‘Will you look after Catherine for me while I’m away in Dublin, Aisling?’ he said, his voice suddenly urgent.
‘But I don’t need looking after!’ protested Catherine, slightly terrified that this attractive woman with the warm smile might ask questions which would be impossible not to answer truthfully.
‘You can see me as much or as little as you wish to, Catherine—I won’t mind in the least,’ said Aisling firmly. ‘But won’t you be terribly lonesome with Finn away?’
‘Catherine wanted peace and quiet,’ put in Finn. ‘So Dublin’s out. And she wants to write.’
‘Yes.’ Catherine swallowed. ‘I’m a journalis
t.’
‘So I believe,’ said Aisling lightly, leaving Catherine wondering whether she had read the article. But even if she had she didn’t seem to hold it against her, not judging by the genuine warmth of her welcome, anyway.
A small boy came running in, closely followed by an older sister, his face covered in sand and the sticky remains of a crab. ‘Jack Casey! Just what have you been doing to yourself?’
‘He tried to eat the crab, Mammy!’ crowed the little girl. ‘Even though I told him not to!’
‘And you just let him, did you?’ asked her mother, deftly picking up a cloth and beginning to scrub at her protesting son. ‘Does this not put you off what you’re about to go through, Catherine?’
‘Well, I’ll have a few years to prepare myself,’ said Catherine, as Jack deposited a chubby handful of shells into her lap.
‘Jack! Please don’t put sand all over Catherine’s dress!’ scolded Aisling.
‘I don’t mind—honestly, I don’t.’
Finn sat and watched the interaction of everyday family life and felt a great clench of his heart. How easy and uncomplicated it all seemed on the surface. With Catherine sitting there laughing as a sticky hand was shoved towards her hair, which today she had woven into two thick plaits which fell over her breasts.
Pregnancy suited her, he thought unwillingly, and her growing body seemed just as sexy as the pre-pregnancy one had done.
Thank God he was going back to Dublin in the morning!
The weeks slid by and Catherine settled into her new life, taking to the slow, easy pace like a duck to water.
She rose early and walked along the seashore, tracing her route back via the shops, where she bought freshly baked bread and milk which tasted better than any milk she had ever drunk before.
Then she settled down to write, but found that her writing had changed. She no longer had the desire nor the contacts to produce the punchy, easy-read features which had defined her career up until this point.
The flat in Clerkenwell was being rented out at an exorbitant fee, and so for the first time in her life there were no pressing money worries. She could enjoy her pregnancy and give in to what she most wanted to do.
She began to write a book.
‘You’re the only person I’ve told!’ she said on the phone to her mother one night.
‘What, not even Finn?’
‘No. It’s a surprise,’ said Catherine truthfully. Or was she scared of trying and failing in his eyes?
‘And when am I going to meet this husband of yours?’ asked her mother. ‘Everybody’s asking me what he’s like and I have to tell them that I don’t know!’
This was a difficult one—more than difficult. Catherine had the means to fly her mother out—and knew how much she wanted to see her and how much her mother would enjoy life in the small Irish village. But—and it was a monumental but—how did she begin to explain the situation?
If her mother came she would either have to tell the truth or she would have to pretend, and she didn’t know how long she could keep that up in front of the person who knew her so well.
For a start she and Finn would be expected to share a bedroom, and she knew for a fact that she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t sleep with him and not be climbing the walls with a terrible yearning to have him close to her in a way he did not want to be. It was bad enough on her nights alone, and the ones when he was sleeping just along the corridor—being in an enclosed space with a bed in it would be almost impossible.
‘Soon, Mum,’ she said lamely.
‘If you leave it much longer, then I’ll be a grandmother!’