Page 6 of The Snag List
It’ll be good for us. It will.
2
‘STORAGE. STORAGE. THAT ONE’S STORAGE.’ AILBHE was walking Niall, the captain of the Walkinstown under-19s who’d been drafted in by her mother, Eileen, to help with the move, through the various boxes crowding the living room. ‘This one is … Hang on, let’s see. Box 4sbr008.’ Ailbhe slightly rearranged her tiny daughter, Tilly, who was sleeping on her shoulder, so she could consult the iPad. She paused to zoom in on the spreadsheet Tom’s assistant, Maia, had compiled to help with packing up his penthouse.Our penthouse, she corrected. She’d lived there for nearly a year but still hadn’t gotten used to it.
In fairness, it’d been a year like no other. Acquiring a husband, a baby and a penthouse in just twelve months had been hectic. Though more accurately she’d actually acquired a casual fling, a surprise slightly-late-in-the-day baby, a penthouse andthena husband. In that order. Tom wasn’t in Dublin all that much, which suited Ailbhe’s approach to relationships very well. When they’d first got together, he’d fly in for meetings, they’d go out for dinner, have a lot of fun and a lot of very hot sex, and everything was nice and low stakes. Then, of course, the shock baby grenade had landed in the middle of her perfect set-up.
How am I someone’s mam?!This time last year, she wouldn’t have believed it. She knew lots of people saw kids almost as something inevitable that they would move on to at some stage, like wide-fit shoes or starting to irrationally hate twenty-somethings. Not Ailbhe.
It wasn’t that she hadneverpictured having kids or a husband, but her last serious relationship had ended eight years ago when she was thirty-four – she cringed at the memory. She’d been on the precipice of a wedding. She’d been with Ruairí, her pal Áine’s cousin, for about two years at that stage. Ailbhe could still barely think about that time. She’d been so excited. With hindsight, she wondered if she’d ignored the signs because she hadn’t wanted to see them. They were tasting cakes and saving dates by the time Ruairí finally admitted he didn’t want to be ‘nailed down’ – his words. It’d caused ructions in their gang at the time – no one knew who to side with, and Ailbhe found the pitying looks and everyone asking ‘howareyou?’ all the time unbearably humiliating. She put on a very convincing show of indifference and immediately stopped letting relationships with men go beyond a few dates.
‘Super-healthy approach to getting hurt, Ailbhe!’ Holly, her best friend and business partner, had been loving but relentlessly sarcastic.
Then Ailbhe had broken her keep-the-men-at-arm’s-length rule with Tom and things had majorly escalated – as evidenced by the brand newhumanon her shoulder! But things with Tom were different. She winced. Very different.Stop it, brain. She quickly shook off the twinge of uneasiness that so often flared when she thought of how Tilly came about and circled the boxes grouped in the middle of the living room of Tom’s extremely male apartment in Dublin’s fashionable docklands.
‘Seriously, the walls are brown leather! It is gak,’ she’d told Holly the first night she went there.
In the year since, she hadn’t bothered to do much with it, but she’d have full interior-decorating control in the new house in Monteray Valley, even if they wouldn’t be there for long. It was an investment property.How am I married to a man with investment property?Some stuff was coming with them to the house out there, but most would be shipped directly to California, where Tom was from and where they’d be moving full-time later in the summer, on the 4 July weekend. It was American independence day and Ailbhe independence day. Thank fuck. Ailbhe was sweating to get out of Dublin – regrets were crowding in on her here. One drunken misstep in the year she’d been with Tom and her life had gone into freefall.Stop that!Ailbhe silently admonished herself.Nothing is in freefall. We aresolutionsfocused. A couple of more weeks and she’d be out in Monteray Valley. Everything would be fine. Tom would never find out. No one would ever find out. A fresh start was needed.
‘Ailbh, pet?’ Her mum, Eileen, leaning round the door mercifully interrupted her frantic mind spiral.
‘Hmmm?’ Ailbhe tucked her long red hair back over her shoulder.
‘Do you want anything from the shop?’
‘Ooooh, white wine, please! Holly’s on her way. She’s giving me the full spruce.’
‘Are you supposed to be drinking when you’re feeding, Ailbhe?’
‘A glass is grand, Mam.’
‘Right.’ Eileen carried on down the plushly carpeted hall and out the front door, which closed silently behind her. That is wealth, Ailbhe thought. No door-slamming for rich people. The doors in the colossal new house out in Monteray positivelywhisperedto a close.
‘Maia’s got this down for shipping.’ She turned back to the brawny Niall. He stretched casually beside her and she caught a hint of maleness on the updraft.He is a ride. Old Ailbhe would’ve probably … never mind! That was old Ailbhe. Old Ailbhe had started this mess. Old Ailbhe has revoked her decision-making rights. Also he’s on the under-19s, you randy bitch.Anyway, her gee’d been recently savaged by the adorable Tilly.
Niall nodded, heaving the box over to another lot destined for shipping grouped beside Tom’s vintage jukebox just as Holly walked in, dragging her wheelie bag of kit.
‘Eilers let me in!’ Holly was here to give Ailbhe the full NCT. Since giving birth four weeks earlier, all Ailbhe’s energy for giving a crap had been redirected into Tilly, but it was time. Slobbing around with straggly hair was so not Ailbhe – she co-owned a salon, for God’s sake.
‘Oh my God, Ailbhe, your colour.’ Holly shielded her eyes. ‘It’s dulled so much, I can’t even look. Youknowredheads cannot take the foot off the pedal for even a second … Where will I set up?’ She shrugged off her silk red bomber jacket, revealing a faded denim shirtdress and orange Perspex earrings that looked gorgeous with her platinum afro. Her nails were fluoro-yellow and she had a streak of matching eyeliner on each eye. Beside her, Ailbhe felt like that weird white stuff that collects in the corners of your mouth when you’re dehydrated.
‘Thank God you’re here!’ Ailbhe flung her arms around her.
Ailbhe and Holly had started Beautify together nine years ago when the whole country was just beginning to recover from the recession. They were best friends from school; their first premises had ‘Holly and Ailbhe are sluts’ in icy-blue neon writing on the wall – a long-running joke dating back to secondary school when some jealous dope had scrawled this on the toilet wall. They’d expanded to three premises before Covid hit and killed everything. The pain of letting staff go and closing all bar one shop had been horrendous. Now, Ailbhe felt incredibly guilty. Moving to the States meant she’d no longer be involved in the day-to-day, although Holly was being very supportive. She really liked Tom, which was both great and terrible. ‘Great’ because if Holly didn’t like something she could be hilariously savage, but ‘terrible’ because she wouldn’tentertainAilbhe anytime she tried to moan about him.
‘Want to set up on the sofa? We’re trying to decode the moving instructions,’ Ailbhe explained to Holly as she scrolled further down the document. ‘I don’t even know what half of this means – “Pacman arcade game, 5sbr2_001”. It’s gobbledegook.’
‘Yeah.’ Niall leaned in to take a look. ‘I can’t deal with spreadsheets at all. Your husband’s into it, I see.’
‘You should see the riding spreadsheet he made her!’ Holly gleefully deployed this characteristically blunt announcement as she set up her portable speakers and the foot spa by the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Dublin’s swish docklands.
‘Holly! Shut up, thank you.’
‘I’m not joking – he schedules sex,’ Holly hooted over at Niall. ‘Or rather his assistant, Maia, does. What does he call it, Ailbhe? Human docking procedure?’
‘Stop!’ Ailbhe yelped. ‘Niall doesn’t need that visual burned on his retinas.’
Niall awkwardly busied himself with a couple of coded boxes on the ground by the door, clearly desperate for the auld ones to stop talking about their dusty old-person sex lives. ‘I’m just going to check if that missing box is with the ones in the office.’ He slid swiftly out of the room and down the hall.
