Rainy Days & Tuesdays Read online

  Rainy Days

  & Tuesdays

  Claire Allan

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook Published 2012 by Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle, Dublin 13, Ireland

  Email: [email protected]

  © Claire Allan 2007

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Copyright for typesetting, layout, design, ebook

  © Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-78199-011-7

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re sold or otherwise circ ulated without the publisher ’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.poolbeg.com

  About the author

  Claire Allan has worked as a reporter for the Derry Journal for the past eight years. Aside from work, she has a passion for reading, buying inexpensive handbags in Tesco and blethering on the phone. She has been married to Neil for six years (she was a child bride) and they have one slightly hyper three-year-old, Joseph. Claire also has a time share of a serial-killing goldfish called Dorothy. Rainy Days and Tuesdays is her debut novel.

  You can visit her website at www.claireallan.com

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost, I would like to thank my family and friends for their unwavering support. Thanks to the two men in my life, Neil and Joseph, for putting up with a wife and mammy who spends all her free time attached to a laptop.

  To my parents, thank you for always believing in me. Lisa, thanks for that special first edition. To Emma and Peter, I’m sure it won’t be long until you give me a run for my money. And Abby, thank you for being my perfect little Lily. And to all the Davidson/ McGuinness connections – thank you.

  Special thanks go to my reading team, for support and encouragement and loads of white wine. Nora, Erin, Amanda, you are stars and I’m very blessed to have your friendship.

  Special mention has to go to my VBF Vicki: you know this book would never have been written without you and Mabel pushing me along every step of the way.

  Thanks also to the wonderful support network at Writewords.org, especially the chick-lit ladies and the site experts. In particular I must mention Luisa Plaja, Keris Stainton and the wonderful Kate Long for reminding me it’s all just a bit of craic.

  Special mention must also go to the staff and management of the Derry Journal for their fantastic support and encouragement and copious free plugs.

  And finally thanks to those people who believed in me and this book enough to take a chance. To Ger Nichol, my agent, a big thank-you for her friendship and support. To the team at Poolbeg, especially Paula Campbell, Niamh Fitzgerald (for saving copies of everything!), Lynda Laffan and Gaye Shortland for her keen eye and encouragement.

  For Siobhan McEleney

  Always remembered

  Chapter 1

  I used to be glamorous once. Honestly I was. I went to the hairdresser’s every six weeks and had my roots done. I wore boot-cut jeans, suit jackets and fitted T-shirts which hugged my contours perfectly. I had a dressing-table overflowing with Clarins and L’Oréal and a selection of funky jewellery to jazz up any outfit. I was a babe – but somewhere between being a babe and having a baby I lost my mojo. Now I’m the ultimate slummy mummy.

  This thought dances through my mind as I wake up – hair damp with sweat, skin greasy from last night’s takeaway. I toy with the idea of hiding under the duvet, ducking my responsibilities and going back to sleep, but then it dawns on me – I’m a grown-up. I can’t just do that. It’s not like when I was at school and I could feign a cough or grab my stomach and perform my dying-swan routine for my unimpressed mammy who would eventually give in to my pitiful whinges and allow me a day under the blue blanket on the sofa. You can’t just refuse to go to work – not when there are bills to pay and stories to write.

  You can’t go back to sleep when you can hear a wee voice from the nursery next door giving a rather amusing rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’ (despite it being July), letting you know that your toddler is awake and will soon be demanding breakfast.

  The dream I had been having was so nice too. It was sunny and bright and I felt gloriously relaxed. I was cycling to a local dress shop to pick a dress to wear to accompany dish-du-jour Dermot Murnaghan, TV News Presenter Extraordinaire, to the BAFTAS.

  Himself is snoring beside me and I realise this is my reality. A stuffy, too bright room. A snoring husband, who bears not even a passing resemblance to the delectable Dermot, and a child who has started to reach fever pitch with his singing.

  Oh yes, and there is work. I have to go to work. I pull myself out of bed and blearily reach for the cow-print slippers which are hiding on the floor. After pulling on my dressing-gown, I give a cursory glance at the mirror. T – minus 60 minutes (in NASA-speak) until I have to be dressed and out of the house. T – minus 60 minutes to make this face, this crumpled, wrinkly, bed-headed vision before me, respectable enough to face my public. It almost makes me laugh.

  When I walk into the nursery I am greeted with a “Mammeeee!”. Jack is grinning ear to ear from his cot. “My want breakfass!” he cheeps, and I smile again, realising that when my son looks at me he sees nothing but his very own mammy and he loves me.

  He is not one bit bothered about my bed-head and the saggy pyjama bottoms I’m wearing. He thinks I am the bee’s knees, one yummy mummy, a foxy mamma. He reaches out his chubby arms and I reach in to lift him up, envelop him in my arms and feel his cuddly body against mine. Until, of course, he tries to bite me and the spell is somewhat broken.

  This morning, like almost every other, I manage to get myself and Jack out the door in time. At least, I manage to get out the door ten minutes after I wanted to, which is a record for this year. Aidan is still snoring comfortably, having worked long into the night, and I have spent my precious sixty minutes trying to entertain my two-year-old, getting us dressed and getting into the car without totally losing my cool.

  I choose to ignore the Weetabix stain I know is on my trousers. It’s not that I don’t care about my appearance but I know no one gives me a second glance any more anyway, so they are hardly going to notice one wee stain. Grooming is a thing of the past when you have to get a child to the childminder and yourself to work on time.

  Where once I would practically dance into the office, throw my (designer) handbag onto my desk and set about working on the features for next month’s issue, now I saunter in the back door, sit down, bury my head in organising my desk and offer to cover all the boring, respectable features that don’t actually require me to leave the office or speak to anyone face to face.

  This morning is no different. I say a few hellos to the team before plonking myself down with my morning coffee and sausage roll to open the post. Somehow in the proper daylight the Weetabix stain on my trousers has morphed from an eeny-weeny mark to one not too dissimilar to that birthmark on Gorbachov’s head.

  Running my fingers through my hair, I realise, not for the first time, that I have forgotten to brush it again before leav
ing home. No wonder Susie, the normally very friendly childminder, had looked at me in an alarmed way as I dropped Jack off. Searching through my tatty Dunnes Stores Better Value handbag for a mini-hairbrush, I am needless to say more than a little dismayed to find the bottle of Calpol I keep for emergencies has sprung a leak and, yes, I can still brush my hair, but only if I don’t mind it being strawberry-flavoured and slightly pink in colour all day.

  I give my hair a quick detangle with my fingers, hoping that everyone is thinking I’m trying the new just-fell-out- of-bed look, and go back to my hiding place behind my monitor.

  From the other end of the office I can hear Louise laughing uproariously. She was at some launch or other last night and apparently everyone who was anyone was there. It was a scream, she says, and she had a hundred admiring comments for her new dress which she bought in some boutique in Belfast. I try to look interested but all I really want to do is staple her head to her desk so I don’t have to look at her smug and gorgeous face any more.

  I shouldn’t be jealous. I attended a launch myself yesterday. One of the local supermarkets was launching their new improved Mother and Baby Club and I was invited along to find out all about their groovy new parking facilities and padded trolleys. All the best mummies were there. And I stress, they were mummies – the posh version of mammies.

  The post generates its usual share of gems. At least, being Parenting Editor, I can always expect some interesting samples. There is a book on raising your toddler to be politically correct, some toilet wipes and a dummy which promises to soothe even the most fractious of children.

  And for the glamorous mummy-on-the-go, well, there was a sample of Tena Lady because we all know the busy working mum can’t smell of wee. I switch on my computer and smile as an image of the lovely Dermot flickers onto the screen. Dermot is my escape – my little fantasy where I can pretend I am still me and not just a mammy or Grace Adams, Parenting Editor of Northern People magazine. Amid the cute pictures of Jack grinning at me from the gaudy-coloured frames proclaiming ‘I love Mummy!’, beside the piles of parenting magazines, nappies and nipple-creams (again, samples) which clutter my desk, there is Dermot – all be-suited and handsome. He looks at me, his eyebrow raised in that quizzical and sexy manner of his, and I wish, oh really wish, we really were heading out to the BAFTAS for a date.

  I sigh, sip my coffee and finish the sausage roll. I cannot lose myself in another daydream today. There is work to be done. I have to come face to face with thirty screaming toddlers at Cheeky Monkeys Day Care Centre for a feature on ‘Messy Play’. And when all that is done, I have to find the answers to the parenting problems submitted to me by overwrought mummies and daddies all across Ireland. Oh, if only my readers knew that Jack had cheese and ham for breakfast this morning because today his favourite Weetabix was “Icky, Mammy, icky!” or that I’d let him watch CBeebies videos until nine thirty last night just to get some peace and quiet.

  I already know this is one of those days when I will need two Nurofen and a power nap in the toilets before lunch-time. If Louise keeps on screeching in her high- pitched giggle, it might even be before tea break.

  I open my email and find my daily reminder from lifecoaches.com to take each day as a new challenge, relax, breathe and remember: “I am a strong, confident woman. I can do this!” Breathing in, holding for five and breathing out, I feel myself relax and get ready for another day.

  And then the phone rings.

  I would say it is a pretty poor reflection of my ability to be an award-winning journalist that I mentally cringe when the phone rings at my desk. I frequently toy with the idea of not answering it and doing that oh-so-American thing of screening my calls. I imagine that wouldn’t go down the best with the powers that be.

  “Good morning, Grace Adams speaking!” I trill down the phone.

  “Hi, Grace.”

  Sighing with relief, I realise it is only Aidan – fresh from his slumbers and ready for another day of scratching himself on the PlayStation before heading out for his bar job in the evening.

  “Do you know where my phone is?” he asks. “No,” I reply. “Where have you looked for it?”

  “I haven’t yet. I thought you might know,” he says. My blood pressure rises.

  We have this conversation every morning. Sure enough, it might not be the phone we are talking about – it might be the keys, the bills that need paying, the wee doodah you use to bleed the fecked radiator in the front room – but the premise is the same. He asks, I tell him to look, he looks, he finds. Why he can’t realise he would be better served to just cut out the middle-woman and look himself is beyond me.

  But this morning, in a remarkable turn of events, I don’t need to answer. By now he has looked around him and found said item two feet from where he is standing. He informs me of this and I get ready to hang up and go somewhere to faint with shock.

  However, just then an unexpected noise comes shooting down the phone-line.

  “Do you want to go out tomorrow night, Grace?” he asks and I start to wonder if my cholesterol-stuffed heart can really take the impact of two such shocks in one day.

  We don’t go out. Not any more. Not since we became parents. We tried it once when Jack was one and it was an unmitigated disaster. I spent the whole night worrying about whether or not Jack would settle without me, and himself spent the whole evening telling me why we needed to get out more. Both of us drank ourselves silly, talked shite about the wee man, ignoring the real issues in our relationship, before going home and falling straight to sleep. As I threw my considerable guts up the next day, I vowed never again. Seeing my whiter-than-white pallor, himself agreed that was not a sight he ever wished to see again either so we became Mr and Mrs Bottle-of-Wine-on- a-Saturday-Night. In other words, we became so boring we even bored ourselves.

  Soon the bottle of wine would involve him on the PlayStation and me watching a chick flick on my own in the other room, and even that went by the wayside when he got the bar job. So, if I’m honest, I’ve become a sad old wino on a Saturday night on my own and he has become the life and soul of the staff-party scene at Jackson’s Bar.

  How we manage to survive as a couple is slightly beyond me so I guess, if I’m trying to operate in the spirit of willingness to save what’s left of our marriage, I’ll have to say yes to his night out – even though I have nothing to wear.

  “Okay then,” I mumble, closely followed by a litany of who, what, where questions that any woman needs to know the answer to before she can even think about picking out an outfit. For one brief moment I wonder if we are going somewhere nice, just the two of us.

  “It’s one of the new bosses at work,” Aidan replies. “He wants to talk to me about my job prospects. He thought it might be nice for us to go out for dinner.”

  I agree, hang up and contemplate suicide. You see, I don’t like going out for dinner with strangers. (Strike Two against my ability to be a fabulous journalist.) There is always a great deal of awkwardness when deciding whether or not to have that extra garlic bread or dessert, and I inevitably end up choosing the most unappetising salad on the menu as I don’t want to appear a greedy gulpen.

  And of course, the menfolk will be talking business – of which I know nothing and care even less for. (Strike Three against my ability to be a renowned journalist – apparently I should be very interested in business and politics etc.)

  As I get in the car and leave for Cheeky Monkeys, I’m already frantically trying to figure out what to wear. I have two problems. The first is that when it comes to suitable evening attire, I’m pretty limited to cosy pyjamas and, second of all, even if I do find some treasure lurking in the back of my wardrobe, I’m not sure how to get out of the door without Jack leaving a special food-stain reminder on it.

  I think about this, while driving along the Foyle Road towards Cheeky Monkeys. I have approximately twenty- three pairs of tatty tracksuit bottoms and a million T-shirts, but when it comes to glamming it up I reali
se it will have to be the RBTs again (Reliable Black Trousers), some killer heels (as we will be in a restaurant and therefore not required to walk any further than the toilet and back) and perhaps my nice turquoise satin vest-top would finish it off nicely. (I don’t know why I say ‘perhaps’: it is in fact the only dressy top I have that still fits.)

  Congratulating myself on my quick outfit-choosing decisions, I park my car, head inside and immerse my arms in a bowl of jelly.

  Whoever said being a journalist wasn’t glamorous?

  Apparently I am growing too fond of my evening glass of wine. Mammy is concerned. She has been surfing the net, reading about working mums under stress and has even suggested in her ever-so-subtle-as-a-brick way that perhaps I might want to “write a wee feature on parents who hit the sauce”.

  It was never this way in her day. Oh no, you made do and you survived on a fiver a week and you were there for your children and you didn’t want it all. You didn’t need to drink and, even if you did, you couldn’t afford it anyway.

  As I listen to The Speech, as my friend Daisy has dubbed it, I pour myself another glass and start to fill the bath.

  This is my salvation – my Me Time. A glass of wine, a bubble bath, a good book or, if I’m feeling too tired to read a book, a cheesy weekly magazine to soak away my troubles and forget about the stresses of the day that has passed.

  It has only been in the last few months that I’ve actually been able to get away with a soak. Before then it would be almost guaranteed that no sooner would bum hit bubbles than Jack would wake screaming and I would run, soaking and dripping, to his room where he would then stare at my nakedness with a strange mixture of curiosity, disgust and humour. By the time he was settled the bath would be cold, the wine would be warm and the magazine would be soggy so I’d opt for a quick shower before climbing into my jammies.