‘Lillian!’ Shocked, Lou sat down beside her mother, all thoughts of behaving differently gone.
‘I didn’t want you to worry, sweetie,’ Lillian went on. ‘I’m quite ready to go if it’s my time.’
‘Lillian, Mum ... Please don’t talk like that,’ said Lou, genuinely horrified. ‘Heart issues can be so well managed ...’
Mim’s father had had all manner of heart issues and open-heart surgery and he was doing incredibly well now. Imagine Lillian having open-heart surgery – Lou felt her own heart flutter with the anxiety of it. How could she possibly have kept her mother at arm’s length when this was going on? She must have been mad; Lillian was hermother, the person she had looked after all her life. Lou felt the guilt flood her and all plans to remain coolly indifferent went out the window.
‘No, really, I am fine,’ said Lillian, beginning to sound anything but fine. ‘I’m fine, sweetie. All I need is a little rest. A holiday. It was such a lovely notion to go out to Sicily. Clever old you and Toni.’
Another blast of guilt hit Lou. Sicily. Should she have gone ...?
‘Tell me exactly what the issue is,’ she said.
‘Dr Ali suggested some tablets. I wish you’d been with me ...’ said Lillian with a little sigh. ‘One does need someone in these very difficult traumatic moments in doctor’s surgeries because one forgets things.’
‘Of course you do,’ said Lou, pressing her hands.
Had Lillian got thin? She anxiously scanned her mother and there didn’t appear to be anything different, but she was pale around the eyes ... was that it? Of course, everyone in Sicily had looked in the rudest of health thanks to the glow of the sun and their tanned skin.
‘Have you been eating properly? I know I didn’t leave anything for you when I went. I normally leave meals in your freezer.’
Lou’s guiltometer was reading very high now.
‘It has been a bit tricky,’ admitted Lillian.
Lou noticed that she was wearing a very beautiful golden cuff bracelet on one arm. It was new, Lou was sure.
‘Lillian, that’s so pretty,’ she said, pleased to have something to praise.
‘A gift,’ said Lillian quickly. ‘Peadar and the boys thought I needed cheering up after the art prize. It was so difficult. I know you understand, sweetie.’
‘Of course I do,’ said Lou.
In the back of her head, the Barking Dog reared and began to howl. What else had Lou missed by being away? Emily seemed to be doing terribly well, but if there had been an emergency Lou wouldn’t have been there and Ned, well Ned managed things on his own, but she was his wife and work ... Blossom. Oh gosh, a slush of fear and anxiety washed over her. Blossom ... how could she have walked out? What disasters might have happened in her absence? That was completely insane. What had she done?
‘I don’t suppose you could cook something for me, sweetie?’ asked her mother. Lou dragged herself out of the morass of anxieties, guilt and roads not taken, to concentrate on her mother.
‘Of course,’ she replied automatically. It had all felt so different earlier. She knew what she was going to say. She was going to say that if she had known about Angelo earlier, when Dad had been alive, she’d have been able to talk to him and reassure him that he was her real father. That would have helped her so much. She was going to say that how Lillian had broken the news was so hurtful. She was going to tell her that their relationship was going to change.
But with her mother sitting beside her, clearly worried sick about her health, things were different.
‘Let’s not talk about any of that, Lillian,’ she said. ‘The important thing is that you’re here and you can have a little break and we can talk about your health.’
Now was not the time to say anything about Angelo, Sicily or changing their relationship. There was time enough for that when Lillian was better.
Toni had been interviewed by people who could talk for five minutes without ever asking a question. She was extremely good at waiting for the actual question to be asked instead of many random comments, where the reporter was just hoping she might jump in with a sound bite.
Elaine played no such games.
‘This morning, we have Toni Cooper with us and Toni, host ofTonight with Toni, is on to discuss the fallout of a panel interview on a radio show where she clashed with one of the country’s top executives and which has left some people questioning her position here. Good morning, Toni. Tell us exactly what happened.’
No waffle there, Toni thought, grinning at Elaine.
‘Good morning, Elaine,’ she began. ‘It’s great to be here to be able to put the record straight.’ Without waiting for any prompts, she dived in: ‘One of my roles, one for which I receive no salary, is as chair of Women in Business, which is an organisation set up to help women achieve similar success in the workplace to their male counterparts. As listeners know, women still don’t have equal pay for equal jobs in a lot of the world and WIB is trying to redress that in Ireland. We’re not a lobby group; instead, we mentor women and use the WIB as a networking tool to help women who are trying to gain foothold in positions of power in businesses. As part of that work, we share information on pay rates in companies that are proactively hiring women and those that are not proactively hiring women.’
‘That does call into question the issue of workplace privacy. Some companies don’t want salaries revealed,’ said Elaine.
‘You are entitled to reveal your own salary,’ explained Toni. ‘Not anybody else’s. However, if we take it that there are more males in executive positions in companies, then we’re in a system where a company can say women are paid equally to their male counterparts, but the reality is that we’re not playing rounds of golf with the boys, we’re not going to international rugby matches, we’re not going on’ – and she couldn’t help herself here – ‘team-building weeks in Donegal, where we stay out for a night to prove how hard we are.’
