Page 8 of Filter This
He came into the kitchen carrying Georgie, and Shelly pasted a smile on her face.
‘Mama!’ Georgie reached for Shelly and Dan deposited her into Shelly’s arms and started pulling pages out of his laptop bag.
‘Hello, sweet baby! You slept well.’ Shelly nuzzled the little girl’s neck.
‘Peppa,’ Georgie shouted.
‘No, not till later,’ Shelly said firmly, smiling.
‘Peppa! Peppa! Peppa!’
Amy looked positively pained at the noise emitting from the child and consulted her phone while Shelly tried to calm Georgie down.
‘Peppa. I want Peppa!’
‘Marni’s on the WhatsApp, she says she’s two minutes away,’ Amy shouted over the child’s chanting.
Georgie immediately switched to shouting ‘Marni’ and, despite Shelly’s attempts at distraction, there was no let-up until Marni, the French minder who’d been with them for two years, walked in the door – at which point Georgie jumped down from Shelly’s arms and ran to the girl. Shelly tried to ignore the pang she felt as Marni swung Georgie up into her arms.
‘Let’s go and pick out your outfit, bébé!’ They headed upstairs, Georgie whispering excitedly in Marni’s ear.
‘Thank Christ,’ Dan snarked. ‘Someone nearly had to do some parenting there. I have a call in two, so if you could just keep it down out here,’ he said and headed into the room off the kitchen where Shelly and Amy usually did the flat lays.
Shelly slumped back against the peninsula. It wasn’t even nine and she felt like crying.
Amy remained buried in her phone – she had a knack for invisibility whenever things were awkward between Shelly and Dan – but a message from her on Slack dropped into Shelly’s alerts proclaiming the jam-packed day officially underway.
Pro-milk sponsored breakfast post – if you’re still so intent on this foodie angle, though you know my feelings on it, then we’ve got a car coming at 10 to bring you to set.
Shelly sighed. At least Amy had no interest in talking things out – it made things a bit more straightforward. Theirs was a strictly feelings-free relationship.
She began arranging Pro-milk (a dairy-free protein-enriched milk substitute) products on a tray. Amy thought the food blogging was a bit unglam for SHELLY but Shelly was keen to cut back on posts with her daughter in them and she wanted to diversify. PlusDurty Aul’ Townwouldn’t go on forever.
The show had been good for her when she and Dan had moved home from London, even if it was a bit of a come-down compared with what her RADA friends were doing. Though Plum, her bestie who kept her up to date with all the old crowd, loyally pooh-poohed this notion.
‘No one’s “made it”, Shelly. Delia’s doing guided tours of the London Dungeons playing a Victorian hooker with a heart of gold, Matt’s got an eczema ad in the works and Edwina’s already jacked it in and tossed off to Surrey with the prerequisite banker and baby on the way.’ At this, Plum abruptly shut up, having inadvertently described nearly exactly what Shelly’d done on graduating from RADA.
Plum didn’t get it – people needed security. Shelly hadn’t had a deprived childhood by any stretch, but when she’d arrived at RADA at twenty-one, she’d realised there was a whole other level of wealth that, growing up with her hard-working parents in Kimmage, she didn’t know the first thing about. When she’d been introduced to Charity, Plum’s posh mother, she’d made gaffe after gaffe – or at least that’s what it felt like. Charity and Plum loved her and never made anything of those blunders (Shelly cringed remembering how she’d described the family’s country house as ‘shabby chic’) but Shelly had felt painfully aware of their differences as the months and years passed.
She got out the faux marble board and steel cutlery and added them to the tray of props as she thought back to when she’d finished drama school. The possibilities had seemed endless. She and all her London friends were working shitty part-time jobs while they put on their first plays and traipsed around to auditions. On weekends, she’d head to Plum’s parents’ country place, which was like something from an Evelyn Waugh novel. Her London friends were all kind of broke but in reality everyone had a safety net, except Shelly.
Her parents had been ecstatically proud of her acceptance to RADA and open-minded about her acting ambitions. Jim had a permanent, pensionable job in the tax office and Sandra had stayed home with the children, but they’d both been active in the local choir and loved helping out on the school plays when Shelly and her sister and brother, Serena and Johnnie, were the all-singing, all-dancing O’Brien kids. They’d encouraged Shelly when she decided to pursue acting after being in Dublin Youth Theatre, and while they helped her set up in London, they couldn’t pay her rent while she threw herself at every part that came up.
The winter after they finished RADA, the London crew were going skiing and, knowing Shelly couldn’t afford the trip, a few of them, presumably at Plum’s insistence, clubbed together to pay her fare.
‘Don’t even facking bother trying to say no.’ Plum was adamant. ‘The whole trip would be a dud if you weren’t there. You can borrow Mummy’s old ski suit and we’ll all be too pissed on vin chaud to notice how ridiculous you look.’
It was a life-changing trip in that the host, Dave, whose parents’ chalet they were all crashing in, had brought his friend from work. An Irish guy. Dan Devine. They’d all met sleepy-eyed in the airport and Dan was all but presented to Shelly.
‘Someone for you to play with!’ Plum said, winking.
‘Racist,’ said Dan with a twinkle that muted Plum momentarily.
Shelly laughed and joined in. ‘Yeah, what, just cos we’re both Irish we’re going to hang around together? What, are you gonna quarantine us?’
‘No, you’re gonna hang around together because you’re both shit skiers. And that’s because you’re Irish,’ laughed Plum.
‘Definitely racist,’ Dan whispered to Shelly. ‘Don’t mind them, they’ll be shit at the après.’ He gave her a wink and Shelly excused herself immediately to go to the bathroom and check what her face was doing at this ungodly hour.
