduce
a doctor or solicitor or some such other professional.

Marian Baré,
you see, suffered from delusions of grandeur. She herself was
married to a carpet layer and there was absolutely nothing wrong
with that, in Jess’s opinion. Her dad was a hard worker who had
always provided for his girls, as he liked to call his wife, Jess,
and her younger sister Kelly.

As the years
had passed, however, and she had unwrapped yet another lacy thong,
her mother had abruptly changed tack.

“
Jessica, your father and I would be just
as happy if you married a tradesman, you know. They make good
providers
and
they’re
practical. That’s so important, sweetheart; I mean, a man needs to
know how to unblock a toilet or change a light bulb. Look at how
your father’s always looked after us.” Marian’s voice softened as
she thought about her obliging hubby Frank but then she’d gotten
back to the matter at hand. “Speaking of whom, your father was
saying the other day that the firm’s just taken on a new
apprentice. He’s only a year or two younger than you, which is
nothing when you think of Catherine Zeta and Michael, so perhaps
Dad could arrange for you…”

“No way! I am
not desperate, Mum, and I haven’t forgotten that awful Jeremy you
got him to set me up with last time! And since when were you on a
first name basis with members of the Hollywood A-list?”

“Don’t be
clever, Jessica; it doesn’t suit you. Your problem, my girl, is
that you’re too fussy for your own good because there was
absolutely nothing wrong with poor Jeremy that a dab of antiseptic
cream on his spots wouldn’t have sorted out.”

“
Yeah, and a bottle of mouthwash, a
deodorant, anti-dandruff shampoo, and soap for that matter.
Personal hygiene issues aside, Mum, in case you haven’t noticed, we
do not live in the 1950s anymore. I don’t need a man to be happy. I
have a career of my own, from which I gain plenty of personal
satisfaction, thank you very much.” Actually, now that she thought
back on it, she had sounded a tad
“And I am off to get a crew cut and stop
shaving under my arms.”
No wonder her mother had begun to narrow her eyes whenever
her girlfriends popped around after that little
statement.

At the time,
though, she had merely reiterated, “Yes, sweetheart, and we are
very proud of you. That’s why we put you through university but a
job won’t keep you warm at night, will it? Why can’t you have both?
Lots of women work and maintain a relationship. I mean, I’ve hardly
sat on my backside all these years, now have I?”

God.
She was so
frustrating and probably the main reason Jess thanked her lucky
stars for her UK ancestry, which meant she could live and work on
the other side of the world from her! She flatly refused to refer
to her daughter’s chosen line of work as a journalist as a career.
It was always referred to as a job—a means to an end until
something better came along: aka, a man. Jess gritted her teeth in
anticipation, knowing what was coming next and she was proved
right.

“Jessica, all
your father and I want for you is to find
someone
to settle down with like your sister has. That’s
not too much to ask for, surely?”

It irked Jess
the way she always included her father in the equation. It wasn’t
him who put the pressure on her to get a ring on her finger at
every opportunity. And, at the very mention of Kelly, she rolled
her eyes. Married she may be but did it count if it were to a
Martian? Okay, so he wasn’t green but he was odd and he wasn’t very
attractive and she had no idea how her sister actually managed to
have sex with him but she obviously did—and quite often, too,
judging by their numerous offspring. Who, if she were being honest,
were complete and utter little shites. Although as their aunt, she
obviously loved her pretentious eight-year-old niece Mia,
know-it-all six-year-old Bella, bossy four-year-old Ethan, and of
course she couldn’t forget her three-year-old tearaway nephew,
Elliot, who still wasn’t properly toilet trained. Nor could she
forget the incident whereby he’d wet himself all over her favourite
velvet Balenciaga skirt the last time she had been home. She had
picked up the vintage skirt for an absolute steal on one of her
op-shop forays and it would now forever bear the mark of her
nephew. Kelly had tried to appease her by saying that he only peed
on people he felt comfortable around. She’d tried to convince her
sister that really, she should be pleased because despite his
having not seen his aunt since he was six months old, he obviously
had a soft spot for her. Jess was too busy wiping at the wet spot
he’d left on her lap to care.

Suffice to say
she loved them all but she loved them even more from afar. Which
was why she had left behind her gigs writing a weekly column about
Auckland’s movers and shakers—she refused to call it a gossip
column—along with the regular trickle of commissioned work that had
started to come her way as she carved a name for herself to
inadvertently flee to the Emerald Isle in the first place.

Now that she
thought about it, her mother never said much when she made
reference to her brother-in-law hailing from the red planet. Jess
reckoned this was because deep down she secretly agreed with her
but the fact Brian was something or other high up in the world of
banking was all the compensation she needed.

There was no
doubt about it; Marian Baré was a snob, she reflected fondly.
Though where it stemmed from, Jess had no idea because it really
wasn’t in keeping with her South Auckland upbringing or her
parents’ current suburban address of Hillsborough in Auckland. It
may well have straddled the more fashionable Mt Eden, as Marian
liked to point out whenever she got a chance, but their
three-bedroomed brick and tile still firmly had its foundations dug
into Hillsborough.

Then there was the thing with their
surname. Whenever anybody pronounced it as the rather blunt “Bare,”
Jess was instantly reminded of that old TV show
Keeping up
Appearances
. The one
where Hyacinth Bucket always insisted her name was actually
Bouquet.
It’s
not Bear, thank you very much; there is an accented ‘e’ on the end.
Beret, dahling; it’s Beret.

“Your sister’s
making noises about having a fifth baby, you know,” she announced
during one of their last cosy mother-and-daughter transatlantic
chats.

“More fool her;
then she’ll be run ragged.” This wasn’t true. Kelly was not averse
to getting their Mum, the world’s most devoted grandmother, to help
out and she would be in her element with another baby. She was a
proper earthmother, which to Jess’s mind simply meant not wearing
makeup, not getting one’s hair done, and talking about nothing else
other than your boobs and your baby’s bowel motions, both of which
her sister majored in.

“All I am
saying is that your eggs are a-cooking, Jessica Jane, and once
they’re fried—no matter what these medical experts say—there is no
turning back the clock. Surely there must be some eligible men in
Dublin. Isn’t it choc-a-block with famous musicians and actors? We
don’t want any more of your wounded birds, mind.”

What was it
with her mother and all things avian? Jess had sighed. “All I will
say with regards to my eggs, Mother, is that I am quite partial to
the odd fried egg despite their being high in cholesterol and that
four, possibly five grandchildren, in an overpopulated world is
enough for anybody. Stop being so bloody greedy! As for your
reference to Irish men, think about the Corrs—three beautiful girls
to one unattractive male. And for your information, so far as
wounded birds go, I do not always date men with problems.”

“Yes, you do.
What about that Peter—the one who didn’t know whether he liked
Arthur or Martha?”

She cringed.
Typical, making her relieve that painful memory. It had been said
more than once that she had a tendency to gravitate toward the
problematic members of the male species and there was the teensiest
grain of truth in that, she supposed, given her dodgy track record.
Peter had issues over his sexuality and she’d been convinced she
would be the one to help him make his mind up one way or another
but apparently not—he’d dumped her for his mate Matthew. Then there
had been Simon, whose parents had divorced when he was a child and
their ensuing bitter custody battle had left him damaged goods.
Paul had followed shortly after. His former fiancée had cheated on
him and he was mistrustful of the female species to the point of
obsession. A stalker was born.

She’d thought
she was on to a winner with Andrew the lawyer and last man she had
dated, though. Christ, for a girl who didn’t attend church, she was
following a bit of a biblical theme here. Marian had gone into a
rapturous state when she’d mentioned what he did for a living to
her but well-paid job or not, he’d managed, after only three dates,
to put her off the opposite sex for a good long while. For
starters, he began their every conversation with, “Well, if you
want to know what I think.” She didn’t but he wasn’t very good at
reading body language, i.e., rolling her eyes. However, the real
clincher had come when he asked as they got amorous on her couch
one evening whether she had any objection to being dominated in the
bedroom. The penny dropped as to what the handcuffs she had seen on
his back seat were actually for—not for restraining his criminal
clients on the way to court after all.