LITMIR.BIZ

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midriff. ‘So my wife is lying when she says there’s more of me to love these days.’

      Molly rolled her eyes. ‘Kay’s a martyr. Or the most deluded woman in the country. Did you do fatherly things with the girls at the weekend?’

      He sighed theatrically. ‘I’m surrounded by a monstrous regiment of women. It’s petticoat power at every turn. I had to go shopping with Kay and the girls on Saturday afternoon. It was vicious – five-and-three-quarter hours of misery and only one coffee break. If I hadn’t been browbeaten into that vasectomy I might have a son by now who’d back me up against them.’

      ‘Vasectomies are reversible, Bar. Any time you find a young one who takes your fancy you can trot back to the doctor and go under the knife again. That’s if Kay doesn’t get to you first. Don’t expect me to shield you. Of course,’ mischief glittered from Molly’s eyes, ‘those nubile twenty-one-year-olds you’re drooling over are mad keen shoppers. Friday nights may be paradise but it’s purgatory all day Saturday as you lug carrier bags from shop to shop and debate the virtues of scoop necklines versus halter. Men with significantly younger wives don’t look euphoric. Try downright drained. Those chicks lend their men a just-basted glow for a short time, then exhaustion sets in. Whereas a plumply rounded hen of your own vintage is like a roast dinner – familiar and satisfying.’

      Barry’s pointy face acquired a knife-edge aspect as he gazed into the future – and quaked. ‘Must you make straight for the farmyard at this hour of the morning?’ he objected.

      ‘It’s for your own good,’ Molly said. ‘La vida loca isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Barry.’

      He nodded. ‘Kay’s sticking the times rightly,’ he conceded. ‘She can still fit into the same size beautician’s uniform she wore when I first met her and there’s not many forty-one-year-old women you could say that for.’

      ‘She’s a gorgeous woman and I don’t know how you ever persuaded her to marry you. She obviously has an infinite capacity for pity. Now will I fetch the coffees or will you?’

      Barry lurched to his feet, sending his chair clattering. ‘I’ll go. The girlies should be trooping out for their breaks around now. Expect me when you see me, Molloy. I may be some time.’

      Molly returned to the Department of Justice report. Wouldn’t you imagine, she fumed, they’d have included a hand-out indicating which pages had the meat on them? She phoned Damien in the press office to complain. He insisted there had been a press release included in the package couriered to the paper but he’d email another. Molly cast an eye in the direction of the newsdesk and spied her press release. Typical, the news editor was using the hand-out that could have made her life ineffably easier to eat toast from. She glared at Stephen, scattering dollops of marmalade on the Department of Justice’s bullet points, and he winked.

      ‘Hung over from all the strumpet city exploits you single girls get up to at the weekend?’ he called down the room.

      Another man convinced he’d voluntarily renounced Sodom and Gomorrah when he took the marriage path. To hear him now, you’d believe he’d been a heartbreaker. Instead of which he courted Clodagh from the age of eighteen and lived with his mammy until he’d saved enough for a deposit on their first house.

      Molly surveyed the lack of talent in the office. Only four unmarried men in the entire pool of reporters, sub-editors and editors, while they had their choice of a bevy of stunning women. Four. Not that you’d actually want to go out with anyone from your floor – too close for comfort – but it would be pleasant to have somebody you could at least fancy from afar without having to listen to him describe the ecstasy of cutting his child’s umbilical cord or shake his head over the criminal cost of school uniforms. And as for the four who were still on the market – three had been well and truly picked over and Molly was convinced the fourth was a twelve-year-old masquerading as a grown-up.

      Most of the married men were up for a snog, or more, after a few drinks. Even the ones who never trotted out those ‘I’m only with her for the sake of the children’ lines that made you want to shake them had the capacity to surprise you at Christmas parties. They seemed to think they were allowed a night off from being married, an amnesty courtesy of Santa Claus. You could sit at the turkey dinner beside a mouse of a man who spent the year scuttling out of your way if you met him in the corridor, safe in the knowledge that at least he wouldn’t make a pass. He’d be wearing a snowman tie to testify that he knew how to let his hair down and he’d show you the photos of his children he carried in his wallet. A few glasses of mulled wine later you’d be trying to extricate his tongue from your tonsils.

      Sport was the only department with a concentration of single, reasonable-looking men. But then they’d only go and bore the ears off you talking about matches. Sporty types were obsessive. Molly dated a soccer writer briefly when she worked on the Evening Standard in London; she still hadn’t forgotten the way he monopolised the remote control belonging to her – repeat, her- television set to check scores. And she was convinced he kept an eye on the league tables while they courted on the sofa; he always arranged it so he was facing the TV set.

      So what you have here, considered Molly, ruling out the sports department arbitrarily as she waited for Damien’s email, was a concentration of married men, some of whom may well be ill-matched with wives and biding their time until the children were grown up, but most of whom were bored, lying to themselves never mind the girls they eyed up, and ready for any bit of distraction they could lay their hands on. Especially the laying-on of hands part.

      Barry returned in time to stop her sending out an abusive all-users message on the computer system telling her male colleagues precisely what she thought of them.

      Molly twisted off the lid of her coffee and slurped. ‘No sugar, Barry.’

      ‘Couldn’t remember if you were taking it or not – you’re as changeable as the seasons, woman – so I brought some sachets.’ He scattered half a dozen on the desk in front of her. ‘I’m smitten. There’s a new recruit in advertising, she has the face of an angel.’

      ‘Admire her from afar, Bar. You don’t want the mystique spoiled by hearing her Dub accent or by discovering that she’s only a few years older than your daughters.’

      Barry shrugged, then performed an exaggerated appraisal of his colleague. ‘Your hair is lovely today, Molly. Have you done something different with it?’

      ‘What’s your game?’

      He radiated injury. ‘It’s a sad state of affairs when a man can’t pass an agreeable remark without it being misconstrued.’

      ‘Once again for the hard of hearing, what’s your game?’

      ‘I need to trade weekend duty with you. The outlaws are encroaching from Monaghan.’

      ‘But you’re off this weekend.’

      ‘Exactly. Be a pal and let me work Saturday and Sunday instead of you. I’ll go nuts if I’m stuck with Kay’s parents for forty-eight uninterrupted hours of close family living.’

      Molly swapped – but not before she made him promise to do all the coffee runs that day.

      She was debating whether there were any other concessions she could wrest from him when her phone rang. It was an old schoolfriend, Mary-P (to differentiate her from Mary-R and Mary-Mac in the classroom); excitement laced with triumph was sizzling down the phoneline. It could mean only one thing: another day out in an extravagant hat. Molly mentally added an extra lunch to her expenses claim to cheer herself up and prepared to sound delighted.

      ‘You’ll never guess what I’ll be doing in nine weeks’ time,’ said Mary-P.

      ‘Having a sex change,’ speculated Molly. ‘Paragliding over Uruguay. Forming a cult.’

      ‘Molly, you have the strangest notions. I’ll be saying “I do” in front of all our friends and family when Paul asks me to love, honour and cherish him all the days of our life. Even saying the words gives me

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