LITMIR.BIZ

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a circle of tarmac at the side of Kirsty’s property, which glistened with frost. The garden was plunged into darkness. Little whorls of ice began to form on the outside of the window. She shivered, flicked on the bedside lamp and closed the curtains.

      She thought of Janice’s luxurious en-suite bathroom and the rows of exquisite glass bottles that lined the shelves above the bath. Janice knew how to pamper herself. Kirsty could learn a thing or two from her.

      ‘Right,’ she said and clapped her hands together. ‘Let’s do this properly, girl.’

      She ran a scented bath, lit some candles and put on a Mariah Carey CD. She removed her flaking nail polish and, when the bath was ready, peeled off her clothes and got into it. She eased herself in slowly. The water was hot – just at that exquisite point between pleasure and pain. The sensation when her shoulders submerged was like a lover’s caress. She closed her eyes, concentrated on the music and tried to cultivate a positive frame of mind.

      At the very worst her date could be a complete bore but she would still have a good time with Janice and Keith – they were always good fun. However, first she would have to get off this guilt trip she was on. Easier said than done. Because her guilt about dating stemmed not from concern for Harry and Dorothy, or for her children, or because she felt that she was betraying Scott’s memory.

      It arose from the fact that, for the last three years, Kirsty had been living a lie. Cast in the role of heartbroken, grieving widow, it was a mantle she wore uncomfortably, especially around Harry and Dorothy, who were so clearly devastated by the death of their beloved only son. When Scott died Kirsty had been traumatised, there was no doubt about that. She’d ended up on tranquillisers for a full six months after the accident.

      But the crucial difference between her and Scott’s parents was that, at the time of Scott’s death, she no longer loved him. For a while after he died, she tried to convince herself that she had – it would’ve made all that well-meaning sympathy easier to bear. She tried so hard that she almost came to believe her own fantasy that they had just been going through a bad patch. Witnesses to her anguish at the time put it down to grief – she wore herself out trying to re-write the past.

      But, with the passage of time, she was forced to concede that she was kidding herself. She had loved Scott once, with a passion. But, at the time of his death, their relationship was on the brink of falling apart. There were no histrionics or arguments. No violence, door slamming or walking out. Just insidious bickering between two people who had drifted apart and no longer had anything to say to each other. They had not slept together for six months before Scott’s death. The only thing that had kept them together was the children.

      Falling out of love with Scott hadn’t been her fault, she told herself regularly, even though she felt guilty about it every day. Scott had changed. Not in any dramatic way, not so that other people would notice. He wasn’t a monster – he provided for his family and he’d never laid a hand on her or the children in anger. But he’d come to hate working in the family business and, in his frustration, he’d hinted more than once that if it weren’t for the responsibilities of marriage and children, he’d be long gone. He never made it clear if he meant long gone from Ballyfergus, or long gone from her and the kids. He was grumpy and irritable at home – and nothing she did seemed to make it better.

      Instead of finding release in talking to her, he found it in cycling, and increasingly he took to going off on long weekends. She’d tried to get him to do more family-oriented things instead but he was never interested. She was truly shocked the time she took the kids to Belfast Zoo, on her own again, and realised that she hadn’t thought about him all day. It was then that she realised she no longer loved him.

      Harry and Dorothy heaped constant praise on her for her courage and strength, for supporting them and the children when she herself was mourning the loss of her husband. And she was torn between the desire to tell them the truth about her and Scott so that she could assuage her terrible guilt and the need not to. Clearly, more harm would come from telling them than good. They were heartbroken enough as it was. It would’ve been pure selfishness to add to their misery.

      And so she told no-one, not even her closest friends. Because to do so would’ve meant disparaging Scott’s character. It would’ve meant saying, directly or indirectly, that he was flawed. And Kirsty was simply not prepared to do that – she would not tarnish his memory. It was all she had of him now. She would not talk ill of the dead. Plus it wasn’t all Scott’s fault; she must bear some of the responsibility too. Or perhaps no-one was to blame. Sometimes these things just happened.

      Luckily, she had only spoken in the vaguest terms about her marriage difficulties to her closest friends. But if they had ever suspected all was not well, as soon as Scott died, no-one asked her about the state of her marriage again.

      Kirsty slid her head under the water and tried to block out these thoughts. She was beating herself up over something which she could not change. And much as she would’ve loved to offload her guilt so that she could feel better, doing so would mean hurting Harry or Dorothy, both of whom she loved. She would not do that. Painful and lonely as it was, she would keep her own counsel.

      The bath water was getting cool – it was time to get out and have a shower. From experience, Kirsty knew she could not wash her hair in the bath. The bath milk would leave a residue on her hair, which would result in lank, dull locks. Pampering, Kirsty concluded, was hard work.

      Three hours later Kirsty was buffed and polished, painted and combed, fragrant with perfume, her shabby nails transformed into dark red talons. She stood in front of the mirror in the outfit Patsy had advised and felt pleased with the result. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was smooth and shiny, her face well made-up, her clothes immaculate. Her wedge boots added an extra two inches to her height making her look slimmer than she was, though she had never been bothered by her weight. She was a size twelve and the same weight, more or less, that she had been in her early twenties. She smiled at her reflection. Patsy would be proud of her.

      And she was proud of herself for getting this far. Here she was, about to go on a date and, though it was unlikely, there was a chance that this man might be The One. The possibility made Kirsty feel alive again. The doorbell went.

      ‘Wish me luck,’ she said to her reflection, and smiled.

      Izzy sat at Clare’s kitchen table. A High School Musical lever arch file was propped against the glass fruit bowl, opened to a page of notes untidily scrawled in blue ink. On the table lay a jotter, the virgin pages as yet unsoiled by Izzy’s hand. Alongside the jotter was a Hannah Montana pencil case – Izzy chewed on the end of a matching pencil. Everything of Izzy’s had to be themed. When Clare was her age – God, was that really twenty-three years ago? – she didn’t have a branded item in her battered denim satchel. How times had changed.

      Simultaneously, with her right elbow resting on the table, Izzy twirled a lock of blonde hair between her forefinger and thumb, the tiny earpieces of an iPod jammed in her ears. Izzy insisted that music helped her concentrate. But, as far as Clare could see, the expression on her pretty face was more vacant than inspired. This, ostensibly, was Izzy doing her homework. Clare bit her lip. Izzy was Liam’s twelve-year-old daughter by his first marriage and, much as she wanted to, it wasn’t Clare’s place to tell the child what to do.

      Clare rolled her eyes at her daughter Rachel, just four months shy of her second birthday. She was seated happily on her booster seat eating beans and toast from a blue bowl with her fingers, a yellow plastic spoon discarded on the floor. Rachel grinned back joyfully, her face and hands smeared with tomato sauce. Four-year-old Josh had already wandered off to watch Space Pirates on CBeebies, his half-eaten meal abandoned. She really ought to wrestle him back to the table, thought Clare, but tonight she just didn’t have the energy. She cleared away his plate.

      Clare bent down to load Josh’s plate and cutlery into the dishwasher and shook her head, torn between the urge to smile at Izzy’s idleness and the urge to intervene.

      But, as far as Izzy was concerned, any interference by Clare was a violation of her human rights. As she frequently pointed out, Clare was not her mother and had no right to tell her what

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