CHAPTER THREE
Bending slightly sideways in her grey swivel chair, Jo reached down and slowly slid the chemist’s paper bag out of her briefcase. She was trying to remove it with as little rustling as possible, hoping that Brenda, who was sitting at the opposite desk blowing kisses down the phone to her current boyfriend, wouldn’t hear anything.
If only she’d stuck the package in her fake crocodile-skin handbag in the first place, she wouldn’t have to smuggle it clandestinely out of her briefcase now. She’d been waiting all morning for the right moment to sneak the distinctive blue and white bag into the toilet without someone demanding to know what she’d been buying in the chemist when they had enough make-up around to cover Claudia Schiffer from head to toe.
That was one of the main problems of working in such a small office, and the office of a women’s magazine into the bargain, she thought ruefully. Everyone knew everything about you and, being inveterate shoppers, they wanted to know what you’d bought when you came back from the shops at lunchtime.
Personal matters were totally public in the cramped offices of Style, where the only privacy to be had was when you locked the door of the tiny toilet and shower cubicle. Everyone who worked in what the interior designer described as a ‘… relaxing contemporary open-plan workspace …” could listen to your most intimate phone calls, could hear you talking to the bank about your overdraft, and knew when you’d forgotten your mother’s birthday.
What’s more, they were all endlessly curious about shopping, shopaholism being the main qualification necessary for working in a
women’s magazine. Entire lunch-breaks could be spent oohing and aahing over a sale bargain hat for that wedding or a new baby gro for baby Jessica.
Jo wanted to keep this latest purchase to herself. A pregnancy testing kit was not the sort of thing you could hold up and scream, “Look what I got for a tenner in Marks and Spencer’s this morning.” Absolutely not.
It was all so unexpected, such a surprise. Jo was still too stunned to know what she thought about it. She certainly didn’t want the rest of the office to know anything about it until she knew whether she was pregnant or not. Or until she knew how she felt about being pregnant, which was more to the point. God, it was confusing.
She sighed, jammed the paper bag into her open handbag and closed her eyes briefly. It wasn’t as if she’d had much time to think about being pregnant. She’d only worked out that her period was late when she opened the phone bill that morning.
Late for work as usual. She was trying to gulp down a cup of coffee while opening her post and sticking folders into her tattered old briefcase when she came upon the phone bill.
Astronomical, what else? All that time ringing Sligo talking to her mother and the boys. She was about to jam it behind the coffee jar when she stopped herself.
Write it down, you moron, she muttered, remembering how very irritating it had been to have to pay the phone company a reconnection fee the last time she’d filed a bill behind the coffee and forgotten about it.
Three pens had to be thrown in the bin before she found one that worked and opened her diary to write, “Pay phone bill’ in the following week. And then she noticed it. Or rather didn’t notice it.
The capital P which stood for period wasn’t there. Details of her fluctuating bank balance were noted along with appointments for interviews and a green biro squiggle she couldn’t read. But no mention of her period. She flicked through the pages rapidly.
“Omigod,” Jo muttered.
“Omigod!” Unless her contact lenses needed to be replaced, she hadn’t
had a period since the second week in April and it was now the beginning of June.
She had either stopped menstruating because she was menopausal unlikely at the age of thirty-four or she was pregnant. But it couldn’t be. They always used condoms and spermicide, so how could she be pregnant?
She’d bought the pregnancy testing kit at the chemist across the road from her apartment, but she was running too late to do the test at home.
Which was why she was waiting for the right moment to slip nonchalantly into the office loo without catching anyone’s eye. Well, it wasn’t the sort of news to broadcast to your colleagues when your brain was still reeling from the shock and your boyfriend was still blissfully unaware of impending fatherhood.
She thought of Richard: clever, witty, good-looking in a boyish way, a talented photographer and an inveterate charmer of women. Of all the words you could use to describe her boyfriend of the last two years, fatherly would have been last on her list. Well, maybe conventional would be last on the list but fatherly wouldn’t be far behind.
Three years older than she was, he looked as if he was heading towards thirty, never mind forty, and thought that settling down was something other people did when they were ten years older than he was.
The thought of being married with 2.5 kids, a semi with a conservatory and an estate car filled him with the dread most men reserved for having their mothers-in-law to stay. At the mention of the word commitment, his eyes glazed over and he would pick up the remote control and switch channels rapidly, searching for something which involved a muddy field, a football or a newscast with in-depth sports coverage.
Of course, when you were a sports photographer you had to keep up with current sporting events, but one tiny piece of Jo’s mind was beginning to think that the manic channel hopping which ensued the last time she talked about buying a place together was a ploy to avoid talking about
settling down. She known what he was like when she first met him, shortly after he’d given up his secure and pension able job with one newspaper to set up a sports agency with a couple of other like-minded, risk-taking photographers.
“It was driving me out of my mind working for just one paper.” He told her about his low boredom threshold as they drank red wine and completely ignored the press photographer awards ceremony going on around them.
“This way, we’re our own bosses and we control what we do and what we don’t do.”
“Absolutely,” breathed Jo, fascinated by his ambition and his Scandinavian blondness. She thanked God that she’d agreed to make up a party of ten people to cheer on Style’s fashion photographer as he accepted his award.
She’d nearly cried off and stayed in to watch Coronation Street instead. There is a God after all, she thought happily.
She wondered whether she should risk going to the loo to reapply some Crimson Kiss lipstick and adjust her strapless dress in case someone else nabbed the most fascinating man she’d met in years. No, she decided firmly.
Who cared if her boobs were about to spill out of the figure-hugging hot red dress she’d borrowed from the fashion cupboard at work?
Her rippling tortoiseshell hair was piled on top of her head in a haphazard manner, designed to suggest she’d just got out of bed. Mascara emphasised her dark eyes beautifully and only the most observant onlooker would notice the wobbly dark line above her lashes where the hand holding her eyeliner pen had slipped. Jo knew she looked good and she wanted this fair-haired hunk to know it too.
“I can’t stand people who just sit still and let life happen to them. I want to make it happen, I want that excitement and that energy,” Richard said passionately.
“It’s what keeps me going.”
Gazing deeply into his eyes, Jo fell for him like a ton of bricks, low boredom threshold and all. She should have wondered what kind of man
would dump a perfectly safe job to run a risky freelance agency. But she hadn’t.
She was the sort of individual who woke in the morning with her guts spasming with nerves if she had a difficult interview ahead of her. She found Richard’s adventurous spirit intriguing. And frankly, very sexy.
There was something macho about taking such a huge gamble and something equally attractive about realising that his dream had paid off tenfold.
That wasn’t enough for Richard, though. Once the agency was making money, he was eager for the next challenge, longing for adventure, while Jo began to yearn for quiet domesticity. He wanted to take up parachuting. She was I scared of heights. He signed up for a scuba diving course and gave her a course of diving lessons for her birthday, even though she hated getting water in her eyes. But how could she now complain about the very traits she’d found so exciting in him in the first place?
“Interest rates and conveyancing fees are probably responsible for more heart attacks than five pints of Guinness a day, darling,” he’d said only the week before when the most gorgeous cottage in the Wicklow mountains just jumped out of the property pages at her. The picture of the cottage bathed in sunlight made Jo long for the house with twelve-inch-thick stone walls and a box-tree herb garden.
“Darling, you know I love living in the city,” he said, throwing the property pages onto the floor and nuzzling her neck as he breathed in the scent of the vanilla perfume he loved her to wear.
“Anyway, setting up the agency has swallowed up most of my capital and I don’t want to take on a mortgage when I can keep renting my flat in Merrion Square for well under the market rate. You’d be mad to sell your apartment so soon after buying it,” he added.
“Let’s leave things the way they are.” And they went to bed.
Once Richard had his arms around her, making her feel more turned on and more desirable than any man had been able to do before, she wasn’t
able to think about anything, never mind buying a house together. All she wanted was his lean body wrapped around hers, his fingers tangled in her hair and his lips gently kissing her skin. When he murmured exactly what he was going to do just before he did it, she melted into a quiver of anticipation.
His voice did the most amazing things to her head, not to mention the effect he was having lower down. And when they finally came together in a surge of passion, the intensity of her orgasm made Jo shudder, and wonder how she’d ever thought she’d enjoyed lovemaking with anyone else.
“We’re wonderful in bed together,” he said afterwards. It was amazing the way they were perfectly in tune in bed, even though they weren’t so in tune out of it, Jo thought to herself.
As she was about to throw a bundle of old papers in the bin a few days later, she looked longingly at the property section and wondered was she mad to think about settling down.
Richard was happy the way things were, so why wasn’t she?
His bachelor pad in the city centre was perfect for a man who liked nothing better than to sway the few short yards from Dublin’s trendy hostelries to his front door on a Saturday night.
Trips to Anfield and Wembley where night clubbing the night away was par for the course, this was Richard’s idea of fun. Not getting up for the three a.m. feed.
Would he want their baby, she asked herself? You could go round and round in circles and never figure it out. What was the point in dreaming up problems for the future until she knew for sure?
Ten minutes in the loo would tell her for certain. She looked around at the empty desks abandoned in the lunchtime rush.
The only person in the editorial office was Brenda and she was thankfully otherwise engaged, telling Mark or was it Kevin about the lingerie catalogue she’d been perusing that morning, ostensibly for a feature on mail-order underwear.
“You’d really like the black bra with those teeny, weeny knickers,”
Brenda purred down the phone, no doubt sending poor Mark/Kevin into a frenzy with the seduction techniques she’d honed after three years of industriously filling in “How Sexy Are You?” questionnaires in Cosmopolitan.
At least Brenda was too busy to listen, thought Jo, as she psyched herself up to do the test. She gave up pretending to study a feature article on the latest tanning creams and had just picked up the small elegant handbag which went with nothing she owned, when she was rudely interrupted. Dropping the bag like a shot, Jo straightened up and smiled broadly at the editor.
“Got a minute, Jo?” inquired Rhona McNamara. She perched one well-upholstered hip on the desk and rearranged the silken folds of her expensive Jaeger skirt.
“Of course. What is it?” With as much nonchalance as she could muster, Jo casually scooped up the magazines from her desk and dropped them on top of the paper bag which was sticking out the top of her handbag in a very noticeable manner. You couldn’t do anything personal around here without someone landing on top of you, she cursed inwardly.
“What do you think about changing the format of the new beauty products section? I’ve been thinking that we should get readers to test certain things and give marks out of ten.”
Rhona’s fingers flew about as she spoke, a habit which would make the casual observer think she was using sign language. In fact, she was just trying to keep her hands occupied until they got hold of her next cigarette.
“I think that’s a great idea,” Jo answered. Obviously, she couldn’t say that she didn’t give a damn who tested the bloody make-up when she was faced with this momentous, no huge event in her life. When a pregnancy testing kit was burning a hole in her handbag just aching to be used.
“It’s a fresh way of looking at products and, since we’re all so blase about lotions and potions, it would be marvelous to get readers to give their opinion about things,” Rhona said in a voice which required some sort of reaction.
“Er … I’ll include an advert for guinea pigs on the beauty page,
although I’ll have to drop something to fit it in.” Jostarted rooting through the piles of paper on her desk for the dummy or advance pages of the beauty section.
With only two days to go before printing, the July edition of Style was nearly totally finished and any changes had to be agreed and inserted within the next twenty-four hours.
Jo still had an entire piece to write about packing for your summer holidays and had managed to leave the ideas she’d jotted down for the article at home.
“D’you know, I haven’t been talking to you all week,” Rhona commented, picking up the tanning article and scanning it for mistakes.
“You look a little bit pale, Jo. Are you feeling all right?”
“Fine,” answered Jo as brightly as she could. She raked her dark curls with her fingers and wished she’d bothered with proper make-up on this of all mornings.
“I’ve had a lot of late nights recently,” she lied, ‘and I’m a little tired. Maybe that Elizabeth Arden magic stuff you keep in your desk could give my complexion a bit of a boost?”
Rhona looked at her shrewdly for a moment, taking in her deputy editor’s pale, freckled skin, tired brown eyes and un-lips ticked mouth.
Jo took her job as fashion editor very seriously and was nearly always dressed to kill in on-the-knee skirts which showed off her long legs and fitted jewel-coloured jackets which were just perfect for her Monroe-esque curves. She was usually better made-up than Ivana Trump.
Today, she was wearing a fawn-coloured linen ensemble which would have cost an arm and a leg if Jo didn’t have a fashion editor’s discount at every top shop in Dublin. Chic in the extreme, the effect of the outfit was ruined by the fact that she wasn’t wearing more make-up or jewellery and her normally wavy hair had flopped in the June heat. It was very unlike Jo, thought Rhona.
“Come on into my office and we’ll have a bitch.” She smiled at Jo, slid off the desk and walked into her tiny office.
It was compact and untidy, with clothes hangers dangling off every nail
and magazines, press releases and sticky layout pages covering every available surface. There wasn’t enough room to swing a cat in its ten-by-twelve confines.
Rhona’s office was, however, blissfully private and a haven for the nicotine-addicted who weren’t allowed to smoke anywhere else in the Georgian three-storey house which was home to both Style and a tiny secretarial agency.
Jo followed the editor into the untidy room and pushed a clump of plastic-covered dresses to one side of the dusty cream settee which took up at least half of one wall. She plonked herself down tiredly and leaned back into the soft cushions. She levered off her shoes and wondered if this sudden exhaustion was pregnancy or shock. “Is lover boy wearing you out at home?” Rhona teased,!
immediately lighting up a cigarette. I Despite herself, Jo blushed. She could feel her face redden!
and she could also see Rhona looking at her in amazement,!
cigarette suspended in mid-air as she stared at her deputy!!
with a dumbfounded expression.
How was she going to get out of this one? Jo groaned silently. The woman with whom she’d shared kiss-by-kiss accounts of various lovers over numerous bottles of red wine was not going to believe that just talking about sex with Richard would send her blushing to her roots. No way.
Rhona knew her much better than that. Which meant that she was going to have to spill the beans. Only how could she spill anything until she knew for sure?
“Did I say the wrong thing?” Rhona sat down heavily and looked anxiously at her deputy.
“Are you having problems?
You know you can always talk to me, Jo, don’t you? I don’t want to interfere, I just want to help.”
“I don’t think you can help me this time,” Jo replied with a small laugh. Here goes, she thought.
“Unless you’ve been secretly training as an obstetrician and haven’t told the rest of us!”
“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Rhona squealed.
“Stupid question. Congratulations, Jo! I shouldn’t be smoking, should
I?” She hastily stubbed out her barely touched Dunhill as though a baby was going to pop out any minute and wail if there was so much as a hint of nicotine in the air.
“Slow down, Rhona. I don’t know if I’m pregnant yet. I missed my period this month and it only really hit me this morning so I don’t know for sure.” It sounded even stranger actually saying it out loud.
“You haven’t done a test?” Rhona looked surprised. The new ones can tell you if you’re pregnant just a day after your period is due.”
“I know, I know.” Jo looked mildly exasperated.
“I was going to do it here, I just didn’t want Ms Nosey Parker out there to pick anything up with her radar ears.”
“Fair enough,” Rhona replied.
“I’ll send her out for fags and you can pee in privacy …”
Rhona stopped mid-sentence and looked Jo straight in the face.
“It is Richard’s, isn’t it?”
“Of course it bloody is!” Jo said, affronted.
“How many men do you think I’m seeing? One a day and two on Sunday!
Come on, Rhona.”
“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that you don’t seem pleased about it and I just thought, maybe it wasn’t his and … Forget I said that, please, Jo. I thought you’d be happy if it was Richard’s and you seem a little off, you know.”
She leaned over and put her arms around Jo’s now tense body, hugging her tightly.
“You know I’m here for you, no matter what happens.”
“Thanks.” Jo stood up, running a ring less hand over her stomach as though she’d be able to tell what lay beneath her linen waistcoat just by touching her belly. What would it be like to feel a baby growing inside her?
Would she feel totally at one with her unborn child, sensitive to every kick and wriggle? If she played her favourite music on the car stereo, would the baby be born liking the same tunes?
Then it came to her with piercing clarity: she wanted this child. She wanted it more than anything she’d ever wanted before, even if Richard
didn’t. That was the nub of the (problem. It was no use wasting time wondering whether he wanted their child, littering her brain with doubts when, all along, she knew what she wanted.
I’ She wanted a baby, maybe she had wanted one for years.
Trying to be the nineties career woman had meant keeping up the facade of a perfect life, complete with a handsome lover!
total independence and a job most women would kill for. I Career women didn’t long for babies and a man’s pyjamas permanently under the pillows, but suddenly, that’s just what Jo wanted.
For once she didn’t care if the magazine’s publisher demoted her to writing picture captions or gave her job to the horrible, sneaky Emma who was always angling to back stab her way up the career ladder. All she wanted was a beautiful, healthy baby.
“I’m pregnant,” she said aloud, suddenly grinning at Rhona with a smile which lit up her whole face.
“I’m pregnant! I just know it!”
“Well let’s send Brenda out for champagne then,” Rhona suggested before hugging Jo to her considerable bosom.
“And for something from the deli. I’m starved.”
“When were you ever not starved?” Jo got up with renewed energy and manoeuvred her feet into her brown suede court shoes.
“I’m going to do the test, to be sure to be sure, if you know what I mean. But I know already. Is that normal?” She looked at Rhona, the mother of three under-tens, for confirmation.
Absolutely,” answered Rhona.
“I knew I was pregnant the first time because I woke up one morning and couldn’t eat a thing, which is not like me, as you know. The day Lynne was born was the happiest day of my life, I always say, mainly because I’d been so sick all the time I was carrying her.”
“I feel fine,” interrupted Jo.
“Hungry actually. I think I need something nutritious to eat, like a Twix.”
“Or a poppy-seed baguette filled with sun-dried tomatoes, Parma ham and chunks of Gruyere washed down with an icy Diet Coke,” said Rhona, who
had not been a magazine restaurant reviewer for nothing.
“I’m supposed to be on a diet, but there are only so many things you can do with brown rice and green vegetables,” she added mournfully, thinking of the considerable difference between what she should be eating and what she wanted to eat.
Tall and big-boned, Rhona was always denying herself something in the hope that she’d miraculously turn into a carbon copy of her sleek, younger sister and, more importantly, fit into all the lovely clothes she’d bought for ‘when I get thin’.
Sadly, her predilection for all the wrong food meant that she was never going to be anything smaller than a size fourteen. Her ‘thin’ clothes were getting closer to the secondhand shop every day.
“Brenda,” called Rhona loudly, winking at Jo, ‘are you busy?
I want you to do something for me.”
Hastily cutting off her steamy conversation, Brenda hurried over to the editor’s office with the speed of one hoping to be promoted, while Jo grabbed her handbag and headed for the loo.
By the time she had peed into the tiny tester and put it back into its little plastic case, her heart was thumping along at advanced-aerobics-class level.
She rummaged around for some lipstick in her tiny make-up bag and thought about telling Richard.
She could bring him out to Fitzer’s, his favourite restaurant, and tell him the wonderful news over the clam linguini.
“Darling, we’re going to have a baby’.”
She could see it all in her mind. She would wear the Jasper Conran jacket she’d bought in a discount store in Belfast.
“My darling, that’s wonderful!” he’d cry before ordering champagne and toasting their baby. Then they’d go back to her place and plan their future together. A Georgian town house in Dalkey, she daydreamed, with plenty of room for Richard’s darkroom and a desk where she could write the novel she was always talking about.
Or maybe an artisan’s cottage in Enniskerry, a cross between Homes and Gardens and the Habitat catalogue. Of course, they’d have to get a new bed because Richard’s futon wouldn’t be suitable for the baby and her ancient double bed was sprouting springs faster than a dodgy biro. There were so many things to buy! She’d better get to Mothercare quickly and get started.
“She’s gone. Let me in,” shouted Rhona outside the door.
“Oh Rhona, it’s so exciting.” Jo smiled, opened the door and carried the tester into the editor’s office as if it was an unexploded bomb.
“I almost can’t believe it. Me, a mother!
Even saying it sounds strange. What if I’m no good at it,” she asked, suddenly anxious, ‘no good at being a mother. Does it just come naturally? I mean, it’s not as if I have any real experience of babies or anything. Oh, and what about work?
Is it really that hard being a working mother?”
Rhona burst out laughing.
“Don’t get me started, Jo. You’ll learn. I mean, it’s not exactly a doddle, I can tell you. First of all,” she started ticking imaginary points off on her fingers, ‘you’re exhausted and you wonder are you doing everything wrong from feeding to nappy-changing to winding them after their feed.”
Then, you go to work and leave your precious baby with some woman you’re convinced turns into an axe murderer every time you walk out the front door, and then, when your baby walks for the first time, you’re not there.
“Ms Axe Murderer is there. You, on the other hand, are listening to some po-faced advertiser telling you that they don’t want their anti-wrinkle cream on the opposite page to a feature on how to stop the ravages of time with plastic surgery.” She stopped with a sigh.
“Is there anything else you want to ask?”
“No, just give me a prescription for Prozac and I’ll be fine,” said Jo with wide eyes.
“I suppose I never really thought about how difficult it was before. You know me, Rho, I can’t walk out the front door without spending half an hour on my hair, throwing at least three outfits on the bed when I’m trying to figure out what look to go for that day and taking another
fifteen minutes to do my make-up. It’s that liquid eyeliner,” she
“It’s impossible to get it right.”
“Liquid eyeliner will be the least of your problems, darling, let me tell you. You’ll be lucky if you can actually brush your teeth in the morning if your little pet is anything like mine were. And as for leaving three outfits on the bed …! Forget it.
Five-year-old girls love wearing Mummy’s clothes and Mummy’s make-up, usually at the same time.
“Believe me, Jo, you won’t be long tidying everything you value away from sticky little fingers. It’s better now that Susie is finally at school,” she reflected.
“Although she has this thing about Liga biscuits. I still get embarrassed when I think about that time in the Conrad Hotel when I opened my cheque book and it was all glued together with molten Liga.”
“Oh yes, that was a howl and I didn’t have any money with me!” Jo started laughing at the memory, and, realising what was in front of her, laughed even harder.
“I can’t wait to see Richard when we’ve got a terrible two-year-old toddling around playing with his Nikons.”
Rhona didn’t smile. She’d known Richard from the two years he’d been going out with Jo. She had a rather different vision of his reaction and she didn’t find the picture at all amusing.
Without a doubt, Richard would commit murder if he saw any child messing around with any of his possessions. If he stayed around long enough for the child in question to reach the grand old age of two, that was.
“Does he know?” she asked quietly.
“Not yet,” Jo confessed.
“I didn’t want to tell him until I was sure. I just wanted it to be between us. But I’m so glad I told you.” She smiled fondly at the other woman.
“Give us a look at the tester then,” demanded Rhona.
Like a magician about to produce a rabbit from a hat, Jo whisked off the plastic lid and gave a whoop of joy.
“Yahoo! I’m pregnant: officially! Just think, Rhona. This is a new life inside me!” She beamed, looking down at her still-slender waist.
“A whole new life in every sense, really. God, I can’t wait to tell Richard.” She sighed.
“He’s in Cork today and I know he has the mobile phone with him, but I just can’t tell him over the phone.”
“Probably not. Let’s go out to lunch, my treat. As you’re eating for two officially, you’ll need some help in choosing the right foods so you don’t end up with a couple of difficult pounds to shift.” Rhona grinned at her slim deputy.
“It must be awful to have to diet,” commiserated Jo.
“I have such a fast metabolism. I mean, I’ve always been able to eat what I wanted and I never put on weight.”
“Don’t remind me. It’s not fair to have someone like you on the staff. Able to stuff herself with chocolate and still not have so much as one love handle.” I Rhona picked up her handbag, stuck a pair of sunglasses on her head and held out her hand to haul Jo off the settee, “Come on, Mummy. Let’s toast your wonderful news with I some mineral water and something fattening, with cream and I chocolate sauce and ooh, I don’t know …” “Did I hear you mention food?” Tony, the magazine’s chief sub-editor, peered into the office.
“Does anybody ever do anything but talk about food around here any more?” he inquired.
“I was sort of hoping we might work on the magazine this afternoon … You know, that A4-sized thing that pays all our wages and currently has a couple of blank” pages in it waiting to be filled with gems of wisdom from your pen, Madame Editor?”
“OK.” Rhona took her sunglasses off her head and looked at Jo wryly.
“Back to work, I’m afraid. You and I,” she whispered conspiratorially, ‘will celebrate later.”
“Thanks.” Jo smiled as she walked to the door.
“But I just couldn’t do any more work today. I’ll get one of the girls to finish subbing that article and I’m going home, via the doctors she added with a huge grin. Actually, I’ve got that party at the News this evening but I’d love not to go. I want Richard all to myself when I give him the news.”
Rhona couldn’t help herself.
“Jo, have you thought about the fact that he mightn’t want a baby?”
she asked gently. For a moment Jo’s face was blank. Then a broad smile swept over her face, lighting up her eyes and curving her full mouth up in that warm and sexy smile which had been knocking men for six ever since she’d been fifteen.
“Of course he will she said confidently.
“He’ll be delighted, I promise!”
As she sat in her temperamental Volkswagen trying to exit the Stephen’s Green multi-storey car park, Jo was still thinking about what Rhona had
OK, so Richard had never been exactly wild about kids.
Last Christmas he had refused point blank to go to the all-day party Rhona gave every year where the Style staff lounged around their editor’s roomy Wicklow farmhouse with glasses of mulled wine, while their offspring watched videos and played on the tiny indoor bouncing castle. That didn’t mean he hated children; he just wasn’t mad about other people’s, that was all.
He told Jo to make his excuses.
Tell them I’m working, Jo, will you? There’s no way I’m going to spend an entire day at a bloody kids’ party. I know she’s your boss and you have to go, but I don’t. You don’t really mind, do you, darling?” he wheedled.
Once Richard had decided not to do something, nothing on earth could make him change his mind. Jo went on her own.
The party had been a huge success although somebody had accidentally turned the cooker off and the coq au vin was icy and virtually raw when the guests arrived.
Rhona’s husband Ted had returned from a booze-buying session at the local off-licence with five extra people and no diet tonic, but nothing could spoil the day.
After downing a super-strength cocktail Jo had mixed up for her with a bit of just about everything from the drinks cabinet, Rhona relaxed enough to serve beans and sausages.
Sick of eating every type of turkey dish possible during Christmas, everyone wolfed down their food and had a whale of a time.
Jo really wished that Richard had come after all. But there wasn’t much time for introspection with Style’s receptionist, Annette, perched tipsily on the arm of Jo’s chair and a hysterical conversation about the rumoured sexual tendencies of the most pious newscaster on the TV going on all around
He’d have loved it, Jo thought a little sadly as she gave a corner of cheesy Pringle to Mutt, Rhona’s slavering black and white spaniel whose main preoccupation in life was food.
For some reason, that picture stuck in her mind. Her friend and colleagues had let their hair down and enjoyed themselves with their husbands, wives, partners and children.
She’d hated being the only person there on her own although she wouldn’t have admitted it for the world. As she told Rhona, she’d enjoyed herself immensely and if the other woman suspected that Richard wasn’t actually working, but just hadn’t wanted to come, she didn’t say so.
The only squabbles were “You drank the last two times so it’s my turn and you have to drive’ arguments every time Ted came in with more booze. Everyone had a great time. Nobody complained about the noise coming from the converted garage as boisterous children did their level best to out bounce each other.
Who’d have guessed that Frederick, the marvellously camp make-up artist who worked on most of Style’s fashion shoots, would turn out to be the children’s favourite playmate.
“I like children, sweetie. I just don’t know if I could eat a whole one!” had been Frederick’s favourite phrase, borrowed from W. C. Fields. It never failed to raise a laugh. But after six vodkas and a lethal alcoholic concoction which included peach schnapps and Grand Marnier, Frederick was up on the bouncy castle with the five-year-olds, happily trying to demonstrate the double somersault he claimed to have been able to do in his youth.
How could you not like children, Jo wondered as the parking attendant handed her a fistful of coins and a receipt.
Richard didn’t hate children. How could he? He’d been an only child
who’d never had anyone to compete with at home. His besotted mother looked after him as if he was the crown prince of Brunei.
That’s it, she thought triumphantly. He’s never had to compete with a brother or sister for affection and he never learned to deal with children. All he needs is a little time to get used to the idea. We must have at least seven months left for that.
She roared off around the Green, whizzing past taxi-drivers and lumbering buses like a rally-driver. You’re not bad, Bessie, when you get going, she told her car. But I may have to trade you in for something more baby-friendly or at least something with a bit of suspension.
The surgery was full when she got there. Two harassed mothers tried to quieten cross toddlers and an elderly man with a hacking cough occupied two seats. One sulky adolescent mutinously insisted he go in to see the doctor by himself.
“I’m not a child any more,” he hissed at his mother.
“Stop acting like one, then,” she hissed back.
He turned pinker than the outbreak of spots on his hairless face when he noticed Jo looking at him.
Jo grabbed a dog-eared magazine off the centre table and squeezed in between the teenager and one of the mothers.
She was in for a long wait, she calculated, judging by the exhausted expressions on everyone’s faces. Still, it was only just after three and she had just had the most wonderful news in the world, so she couldn’t complain about waiting for the doctor. She couldn’t complain about anything.
She wanted to tell Richard so badly it was killing her. She wanted to tell everyone in the waiting room. Instead, she turned her attention to a year-old copy of Elle and flicked through the pages with a professional eye.
Jo could no longer look at any publication aimed at women without wondering whether Style would look good with a wrap-around calorie counter, three more pages on travel or whatever.
She was just reading an in-depth report about cervical cancer the sort
of article which would have once had her reaching for her edition of Everywoman in terror when a woman walked into the waiting room with a baby cradled papoose-like on her chest.
Jo stared at them, taking in every detail. The baby girl, dressed in pink which matched her soft rounded cheeks, had obviously been sleeping until the noisy surgery waiting room woke her up.
She blinked long dark eyelashes and stared drowsily up at her mother with enormous eyes, smiling a toothless grin when Mum murmured comforting words.
Jo held her breath as she looked at the mother and baby.
She had a million questions she wanted to ask, but she didn’t!
say a word. This was what she wanted, thought Jo as the mother gently kissed her baby’s downy head, this bond!
between a mother and her child, a love that was holier than!
anything she’d ever felt in a church. And now she was going!
to experience it. I Back to Elle. She discovered that shimmery pink was in black was out and anyone wearing last year’s opaque black!
tights would be arrested by the fashion police. She had just started reading an ancient edition of Hello! and was looking at pictures of Michael Jackson’s wedding when the doctor called her name. Thank God for that. One more page about Cindy Crawford’s workout wardrobe or her marvelous fashion sense, and she’d have gone mad.
The last time she’d been in the clinical-looking surgery, she was in the grip of a particularly virulent stomach bug and had nearly been sick all over the expensive cream floor tiles.
Today’s visit was definitely an improvement. “I’m pregnant.” Saying that brought a gleam to her eyes, she just knew it.
“I thought I needed a professional opinion, although I’ve done a test and it was positive. Are those tests accurate, Dr. Daly?” Jo asked in concern.
“Used properly, they’re excellent. But I’d prefer to make sure.” Ten minutes and another positive pregnancy test later, the doctor was
working out dates and talking about diet and folic acid supplements. By the time Jo turned her key in her front door lock, it was nearly six. She couldn’t wait to make herself a huge cup of sugary tea. She switched the kettle on and peered into the fridge.
Two weepy tomatoes, a soggy courgette, a jar with a scraping, of crumb-filled honey at the bottom, a half-full tin of beans and a tub of spreadable cheese covered with green fluff stared back at her dismally.
Only the milk, butter and two yogurt pots looked healthy enough for human consumption. This won’t do, she thought.
Time to get your act together, Ms Ryan, she told herself as she closed the fridge door. At least she had those potato waffles in the freezer. They were carbohydrates, weren’t they? She switched on the answering machine and listened to her messages while she poured boiling water over a tea bag.
Rhona had rung to see how she got on with the doctor. Her sister-in-law had been on to tell her about a surprise birthday party for Shane’s fortieth. Could she ring back during the day when he was out? asked Mary against a background noise of a washing machine about to lift into orbit.
Jo was chuckling at the idea of her older brother’s face when he realised he’d been duped when she heard Richard’s voice: “Hi, Jo. I’m in Naas on a job for the Independent. I’m going to drive straight to the party when I’m finished, OK?
William is coming with me and he’s bringing his sister along because she’s home from Paris. He can’t just leave her on her own in the flat. I’m covering the party for the Herald as a favour in case the Def Leppard guys or Dennis Hopper turn up. That’s it. Sorry I missed you but I’ll see you there. Bye.”
Oh no, Jo thought despondently. I wanted to go with you, Richard. Blast you. She plucked the tea bag from her cup and added the last dribble of milk and sugar. A few chocolate digestives, I think, she muttered miserably. She opened the junk cupboard where she kept a bag of mini-Mars bars, biscuits and several bottles of 7-Up for emergencies.
He said he was going to bring me to the bloody party, she muttered as
she carried her tea and biscuits into the bedroom. What the hell is he bringing Will and his stupid sister for? Are they more important to him than I am?
She took a bite of chocolate digestive and washed it down with hot, sweet tea. She turned on the radio and sat down heavily on the bed. How was she going to get the energy to change her clothes?
She looked at the pile of unironed clothes draped on her white cane chair. Last month’s ‘de-junk your life feature flashed before her eyes and she thanked God that nobody in the office could see the chaos that was her bedroom.
She was reasonably tidy at work. Losing a vital piece of paper there could prove disastrous so she forced herself to dump all the press releases, old newspaper cuttings and scrawled phone messages before they swamped her desk.
At home, however, she flung linen jackets onto the chair only to find them crumpled and requiring half an hour of ironing a week later.
A tangle of tights lay on the flowered blue quilt, silky beige and black skeins abandoned during her frantic attempts that morning to find a ladder less pair of sheer tights to go with her linen outfit.
It was a pretty room, decorated in the blue-sprigged Laura Ashley wallpaper she’d instantly adored when she spotted it in the shop. The white cane dressing table, bookcase and bedside table looked just right with the wallpaper, and matched the long white muslin curtain which hung elegantly from a brass pole.
It all would have been property-supplement-perfect if it hadn’t been for the piles of paperbacks and magazines stacked untidily on the bedside table, the sheaf of newspapers dropped casually onto the floor beside her bed and the heap of blouses, Tshirts and trousers on the chair.
The oval dressing table was like a chemist shop’s display with bottles of perfume, body lotion and endless old lipsticks she just couldn’t bear to throw out. A picture of her and Richard on their last holiday in New York had pride of place beside the walnut jewellery box he’d
bought her last year. What a bloody mess, she thought, remembering Rhona’s ?!
words of wisdom on small children and their effect on untidy mothers. I’ll tidy up tomorrow, she promised. Now what to wear for the party?
Jo glanced briefly at the mirror could do with a dust, she rebuked herself and was amazed by what she saw. She felt exhausted, but the face that stared back at her positively glowed. Her eyes shone and her skin was healthily flushed with a radiance no expensive face cream would ever be able to match.
Marvellous! I feel like I’ve been squashed under a cement mixer and I look great! The people who made Oil of Ulay had better learn how to bottle this.
All those articles she’d written about motherhood and the Blooming Pregnancy fashion features came to mind.
She laughed out loud at the thought of pregnant women reading her zero-experience-of-pregnancy claptrap.
“Your skin will bloom and your hair will be shinier than any salon treatment could ever make it…” she giggled. And I hadn’t a clue what I was talking about.
Let’s put that blooming beauty to good use, she decided, as she finished the last bit of biscuit. After a quick shower, an ?” even quicker blast of the hair dryer and ten careful minutes spent applying make-up, she cast a critical eye over herself.
The launch of Michael Moran’s long-awaited glossy supplement would doubtless be a glitzy, highprofile affair.
Jo had no intention of turning up looking anything but her best, especially as the bosses of two model agencies had told her they were going to be there with some of their most stunning girls, naturally. The threat of rock star involvement meant that the city’s model population would be out in force, an army of perfectly groomed women who were paid to look stunning and who instantly made other women green with jealousy.
With Richard prowling around, Nikon slung round his neck as he searched for photo opportunities, Jo didn’t want to look any less gorgeous than
these professional beauties. Neither did she want to look tired and pale when she told him their wonderful news. Something sexy was definitely required.
She opened the wardrobe door and stood back as her black suede sandals, a fluffy pink slipper and a wire hanger fell out.
She searched through jackets, dresses, skirts and trousers, rejecting outfit after outfit until she came upon the perfect one an elegant midnight blue slip dress which looked deceptively simple unless you knew how much it had cost and realised that only brilliant and expensive designers made bias-cut gowns so flattering.
Jo twirled in front of the mirror, twisting and turning to see her figure from every angle. She looked beautiful. A string of glass beads, tiny pearl earrings and high-heeled shoes completed the outfit.
With her tortoiseshell hair cascading down her shoulders in the natural waves she’d never managed to tame, dark eyes shimmering with a faint dusting of Lancome’s silvery grey eyeshadow and the dress swirling around her, she felt like some Thirties movie star. Katharine Hepburn maybe, she thought, remembering rainy Saturday afternoons watching I old movies on the TV. She sprayed her neck and wrists lightly with
perfume. Go get ‘em, Jo.