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: 2019-03-26

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

Back Ads

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.

CHAPTER TWO

The Willow Hotel had been a part of Carrickwell as long as anyone could remember. Other, grander establishments had come and gone, bringing variously nouvelle cuisine, Zen-like simplicity and chic modern style to the area, but only three hotels remained in the town: the Carrick Park, a motel on the main road to the city; the Townhouse, a small business establishment near the cathedral that did a roaring trade in office lunches, and the Willow, a big, rambling Georgian country house hotel that was crammed with shabby antiques, was hell to heat and had managed only to stay more or less solvent in the thirty years since Cleo’s parents had taken it over.

Harry and Sheila Malin had been newly married then and thought the Willow would be a great place to rear a family, what with its enormous overgrown back garden and the big house for children to tear around in, and they’d thrown themselves into running the place with great gusto, even though they hadn’t a smidgen of experience between the pair of them. Somehow they’d managed it, and thirty years and three children later, the Willow was still there: a landmark building on five valuable acres of land on the outskirts of the town.

It featured in guidebooks in the country house category, the sort of place where guests could feel they were visiting a friend’s large, old-fashioned, comfortably down-at-heel home rather than a hotel. There were sixteen bedrooms, each one different, two suites, and a tiny ballroom where small, intimate wedding receptions could be held.

The Willow Hotel was the same as it had always been. It was Carrickwell that had changed over the years. No longer a sleepy town, it had become a busy part of the commuter belt where property prices rocketed and where other hotel-owners were always trying to set up shop.

The most recent bit of competition had come from the large Victorian rectory on the Glenside Road, where all the bedrooms were done up like a Parisian brothel, complete with mirrors and an abundance of plum-coloured velvet and leopardskin. Cleo’s father had surreptitiously checked it out and was able to report back that the breakfasts were bad – continental instead of the good solid fry-up that most people wanted, high cholesterol notwithstanding – and that the owner seemed more keen on having the place photographed in style magazines than attending to the daily routine of a hotel.

The leopardskin palace was a source of great amusement in the family quarters of the Willow, where the carpets were threadbare and the wallpaper hadn’t been changed in aeons.

Harry Malin thought that its closure after only a year was reassurance that people liked solid home cooking and a cosy atmosphere instead of great style and expensive new furnishings.

Given that nothing at the Willow had been updated since she was a child, Cleo thought this was all just as well, but she didn’t say so.

Sheila said it was proof that the Willow was part and parcel of Carrickwell, and didn’t people drive out from the city just for Sunday lunch in the big dining room? People booked the Willow’s Christmas Day lunch months in advance, and wasn’t the waiting list for Christmas cancellations a mile long? Barney and Jason, Cleo’s older brothers, said the Willow could be a little goldmine now they had cut a deal with the tour company taking people to see the Cistercian monastery and the round tower. And as it was all going so well, what was the point of shelling out lots of money to upgrade the heating system just because the plumber mentioned that the pipes were beyond their use-by date? That was plumbers for you – of course any plumber worth his salt was going to say the pipes were in need of work.

Sondra, Barney’s wife, said that the family could always sell a bit of the land at the back of the hotel to developers, who’d whip up a couple of apartment blocks before you could whistle, and then, wouldn’t everyone be in clover?

Cleo was the only one to sound a note of warning. Fresh from graduating in the top five per cent of her class in hotel management, she said they really ought to think about refurbishing because times were tough and it would be very easy for a hotel like the Willow to slide into the doldrums because of a lack of vision on the family’s behalf. The big modern hotels were generally owned by corporations who could afford to invest with an eye to the long term, she said, while smaller establishments had to offer something special as boutique hotels, a concept that required high standards and lots of money spent.

Mrs O’Flaherty, who’d worked in the exquisite Victoria Jungfrau in Switzerland, had lectured Cleo’s class on the future of the hotel industry, and she’d been passionate about the need of smaller hotels to do their best to keep up.

‘If standards slip and the money isn’t spent, then your thriving small hotel can go from having every bed occupied to being empty every night very quickly,’ Mrs O’Flaherty had pointed out with great seriousness. ‘That is the tragedy of the family-owned end of the business. There often isn’t enough money for renovations but not investing is a recipe for disaster.’

The class, many of whom were from hotel-owning families, listened earnestly, making notes and wondering how they’d impart this information at home.

Cleo’s friend and admirer, Nat, who came from a quaint twenty-bedroomed hotel in Galway that had been in his family for generations, used to say he had no hope of getting through to his widowed mother about the need for investment.

‘She says there’s a limit to how much money you can spend on a place and that if we doll it up too much, we’ll have to charge miles more per room and all the old regulars won’t come near us,’ said Nat gloomily. ‘I keep telling her we need to put thousands into the place or we’ll go under, but she won’t listen. So what can I do?’

Cleo shrugged her shoulders, which meant: don’t ask me – you know my lot don’t listen to what I say either.

Cleo was the youngest in the family and, at the age of twenty-three, she was still treated like a child at home.

Barney and Jason had no interest in the hotel except to discuss its finances. When they’d reached twenty-five, each brother had been given a ten per cent share in the business. Cleo was sure that her father had waited until her brothers had reached twenty-five because they were both reckless when it came to money. Her mother insisted it was because Harry wanted to make sure they were sensible enough to think of the hotel’s future when they were finally part of the deal.

‘Twenty-five is ridiculous. It’s so far off it’s almost Victorian,’ Cleo insisted at her twenty-first birthday, when she heard of this scheme for the first time and realised she wasn’t old enough to be in it.

‘It’s the age of maturity,’ her father said.

‘In Jane Austen’s time, perhaps,’ Cleo said. She hated the fact that her father didn’t realise she was already far more mature than her brothers would ever be – honestly, they were like children sometimes – and she was determined to change this. Dad would listen to her. It was crazy not to give her her share now so she could have a say in the running of the business. She had all the training, she knew what would work and she was so eager…

‘Are you buying those magazines or are you practising to be in the wax museum?’ demanded the man behind the counter in the newsagent’s. Wrenching herself out of a daydream in which her family listened to her every utterance as if it was written on tablets of stone, Cleo realised she’d been staring blindly at the magazine rack for ages with two glossy magazines clutched to her chest.

‘Sorry,’ she said, going over to the counter and beaming at him. Cleo had a fabulous smile, everyone said, because it brought out her dimples and reached her eyes too. If Cleo had been the sort of girl who’d ever got into trouble – and she wasn’t, as she moaned to her best friend, Trish – she’d have been able to wriggle out of it instantly, thanks to her hundred-watt beam.

The newsagent’s face mellowed as he took the magazines to scan them. She was a grand girl and polite too, not like those hoydens who came in, flicked through every magazine in the place, read out the sex hints loudly, and went off without buying so much as a packet of crisps.

‘Thank you.’ Cleo took her change and her magazines, averting her eyes from the rows of chocolate at the till. Chocolate was evil, particularly the new white chocolate thing that just melted on your tongue and bypassed your stomach completely before resting on your backside. Cleo had never worried that much about her weight: she was tall with long legs and an athletic body. No matter what she ate, her stomach was enviably flat. Her breasts were the problem. A 38D was big in any language, and if she did put on any extra weight at least half went straight onto her chest.

Trish was waiting for her at the lights, huddled into her fake sheepskin coat because it was so cold, a knitted red hat flattened down on her head.

‘Whatdidya get?’ she demanded, poking at Cleo’s purchases as they waited to cross the busy city centre street.

‘Interior design magazines,’ said Cleo, hoping it wasn’t going to rain until she was on the bus home because she hadn’t got either a hat or an umbrella. Her hair was bad enough as it was, all wild and mind-of-its-own, but if it got wet – then she turned into cavewoman.

‘Why didn’t you get nice gossip mags to cheer us up?’ moaned Trish. ‘I love those pictures of stars with no make-up, spots, cellulite and fags in their hands.’

Trish had recently given up smoking and there was nothing she loved better than to see other people looking unhealthy with cigarettes in their hands. It proved, she said with gritted teeth as she chewed another bit of nicotine gum, that she’d made the right decision.

‘Because those mags are also full of diets and hints on how to look like J-Lo, and it always involves spending loads of money, which we don’t have, and being a size six, which we aren’t,’ Cleo pointed out.

The green man flashed on the pedestrian lights and they hurried across the road to the Shepherd, the pub where they’d spent many an hour when they were both in college in the city. Five minutes on the bus was all that separated the two colleges, and plenty of Cleo’s hotel management lecturers must have thought that Trish was enrolled there instead of on the business degree course across the River Liffey.

‘We could be size six if we wanted to,’ Trish said.

‘If we didn’t eat and had some of our important organs removed, then yes, it’s a distinct possibility.’ Cleo opened the swing door of the pub and felt the welcoming warmth of central heating on high.

‘Why are you so grumpy?’ demanded Trish, once they’d found a cosy nook and ordered two coffees.

‘I turned down the Donegal job.’

‘You didn’t!’

‘I did.’ Cleo almost couldn’t believe it herself. It wasn’t the job she’d longed for – just assistant manager at the small Kilbeggan Castle Hotel in a ruggedly beautiful part of Donegal – but it was her first real job. And she’d said no. She must have been mad.

The man who owned the Kilbeggan Castle clearly thought so too.

‘You were so keen and interested…’ he’d said in irritation when she’d phoned after getting the job offer in the post.

‘I am so sorry,’ Cleo said. ‘I didn’t mean to waste your time.’

‘Well, you did.’

‘Not intentionally,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s just something’s suddenly cropped up. You know I come from a hotel background? Well, there’s a good reason for me to stay at home and work with my family right now.’

‘I know tourism is down,’ the man said. ‘We’re all feeling the pinch because people are too nervous to fly any more. I suppose your place is hit the same way. Enough said.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose I’ll be reading your name in conjunction with all sorts of great ventures in the future. We were all very impressed with you, Miss Malin.’

‘Thank you,’ said Cleo with regret. Instinct told her Kilbeggan Castle would have been a lovely place to work. She was mad to turn it down. But in the end she just couldn’t bring herself to give up on her heritage. She had to try to drag the Willow and her family kicking and screaming into the new century before the hotel went under.

‘You’re mad,’ Trish said. ‘Stone mad. Sorry, I know that’s rude, but you are.’ She glared across the small pub table at Cleo, the way she’d been glaring at Cleo since that first day in Miss Minton’s class in Carrickwell Primary School, where they’d both decided they wanted to sit on the blue wooden chair and a fight had ensued with hair-pulling and lots of wild screaming.

Eighteen years later, there was no hair-pulling in the relationship, but occasionally there was a bit of screaming. Cleo had last roared at Trish when her friend shamefacedly admitted that she hadn’t actually dumped her current boyfriend as planned, even though he’d been seen in a clinch with another woman at a New Year’s party.

‘He says he’s sorry,’ Trish protested.

‘Until the next time,’ Cleo said angrily. ‘If he did that to me, he’d be on his way to casualty right now, whining for a morphine suppository to put him out of his misery.’ She meant it. Cleo mightn’t have had a long line of boyfriends but those she’d had had known not to mess her around. The guy who’d promised devotion after one evening, and that he’d phone but hadn’t, would always remember having his drink poured over his head in the pub the next day while Cleo loudly, and to the amusement of the whole premises, told him not to make promises he didn’t intend to keep.

‘Honesty is the best policy,’ she’d said as he sat with beer dripping down his astonished face. ‘If you didn’t want to see me again, all you had to do was say so. I’m not the sort of woman who likes waiting for the phone to ring.’

Today, Trish was the one trying to make her friend see sense.

‘Why did you turn it down? Why? It was a perfectly good job. What is the point of saying no to a good job in Donegal when your family takes no notice of you? Your dad’s not going to let you take over the place and show him how it should be done, is he? And neither are Barney or Jason. You said yourself Barney’s secretly hoping everything has to be closed down so you can sell the land and he and Sondra can make a fortune out of their share and live in the lap of luxury. You can’t save the Willow, Cleo, if they don’t want it saved.’

It was a perfectly good point and one Trish had been making for the past month, ever since Cleo had become acutely aware just how badly her family’s business was doing.

Terrorism meant tourism was down all around the world, but the Willow’s problem could not be laid solely at this door. The first inkling of doom had struck Cleo when she’d come home for Christmas, having spent the seven months since she’d left college working nights on reception in a big hotel in Bristol. She found shift work hard to get used to but felt she’d learned a lot – both about the business and about a handsome French guy named Laurent with whom she’d had a brief but fun fling. Now she wanted to show them all at home just how much she’d learned, although she didn’t plan on sharing Laurent’s native kissing techniques.

The Willow had only been half full for Christmas, the first time this had ever happened. Even an expensive advert in a national newspaper had failed to bring in guests. For the big Christmas Day lunch, they’d had to close off part of the dining room to take the barren look off the place.

Jason, Barney, her mother and her father all acted as if this was some blip on the radar, a chance happening. But Cleo knew that it wasn’t. It was the beginning of the decline. People wanted more from hotels than the faded grandeur they got in the Willow. They wanted silver tea services, elegant old furniture, the sense of gracious living that came from a beautiful old hotel – and hot water all day, a swimming pool and a beauty salon.

What could the much-loved Willow offer them?

‘Mind you, Donegal wouldn’t be hot enough,’ Trish went on thoughtfully. ‘If I were you, I’d get on the first plane out of here, go somewhere warm and gorgeous, and find a luxury hotel where I can come to stay and you can comp me a room. The Caribbean would be nice,’ she added, ‘sandy beaches, me on a lounger waving my hand in the air so some ebony god of a man with thighs like The Rock can smile at me and help move my sunshade.’ Trish sighed at the thought of it all.

‘Finished fantasising?’ enquired Cleo. She opened one of her magazines. ‘You see, this is my plan. If we did up the hotel ourselves, it wouldn’t cost so much.’ She found the page that had captivated her in the newsagent’s: a home not unlike the Willow in décor, but with lots of fabulous paint effects on the walls and an incredible trompe-l’œil arched door in a wall leading into a tropical garden. With something like that in their dining room, the hotel would look wonderful.

Trish sighed. ‘Cleo, those houses look like that because they have a fleet of paint experts each with a Masters in fine art working round the clock to transform a dingy hallway into a Garden of Eden with just seventeen tins of paint. If normal people like us do it, it would look like those paintings done by chimpanzees.’

‘It can’t be that hard,’ Cleo muttered.

Trish narrowed her eyes. ‘Yeah, right, Leonardo. Get real. Your family think you’re a kid who knows nothing. That’s what being the youngest is all about. You should face facts and get out of there and get on with your life. Like I have,’ she added defiantly.

Trish had moved to Dublin at the age of eighteen when she went to college. And she claimed that the secret to getting on with your family was not actually having to live with them. She’d lived away ever since. Cleo used to envy Trish for her independence in those days, but now she wasn’t so sure. She’d been wildly keen to go to Bristol and experience a bit of the world, and yet, when she did, she found that she missed home.

‘It was different for you, Trish,’ Cleo pointed out. ‘You needed to get out.’ Trish’s family were known for their volcanic arguments and door slamming. ‘But I don’t want to leave,’ Cleo said sadly. ‘I know if only I can make them see we’re in trouble, that they’ll do something, won’t they?’

‘OK, you have the family conference and tell them they’re doing it all wrong and let’s see what happens,’ Trish said. ‘And don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

As she walked to the bus, Cleo mulled it all over in her mind. She knew that staying in Carrickwell to revitalise her family business was unlikely to work for all the reasons Trish had mentioned: her father wouldn’t listen to her, and her brothers probably hoped it would fail anyway. Neither Jason nor Barney had shown the slightest inclination to work as hoteliers. Jason worked in the travel business while Barney was a sales manager in a local car dealership. If the hotel and its land were sold, they could make a lot of money.

Cleo loved her brothers but the age difference between them meant she’d been excluded from their games as a child, and even now there was always a squabble between them when they met.

The bus was waiting, and Cleo got on board. As the bus doors shuddered to a close, she took her scarf off and wriggled lower into her seat to enjoy the ride.

‘Cleo Malin, as I live and breathe. How are you?’

Mrs Irene Hanley, a friend of her mother’s, deposited two huge bags of shopping onto the seat beside Cleo. ‘Can I sit with you? I hate the journey home – drive you mad, wouldn’t it, with boredom?’ Without waiting for an answer, Mrs Hanley had removed her coat, rearranged her shopping on the floor so it fell onto Cleo’s feet, and launched herself into the seat. Built along the same lines as the robust women of Tonga, Mrs Hanley took up all her own seat and a fair percentage of Cleo’s too. Cleo was pushed nearer the window but all chance of staring happily out of it, in a world of her own, was now gone. Mrs Hanley was set for chat. First, she produced a box of chocolates from her shopping.

Cleo could feel hunger rising in her like a tidal wave as Mrs Hanley opened the box and dithered happily over her selection before choosing a succulent white chocolate and passing the whole box to Cleo.

‘Have a chocolate – ah, go on,’ she added, as Cleo shook her head. ‘One won’t hurt.’

Cursing herself for being so weak, Cleo took one. Chocolate caramel with a nut in the middle. She could feel the chocolate sensors in her body going on full alert. We’re back in business, boys!

‘Maybe I’ll have another one,’ she said.

Mrs Hanley’s family, all girls and all with the same statuesque physiques, were apparently either married or nearly married to wildly eligible men.

‘Now Loretta, her fellow, Lord, he’s fabulous, calls me his second mummy, well, he’s taking her to Lanzarote for Valentine’s Day. Loretta, I said, Loretta, hold on to that man, I said.’

‘Loretta, she was twenty-two last year?’ asked Cleo suddenly, remembering Loretta from the vast Hanley clan. Loretta had worked briefly in the Willow as a chambermaid one summer and now ran the Carrickwell office of one of the bus tour companies.

‘My baby.’ Mrs Hanley got all misty and only a dark chocolate nougat could make her feel better.

Cleo sighed and took a cappuccino cream. Since the shortlived thing with Laurent, there was no sign of a man in her life – except Nat, who didn’t count – never mind one with either the wit or the overdraft to take her to Lanzarote. How did Loretta do it?

Perhaps being less bolshie was the trick. Cleo knew she was tough with men, but you couldn’t change that, could you? A firm hand was what was needed, whether it was throwing drunks out of the hotel at closing time or telling men that one date did not entitle them to stare glassily at her cleavage.

‘Nearly there already. Lord, doesn’t the time fly when you’ve got company?’ Mrs Hanley said as the bus shuddered into the depot at the bottom of Mill Street. ‘As I said, I’m counting on Loretta coming back from Lanzarote with an engagement ring, although keep that to yourself, but if she does, we’ll have a bit of a bash. Nothing too fancy. They’ll be saving for the wedding, I dare say. Loretta loves the Metro-pole in Dublin. Very classy. Or the Merlin Castle and Spa over in Kildare. Pity we’ve nothing like that here. There are builders working all hours of the day and night on the health farm in the old Delaney place. It’s nearly finished, I believe, but it won’t have a hotel with it, so Loretta will have to go out of town if she wants her posh wedding.’

The words were only out of Mrs Hanley’s mouth when she realised what she’d said and clasped a beringed hand to her lips. ‘Sorry, Cleo. Me and my big mouth. I didn’t think. Don’t tell your mother, please. You know I’m mad about her, it’s just that young people, like Loretta, you know, they want different things at weddings these days and they like to make a weekend out of it. Say with the wedding on a Friday, then all sorts of treatments in the health centre on the Saturday, and a party that night. And you’d need a big ballroom too and at least fifty rooms to cater for all the people flying in from abroad. A small place with a few rooms wouldn’t do…’ She clamped a hand over her mouth again. ‘I’m digging an even bigger hole for myself, Cleo, love. I didn’t mean to offend you or your family.’

‘Don’t be silly, Mrs Hanley,’ said Cleo briskly. She could hardly blame the woman for pointing out the truth as Cleo saw it herself. ‘Anyway, you’ll be hearing interesting things about the Willow soon. We have great plans for the future, you know,’ she added. ‘The work will be starting soon, in fact.’

‘Be positive about your hotel,’ had been part of the advice in college. ‘Don’t be afraid to tell people the positive points and any future improvements, as long as you can back it up.’

And they’d be able to do that soon, Cleo reasoned. If her family listened to her.

‘I’m so glad,’ Mrs Hanley said. ‘I’ve been worried because the place has been a bit run down and your poor mother is worn out with it all. Myself and the girls from the book club talk about it all the time.’

‘You do?’

Relief that Cleo hadn’t taken offence made Mrs Hanley loquacious. ‘She looks worn out, you know. Worn out. It can’t be easy, although she keeps a brave face on her. But we have been worried, Cleo. I’m so fond of your mother, and your father too. I thought they might retire, to be honest, and head off for the sun. The heat’s great for arthritis and your mother is a martyr to it. Stay off the tomatoes, Sheila, I tell her, they’re ruinous for the old arthritis, but does she listen?’

Mrs Hanley pressed another chocolate upon Cleo before they parted company. ‘You’re only a slip of a thing,’ Mrs Hanley said disapprovingly.

Cleo grinned and took the chocolate. Compared to the Hanley girls, she was a slip of a thing.

As she walked out of the bus depot, she chewed her chocolate slowly to make it last and thought of the truth in Mrs Hanley’s words. Everybody could see that the hotel was in trouble. Except her family.

On her way up through Carrickwell to the Willow, Cleo passed The Holy Land, which looked a bit bare now Christmas had gone, and past the brightly painted façade of Little Tigers Nursery with its big tiger motif on the front door. It was half-six and parents were still rushing in to collect children, who emerged all wrapped up in warm clothes, running and skipping to their parents’ cars, talking madly about what they’d been painting and what games they’d played. Cleo had never given much thought to it before, but it occurred to her that it must be hard to leave your child in a nursery all day, only picking him or her up when you were both worn out.

Cleo and her brothers had never been sent to a crèche or nursery. The hotel had been their nursery. There had always been someone around to keep an eye on them, and from when she was little Cleo had loved helping clean bedrooms as long as she had her own yellow duster and her own squirty bottle. She wondered if she’d have children some day and would they play in the hotel while she worked, learning how to make a bed properly and watching the chef rustling up twenty-four cooked breakfasts as easily as making a cup of tea.

It had been a fun way to grow up. Her children would play in the hotel, she decided. She’d want them to enjoy their birthright the way she had. Of course, that was years and years off, and she’d need a man first. That wasn’t the sort of thing that could happen quickly. No way was she settling for any guy. She wanted the one. The right one. Perfect. Tall, naturally, so she wouldn’t have to look down on him. Small men loved her for some reason, but she could never bear to go out with anyone shorter than herself.

Laurent had been tall and olive-skinned, with the most amazing grey eyes. And his accent…when he said, ‘You are so sexy, Clee-oh,’ in that luscious Provençal drawl, Cleo had felt herself melt.

By the time she got home, Cleo’s hair was woolly from the damp of the evening. Hat – she had to buy a new hat to replace the one she’d lost on a night out with Trish. A vibrant young businesswoman needed decent hair. And she was a vibrant young businesswoman, the sort of one who could have her pick of handsome tall men with fabulous accents. Who’d manage to drag their eyes from her bosom to actual eye-level.

With this cheering thought in mind, she walked in the front door and did what Mrs O’Flaherty, her favourite course lecturer, used to tell the students to do: imagine they were guests arriving at the hotel and see what it felt like. Cleo stood and tried to see the hotel with a dispassionate eye.

The flowers that had only one day left in them yesterday still stood on the big hall table and it was obvious that nobody had got round to changing the water. Murky and green like water from a gloomy pond, it gave the hall the aroma of bad eggs. The cushions on the two big armchairs in front of the fireplace still bore the imprints of whoever had last sat in them, and a newspaper was rolled up and squashed in a corner of one. Worse still, the door to the conservatory hallway was swinging open, admitting both a stiff breeze from the garden and the smell of eau-de-cabbage from the kitchens.

Cleo didn’t have to exert her imagination to figure out what any self-respecting guest’s reaction would be if they’d travelled in the cold evening to the Willow, hoping for warmth and welcome, to be greeted by all this. The place was only missing Bela Lugosi with extra sharp incisors to complete the atmosphere. Before she’d gone to college, before she’d spent work experience summers in other hotels, Cleo had thought that their hotel was the finest around. Creaking water pipes, quaint hot-water bottles for guests’ bedrooms in winter and beautiful rugs with papery thin edges were part of an old hotel’s attractions. Its charm had also come from the love and warmth her parents had put into it, charm that meant more than any new furnishings or thick carpets. Harry Malin’s warmth was as much a part of the Willow’s success as the sense of faded elegance in a world of monotone, identikit hotel chains. But the balance between her father’s warmth and the state of the house had shifted.

Now she saw the Willow with new eyes. The hotel was tired, a dump. It badly needed a total revamp.

‘Hello!’ yelled Cleo into the empty hall.

Tamara, the hotel’s part-time receptionist, poked her head out from behind a tiny gap in the office door, the door that was supposed never to be shut. Small and very blonde, like her elder sister, Sondra, Cleo’s sister-in-law, Tamara had the air of one who always had something better to do than talk to you.

She wasn’t too keen on Cleo, mainly because Cleo was one of those people who never wanted to sit still. Tamara liked sitting still when there was nothing she felt inclined to do. Even better, she liked working on her nails. The acrylics had been too expensive, so she’d got rid of them and it was hard work getting her nails back into condition again. You really needed to rub nail conditioner in every hour religiously.

‘Yeah, hi,’ Tamara muttered, from where she sat, and went back to reading her magazine carefully so as not to dampen the pages with fingers slick with nail oil.

Cleo counted to ten. Then she went to twenty to be on the safe side. Screaming at staff was generally not encouraged in hotel management. But Tamara was not Cleo’s idea of a proper hotel receptionist, even if she was ‘almost family’, as Barney put it.

In the grand tradition of keeping the business in the family, Barney’s wife, Sondra, used to work as receptionist on a part-time basis, but now that she was pregnant, albeit only just, with the first grandchild of the Malin dynasty, she had given up work and her sister had been drafted in as her replacement.

Cleo had been all for hiring someone new but, no, family had to come first.

‘Cleo, come on, charity begins at home and all that. Tamara’s a bit low since she lost that job in the beauty salon,’ Barney had said. ‘And it’s not as if you need much experience for reception.’

That, Cleo decided, was what was wrong with her brothers. They didn’t understand the finer points of running a hotel. In Barney’s view, any idiot who could do long multiplication and say ‘Reception, how can I help you?’ could operate a successful hotel.

‘Barney, you do need experience for reception,’ Cleo said in exasperation.

‘Ah, Cleo, she’ll be great,’ wheedled Barney.

He had such an engaging smile, like Cleo’s but with an added hint of rogue thrown in for good measure. It was hard to resist.

‘Where is everyone, Tamara?’ asked Cleo brightly now so that Tamara would hear her through the half-closed office door.

‘Your mother’s in the kitchen and your father’s out.’

And there’s nobody on reception in case a guest comes in, Cleo thought. The hotel didn’t have a receptionist on all day; they couldn’t afford to. Tamara was employed for times of the day when Harry or Sheila were busy elsewhere.

Cleo was heading for the door that separated the reception from the kitchen when the office phone rang sharply.

After five interminable rings, Tamara picked it up.

‘Helloo, the Willow Hotel, how can I help yoou?’ she intoned in the special voice she used only for the phone or talking to rich guests.

Tamara would have to go, Cleo decided. Family or no family. Because if she didn’t go, Cleo would end up being arrested for hitting Tamara over the head with Tamara’s cosmetic-filled Burberry handbag. Also not generally encouraged in hotel management.

Cleo’s mother, Sheila, sat in the tiny alcove in the kitchen where an old church pew had been wedged in and covered with cushions so that people rushing around cooking and serving could take a rest and a cup of tea out of everyone’s way. The pew was of worn oak and the cushions looked like a multi-coloured bric-a-brac display with two scruffy rose velvets lined up with a scratchy oatmeal barrel cushion, a few threadbare tapestry cushions and a toile de Jouy confection that was faded to nothing. All had once been somewhere else in the hotel and had ended up in the kitchen when they were too old and shabby to be in the public domain. A small card table covered with a floral oilcloth sat in front of the pew and it was there that Cleo had done much of her homework, working patiently away with sums and French verbs while her parents spun past as they cooked and cleaned.

‘A good hotel-owner needs to be able to cook if the chef doesn’t turn up,’ Cleo’s father always said. And Harry Malin could certainly cook. In the early days, it was from him that Cleo had learned her love of the business – and her skill with people. Dad just had that way with people that made them comfortable in his company. It was the perfect gift for an hotelier.

The kitchen was warming up for dinner time with Jacqui, the chef, surveying her empire with pride before she sloped off for a quick break before the rush. Jacqui had been with the hotel for a year now. The same age as Cleo and just as eager, she was always having arguments with Harry about innovative new menus. Harry liked substantial French cuisine with an Irish twist. Jacqui liked Pacific Rim food, worshipped lemongrass and longed to be allowed to create exotic recipes with coconut milk.

Cleo waved a greeting at Jacqui, filled a mug with coffee from the pot on the counter, then kissed her mother on the cheek. ‘Where’s Dad?’

‘He and Bill are looking at the hot-water pump.’ Bill was the hotel’s part-time handyman and a genius with machines. He needed to be, given the age and decrepitude of most of the hotel’s equipment. ‘It’s gone again and Bill has some new yoke to fix it.’

‘Cardiac paddles are the only things that’ll work on that pump,’ Cleo joked. ‘Or else a novena to St Jude.’ It would take the patron saint of hopeless cases to perform a miracle.

Her mother nodded absently over her sewing. ‘For sure.’

‘Mum, look at these.’ Cleo spread the interiors magazines in front of her mother.

Sheila moved her mug to make room. ‘Those magazines are very expensive, love,’ she muttered, peering through her glasses at the price stickers. Since she’d started wearing the spindly gilt bifocals, she looked so much older, Cleo thought sadly. For years, Mum had looked so young and lively, with her hair, same uncontrollable nut-brown curls as Cleo’s, tied up in a bouncy bun with tendrils trailing around her neck. But suddenly her hair was almost all grey and the lines around her silvery blue eyes were so deep they looked as if they’d been carved with a compass. Her hands were misshapen with arthritis, the knuckles on both hands swollen, and where she’d once made an effort with pearly nail varnishes, now her nails were bare. Even her clothes looked aged. There was never any money in the Malin family for clothes. Every penny was ploughed back into the business. Cleo’s school uniform had been patched so often it looked like a quilt, to her shame.

Mrs Hanley had been right: her mother was worn down by everything. Cleo felt a surge of remorse at not having noticed this herself before now.

‘Bit of a waste of money, Cleo. If you’re going to have enough money to buy a car for when you’re working in Donegal, then you’ll have to stop spending it on magazines.’

Cleo bit her lip. She still had to tell them she’d turned the job down. Everyone had been so pleased when she’d blurted out that she’d been offered it, particularly Mum and Dad. It had been almost upsetting. You’d think they were glad to get rid of her.

‘Mum, I had this great idea. Well, I’ve been thinking about it for ages. We do need to upgrade the place a bit and then I saw this magazine and, what do you think of us doing some new paint effects? It wouldn’t cost much,’ she added hurriedly. She opened the magazine on the correct page for her mother. ‘The dining room could do with a bit of work and just think if we had something like this paint effect on the far wall…’ She got no further.

The back door opened, and Sondra and Barney arrived in a whirl of cold wind and Body Shop White Musk, a perfume Cleo had once liked and now hated because Sondra seemed to wear a pint of it every day.

‘Hello, just thought we’d drop in to say hi,’ Sondra said, newly pregnant and radiant in full make-up and a chic black dress.

‘We’ve nothing in for dinner so we came up here to cadge a couple of free meals,’ said Barney, who was nothing if not frank.

‘Sit down, Sondra, love. Chef’s got lovely sea bass and I can get her to rustle up some chips for you.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Cleo could see Jacqui smile as she came back from her break. She loved being called Chef.

‘Great.’ Sondra sighed as she sat down in the comfiest corner of the pew and flicked through Cleo’s magazines while Barney scavenged in the main part of the hotel kitchen for a snack.

Jacqui knocked his hand away as it slid towards the chill drawer where the smoked salmon was ready. ‘Don’t touch.’

Barney got a fistful of almond cookies that had been made to accompany Sheila’s homemade vanilla ice cream instead and squashed in beside his wife. She’d come to the trompe-l’œil page. The house really did have a look of the Willow about it – the same big windows, high ceilings and similar coving.

‘That’s nice,’ said Barney, munching.

‘Isn’t it?’ Sheila said. ‘Cleo wonders if we could do something similar here.’

Sondra raised carefully painted eyes to Cleo. ‘But impossible to copy,’ she said. ‘It’d cost a fortune.’

‘You think?’ Cleo said, wondering why Sondra complained about how she’d hated exams at school, since she was so scarily sharp about everything post-school.

‘Lord, Cleo, don’t they teach you anything in college? Paint effects cost a fortune. You weren’t thinking of doing it yourself, were you?’

The first stirrings of anger roared through Cleo’s veins. ‘I was, actually,’ she said. ‘The whole place needs work and this is one option that wouldn’t cost too much. We weren’t full over Christmas and it’s about time we all faced facts and did something about it. We don’t want to lose the place, do we?’

She could sense rather than see her mother stiffen at these words.

‘Cleo, the Willow will be going strong when we’re all dead and buried,’ came her father’s voice.

Harry Malin stood in the kitchen unwrapping a scarf from his neck. ‘The pump’s fine. Bill has it working like a dream. How’s my favourite daughter-in-law, then?’ He smiled down at Sondra.

Cleo’s inner fire roared a bit more. He was doing what they all did: deliberately avoiding any mention of the hotel’s shortcomings. Like ostriches with their heads in the sand.

Cleo steeled herself. ‘I wish I could agree with you about the hotel, Dad,’ she said, ‘but I can’t. I love this place but we’re on the slippery slope. We need to do something.’

‘I think your father knows what he’s doing,’ Sondra shot in. ‘He’s been running this hotel for thirty years.’

Cleo’s plans to be diplomatic took a dive. ‘So a hotel management degree is a waste of time and money, is it, Sondra, and I know nothing about hotels?’

‘You said it, not me,’ smirked Sondra.

‘Please don’t argue,’ said Sheila.

‘All I’m saying is that the hotel is in trouble and nobody’s even talking about it,’ Cleo argued hotly. ‘We might have managed in the past because people love the Willow but it’s getting older; the whole hotel needs refurbishing. If you could see the money they spend in some of the hotels I’ve worked in…Customers expect that now…’

‘The Willow doesn’t stand up to the other places you’ve been then?’ her father said evenly.

‘No, Dad, that’s not what I mean at all.’ Cleo’s eyes pleaded with him not to take offence. ‘They were different sorts of hotels. We run a small, intimate house hotel where people feel welcomed into our world and that’s what I love. That’s what you created, Dad.’ Her eyes were still pleading. ‘But we need to improve the place somehow. Carrickwell’s changing all the time and we’ve got to change with it, be ready for the future or else…’

‘Or else what?’ asked Harry.

Cleo couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say they’d close down.

‘Or else we’ll see the profits dive,’ she added lamely.

‘Cleo, we’ve got twenty covers for dinner tonight,’ Sheila Malin added. ‘That’s hardly bad for a week night.’

Everyone but Cleo smiled at this clear proof of the hotel’s success.

‘Make that twenty-two covers. Or even twenty-three.’ Sondra patted her belly happily.

‘You don’t have any steak, Jacqui?’ called Barney. ‘I’m ravenous.’

‘Chef does not have time to whip up private meals for you, Barney,’ Cleo snapped at her brother. ‘You’ve been up here four times in the past week for dinner. Can neither of you cook?’

‘I’m pregnant,’ Sondra said, looking daggers at her sister-in-law. ‘Cooking makes me sick. I don’t know why they call it morning sickness, when it’s all-day sickness.’

‘Lots of women have to work when they’re pregnant and they can’t afford to give up their jobs at the drop of a hat because their husband’s family business will keep doling out money to support them,’ Cleo said, taking the gloves off. She knew that her parents supplemented Barney’s income with handouts. Handouts that Barney felt were entirely his due.

‘It’s a loan,’ snarled Sondra.

‘Four loans in the past two years?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘It’s my business when the hotel profits are being siphoned off into your pockets.’

‘Cleo.’ There was a warning in her father’s tone but neither Cleo nor Sondra took heed.

‘You could be contributing something if you were still working on reception, Sondra,’ Cleo went on. ‘We all know that Tamara is hopeless. She spends the whole time doing her nails.’

‘How dare you talk about my sister like that?’ shrieked Sondra.

‘Don’t, please,’ Sheila begged her daughter.

‘Yeah, who do you think you are, Cleo?’ Barney said, remembering his husbandly duty. ‘Apologise.’

Cleo was just about to say that she had no intention of apologising because every word she’d said was true, when Harry interrupted. ‘Yes, apologise, Cleo.’

Stunned, she spun round to look at her father. ‘For telling the truth?’ she demanded.

‘We don’t have big rows in this family, Cleo,’ Harry went on. ‘That gets nobody anywhere. Please apologise to Sondra.’

Cleo felt betrayed. Her father rarely interfered in squabbles and it was hardly a family secret that she and Sondra didn’t get on. They were grown-ups; they were entitled not to get on if they didn’t want to. She loved and respected her father but he wasn’t always right. All she’d done was tell the truth and she was being punished.

Although she knew why: her father hated rows and tried to avoid conflict at all costs. His mother had been what he euphemistically called ‘fiery’ and Harry had grown up watching his parents face each other like bullfighters, circling in rage, screaming insults several times a week. A person could have too much plate-throwing in their life, he used to say. Cleo knew she’d inherited her grandmother’s passion – although not her harsh tongue. She would never hurt anyone with a rash word – she knew better than that, no matter how passionately she felt about something. Her grandmother’s way was not the right way to do things.

‘You’re right, Dad,’ she said calmly now. ‘I went about it the wrong way. I’m sorry for talking about Tamara like that,’ she said to Sondra. But not sorry for the other parts. ‘That wasn’t fair. I’m going out for a walk.’ And she got up to go.

Her father muttered something about going into the office for a few moments, and he left too, by a different door.

Cleo went and sat where she’d always gone when she was wildly annoyed but trying to hide it. Down at the bottom of the garden, behind the orchard wall, on the cracked stone seat under the apple tree. The bark of the tree was coated with silver and there were no acid-green buds appearing. The tree was dying from neglect. Nobody in the Willow knew the first thing about trees and the men who worked on the garden had their hands full sorting out the front in the limited time available.

Some of the hotel’s brides had found this secluded spot over the years and had been photographed there, just the bride and the groom, smiling under the apple tree. For that reason alone, the tree should have been taken care of but nobody had listened to Cleo when she said it. They never did. And they probably never would, Cleo realised with a jolt.

She knew she’d changed from a tomboyish kid, but to Mum, Dad, Jason and Barney, she was still the baby of the family.

Idly, she picked a bit of bark off the tree. Several beetles fell out, shocked at losing their home. Feeling like a murderer, Cleo tried to replace the bark but it wouldn’t stick.

‘Sorry, boys,’ she said to the beetles who’d made a rapid exit on the stony ground at her feet.

They’d lost their home and the Malins would lose their home too.

She took the piece of newspaper from her jeans pocket and unfolded it for the nth time. Nat had seen it in a trade paper and had sent it to her. He’d understood what it meant.

‘Roth Hotels Expansion Plans’ ran the headline. The article reported how the vast international chain of Roth Hotels had decided to turn their attention to the Irish and UK markets. Not city hotels, the article went on to say, but some of their hugely successful country resorts complete with golf, health club and riding facilities. Locations mentioned included the eastern part of Ireland. Cleo felt sick to the pit of her stomach when she thought about it.

If a Roth Hotel opened up in Carrickwell, it would sound the death knell to the Willow.

CHAPTER THREE

Daisy Farrell had thought that tidying out her wardrobe was the perfect way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon when Alex was away in London for the weekend working. But the task had palled somewhat as the day dragged on. Five o’clock and dusk arrived at the same gloomy moment, and every single item of clothing Daisy owned was still piled on the bedroom floor in their normally immaculate apartment, in so many tottering piles. All black, of course. Despite the fashion bibles screeching that red or pink or white were the new black, Daisy knew – like every fashionista worth her salt – that black would always be the new black.

Black made every lump and bump disappear and turned slender into skinny. Who needed bulimia when you had black?

She had so much stuff, she reflected, wishing she’d never started. How was it that a woman whose very job was picking clothes for other people – she was a buyer for Carrickwell’s chicest designer shop, Georgia’s Tiara – seemed to have so many fashion mistakes in her own wardrobe?

‘This will have to go,’ Daisy decided, holding up a tweedy skirt that had never quite suited her. ‘And this.’ Drapey chiffon shirts had never been her style, yet she loved them. They’d sold buckets of them in the shop, though. Daisy’s style might waver when it came to dressing herself, but her instinct was spot on when it came to her job.

‘How do you do it?’ asked people, fascinated at how she knew the shop’s customers would buy the clothes she bought at the fashion fairs six months in advance of stocking them.

‘You pick clothes in January and then when summer comes, you hope they’re in fashion and that women here buy them?’ was the usual question when Daisy explained what being the fashion buyer for Georgia’s Tiara meant. ‘How do you know they’ll like them?’

‘I don’t,’ Daisy would say pleasantly. ‘I’ve been doing it for years and it’s a combination of experience, skill and, well…you’ve got to have an eye for it.’

‘Ah.’ That answer pleased most of the crowd because an eye was the same thing as luck: you either had it or you didn’t. They could not be blamed for not having an eye, and therefore not having the apparent good fortune of Daisy Farrell. A nice apartment in the restored old mill in the centre of Carrickwell, a lovely red sporty car, two decent holidays a year, not to mention all that flying to fashion fairs in Germany and London, having champagne in club class, and a man like Alex Kenny. Some women had all the luck.

‘Don’t tell them that it’s just down to having an eye for fashion. You make it sound too simple,’ Alex chided. ‘Tell them it’s bloody hard work and there’s no guarantee you’ll sell a single thing you buy.’

Alex worked in investment banking in Dublin city, a job where it was mandatory to blow your own trumpet. Even after fourteen years with Daisy, Alex still couldn’t understand her natural reticence. She was brilliant at what she did – what was wrong with telling people? And Daisy, safe in the love of the one person in the world who made her feel good about herself, laughed and said that being a fashion buyer was impossible to explain to the uninitiated. It was like wearing Prada and looking effortlessly cool, so effortlessly cool that nobody would ever guess all the hard work that went into the whole outfit.

Besides, Daisy, like all people who doubted their worth, had a horror of boring other people. She felt she’d bore everyone rigid if she told them about the years of following fashion from the sidelines and of how she’d tried to make clothes from odd scraps of fabric almost before she was old enough to sew. Daisy might have been blessed with an eye for fashion, but her lengthy apprenticeship had sharpened it.

‘It’s a female thing,’ she added. ‘Women don’t like showing off.’

‘It’s a Daisy thing,’ Alex replied. ‘My office is full of women who have no qualms about telling people how talented they are.’

‘Only because they’re trying to impress you,’ Daisy laughed. And it was true. At thirty-six, Alex still had the physique of the college rower he’d once been. Long and lean, he looked good in his office suits, even better out of them, and his glossy wolf’s pelt hair and strong, intelligent face meant that women noticed him. One of the many, many things Daisy loved about him was that Alex didn’t notice them back.

It never occurred to her that he might ever have to worry about men noticing her. Daisy had no illusions about her own beauty. A person didn’t grow up overhearing their mother call them an ugly duckling, like Daisy’s mother did, without drawing their own conclusions. But she had style, fabulous shoes, and Alex, the man she’d adored since their first meeting in a dingy college pub a lifetime ago.

Her beloved Alex was linked to the three questions that Daisy really hated. First up was, ‘Are you and Alex ever going to get married, Daisy?’

Short answer: ‘Perhaps,’ delivered with a little smile that hinted at plans for something elegant on a far-flung beach where the party could pick exotic blooms to hang behind their ears as they stood, barefoot, in the sand. A Vera Wang dress, privately designed rings, and a select beachside party for their small group of friends, followed by a relaxed gathering in a restaurant when they got home from the honeymoon.

Daisy’s real answer was: ‘I’d love to but Alex’s not interested. We’ve talked about it but he’s not really into marriage. Why fix what’s not broken, he says.’

She’d said it to Mary Dillon, her partner in the shop.

‘That’s such a man thing to say,’ remarked Mary, who was just divorced and still inhabiting the all-men-are-pigs zone. Mary had started Georgia’s Tiara ten years before, and Daisy had come on board shortly afterwards. Together, they made a great team.

‘Getting married isn’t about not fixing anything. It’s a bigger commitment, that’s all,’ Mary went on. ‘It’s Alex saying he wants the world to know he’s going to be with you for ever. Living with someone can’t do that. Mind you,’ she added gloomily, ‘if I’d just lived with Bart instead of being stupid enough to marry him, we mightn’t have ended up paying the lawyers so much. Every time I see my lawyer in his new Porsche, I feel like saying I own an eighth of that car, so when can I borrow it?’

‘Yes…’ said Daisy, wishing she hadn’t started this. Mary was not the sort of woman to call a spade a metal digging implement and Daisy had just broken her own steadfast rule about couple loyalty. Never speak about your loved one in a negative way. Anything else was too like what she’d grown up with. ‘I suppose I can see Alex’s point,’ Daisy went on untruthfully, backtracking out of guilt. It had been a private conversation with Alex. What on earth had made her spill it all out to Mary? ‘We are happy as we are. I must be premenstrual, that’s it. Ignore me.’

The only plus about not having plans to get married meant that Daisy didn’t have to think about the dilemma of inviting both her parents to the wedding. It had been years since Daisy’s mother had tolerated being in the same town as her father, much less the same room. Nan Farrell had insisted that her husband move out of Carrickwell years ago so she could pretend – to herself, at least – that she was still a person of consequence in the town. Daisy’s father had drifted in and out of her life for years. He lived in San Francisco now and seemed perfectly happy to send and receive nothing more than a Christmas card.

Whenever Vogue had a feature on beautiful brides, Daisy contented herself with the knowledge that she had commitment without the need for an intricate seating plan to keep all her family happy. Her family had been a bit of a non-family all her life. And surely, she reasoned, it was more modern to live with a loved one than rush up the aisle just for the sake of it?

Her second most hated question was even more personal.

‘How did you lose all the weight?’ interrogated all the people who hadn’t seen her for years and who remembered Daisy as the rounded creature she would always remain in their heads.

Ignoring the rudeness of the question – weight was a terribly personal matter and yet so many recklessly demanded to know what you ate for breakfast if it would help them lose a few pounds – Daisy would say that she hadn’t done a thing. Honestly.

For all his charming sociability, Alex was incredibly private and hated anyone knowing he’d been sick, so she couldn’t say that the sheer worry she’d gone through over the two years of his mystery illness meant the weight, three stones of it, had just melted away.

‘Not WeightWatchers, not the Atkins?’ people would then say suspiciously, clearly convinced she was lying through her teeth, lived on nothing but cabbage soup and probably had terrible problems with bad breath.

‘Not a thing,’ Daisy replied, privately wondering was there an opening in the book world for the Epstein Barr Virus Diet.

Alex looked great now. Thanks to the last year as a patient of the fabulous Dr Verdan, he was glowing with health and brimming with his old energy. He was taking enough health supplements to open his own shop, but they all seemed to be working. She hoped the ones she’d begged him to ask Dr Verdan for were helping.

Which led on to the third question, the one that wasn’t asked quite as often. Apparently, people were more aware of the delicacy of asking it these days, so that when a woman reached a certain age and no children had appeared, only the bumbling lumbered in and asked: ‘What about kids? Don’t you want them?’

Unfortunately, there were lots of bumblers out there, people who thought it was perfectly acceptable to ask a healthy thirty-five-year-old woman with a long-term partner if she’d ever considered the notion of children.

Hell, no, Daisy wanted to yell at them. ‘We thought about it but we’ve heard that a child costs 30,000 euro in its first five years, so we’re going to the Bahamas instead.’ Only an answer so flippant could disguise the genuine physical pain she felt when asked such a question.

Because Daisy didn’t want children. She craved them, yearned for them, cried for them in her sleep.

When she was thirty, she’d stopped taking the pill.

‘It’ll be fun making babies,’ Alex had said at the time.

And it had been. Making love and hoping to get pregnant instead of the reverse was very sexy.

‘The mother of my children,’ Alex liked to murmur when he lay above her, his naked body moulded perfectly against her soft lush one.

Daisy had no particular love for her body. It was so defiantly different from what she’d have liked it to be, with rounded everything and fat that spilled out over her size fourteen waistbands, making her move miserably on to size sixteen. But when Alex was holding her gently, and her strawberry-blonde hair streamed around her, creamy skin pillowed out below him as they tried to conceive their child, that was the only time when she felt that she was almost beautiful.

Making babies didn’t work out to be as straightforward as they’d thought, however. It was as if simply deciding to have one, instead of trying hard not to, had suddenly made pregnancy very difficult to achieve.

Magazines were full of miserable stories about declining fertility and how women were leaving it too late to conceive. Daisy hated those articles ever since the day she’d grasped the horrific news that women were born with all the eggs they were ever going to have and it was all downhill from then on.

‘You mean, we don’t make new eggs all the time?’ she asked Paula, who worked in the shop and was addicted to health websites. ‘I thought everything in the human body got replaced every seven years. I read that, I know I did,’ Daisy added anxiously.

‘No,’ said Paula cheerily. ‘You’ve got your lot, I’m afraid. When you’re thirty, so are your eggs.’

Daisy blanched at the thought of her then thirty-year-old eggs and all the things her body had been through.

Could too much alcohol affect your eggs? Think of all those mad nights in her twenties when she’d had so much to drink that she’d almost drunk herself sober. Or drugs. Remember Werner, the Austrian student friend of Alex’s who’d been very keen on smoking dope and who’d encouraged a disapproving Daisy to have a joint with the rest of them on that holiday. She’d never done drugs before, she disapproved of drugs, for heaven’s sake, but she’d been stupid and said yes, and she knew that would come back to haunt her. Stupid cow, how could she not have known about her eggs?

Paula, who was younger than Daisy, didn’t seem too worried about the state of her ovaries and the fact that she hadn’t hatched anything, so to speak.

‘Ah, sure, what’ll be will be,’ she said optimistic ally.

‘Life is not a Doris Day song,’ a little voice inside Daisy’s head raged bitterly. Aloud she said: ‘You’re dead right, Paula. It’s crazy to obsess over these things. We’re only young, after all, and there’s loads of things they can do now to help you have children.’

That thought, the thought of experiments at the cutting edge of science where people would be able to have babies without even being on the same continent as each other, kept her going.

Cutting back on caffeine didn’t kickstart Daisy’s reproductive system. Neither did eating all the so-called superfoods. The vegetable basket looked almost alive with all the green stuff in it, and Daisy did her best to cut down the glasses of wine at the weekend. But her periods came with a regularity she’d sworn wasn’t there in the days when she hadn’t wanted to get pregnant.

Still, there was time on their side, she counselled herself. They were young, healthy, successful in everything they touched.

Georgia’s Tiara became more and more prosperous. Mary gave Daisy a share in the shop.

‘I can sell ice to the Eskimos but I wouldn’t be able to sell it unless you got the right ice,’ Mary said firmly. ‘You’ve put so much effort and energy into this business, you deserve to be a partner.’

Daisy had covered her mouth with her hands like a child. ‘Mary, I can’t believe it. You’re so good to me.’

‘Nonsense.’ Brisk was Mary’s middle name. ‘You’re so good to me, and for the shop. Running a business is second nature to me but I could spend a month of Sundays trying to learn what you do, and I’d still never manage it.’

Buoyed up by this – even her mother would have to say she was doing well – Daisy decided that she wasn’t pregnant because the time wasn’t right. It was like that old Buddhist saying: when the student is ready, the master will appear. She obviously wasn’t ready. Career women had so much trouble balancing kids and work that it was probably easier at this point in her life not to have a child. Then, after a year of baby-making, Alex became sick. It seemed incredible that it had taken so long to get a diagnosis and they had gone through the seven valleys of hell before they’d found out what it was. Even now, Daisy quaked at the thought of what it could have been. She and Alex had suspected leukaemia. Now, she always put money in collection tins that had anything to do with cancer as if to ward off the evil.

But the bugbear had been Epstein Barr, an autoimmune disorder that turned normally energetic people into wrecks. Hard to detect and even harder to cure, the illness had taken its toll on both Alex and Daisy. Baby-making had not been on the agenda then, but it was at the back of Daisy’s mind constantly, the sense of time passing slowly and of her elderly eggs getting even older. She also worried, although she would never say it, that Alex’s illness was part of the problem.

And now they’d come out of the fire, together. For the past two years, Alex had been healthy and said he felt great. She felt great. She was going to get pregnant. It was her time, time to find out why she wasn’t conceiving, if there was a problem with Alex’s sperm due to the Epstein Barr, and to do something about it. The student was ready.

Standing in front of the mirror in their bedroom on a dark Sunday afternoon, Daisy said it out loud: ‘I’m ready. I’m ready to get pregnant. Now.’

Nothing happened. No thunderbolt from on high to tell her that God was listening, no rustling of curtains to tell her that her guardian angel was hovering and would do his or her best.

There was no sign, just as there had never been any sign before.

‘Alex, I want us to have tests to find out what’s wrong. We can’t afford to wait any longer. I’m getting older and…’ Daisy’s monologue to the mirror trailed off. She didn’t want to tell the mirror – she wanted to tell Alex, and now.

She’d spent the weekend thinking of nothing else because, with Alex away, she had lots of time to reflect. He was in London with a group of investors on what he described as a ‘bank hooley’, where good food and expensive wine were laid on to help lubricate people’s cheque books.

Although she hated being alone, his being away gave Daisy a chance to catch up on all the boring household chores, like cleaning the oven before it went up in flames. The oven now gleamed, thanks to much scrubbing on Saturday. But the wardrobe tidying had proved to be a bit of a marathon task.

She’d kept some of her ‘fat’ clothes for when she was pregnant. That silky sweater from Italy, the flowing Pucci shirt, they’d look lovely over a pregnant belly. Daisy had such plans for being a fashionable pregnant woman and now, faced with these clothes and no use for them in sight, her heart ached.

By five on Sunday afternoon, as she turned the bedroom lights on, Daisy realised she’d like nothing better than an early dinner in front of the box, but she still had to put away loads of clothes. At least fifty per cent of everything she owned was in heaps on the floor.

She was holding up a sweater – black, and expensive, so how could she get rid of it, even though it didn’t really suit her? – when the phone rang.

‘Alex, hello.’ Daisy sank onto his side of the bed, cradling the phone into her shoulder, her voice softening with love. ‘How are you? Miss you, you know.’

‘I know, Daisy. But I’ll be home tomorrow evening.’ From his businesslike tone, it was clear that he wasn’t alone.

‘Can’t talk, huh? No problem. How’s it going?’ she asked, suppressing the slightest tinge of irritation that he hadn’t slipped away from the group for a moment to phone her privately. He was on his mobile, it seemed, and she hated those brusque ‘All fine here, how are you?’ conversations.

‘All fine here,’ said Alex, right on cue. ‘And at your end?’

Daisy laughed and did her best to let the irritation slip away. She could hardly have said, ‘Let’s do something about why I’m not getting pregnant,’ over the phone, could she? ‘My end is great but it’s lonely because it doesn’t have your end to snuggle up against in bed. It was freezing here last night,’ she added. ‘I had to resort to my fleece pyjamas and my bedsocks as I didn’t have you to warm me.’ She couldn’t resist the joke. He hated her bedsocks.

‘Really?’ said Alex blankly, but Daisy knew he must be grinning. Only someone who knew him well would hear the amusement over a crackly mobile and hundreds of miles.

‘Really. So hurry home. Me and the bedsocks miss you.’

‘You too. Better rush. We’ve got another meeting before dinner and it will probably be late, so I won’t phone again. See you tomorrow.’

‘Yes, can’t wait.’ She had so much to talk to him about. ‘I know you can’t talk, Alex,’ Daisy said quickly, ‘and you don’t have to reply but I love you.’

There was silence in her ear. He’d hung up.

Daisy made herself put the receiver back without slamming it into the cradle. How was it that women invariably wondered what was wrong, even when there was nothing wrong, and men never divined anything out of the ordinary when emotional war was about to be declared? She’d like to see how pleased Alex would be if she’d hung up on him when she was working away and when he was burning to tell her something.

She dismally surveyed the piles of clothes on the beige carpet. Everything in the apartment was decorated in subtle shades of beige and caramel, with dark brown accents. Alex loved modern minimalism.

Daisy had once wondered how their flat would cope with a small child in it. She loved planning new floor coverings and washable paintwork, or working out how to lay out the baby’s room. How sad was she?

That was it: her enthusiasm had vamoosed. She’d stack everything on her side of the room and do it during the week. There was a pepperoni pizza and oven chips in the freezer, a bottle of chilled wine in the fridge and probably some slushy romantic film on the movie channel. She could even give herself a manicure. And she’d put a conditioning treatment in her hair to bring it back to its glossy, strawberry-blonde glory. Her straightening irons and the colour played havoc with the split ends.

She’d look fabulous for when Alex saw her and he’d be flattened with both guilt and longing, and then she’d tell him what she’d really wanted to talk to him about.

Georgia’s Tiara had two windows looking out onto Delaney Row, a street of grand, three-storey houses on the northern side of Carrickwell, and both windows had the words ‘SALE’ emblazoned across in giant, art deco lettering. Decorated in proprietress Mary Dillon’s favourite lemon yellow, the shop was a clothes lover’s paradise and included a tiny accessory department that sold shoes, bags and costume jewellery, three large changing rooms and, most important of all, sympathetic mirrors.

Mary had most of her warpaint on and was on her second cup of hot water and lemon – awful, but great for the insides, she’d read – by the time Daisy got into the shop on Monday morning.

‘Sorry, traffic was brutal,’ Daisy said, which was pretty much what she always said. The snooze button was just so seductive in the morning. She’d always been able to identify with the Chinese mandarin who insisted on being woken at four every morning just so he had the luxury of knowing he didn’t have to get up yet. ‘And the roadworks on the bridge…shocking.’

‘Paula wanted fresh air so she went across to Mo’s Diner to get the lattes,’ Mary said, not even bothering to reply to the traffic story. The day Daisy arrived on time, Mary would know there was something seriously wrong. ‘Take the weight off the floor and catch your breath,’ Mary continued, handing over a bit of the newspaper.

Paula, who was now five and a half months pregnant with her first child, arrived with the lattes and three of Mo’s famous blueberry muffins, and for a few moments, there was the weekend catch-up as Daisy asked how Paula felt, had the baby been kicking and how many bottles of Gaviscon had she gone through?

‘Two,’ admitted Paula, shamefacedly. She was torn between joy at being pregnant and misery at having heartburn like the eruption of Krakatoa.

‘Only two?’ said Daisy cheerily. ‘You should have shares in the company.’ Today she could joke with Paula. Up to now, she’d found it hard although she did her level best not to show it because she loved Paula and wouldn’t have hurt her for the world. But today felt different. Now that Daisy had decided to take action, the pain had receded a little.

When everyone had their coffee – two lattes, and a decaf for the mother-to-be – blissful peace took over as the women flicked the pages of the tabloids, seeing who’d been wearing what at the weekend.

One of the shop’s best customers, a ladies-who-lunch type who had loads of money and the fashion sense of a Doberman, was pictured at a movie premiere wearing a spaghetti-strapped embroidered dress in midnight blue, a French blue cashmere shrug and string of tourmalines – an outfit that Daisy had put together specifically for her. The only defect was the flash of nude tights visible between the dress and the skinny navy suede boots.

‘You told her to wear black tights,’ groaned Paula.

‘The tights aren’t too bad,’ Daisy said. ‘If she’d done them on purpose, we’d all be saying it was brilliant.’

‘True,’ muttered Mary. There was a fine line in the fashion world between the genius of doing something different and the stupidity of wearing the wrong tights. Likewise, blue eyeshadow could be spectacular on the right person, and a hideous mistake on the wrong one.

The morning was taken up with phone calls about the whereabouts of a shipment of Italian silk print scarves. In between, Daisy lent a hand to a trio who were looking for a mother-of-the-bride outfit that would go with a cream brocade wedding gown, and a bridesmaid’s dress for the bride’s sister.

‘A dress that she can wear again, nothing with big flowers like a huge duvet cover,’ insisted the bride, with the bride’s sister nodding emphatically in the background. Once was quite enough to look like a refugee from the sofa factory – she was not wearing anything flowery and wildly frilly ever again.

Daisy quite liked the challenge of dressing bridal parties. Mary hated it because, in her current post-divorce state, she felt people weren’t being advised of what they were letting themselves in for.

‘There should be something more in the ceremony, something along the lines of a warning that it takes just one day to get married and five thousand days to work yourselves up to the divorce,’ she said darkly, out of range of the happy trio. ‘And bitterness…they never mention bitterness at weddings, do they? That’s the bit that lasts longest. You might have long since forgotten where you’ve put the wedding album, and the Waterford stemware might be scattered all around the house, but by God, you can lay your hands on a bit of bitterness at any time of the day or night.’

Daisy didn’t know what to say as they rummaged around at opposite ends of the storeroom, searching for a pale pink, beaded column dress with butterflies on the hem as well as a wool-silk mix dress with matching coat that would look good on a size sixteen at a winter wedding. It was odd that Mary could be so anti-marriage one minute, and pro-marriage the next. She’d raged at Daisy’s story of how Alex didn’t want to get married. Lately, Daisy had been censoring her conversation with Mary in case she rattled on too much about what she and Alex had done at the weekend, when she knew Mary was sitting at home on her own, worrying about cash flow or never having sex again.

‘I blame Richard Gere,’ Mary sniffed balefully. ‘I thought life was going to be like in An Officer and a Gentleman and look where that’s got me? Bloody nowhere. It’s the uniform that did it for me.’

As Bart had never worn a uniform, Daisy wasn’t quite sure what Mary was on about but she let her ramble.

‘Triumph of hope over dumb bloody stupidity,’ Mary said. ‘Why do we all think we have to get married? What’s wrong with women’s brains that we feel we’re not connected with the world unless we have a man to connect us with it? Men – who needs them?’

Mary’s bedtime reading was currently of the women-who-love-bastards variety. She’d lent Daisy some of her books and Daisy had accepted them out of guilt, but they were still in the back of her car in their plastic bag, necessitating even more guilt. What if Mary saw them, patently unread, and realised that while she was unhappy, not everyone else was?

‘Come on, Mary,’ said Daisy now, feeling that some sort of cheering-up was in order. ‘You’re over Bart, you know you are.’

‘Am I?’ demanded Mary. ‘Because I’m not, you know. I’m sad and depressed and I don’t think I’ll ever feel right again. That’s what marriage does for you, Daisy, and don’t you forget it.’

The lustre had gone out of dressing the wedding party for Daisy. She felt a bit headachey, so as soon as they had gone she nipped out for some painkillers and, on the spur of the moment, decided that a bottle of wine might cheer Mary up.

They closed at six and Daisy cracked open the bottle.

‘Just one glass,’ Mary warned. ‘The kids have a friend over for dinner and I don’t want to get a reputation as the divorced lush. That would give them something to talk about at the school gates. Alone and alcoholic isn’t the sort of thing you want to advertise. Nearly as bad as lonely and desperate for sex.’

‘None for me,’ added Paula, holding up a hand in refusal. ‘If I look at a drink, the baby will emerge phoning the child protection agency and my mother will be scandalised. She’s never got over my sister-in-law having that glass of champagne at our wedding when she was pregnant. She still talks about the irresponsibility of it all.’

Daisy did a quick bottle/person calculation. She never drank more than one glass when she drove.

Mary edged off her shoes, put her feet up on the wicker bin behind the counter, and sighed. ‘Don’t know why I wear those blinking shoes,’ she said, wiggling her toes luxuriously. ‘They ruin my feet. I’ll have bunions soon.’

‘The girl today who was getting married was going to have the full works done in a beautician’s just before the day,’ Paula said. ‘Manicure, pedicure, you name it.’

They all sighed at the thought.

‘I’ve never had a professional pedicure,’ Daisy said. ‘I feel embarrassed enough about having a manicure, my nails are always such a mess, but my feet…ugh. That would be worse. I think they’d need industrial sanding equipment to get the hard skin off my feet and then the beautician would look at me and think I was a right old hick. No, I can’t face it. I’d prefer to do it badly myself.’

‘Ah, they don’t care about the state of your feet,’ Mary said. ‘See enough feet and you can cope with anything. I’ve had everything done over the years. Feet, hands, that wrapped-up-like-a-mummy thing that makes you lose inches. Stinks, though; you feel smelly for the whole day with the mud. Can’t afford any of it now, of course, thanks to Bart. Plus I don’t have the time.’

‘That’s what we need,’ Daisy said dreamily. ‘A girls’ day out at a fabulous beauty parlour where we can relax and be made beautiful, and I could have a pedicure and you’d be with me so I wouldn’t feel inadequate because of my messy cuticles and hard heels!’

‘That spa they were working on near the old Delaney place is opening up next week,’ Paula said. ‘I don’t know who bought it but they’ve had builders working like madmen, according to my mother – she and her rambling club are there every week for their mountain walk. It’s going to be all holistic, with yoga rooms, hot stone therapy and aromatherapy.’

‘I wouldn’t mind some of that hot stone thingy,’ moaned Mary. ‘I wish I had time for it…’

‘Why not?’ asked Paula. ‘We could do it soon. If they’re new, they’ll have special offers, and they’re bound to have pregnancy stuff. Special massages and treatments.’

‘Right, I’ll check it out,’ said Daisy, fired up by this new idea.

Today was a day for plans. She’d phoned several fertility clinics today and she had news for Alex. Exciting news. She’d made an appointment for them both with one of the clinics. The only problem was that the appointment wasn’t for several weeks. She’d go mad with anticipation until then. A spa day with the girls was just what she needed to look forward to in the meantime.

Daisy arrived home at seven, swinging the plastic bag of Mary’s self-help books because she had to flick through them some time. The first thing she spotted was Alex’s briefcase sitting on the walnut floor in the hall. What caught her eye was the flash of turquoise peeping out of the black leather folds. A Tiffany gift bag. She considered a quick peek to see what Alex had bought her and then thought better of it.

Imagine if he’d bought her a diamond as big as a marble for their engagement and she’d have to spend the rest of her life knowing that she’d looked before he’d produced it. How did you and Dad get engaged? the kids would ask, and she’d have either to lie or say, ‘I stuck my big nose into his briefcase and found the ring, so I knew then…’ Not the romantic story she’d like. Anyway, it couldn’t be an engagement ring. They’d discussed that – they didn’t need marriage to cement their relationship.

She yelled a cheery hello and Alex rushed from the bathroom, looking a bit pale. ‘Dodgy stomach,’ he said by way of greeting, then planted a speedy kiss on her cheek.

‘Is that all the welcome I’m getting?’ Daisy joked, following him into the bedroom where he began rapidly undressing, throwing his jacket and tie onto the silken caramel throw on their king-size bed. ‘Oh-oh, this is the welcome…’

Halfway through pulling off his shirt, Alex grimaced. ‘Honey, if you knew the weekend I’ve had…Those people wouldn’t spend Christmas. I am so shattered. And the hotel wasn’t as good as the last one.’

‘Poor love.’ She held out her arms to him, and for a minute he relaxed against her and laid his head on her shoulder.

Then, he moved away and finished undressing, before putting on jeans and a sweatshirt.

Daisy sat cross-legged on the end of the bed.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ she began. ‘It’s OK,’ she laughed, seeing his eyes widen, ‘I haven’t been fired and I haven’t crashed the car! It’s about the baby, our baby. Oh, Alex, we’ve waited so long – let’s do something about it.’ She smiled, having saved the best till last. ‘I did some research today and phoned a couple of fertility clinics. With most of them, you’ve got to wait about a month for an appointment but the Avalon – I read about it in the paper and it’s brilliant, although it’s one of the more expensive – had literally just had a cancellation. They can see us on Friday three weeks at twelve fifteen.’ Her eyes shone with excitement. ‘Isn’t that fantastic? Please say you can make it.’

Alex, frozen with one black sock on and one off, stared at her.

‘We’ve been waiting for years, Alex. One before you got sick and two since.’

He flinched. She knew he hated being reminded about his illness.

‘We’ve got to do something before I run out of time. I need to know why I’m not getting pregnant. I want a baby.’ Even saying it made her feel emotional. ‘And I know you do too. It’s what we’ve wanted for so long, and now it’s the right time.’

She held out a hand to him and, his expression unreadable, he took it, sitting down on the bed beside her.

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Daisy rushed in, terrified that he’d say that he didn’t want a baby that much after all. ‘Alex, I think that’s our problem: we think and plan and with some things in life, you can’t think and plan. They should just happen. We’ve been waiting for the right time to have a baby and it’s now.’ Please agree with me, she pleaded silently.

‘I don’t know,’ he repeated.

‘Please, Alex. It’s so important to me and I don’t think we should wait any longer,’ she added softly.

‘I can’t believe you’ve set up a meeting with a fertility clinic without asking me first, Daisy.’

Daisy breathed again. At least he hadn’t said no. It was a start. Shock she was prepared for. Men didn’t like asking for help with directions when they were driving: you’d need to multiply that behaviour by ten to recreate how most men would feel about having to produce sperm in a cup in some anonymous room to make their partner pregnant.

She tried again. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a big step and it can be hard on couples. I’ve read all the articles about fertility treatments.’ Going through the mill of fertility treatment had broken up many couples. But it wouldn’t do that to them, Daisy vowed. All she had to do was convince him. ‘We can do it, Alex. Please.’

There was doubt written all over Alex’s face. But he hadn’t said no.

‘All we have to do is go this one time and see what they say,’ she offered. ‘And if you hate the idea, well, we can talk some more…’ With this olive branch extended, he couldn’t say no. ‘OK, we’ll stop talking about it. You need to think.’

Yes, stop haranguing him. Let him think about it. She changed the subject.

‘Hey, want to tell me what else you were doing in London besides staying in a horrible hotel and ferrying rich, stingy people around?’ she teased, thinking of the Tiffany bag. ‘I can see you’ve been shopping. Anything you want to tell me?’

‘Daisy…’ he began and stopped.

‘Sorry, I ruined the surprise, did I?’ She was contrite. ‘But it’s not my birthday for ages. I thought it was some fun present, although nothing from Tiffany’s could be strictly classed as purely fun. Serious fun!’

He looked blank.

‘The Tiffany bag?’

Comprehension dawned.

‘Was it for something else?’ It couldn’t be an engagement ring? No, of course not. ‘Our anniversary’s not just yet,’ she said quickly.

Alex shook his head as he left the room. ‘No.’

He returned with the bag in question and put it in front of her without any fanfare. What did she want an engagement ring for anyway? Daisy thought as she opened the bag and took out the Tiffany box. ‘You buying this is a sign,’ she said happily, taking the white ribbon off. ‘A sign that this is a good time to change our lives.’

Inside the box was a silver necklace, not unlike the first present he’d bought her years ago, only this one was Tiffany silver and exquisitely pretty.

It was indeed a sign, Daisy realised. A sign that their love could endure no matter what. Alex needed time to think about fertility treatment and then he’d come round to her way of thinking. Having a family was the most natural thing in the world. It was a no-brainer, as Alex would say.

The first present he’d ever given her, a silvery necklace with a heart on it, was kept in her treasures box, along with the black satin trousers she’d been wearing the first time they’d met.

The necklace had tarnished black with age because it was only a cheap thing, but she loved it and wished she could still wear it, although it turned her neck an alarming shade of green. The matching bra and knickers she’d been wearing the first time they made love were there too. Daisy never told Alex she still had them; he’d have thought it was a bit silly, keeping such mementoes many years later.

The satin drainpipe trousers made her cringe now when she looked at them. In theory, satin trousers were sleek, narrow and made for people with hips like a greyhound’s. At the time, an unbelievable fourteen years ago, Daisy was definitely not a greyhound sort of girl.

The others on the fashion design course wore edgy, frayed black things they’d customised themselves, and were instantly recognisable as design students on the sprawling campus. Daisy alone never wore her own stuff. This was partly because she’d realised, with much misery, that she wasn’t much good at clothes designing. She lived for Vogue, understood bias cuts as if she’d learned at Schiaparelli’s knee, and could draw like an angel. But she couldn’t design for peanuts.

Besides, the sort of clothes she loved were garments made for tall, willowy brunettes with arrogant eyes and cheekbones like razor blades. Rounded girls with heavy legs and a bust straight out of the wench department in central casting looked better in all black, even black satin trousers topped with a long-line silk cardigan.

Of course, she hadn’t thought she’d looked bad then. She’d thought the black satin disguised the fat bits and elongated her shape so she looked quite good, although hardly supermodel material. And Alex had thought so too, unlike some of the guys in college.

It was amazing the way being a big girl made you invisible. It should have been the other way round – if you were big, there was more of you and people couldn’t avoid you. But they did. They averted their eyes like medieval peasants must have at the sight of lepers, yelling ‘unclean’.

Alex Kenny, long, lean, dark-eyed and with biceps of steel from being uncrowned king of the rowing club, didn’t avert his eyes.

‘You don’t wear mad stuff like the other design nuts,’ he said in amusement that first time they’d met. ‘You look normal.’ And he’d reached out and lazily twirled a tassel of her rose-pink vintage silk scarf, making Daisy turn exactly the same shade of pink.

They’d been sitting in the Shaman’s Armchair, the labyrinthine off-campus pub favoured by the rowing boys. Jules and Fay, classmates of Daisy’s, were keen on some of the Lazer rowing team and an impromptu outing to the pub had been organised for one Saturday after a race. Well, it was supposed to be impromptu but Daisy had seen first-hand how long Jules and Fay had taken to get ready. The just-thrown-together look took an awful lot of time to achieve.

Daisy hadn’t done much, make-up wise, but had gone to her usual enormous effort to look thin. Looking thin was her mission in life although she knew that she could never really manage it.

As Jules and Fay flirted happily in the pub, Daisy sat in a corner nursing her half-pint. She was stony-broke again. Her grant was almost gone and the pizza restaurant near the flat she shared with the girls didn’t need her for late night shifts. She watched the flirting ritual, thinking how nice it would be to be like Jules and Fay, confident and good with men. She was good with men if she was asking them if they wanted their pizza with extra mozzarella, but otherwise, forget it. And then Alex arrived, took in the seating arrangements, and very definitely sat down beside her. Alex Kenny, a man so fine that even Jules and Fay had never thought of setting their cap at him.

‘Did you make this?’ Alex asked, gesturing at her poncho, also black but with tiny jet beads dotting the hem.

Daisy laughed. ‘I’m as good at knitting as I am at rowing,’ she said. ‘But I sewed the beads on.’

‘Did you?’ He seemed astonished by this and pulled a chunk of poncho closer for further examination.

Daisy felt her heart flutter wildly at this intimacy.

‘But there’s millions of them,’ Alex added. ‘You’d be sewing for ever.’

‘Sewing is a part of the whole designing clothes thing,’ she informed him gravely.

Alex’s eyes – coffee brown or melting chocolate, Daisy couldn’t be sure – twinkled. ‘Are you making fun of me, Madame Designer? Do you think I’m a big hick from the rowing team who’s on a sports scholarship and has an IQ in double digits?’

‘Double digits?’ she asked in mock astonishment. And then ruined it by saying, ‘Sorry, only joking…’ in case she’d upset him.

But Alex only grinned more broadly and wanted to know how long it would take to sew on that many beads.

‘I do it when I’m watching telly,’ Daisy explained.

‘How can you watch and sew? No,’ he added, ‘don’t tell me. It’s like how do you get to Carnegie Hall – practise.’

‘Like rowing,’ Daisy added, looking at his muscles, still very obvious despite the big porridgy sweater he was wearing.

‘I’m out of shape,’ Alex said ruefully. ‘Need to get back in for the season.’

‘And you practise a lot?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘I don’t know anything about rowing.’

‘Good. I hate rowing groupies. They discuss rowing with you like a pro but they’ve never put a foot in a scull in their life.’

And he rattled on, telling her about the hours of rowing and gym work, before weaving the conversation back to her and the sort of work it took to get into design college.

Daisy’s shyness evaporated. Naturally, Alex wasn’t interested in her in any romantic sense – nobody ever was – but he seemed to like talking to her, so that gave her an unaccustomed courage.

He wasn’t just being kind talking to the shy, chubby girl because he really fancied one of her friends, kooky Fay, or elegant Jules, who had that Grace Kelly thing going. He was one of those beautiful people who liked talking to everyone. Daisy had decided that some students in college had a scale they worked whereby they wouldn’t deign to talk to anyone below a certain rank. Daisy, no good at fashion design and pretty-ish but too big, was below the bar. The cool women ignored her and the cool men didn’t see her. But life’s gods, like Alex, were above rules and could bestow favour on any lesser mortal. Daisy was fairly sure that as soon as Fay and Jules drifted in Alex’s direction, he’d stop talking to her and turn that charming gaze away. But for now, he was hers: the aquiline nose above the sculpted mouth, the faint tan that spoke of some sort of exotic Christmas holiday outside Ireland, the lazy smile of the man who knows he doesn’t have to try too hard.

Saturday afternoon crept into Saturday evening and hunger hit. The pub did great traditional Irish potato crepes called boxty, so huge plates of boxty and more drink were ordered. The crowd swelled from the original three girls and four rowers to a big clatter of students. They took up a whole section of the Shaman’s, laughing and joking and swapping stories on how unprepared they were for the new term. Still Alex sat beside Daisy.

Warmed up by the two hot whiskys Alex had bought her when she finished her half-pint, she told him that she loved clothes but had come to the painful conclusion that she wasn’t much good at designing, something she’d only told Jules and Fay up to now.

‘It’s desperate,’ she confided. ‘When I think of how hard it was to get on the course, and now I’m here I can see that it’s a mistake.’ She could picture her mother’s face when she heard. Her mother had pushed for Daisy to do a secretarial course in Carrickwell so she’d always have a steady income. In one of the few battles she’d attempted with her mother, Daisy had said no. She’d been the best in her class at school at art and had dreamed of design college since she knew such a thing existed. There weren’t many of Daisy’s dreams within reach – being beautiful, thin, adored by her mother – she couldn’t let this vaguely achievable one escape.

‘Really, Denise, you disappoint me,’ her mother had said in deeply betrayed tones. Her mother tended to call her Denise, rarely Daisy. It was her father who’d called her ‘my little Daisy’, the nickname that had somehow stuck. ‘After all we’ve been through surely you’d see the need for a sensible job, not a rackety one like your father had. I thought I’d taught you that at least. But do what you want. Don’t think about what I want.’

Nan Farrell, as thin as the long cigarettes she chain-smoked, took out her cigarette case and flicked it open. It was silver and engraved, the one good thing she had left from her previous life as part of the Carrickwell élite. That life had ended when she’d got pregnant with Daisy – as she never ceased to remind her daughter – and had hit the real world with an almighty bang, married to a man who loved to enjoy himself and wasn’t interested in either roots or hard work.

‘It’s not as if my opinion has ever mattered to you.’

If only, Daisy thought. Her mother’s opinion was like the pyramids in relation to Cairo – huge, unyielding and no matter where you stood, you could still feel their presence, even if you couldn’t see them.

The memory of the row and the glacier that still existed between herself and her mother took away the happy glow Daisy had been experiencing from talking to Alex. Forgetting for an instant that Alex was a gorgeous man and that she should have been puce with embarrassment just to be talking to him, Daisy leaned her head on her hands on the scratched pub table in the Shaman’s. ‘How can you have messed up your whole career when you’re twenty?’ she mumbled.

‘All the best people do,’ Alex said, patting her arm. He let his fingers roam to the back of her neck where he touched her gently, stroking the soft caramel curls that had escaped from her ponytail. It felt gorgeous, so sexy. Daisy gulped and sat up, forcing Alex to move his hand. She could have stayed there for ever but a man’s attentions, the sort of thing that regularly happened to the likes of Jules and Fay, were not what she was equipped to deal with.

He didn’t appear to notice her jitteriness.

‘At least you know what you wanted to do. I didn’t, still don’t,’ he said. ‘A business degree was the obvious choice for me but it doesn’t light my fire. It’s not on kids’ top-ten lists of brilliant jobs, is it? What do you want to be when you grow up, son? Oh, Dad, I want to sit behind a desk and toil through spreadsheets for ever.’

He told her that he often felt like giving up college if it weren’t for the fact that his course guaranteed a good job at the end of it all. Money was important to him. Daisy got the impression, never voiced, that there hadn’t been much spare cash in the Kenny household. She could empathise with that. There hadn’t been much money in her house either. She and her mother lived in a small terraced house in the centre of Carrickwell, not physically far from the big house where her mother had grown up, but miles away socially. Daisy had been raised not to discuss money.

Nobody was to know that the gas heater was to be used sparingly, or that Sunday’s meat could be made to last until Wednesday if enough imagination was involved.

‘We’ve got our pride,’ Nan insisted.

Despite this, Daisy didn’t believe that money made you happy. Her mother had come from money and there was no proof anywhere that she’d ever had a happy family life, although she was probably more miserable without it than she had been with it.

Love, Daisy felt, was what mattered in life. Not money.

When Alex went to the bar in the Shaman’s to get her a drink, Daisy watched him and knew she must look like a spaniel trailing sad eyes after a departing master. Being aware of how others saw her was Daisy’s biggest failing. She couldn’t walk into a room without wondering if people thought she looked like a whale in whatever she was wearing, and when she spoke during classes, she measured her words as carefully as she measured silk when she was cutting a pattern. Today, though, she wasn’t measuring her words or angling her thighs on the seat so that she looked thinner. That was the effect Alex had upon her.

And so they began to go out. They appeared an unlikely couple: the handsome, popular Alex, who could have hooked up with any girl he wanted, and Daisy, who was sweet and pretty certainly, but why didn’t she do something about her weight?

Other people didn’t see that gentle loving Daisy gave Alex security. Steady, warm, like hot tea in front of a fire, Daisy made the dynamic Alex Kenny feel as if he’d come home.

Daisy tried the Tiffany necklace on. Silver suited her. Gold could make redheads look brassy, she knew. Her mother, who had genuine blonde hair, had warned her so often enough.

‘It’s beautiful,’ breathed Daisy, turning to hug Alex again.

‘I’m glad you like it,’ he said woodenly, sitting down wearily on the end of the bed.

‘Oh, love, don’t be like that,’ said Daisy. ‘I know you’re nervous, I am too, but this is so important to us.’

‘Daisy –’ he began.

‘We can do it,’ she interrupted. For so long she’d hidden just how important a child was to her; now she had to convince him. ‘Alex, I want a baby so badly. I don’t talk about it but it haunts me.’ She sat down on the bed beside him and held his hands in hers. ‘When I go into work and Paula’s there, pregnant and so happy, it hurts me so much. Not that I begrudge her a moment of her happiness, but I want that for me, for us. There are babies everywhere you look, did you know that?’ She squeezed his hand for support. ‘In the shop, on the streets, in Mo’s Diner sitting in high-chairs staring around with big eyes. I never thought I’d feel this broodiness because it’s not as if I was madly into babies or eager to babysit all the time when I was growing up.’ Daisy’s words were tumbling out now. ‘If I’d had brothers or sisters, I’d maybe have had experience with younger children but I didn’t, so I didn’t think I was that maternal, but then whomp! It hit me.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Alex, I think about having a baby all the time. Every month, I feel I’ve failed when my period comes. We’ve been trying to have a baby for five years now, that’s over sixty times of feeling I’ve failed. I feel…’ she searched for the right word, ‘I feel empty, not quite a proper woman. Only half a person. It’s so lonely and sad, and I look at pregnant women or women with children and I feel I’m from another planet. That they’re part of this wonderful earth cycle of love and motherhood and I’m not. I’m different, excluded. They don’t have a clue that I want my own baby, they probably think I hate kids! But I want my own child so much it hurts. God, it hurts.’

She stopped, aware that he had said nothing all this time. He was probably astonished at what she’d said. Daisy never quite told anybody everything, not even Alex. She thought it might be being an only child and not used to sharing confidences. She envied people who could tell their innermost feelings easily. But now that she’d done it, she’d found it was liberating and scary at the same time to reveal so much.

‘I didn’t know you felt like that,’ he mumbled, not looking at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘We were trying to get pregnant,’ Daisy said lightly. ‘I sort of thought you’d know how much I wanted a child.’ All this time, Daisy had been crossing her fingers and praying every time her period was due, even during the years when Alex had been sick and their lovemaking had been curtailed. How could he not have known?

‘I didn’t.’

‘It’s only an appointment,’ she begged. ‘It can’t hurt to go and see what they say. Please, Alex. For me. We’ve been through so much the past few years, with doctors and tests. I know you hate all that.’ So had she. For every blood sample he’d given, Daisy wished she could have proffered her arm. And she’d been there with him through all of it. Couldn’t it be her turn now?

Alex looked as if he was under enormous strain but he nodded tightly. ‘We can go,’ he said finally. ‘If that’s really what you want.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Mel wished she’d had more time to make an effort for the Lorimar charity ball at the end of February. A black-tie event which all senior staff were expected to turn up at upon pain of death, it had been the subject of much discussion in the office for the past month.

One Lorimar contingent – a Samantha from Sex and the City lookalike from marketing, three executive assistants and the head of telesales – planned to go all out for Sex and the City glamour, with perilous heels, just-left-the-Elizabeth-Arden-counter make-up and wildly contemporary outfits.

‘Lots of red lippy is the key,’ said the woman from marketing, who had spent hours on the party preparations, a mammoth task, which also involved ensuring that hundreds of red Lorimar balloons would fall from the ballroom ceiling when Edmund Moriarty announced a special Lorimar donation of &euro;100,000 to the charity, a heart surgery research foundation. Edmund would go ballistic if his big moment was ruined, so most of marketing and a fair part of publicity were deployed on charity detail.

Another group of female staff were planning to get themselves fake-tanned to a decent colour, go to the hairdresser’s, then dig out their reliable old black dresses, because nobody wanted to splash out on a new outfit for a mere office do. Vanessa had borrowed a red satin knock-out evening gown from her sister and said she was fully expecting Hilary to go into cardiac arrest when she saw it.

‘Although there will be lots of cardiologists on hand if she does,’ Vanessa said cheerfully.

And Mel…Mel had planned a bit of personal grooming time so she’d look her best on this important occasion. A new dress, perhaps. Or a trendy haircut. Something to show the world, and the top people at Lorimar, that Mel Redmond had her finger on the pulse.

Yet somehow, with fifteen minutes to go before she and Adrian had to leave the house on the Saturday night in question, Mel was upstairs frantically trying to revive her limp hair with a blast of hairspray. Her maquillage consisted of a faded bit of eyeliner that had originally been plastered on at nine that morning, and her skin tone was more Wet Weekend in Greenland than the delicious shade of Malibu Bronze most of the other Lorimar women were aiming for. Adrian was recovering from the flu and Mel realised miserably that even he looked better than she did. Feeling worn out after a hectic day and an even more hectic month, all she wanted to do was lie down on the bed and sleep.

Her diary had been black with dates for the whole of February. The second Friday of the month had been Adrian’s younger brother, Eddie’s, fortieth birthday and the landmark party had involved a big meal for the extended family in his favourite restaurant.

‘My kid brother, forty…’ Adrian kept remarking in an astonished way. ‘It seems so old. I can remember us talking about what it would be like to be forty.’

‘It was like being a million years old,’ reflected Eddie. ‘It seemed so far away. I sort of hoped I’d be forty before you because I was fed up with being two years younger and you got to do everything first.’

‘For you to be forty first, Adrian would have had to have died,’ said their mother, Lynda.

‘Just as well it didn’t happen then,’ Eddie said gravely, ‘although I came close to killing you often enough, big bro.’

The following weekend, Mel’s aunt and uncle celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary and their children organised a big lunch party in a Dublin hotel, complete with a band playing Jim Reeves songs, and enlarged photos on the walls of the happy couple during their married life. Arrangements of pale pink roses decorated the tables, and to recreate the whole wedding effect, which had originally been low key because of a lack of funds, there was a blessing by the parish priest, champagne toasts and speeches.

‘It’s such an emotional event, isn’t it?’ said one of the guests dreamily to Mel after Uncle Dermot reduced the whole room to floods of tears by telling them how he didn’t want to cope a single day without his Angela.

‘Er, yes, very emotional,’ replied Mel, sweat ruining her hair as she rushed off after Carrie, who’d run rampant as soon as she realised that the hotel was the perfect place for escaping her mother. So far, Carrie had hidden in a stall in the women’s loos, under the draped tablecloth where the anniversary cake stood in state, and behind the swing door into the kitchen.

‘Sit down and rest and I’ll take care of Carrie,’ said Mel’s mum, as Mel sprinted past.

Mel stopped and thought of how her high-heeled party sandals were killing her and how the people who organised these events and invited children never seemed to plan anything specifically for them. ‘Children welcome!’ meant nothing when it didn’t include a special child-friendly room where parents could alternate care while round-the-clock Barney’s Great Adventure/One Hundred and One Dalmatians played on the video. Or else on-demand tranquillisers for the parents. Those glasses of red wine sitting invitingly at the edges of the tables were like a magnet for a child of Carrie’s age.

‘You’re tired, Mel. Have a sit-down with Adrian. Get yourself a piece of the cake, go on. I’ll keep an eye on her.’ Karen got up from her seat and began to head off after the lilac-clad whirlwind that was Carrie.

‘No, Mum, it’s OK. You do enough,’ Mel said firmly. If her feet hurt, she’d just take her shoes off. Who’d notice? ‘Next thing, Carrie will think you’re her mother and not me!’ The brittle laugh that accompanied this comment didn’t escape either of them.

‘She wouldn’t, don’t be silly.’ Karen’s soft hand gripped her daughter’s tightly.

‘Course not. It was a joke!’ Mel’s face adopted its best PR executive smile. They both knew it was fake.

‘See you later then, love,’ said her mother. And although she’d never worked in PR, she managed a creditable imitation of her daughter’s smile.

There was no respite at the office either. Mel was snowed under as the company’s magazine, which was sent to all subscribers, was going quarterly instead of biannually, and everyone in the publicity department was being called upon to work overtime. To make matters more tense, there were ominous rumours of huge cutbacks. More work and less money – not a good combination, Mel felt.

Vanessa was under the same pressure and the only time they got to talk was in the morning in the ladies’, where they compared notes on the dismal vibes that were circulating about how the company could Save Money.

‘I was reading a bit in the paper the other day about how most working women do so much first thing in the morning that by the time they actually get into the office seventy-five per cent are knackered,’ Vanessa said one day as she washed her hands and decided that she didn’t have the energy for any other primping.

Mel, applying jet-black mascara to give her tired eyes some definition, almost laughed. ‘Only seventy-five per cent? What sort of medication are the other twenty-five on?’

What had added most to Mel’s sheer exhaustion was the fact that Sarah wasn’t sleeping well. For several weeks, Sarah had refused to settle on week nights until she was falling with tiredness, and then she slept badly and woke up several times in the night crying. Mel had discussed this with Dawna, the nursery boss.

‘I think I’ve got to the bottom of it,’ Dawna said finally the Friday before the Lorimar charity ball, when Mel was at her wits’ end. ‘She doesn’t want to miss being with you, Mel. When Mummy’s out at work all day, we miss Mummy, don’t we?’

Sarah nodded gravely.

‘That’s all it is. She doesn’t want to go to bed and miss spending time when you’re home in the evening,’ Dawna went on blithely, not realising that she was injecting another hypodermic needleful of guilt into Mel’s heart. ‘I bet she goes down like a lamb at weekends when you’re there all the time?’

Mel nodded. It was true: on Friday and Saturday nights, Sarah always slept well and Mel had tried to convince herself it was because the weekends were packed with activity and she was tired. She should have known it wasn’t that.

Rather than ask for her mother’s help again, Mel enlisted the aid of Adrian’s mother, Lynda, to babysit on Saturday while she and Adrian went to the ball. Lynda was always thrilled to be asked, though that didn’t happen often. This was partly because Mel didn’t want to seem to take advantage of her but mostly because Mel felt that Lynda at some level disapproved of her.

Lynda had come from a generation who’d stayed at home with their children, and even though she never directly said a word to Mel about her job – Lynda wasn’t the confrontational type – Mel felt the vibes anyway.

A youthful sixty-something with a trim figure from playing badminton and the same blonde colouring as her son, Lynda seemed the ideal mother-in-law. She lived far enough away not to be dropping round all the time and, although she’d been widowed for several years, she had her own social life and didn’t cling to Adrian. But the odd comment Lynda made gave Mel to feel that she didn’t want her beloved granddaughters brought up by strangers and was suspicious of her granny rival.

‘Melanie, I can’t get over how good the girls are with strangers. Carrie particularly. When my boys were that age, they just weren’t used to people and they’d hide behind my skirt if they met new people,’ Lynda remembered fondly. ‘But the girls, why they’re regular little grown-ups! It must be being at nursery all day.’

Mel had ground her teeth at that one.

‘She didn’t mean anything by it,’ Adrian protested. ‘She’s only saying…’

‘I know,’ said Mel tightly. The memory of her mother-in-law’s last comment: ‘You career women! I don’t know where you get the energy from. I wouldn’t have been able to take care of my family and go out to earn a living, I can tell you!’ was still fresh in her mind. If Lynda was only saying, why did it sting so bloody much?

By half-past six that evening, Mel had done all she could with her hair and would have to put her make-up on in the car. The day had been swallowed up with grocery shopping, taking the girls swimming and getting everything ready for Lynda that night.

Sarah had been upset that her parents were going out, and had been miserable with her mother all day. With her tiny heart-shaped face, huge blue and violet eyes and silvery blonde ringlets, she had the look of an enchanting little angel. But the angel-face hid fierce determination to have her own way in everything and, at the age of four and a quarter, she was well on the way to being empress of the Redmond household. Mel had read all the books on how to cope with strong-willed children and had finally come to the conclusion that none of the childcare experts had ever met anyone like her daughter.

At least swimming had tired her out, Mel thought, rapidly pulling on her long black evening dress, the one that could almost go to the ball by itself, it had been to so many work parties. Standing in the pool, holding Carrie up, had tired her out too. Downstairs, Beauty and the Beast was in the video, ready to go. Two chicken breasts in garlic and wild mushroom sauce sat in a dish on the kitchen counter with a bowl of baby potatoes beside them, waiting to be warmed up for Lynda’s dinner. A joint of lamb was marinating in fresh rosemary and olive oil in the fridge for tomorrow, because Lynda stayed over till the following evening if she babysat and she was partial to a proper Sunday dinner. The spare bed was freshly made up with lilac sheets and Mel had even managed to iron the duvet cover, something she didn’t do for herself and Adrian. The soft sheets on Sarah’s bed and on Carrie’s cot had been changed, and all their favourite cuddly toys were lined up in their correct places. Mel had left the thermometer and the children’s paracetamol on top of the bathroom cabinet, too high for the children to reach but where Lynda could get them in an emergency, and the phone number of the local doctor and the venue for tonight’s party were both written in big writing – Lynda was half blind without her glasses – beside the phone.

Surely Lynda would have no excuse to think that Mel’s going out to work meant the family suffered.

‘We’re going to have a lovely time tonight,’ Lynda cooed to her two grandchildren, who sat snuggled up beside her on the couch, cosy in their pyjamas and ready for fun with Granny Lynda.

Lynda had brought sweets with her, the sort of sugar-laden confections that were banned in the household because they made both children hyper. Mel knew she couldn’t say anything.

Adrian, looking less pale, walked in finishing a biscuit. There was dinner tonight but what with the drinks reception first, who knew when they’d get a bite to eat. He was wearing a black fine wool suit with a silvery grey shirt that brought out the blue of his eyes. He looked great. ‘Will you miss Daddy?’ asked Adrian, quickly scooping Sarah up from the couch and turning her upside down, a game she’d loved since she was a baby.

‘Yes,’ giggled Sarah, trying to pull her long fair hair away from her face.

‘No, really?’ demanded Adrian, bouncing her up and down.

‘Yes!!’ she squealed with delight, loving being bounced. She had no fear of anything, Mel knew.

‘Me, me!’ yelled Carrie, her fat baby cheeks rosy with excitement. She looked like a mini version of her sister, without the stubborn chin.

More like our side of the family, Lynda said sometimes, and Mel took that to mean the stubborn streak in Sarah had come from her and was, therefore, not approved of.

‘We should go,’ Mel said automatically.

The fun seemed to stall for a moment. Sarah, still upside down, gazed at Mel with those knowing eyes as if to ask why her mother had to ruin it all.

Because there isn’t enough time in the day, Mel wanted to scream. Somebody has to keep it all running on schedule. Imagine what would happen if she didn’t keep them all to time.

Adrian put Sarah down and then quickly bounced Carrie a few times to keep the peace, before popping her back beside her grandmother.

‘Be good for Granny,’ Adrian told both his daughters, who smiled adoringly at him as if to imply that they didn’t know the meaning of the word naughty.

‘Bye, Carrie.’ Mel bent to kiss her baby and was rewarded with two fat little hands clinging to her neck and a sloppy kiss planted on her cheek. She was growing so quickly, Mel thought with a pang. It seemed like only yesterday she was a tiny, fragile creature nestling in Mel’s arms, tiny rosebud mouth sucking on her mother’s nipple.

‘Bye, Mummy,’ Carrie cooed in her breathless voice.

Mel kissed her again. ‘I love you,’ she whispered gently.

On the other side of Lynda, Sarah now sat with a stash of forbidden sweets on her lap.

‘Can I have a kiss goodbye?’ Mel asked tremulously.

‘Byee,’ said Sarah, still engrossed in arranging her treasure, ignoring the request.

‘Little scamp, you should kiss your mummy goodbye,’ said Lynda fondly, ruffling Sarah’s hair.

‘Oh, they all get like that sometimes,’ Mel said in a breezy voice. She would not let anyone know how she felt like breaking into betrayed, bitter tears. ‘The new person is always more fun than boring old Mummy.’

‘Give your mum a kiss,’ urged Lynda.

Blissfully unaware of the pain it sent shooting into her mother’s heart, Sarah kept her head down and ignored them all.

‘Go on,’ Lynda said, half-laughing. ‘Isn’t she a little rascal? She hates you going out, Mel.’

Suddenly, Sarah looked up, smiled her breathtaking smile, and blew her mother a speedy kiss with an idle wave of one hand.

‘Good girl,’ said Lynda. ‘Now give me the television zapper and let’s watch our film.’

‘Have a great time.’ Adrian was already making for the door.

‘Yes, be good, darlings,’ Mel added as she walked mechanically after her husband, feeling her disappointment like a physical ache. Sarah hadn’t wanted to kiss her. Blowing a kiss didn’t count, not as a proper kiss. Sarah always kissed her mother goodbye, always…

‘Mel, your handbag,’ reminded Adrian, handing it to her. ‘How could you forget that?’

‘Silly me,’ said Mel, and went out of the door.

‘You’re exhausted, aren’t you?’ Adrian said, unlocking the car.

His wife sank into the front seat. As they sped down the road, she realised that her make-up bag was still on the hall table. All she had with her was a pale lipgloss and mascara. With limp hair and a nearly nude face, she’d look like she was the one with flu. But in her misery, for the first time in her perfectly groomed life, Mel Redmond didn’t care.

The event was being held in the ballroom of a posh five-star city hotel called McArthur’s, and the drinks reception in the foyer was already in full swing when Mel and Adrian arrived. Smiling gracefully, aware she must look like a plague carrier, Mel held Adrian’s hand as they progressed through the throng until they came upon one of Mel’s good friends from work, Tony Steilman, and his wife, Bonnie. They were friends outside of work too, and Tony was a person Mel trusted entirely.

‘Hey, great to see you,’ said Tony, kissing her. ‘You look terrible.’

Bonnie, hugging Adrian, gave her husband an exasperated look.

‘Left my make-up at home in the rush to get out the door,’ Mel shrugged.

‘I don’t have much with me,’ Bonnie said, holding up a tiny evening bag, ‘but you’re welcome to use mine.’

Leaving the two men to talk, Mel and Bonnie made their way in the direction of the loos, but as they turned into the corridor, they almost literally bumped into Hilary and the chief executive, Edmund Moriarty – the very last people Mel wanted to see in her current state.

‘Gosh, Mel, are you ill? A virus?’ asked Hilary, moving a step away because whatever it was, she didn’t want to catch it.

‘No, it’s being a working mum and always having to do everything at a rush,’ laughed Bonnie brightly, the effects of her two glasses of pink champagne loosening her tongue. ‘Honestly, Hilary, I don’t know how she manages it. Our Mel is a regular heroine. I always say to Tony that he’s lucky I’m there at home for him all day so he doesn’t have to come home to the washing, like Mel. It’s great that Lorimar are such supporters of working mums.’ Bonnie’s sweet round face shone with pride at her friend, thinking she’d said the right thing because Mel was incredible, really. Bonnie didn’t know how she’d manage if she had to work as hard as Tony and Mel, and still be a mum.

There was silence.

Mel felt the smile straining on her face. She knew that it was absolutely the wrong thing for Bonnie to say. Edmund did not want to be reminded that Mel was a mother with any other responsibilities. He and Hilary wanted Lorimar to be her first priority and they genuinely didn’t care what sort of hoops she had to jump through in order to do her job. A childless man, the only capricious, demanding and easily bored person Edmund wanted his employees interested in was himself.

Casting her mind about for some explanation that would satisfy everyone and keep her Super Career Woman image intact, Mel suddenly came up trumps. ‘Actually, I was at the gym training and I had to rush home. You know how time flies when you’re working out.’

Bonnie blinked.

‘The mini marathon,’ Mel went on. ‘Lorimar have a group running and, obviously, I want to be there.’

The vision of a gang of his female workers wearing head-to-toe Lorimar merchandise as they ran past waiting photographers clearly appealed to Edmund Moriarty. Health, charity and good publicity – the perfect combination.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Didn’t know we were sponsoring a team but excellent idea. Health is our aim and we are healthy. I like it.’

Hilary, who obviously didn’t believe a word of it, gave Mel a bland stare. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘We can talk about it on Monday.’ And she led Edmund off to schmooze some more.

Mel managed to keep a stiff upper lip for the rest of the night and it was only when they were safely on their way home that she let her guard down.

‘It looked so bad,’ she groaned as they drove out of the hotel’s underground car park. ‘And for damage limitation, I said I was training for the mini marathon, which means I’ll actually have to do it.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’ Adrian was bemused by all of this. So what if Mel had looked tired? She hadn’t been hired to look like a supermodel all the time; she was a normal person.

‘No,’ she snapped, angry at the world and, since the world wasn’t there, Adrian would have to do.

‘You can’t have to run a mini marathon just because you looked tired at a party?’ he went on.

‘Yes I do because I said it in front of the boss and the boss’s boss, so I have to, and it’s all my bloody fault for looking a wreck. I can see why people have eyeliner tattooed on. At least you always look as if you’ve tried.’

Adrian laughed. ‘Come on, love, it’s not that important, really. You’re great at your job, they know that. The rest is rubbish. Who cares about how you look?’

‘It shouldn’t matter but it does,’ hissed Mel furiously. ‘How I look does count because I’m a woman and I’ve got kids and I’m on borrowed time. You don’t understand that. You’re a man and nobody’s watching you like a hawk for signs that your family are coming before your job, and that goes for your appearance too. Everything matters! You’re not suspected of being the one who takes a sickie when Carrie has a temperature of a hundred and three. If you make the school Christmas play, everyone thinks you’re in line for Dad of the Year. If I make it, I’m clearly shirking at work and if I don’t make it, I’m clearly shirking as a mother. So yes, how I look does matter.’

‘I’ve stayed home with the girls when they’re sick,’ Adrian pointed out.

‘But with men it’s seen as a one-off,’ Mel said in exasperation. ‘It never stops with women. It’s like a bloody marathon. And not the mini marathon, either.’

‘It can’t be sexism in Lorimar, Mel, because Hilary’s a woman too,’ Adrian said doubtfully.

‘Not so you’d notice,’ Mel sighed. ‘She’s married to the job and you’d never think she has kids. In other words, the perfect female executive. Have your tubes tied or have someone else bring up your kids so you never see them and we’ll give you a job at the very top.’

‘But you love it,’ Adrian insisted. ‘You’re a powerhouse, Mel. Everyone thinks you’re great for all you do. I think you’re great. The way you manage work and the kids, juggling it all…’

‘I hate when they call it “juggling”,’ Mel said quietly. ‘Juggling can’t be that hard but this…this is like…’ she searched blindly for the right words, ‘this is juggling with hand grenades.’

‘Is it that bad?’

Mel closed her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a bloody nightmare, like a hamster wheel in a horror movie, and I can’t get off.’

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