Always and Forever - Cathy Kelly

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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.

      One Lorimar contingent – a Samantha from Sex and the City lookalike from marketing, three executive assistants and the head of telesales – planned to go all out for Sex and the City glamour, with perilous heels, just-left-the-Elizabeth-Arden-counter make-up and wildly contemporary outfits.

      ‘Lots of red lippy is the key,’ said the woman from marketing, who had spent hours on the party preparations, a mammoth task, which also involved ensuring that hundreds of red Lorimar balloons would fall from the ballroom ceiling when Edmund Moriarty announced a special Lorimar donation of €100,000 to the charity, a heart surgery research foundation. Edmund would go ballistic if his big moment was ruined, so most of marketing and a fair part of publicity were deployed on charity detail.

      Another group of female staff were planning to get themselves fake-tanned to a decent colour, go to the hairdresser’s, then dig out their reliable old black dresses, because nobody wanted to splash out on a new outfit for a mere office do. Vanessa had borrowed a red satin knock-out evening gown from her sister and said she was fully expecting Hilary to go into cardiac arrest when she saw it.

      ‘Although there will be lots of cardiologists on hand if she does,’ Vanessa said cheerfully.

      And Mel…Mel had planned a bit of personal grooming time so she’d look her best on this important occasion. A new dress, perhaps. Or a trendy haircut. Something to show the world, and the top people at Lorimar, that Mel Redmond had her finger on the pulse.

      Yet somehow, with fifteen minutes to go before she and Adrian had to leave the house on the Saturday night in question, Mel was upstairs frantically trying to revive her limp hair with a blast of hairspray. Her maquillage consisted of a faded bit of eyeliner that had originally been plastered on at nine that morning, and her skin tone was more Wet Weekend in Greenland than the delicious shade of Malibu Bronze most of the other Lorimar women were aiming for. Adrian was recovering from the flu and Mel realised miserably that even he looked better than she did. Feeling worn out after a hectic day and an even more hectic month, all she wanted to do was lie down on the bed and sleep.

      Her diary had been black with dates for the whole of February. The second Friday of the month had been Adrian’s younger brother, Eddie’s, fortieth birthday and the landmark party had involved a big meal for the extended family in his favourite restaurant.

      ‘My kid brother, forty…’ Adrian kept remarking in an astonished way. ‘It seems so old. I can remember us talking about what it would be like to be forty.’

      ‘It was like being a million years old,’ reflected Eddie. ‘It seemed so far away. I sort of hoped I’d be forty before you because I was fed up with being two years younger and you got to do everything first.’

      ‘For you to be forty first, Adrian would have had to have died,’ said their mother, Lynda.

      ‘Just as well it didn’t happen then,’ Eddie said gravely, ‘although I came close to killing you often enough, big bro.’

      The following weekend, Mel’s aunt and uncle celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary and their children organised a big lunch party in a Dublin hotel, complete with a band playing Jim Reeves songs, and enlarged photos on the walls of the happy couple during their married life. Arrangements of pale pink roses decorated the tables, and to recreate the whole wedding effect, which had originally been low key because of a lack of funds, there was a blessing by the parish priest, champagne toasts and speeches.

      ‘It’s such an emotional event, isn’t it?’ said one of the guests dreamily to Mel after Uncle Dermot reduced the whole room to floods of tears by telling them how he didn’t want to cope a single day without his Angela.

      ‘Er, yes, very emotional,’ replied Mel, sweat ruining her hair as she rushed off after Carrie, who’d run rampant as soon as she realised that the hotel was the perfect place for escaping her mother. So far, Carrie had hidden in a stall in the women’s loos, under the draped tablecloth where the anniversary cake stood in state, and behind the swing door into the kitchen.

      ‘Sit down and rest and I’ll take care of Carrie,’ said Mel’s mum, as Mel sprinted past.

      Mel stopped and thought of how her high-heeled party sandals were killing her and how the people who organised these events and invited children never seemed to plan anything specifically for them. ‘Children welcome!’ meant nothing when it didn’t include a special child-friendly room where parents could alternate care while round-the-clock Barney’s Great Adventure/One Hundred and One Dalmatians played on the video. Or else on-demand tranquillisers for the parents. Those glasses of red wine sitting invitingly at the edges of the tables were like a magnet for a child of Carrie’s age.

      ‘You’re tired, Mel. Have a sit-down with Adrian. Get yourself a piece of the cake, go on. I’ll keep an eye on her.’ Karen got up from her seat and began to head off after the lilac-clad whirlwind that was Carrie.

      ‘No, Mum, it’s OK. You do enough,’ Mel said firmly. If her feet hurt, she’d just take her shoes off. Who’d notice? ‘Next thing, Carrie will think you’re her

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