Always and Forever
Cathy Kelly

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Cathy Kelly 2005

Cathy Kelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Ebook Edition © February 2012 ISBN: 9780007389308

Version: 2017-11-21

Praise for Cathy Kelly:

‘A must for Kelly’s many fans; a warm, moving read.’ Daily Mail

‘Totally believable.’

Rosamunde Pilcher

‘An upbeat and diverting tale skilfully told…Kelly knows what her readers want and consistently delivers.’ Sunday Independent

‘Warm and delightful.’

New Woman

‘An absorbing, heart-warming tale.’

Company

‘Her skill at dealing with the complexities of modern life, marriage and families is put to good effect as she teases out the secrets of her characters.’

Choice

‘Kelly dramatises her story with plenty of sparky humour.’

The Times

‘Kelly has an admirable capacity to make the readers identify, in turn, with each of her female characters…’

Irish Independent

For Dylan and Murray

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Cathy Kelly:

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

Excerpt from The House on Willow Street

Prologue

Chapter One

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About the Author

By the same author:

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The woman stood as still as the mountains around her, taking in the view from Mount Carraig House – the windswept, overgrown gardens and the ragged path leading down to the small lake. Behind her towered Mount Carraig itself. Rob, the estate agent, had told her that ‘Carraig’ meant ‘rock’ in Irish, and that’s exactly what Mount Carraig was: a spectacular rock dominating a smaller range of mountains known as the Four Sisters, which swelled to the southwest.

Spread out before her lay Carrickwell, the bustling market town that took its name from the mountain. It was bisected by the silver line of the River Tullow, and from here, high up, she could make out the gently winding main street, the sprawl of houses, shops, parks and schools, and the medieval cathedral at the centre.

A quarter of a century before, Carrickwell had been a sleepy backwater, within reach of Dublin but still very much a rural community. Time and the price of houses in the city had turned it into a busier town, but the air of tranquillity had remained.

Some said this was because of the ancient ley lines that crossed it. Druids, early Christians, religious refugees – all in their turn had come to Carrickwell and set up home in the benevolent shadow of Mount Carraig where they could seek refuge and thrive on the pure mountain spring water.

On a slope to the left of the mountain were the ruins of a Cistercian monastery, now a honey pot for tourists, water-colour painters and scholars. There was also the remains of a round tower where the monks had raced up rope ladders to safety when invaders came.

Across the town, near the pretty but slightly crumbling Willow Hotel, was a small stone circle that archaeologists believed to be the site of a druidic settlement. Mystical Fires, a small shop in the town that sold all manner of alternative artefacts, from crystals and tarot cards to dream catchers and angel pins, did a roaring trade in books about the druids at midsummer.

At Christmas, visitors drifted unconsciously away from Mystical Fires to The Holy Land, a little Christian bookshop, where they could buy recordings of Gregorian chant, as well as prayer books, delicate Hummel Holy Water fonts, and the shop’s speciality, mother-of-pearl rosary beads.

The respective owner of each shop, a pair of lovely septuagenarian ladies, each devout in her chosen creed, didn’t mind in the slightest that their businesses waxed and waned in this manner.

‘The wheel of fortune turns in its own way,’ said Zara from Mystical Fires.

‘God knows what’s best for us,’ agreed Una from The Holy Land.

With all the spiritual vibes, there was a great sense of peace hovering over Carrickwell and it drew people to the town.

It was certainly this aura that had drawn Leah Meyer to Mount Carraig House on a cold September morning.

Despite a thick woollen jumper under her old ski jacket, Leah could feel the chill sneaking into her body. She was used to the dry heat of California, where cold weather meant 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and the possibility of using less sun screen. Here, the climate was so different and the unaccustomed cold made her feel achey. I’m beginning to feel my age, she thought, shivering, though she knew everyone marvelled at how young she looked.

She’d taken good care of herself over the years, but time had marched on and, eventually, no cream could keep away its mark. It had taken a discreet eye and brow lift a few years ago to give her back the finely sculpted face she’d been born with. Sixty really could be the new forty, Leah smiled to herself – as long as you had the right plastic surgeon.

And she could put up with the aching joints for a while because she’d finally found it, the place she had been looking for for years in which to build her spa. Carrickwell and Mount Carraig House were perfect. And in that state of mind, she didn’t feel the air as cold, but as pure and cleansing.

‘Calm,’ she said finally, turning to the estate agent, who was standing a polite distance away. ‘That’s the word I was looking for. Don’t you feel instantly calm when you stand here?’

Rob, the estate agent, studied the tumbling wreck that was Mount Carraig House and wondered whether it was he who needed his head examining or whether it was the elegant American visitor. All he saw was a ruin in a wilderness that had been on his agency’s books for four years with ne’er a sniff of serious interest from anyone.

A few people had come to look, all right, drawn by the lyrical description written by a one-time employee who had a definite flair for making a silk purse out of the proverbial pig’s ear.

This elegant eighteenth-century family house, once home to the famous Delaneys of Carrickwell, is designed in the grand classical style and boasts the fabulous high-ceilinged rooms of the period. The sweeping gravel drive and the great portico are reminiscent of a romantic era of horse-drawn carriages, while the abundant formal rose gardens, sheltered from the mountain breezes, need only a skilled gardener’s hands to bring them back to their former glory. The views of the fierce beauty of Mount Carraig and the valley below are unrivalled, and a stately rhododendron walk, planted over a hundred years ago, leads down to the majestic Lough Enla.

The blarney had worked its magic on Mrs Meyer, for sure, because she’d seen the house on the firm’s website and now, here she was, clearly captivated. Rob could tell when clients liked a place: they stopped noticing him and noticed only the property, imagining their furniture in the rooms and their family’s laughter echoing in the garden. This woman showed all the signs of being besotted. He knew she had money too, because she’d arrived in a sleek black chauffeur-driven car from the airport. It had to be said she didn’t dress like a millionaire – she wore jeans, a very ordinary blue padded coat, simple soft cream pumps and no jewellery.

It was hard to work out how old she was. Rob liked to put a date to property and people: eighteenth-century house; ’seventies bungalow; forty-something rich businessman buyer. But this woman’s age eluded him. Elegantly slim, with silky chestnut hair and big dark eyes, she could have been anything from thirty to sixty. Her olive skin was unlined and glowing, and she looked so happy within herself. Early forties, perhaps…

‘I love the house,’ Leah said, because there was no point beating around the bush. ‘I’ll take it.’ She clasped Rob’s hand and smiled. Now that she’d made the decision, she felt peace flooding through her.

She’d felt tired for so long, but already she was impatient to start work. Mount Carraig Spa? The Spa on the Rock? The name would come to her. A name suggestive of a haven, not a place where bored women would have their toes painted and men could do a few lengths in the pool and hope they were staving off the onslaught of Father Time.

No. Her spa would be about making people feel good from the inside out. It would be a place where people would come when they were exhausted, drained and didn’t know where else to go. They could swim in the pool and forget about everything, they could lie on the massage mat and feel their worries drain away along with their aches. With the refreshing water from the mountain running past the door, and the tranquil vibes of Carrickwell in the air, they would be revitalised and healed.

The magic of a similar place had once given her back some semblance of peace and serenity. Cloud’s Hill had been its name, from the ancient American Indian name for the hill on which it had been built, and suddenly Leah realised that the same name would be perfect here.

The other Cloud’s Hill, where she’d learned to enjoy life again, was a world away from here, but there was magic in this place too, she knew it. And with this spa she could do for other people what the original Cloud’s Hill had done for her. Giving something back was her way of saying thanks, and setting up the spa was what she’d dreamed of for years, but had never found the perfect place to do so before. And, she calculated, if she started the work straightaway, the spa would be open within a year – or a year and a half at the latest.

‘You…you mean you’ll buy the house?’ said Rob, shocked at the speed of the decision.

Leah’s face was serene. ‘I will,’ she said softly.

‘This calls for a drink,’ said Rob, relief washing over him. ‘On me.’

CHAPTER ONE

January, a year and a half later.

Mel Redmond dumped her fake Italian leather briefcase onto the cubicle floor, pushed the loo seat down with a loud clang, sat on it and began trying to rip the cellophane from the packet of ten-denier barely blacks. Haste made her clumsy. Damn packet. Was everything childproof?

Finally, the packet yielded and the tights unfolded in a long, expensively silky skein. The convenience store beside Lorimar Health Insurance was out of black and barely black sheers – ridiculous really, given that the store was bang in the centre of Dublin’s office-land – so Mel had had to rush to the upmarket boutique beside the bank and shell out a whopping &euro;16 for a pair. She would get a ladder in her tights on a day when the firm’s chief executive was addressing the troops.

Years in public relations had taught Mel one of the central tenets of the working woman: look great and people notice you; look sloppy and they notice the sloppy part, whether it was smudged eyeliner, chipped nail polish or omigod, look at her roots!

Anyway, Hilary, head of Lorimar’s publicity and marketing departments and Mel’s boss, would probably turn chalk white under her Elizabeth Arden foundation if Mel committed the crime of turning up at the meeting with ripped tights.

Mel joked that Hilary was the person she wanted to be when she grew up: always organised, as opposed to doing her best to look organised, and with an emergency supply of headache tablets, tights and perfume in her briefcase, which was real Italian leather.

Mel’s fake one contained her own emergency supplies of half a chocolate bar, a tampon with the plastic ripped off, one fluffy paracetamol, several uncapped pens and a tiny toddler box of raisins so desiccated they now resembled something from Tutankhamen’s tomb. Raisins were great for snacks, according to the toddler-feeding bibles, but Mel had discovered that chocolate buttons were far better for warding off tantrums in the supermarket at home in Carrickwell.

‘Score another black mark for being a terrible mother,’ Mel liked to joke to her colleague in marketing, Vanessa. They joked a lot about being bad mothers although they’d have killed anyone who’d actually called them such.

When you were a working mum, you had to joke about the very thing you were afraid of, Mel said. Her life was dedicated to making sure that two-and-a-half-year-old Carrie and four-year-old Sarah didn’t suffer because she went out to work. If she could possibly help it, nobody would ever be able to describe Mel Redmond as lacking in anything she did.

She loved her job at Lorimar, was highly focused and had once vowed to be one of the company’s publicity directors by the time she was forty.

Two children had changed all of that. Or perhaps Mel had changed as a result of having two children. Like the chicken and the egg, she was never quite sure which had come first.

The upshot was that she was now forty, the publicity directorship was a goal that had moved further away instead of closer, and she was struggling to keep all the balls in the air. As motherhood made her boobs drop, it made her ambition slide as well.

‘When I grow up, I want to be a business lady with an office and a briefcase,’ the eleven-year-old Mel had written in a school essay.

‘Aren’t you the clever girl?’ her dad had said when she came home with the essay prize. ‘Look at this,’ he told the rest of his family proudly at the next big get-together, holding up the copy book filled with Mel’s neat, sloping writing. ‘She’s a chip off the old block, our little Melanie. Brains to burn.’

Mel’s dad would have gone to university except that there hadn’t been enough money. It was a great joy to him to see his daughter’s potential.

‘Don’t you want to get married at all?’ asked Mel’s grandmother in surprise. ‘If you get married you can have a lovely home, with babies, and be very happy.’

Mel, who liked the parts of history lessons where girls got to fight instead of stay home and mind the house, simply asked: ‘Why?’

Her father still thought it was hilarious, and regularly recounted the story of how his Melanie, even as a child, had her heart set on a career.

Mel loved him for being so proud of her, but she’d grown to hate that story. As a kid, she’d assumed that being smart meant you could have it all. She knew better now.

These days she had two jobs, motherhood and career, and even if everyone else thought she was coping, she felt as if she wasn’t doing either of them right. Mel’s standards – for herself – were staggeringly high.

The third part of the trinity, marriage, wasn’t something she had time to work on. It was just freewheeling along with its own momentum.

‘How does a working mother know when her partner has had an orgasm?’ went a recent email from an old college pal. ‘He phones home to tell her.’

It was the funniest thing Mel had heard for a long time, funny in an hysterical, life-raft-with-a-hole-in-it sort of way. But she couldn’t share the joke with anyone, especially her husband, Adrian, in case he remarked how accurate it was.

In their household, lovemaking occupied the same level of importance as time spent with each other (nil) and long baths with aromatherapy products to reduce stress (also nil).

Mel’s fervent hope was that if she kept quiet and jollied the house along, cheerily smiling at Adrian, Carrie and Sarah, then nobody would notice the places where her love and attention were spread thin.

‘Delegate, have some me-time and don’t let your family expect you to be superwoman,’ cooed magazine articles about the stress of the working mother.

After her years working with journalists, Mel knew that these articles were written by one of two types: glamorous young women in offices for whom the notion of children was a distant one; or working mothers who were freelancing at the kitchen table in between picking up the children from school, having long since realised that you couldn’t do it all, but were making a decent living telling people you could.

Me-time? What the hell was me-time? And how could you delegate the housework/weekly shop to a pair of under-fives and a man who didn’t know how to check can labels for sodium content or benzoates?

She ripped her laddered tights off and stuffed them into her bag before struggling into the new ones. With one last tug at the tourniquet-tight bit cutting into her thigh, she smoothed down the fabric of her plum-coloured skirt – last season Zara, designed to look like Gucci – and raced out of the loo to the mirrors, where she hastily combed her short blonde hair with her fingers. Her roots had grown beyond the boundaries of good taste and were teetering on the line between funky and couldn’t be bothered. Another task for her list.

At least she didn’t look forty yet, which was handy, because she had neither the time nor the money for Botox. Looking younger than she was had been hell when she was eighteen, looked four years younger and had to produce her student card to get into grown-up films. Now, two children and endless sleepless nights later, it was a blessing.

Nature had given Mel a small face with a pointed chin, pale skin and arched brows above almond-shaped eyes the same clear blue as the sky after a storm, with hints of violet around the pupils. Maybelline New York had given her thick black lashes and kiss-proof cherry lipstain that would survive a nuclear attack. A sense of humour meant she had plenty of smile lines around her mouth and she didn’t think she could stand the pain of doing anything about them. After her second labour, the one that had required the rubber ring for a week, she’d gone right off the idea of any sort of delicate stitching.

She looked at her watch. It was five past ten. Damn, damn, damn. Late. Too late for the lift. She galloped up the stairs, managing to find her lipgloss as she ran.

Edmund Moriarty, the chief executive of Lorimar Health Insurance, had just taken his seat at the top of the big conference room but there was still a mild hum of conversation, allowing Mel to slip in and make her way to a free seat on the left.

One of the biggest health insurance companies in the country, Lorimar had been a market leader for twenty years, but lots of new international firms were now on the scene and business was tough. Today’s gathering was a strategy meeting about how Lorimar could face the increased threat of competition.

Normally, strategy meetings were for high-level executives, and someone like Mel, who was one of the company’s four publicity managers, wouldn’t have been invited. But this was a ‘cheer up the team’ meeting, ‘to remind us that we’re still tops,’ as Hilary said, so lesser beings were there today with the firm’s big-hitters. Privately, Mel thought that the only things that would cheer up the Lorimar team were a pay rise and bringing in that Calvin Klein underwear model as post boy. She just thanked God it was merely a meeting today instead of paintballing in the back of beyond, which had been last year’s concept of team-building. Those paint balls bruised like hell.

Edmund Moriarty tapped his microphone to gain everybody’s attention and all heads snapped round in his direction.

‘How do we go forward? – that is the question,’ he began, his voice gravelly. ‘Lorimar is the market leader but stiff competition means we must keep striving.’

The seventy people in the room listened carefully. Mel took a pad of paper from her attaché case and uncapped the onyx and gold pen her parents had given her for her fortieth birthday. Although she dated the top piece of paper and kept her gaze on the boss, her mind was on the second sheet of paper. The top sheet was ready to be covered with gems of wisdom from the chief executive so that it looked as if she was paying attention. The other was the list of things Mel had to achieve that day – a day that was diminishing as Edmund pontificated to everyone about what they already knew. The list read:

Speech for Publicity Forum lunch.

Go over brochure photos with fine-tooth comb.

Phone Sentinel journalist re psychiatric case.

Pick up nappies, wipes and vegetables. Chicken, beans and kids’ yogurts.

Talk to Adrian about Saturday. His mother? Can’t ask mine.

Buy tights!!!

Fairy costume – where to buy?

Multitasking – a way of life, Mel knew, so that working mothers could hold on to their jobs and still keep the home fires burning.

She could see her female colleagues concentrating – or at least pretending to be – on what Edmund was saying. Hilary’s face wore that serene expression that said she was listening intently, but Vanessa was staring glassy-eyed at where he was standing and simultaneously trying to text on her mobile phone. Vanessa had a thirteen-year-old son, Conal, and apparently, thirteen-year-old boys were even harder to control than two under-five girls.

Vanessa was divorced and was Mel’s best friend in the company. They were nearly the same age, they had the same sense of humour and they’d both admitted privately to each other that balancing work and home life was ten times harder than doing the actual job at Lorimar.

‘If management knew just how good we were at doing four things at once – like organising to get the washing machine fixed, sorting out after-school activities, remembering to pick up groceries, and fire-fighting in the office, then we’d both be promoted like a shot,’ Mel had said the week before, when they were enjoying their once-a-month blow-out lunch at the Thai restaurant with the handsome young waiters.

‘Yes, but if we were promoted, we’d have to stay even later in the office in the evening and be even guiltier about it. So why even try to break the glass ceiling? Sorry, the guilt ceiling!’ Vanessa laughed, remembering their joke.

The promotion ceiling wasn’t made of glass for working mothers, they’d decided – it was made of maternal guilt.

‘Or possibly a gilt ceiling,’ Mel added thoughtfully. ‘Looks great but is fake close up. Like false boobs.’ She looked down at her own now-modest 34B cup. ‘I wish I had the money and the courage to get them done.’

‘Oh, stop going on about your boobs,’ Vanessa groaned. ‘They’re fine.’

‘Yeah, if fine means they droop down to my knees, then they’re perfectly fine,’ Mel grinned. ‘Anyway, we’ve got to stop using the word “fine”. Do you know what it stands for? Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.’

‘Sounds just like me,’ said Vanessa. ‘Next time anyone asks me, I’ll say “I’m fine”.’ Hearing about struggles with Vanessa’s son made Mel feel sorry about how easy she had it by comparison. She had left having children until she was that bit older, which meant she was ready to settle down into motherhood when she became pregnant at thirty-five. Vanessa had found the double blue line when she was twenty-four.

Plus, Mel had a husband to share it all with. Vanessa had an ex-husband who had a new wife, a new family and no real interest in the mistakes of his youth apart from trying to weasel out of his maintenance payments for Conal. Sure, the washer/dryer was a mystery to Adrian, and he still laboured under the impression that elves filled the fridge at night by magic. But despite all that, he was there, another grown-up to share the parenting burdens. Nobody who’d seen him painstakingly doing jigsaws with Carrie or making dinosaurs out of Plasticine with Sarah could deny that he was a brilliant, incredibly patient dad. Mel’s own dinosaurs always looked like giant slugs.

She was lucky with childcare too. The Little Tigers Nursery beside Abraham Park on one of Carrickwell’s prettiest tree-lined roads was a fantastic place for children. Mel had heard such horror stories about day care: babies who were allergic to dairy products being given milk; toddlers getting gigantic bites from other children…There had never been any such problems with Little Tigers. But what would it be like when Sarah went to school? Mel wisely decided that she’d worry about that later.

She counted her blessings. Look at all the people who’d kill for what she had – a great job, a great husband and wonderful kids. OK, so there was never much time for herself, but there was some. And she was working, something she’d sworn she’d never give up when she had her babies. She was living the modern woman’s dream, wasn’t she?

An hour later, Edmund Moriarty was still going strong. ‘We care,’ he intoned now. ‘That’s the message we have to deliver to each and every one of our customers: Lorimar cares.’

Mel nodded along with everyone else: We care – message received, O glorious leader.

When Edmund’s laser gaze swept past her, like prison camp searchlights seeking out escapees, she went back to writing diligently on her notepad and sucked in her pelvic floor as she’d been shown in her one and only Pilates class. Might as well get something from the meeting.

Suck and hold for a count of ten. Pilates was the way forward and was even featured on the company’s health website – which Mel was involved in – as a way for people to get into shape. Mel still wished she’d been able to manage more than one class after childbirth but she’d been back in work three months after Sarah was born, two after Carrie, and there just hadn’t been the time to fit in Pilates. Her pelvic floor would have to stay as droopy as her boobs.

Finally, Edmund shut up and Mel was able to escape back to her desk. There were seventeen messages on her voice mail. They were all work-related except for the last one: ‘Hi, Mel, this is Dawna from Little Tigers. Just to remind you that tomorrow’s the zoo day for Sarah so she’ll need extra warm clothes, and that Carrie can go if you’d like, but if it rains we won’t take the little ones. I know it’s a bad time of year but the Siberian tigers are only going to be there for another week and we’ve promised the children we’d go. It’s fifty euro for both children – that covers the bus hire, entrance fee and lunch. Or twenty-five euro if it’s just Sarah. See you tonight. Bye.’

Mel added another note to her list. ‘Zoo day for girls. Leave money out for Adrian.’

Wednesday was Adrian’s morning for taking the girls to Little Tigers. Mel did the nursery run the other four mornings before getting the train from Carrickwell into the Lorimar offices in Dublin, but on Wednesdays there was a breakfast meeting of the marketing and publicity departments, so Mel had to be in work early. She remembered when getting up earlier on Wednesdays had been a total pain because she had to set her alarm clock for seven instead of half-past. That was before the children had come along, and before they’d moved to Carrickwell. Seven was a lie-in these days, now that Carrie woke up bright and breezy at six every morning.

‘Heyyo, Mummy,’ she’d lisp when Mel hurried into the darkened, Winnie-the-Pooh-papered bedroom, showered but sleepy. It was hard to be grumpy when that little smiling face shone up at her, eyes bright with anticipation of the day ahead and small, fat hands outspread to be scooped from the cot. Although she was two and a half, she still didn’t like to clamber out of the cot on her own, unlike her older sister, who’d been doing it from the age of two, but Mel knew it would happen any day now.

Early morning was one of Mel’s favourite parts of the day. The pure unadulterated joy of being with her children, them kissing her hello, their childish pleasure at another day – it was what kept her going.

No perfume in the world was as beautiful as the morning scent of baby skin, a magical smell of toddler biscuits, baby shampoo and pure little person. Carrie loved being cuddled and wanted at least five minutes of snuggling before she’d consent to being dressed. Mel was usually torn between wanting just as much cuddling but knowing that the clock was ticking on.

Sarah was a morning person, all questions at breakfast.

‘Why is Barney purple?’ was her current favourite.

It was Mel’s job to come up with funny reasons as she raced round the kitchen, sorting out breakfast for all of them.

‘He fell into some purple custard and he liked it so much he didn’t wash it off. Now he jumps into purple custard every day.’

‘Mommy, that’s silly!’ Sarah had giggled that morning.

Carrie, slavishly adoring of her big sister, giggled too.

At her desk in the tiny cubicle on Lorimar’s third floor, with its stunning views of Dublin’s docklands, Mel reached over and touched the shell photo frame with Adrian, Sarah and Carrie’s faces beaming at her. The three people she loved most in the whole world. The three people she did it all for.

Mel spent two hours working on the website with the help of two coffees and a Twix bar. Lunch was for people who had time to make sandwiches before they left the house in the morning, or the money to buy the overpriced ones from the guy who came round the office every lunchtime.

As she drank her second coffee, Mel looked at her list and idly circled the word ‘zoo’. She and Adrian had taken Sarah to the zoo for the first time when she was two. Showing your child real tigers and elephants after so long looking at them in picture books was one of those parental milestones. How many parents never got to do things like that any more? she wondered. How many mothers missed the actual trip and instead got to read the nursery school diary: ‘Carrie saw lions and seals, and piglets in the petting zoo. She had an ice cream and got upset when she saw the monkeys because of the noise. She was a good girl!’

Lunch over, Mel went through the most recent pages for the website, scanning every line and photo like a hawk. The previous month, a huge error had occurred when a paragraph on new procedures for hip replacements had slipped into an article about erectile dysfunction. There had been much giggling in the office at the idea that ‘innovative keyhole surgery under local anaesthetic may do away with the need for painful replacement operations and would mean that patients will be back in action in just twenty-four hours’.

‘I’d say a lot of male customers vowed to keep away from the doctor when they read that bit,’ Otto from accounts had teased, as he’d delivered the expenses cheques. ‘Willy replacement isn’t exactly what every man wants to hear about when he’s having trouble in that department.’

Mel’s boss, Hilary, had been less amused, and completely uninterested in Mel’s explanation that the error had surfaced mysteriously when the web designer was working on the page. Mel was responsible, end of story.

‘This is an appalling mistake,’ Hilary had said in that cold tone of disappointment that was far more scary than if she’d actually screamed at Mel. Hilary was Olympic standard at making people feel as if they’d failed. ‘Maybe someone in design did it as a juvenile joke, but you should have spotted it. I’d bet my bonus it’s going to be in all the Sunday papers’ quote of the week sections.’

Hilary hadn’t said that Edmund, who noticed everything, would undoubtedly blame Mel and that this would not look good on her file. Mel knew that herself. And mistakes on the file of a working mother were multiplied by a factor of ten. Being a working mother was like being a marked woman in Lorimar. Once a woman had children, no matter what sort of ambitious powerhouse she’d been beforehand, she was living on borrowed time afterwards. One child was seen to be careless, two was asking for trouble.

The fact that Hilary herself had three children was not a help. In all the years Mel had been working for Hilary, she’d never seen her boss either leave early over some child emergency or take a sick-baby day off.

‘How does she do it?’ Vanessa used to ask in September, when she was up to her eyeballs getting Conal sorted out with school books and uniform, desperately trying to take half-days here and there, while Hilary was at her desk at all times, mercilessly watching out for people skiving off.

‘They can’t be kids, they’re robots,’ Mel decided. ‘That’s the only answer.’

‘Or is it having a husband who works from home and a nanny who gets paid more than the chairman of Microsoft?’ asked Vanessa.

‘You could have something there,’ Mel agreed.

By five, Mel had returned all her phone calls and was finishing a batch of letters. There was still a report on the month’s publicity activity to write for Hilary but she had to be out the door by five fifteen or she’d miss her train and be late to pick up the girls. She’d have to take the work and do it on the journey home.

Twenty minutes later, Mel swapped her heels for her commuting flats, filled her travel Thermos with coffee, and raced off into the cold. With luck, she’d be home by seven.

It was ten past seven before Mel parked the car in the drive and she helped Sarah and Carrie out and gathered up all their bags. It was a relief, as always, to be home.

‘Carrickwell is such a gorgeous, mellow place,’ their friends had all agreed when Mel and Adrian had given up their apartment in Christchurch to move to the country. Sarah was still a bump beneath Mel’s ‘Under Construction’ maternity T-shirt then. ‘Perfect for bringing up children. And the schools are great.’

Mel and Adrian had agreed and, catching each other’s eye in the almost telepathic way of a couple who knew each other inside out, had said nothing about how they’d muddled their way to their decision.

Both of them were city people, born and bred, so the idea of this country idyll wasn’t as appealing as everyone else seemed to think. There were other factors involved.

Mel’s parents had moved out of the city ten years before to a small house halfway between Carrickwell and Dublin, which meant Mel’s mum would be nearby to help take care of the bump.

In Dublin, they wouldn’t have been able to afford a four-bedroomed semi in such a pretty road. And both of them felt it would be good for the children to have the countryside on the doorstep, perfect for family picnics. Or that was the theory. In reality, all Mel saw of the countryside now was from the confines of the train to and from work.

The clincher had been the local schools. However, they were now made to feel they had missed the boat there. Sarah and Carrie were down for all the best Carrickwell schools but the local Mummy Mafia had it that they should have had their names listed when they were embryos to guarantee a place in the very best, the Carnegie Junior School. Not to mention the fact that learning the recorder wasn’t a part of the curriculum at Little Tigers. Serious mummies had their four-year-old poppets playing Bach on their recorders to impress the panel at the Carnegie. Sarah could play the television remote pretty well but Mel suspected this wasn’t the same thing.

It was the large back garden at Number 2 Goldsmith Lawn that had really sold Carrickwell to them.

‘We could have apple trees in it,’ Adrian had said as they flicked through the auctioneer’s brochure and saw the long, narrow swathe of lawn with a shabby green shed at the end.

‘And we could put a swing on the cherry tree,’ sighed Mel.

They’d smiled and she’d patted her burgeoning belly, conveniently forgetting that neither of them was able to so much as hammer in a nail without bringing down a shower of plaster.

Five years later, there were still no apple trees in the garden and the weeds had declared an independent state over by the shed, but there was a plastic swing under the cherry tree. Sarah loved it.

She ran happily ahead of her mother to the front door now, holding her pink and white spotted rucksack, while Mel struggled in behind with her briefcase, Carrie, and all Carrie’s belongings.

The front door of Number 2 was a glossy green, flanked by two dwarf conifers in matching green wooden containers on the step. When they had moved in, Mel and Adrian had spent two months’ worth of weekends sorting out the front garden so that it was maintenance-free and would fit in with their neighbours’ beautifully cared-for gardens. The tiny sliver of grass had been replaced by beige gravel with various ornamental grasses and plants grouped in the two planting areas at either end. It all looked well cared for but this was a clever illusion.

Once Mel opened the front door, reality prevailed. The hall looked tired, the peeling paintwork and battered wooden floor badly in need of a month of DIY enthusiasm. Everything in their house needed work – don’t we all? Mel thought grimly. There was never enough time. Adrian worked in IT in an industrial estate thirty minutes’ drive from their home and since he’d been doing a Masters degree at night, he never had a moment for anything as mundane as Destroy It Yourself.

‘Hi,’ yelled Mel as she dumped her load onto the hall floor and kissed Carrie on the forehead before putting her gently down on her chubby little legs.

No reply, but the kitchen door was closed. With yells of delight, Sarah and Carrie erupted into their playroom. Mel felt that you needed somewhere to keep all the kids’ stuff or it just took over the house, so the dining room was now the playroom, with the table shoved up against the wall and toys spilling out of all the big pink and purple plastic storage boxes. In the rigid tradition of children’s colours, everything for little girls was lurid pink and purple. Mel longed for some subtle colours to take over.

‘The dishwasher’s broken,’ announced Adrian as soon as she walked into the kitchen with the gym bags of dirty clothes from Little Tigers.

Sitting with his course books spread out over the kitchen table, he looked up at his wife and gave her a weary smile. Adrian had Scandinavian colouring, with short blond hair, pale blue eyes, and skin that reacted to a hint of sun so that he always looked golden, unlike Mel, with her Celtic complexion. Sarah and Carrie both had his fair hair and skin, but their mother’s fine bones and lovely eyes. When Mel had first met Adrian, he’d had the build of a marathon runner, despite living off Chinese takeaways and pizzas. But over the years, lack of exercise and a fondness for the wrong sort of foods had made him more solid. Cuddly, she said.

‘Needing to go to the gym,’ Adrian would remark good-humouredly.

If they could afford the gym, that was.

Mel patted him affectionately on the arm on her way to the utility room to get a wash going.

‘Are you sure the dishwasher’s really broken?’ she asked.

Broken appliances meant organising someone to come and fix them at a time when someone would be in, a task on a par with choreographing Swan Lake on ice.

‘The dishes are dirtier now than when they went in,’ Adrian said. He gestured to the worktop, where a white mug speckled with food particles sat.

‘Sure there isn’t a spoon stuck in the rotor?’ asked Mel hopefully.

‘’Fraid not.’

She set the washing machine going, emptied out Carrie’s juice cup and snack box, then tackled Sarah’s spotty bag of equipment, her mind whizzing through all the tasks she had to complete before bed. Then she stuck the mushroom and pepper chicken for the girls’ dinner in the microwave, put a pan of pasta on and got out a new wiping-up cloth, flinging the old one into the utility-room washing basket like a basketball pro.

‘Will you keep an eye on the girls while I change?’ Mel was halfway out the door as she spoke.

‘Yeah,’ replied Adrian absently.

Upstairs, Mel ripped off her work clothes and pulled on her grey sweatpants and red fleece. She removed her earrings quickly – Carrie loved pulling earrings and Mel had lost a really nice silver one already this week – and was back downstairs to finish the children’s dinner within three minutes.

The girls were already on their father’s lap, his college books shoved out of the way as they told him all about their day.

‘I did a picture for you, Daddy,’ said Sarah gravely. She was a daddy’s girl and could cope with any childish trauma as long as her father’s arms were around her.

‘You’re so clever,’ said Adrian lovingly, and kissed her blonde head. ‘Show me. Oh, that’s wonderful. Is that me?’

Sarah nodded proudly. ‘That’s Carrie and that’s Granny Karen and that’s me.’ From beside the cooker where she was stirring pasta, Mel looked over. Like all Sarah’s pictures, it was in the crayon triad of pink, orange and purple, with Adrian, Mel’s mother, Karen, and Sarah all big and smiling. Carrie, whom Sarah had never quite forgiven for being born, was a quarter the size, like a dwarf stick-person. There was no sign of Mel.

‘Where’s Mummy?’ asked Adrian.

Mel, who’d read plenty on separation anxiety, wouldn’t have asked, but her breathing stilled to listen to the answer.

‘She’s on another page. At work,’ Sarah said, as if it were perfectly obvious. She produced another picture, this time of a bigger house with her mother outside with her briefcase in her hand. The briefcase was nearly as big as Mel herself, but she had to admit that Sarah had got her hair right: half brown, half blonde and frizzy.

‘Oh,’ Adrian said.

Mel could feel him looking at her sympathetically 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 all 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 yellow 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 fallen 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 tonsillitis 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 all 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 all 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 still 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. ‘Will 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 well. 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, gleefully 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 filled with sorrow.

‘Will 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 finally 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 full 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 all 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 tell you but Caroline phoned when you were doing the baths to remind you that you’re all 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 – cancelled so many times that they’d finally 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 full-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 small 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 fallen 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 all 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 all 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 all great,’ Mel lied. ‘Just great.’ She paused, hoping that a sudden change of plan meant that the night out on Thursday had been cancelled. She daren’t cancel again, although she longed to. How could she have agreed to a night out mid-week, 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’ll 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 still 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 actually 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 will I be totally mutton dressed as lamb?’ Caroline was asking.

Did other people ever want to kill 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 all 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’ll wear it. I’m really looking forward to it, I can tell 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 mid-week. 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 occasionally ordered too much wine because of their job/their home life/their credit card bill/all 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 colleagues while handsome young waiters hovered in the background wielding bottles of Frascati and scenting large tips. All 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 ruefully. ‘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 all week with your job. What’s the fashionable drink now for us boring old mums?’

Mel found that she was still 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’ll 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’ll 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, Mel was astonished to learn that Caroline had joined a national group who were lobbying for greater parental input in primary schools.

‘You’re so good to do that,’ said Val guiltily, stirring her White Cranberry Ice, a lethal concoction that slipped down too easily. ‘I should but…’ she looked at Mel as if they were in this together, ‘it’s so hard to find the time, isn’t it? I’m so busy with everything. I’m still going to Weight-Watchers, and I’ve only half a stone to go.’

Everyone raised their glass to her and told her she looked wonderful.

‘Thanks,’ beamed Val. ‘But I’ve got to fit in a long walk three times a week and what with all the extracurricular activities the kids are doing, like gymnastics – did I tell you Maureen’s taken it up? Twice a week it is – there isn’t the time for anything else.’ She flashed another gaze of complicity at Mel.

Mel didn’t return the look. She couldn’t. There was no comparison between her and Val. Val was a twenty-four-hour mother and if she didn’t manage to fit in the parents’ association because she was busily baking additive-free carob cookies and keeping herself fit, then it was hardly a crime.

What was more, Mel was a non-mother during the hours of nine to five – or, more accurately, between half-seven in the morning and seven in the evening – and if Carrie or Sarah one day decided they wanted to do gymnastics, then how the hell would it be managed?

‘How are Carrie and Sarah?’ asked Lorna, turning her attention to Mel. ‘Sarah must be going to school soon. It’s such a milestone, isn’t it?’ She sighed. ‘One minute they’re babies, the next they’re in school.’

Mel waited to see if Lorna would make the usual remark about how she was so glad she’d given up work when Alyssa was born because childhood went so quickly and you had to be there for it. She did it every single time they were out. Sometimes, to add insult to injury, she mentioned how hard it must be on Mel to have to miss all the important moments in her daughters’ lives.

‘I’m not getting at you, Mel, when I say this,’ Lorna said with all the inevitability of thunder following lightning, ‘but it must be so hard for anyone who has to go out to work. You do miss so much of their lives. I read something the other day in a magazine about a childcare worker who admitted that they lie to parents sometimes.’

‘Lie about what?’ asked Mel, ready to do battle.

‘Lie about when the child has taken their first steps or whatever,’ Lorna went on blithely. ‘Apparently, they say the child has nearly done it, nearly walked, for example, so that when they do it at home, the parents think they’re witnessing it for the first time. Sad.’ She turned a fake smile on Mel. ‘Honestly, women have to cope with so much, don’t they?’ she said. ‘But it’s worth it. Children make it all worthwhile.’

‘Absolutely,’ agreed Caroline.

‘You said it,’ added Val fervently.

Mel went through all the things she wanted to say to Lorna and thought she had better not.

The conversation whipped round to gossip about another friend of theirs who was about to get married for the second time and was having the wedding she’d always dreamed of on Australia’s Gold Coast. As the others talked about how they’d love to go but couldn’t, Mel felt herself sinking into the sort of self-berating misery that no amount of White Cranberry Ices could defeat.

Lorna’s needling got to her every time for one simple reason: because Mel was so terribly scared that Lorna was right. If only Lorna could be more sensitive…After all, not everyone could afford to stay at home with their kids.

Adrian was half asleep when Mel slipped under the duvet beside him. It was after twelve and she felt sick at the thought that she had to be up again in just over five hours.

‘Did you have a good time?’ he murmured, turning to put one arm around her.

Mel snuggled into his embrace. The heating was off and she felt cold. Adrian was always warm and it was a long-running joke between them that he wanted just a sheet and the lightest duvet imaginable on the bed in winter, while she wanted an electric blanket, about four heavy blankets and a flannelette, instant-turn-off nightie.

‘It was fine,’ she said, settling herself into the comfiest position against him. But it hadn’t been.

Lorna had been all set for going to a nightclub when Mel got up to leave, pleading exhaustion.

‘You used to be a wild woman!’ Lorna had said in the accusatory tone of the blind drunk as Mel pulled on her coat and checked that she had enough money for a taxi to the train station. ‘What’s happened to you? Are we such boring friends that you don’t have time for us any more, is that really it?’

After an entire night of feeling guilty for the fact that she no longer had enough time to meet up with the girls more than a couple of times a year, Mel’s patience snapped.

‘I have a job, Lorna, a job where I have to produce results all day, and then, when I go home, I get to do all the work that you do but in about a quarter of the time. So forgive me if I’m not ready to party on all night but if I have a hangover, I can’t go back to bed when the kids have gone to school. My job won’t wait like the shopping or the washing. I’m not my own boss, you see.’

She was being unfair but she didn’t care. Lorna had been unfair about Mel having to work: if she dished it, she should be able to take it.

‘And since you find my company so boring,’ Mel finished, ‘don’t bother to phone me next time you want a big night out where you get pissed and compare parent/teacher council stories. I don’t have time for that. I’m too busy missing all the milestones in my children’s lives.’

She’d left then, with Caroline, Val and Lorna staring open-mouthed after her. In the taxi to the train station, Mel had cursed herself for letting Lorna goad her. Why hadn’t she held her tongue? It wasn’t even that she’d been horrible to Lorna that mattered – Lorna was plastered and wouldn’t remember any of it. And it was about time Lorna got some of her own medicine. Hurting Caroline, however, was different. Caroline was a true friend and now she’d think that Mel was one of those bitchy career women who looked down on stay-at-home mothers, when she wasn’t. It was all such a mess.

‘How’s Caroline?’ asked Adrian sleepily.

‘She’s OK,’ Mel said. There was no point bothering him with any of this.

‘We missed you,’ Adrian said, his voice muffled against the silk of her hair.

‘Missed you too,’ she said truthfully. ‘Go to sleep, love. Sorry for waking you up.’

‘I couldn’t sleep properly until you were in,’ he said.

In the darkness, Mel smiled and curled her body closer into the curve of his. She was lucky to have a husband like Adrian. He told her he loved her and missed her. Not all men were able to be as honest. They made a good team and they’d get through the difficult times together, or so Adrian was always saying. It was just that the difficult times seemed to outweigh the good ones lately.

The next day, Mel didn’t phone Caroline until just before lunch, when she knew her friend would be at home after the morning school run and the inevitable grocery shopping.

For the first time in their friendship, Caroline’s tone was frosty. ‘You didn’t need to be so hard on Lorna,’ she said sharply.

At her desk, Mel rubbed her tired face. Lack of sleep made her forget all the things she’d planned to say.

‘Lorna made a difficult choice to stay at home with her children and give up her career for the moment; that doesn’t mean she’s a non-person,’ Caroline continued. ‘We’re fed up with people asking, “What do you do?” and then tuning out when you say you stay at home with your kids. It’s bad enough when men do it without another woman doing it too. I thought you understood why I gave up my job, Mel – that I couldn’t bear to leave my babies for someone else to bring up. If I’d known that you really looked down on me, then I wouldn’t have kept in touch with you. I’ve got plenty of new friends who do what I do; I don’t need to cling on to you for old times’ sake just because we once sat at desks opposite each other and bitched about our boss.’

‘Don’t be like that, Caroline,’ Mel begged. ‘I didn’t mean it like that, you know I didn’t. I don’t look down on you. In fact,’ she laughed without mirth, ‘I think the boot’s on the other foot.’ Why didn’t Caroline understand that working mothers like Mel felt that the stay-at-home mothers like Lorna looked down on them? ‘I wish I could stay at home and look after Carrie and Sarah too,’ she began, and stopped in shock. There, she’d said it. She’d told someone her deepest secret, the secret she’d only just recognised in herself. She did wish she could stay at home. She was tired of her life, tired of running on a treadmill like a caffeined-up hamster and never getting anywhere.

‘Of course, I know what you mean,’ said Caroline, sarcasm glittering in her voice. ‘You wish you could lounge around all day at home because that’s what you think it’s like, but it’s not. It’s not meandering round the shops and meeting other housewives for coffee and doing the odd bit of washing and ironing at home in between watching Oprah. It’s damn hard and very boring.’

‘I know, I realise that,’ stammered Mel. ‘You’ve got me wrong…’

‘You think I don’t remember what it was like to have an interesting job and have people look up to me? To earn my own money and use my talents to the full?’ Caroline went on shakily. ‘And now I’m just a stay-at-home mother, a housewife, a dependant, and nobody respects that. Graham jokes that I’m the CEO of the household but this is the only CEO job where nobody places the slightest value on what you do. I thought you understood all this, and that occasionally it was nice for me to touch the old world again with you and remember what it used to be like, but I can see I was wrong. You just look down on me.’

‘No, Caroline,’ begged Mel, ‘I don’t. It’s just that Lorna really gets at me…’

‘Mel, I don’t have time to talk to you right now.’ Caroline spoke crisply. ‘I have things to do. Oprah’s going to be on TV any minute and I’d hate to miss it. Goodbye.’ And she hung up.

‘Caroline, no…’ How had they got themselves in this mess? Just when Mel suddenly understood why Caroline had given up her job in favour of taking care of her three little boys? Because now, finally, after years of trying to keep all the balls in the air, that’s what Mel wanted too.

Hardly had Mel a chance to put the receiver back in the cradle, when the phone rang again.

‘Mel, I’m sorry, I know it’s lunchtime but I’ve got a journalist from the Echo on the line,’ said Sue, the department assistant, ‘a Peter Glennon and he’s phoning about a statistic on the website about heart disease and how they aren’t the right figures for Ireland.’

‘Put him through,’ said Mel pleasantly, as if she hadn’t just got off the phone from a horrible conversation with one of her oldest friends. Lunch, like thinking about her row with Caroline, could wait. Everything had to wait for work, didn’t it? Her life, her family, her friends. Work ruled.

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