He nodded, but seemed preoccupied, only half listening.
‘My cousin Laura, when her boy Jack got married, the band didn’t turn up and so someone grabbed a couple of speakers and they put on a playlist and honestly, it was the best night ever, even your dad danced!’ She pulled a wide-eyed face, knowing Aiden, like her, was aware of his lack of coordination on the dance floor. ‘People were shouting out their favourite tunes and on they came! It was like a jukebox, it was fab.’
‘Sounds it.’
‘I guess what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t need to be perfect. Things never are.’
‘No, they’re not, are they?’ He looked at her now and she tried to read between the lines. ‘Things got pretty heated after you left yesterday.’
‘In what way? Between you and Iris?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Trish was really drunk, as you might have noticed.’
‘I did, but that’s her business in her home, maybe she was nervous or—’
‘No, Mum. It’s a regular thing. A fairly new regular thing by all accounts. I get the impression she’s always been a bit of a free spirit.’
‘... she was beautiful and quite wild, which I found insanely attractive...’Dominic’s words came to her now.
‘But Iris is worried about her, obviously, and when she tried to move her up to bed, after you’d gone, Trish got a bit aggressive and then Dominic arrived home, and he and Trish had a row. It wasn’t great to see. She was screaming at him, about him not being there, about being distant, telling him to go, then asking him to stay. It was all a bit...’ He exhaled. ‘I didn’t know whether to hang around and be there for Iris or to give them space, it was bloody awful.’
‘It sounds it.’ She felt sorry for them all and hated that she might inadvertently be a small part of it.
‘I want to marry Iris, more than anything I want that, but if she said let’s fly to Vegas and do it in our jeans, I’d like that even more.’
‘It’s your wedding too, it has to be what you both want.’ She was desperate for him to get to the point of what ailed him and wanting so badly to warn him yet again to slow things down, to take the time to make sure it was really what he wanted.
‘Everyone says that, don’t they, but it seems to me that it’s all about compromise and one of you saying yes to keep the peace or make the other happy.’
‘I guess so.’ Holly, she knew, had every last detail worked out; Aiden would merely have been required to turn up and say, I do! But it was not Holly he was marrying.
‘How do I tell Iris that Holly is pregnant?’
‘For the love of God! Youstillhaven’t told her?’ She put her mug down, her voice raised.
‘Does it sound like I’ve told her? I wouldn’t be asking, would I, if I had!’ He raised his voice a little.
Enya sighed. ‘Your sarcasm is quite unbecoming.’
She was still a little startled at how it took no more than a light strike of a match to set things ablaze and how quickly the fire of disharmony took hold. It was a pattern that was tiring, and she was more than a little sick of being his verbal punchbag, his and everyone else’s.
‘And you’re right, of course, silly old Mum!’ She raised her voice. ‘And so I guess my advice is the same today as it was yesterday and the day before that and no doubt it’ll be the same tomorrow: tell her sooner rather than later as the longer you keep it from her, the less favourable a response you’re going to get. I don’t know how else to put it! Keeping it a secret only compounds the problem. And forgive me if I’m not mentally in tip-top form this morning. I had a rather disturbed night, on account of your pregnant ex sneaking into my room in the middle of the bloody night, when I was unaware she was in the house, which gave me a flipping heart attack!’
Her words, bluntly delivered, now coasted on pent-up anger; she was entirely over being shoved with the shitty end of the stick when none of this was her doing!
‘What?’ He screwed his eyes up in disbelief.
‘You heard me, and when I screamed, Phil, Jenny and Maeve – who, incidentally, was armed – came running in and we all had a cup of tea in our PJs! That was until I inadvertently announced thatyou were getting married, and everyone rolled their eyes and left in a huff, like I was a toxic thing to be avoided! As if it’smethat’s caused this whole bloody pantomime. And it’s not me, Aiden, it’s nothing to do with me, actually, but you’re not here, Jonathan’s not here, and it appears to be me who is the sounding board, the kicking post, or the shoulder to cry on! And truth be told, I’m getting a little pissed off with it all!’
‘You told them I was getting married?’ This apparently what he’d chosen to take from her monologue.
‘Yes, Aiden, I did. Because, as I might have mentioned, I am losing track of what you have said and what you are keeping secret.’
‘I’m not keeping anything secret.’ He sounded most indignant.
‘You are though! You are!’ She banged the table. ‘You hadn’t told Holly, the expectant mother of your child, that you’re getting married in a matter of weeks and you haven’t told Iris, the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with, apparently, that you’re having a baby with your ex-partner, have I missed anything?’
‘You make it sound so simple!’ he barked.
