Kitabı oku: «Three Wise Men»

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part Two

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Part Three

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Keep Reading

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

Kate props an elbow on the ledge above the hand-basin and concentrates on drawing a steady line around her mouth with her new rust-coloured lip pencil. She’s slapping on the face she chooses to wear, as opposed to the one dumped on her by the arbitrariness of genes, for a rendezvous with Jack. And lip-liner is integral to the operation. She snapped up three pencils when she spotted them in Clery’s – plums are in vogue and you can’t find autumn shades to save your life. Not that lip-liner is technically a life-saver, but it comes a close second. It’s certainly giving her mouth the kiss of life.

Kate is preparing for her farewell to Jack’s arms, as well as the rest of him, and she can’t apply herself to the task until she applies her make-up. A woman has to look her best to do her worst to a man; imagine if he went home relieved. Like a lemming that couldn’t find a cliff.

Her lips are within half an inch of perfection when the phone rings, causing a painted-on wobble instead of a pout. She contemplates ignoring the source of the interruption, reconsiders when it strikes her the caller might be Jack changing the time they’re to meet, and bolts from the bathroom before the answering machine gobbles any message.

The caller is Mick, her friend Gloria’s husband, and he’s virtually incoherent. Kate has to make him repeat his story twice before she establishes that Gloria’s been rushed to hospital with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Whatever that is. It must have required the full ER team from Mick’s garble. Thirty-six hours without sleep are taking their toll on him. Kate, only barely assimilating the news, realises she’s still clutching her new lip-liner and grinding the pencil tip against the body of the phone. Bronze Babe is smeared between redial button and microphone. She and Gloria have been intimates for a million years, since they were cast as two of the three wise men in the Primary Two nativity play; another friend, Eimear, was the third.

‘Which hospital is Gloria in? I’ll go straight in to see her,’ she offers.

Mick advises against it, to Kate’s relief when she remembers her only way of contacting Jack to cancel is by catching him in the office – a call to his home is never an option. Not unless she’s intent on setting out the welcome mat for trouble.

‘Leave it for now, she’s still not able to have visitors: the tears start tripping her as soon as she lays eyes on me,’ says Mick. ‘They operated on her in the middle of the night and it’s been a massive shock. We didn’t even realise she was pregnant. I was too shaken to let you know sooner but Gloria’s just asked me to give you and Eimear a ring – I’ve already told her family. Eimear’s my last call, then I suppose I’ll head off and find something to eat. I haven’t much of an appetite, to be honest. You’ve no idea what a jolt this has been; it’s the first time I’ve had to phone an ambulance.’

Guilt pricks at Kate. She ought to volunteer to meet Mick for a drink, she’s known him even longer than Gloria and he sounds in a state, but she’s psyched up for her parting is such sweet sorrow number with Jack. And even if she doesn’t pull it off tonight she can plant the seeds … drop hints about how the end of the line is only a few stops away. In the meantime she can’t bring herself to renounce the euphoria of an evening spent in her lover’s company. Mick must have other friends who can keep an eye on him.

‘I’ll drop in to see Gloria before work tomorrow,’ she promises; and conscience salved after a few consolatory truisms, returns to her dating ritual preparations. Game on.

Kate knows she should feel restrained by Gloria’s hospitalisation but decency is purged by jubilation at the prospect of Jack’s undivided attention. Her reflection smiles giddily at her as a wave of exultation bubbles up from her diaphragm and catches in her throat. He drenches her with gladness, simply the thought of him makes her laugh aloud. It’s enough to be able to look at Jack, she wouldn’t object if there was never any touching. Actually, that’s a fib; she adores the stroking, but it’s not the alpha and the omega.

‘Listen to me with my Latin tags. I should forget about being a lawyer and think about being a friend,’ she reminds herself.

Kate’s aware – and only hazily concerned by the realisation – that she’s dwelling on the anticipatory pleasure of being with Jack without sparing a thought for Gloria, comatose and attached to a drip. She’ll make it up to her tomorrow; she’ll transform Gloria’s room into a bower. Meanwhile she should be plotting the direction her tryst with Jack will take.

She’s decided to end their affair, although not because it’s turned stale – a flashback of Jack’s lean brown fingers cupping her cheek swims before her eyes and she tingles with anticipation, losing her train of thought. ‘Concentrate,’ she wills herself, a woman needs to be rehearsed before an encounter with Jack. He has a propensity for bringing the curtain down on the rational processes. Jack O’Brien tends to make you feel more and think less.

That’s why she’s wearing her dating underwear. Kate has no intention of ending up in bed with him but to be on the safe side she slipped on a particularly sheer matching set after showering. Jack always notices and comments as he eases them off, it’s worth occasionally imagining you’ve stumbled into playing the leading lady in a porn movie for the pleasure he takes in it.

On Jackless days she slings on whatever comes to hand – even her boyfriend Pearse’s boxer shorts when she’s cold – but if Jack’s in the vicinity Kate prefers the comfort of the uncomfortable. Style over substance is the coda, which is just as well because there’s virtually no substance to what she’s wearing.

But back to the task ahead. She daubs at the shaky patch on the lip-line front and contemplates options in the staple declarations department. There’s that threadbare standby, ‘Let’s agree to say goodbye now before anyone gets hurt,’ closely followed by, ‘We owe it to our partners to call it a day.’ She has a sneaking fondness for ‘We both knew this liaison had built-in obsolescence’ but is wary of fielding it in case Jack accuses her of pomposity.

Kate giggles. ‘The sure-fire way to scare a man off is to tell him you’re ready to have his baby.’

But carrying his child – or anyone else’s – is unimaginable. Besides, she doesn’t want to put the wind up Jack so thoroughly that he’s caught in a typhoon; what’s required here is a regretful parting of the ways potholed with might-have-beens.

Even as she rehearses, Kate instinctively recognises her chances of pulling off a dignified exit-stage-left are on a par with the likelihood of nomination for a Nobel Prize. Jack only permits disengagement when he’s ready; anyone else’s requirements do not compute. He confessed once that he ended or engineered the conclusion of every single relationship he embarked on. Apart from his marriage, which still purports to be watertight in Jack’s version of his first-class cruise through life.

This time she’s going to take the initiative, vows Kate, scrutinising her face and deciding it will pass muster. God, but it’s time-consuming, this business of packaging yourself for an affair. The rules preclude turning up in mangy jeans and a windcheater, it has to be glamour every time. As sound a reason for bailing out as any dilatory – but better late than never – notions about loyalty or morality. She could have waded through Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy with all the hours lavished on blending, shading and defining a face that would never, not ever, earn a second glance when Jack’s wife was in the vicinity.

She’ll call a halt tonight for sure. Fortified with this sense of clambering a few rungs up the moral ladder, Kate activates the burglar alarm and closes the front door behind her. Then she has to de-activate it to retrieve a coat – in her exhilaration at knowing she’ll be within Jack’s ambit in ten minutes, less if she trots, she forgets that she needs another layer. He might proclaim himself enthralled by her skinny freckled arms but he won’t be quite so smitten by goosebumps lurching upon them.

That’s a characteristic of Jack, she thinks as she hurtles down the stairs. He fosters oblivion. Which just about sums up her attitude to Pearse. She has a disgraceful capacity for amnesia where he’s concerned. Make that mental obliteration.

Her boyfriend – although Kate doubts Pearse was ever a boy because he was born middle-aged – is currently visiting his mother in Roscommon. This has allowed her the luxury of an hour in the bathroom reinventing her appearance for Jack’s delectation, allied to the elimination of any obligation to construct a plausible excuse for heading out dressed like a slut on a week night. Thank heavens for Pearse’s mother’s unsteady turn the other day propelling him westwards.

Jack isn’t in The Odeon when Kate arrives; she’s disappointed, searching the bar decorated with a nod in the direction of a thirties theme. Then again, Jack is never there first. She always forgives him because she doesn’t want to sound girlie about having reservations at hovering in a pub on her own. The Odeon is more central than the places they usually meet but Jack calculated it was safe because it attracts a young clientele, plus the lighting is so subdued you need a torch to find the marbled bar. And there’s a sea of bodies bobbing around Kate so unless Moses shows up to part them, the chances of someone recognising her are remote to zero.

Kate is swirling the dregs of her red wine with burgeoning discontentment when Jack strolls in.

‘You look gorgeous.’ He unleashes his most intimate smile.

Her resentment evaporates.

‘Let me order you a refill,’ he adds, stroking her back lightly with circular movements. ‘Is that a new lipstick? Have I told you yet how sensational you look? How come you look extra fabulous tonight?’

‘I had an early night last night,’ laughs Kate, warmed by his main-beam attention. ‘It’s down to sleep, the ultimate beauty aid. No, come to think of it that’s plastic surgery. But sleep must run the scalpel a close second.’

Jack looks faintly bemused as he leans an elbow on the bar and asks for two glasses of red wine. They arrive in miniature bottles and he carries them to a pair of curving cream leather armchairs which miraculously disgorge their occupants just as he searches for a place to sit. Life operates that way for Jack, reflects Kate, as he touches his glass to hers.

‘Here’s to wine and women, we’ll pass on the song,’ he says.

‘To wine and men,’ she responds. ‘Although a man is only a man but a good glass of wine is a drink.’

‘You purloined that from somewhere,’ he accuses her lightly.

‘Cannibalised it,’ she shrugs. ‘That’s as acceptable as invention.’

Time to play the goodbye girl, she reminds herself minutes later as he crowds her, leaning across the table and gazing at her lips so intently she starts to wonder if she has a red wine rim around them. Covertly she rubs between nose and upper lip while pretending to adjust her ankle boot, then prepares to extract one of her guillotine lines from the ready-prepared store. But Jack distracts her by lifting her hand and running his thumb against her inner wrist.

‘Feck it,’ she decides, ‘I’ll tell him we’re finished after we have sex. No point in ruining the evening.’

It seems churlish to raise the subject in the languorous afterglow of their lovemaking, especially when they have unfettered access to her apartment with Pearse’s absence. Instead of biting the bullet Kate swallows it, along with her good intentions, and snuggles up to Jack who’s radiator warm.

She’s slumbering contentedly when he leaps up, dislodging her head from its perch on his shoulder and complaining she should have kept an eye on the time.

‘Eimear will go ballistic if I wake her arriving home at 2 a.m.,’ Jack whines, looking considerably less alluring with a crossly furrowed forehead and one foot in his underpants than he did a few hours earlier.

Kate regards him with a distinctly unenamoured expression as he cannonballs around her bedroom scooping up articles of clothing. She thought men were supposed to fall asleep after climaxing, not trash your room. Right, this is it, he’s brought it on himself – she’s ready for endgame. But Jack isn’t.

‘Listen, we have to talk,’ she begins.

‘Not now, baby girl; order me a cab, would you. And, um, you couldn’t lend me a couple of notes to pay for it – I forgot to hit the hole-in-the-wall machine today.’

Automatically she dials up one of the local firms and hands him the price of his fare. By which stage Jack is dressed, prepared for flight and has regained his grip on the sixth-sense charm he operates.

He bends over the bed, cooing: ‘What did you want to talk about, Katie-Kate?’ and covers her face with feathered kisses which completely divert her from following her own advice delivered in front of the bathroom mirror. Oscar Wilde had the right idea about good advice: Pass it on. As precipitately as possible.

‘Share the joke, baby girl,’ murmurs Jack, by now licking her inner ear.

But before she responds the front-door buzzer sounds the taxi’s arrival and he bounds away like a greyhound out of the trap.

Kate scowls, punching the pillows, and contemplates having that chat with Jack over the telephone. He can’t trickle exactly the optimum quantity of saliva into her ear over the phone. Honeyed words are as much as he can manage there. She’ll call him tomorrow.

The last conscious thought to strike Kate, as she nods off, renders that phone call unlikely.

‘I don’t honestly want to end this affair with Jack, that’s why I’m having such trouble doing it. Just because Jack belongs to Eimear doesn’t mean I can’t share him – if we’re discreet.’

CHAPTER 2

‘I’m having an affair.’

The words dangle in the air, flaunting as temptingly as a Christmas bauble. Gloria’s instinct is to take them down and examine them, just as she always longs to handle glittery tree decorations – touch them to check if they’re real. She’s lying in a hospital bed, a captive audience. If in doubt say nothing: that’s her mother’s advice. Gloria ignores it.

‘Who with?’ she asks Kate.

‘With Jack,’ responds Kate, feigning interest in the wilting floral arrangement on Gloria’s locker.

The news is so startling it almost – almost – distracts Gloria from her own problems. Now she does take her mother’s recommendation to heart, although only because she’s too dumbstruck to speak. Kate glances at her covertly as she strips expiring foliage from the vase of moon daisies and seizes the silence as an invitation to elaborate.

‘We’re in love, Gloria. Neither of us planned it but it happened and now’ – she blushes – ‘we find we can’t live without one another.’

‘And love invents its own laws?’ Gloria’s tone is caustic; she’s regained her power of speech and a sense of outrage along with it.

The stain on Kate’s cheeks deepens, clashing spectacularly with her red hair. ‘We know we’re doing wrong,’ she admits. ‘This is such agony, ecstasy too, but agony. I can’t erase Eimear from my mind.’

‘You managed very nicely when you leapt into bed with her husband.’

‘Oh, Glo, don’t be angry with me, I know I’m a wicked temptress who deserves to be ducked in the village pond.’

Kate beats her chest in such mock-pious atonement that Gloria can’t help but smile. Just for a nano-second; this is no laughing matter. She hurriedly resumes her stern expression.

‘What were you thinking of, Kate McGlade, taking up with your best friend’s husband and you with a man of your own at home?’

Kate bows her head in comic humility, hoping for an encore of the smile, but Gloria is relentless now, appalled at the impact her deviancy will wreak on their triumvirate.

‘This is serious, Kate; this is beyond serious, you have to stop seeing him immediately.’

‘I can’t,’ she wails, rumpling her hair until it’s standing in peaks. ‘It’s the real thing, he’s my Coca Cola lover.’

‘Well then,’ forecasts Gloria, ‘prepare for Armageddon. And you’ll probably have your cornflake-box crown confiscated.’

They each wore one, sprayed gold and decorated with fruit gums, twenty-six years ago as the Three Wise Men. Trouble is, they grew up to be Three Unwise Women.

But Gloria’s losing sight of her own troubles with Kate and she’s not ready to shed that comforting blanket of misery just yet – especially not to tackle a situation as explosive as this. A dear little nun who calls for an uninvited visit is just about to remind her of them. The sister totters into the room, sees another figure by the bedside and starts backing out, but Kate (natural born coward that she is, thinks Gloria) insists she has errands to run and she’ll call by later.

‘There’s no need,’ Gloria tells her.

‘Holles Street Hospital is only around the corner from me, it’s no bother, Glo. I’ll bring you some flowers – these ones need urgent medical attention,’ Kate bribes her.

‘Make it freesias,’ she barters. ‘And don’t think I’ve finished with you yet, you’ve a shopping trolley full of explaining to do.’

Kate settles the nun in a chair by Gloria’s bedside and scuttles off, pulling faces at her behind the tiny sister’s back. Gloria shakes her head: The woman’s beyond redemption – one minute she’s chanting mea culpas, the next she’s behaving like a skit of a schoolgirl.

However she has a guest to take her mind off Kate’s bombshell, one who looks like she’s been paying hospital visits since the days of dancing at the crossroads. Not that nuns went in for much of that, unless of course they were late vocations. Gloria studies her covertly as she speaks: integrity and sincerity shine from the nun’s eyes; she’s in her mid-seventies, no veil, neatly cropped hair, silver band on her wedding ring finger, mysterious stain on the front of her black dress. Gin or vodka?

As she listens she stems a rising impulse to slap her visitor – a sting to shock her into silence. Gloria looks at her clasped hands on the bedspread and concentrates on controlling them. The nun is talking about God’s will and how he moves in mysterious ways; Gloria nods whenever she looks directly at her and wraps fingers around fingers, pressing until white blotches spread across the surface of the skin.

‘There’s a reason for everything, even if we can’t yet see it,’ explains the visitor in tones Gloria hopes to be conclusive.

‘Indeed there is, sister,’ she agrees dully.

Fourteen years of convent education are no preparation for forcibly ejecting elderly nuns from your hospital room. Besides she’s leaving now – no, it’s a false alarm. The nun lifts her bag from the floor but instead of standing up she’s rooting around for something.

Amazing, notes Gloria. You can spend a lifetime in a convent, devoting yourself to God and good works, but there are certain female traits that can never be sublimated and the instinct to cram handbags to the hilt is one of them.

The nun tracks down what she’s searching for and produces it with a magician’s flourish: a holy picture showing the Madonna and Child. Gloria holds it limply. Our Lady is wearing her usual impractical blue nightdress – who decided the poor woman always has to be kitted out in bedclothes anyway? The small blond toddler in Mary’s arms looks like a right handful, no chance of persuading him to eat his greens if he doesn’t feel like it.

Mother and tearaway have their hands joined in prayer peaks and at the bottom of the card is an invocation, ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.’

Even the Virgin Mary has a baby, Gloria thinks sourly. The nun settles herself back in the chair and she stares at her mouth as it opens and closes, opens and closes.

Can the nun direct her to where the Holy Spirit will impregnate her? Otherwise she may as well leave. It doesn’t even have to be a child of God, an ordinary one will do.

A nurse’s head appears around the door. It’s Imelda, Gloria’s favourite one. She and her boyfriend are saving up to emigrate to Australia but they keep having to postpone the departure date because of sessions. Either it’s a session for a brother’s birthday or a session for a friend’s wedding (that can run into week-long celebrations) or a session for their engagement. Sessions are what make life worth living for Imelda but they don’t help her and Gerry the Guard save for their Outback Odyssey.

‘Doctor Hughes is about to make his rounds,’ she announces, a prim figure in her nurse’s white. You’d never think this was the girl who bartered a pint of Guinness and her uniform badge for the male stripper’s lurex thong at a hen party last week, claiming she wanted Gerry the Guard to try it for size. Gloria looks hopefully at her but is unable to signal the necessary distress flare.

Fortunately Imelda’s talents don’t begin and end with partying like there’s no Gomorrah. A glance at the patient’s face shows an unnatural brightness in the eyes. Instead of bustling off, Imelda comes into the room and helps the nun to her feet:

‘I think it’s time we gave you a drop of tea, sister, we’ll have you worn out with all the visits you’re paying.’

No wonder they call nurses angels, thinks Gloria. If Imelda weren’t engaged she’d marry the girl herself. Of course she’s married already, and the wrong sex to pledge herself to someone called Imelda – at least here in Ireland. Still, she feels a rush of love for the nurse in that instant.

‘Here we go, sister.’ Imelda beams down into the older woman’s face as she lifts her bag and attaches it to the bent arm.

‘Well, maybe a cup of something would be pleasant,’ concedes the nun, allowing herself to be led.

She hobbles to a halt as she passes Gloria’s bedside and pats a hand, not noticing the bone poking through the knuckles.

‘I hope I’ve helped you, dear. It’s good of you to let me talk to you. You’d be surprised how many people don’t want to be bothered these days. They tell me they’ve lost their faith, as though they could misplace it like a spool of thread.’

‘Thank you for your trouble, sister,’ whispers Gloria as she potters off.

‘I’m the world’s biggest hypocrite,’ Gloria wails to the empty room.

She buries her face in the pillow, not knowing if she hates this inoffensive nun or herself more. The misery wells up and splashes down her cheeks. It’s not fair, she sobs against the starch. The worst sort of pillow talk. But even weeping requires energy that she can’t muster – the tears peter out and she’s left with a thumping headache.

Imelda lands back with the doctor, who glances at her blotchy face and decides to jolly her along. Gloria imagines him dressed like Ronald McDonald handing out balloons.

‘Now, now, we can’t have this moping, there’ll be plenty more babies,’ he booms.

Imelda sits beside Gloria and holds her fingers in her capable, calloused nurse’s hand – Gloria is amazed at how needily she clings to it.

‘This is only a temporary setback, you’ll be pregnant again in no time,’ insists Dr Hughes.

Feck off, you quack, she says, but only inside her head. She feels better and a twitch that could pass for a half-hearted smile chases across her face. The doctor is delighted with himself.

‘Sensible girl,’ he nods, flicking through her notes.

He’s headmasterly, jowly and heavy-handed with the aftershave. A few checks and he’s on his way.

‘I’ll be seeing you in the maternity ward one of these days,’ he calls from the door.

Not if I see you first, you scut, she says, but naturally it’s only inside her head again.

Kate and Eimear arrive simultaneously: Kate is weighed down with bribes – a stack of magazines in her arms as well as flowers – while Eimear proffers a box of chocolates so large she should have applied for planning permission.

‘God love you, Gloria, you’ve been through the wars. How many pints of blood did they pump you full of? I wonder whose blood it was? I hadn’t a notion ectopic pregnancies were so serious – that you can actually die from them. You’re not going to die on us now, are you, break up the trio?’

Kate rattles through this without so much as drawing breath, she always did take life at the gallop. Eimear is quieter, she perches on the edge of the bed and looks steadily at her friend’s wan face.

Gloria sees Kate’s game, she’s trying to pretend she didn’t visit her earlier. While Eimear struggles to open the window – it’s painted shut – Kate gives Gloria a cautionary look, taps her finger against her lips and says loudly, ‘Mulligan here and I bumped into each other by the front desk.’

As she gushes on about what a fright they’ve had, Eimear leans across, whispers, ‘Poor you,’ and touches the invalid’s hair. It’s exactly what she needs. The stroking soothes her, she has a little wallow, then, when Eimear murmurs, ‘Such bad luck,’ she’s ready to be brave.

‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’ Gloria gives an elaborate shrug.

They stare at her a moment before laughing aloud – nervous peals, admittedly, but better than none at all.

‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’ they repeat, mimicking the shrug.

It’s their mantra, the three have parroted it for years when one of them has a setback. Unbelievably it does cheer them up.

Gloria is almost enjoying their visit. Perhaps that’s an over-statement, since she’ll never rejoice in anything again, but they do distract her from her misery – and from Kate’s atomic conversational gambit of a few hours earlier.

‘How’d you end up with a private room?’ asks Kate, as she rips the cover off Eimear’s chocolates. ‘You could fly from Dublin to Florida and back for the price of a couple of nights.’

‘Mick’s job at the bank gives us free health cover.’

Gloria is vague, she’s scrutinising the contents with the due gravity such an outsized package of cocoa solids deserves. Chinese farmers could probably grow enough rice to feed a family of eight on a patch of land the size of this box. The chocolates are called Inspirational Irish Women and they make their selection from such luminaries of Hibernian womanhood as Lady Gregory and Countess Markievicz. Kate chooses Maud Gonne so she can tell her Belfast hospital story again.

‘Remember the summer you worked as a domestic in the Royal?’ Gloria prompts her and she’s in like Flynn with the rest of the story.

‘One of the regular domestics was called Maud and if anyone asked for her when her shift was finished, I used to tell them, “Maud’s gone,” and then double over,’ she recalls. ‘None of them ever seemed to get the joke, they just thought it was a mistake to take on light-headed students.’

‘Which it was,’ interjects Eimear.

‘Which it was,’ agrees Kate. ‘The amount of pinching that went on was serious. I still have a conscience about the breast pump I stuffed into my holdall – I didn’t even know anyone who was breastfeeding. I ended up dumping it in the Lagan one night.’

‘You were young and stupid,’ consoles Eimear. ‘Weren’t we all.’

‘What’s my excuse now,’ Kate responds.

It jolts Gloria back into a recollection of her friend’s transgression. How can she giggle with Eimear about student high-jinks when she’s behaving like a low life with her husband? This needs sorting – only not just yet. She aches too much to concentrate on anything but her own hurt.

She watches her friends as they chatter, flicking through magazines and reading her get-well cards. Kate’s guessing who they’re from by the pictures on the front. She lifts one that reads ‘To My Darling Wife’ in gold lettering and says: ‘Next-door neighbour? The boss? No, it has to be from the cat.’

‘You fool,’ Eimear slaps her playfully.

If only she knew, frowns Gloria, there’d be nothing light-hearted about that blow. But she can’t be the one to tell her. Can she? She sucks on a ragged fingernail and tunes out of their conversation, content simply to have them there in the room with her. Her two best friends. They interpreted it as a sign when they were chosen for the nativity play: they’d been singled out to become a troika.