28

I read it again, just to make sure.

‘This NDA shall remain in effect until the confidential information pertaining to the event, the nature of the event, the bridal party and their guests no longer qualifies.’

It’s their wedding. Emilia Coburn and Ben Dixon are having their wedding at Garbally and I’m the only one who knows it. Well, the only one around here anyway, it seems. Even James seems to think the first event there is a birthday party, and I’m afraid to probe any deeper because am I even allowed to say that I’ve signed an NDA? Won’t that reveal that I know something about it? Better to say nothing at all. Mandy has prepared less detailed agreements for Carol, Noel and Karla, so all they know is that we’re preparing food for an event at Garbally. I open the calendar on my phone and I’m about to put the date into it when I freeze. Maybe it’s best not to. You never know who’s watching. I’ll hardly forget it anyway, though – 27 April. Exactly one week before Majella’s wedding.

‘Honey, I’m home,’ James calls into the apartment as he closes the front door with a swing of his hip. He’s done it every night since we moved in together and is just thrilled with himself. It’s cute but also wearing a bit thin. Plus, he’s started coming in covered in cement dust every day. They’re pouring floors at Garbally apparently. Pity they wouldn’t pour themselves into washing machines at the end of the day. James is carrying shopping bags. He must have gone to the New Aldi to get ingredients for the toad in the hole he’s promised to make me. Or threatened, more like. I couldn’t say anything over breakfast, of course, but it sounds God-awful, with the exception of the sausages.

‘Honey, you’re home.’

I said this back to him the first night he did it, and now it’s a little ritual. He smiles at me in his work fleece with his bag of groceries in one hand and some post in the other. It’s mad how quickly this has all happened. I survey our little place. I must say, it’s looking a lot better since I went to Knock Garden Centre the other day. As well as a lovely cosy throw for the couch, I picked up a Colette Green reed diffuser, a bottle of fancy hand soap for the bathroom, eight baskets in varying sizes, a set of Joseph Joseph chopping boards, three stepping-out mats for the shower, a silver picture frame, four succulents, two mugs that say ‘Love’, a knitted pouffe for the living room and two hundred tea lights. You can never have enough tea lights, especially in your first proper home with a boy.

Carol nearly fainted when the receipt fell out of my purse in the café, and it’s very unlike me to be so flaithiúlach, but I must admit, firing the stuff into the little wheelie basket they give you there made me feel quite calm. The calmest I’ve felt in ages. Maybe that’s why Sadhbh likes shopping so much? Maybe I need another shopping spree after the shock of this NDA stuff.

‘Well, did she get the dress?’ James is unpacking stuff in the kitchen and I stop myself from going in to make sure he’s putting everything on the right shelf in the fridge.

‘Oh, she did. One thing knocked off my to-do list.’

He waves a square white envelope at me. ‘Look! Addressed to both of us. Our first post.’

I reach out and take it from him, running my finger over our two names. It looks so grown up. I slip my finger under the flap and open it.

‘It’s a card! “Home Sweet Home” with a picture of a cottage. Aw.’ I flip it open. ‘“Congrats Aisling and James! Love Elaine and Ruby, and Dexter.” “Dexter is our new puppy,” it says in brackets. Ah, they got a puppy! I thought it would have been cats, to be honest.’

‘That was very nice of them,’ James says, going back to his groceries while I move some of the smaller baskets and succulents around on the mantelpiece to make room for the card. Of course there’s only an electric fire in the hearth, given that it’s an apartment, but it’s better than nothing, and the ‘real’ effect is so convincing James had to stop me flinging a sod of turf on it for the first few weeks.

‘Remind me to tell them about the new mugs,’ I say, arranging the baskets by size. ‘They were designed by Ellen DeGeneres, you know.’

‘Huh?’ He’s looking at his phone.

‘The mugs. Ellen designed them herself. She has her own range of delph now. I’m sure the girls are all over it.’

‘Sorry, Ais … it’s just this email. Gah!’

‘Everything okay?’ I walk over to the kitchen and run a hand up his back, feeling bad for being annoyed at him when he came in. As I know only too well myself, the curse of being self-employed is you have to be reachable at all times. There’s just no escape. It’s not like sitting in an open-plan office and being paid whether you process those pension claims or not, and more’s the pity. Hindsight is 20/20, but I didn’t know how good I had it back at PensionsPlus.

‘It’s about that event that’s scheduled for Garbally. The planner is nitpicking about finishes when we’re not even close to that stage yet. So bloody clueless. It’s that woman, Mandy, the one you met. What’s the latest with that, anyway?’

I start to panic. Can I tell him anything? Can he even know we’re doing food for this ‘event’? Will I get sued? I decide to err on the side of caution. ‘No, she’s gone very quiet. They must be going with someone else.’

‘You’re probably better off.’ He flings his phone onto the counter and I gather up the butter and milk and head for the fridge, avoiding his eyes.

‘Well, you know the way it is with … some people,’ I stammer. ‘They probably want everything to look perfect. For the pictures, I mean. The … eh … birthday pictures.’

I nearly said wedding pictures. I really need to stay on top of this. To be fair, though, everybody does love looking at wedding pictures. Denise Kelly has her album on a sort of stand in the corner of her sitting room. More of a podium, really. She turns a page every day like the Book of Kells. It’s a good idea, really, when you factor in the price of a wedding photographer. She’s only getting her money’s worth.

James looks at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?’ I pick up the TV guide. ‘Oh, look, the repeat of Strictly is starting. I’m dying to see Basil Brush’s tango. Majella said Pablo was very impressed with his rhythm.’ I slide down onto the couch and flick on the telly, grateful to have my back to him.

I still can’t quite believe BallyGoBrunch will be doing the canapés for Emilia Coburn and Ben Dixon’s wedding. On the one hand, it’s doing nothing for my already sky-high stress levels, but on the other, it’s likely to be a star-studded affair. What if their pictures get into magazines, what with all their celebrity friends? Imagine Dawn O’Porter being papped eating a Carol Boland sausage roll? Or George and Amal going bananas for our ham and cheese croquettes? The café could be catapulted onto the international stage. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. Everything will have to be perfect. I take out my phone again and open the document, swooshing my finger around to draw my signature before I change my mind. I hit Send and sit back on the couch, thinking about all the ways I could possibly make a balls of this.

Sadhbh sent me a link last week to an article about compartmentalising. She said it would help me get my cortisol levels down, and at this stage I’ll try anything. Well, anything but ‘smudging’. This was her other idea: that I wrap up a little pile of sage, set it on fire and walk around the apartment waving it till all the negativity is gone from my life. I ask you. No, compartmentalising makes more sense. With that, I just visualise keeping every problem in its own box and not letting them all spill out together and joining up like one giant, mega problem, which is how I’m feeling at the moment, and it’s starting to show, even with Majella’s dress now under control.

Carol had a huge pot of chicken carcasses and vegetables and herbs on the hob for three days to make a stock, and when she asked me to strain it yesterday, I poured the lot down the drain and kept the pot of bones. She had to explain to me three times what I’d done wrong. I’m half-thinking of going to Dr Maher and asking him for a prescription or something, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to confess to anyone that I’m feeling so overwhelmed. Would they even believe me? I should probably tell James first, since he’s my boyfriend. My ‘partner’, as Mammy’s taken to calling him. I always thought ‘partner’ was for glamorous women whose first husbands died in mysterious circumstances but here I am, a ‘partner’. James’s partner.

I can hear him whisking away goodo in the kitchen and I know I’m lucky to have him. I had to go to the cash and carry yesterday morning, and when I got to the Micra I noticed he’d poured boiling-hot water on my windscreen to de-ice it. A lovely gesture, even though it’s highly dangerous and he could have shattered the whole thing. Still, though, it’s the thought that counts.

I can’t help but think back to his parents in that big house in Buckleton, how they can barely stand to be in the same postcode as each other, and how you’d think that would have completely messed up his idea of what love really is. But no, he’s behind me making me toad in the hole. He’s staying in Ireland because of me. He loves me.

‘Hey, I was thinking.’ He slams the oven door, throws himself down beside me on the couch, and nuzzles my neck. ‘We should have a little housewarming in the next few weeks, now that you’re all unpacked. What do you think? I know you’ve been non-stop with wedding-dress shopping and all that. It’ll be a chance to let your hair down and relax. You can invite all your friends and I can bring some of the work crew.’

Oh God, as if I haven’t enough to be doing without adding a party. I’m about to object when he cuts me off. ‘You can show off your new mugs. And those candles you’re so fond of. Maybe get another throw.’ He raises his eyebrows and he knows he has me, the crafty shite. I must ring Knock Garden Centre and get them to hold two of the Colette Green cushions for me. If we’re going to have a party, we’re having it in turquoise-velvet style.