‘Well, Prof Morris is retiring at the end of the year and that’s going to leave a consultancy positiondisponibile. Sorry, I meanthere’s a job going and it would appear—’
‘You’re in line for it,’ breathed Mum reverentially. ‘Can you believe it, Ray, our baby a consultant, at only thirty-three?’
‘Dad, I will never forgive you for sending him on that Italian exchange in transition year.’ Ally knew she was being a bitch, but the irritation just bubbled out of her.
‘Now, now,’ said Mum, ‘it’s just excitement. You know he doesn’t mean anything by it.’
‘Sorry, Damo .?.?. I mean congratulations,’ muttered Ally.
She knew it sounded about as sincere as a fabric conditioner ad, and maybe she would have been better off staying at home and finishing up the last of the Singapore noodles and the dregs of the Merlot, but the truth was that she couldn’t have stood another minute of solitude. Mum smiled indulgently.
‘Not in good form this evening, love?’
‘No, I’m great,’ she lied.
Dad, of course, tuned out anything that wasn’t of immediate relevance to him.
‘Bloody good game of golf with Francis yesterday. Crafty bugger chipped in a putt from .?.?. five feet! As I said to him, that promotion must be going to your head .?.?.’
Oh, what fresh hell was this? She and Francis had split up on New Year’s Eve the previous year. Well, technically she’d split up with him, but it was one of those situations where, after five years of jogging along together, there was an unspoken recognition they’d stalled and someone was going to have to do the breaking-up. They’d been drifting for ages like two leaves in the same gust of wind. Mum, on the other hand, had spent the whole of New Year’s Day crying that she’d lost a son – she had even lost three pounds, at which she was secretly delighted, but Ally felt horribly guilty, especially when Dad had informed her in his most patriarchal tone that the day would come when she’d regret it. Today was feeling a lot like that day, especially as Dadsaw no reason not to continue his routine of Saturday golf with Francis and report on it at length.
‘And how was he?’ Mum’s tone was sorrowful.
‘Tearing form,’ declared Dad. ‘Senior management – next thing is a seat on the board. Francis is the one to watch, he comes up on the outside and pow! Gets his nose across the line when everyone’s eye is elsewhere. No fool, that lad. Oh, and did I mention he’s put a booking deposit on a house in Kiltiernan? Lovely view of the sea.’
It wasn’t that Ally wished Francis ill – far from it, he was a decent, kind, dependable guy with soft hands and sandy hair that was thinning slightly at the crown. They’d met after a rugby international with a group of mutual friends in a pub full of pints and scarves and jokes, and it had all seemed so suitable and so safe. Her family had embraced him instantly. He joked with Dad and bounced off Damo, while Mum clearly saw him as her second son. Family dinners with Francis had always been so happy, she thought ruefully. She’d loved his company too. Dinner-Party Francis was delightful: he cracked jokes, told self-deprecating stories, laughed heartily at everybody else’s. If only life could’ve been one long Christmas dinner, they’d still be together.
But once they moved from being a couple within the crowd to a couple alone together in an apartment, the high, exciting waves they’d been surfing seemed to recede and they were left bobbing around in something perfectly amiable while wondering how to get the buzz back. They’d played house in their two-bedroom apartment. They invited friends for meals that Ally cooked out of Jamie Oliver’sComfort Foodon a Saturday night. They had regular sex, vanilla mostly, except when Francis got an idea from Pornhub and she obliged by dressing up as a Garda and spanking him on the bottom with a wooden salad server. Francis loved it but she secretly had her eye on the digital clock thewhole time. Half an hour was her limit.
Gradually, they’d found themselves living more and more separate lives. Ally used to tell herself that it was perfectly healthy to give each other space and that all couples moved into that phase once the honeymoon period was over. Although she couldn’t help noticing that Maeve and Rob hadn’t seemed to, and her parents were still embarrassingly tactile with each other for old people – she’d even caught Dad feeling Mum’s bottom during the heatwave.
‘Ally .?.?. Al .?.?. hello?’
Maeve had managed to drag her attention away from little Luna, who was busy making two bits of broccoli act out a very violent scene, and was waving at Ally, trying to get her attention.
‘Listen, Al, I was just thinking about you the other day .?.?. A single friend of mine has just bought herself a two-bed place – why don’t you sell your little one-bed apartment and upgrade to a two-bed, and then you can rent out a room? It’d be a sacrifice in the short term but you’d have a more valuable asset going forward. I mean, there’s a lot of building going on so there’s availability and nothing’s going down in price any time soon.’
They’ve given up on me, she thought. They want me to at least have a gaff I can grow old in so they can stop worrying. I’m the unclaimed treasure left as a warning to twenty-somethings everywhere. And that was without knowing about the Celtic Concrete debacle. Crikey.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Maeve, I think that sounds very stressful.’
She was conscious of Mum looking at her with her head on one side and tutting.
Oh God, everybody please stop focusing on me.
‘Would you not think of doing an MBA?’
‘A what?’
This was pure Damo A-type go-get-’em logic.
Damo eyed her diagnostically as he shovelled a forkful ofroast beef and brussels sprouts into his mouth after his fourteen-hour shift spent looking after the dodgy middle-class hearts of South Dublin.
‘You know, it might make you more marketable, help you climb the career ladder. And you never know who you might meet .?.?. though my mate Terry says they’re all married by now,’ he added crushingly.
She did realise Damo had no notion of upsetting her – it was just that his mindset as a surgeon was geared towards complete objectivity, which made it worse.
Are you crazy? she wanted to yell at them. The career ladder? I’ve just landed on the fucking biggest snake on the board and now I’m flat on my arse at rock bottom. I can’t even imagine getting started again. I couldn’t get started if I was clipped to a set of jump leads.
