‘We just can’t believe he’s thinking of getting rid of it. It’s our family home. And he says your mum is selling her farm. Do you not think it’s all a bit much too soon?’
I find myself in a place I couldn’t have even imagined one or two or three months ago: relating to and empathising with Cara and Síomha. ‘I totally get where you’re coming from. I’ve been really struggling with the idea, too. So much so that I’m considering taking over the farm myself.’
‘Dad says it’s just bricks and mortar and we carry our memories with us, but, like, that’s where Mum was when she died. It’s like he doesn’t care.’
‘I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t care, Síomha.’ Cara shakes her head. ‘Like, obviously he’d be sad to sell it, but he just doesn’t think we have much of a say.’
At least Mammy has entertained the idea of me taking over the farm, although my earlier conversation with Maj rings in my ears. The money she’d make from the sale would give her financial independence. I’ve just been selfishly and ignorantly assuming she’d just walk away and give everything to me. ‘Maybe your dad wants the money from the house to retire on?’
‘He’s a GP. He has plenty of money. We actually –’ Cara breaks off there.
‘What?’ I push her.
‘We thought maybe your mum was after his money for a long time.’ She has the good grace to look a bit ashamed.
I feel myself bristling. ‘My mother is not after his money or anything else. I think she’s shown that she’s mad about him just by putting up with you two, to be quite honest.’
‘Well, it’s not like you were the most welcoming yourself!’ Síomha fires back. ‘You looked like you wanted to die at Christmas, and you literally assaulted us at Castlefarrow.’
I will acknowledge that it doesn’t sound great when they lay it out like that. ‘Okay, I’m really sorry. It really wasn’t like me. I was just …’ I sigh. ‘I had had a rough few months and I was worried about Mamm– eh, my mam. But also, I invited you to The Peigs and you didn’t even show up. It wasn’t easy to get those tickets.’
‘We are genuinely sorry about that, and to this day I’m raging we didn’t go,’ Cara admits. ‘But it just seemed so overwhelming. You with all your friends – you’re besties with Sadhbh, for God’s sake. She’s as inner circle as it gets.’ I spare them the details of Sadhbh’s heartache. ‘We were afraid you’d be laughing at us or resent us for being there. We know our dad asked your mum to sort the tickets.’
‘Yeah, and she was really hurt that you wasted them.’
‘We know. We got it in the ear from Dad.’
‘My mother is a nice person, you know? She’s not an evil-hag stepmother.’
‘I know, and she was so, so nice to us today after the … the thing with the cat.’ Cara looks ready to cry again.
‘Well, since we’re being honest, for a minute I thought you might try and murder her. Or us. To get us out of the picture. Your podcast is full of great ideas.’
Síomha bursts out laughing. ‘We were hoping she might just end things with Dad, but she didn’t, in fairness to her. We probably took it a bit far.’ Síomha looks at Cara and they both nod.
I smile. ‘We all took it a bit far. But at least no one died. Well, except the cat.’
There’s a squeal from across the room and we look over to see Geraldine from Geraldine’s Boutique recoiling from the cat chariot. She’s not the first person who’s peered in expecting a baby, only to be greeted by Marsha.
‘Did you know they want to move to Connemara?’ Cara has a note of incredulity in her voice.
‘Yeah, Mammy mentioned something about the west, alright.’
‘Although Dad sent me a link to a place on Achill. Did you get that, Síomha?’
I didn’t know Achill was now in the mix. Mammy hasn’t shared any of this with me. I suppose how can she when I’m still humming and hawing over the farm.
‘Oh, Achill’s cool. I was there with Matt last summer.’
‘Still, though, are we really willing to sacrifice the Kerry house?’ Cara slumps in her chair, and I realise how unreasonable she sounds. How unreasonable we all sound. And at least I have Mammy saying she wants to keep a base in BGB. The girls won’t have anything similar in Kerry.
‘Are you genuinely thinking about running the farm, Aisling? Do you not have your deadly job in Dublin? And you’re living with John. Would he come with you?’
I think about leaving the little cottage again so soon, after all the work we’ve put into it. I think about the dodgy boiler in our old farmhouse and the draught that gets under the carpets. I think about how long I’ve been storing my memories in that house and those sheds and those fields and imagine packing them up and bringing them with me.
‘Do you know what? Maybe I will just let it go. Now that I think about it, it feels a bit selfish to insist on keeping it.’
Cara and Síomha look unsure.
‘My friend Majella, who’s very wise and insisted on this baby shower, said something to me earlier about home being what you make it. If Mammy and Dr Trevor’s home’ – the girls snigger at me calling him Dr Trevor – ‘if it’s in Achill or Connemara, then that’ll kind of be our home too, if they let any of us ungrateful wagons visit.’
‘Sounds like you’ve made your decision.’ Cara shrugs.
‘Any clearer on the Kerry house?’ I look from one face to the other.
‘Maybe,’ Síomha says, ‘but we might give him a hard time for a bit longer.’
‘I’d well believe it.’
Hannah appears at my side. ‘Aisling, he’s outside. Get her in the chair.’
I hurry over to Sadhbh and tell her to initiate the diversion as I prepare the floor for the stripper’s arrival. She dutifully asks Majella to show her photos of her meeting various Westlife members, a pastime that will buy us precious minutes of set-up time. I race out of the ballroom and down to a large storage cupboard where I’ve stashed the chair gussied up to look like a throne. As I drag it back into the ballroom, Aubrey is passing out giant baby bibs with ‘I’ve got a boner’ printed on them, plus a cute dinosaur to make them a little less crude. Dee is in place to man the music, and all that’s left to do is send Hannah the text that we’re ready to roll. I fire it off, give Dee the nod and as the iconic Jurassic Park music fills the room, I escort a confused Majella to her throne, startling her from a monologue to Sadhbh about Shane Filan’s eye creases.
‘What the hell, bird?’
With that the ballroom door swings open and in struts Dr Alan Grant. Well, a small but very well-built version of him, anyway, wearing the blue shirt, chinos, red kerchief and an Indiana Jones hat. He even has dust on his trousers and boots. Hannah’s attention to detail is up there with Aubrey’s.
‘Oh my God,’ squeals Majella, as Dr Grant strides towards her and bellows, ‘I’m here to jump some bones.’
Majella grabs my hand. ‘Aisling, I really do think I might be going into labour.’
‘What? Really?’
Dr Grant crosses the dance floor towards Majella, loses focus for a second when he sees just how pregnant she is, but then he’s back in the game and he’s undoing the upper buttons of his shirt.
‘No, actually, I’m alright,’ she hisses, shooing me away.
The palaeontologist stripper is better than any Magic Mike impersonator we could have gotten, and even plays along when the sweeping Jurassic Park music segues into ‘Pony’, humping and grinding like nobody’s business. His pièce de résistance comes when he whips a little brush out of his tiny pants and flicks it up and down Majella’s body. I’m glad Pablo isn’t here to see it. The room is going wild as he finishes his set, running around the room and rolling his hips at anyone who’ll stand still for two seconds. I’ve never seen Constance Swinford so puce. Before he leaves, I press two fifty-euro notes into his hand as a tip. He’s earned it. And I’ve earned a drink. Majella toddles off to the bathroom to cool down after her hectic time in the throne, and I tip over to Sadhbh and Ruby to see if they want a top-up.
Sadhbh is staring at her phone in disbelief. ‘It’s Don. He’s outside.’
‘Oh. What? Is he okay?’
‘He wants me to come out. I suppose I’ll go?’ Her cheeks are flushed and she’s practically giddy. So much for no contact. It hasn’t even been forty-eight hours.
Before she can even make it to the door, a frantic Don is entering the ballroom, eyes swivelling around looking for her. He spots her and pounces, taking both her forearms in his hands. ‘I thought you weren’t going to come out.’
‘In fairness, she didn’t get a chance,’ Ruby pipes up, and is silenced with a glare from Elaine.
‘Sadhbhy,’ Don pants, ‘I barely got through one day without you. I’m in absolute bits. Please can we stop this stupid thing we’re doing and just go back to being us. I’m in hell.’
The whole room is agog. Denise Kelly has even produced popcorn from somewhere.
‘What about the baby issue, Don? If I haven’t changed my mind and you haven’t changed yours –’
‘I have changed my mind. I have changed it, Sadhbhy.’
‘How? Since Thursday?’
‘I can’t live without you. You’re more important to me than any stupid baby that doesn’t even exist.’
‘Interesting language for a literal baby shower,’ Ruby mutters, before being shushed by several people.
‘Plus,’ Don continues, ‘I was staying with Marc and his wife last night, and they have a two-year-old and a newborn, and it was so awful. The older one was terrorising us.’ Some of the mothers in the group nod sagely. ‘I’m pretty sure I can live without that, but I can’t live without you.’
Sadhbh collapses into his arms and a cheer goes around the room. Even the barman is looking misty-eyed. The cousin with little Danny DeVito elbows her way through, thrusting the child at Don. ‘I know you said you’re not into babies, but I absolutely have to get a photo for Facebook.’
Don accepts the infant, somewhat blindsided, and then turns on his delicious smile for the camera. The cousin forces her phone on her mother. ‘Get one with me in it.’
As the posing continues, Majella pushes her way through, much more composed after a little time out. She stops dead in her tracks as she takes in the scene of her one true love – after Pablo – standing in the middle of her shower, cradling a tiny baby. She gasps and grabs her bump.