Woman to Woman (8 page)

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.

It was eight o’clock exactly according to the clock on the dashboard. It was time to go in, time to face her husband and the entire staff of the News who undoubtedly knew exactly what was going on in her marriage. Or her non-marriage as the case might be, Aisling thought glumly.

The launch party had been going on for at least an hour already, she reckoned. But she had been sitting quietly in the car since she’d arrived, nervously fiddling with her car keys and wondering how to slip in as unobtrusively as possible.

Jo would be there, she reminded herself. Thank God for that. Even though it was over twelve years since she’d shared a matchbox-sized flat in Rathmines with the lively trainee journalist, they’d still remained friends.

Aisling knew that it was largely thanks to Jo’s determination that they’d seen each other regularly over the past ten years.

When their lives had diverged one of them climbing up the career ladder and the other climbing the stairs with piles of laundry Aisling had begun to wonder whether a high flyer like Jo would be bothered to keep in touch.

The question became academic when the demands of Jo’s job meant she had neither the time nor the energy to socialise outside work. Aisling found that two adorable baby boys required twice as much work as one. Consumed by love for her darlings, she retired from normal non-baby life until the boys reached school-going age and she began to pick up the pieces of her old life again.

Meeting Nuala, an old friend from work, Aisling realised that her world had changed utterly over the past few years while Nuala’s was just the same. Nuala talked about flexitime, staffing cutbacks and brokers who

irritated her on the phone. Aisling felt instantly boring, another mother droning on about her lovely children.

She wasn’t surprised when Nuala didn’t ring back to arrange another lunchtime meeting. That was why Aisling had assumed Jo would be the same. Too busy to squeeze in a hurried sandwich with someone she’d been close to years before. People changed, moved on.

It was a pleasant surprise to find out that she was wrong. Jo was determined to keep in contact, always on the phone or arriving for lunch when she was in the vicinity.

No matter how long an interval between their meetings, they would always slip back into their familiar friendship, laughing at the same things and reminiscing about the days when they hadn’t enough money for the gas meter and wrapped themselves up with blankets to keep warm while watching their tiny portable TV.

“I still have this recurring nightmare about not having the rent money and coming back to the flat to find our clothes on the road,” Aisling said, one freezing December morning when Jo had dropped by with Christmas presents for the boys and a beautiful enamelled brooch for

“I wake up thinking the landlord is banging on the door and the relief to find it’s all a nightmare.”

“I know the feeling,” Jo shuddered, even though they were sitting in front of the fire in Aisling’s primrose yellow living room.

“God, it was awful not to have enough money, always scraping by.”

“I was buying this gorgeous red jacket the other day and I was just at the cash register with my cheque book when I realised that it cost more than two months’ rent in Mount Pleasant Avenue! Isn’t that unbelievable?” Jo took another sip of coffee.

“I nearly put it back. I mean, two months’ rent! My mother would be horrified if she saw me spending that much money on clothes.”

“I think, by now, she’s figured out that you’ve expensive tastes in clothes!” laughed Aisling, looking pointedly at the elegant cream

crepe trouser suit Jo was wearing. And nobody’s likely to think that those shoes were in the 9.99 bargain bin in Penney’s.”

True.” Jo looked down at the cream-coloured soft leather pumps she was wearing.

“It’s crazy, really, the money I spend on clothes. But all the fashion correspondents are the same,” she protested.

“If I turned up at a fashion show in my old grey leggings and a sloppy old T-shirt, they’d all wet themselves with glee. So I have to spend money on clothes!”

Aisling laughed. No matter what elevated circles Jo moved in, she was always the same funny, kind and totally lacking in pretension. The same warm-hearted girl who’d lend her less glamorous flat mate anything, even her newest and best-loved dress.

Jo had always been a friend to rely on, the sort of person who’d be there with a box of tissues, a comforting hug and a buoyant speech no matter what happened, Aisling reflected. Unlike her sister, Sorcha, who was so tied up with her job in London that she barely had time to come home for Christmas, Jo genuinely enjoyed Aisling’s company. So what if Sorcha thought her older sister has turned into a non-person just because Aisling didn’t have a high-powered career by day, and didn’t go to management courses at night.

Jo Ryan, deputy and fashion editor of fashionable Style magazine, was one of Aisling’s best friends and not even Sorcha could call Jo boring. Lively, clever and a little bit wild, maybe. But boring, no.

Funny, warm, and a little too trusting when it came to men or so Aisling had always thought Jo had finally met the man of her dreams after years of meeting Mr. Wrong after Mr. Wrong.

“You’ll love him, Ash,” Jo said happily down the phone, one romance-filled week after meeting Richard.

“He’s perfect better than Richard Gere!”

“That good?” Aisling chuckled.

“Are you sure he’s real, or has he escaped from the pages of GQ?”

“He’s real all right.” Jo’s throaty laugh told Aisling everything.

The gorgeous photographer had obviously made it to first base. Aisling thought Jo should have waited a bit longer before going to bed with her new boyfriend. Michael had been her first and only lover. But, things were different now.

She hoped Richard wasn’t like some of the other men Jo had been involved with. Jo always seemed to make huge mistakes when it came to men. She fell for each one passionately and wholeheartedly, only waking up to their faults when it was too late. Maybe this time would be different.

Aisling hadn’t seen much of her friend since Richard had come on the scene. She briefly wondered if Jo had heard any rumours about Michael’s affair.

Surely not, she thought. Jo would have told her if she’d heard anything. Or would she? Aisling’s head was spinning thinking about it all. And I’m the one who thinks Jo goes around with rose-tinted glasses. How ironic.

Please let Jo be here tonight, Aisling prayed fervently. She and Jo always ended up sitting together at journalistic parties.

Aisling was grateful to her more extrovert friend for introducing her to the ever-changing pool of reporters, subs and photographers.

There were always loads of people she didn’t know, Aisling reflected, thinking of the occasions she’d tagged along with Jo after Michael had hot footed it in another direction.

“Come on and meet Lorraine,” Jo would say.

“She reviews books for The Times and you’ll have loads to talk about.”

Instantly, Aisling felt as if she belonged, as if she had something to talk about. Jo never made her feel colourless or uninteresting, the way Michael did.

When she was with Jo, Aisling felt more like her old self again, more like the girl who’d gone to the College of Commerce. Christmas party as the blonde from Abba. Jo had been the red-haired one, in sequins and flares. Who cared that it wasn’t even fancy dress?

God, she thought, did I ever do that? What did we look like? They

hadn’t cared what they’d looked like after half a bottle of Malibu drunk in the toilets. She’d never been able to so much as look at a bottle of Malibu after that evening. Vodka didn’t give you such bad hangovers, Jo pointed out. Gin was even better.

I hope it isn’t one of those parties with nothing but wine, Aisling thought. Tonight, of all nights, she needed the buzz from a proper drink, the gentle loosening of inhibitions which made her feel less awkward.

Michael would probably give her one of his reproving looks when he saw her drinking. Once he’d been a great man for a few beers while watching TV, but he’d recently become very anti-booze and patted his now flat stomach smugly as he refused his customary weekend Budweiser.

He wanted to stay lithe for his girlfriend, no doubt, she thought bitterly.

“I’m not drinking beer at home any more,” he’d informed her in January, when she’d just unpacked the shopping all on her own and was stowing two six-packs in the larder.

“It’s so unhealthy. And a few glasses of red wine is much better, and more enjoyable. That’s what the Italians drink every day and look at how healthy they are.” He looked pointedly at Aisling as she guiltily took a large tub of Bailey’s ice cream out of a shopping bag. Ten billion calories at least.

“A friend told me that scientists actually recommend a couple of glasses of red wine a day along with a Mediterranean diet,” he

“I must get one of my students to do a piece on it.”

Aisling wondered if the ‘friend’ he’d talked about then was the same femme fatale he’d taken to Le Caprice and if the bitch preferred wine connoisseurs to men who drank pints?

Probably. Maybe she was one of those women who delicately sipped two white wine spritzers before loudly proclaiming that she would only drink mineral water for the rest of the night.

How different from me, Aisling thought. Practically under the table after five gin and tonics, she often ended up giggling and silly at

parties. Of course, enduring Michael’s diatribe in the taxi home was part and parcel of these occasions.

“How could you tell that story tonight?” he thundered the night Aisling told the managing director’s wife her hilarious story about the first time she had her diaphragm fitted.

“Jesus, I shouldn’t bring you to parties if you’re going to embarrass me like this. I don’t know what they’re going to think.”

There was no point, Aisling decided, in saying that the managing director’s wife had obviously loved the story and had burst out laughing as soon as a shocked Michael was out of earshot. No point at all, really.

Who the hell was Michael to tell her she shouldn’t have a few drinks at parties? He was screwing some damn woman, breaking his marriage vows as if they weren’t worth the paper they were written on. He had no right to tell her what she could or couldn’t do. She’d drink what she felt like, especially tonight.

Maybe she did drink too much when she was out. So what?

If she felt inadequate in his friends’ company, he was responsible.

He always kept her at arm’s length from his colleagues and made her feel stupid in contrast to the editor’s wife, a physics lecturer no less.

Well, Michael certainly couldn’t make her feel any worse than she did now. He’d already found another woman, what could top that for humiliation? Blast him! She was going to have the biggest drink she could lay her hands on and she didn’t give a damn if Michael saw her do it.