Always and Forever. Cathy Kelly

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      ‘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 Carrick well 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 СКАЧАТЬ