Happy Ever After

  To my dear and precious Dad, who has been so strong for us and minded us all so well and kept us going this past eighteen months.

  You’re the best father in the world and we love you so much.

  The great question . . . which I have not been able to answer . . . is, ‘What does a woman want?’

  Sigmund Freud

  PROLOGUE

  DEBBIE

  It was hard to believe the honeymoon was over, Debbie Kinsella thought ruefully as she surveyed the shambles that was their bedroom. Bryan had half a dozen art-gallery catalogues strewn over the floor on his side of the bed. Three cool T-shirts she’d bought in Gap for her half-sister, Melissa, lay on top of the chest of drawers. Who would have ever thought she would end up buying a present for the teenager she’d despised for so long, she mused, putting the T-shirts on hangers so they wouldn’t crease. Debbie felt an unwelcome pang of conscience, remembering how unfriendly and unkind she’d been to Melissa over the years. She’d been so angry and bitter at her father for leaving that she hadn’t been able to bear to see him happy with his new family. When Melissa was born, Debbie had finally given up on the wistful notion that Barry and Connie would reunite. Melissa had been a focus for her anger for a long time. It had been undeserved, and Debbie was ashamed of herself and anxious to make amends. Hopefully, her half-sister would like the T-shirts she’d chosen for her, thought Debbie as she placed the hangers on the wardrobe door-knob.

  The linen basket was overflowing, and their cases were still unpacked, full of clothes that needed to be washed. At this rate, she’d be washing for a week. Once, she would have gathered everything up and brought a bag full of clothes to the launderette and had them washed and ironed. It would have cost her. Ironing was expensive, but she wouldn’t have cared; it was money well spent, in her eyes.

  Now that they were saddled with a mortgage, loan repayments from the credit union for their wedding and honeymoon expenses, and a massive Visa bill, cashflow was a big issue, and the little luxuries that she and Bryan had taken so much for granted were going to have to fall by the wayside. Debbie had suggested going back to work on a Friday, as it was payday, and it would help them adjust to ‘normal life’ after all the excitement of the wedding and honeymoon. They’d only be in work one day, they’d have the weekend to recover, and they’d have money in their wallets. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, studying the disarray surrounding her, she wasn’t so sure.

  She let her wet towel fall to the floor and began to dress. At least she didn’t have to worry about what to wear, which was just as well, as she would have had to delve deep in their crammed, bulging wardrobe for something clean, and that, right at this moment, was not for the faint-hearted. Her uniform suit, neatly pressed, hung on the back of the door, and she gave herself a mental pat on the back for at least being that little bit organized. She brushed her shoulder-length copper hair, twirled it around and fastened it with a comb, loose tendrils escaping, framing her heart-shaped face. Her blue eyes, flecked with hazel, needed nothing more than a touch of grey, smudged eyeliner, which she applied with practised ease.

  It was weird getting dressed to go back to work. This day last week, she and Bryan had been strolling arm in arm through the Met in New York, admiring the work of the American photographer Walker Evans, part of the museum’s massive photography collection.

  That had been a particularly nice day, reflected Debbie as she dusted shimmer powder over her cheeks, wishing she could disguise the smattering of freckles on her nose and cheekbones. They had breakfasted in a little deli on East 52nd and then ambled the few blocks up Fifth Avenue, to Tiffany’s, where they’d bought each other a Heart Tag keyring as a memento of their honeymoon. They had carried on to the Met, where they spent a thoroughly enjoyable morning browsing the collections. Hunger had eventually forced them to drag themselves away that afternoon, and they had headed for Central Park and the Boathouse Restaurant on the lake. Sitting on the sun-drenched deck waiting for their prawns and salads to arrive, they watched the rowboats drifting by, the ducks and swans looking for titbits, as the sun glistened on the lake and the Manhattan skyscrapers soared above the trees on the opposite shore.

  Debbie had remembered the scene in Sex and the City when Big and Carrie fell into the lake, and almost had to pinch herself to make her realize that she was honeymooning in New York and she was now Mrs Bryan Kinsella. Oh yes, it had been a glorious and happy day, she smiled, fingering the gleaming gold wedding band that encircled the fourth finger of her left hand.

  She might have come down to earth with a bang, but at least she and Bryan had overcome their rocky times, and she couldn’t be happier. And bad enough as it was going back to work, at least she wouldn’t have to deal with her bullying boss, Judith Baxter, who was in hospital following a car accident. Word was she wouldn’t be in the office for a while, which was a huge relief to most of the staff and to Debbie in particular. Judith was a tyrant and had given Debbie a rough ride in the run-up to her wedding. She’d been down on her like a ton of bricks for any mistake. Even Debbie being a few minutes late had incurred Judith’s wrath, and she had stopped her pay increment for six months. Debbie had been shocked. That was uncalled for. She had been counting on her rise to help pay off her loans.

  She didn’t wish her boss ill, but there was no love lost between them and she’d be the first to admit that if she never saw the woman again she wouldn’t give a toss. Hard enough as it was returning to work, it would have been a thousand times harder if Judith had been waiting, hawk-like, to see that she was on time.

  She had to be thankful for small mercies, Debbie supposed as she raced downstairs, anxious not to be late on her first day back, Judith or no Judith. The post had come and, as she picked up what were mostly bills, her heart sank as she saw their Visa bill. She and Bryan were well maxed out on their credit card, and they really were going to have to tighten their belts big time in an effort to pay off their spiralling debts. Bryan would hate it, he was moaning about it already, but it was something they had to address before things got seriously out of hand.

  Debbie pulled the door behind her and hurried along the path. It was going to be a scorcher – how nice it would have been to take her lounger out on to their deck and flick through magazines and drink coffee. Would she ever be able to give up work? Or even work part time, job sharing, like some of the married women in her office did? Not unless she won the Lotto, she thought glumly. It was eight million this week – she must remember to buy a few Quick Picks. She’d do it at lunchtime. She tried to cheer herself up: she had as much chance of winning as anyone else had.

  She crossed the street, weaving in and out of traffic. Real life was back with a vengeance. At least she didn’t have the usual knot of tension in the pit of her stomach from worrying about Judith Baxter, she comforted herself as the noisy stop-start of car engines and squealing brakes and children crying in buggies as their mothers rushed to crèches grated on her ears. Although Sandymount wasn’t far from the city, driving in the rush hour was chaotic, and she and Bryan far preferred to take the train. But, sometimes, Bryan needed the car to travel to clients. At least she could walk to her office from the Dart and it kept her fit.

  Debbie quickened her pace and joined the morning commute.

  BRYAN

  ‘Come on, come on, come on!’ Bryan Kinsella sat behind the steering wheel of his Audi soft-top as the traffic inched along the Strand Road. He should have taken his chances and gone through the village and turned right for the East Link. He could see across to the Sean Moore road in the distance, and the traffic snaked along, bumper to bumper, hardly moving. Some mornings, if he went to work very early, he could get to the IFSC in less than ten minutes. It was easily going
to take the guts of an hour today.

  Was this what his life was going to be like, apart from his few precious weeks’ holidays? He groaned as the lights went red again. It was incredible to think that the wedding was over. The reception, which he’d looked forward to more than the ceremony, was a blur, and the honeymoon, which had been the trip of a lifetime, when he’d got to see as many of the cultural sights and scenes of New York as he possibly could, was now just a lovely dream. How he’d enjoyed strolling through myriad art galleries and studios, sipping lattes on sidewalk cafés, taking in shows, browsing in Borders and buying treasured books with not a care in the world.

  Now he was back to real life, with all its worries and pressures. He couldn’t even think about the amount of debt they were in after the honeymoon. Both their credit cards were up to their limits, as was the one he had himself on the sly, which Debbie knew nothing about. He had a credit union loan that she knew nothing about either, he thought guiltily, and he was barely managing to pay the interest on that. It looked as though their hefty mortgage was going to increase by another half a per cent, and he hadn’t paid the last telephone bill, even though he’d told Debbie he had.

  This was what being married did to a fella, he thought gloomily as he stared unseeingly out the car window. Why were women so anxious to get married? He didn’t understand it at all. He’d have been quite happy to mosey along in a smart, rented apartment in a good area, with no mortgage, for another few years, but Debbie had insisted they buy a house, saying that rent was money down the drain. He shouldn’t have bloody well listened to her. They’d bought their townhouse in Sandymount at the height of the property boom, when prices had rocketed, and paid mad money for it. Sandymount was an undeniably chic address, and he liked living there. He liked the village ambience, the upmarket delis, bistros and restaurants, the quirky shops. It was enjoyable to stroll along the seafront on Sunday, buy the papers and have lattes and eggs Florentine in Itsa4 for brunch. Or to go to Brownes on a Saturday night and indulge in their famous fresh salmon rillettes wrapped in smoked salmon or their to-die-for flaked crab. His mouth watered as he thought of his favourite dishes. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, and he was hungry.

  Now, a slump had hit, and there was no way they’d ever get the price they bought their house for if they went to sell it, so they were in negative equity on that front. If Debbie hadn’t been so impatient, they could have bided their time, rented and bought when prices dropped and it was a buyers’ market. He’d make sure to say that to Debbie’s mother, Connie, he thought grimly. She’d been pushing for them to get a house. She should have minded her own bloody business. He scowled, looking for someone to blame for his woes and thinking that Connie, his pushy mother-in-law, would fit the bill perfectly.

  Connie wasn’t his favourite person in the world. He always felt that she was judging him and finding him lacking – just because he didn’t spend every precious weekend stripping wallpaper or doing DIY. She’d obviously hoped for better for her only daughter. She hadn’t been able to keep a husband, so she needn’t bother looking down her nose at him, he decided, conveniently forgetting the very generous cheque she’d given to himself and Debbie, money she had worked hard to earn.

  The lights turned green, and the traffic moved a couple of yards before stopping again. He glanced in the mirror, approving of the way his tan made his eyes look a deeper shade of brown. He was a good-looking guy, he had to admit, and he turned this way and that, noting with dismay that he was beginning to get lines at the corners of his eyes. Hell, before he knew it he’d be thirty and Debbie would want children, and his life would be well and truly over. It was a daunting thought. Did other new husbands think like he did, or was it just him? He’d never been one for taking on responsibilities; it made him feel smothered. He would have quite happily lived with Debbie for the rest of his life with no marriage and no kids. Just the two of them, enjoying their freedom and having fun.

  Debbie would be well into the city on the Dart by now, even though he’d left much earlier than she had. Bryan wondered how she would react if he told her he’d like to quit his job and open up an art gallery. Not too well, he figured as he surfed the radio channels, coming to Lyric FM. The strains of ‘Lara’s Theme’ from Doctor Zhivago floated across the airwaves, and he sat imagining how his art gallery would look until an impatient beep from the car behind brought him back to reality and he inched another few yards towards work.

  CONNIE

  Oh God, let me win the Lotto, Connie Adams prayed silently as she knelt at the feet of Miss Eunice Bracken and eased a pair of tights over her spindle-thin, purple, varicose-veined legs.

  ‘Make sure they’re straight, Nurse. I don’t like wrinkles around the ankles. I’m not Nora Batty,’ Miss Bracken instructed bossily. She was an ex-headmistress, and she treated the staff in Willowfield Nursing Home like schoolgirls. Connie manoeuvred the tights up over Miss Bracken’s girdle and straightened the nylon slip down over her patient’s knees. She then slithered another nylon slip down over the old lady’s shoulders. Miss Bracken liked to wear two slips to keep out the cold, despite the fact that it was mid-summer.

  ‘My beige skirt, cream blouse and mint-green cardigan are hanging up in the wardrobe. I’ll wear them today.’ Eunice gave an imperious wave in that direction. ‘Lay them out neatly on the bed first.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Bracken, no, Miss Bracken. Three bags full, Miss Bracken,’ Connie thought irritably as she stood up and went to fetch the required clothes. What the hell was she doing being bossed around by a cantankerous old shrew at this stage of her life? Forty-eight years of age, twenty-nine of them a nurse, divorced mother of a newly wed twenty-five-year-old. Surely she was entitled to some respect?

  ‘And pass me over my amethyst brooch – it’s on the dressing table,’ came the next haughty instruction. Clearly, her patient thought she was there to wait on her hand and foot.

  ‘Certainly, Miss Bracken,’ Connie responded, amused in spite of herself. There was no point in going down the road of standing on her dignity. She had nursed the old trout before and knew the best way to deal with her was to ignore her bossiness and not let her get a rise out of her.

  A box of Terry’s All Gold chocolates lay open beside the antique brooch, and Connie gazed at them longingly. She was dying for her tea break. She had her period, and salt and chocolate cravings had kicked in. She’d bought herself a packet of King crisps for her break; a chocolate would be lovely with them. But she knew better than to nick one. Miss Bracken was notoriously mean. She counted her chocolates daily, and woe betide the staff if any of them were eaten.

  ‘Stop dawdling, Nurse,’ Miss Bracken ordered brusquely, and Connie had to fight hard to restrain herself from giving a sharp retort. She didn’t know if it was a menopausal thing or not, but lately she was feeling thoroughly grumpy and exasperated, going so far, one Sunday morning, as to send in a furious email to a panellist on a radio show who had made light of the overcrowding problems in A&Es. It hadn’t been read out, and she hadn’t known whether to be amused or irritated by her behaviour. Miss Eunice Bracken was pushing her luck, if only she knew it. Connie’s patience was hanging by a thread. Thank God her days doing agency nursing were coming to an end for the foreseeable future. She was looking forward to her new job as a part-time nurse to an elderly lady in Greystones, not far from where she lived. And, before that, she had a week in Spain with her sister-in-law, Karen, to look forward to. It was badly needed; she felt whacked.

  The stress of her daughter Debbie’s wedding had taken a lot out of her, more than she realized, she thought, stifling a yawn and sliding Miss Bracken’s beige skirt over her head. ‘Would you be careful what you’re doing, you’ve messed my hair,’ the elderly woman scolded, as her head emerged, hair slightly mussed, glasses awry, as Connie pulled the elastic-waisted skirt down over her thin frame. Miss Bracken suffered from arthritic hips and bad knees and couldn’t lift her right leg to step into a skirt.

  ‘Sorry,’ Co
nnie apologized. ‘I’ll brush your hair for you when you’ve finished dressing.’

  ‘You needn’t bother. I can do it myself, thank you,’ Eunice Bracken snapped irritably as a dart of pain shot through her. ‘Get me my tablets, and be quick about it. I’m tormented with my arthritis today.’

  ‘It must be the rain we’ve had the past few days,’ Connie said kindly, suddenly feeling sorry for the old lady in front of her. What sort of a life did she have? An intensely proud and independent woman like her, having to be helped to get dressed – it must be humiliating – and then she had to contend with a life of chronic and disabling pain. No wonder the poor thing was crabby.

  She handed the tablets and a glass of water to her patient and then resumed dressing her, closing the buttons on her blouse, a task Miss Bracken was unable to undertake because of her arthritic fingers.

  ‘You’re not the worst of them,’ her patient said grudgingly when Connie had finished her ministrations.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Bracken.’ Connie smiled, knowing she’d been paid quite a substantial compliment. ‘Let me walk you down to the day room and get you a nice cup of tea.’ She took the elderly lady’s arm, and they walked slowly from the room, down the hall, to a bright, airy, comfortable drawing room that looked out on to verdant lawns and massed beds of shrubs and flowers.

  ‘The chair by the window, quick now, before Mr McCall comes. He hogs it, you know. You’d think he owned it, the way he goes on,’ Miss Bracken declared, managing a little spurt as she triumphantly laid claim to the comfortable armchair. ‘Now you may get me my tea, and my Irish Times,’ she instructed, settling in comfortably and gazing with longing at the lovely garden. She’d been an avid gardener once, but her arthritis had put a stop to that. Now, all she could do was look and criticize the planting strategy of the lazy lump who looked after the gardens but was more often to be seen smoking and chatting to anyone who would listen to him. He could do with a haircut too. ‘That fellow looks like Worzel Gummidge,’ she sniffed when Connie handed her the newspaper, and couldn’t understand why she guffawed.