Page 7 of The Snag List
Ailbhe and Holly exchanged a grin.
‘He’s hot!’ Holly whispered. ‘I’d pencilhimin on the spreadsheet.’
‘Shshhshh.’ Ailbhe giggled. ‘Can you just let the spreadsheet go? I should never have told you.’
Speaking of the spreadsheet, they were due for a session that very evening. Scheduling sex definitely sapped the spontaneity of the thing, and she rued the day she’d joked to Tom that they should have a ‘Sexcel spreadsheet’ given the extended periods that he was away. One had appeared in her inbox from Maia the very next day.
‘Please see attached’ was the only text contained in the email, and Ailbhe had wanted to die. Die. Morto.My dignity is over. The attached document had not been called ‘Human Docking Procedure’ as Holly had joked. But it wasn’t far off: ‘Intimacy Exchanges June– July 2021’. She would never, ever be revealing to Holly that there was a key for the document too. Enter IE-P, for example, and you’d be logging a penetrative intimacy exchange; IE-RS was remote sex. IE-ANL was …Well, let’s hope it never comes to that. Ailbhe winced.
Tom had been baffled at her embarrassment that Maia, a woman Ailbhe had never met, was privy to their sex life. All three of them had access to the spreadsheet, so Ailbhe got an alert every time an intimacy exchange was moved or cancelled due to Tom’s schedule. ‘Maia has made a change to your shared document’ chirped the notification.
‘What’s the problem?’ Tom had been confused. ‘Maia’s been married for three years and she thought it was an awesome idea. Her and Judd never do it, not even virtually! She said it was really great that I was taking pre-emptive action against the onset of the inevitable marital-sex lag. You have to keep sex on the agenda. Don’t worry, honey, Maia is very supportive,’ he had concluded, completely missing the point.
‘This is not about Maia being supportive. I just don’t want her involved. Look, just cos I rode you between floors in the Hilton International lifts the night we met doesn’t mean I’m grand with you broadcasting our sex life.’
‘Honey, Maia is my right hand – you’ll get used to her.’
‘You realise describing Maia as your right hand is particularly off-putting in the context of this conversation, right?’
‘Ha,’ Tom had barked a laugh.
Now Ailbhe eased gingerly onto the couch, careful not to disturb Tilly still lolling on her shoulder.
‘She is so gorgeous.’ Holly reached up and gently pinched the tiny pouch of peachy flesh under Tilly’s chin.
‘She is, but don’t you dare wake her – she sounds like a chainsaw when she gets going.’ Ailbhe grinned. ‘Eilers is getting the wine. I am in dire need!’
‘Ah, so I take it Tom’s gone back to California?’
‘God, yeah, he is not into me making White Russians with Tilly’s tit milk!’
‘I don’t think that’s just Tom, yanno – think it’s more a medical guidelines thing.’ Holly shook her head.
‘A glass or two is fine. I read a study on Facebook. It is definitely way more grand than people let on,’ Ailbhe argued, grinning. ‘And, anyway, when Tom’s around I am very good!’
When they were casual, Tom’s absences had suited Ailbhe. He’d fly in to see her and every weekend was an event. They’d go out for dinners or head away for luxury breaks. It was all very sparkly, with just the right level of commitment for Ailbhe – i.e. none at all. They’d met the previous year on the weekend of Valentine’s Day. Maia had contacted her and Holly to book out the salon for the entire day. It could only mean one thing: mystery celebrity client. Or recentLove Islandcontestantconvincedthey were a celebrity.
She and Holly had arrived early to prep, eager to discover who the client was. It turned out to be a somewhat disappointing tech entrepreneur who was in town to give a talk for Tom’s company. The guy was just coming off a twenty-one-day screaming retreat in Donegal and in need of intensive grooming – nothing could be done about the popped veins in his eyeballs, unfortunately, but Holly valiantly hacked away at his woolly beard for hours while politely nodding to his relentless monologue about the benefits of screaming for releasing negativity.
Meanwhile, Ailbhe had offered Tom a mani-pedi – more to pass the time than anything. Over his nails – which were no stranger to a cuticle remover – they chatted idly about his business, Optimise (‘A suite of personal betterment apps,’ he’d explained), what he thought of Ireland (‘Love your sexy Irish tax laws,’ he’d winked) and what he was up to that night (‘I have to entertain this guy,’ he’d whispered, making a face). Ailbhe had a finely tuned craic detector and, considering what he was paying to make this lad fit for public consumption, she sensed a night on the lash funded by Tom would be worth the potentially tedious small talk.
‘You should bring me and Holly with ye, make it up to us for the taxes we’re paying to cover your stingy multinational arse,’ she’d said, grinning, while massaging almond oil into his fingertips. And so he did. And they’d had a surprisingly good time.
Tom was a lot more upfront and no-bullshit than the lads she’d usually end up with. Perhaps it was because she’d grown up in Dublin that she’d tended to hook up with guys she’d known for years and with whom she could call all the shots. They’d all gone to school together. It was nice and familiar. During their twenties, they went to the same clubs and parties. In their thirties, she’d done the rounds of all of their weddings. And in their forties, she and Holly were now finding themselves on a spate of ‘fuck him’ divorce holidays, quietly congratulating themselves on bypassing the whole long-term monogamy fuck-show.
Then the dreaded emotional glomming-on began with Tom. The funny thing was, though, the emotional glomming when it came from him was kind of sweet. In every other relationship since her doomed engagement to Ruairí, if anyone tried to progress to more serious territory she would flee, but with Tom, she caught her thoughts occasionally drifting towards vague notions of future plans. It was massively un-her. Ailbhe didn’t like the thought of getting emotionally entangled with a man. Nothing wrecked a woman’s life more than allowing her happiness to become contingent on a man. Look at her own mother.
Eileen had started going out with Eamon when she was sixteen and he was twenty. At seventeen, she had Ailbhe, and for the next few years Eileen was tormented by Eamon. He’d started with the betting when he was eighteen and was always either flush or scrounging. He was in and out of their lives constantly. Anytime Eileen made any inroads into being free of him, he would suddenly reappear and reel her back in. He never committed but he kept Eileen on the hook. It wasn’t until the year Ailbhe was eleven that anything changed. He stole the money Eileen had put aside for Christmas and didn’t contact them again for five years. In that time, Eamon, in fairness to him, got a handle on his addiction and eventually made amends, but he was never going to be in their lives in any kind of normal way. Eileen was still very young but was left permanently affected by the ordeal of her first love.
Tom told Ailbhe he loved her on what he’d claimed was their four-and-a-half-month anniversary.
‘That’s not a thing!’ She had laughed. ‘And Tom …’ Ailbhe had trailed her arms over his broad shoulders and whispered into the dark curls at his ear. ‘You don’t love me. You just think you do. You’re thirty-two – you’ve just caught monogamy. Don’t worry, it’ll pass. You just have to wait it out.’ She was trying to keep things playful.
Then, in predictable fashion, she’d gone straight out and made the worst mistake of her life. Well, not the worst. She looked down at Tilly.She’s the best mistake of my life. But also the most complicated.
‘Right, get comfy.’ Holly had laid out some big fluffy white towels beside a little portable foot bath. She lit a lavender candle and was picking out some soothing music on her phone.
Eileen came in carrying a couple of glasses of white and set them down on the ledge at the base of the window.
