The Better Half Read online

  Shannon was sitting on the window-sill behind us with Maeve. Ciara had rejoined us.

  ‘Jesus, I forgot to say! Did you hear that one of Tracey Thornley’s implants burst?’ said Maeve.

  ‘Nooooo!’

  Tracey Thornley was not a close friend, but Frank and I had hung out with her and her husband a lot.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Maeve, ‘she’s had to have them both out. It’s why she wasn’t at the lunch today. I can’t imagine what she looks like without those air-bags.’

  Minus the large plastic boobs, Tracey would look like a rib with hair.

  ‘She’s so skinny she looks like she’s digesting herself,’ Shannon said, with a clear trace of envy in her voice.

  ‘She’s too thin,’ Ciara said scrunching up her nose. ‘She’s what I call hooker thin. There’s something kind of cheap about those concave inner thighs.’

  Shannon shot her a look but said nothing.

  To put Tracy’s figure in context, she made Shannon look beefy. Maeve unkindly called her Karen Carpenter behind her back.

  ‘I still can’t believe Dermot gave her breasts for her birthday,’ said Ciara, turning to Maeve. ‘I mean, is that true? I’d be so insulted if Will gave me plastic surgery for my birthday.’

  ‘Tracey told me without one iota of shame,’ Maeve said. ‘She seemed thrilled by it.’

  ‘Tracey’s nice,’ declared Shannon. ‘She wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘That wouldn’t exactly be what you’d want written on your epitaph,’ remarked Maeve.

  They were probably all thinking the same as I was: that Maeve was safe enough there. Not the kind of thing you’d point out to her, though. It would be like taking your life in your hands.

  I wondered what might be written on my epitaph – ‘She liked a drink’?

  ‘Where do some of these guys get off,’ Shannon sniffed, ‘being so arrogant as to give their wives body parts for presents? It’s kind of presumptuous.’

  ‘I got my breast implants for me,’ Maeve said. ‘There’s no way I’d be dictated to by Ultan.’

  I had the mean thought that Ultan wouldn’t care much what Maeve’s breasts were like.

  ‘Dermot is obsessed by Tracey’s appearance,’ Maeve said. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he calorie-counts her food. He even encourages her to wear those tiny dresses. She’s a chattel to him.’

  ‘She loves him, I guess,’ I said.

  Tracey had told me once in front of Frank and Dermot that she loved him so much she would have hacked off a leg for him, which had seemed pretty extreme. But who could say why a connection existed between two people? There was no legislating for the human heart.

  ‘Is that Paul Hogan over there?’ Ciara asked, telescoping her head towards the door. ‘Who’s that guy with him?’

  ‘Hmm, he looks familiar.’ Maeve had followed her gaze.

  Some man was whacking Paul on the back and Paul was flashing his trademark Cheshire grin. As usual, he looked dapper.

  ‘That guy Paul’s got a lot of guts,’ Shannon said. ‘Jimmy banks with him. He can be a little obnoxious, I guess, but he’s got chutzpah.’

  ‘He’s the man,’ Maeve said. ‘Ultan banks with him too.’

  ‘So does Frank,’ I added.

  ‘Everyone banks with Paul,’ said Maeve. ‘Paul has done a lot for business in this country. Without the likes of Paul, loads of guys wouldn’t have had their start.’

  ‘How so?’ asked Ciara.

  ‘Because a lot of the older bankers made very conservative lending decisions in what were mainly traditional sectors. And they were snobbish. They looked after their own little circle. Light-touch regulation and flexibility have been the bywords of Paul’s success,’ said Maeve, sounding as if she was channelling Ultan.

  Maureen sniffed. ‘Donal would say that there’s been a lot of reckless lending.’

  You could rely on Maureen to puncture the mood.

  ‘There’s Dermot Thornley now,’ I said, trying and failing to muster a smile.

  For the earlier part of the day I had smiled robotically. Now a smile was beyond me.

  Dermot Thornley waved at us, then disappeared into the mêlée.

  Maeve swung her head around. ‘Well, as Tracey’s off getting her tits removed I wonder who he’s here with … He’s a total hound dog,’ she added.

  ‘When he’s talking to you he has this way of making you feel like you’re the only person in the room,’ Shannon said. ‘It’s pretty effective.’

  She was right. I had bumped into Dermot a couple of weeks before at a party and he had sat on the armrest of my chair, his arm encircling my shoulders, telling me how, with a fat laugh, he had always been ‘a huge fan’ of mine.

  Maeve sat forward in her chair, a bold look on her face. ‘They say that the Thornleys are into swinging.’

  ‘You’ve gotta be kidding,’ Shannon said immediately. ‘That’s total baloney, I’d say.’ Shannon didn’t like to speak ill of people, which marked her out as a bit of a freak in our circle.

  Maeve was nettled. ‘I was at a dinner party where I’m positive they were blooding me and Ultan out.’

  We stared at her. The idea that anyone might consider a bloodless hermit like Ultan, with his narrow hips, a candidate for lusty activities seemed a long shot.

  ‘My hairdresser told me she got a lift back from Marbella on a plane with some of Dermot Thornley’s friends and it turned into an orgy. She said she was very relieved to get off safely. She had to lock herself in the loo.’

  Maureen’s eyes boggled.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Dermot Thornley on the plane,’ Shannon said.

  ‘Show me a person’s friends …’ Maeve said. She tossed her head back. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘Dermot Thornley came up to me at your party, Anita, and whispered in my ear, “I’d like to fuck you senseless against a wall.”’

  Ciara lifted her eyebrows.

  Maureen gave a little shudder. ‘Swinging, though!’ she breathed, looking appalled – but obviously reluctant to let the topic slide. ‘So sordid.’

  ‘Oh, go on out of that,’ Maeve said. ‘You love it – sitting forward there, practically panting. You’re desperate for the details.’

  Maureen spluttered. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Maeve baited poor Maureen too much but, to be fair, she had a point. I could visualize Maureen retelling the story. She loved gossip, particularly tales she could tut-tut at.

  Ciara made a face. ‘A very good barrister friend of Will’s said there was a group of younger barristers who were very into it. I know them, actually. They’re quite an attractive bunch. You wouldn’t think they’d have to resort to that.’

  Maeve had a saucy look on her face. ‘It’s a form of exhibitionism. It’s obviously to get kicks.’

  Ciara continued, ‘Apparently some of the girlfriends and wives used to snog in open view of their husbands.’

  ‘No!’ said Maureen, her heavily ringed podgy hand covering her mouth.

  Shannon tsked. ‘I gotta say that’s really stretching credibility.’

  Maureen said primly, ‘I think it’s totally disgusting. Whatever happened to old-fashioned common decency?’

  ‘It went out of fashion,’ Maeve retorted, ‘thanks be to God.’

  Maureen made a face.

  Maeve raised a shoulder and dropped it. ‘Whatever floats your boat. It’s a free world. I don’t care if somebody has sex with the family Labrador once it’s behind closed doors and I don’t have to hear about it.’

  Maureen straightened in her chair. ‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ she said, her lips pursed so that her mouth looked like a lipsticked prune, ‘but when I was growing up a sense of right and wrong was instilled in me. During Lent we went to Mass every morning and our father made us say five decades of the Rosary, every night. We held the Crucifix of the Rosary in our right hands.’

>   ‘That must have been fun,’ Maeve said, her tone bone dry.

  Maureen’s lips were pressed together so firmly they nearly disappeared from her face. ‘There’s nothing wrong with family values.’

  Maeve ignored her. ‘If you ask me, what’s right and what’s wrong are a matter of personal opinion. Morality is relative.’

  ‘I would have to say that I strongly disagree with you, Maeve,’ Maureen said, looking riled. Ordinarily she was quite serene, but not where family values were concerned.

  Maeve tossed her head. ‘Being good is boring. Self-restraint is overrated.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what is true,’ Shannon said, lowering her voice. ‘I heard from a woman I know – she’s divorced and I won’t say her name – that mothers at the gym pay the French tennis coach for sex.’

  ‘Really?’ said Ciara, her eyes rounding. ‘That guy’s a gigolo?’

  ‘That’s what she said,’ Shannon agreed, her eyes full of mirth. ‘He coaches the boys but I’ve never got the impression he was a gigolo.’

  Maeve had gone quiet. And her neck had gone crimson.

  My response was vague. ‘Hmm,’ I said, avoiding Maeve’s eye. ‘I don’t know, really.’

  Maureen’s mouth had fallen open. Her ample décolletage was flushed with alcohol and surprise. ‘I find that very hard to believe. That mothers pay their children’s tennis coach for sex.’

  ‘Have you ever seen that guy from the rear?’ said Shannon, with a dirty laugh. ‘He’s got buns of steel.’ She was only joking. She would never stray from Jimmy. They had an extremely happy marriage. I watched Shannon readjust the giant bow in her hair. It looked insane. I’d overheard her telling a social diarist that she was dressed in an outfit by Chanel. Shannon always wore whatever was in fashion, with no regard for her shape or age. No outfit was out of bounds.

  When she first came to Ireland she had dressed in a fairly neutral American, almost preppy, way. But bit by bit the clothes got more outlandish. She was now in her forties but she wouldn’t go easily. She’d go kicking and screaming into the night, trussed up inside the filmiest and shortest of outfits. I’d once attended a wedding where she’d worn a see-through skirt.

  ‘Shannon makes mutton look like lamb,’ Frank had said, after she had answered the door to us in what looked like a baby-doll négligée but was in fact a dress. ‘Oh, I’m sorry we’re too early – we’ll come back when you’re dressed,’ he had joked. Shannon had mock-punched his arm.

  The conversation had moved on and the heat had left Maeve’s cheeks. Maeve, for all her love of free expression, was keeping the Frenchman more or less to herself. To my knowledge, she had only talked to me about him and had sworn me to secrecy.

  I could hear Ciara talking about the benefits of hot-housing your children. ‘You should spend a couple of concentrated hours each day doing mental maths with them …’

  Maureen was talking to me now about her ex, something about the value of the shares Donal had given her as part of her settlement. ‘They slumped yesterday by more than eleven per cent. Eleven per cent.’

  Maureen’s ex-husband’s empire was rock solid. He had built up banks of land around Dublin thirty years previously and he came high up on Ireland’s rich list. He was in a different league from fellas like Frank. Maureen had been given a very generous settlement – a large house in Blackrock, a villa in Puerto Banus, a flat in London overlooking Hyde Park, plus stocks and shares and a lump-sum payment that would mean she never had to work. But she went on poor-mouthing a bit. Partly, I thought, because she wanted an excuse to talk about Donal.

  I tried to be patient with Maureen. I knew how badly she missed her husband and the status she felt had come with being married to him. But sometimes, watching her lips move, I found myself tuning out. I’d heard it all before. I could have written a thesis about Donal. And I wouldn’t mind but the man himself wouldn’t exactly have set the world on fire.

  I’d seen Donal out one night in the Unicorn restaurant, acting like love’s young dream with the girlfriend. He was not a man – say, like Will – whom you might have mentally cast in the role of seducer. Not that Will would be unfaithful, but he had the right looks for the part of dashing hero. Donal was mutton dressed as ram – with a dye job that was very obvious around the ears. And denims that made his arse look like a sack of puppies fighting. All he was missing was the earring.

  The waiter edged his way between our huddle setting down an ice-bucket and a quartet of glasses.

  ‘Whose shout is it, la-diees?’ asked Maeve, shimmying her hips.

  Maeve was a seasoned party girl – although recently there had been times when I’d thought she seemed a little jaded, as if the party might be going on just that bit too long.

  ‘It’s my pop,’ said Shannon. ‘Stick it on my tab.’

  ‘Nope,’ said Maeve, looking pointedly at Maureen, who was suddenly busying herself with her mobile phone. Maureen was a great woman for sitting on her hands. ‘I’ll get it,’ Maeve said, still staring at Maureen who was oblivious of the looks she was attracting.

  ‘No, this one’s on me,’ I said, dropping a credit card into the saucer. I told the waiter, ‘We need a fifth glass, please.’

  ‘Are you sure, hon?’ Shannon asked.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘This one’s on Frank.’ Ciara and I weren’t long back from having had a little toot. The coke was just hitting the back of my throat and nose and I felt myself burst into life. My addled brain was turning somersaults. ‘I was just wondering what our teenage selves would say if they could see us now,’ I said, cutting across something Shannon was saying.

  I was so wired. I heard myself talking at the wrong speed, like a record being played too fast. My eyes panned the group. ‘Do you remember the sense of possibility when you were young? The intense conversations you had with your pals about love and what you were going to do with your life? I mean, if the young versions of us could see us now, what do you think they’d make of us?’

  Maeve refilled her glass, her eyes scanning the group. She gave a self-congratulatory smile. ‘I’d say they’d think we’d done very well.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ I asked.

  Her tone when she replied was a little defensive. ‘Yeah, I do.’ She gave an abrupt laugh. ‘I would have thought that was obvious.’

  ‘If you’d asked me ten years ago if I’d done well I probably would have said yes, but not now.’

  ‘What’s changed?’ asked Shannon.

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said, running my tongue along my gums, which were numb from the coke, ‘I feel that Frank and the kids have moved on, leaving me behind.’ It was true. The soundtrack to my life had become the slam of doors as people stepped inside their bedrooms with cries of ‘Not now, Mum.’

  ‘I totally get that,’ said Shannon, nodding. ‘More and more I see the boys growing away from me. They’re constructing worlds for themselves where I can’t follow. They still love me, and sometimes they need me, but they want to break free too.’

  Maureen piped up: ‘I remember when that happened with my kids. Although, you know, I always had my golf and my bridge …’

  ‘You also had a career outside the home once, Maureen,’ I said. ‘I never had that. I did the books for Frank’s business until Dylan was born but that was all.’

  Maureen, who had been a nurse, smiled. ‘That was years ago,’ she said, putting her hand on her throat. ‘I couldn’t imagine nursing now – I wouldn’t have a clue.’

  ‘You all had careers, other lives before you became mothers and wives,’ I reminded them. ‘I just wonder if sometimes you miss those lives.’

  ‘I liked being a stay-at-home wife,’ Maureen said. ‘I felt that was where my duty lay. And I was good at being a homemaker. My children and my husband were the focus of my life,’ she said, the corners of her mouth turning down a little.

  A small solemn silence grew, as we pondered this tr
uth. Maureen’s husband had bolted. She had a son who lived in London and a daughter who was married with small children in Cork. Her daughter and son-in-law were good to her and Maureen went down to visit regularly, but it wasn’t the same as having your daughter near by. The son seemed to come home when it suited him.

  ‘I used to make my children’s clothes,’ she said, with a lopsided smile.

  ‘I bet you were an awesome cook too,’ Shannon said kindly.

  ‘I was, actually,’ Maureen admitted.

  ‘You mean you are,’ Maeve corrected her. ‘You’re not dead, Maureen.’

  ‘Cooking for one isn’t the same,’ Maureen said, her eyes clouding. ‘You don’t get the same enjoyment out of it as you do cooking for other people. I mainly just have cheese on toast in the evenings or a boiled egg.’

  After a pause Shannon said, ‘Well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss being an attorney. I’d definitely like to be that girl again, in the slick suit and pumps.’ It wasn’t the first time she’d made this confession. ‘Sooner rather than later,’ she added.

  ‘Really?’ asked Maeve, clearly sceptical.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Shannon. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed being at home with the boys. I’ve been damn lucky to have the opportunity – Jimmy can carry us without a second salary coming in. None of my sisters have the option to be homemakers and I know they consider me very lucky. But all the repetition – and when they were younger putting up with that awful loser Barney,’ she said. ‘There were times when they were little I felt like I was going stir crazy. Especially in the mom-and-baby group. I found it hard to work out was it me or the other mothers – if it was that they were all on Prozac or that I needed to be.’

  We all laughed.

  ‘Maybe you were just going to the wrong group,’ countered Maeve. ‘I met some lovely girls in mine.’