In the meantime, Vera was their go-to help. If there were any problems, Vera could always call on Cynthia next door, who was only mad to get in and have a go at India herself. Cynthia was the backup babysitter and was getting into training, as she explained, because Shazz was pregnant.
‘I don’t know how this has happened,’ Shazz had said, the day she’d imparted the news to Ted and Sam in the driveway. Shazz was still tall, blonde, beautiful and there was a hint of a tanned bump spreading out from underneath her crop-top. Her belly button was an outie and it had already popped out a little bit.
‘No idea how it could have happened?’ said Ted, deadpan.
‘I don’t know, I mean it’s ... confusing,’ Shazz said, as if she’d never had a single sex education lesson in her life.
Cynthia was more prosaic about the impending birth of her first grandchild.
‘Shazz never did pay much attention in school and I think she thought that pregnancy happened to other girls. It’s not that she doesn’t know how it happened, it’s just that she has absolutely no idea how it happened to her. Because Shazz is one of those people who coasted through life with good things happening to her.’
Shazz certainly seemed to be enjoying pregnancy and delighted in going around with her tiny bronzed beach-ball belly on show for all to see.
‘Mum says it’s winter and I should be wearing more clothes, but you know, I’m hot,’ she said.
Sam giggled. Even in previous winters, Shazz had worn skimpy little clothes all the time and being pregnant wasn’t really changing that, except for the fact that her pink hair was now blonde and tipped with a fabulous feathery purple.
‘Have you got names for the baby?’ Ted asked. Ted loved Shazz and her dizzy madness. He looked at her as if she was a sort of slightly daft alien from the planet Moon-Dust, a planet where normal rules did not apply and where the inhabitants lived in a lovely hazy world of unicorns and moonbeams.
‘Yeah,’ said Shazz dreamily. ‘I just can’t get my head around the right sort of names. Petal and Flower, I love all those names, but Unicorn – that’s so pretty and I have a unicorn tattoo on my lower back. Have I ever showed it to you?’
‘Yes,’ fibbed Sam.
‘Yes,’ agreed Ted hurriedly, ‘we’re fine, we don’t need to see the tattoo. Today. Again, I mean.’
Sam grinned. While Ted loved Shazz, he was also a bit scared of her.
‘I was going to get it coloured in, but I’ve been told that you shouldn’t have any tattoos done when you’re pregnant, so I’m going to be careful because I’m going to be a good mum, like you, Sam. You can explain to me how to be a good mum.’
‘Your mother could explain how to be a good mum because she’s amazing,’ Sam had said.
‘I know,’ said Shazz, ‘but she’s, you know, old. I mean you’re old too, but you’re different old, you’re young old, you know.’
Sam grinned at the memory as she drove off down the road. With Cynthia and Shazz living next door it was always lively. Vera and Cynthia had struck up a surprising friendship and spent much time talking to one another about baby India’s routine. All in all, thought Sam as she headed towards Ballyglen, she was incredibly lucky.
Even work was flying. Somehow, they’d managed to keep the lid on the whole credit card scandal in Ballyglen and Andrew had covered the whole of the misappropriated funds personally. Today, Sam was going to visit the local nursing home who’d received some funding from the charity and to see their whole place. She couldn’t bear to think that they would miss out on thousands of euros of help.
She’d downloaded a book onto her phone, stuck the jack into her car dashboard and prepared to listen to Jane Austen all the way there. All was right with her world.
Ginger
December had arrived with a ferocious blast in Dublin. An unexpected flurry of snow overnight had turned mainly to slush and as Ginger looked out of her bedroom window onto the street below, she could see nothing but a mild dusting of early snow on the car roofs. She could still feel the chill in the air, even though her heating had come on. No matter what the weather was though, she walked, although today it would have to be a speedy one – today she had a horrible job to do in Ballyglen and a photographer was picking her up in an hour.
Carla must have mentioned that no newspaper had still got the exclusive on Jason Reynolds’ abandoned wife – now apparently exonerated by the police – and Carla thought it would be wonderful to ‘have someone with Ginger’s empathy talk to her’. Yeah, right.
She pulled on her dressing gown, went out into the living room, switching on lights, and greeted her beloved guinea pigs.
‘Good morning darlings,’ she said, reaching into their luxury guinea pigs’ duplex. There was no sign of either of them: burrowing in their soft nests against the early cold, she figured.
Her walk had become an integral part of her day. It was her meditation. How had nobody told her that when you walked and breathed in the fresh air, and looked at the trees growing around you and the canal floating beside you with its birds and wildlife, that your mind could be freed to rest. It wasn’t the hardcore workout sessions she’d done with Will, but in some ways it was better.
She tried not to think about Will so much anymore. It was easier that way. Love hurt.
That was another thing she thought a lot about on her morning walks, that love hurt so much. She must have been crazy to have dreamed of love and men and finding that perfect person to spend her life with. What if you found the perfect person and they still hurt you? What happened then? She had meant to throw out all the novels she’d loved for years, where heroic men won the hearts of women who had been through so much, but she couldn’t bear to do it and now she allowed herself to read them, for comfort.
Sometimes you need to comfort yourself because nobody else is going to do it. You need to be kind to yourself. Remember that, girls: you have to take care of you and find the simple things that make you happy. For me, it can be books, but for you it might be chocolate, or a run, or talking with your friends or talking to your mother or hugging your pet.
Ginger had given that advice in a Girlfriend column just the other week and she hadn’t flinched when she’d written about her mother. She’d been so lucky with her family, even if her mother hadn’t been there. But her mother had left her so many wonderful things, like her father and her two brothers and Aunt Grace and then Esmerelda had come along, as had Zoe, Margaret, Jodie, Paula, Lulu and Fiona. There were so many wonderful people in Ginger’s life.
