Woman to Woman (56 page)

The painters are coming tomorrow Jo said in a faint voice.

“I know, I know. I’ll ring them up and tell them not to come until Tuesday afternoon.”

“Sugar?” inquired the man who’d been working the kango hammer.

Two, please said Jo, ‘and do you have any biscuits?” Or Prozac?

They drank their tea and talked about how the rain had delayed the work, how the plumbing had delayed the work and how there was some problem with the phone line according to the man from Telecom.

“Oh, did I tell you that he came?” asked Tom.

Jo speed-munched her way through three fig rolls and drank a cup of very sweet tea before climbing the stairs. The pale wooden banisters were thick with concrete dust, lumps of plaster had found their way onto the steps. Jo ignored it.

As she walked into the second bedroom, she realised that the painters would have to spend days cleaning the walls and woodwork.

At least the cork tiles in the bathroom would only need a wash. But the pale green carpet in the smaller bedroom was so dusty Jo knew she’d have to replace it. She thought about the mounting bills and decided that judicious hoovering would have to do for the moment. Maybe she could rent one of those industrial carpet cleaners and do it herself. Then again, she thought gloomily, at seven months pregnant she was hardly in any condition to hoover anything except food up from her plate. She felt huge. Even her gynaecologist said so. Huge, broke and with a half-finished cottage hanging around her neck like a millstone. She poked at a bit of carpet with her shoe. A cloud of dust rose like white smoke from the Vatican. Blast.

If anyone asked her what she wanted for her birthday in a couple of weeks, she’d ask for a carpet-cleaning voucher.

The kango hammer started up again, the noise practically drowned out the thoughts in her head. God, what a waste it had been coming, up here today. But she had to do something on her day off instead of slobbing around Aisling’s house. It was lovely of Aisling to have offered her spare room for the two weeks when Jo was homeless make that six weeks and lovely to spend time with her friend, the first time they’d actually lived together since their flat-sharing days. But she preferred her own space to living with someone else, even if that someone was as easy-going as Aisling. And now that Sam was there every minute of the day, Jo was beginning to feel like a gooseberry. An enormous gooseberry.

She went into the main bedroom and idled away a few moments imagining

how she was going to decorate it. She’d picked a rich yellow paint to go with the cream and buttermilk curtains she fancied. But the curtain material would have to wait. God only knew how much extra the contractor would charge.

She was staring out at the muddy wasteland at the front of the cottage wondering how it could possibly be transformed back into something resembling a garden, when the baby kicked. Jo’s face grew soft as she stroked her belly lovingly.

The baby was always kicking these days, but Jo didn’t mind, except when it happened all night. On those days when she felt depressed, miserable and lonely at the thought of having the baby all by herself, all it took was a gentle reminder from her little passenger to cheer her up.

“I’m off she said to Dick, the kango-hammer man, who’d stopped the machine once he saw her making her way carefully down the stairs.

“Bye, Tom she called into the sitting room.

“He’s gone, “Dick said.

Charming, thought Jo. Rips up the kitchen floor and buggers off. What a worker.

It had started to rain. Again. She trudged through the mud where she and Mark had once negotiated nettles and long grass, and got into her car.

She’d had to push the driver’s seat back so she could fit her bump behind the steering wheel. Her size also meant she’d outgrown practically everything she owned, including her maternity trousers. Aisling was going to bring her shopping tomorrow, ‘early, so we’ll avoid the Saturday crowds’, she’d said. Aisling was great. She’d even sorted through her old ‘fat’ clothes to find something to fit Jo.

A flowery over shirt Aisling had produced, her own black maternity skirt and a pair of pale grey ski boots were today’s deeply unflattering outfit. Wedged into the driver’s seat, Jo couldn’t see her feet, but she just knew that the ski boots were filthy from the muck outside the cottage.

There was no way she could go into the supermarket in this state. Damn and blast.

She turned the key in the ignition. The engine made a high-pitched whirring noise, gave a little shudder and then died. Damn, damn, damn. She turned the key again. Same outcome. I do not believe this is happening, she shrieked. She tried again and when the engine made a third halfhearted attempt to get going, she thumped the steering wheel angrily.

Bloody car. This is the perfect time for you to pack it in!

She levered herself out of the car, marched back into the cottage and gave Dick the fright of his life when she tapped him on the shoulder.

“Jesus.” he yelled.

Jo was not in the mood for conversation.

“My car won’t start. Will you have a look at it?”

By the time Dick had pulled off his dusty overalls, tried the car a few times and spent ten minutes with his head under the bonnet poking around, Jo was at boiling-point.

“It’s your starting motor,” he pronounced finally.

“Which means what, exactly?” Jo asked irritably.

“It’s not going anywhere today,” he replied.

Jo felt as if she’d been deflated.

“What will I do?” she asked.

“Can you give me a lift to a garage or something?” she pleaded.

“Tom’s got the van and he’s not coming back for a couple of hours. He’s running over to check on a job in Bray. But I’ve got a mobile. You can ring someone.”

Rhona’s mobile phone squawked that she was either out of coverage or had her unit turned off.

Rhona was out all day, Nikki was in London and everyone else in the office was at lunch, Annette said when she answered the phone.

“I can’t go anywhere,” Annette said, deeply apologetic, ‘the man’s coming to fix Tom’s word processor and I’ve got to be here. I’ll get someone to pick you up as soon as … oh, hold on, Jo, will you.”

Jo sheltered from the rain under the porch of the cottage.

She wouldn’t be able to hear a thing Annette was saying from inside the cottage since Dick had started kango-ing again.

She’d have to get her own mobile phone. More money. Why hadn’t she bothered joining the AA? Why, why, why?

“Jo?” said a man’s deep voice. She gasped. It was Mark.

“What’s happened?”

She’d managed to avoid him for ages, had been frostily polite in the office, disappeared as fast as a heavily pregnant woman could whenever he seemed to be walking towards her desk to talk to her. Now there was no escape.

“My car’s broken down. It’s the starting motor, apparently.

I’ve got no one to bring me home she wailed.

“And I don’t know who to ring. It’s never actually broken down on me before.”

“Where are you? And how do you know it’s the starting motor?”

“I’m at the cottage. Redwood Lane. One of the builders looked at it for me. It’s his phone I’m using but he doesn’t have the van because Tom’s gone to Bray.”

If Mark was confused by this explanation, he didn’t let on.

“Leave it to me he said firmly.

“I’ll arrange for a tow truck to pick the car up and I’ll come and get you myself. Give me three-quarters of an hour.”

He must have really pushed the Porsche to the speed limit.

Only twenty-five minutes later his car roared down the lane and stopped outside the house.

“Nice car said Dick appreciatively, sipping another cup of tea. Too much tea, that was why the cottage was like a disaster area, Jo thought testily. Maybe she should swipe the tea bags and see how much Dick got done without a tea break every half an hour.

“Your fella, is he?” Dick inquired with interest.

Jo sniffed.

“No.”

“Mmm.” Dick muttered, as if he’d noticed the eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick she’d carefully applied in the bathroom mirror. She hoped his nose was too bunged up with cement dust to smell the liberal application of Tresor. If only she’d been able to find her brush. Not that she could have done much repair work when her hair was so damp and frizzy.

Mark swept up the path, a dark brown waxed raincoat flapping around his long legs. He looked far more at home in the wilds of the Dublin mountains than she did. Apart from her ski boots.

He also looked healthily brown after two weeks in the Maldives, the honey colour of his skin made the grey streaks in his short hair stand out even more. He was sickeningly attractive, sexy and most definitely not ‘my fella’, thought Jo desolately.

“Hello,” she said in a small voice.

“Come and sit in my car while I have a look at the engine.”

He put a strong arm around her. They walked slowly down the path. He pushed the passenger seat back, helped her in carefully and said, “I won’t be a moment.”

Jo watched him stride back to her car and lift the bonnet capably. Mark did everything capably, everything from running several businesses to fixing the coffee maker in the office when Annette said it couldn’t be fixed.

He’d made her feel safe, comforted and special for a few months. And she’d pushed him away and into the arms of his old girlfriend. Well, he’d hardly gone to the Maldives alone.

A few minutes later, Mark opened the car door, threw his raincoat into the back and eased his big frame into the driver’s seat.

“It’s the starting motor, all right. Someone from my garage is coming to get it. They’ll have it for you tomorrow afternoon.”

“Will it be expensive?” she asked tiredly.

Mark shot her a glance.

“No. I doubt it. It’s just a small job.”

“Really?”

“Really. I don’t suppose you’ve had any lunch, Jo, have you?”

he asked kindly.

Nobody said her name like that but Mark, with that mixture of warmth and something else, something she could never define. Tenderness. Was that it? Couldn’t be. Why would he bother being kind to her when she’d been such a bitch to him?

Jo bit her lip and looked out the window at the small patchwork fields speeding by, dark with mud. Cows huddled together in the rain, monotonously chewing silage from big metal troughs. They looked as wet as she was. They looked depressed too. Being a cow couldn’t be much fun.

She felt a hand on hers, a warm, strong hand clasping her small, cold one for a moment, “Let’s go to Johnny Fox’s. I could do with a decent pint of Guinness and some lunch, how about you?”

Jo couldn’t say anything. She just nodded.

, “Good. And you can tell me why you’re still up to your eyes in builders a month after they started.”

“Don’t get me going on builders said Jo, brightening up.

“Honestly, I don’t know what they’re playing at. They know I’m in a hurry to move in but they don’t seem to be working any faster to make up for lost time.”

“Have you spoken to Brian recently?” Mark put his hand back on Jo’s after negotiating a sharp bend.

“He’s the best contractor I know. He usually runs a pretty tight ship.”

“He’s away all this week.” Jo was almost afraid to move in case she dislodged his hand from hers. It felt lovely to be touched, so comforting to have his fingers gently curled around hers.

“I’ll ring his office later,” Mark said, ‘and put the skids under those boyos at your house. Brian must be paying them too much if they’ve all got mobiles, and I don’t want to make them millionaires at your expense.”

Thanks,” Jo said gratefully.

“I know I should be tougher on them myself, but I’m just not up to it right now. If they said anything back to me, I know I’d cry.” She was sick of acting hard-as-nails with Mark. He didn’t have to know that when she felt like crying, it was because she’d messed up her chances with him. Nobody knew that, not even Rhona.

Jo had lost count of the times when she’d lain in bed and wondered what he was doing, who he was doing it with.

She still had the ticket stub from their trip to America in her purse

and sometimes she took it out and touched it, remembering the few days they’d had together. When anything seemed possible, even a love affair between a pregnant woman and her boss.

Jo had searched the gossip columns relentlessly, keeping an eye out for mentions of glamorous half-French painters or wealthy businessmen. But there’d been nothing.

Once or twice, she’d thought of telling Rhona what had happened, that she’d lied to Mark about Richard. Then she’d stopped herself. Mark had to be in love with Eva and Rhona knew about it, Jo was sure. Telling Rhona that she was in love with Mark would put the other woman in a difficult position.

Jo could almost hear her words, “They’re getting married, Jo, as soon as she can get a divorce.”

Mark looked over and grinned at her, the tiny lines around his grey eyes crinkled up attractively.

“I have tissues in the glove compartment if you feel like a good sob,” he offered.

“But I hope I can cheer you up.”

You sure could, Jo thought silently.

He stopped the car outside the highest pub in Ireland and hurried around to help Jo out of her seat.

Oh God, she thought, remembering the muddy ski boots.

“I look a mess,” she sighed. These horrible boots and everything.”

Mark took her face in both hands and kissed her gently on the lips.

“You look absolutely beautiful, as always, Jo.”

Still holding her upturned face, he stared at her carefully, eyes taking in her huge dark eyes fringed with thick lashes.

She stared back at him, wondering if she’d dreamed the last moment. She looked an absolute mess with her frizzy hair and her awful clothes. Had he really kissed her and told her she was beautiful? It was like some glorious dream.

Mark was watching her intensely, fingers warm on her skin and suddenly she knew what he was waiting for. A response.

He wasn’t sure, he’d taken a chance. What a fabulous, marvelous, perfectly timed chance.