Always and Forever

‘That’s what we need,’ Daisy said dreamily. ‘A girls’ day out at a fabulous beauty parlour where we can relax and be made beautiful, and I could have a pedicure and you’d be with me so I wouldn’t feel inadequate because of my messy cuticles and hard heels!’

‘That spa they were working on near the old Delaney place is opening up next week,’ Paula said. ‘I don’t know who bought it but they’ve had builders working like madmen, according to my mother – she and her rambling club are there every week for their mountain walk. It’s going to be all holistic, with yoga rooms, hot stone therapy and aromatherapy.’

‘I wouldn’t mind some of that hot stone thingy,’ moaned Mary. ‘I wish I had time for it…’

‘Why not?’ asked Paula. ‘We could do it soon. If they’re new, they’ll have special offers, and they’re bound to have pregnancy stuff. Special massages and treatments.’

‘Right, I’ll check it out,’ said Daisy, fired up by this new idea.

Today was a day for plans. She’d phoned several fertility clinics today and she had news for Alex. Exciting news. She’d made an appointment for them both with one of the clinics. The only problem was that the appointment wasn’t for several weeks. She’d go mad with anticipation until then. A spa day with the girls was just what she needed to look forward to in the meantime.

Daisy arrived home at seven, swinging the plastic bag of Mary’s self-help books because she had to flick through them some time. The first thing she spotted was Alex’s briefcase sitting on the walnut floor in the hall. What caught her eye was the flash of turquoise peeping out of the black leather folds. A Tiffany gift bag. She considered a quick peek to see what Alex had bought her and then thought better of it.

Imagine if he’d bought her a diamond as big as a marble for their engagement and she’d have to spend the rest of her life knowing that she’d looked before he’d produced it. How did you and Dad get engaged? the kids would ask, and she’d have either to lie or say, ‘I stuck my big nose into his briefcase and found the ring, so I knew then…’ Not the romantic story she’d like. Anyway, it couldn’t be an engagement ring. They’d discussed that – they didn’t need marriage to cement their relationship.

She yelled a cheery hello and Alex rushed from the bathroom, looking a bit pale. ‘Dodgy stomach,’ he said by way of greeting, then planted a speedy kiss on her cheek.

‘Is that all the welcome I’m getting?’ Daisy joked, following him into the bedroom where he began rapidly undressing, throwing his jacket and tie onto the silken caramel throw on their king-size bed. ‘Oh-oh, this is the welcome…’

Halfway through pulling off his shirt, Alex grimaced. ‘Honey, if you knew the weekend I’ve had…Those people wouldn’t spend Christmas. I am so shattered. And the hotel wasn’t as good as the last one.’

‘Poor love.’ She held out her arms to him, and for a minute he relaxed against her and laid his head on her shoulder.

Then, he moved away and finished undressing, before putting on jeans and a sweatshirt.

Daisy sat cross-legged on the end of the bed.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ she began. ‘It’s OK,’ she laughed, seeing his eyes widen, ‘I haven’t been fired and I haven’t crashed the car! It’s about the baby, our baby. Oh, Alex, we’ve waited so long – let’s do something about it.’ She smiled, having saved the best till last. ‘I did some research today and phoned a couple of fertility clinics. With most of them, you’ve got to wait about a month for an appointment but the Avalon – I read about it in the paper and it’s brilliant, although it’s one of the more expensive – had literally just had a cancellation. They can see us on Friday three weeks at twelve fifteen.’ Her eyes shone with excitement. ‘Isn’t that fantastic? Please say you can make it.’

Alex, frozen with one black sock on and one off, stared at her.

‘We’ve been waiting for years, Alex. One before you got sick and two since.’

He flinched. She knew he hated being reminded about his illness.

‘We’ve got to do something before I run out of time. I need to know why I’m not getting pregnant. I want a baby.’ Even saying it made her feel emotional. ‘And I know you do too. It’s what we’ve wanted for so long, and now it’s the right time.’

She held out a hand to him and, his expression unreadable, he took it, sitting down on the bed beside her.

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Daisy rushed in, terrified that he’d say that he didn’t want a baby that much after all. ‘Alex, I think that’s our problem: we think and plan and with some things in life, you can’t think and plan. They should just happen. We’ve been waiting for the right time to have a baby and it’s now.’ Please agree with me, she pleaded silently.

‘I don’t know,’ he repeated.

‘Please, Alex. It’s so important to me and I don’t think we should wait any longer,’ she added softly.

‘I can’t believe you’ve set up a meeting with a fertility clinic without asking me first, Daisy.’

Daisy breathed again. At least he hadn’t said no. It was a start. Shock she was prepared for. Men didn’t like asking for help with directions when they were driving: you’d need to multiply that behaviour by ten to recreate how most men would feel about having to produce sperm in a cup in some anonymous room to make their partner pregnant.

She tried again. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a big step and it can be hard on couples. I’ve read all the articles about fertility treatments.’ Going through the mill of fertility treatment had broken up many couples. But it wouldn’t do that to them, Daisy vowed. All she had to do was convince him. ‘We can do it, Alex. Please.’

There was doubt written all over Alex’s face. But he hadn’t said no.

‘All we have to do is go this one time and see what they say,’ she offered. ‘And if you hate the idea, well, we can talk some more…’ With this olive branch extended, he couldn’t say no. ‘OK, we’ll stop talking about it. You need to think.’

Yes, stop haranguing him. Let him think about it. She changed the subject.

‘Hey, want to tell me what else you were doing in London besides staying in a horrible hotel and ferrying rich, stingy people around?’ she teased, thinking of the Tiffany bag. ‘I can see you’ve been shopping. Anything you want to tell me?’

‘Daisy…’ he began and stopped.

‘Sorry, I ruined the surprise, did I?’ She was contrite. ‘But it’s not my birthday for ages. I thought it was some fun present, although nothing from Tiffany’s could be strictly classed as purely fun. Serious fun!’

He looked blank.

‘The Tiffany bag?’

Comprehension dawned.

‘Was it for something else?’ It couldn’t be an engagement ring? No, of course not. ‘Our anniversary’s not just yet,’ she said quickly.

Alex shook his head as he left the room. ‘No.’

He returned with the bag in question and put it in front of her without any fanfare. What did she want an engagement ring for anyway? Daisy thought as she opened the bag and took out the Tiffany box. ‘You buying this is a sign,’ she said happily, taking the white ribbon off. ‘A sign that this is a good time to change our lives.’

Inside the box was a silver necklace, not unlike the first present he’d bought her years ago, only this one was Tiffany silver and exquisitely pretty.

It was indeed a sign, Daisy realised. A sign that their love could endure no matter what. Alex needed time to think about fertility treatment and then he’d come round to her way of thinking. Having a family was the most natural thing in the world. It was a no-brainer, as Alex would say.

The first present he’d ever given her, a silvery necklace with a heart on it, was kept in her treasures box, along with the black satin trousers she’d been wearing the first time they’d met.

The necklace had tarnished black with age because it was only a cheap thing, but she loved it and wished she could still wear it, although it turned her neck an alarming shade of green. The matching bra and knickers she’d been wearing the first time they made love were there too. Daisy never told Alex she still had them; he’d have thought it was a bit silly, keeping such mementoes many years later.

The satin drainpipe trousers made her cringe now when she looked at them. In theory, satin trousers were sleek, narrow and made for people with hips like a greyhound’s. At the time, an unbelievable fourteen years ago, Daisy was definitely not a greyhound sort of girl.

The others on the fashion design course wore edgy, frayed black things they’d customised themselves, and were instantly recognisable as design students on the sprawling campus. Daisy alone never wore her own stuff. This was partly because she’d realised, with much misery, that she wasn’t much good at clothes designing. She lived for Vogue, understood bias cuts as if she’d learned at Schiaparelli’s knee, and could draw like an angel. But she couldn’t design for peanuts.

Besides, the sort of clothes she loved were garments made for tall, willowy brunettes with arrogant eyes and cheekbones like razor blades. Rounded girls with heavy legs and a bust straight out of the wench department in central casting looked better in all black, even black satin trousers topped with a long-line silk cardigan.

Of course, she hadn’t thought she’d looked bad then. She’d thought the black satin disguised the fat bits and elongated her shape so she looked quite good, although hardly supermodel material. And Alex had thought so too, unlike some of the guys in college.

It was amazing the way being a big girl made you invisible. It should have been the other way round – if you were big, there was more of you and people couldn’t avoid you. But they did. They averted their eyes like medieval peasants must have at the sight of lepers, yelling ‘unclean’.

Alex Kenny, long, lean, dark-eyed and with biceps of steel from being uncrowned king of the rowing club, didn’t avert his eyes.

‘You don’t wear mad stuff like the other design nuts,’ he said in amusement that first time they’d met. ‘You look normal.’ And he’d reached out and lazily twirled a tassel of her rose-pink vintage silk scarf, making Daisy turn exactly the same shade of pink.

They’d been sitting in the Shaman’s Armchair, the labyrinthine off-campus pub favoured by the rowing boys. Jules and Fay, classmates of Daisy’s, were keen on some of the Lazer rowing team and an impromptu outing to the pub had been organised for one Saturday after a race. Well, it was supposed to be impromptu but Daisy had seen first-hand how long Jules and Fay had taken to get ready. The just-thrown-together look took an awful lot of time to achieve.

Daisy hadn’t done much, make-up wise, but had gone to her usual enormous effort to look thin. Looking thin was her mission in life although she knew that she could never really manage it.

As Jules and Fay flirted happily in the pub, Daisy sat in a corner nursing her half-pint. She was stony-broke again. Her grant was almost gone and the pizza restaurant near the flat she shared with the girls didn’t need her for late night shifts. She watched the flirting ritual, thinking how nice it would be to be like Jules and Fay, confident and good with men. She was good with men if she was asking them if they wanted their pizza with extra mozzarella, but otherwise, forget it. And then Alex arrived, took in the seating arrangements, and very definitely sat down beside her. Alex Kenny, a man so fine that even Jules and Fay had never thought of setting their cap at him.

‘Did you make this?’ Alex asked, gesturing at her poncho, also black but with tiny jet beads dotting the hem.

Daisy laughed. ‘I’m as good at knitting as I am at rowing,’ she said. ‘But I sewed the beads on.’

‘Did you?’ He seemed astonished by this and pulled a chunk of poncho closer for further examination.

Daisy felt her heart flutter wildly at this intimacy.

‘But there’s millions of them,’ Alex added. ‘You’d be sewing for ever.’

‘Sewing is a part of the whole designing clothes thing,’ she informed him gravely.

Alex’s eyes – coffee brown or melting chocolate, Daisy couldn’t be sure – twinkled. ‘Are you making fun of me, Madame Designer? Do you think I’m a big hick from the rowing team who’s on a sports scholarship and has an IQ in double digits?’

‘Double digits?’ she asked in mock astonishment. And then ruined it by saying, ‘Sorry, only joking…’ in case she’d upset him.

But Alex only grinned more broadly and wanted to know how long it would take to sew on that many beads.

‘I do it when I’m watching telly,’ Daisy explained.

‘How can you watch and sew? No,’ he added, ‘don’t tell me. It’s like how do you get to Carnegie Hall – practise.’

‘Like rowing,’ Daisy added, looking at his muscles, still very obvious despite the big porridgy sweater he was wearing.

‘I’m out of shape,’ Alex said ruefully. ‘Need to get back in for the season.’

‘And you practise a lot?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘I don’t know anything about rowing.’

‘Good. I hate rowing groupies. They discuss rowing with you like a pro but they’ve never put a foot in a scull in their life.’

And he rattled on, telling her about the hours of rowing and gym work, before weaving the conversation back to her and the sort of work it took to get into design college.

Daisy’s shyness evaporated. Naturally, Alex wasn’t interested in her in any romantic sense – nobody ever was – but he seemed to like talking to her, so that gave her an unaccustomed courage.

He wasn’t just being kind talking to the shy, chubby girl because he really fancied one of her friends, kooky Fay, or elegant Jules, who had that Grace Kelly thing going. He was one of those beautiful people who liked talking to everyone. Daisy had decided that some students in college had a scale they worked whereby they wouldn’t deign to talk to anyone below a certain rank. Daisy, no good at fashion design and pretty-ish but too big, was below the bar. The cool women ignored her and the cool men didn’t see her. But life’s gods, like Alex, were above rules and could bestow favour on any lesser mortal. Daisy was fairly sure that as soon as Fay and Jules drifted in Alex’s direction, he’d stop talking to her and turn that charming gaze away. But for now, he was hers: the aquiline nose above the sculpted mouth, the faint tan that spoke of some sort of exotic Christmas holiday outside Ireland, the lazy smile of the man who knows he doesn’t have to try too hard.

Saturday afternoon crept into Saturday evening and hunger hit. The pub did great traditional Irish potato crepes called boxty, so huge plates of boxty and more drink were ordered. The crowd swelled from the original three girls and four rowers to a big clatter of students. They took up a whole section of the Shaman’s, laughing and joking and swapping stories on how unprepared they were for the new term. Still Alex sat beside Daisy.

Warmed up by the two hot whiskys Alex had bought her when she finished her half-pint, she told him that she loved clothes but had come to the painful conclusion that she wasn’t much good at designing, something she’d only told Jules and Fay up to now.

‘It’s desperate,’ she confided. ‘When I think of how hard it was to get on the course, and now I’m here I can see that it’s a mistake.’ She could picture her mother’s face when she heard. Her mother had pushed for Daisy to do a secretarial course in Carrickwell so she’d always have a steady income. In one of the few battles she’d attempted with her mother, Daisy had said no. She’d been the best in her class at school at art and had dreamed of design college since she knew such a thing existed. There weren’t many of Daisy’s dreams within reach – being beautiful, thin, adored by her mother – she couldn’t let this vaguely achievable one escape.

‘Really, Denise, you disappoint me,’ her mother had said in deeply betrayed tones. Her mother tended to call her Denise, rarely Daisy. It was her father who’d called her ‘my little Daisy’, the nickname that had somehow stuck. ‘After all we’ve been through surely you’d see the need for a sensible job, not a rackety one like your father had. I thought I’d taught you that at least. But do what you want. Don’t think about what I want.’

Nan Farrell, as thin as the long cigarettes she chain-smoked, took out her cigarette case and flicked it open. It was silver and engraved, the one good thing she had left from her previous life as part of the Carrickwell élite. That life had ended when she’d got pregnant with Daisy – as she never ceased to remind her daughter – and had hit the real world with an almighty bang, married to a man who loved to enjoy himself and wasn’t interested in either roots or hard work.

‘It’s not as if my opinion has ever mattered to you.’

If only, Daisy thought. Her mother’s opinion was like the pyramids in relation to Cairo – huge, unyielding and no matter where you stood, you could still feel their presence, even if you couldn’t see them.

The memory of the row and the glacier that still existed between herself and her mother took away the happy glow Daisy had been experiencing from talking to Alex. Forgetting for an instant that Alex was a gorgeous man and that she should have been puce with embarrassment just to be talking to him, Daisy leaned her head on her hands on the scratched pub table in the Shaman’s. ‘How can you have messed up your whole career when you’re twenty?’ she mumbled.

‘All the best people do,’ Alex said, patting her arm. He let his fingers roam to the back of her neck where he touched her gently, stroking the soft caramel curls that had escaped from her ponytail. It felt gorgeous, so sexy. Daisy gulped and sat up, forcing Alex to move his hand. She could have stayed there for ever but a man’s attentions, the sort of thing that regularly happened to the likes of Jules and Fay, were not what she was equipped to deal with.

He didn’t appear to notice her jitteriness.

‘At least you know what you wanted to do. I didn’t, still don’t,’ he said. ‘A business degree was the obvious choice for me but it doesn’t light my fire. It’s not on kids’ top-ten lists of brilliant jobs, is it? What do you want to be when you grow up, son? Oh, Dad, I want to sit behind a desk and toil through spreadsheets for ever.’

He told her that he often felt like giving up college if it weren’t for the fact that his course guaranteed a good job at the end of it all. Money was important to him. Daisy got the impression, never voiced, that there hadn’t been much spare cash in the Kenny household. She could empathise with that. There hadn’t been much money in her house either. She and her mother lived in a small terraced house in the centre of Carrickwell, not physically far from the big house where her mother had grown up, but miles away socially. Daisy had been raised not to discuss money.

Nobody was to know that the gas heater was to be used sparingly, or that Sunday’s meat could be made to last until Wednesday if enough imagination was involved.

‘We’ve got our pride,’ Nan insisted.

Despite this, Daisy didn’t believe that money made you happy. Her mother had come from money and there was no proof anywhere that she’d ever had a happy family life, although she was probably more miserable without it than she had been with it.

Love, Daisy felt, was what mattered in life. Not money.

When Alex went to the bar in the Shaman’s to get her a drink, Daisy watched him and knew she must look like a spaniel trailing sad eyes after a departing master. Being aware of how others saw her was Daisy’s biggest failing. She couldn’t walk into a room without wondering if people thought she looked like a whale in whatever she was wearing, and when she spoke during classes, she measured her words as carefully as she measured silk when she was cutting a pattern. Today, though, she wasn’t measuring her words or angling her thighs on the seat so that she looked thinner. That was the effect Alex had upon her.

And so they began to go out. They appeared an unlikely couple: the handsome, popular Alex, who could have hooked up with any girl he wanted, and Daisy, who was sweet and pretty certainly, but why didn’t she do something about her weight?

Other people didn’t see that gentle loving Daisy gave Alex security. Steady, warm, like hot tea in front of a fire, Daisy made the dynamic Alex Kenny feel as if he’d come home.

Daisy tried the Tiffany necklace on. Silver suited her. Gold could make redheads look brassy, she knew. Her mother, who had genuine blonde hair, had warned her so often enough.

‘It’s beautiful,’ breathed Daisy, turning to hug Alex again.

‘I’m glad you like it,’ he said woodenly, sitting down wearily on the end of the bed.

‘Oh, love, don’t be like that,’ said Daisy. ‘I know you’re nervous, I am too, but this is so important to us.’

‘Daisy –’ he began.

‘We can do it,’ she interrupted. For so long she’d hidden just how important a child was to her; now she had to convince him. ‘Alex, I want a baby so badly. I don’t talk about it but it haunts me.’ She sat down on the bed beside him and held his hands in hers. ‘When I go into work and Paula’s there, pregnant and so happy, it hurts me so much. Not that I begrudge her a moment of her happiness, but I want that for me, for us. There are babies everywhere you look, did you know that?’ She squeezed his hand for support. ‘In the shop, on the streets, in Mo’s Diner sitting in high-chairs staring around with big eyes. I never thought I’d feel this broodiness because it’s not as if I was madly into babies or eager to babysit all the time when I was growing up.’ Daisy’s words were tumbling out now. ‘If I’d had brothers or sisters, I’d maybe have had experience with younger children but I didn’t, so I didn’t think I was that maternal, but then whomp! It hit me.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Alex, I think about having a baby all the time. Every month, I feel I’ve failed when my period comes. We’ve been trying to have a baby for five years now, that’s over sixty times of feeling I’ve failed. I feel…’ she searched for the right word, ‘I feel empty, not quite a proper woman. Only half a person. It’s so lonely and sad, and I look at pregnant women or women with children and I feel I’m from another planet. That they’re part of this wonderful earth cycle of love and motherhood and I’m not. I’m different, excluded. They don’t have a clue that I want my own baby, they probably think I hate kids! But I want my own child so much it hurts. God, it hurts.’

She stopped, aware that he had said nothing all this time. He was probably astonished at what she’d said. Daisy never quite told anybody everything, not even Alex. She thought it might be being an only child and not used to sharing confidences. She envied people who could tell their innermost feelings easily. But now that she’d done it, she’d found it was liberating and scary at the same time to reveal so much.

‘I didn’t know you felt like that,’ he mumbled, not looking at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘We were trying to get pregnant,’ Daisy said lightly. ‘I sort of thought you’d know how much I wanted a child.’ All this time, Daisy had been crossing her fingers and praying every time her period was due, even during the years when Alex had been sick and their lovemaking had been curtailed. How could he not have known?

‘I didn’t.’

‘It’s only an appointment,’ she begged. ‘It can’t hurt to go and see what they say. Please, Alex. For me. We’ve been through so much the past few years, with doctors and tests. I know you hate all that.’ So had she. For every blood sample he’d given, Daisy wished she could have proffered her arm. And she’d been there with him through all of it. Couldn’t it be her turn now?

Alex looked as if he was under enormous strain but he nodded tightly. ‘We can go,’ he said finally. ‘If that’s really what you want.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Mel wished she’d had more time to make an effort for the Lorimar charity ball at the end of February. A black-tie event which all senior staff were expected to turn up at upon pain of death, it had been the subject of much discussion in the office for the past month.