‘And I was sorry to hear about you and Colin, Rosi. I hope you’re doing okay?’
‘Ah, sure.’ Roisin waved the comment away. ‘We’re grand.’
Patrick turned to Noah who was looking at him uncertainly. ‘Now then, young fella, have you a hug for your Uncle Patrick who’s flown all the way from America?’
‘I’ve got a gerbil,’ Noah said, testing the water. ‘His name’s Mr Nibbles.’
‘That’s a fine sounding name for a gerbil,’ Patrick said, receiving a hug. He was easily bought her son, Roisin thought, not for the first time as her brother pulled a tube of M&M’s from his pocket and gave them to Noah.
‘Come on and sit down,’ Maureen urged, patting the space between her and Moira they had left for him to squeeze into. He did so.
‘Rosi, Aisling, go and see that your brother’s room’s made up and put his and Cindy’s bags in there while you’re at it. We’re all very modern here,’ she added.
Roisin resisted the urge to tell Mammy nobody had chopped Patrick’s legs off. She supposed he had just flown in from LA though. Just this once, she thought, and she begrudgingly followed her equally begrudging sister from the room. Noah seized the opportunity to sit next to Cindy, delighted to secure a position next to her and certain she would be the type of girl who would love gerbils and not the type to try and pinch the M&M’s off him.
‘WHY DO YOU THINK HE’S back?’ Roisin said, tucking in her corner of the bed and smoothing the sheet.
Aisling did the same. ‘I don’t know but if he’s any plans of putting the squeeze on Mammy about selling O’Mara’s again, I’ll personally stick him in a box and send him back to Los Angeles with a do not return sticker.’
‘Ah, Ash, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt. You know maybe he just misses us and thought it would be nice to spend Christmas with his family. Or, maybe things are getting serious between him and Cindy and he thought he should introduce her to us all.’
Aisling sighed. ‘Rosi, it’s Patrick you’re talking about. The only person Patrick’s ever had a deep and meaningful relationship with is himself. No, he’ll have one of his deals on the go, it’ll be business that’s brought him back, not us.’
‘You’re too cynical,’ Roisin said, although her sister’s description of their brother was bang on. ‘What did you make of Cindy?’ she asked, pausing in her stuffing of the pillow into the case. ‘I think she seems sweet, but I can’t stop staring at her breasts.’
‘Me neither, they’re enormous, but sure, she must be used to it. There’s no way they’re natural. I reckon she went along to yer plastic surgeon one and said, ‘I’ll have the Pam Anderson special please, and speaking of unnatural. Who am I?’ Aisling cracked a cheesy grin and said, ‘Ah, Mammy, you’re the best mammy in the whole world and I’m a fecky big brown noser, so I am.’
Roisin giggled. ‘Pat. The state of those teeth. Honest to God any whiter you’d want to wear sunglasses around him.’
Aisling plumped her pillow and put it on the bed. ‘It will be strange having him back in his old room.
‘I wonder if you’ll hear the old headboard banging.’ Roisin pointed to it.
‘That’s disgusting, so it is. Besides I’m off round to Quinn’s later and Moira’s going to Tom’s so Pat and Ms Pneumatic Breasts can bang away to their hearts delight, but I won’t be changing the sheets at the end of the week.’ She paused in her smoothing of the eiderdown. ‘How does Mammy seem to you?’
‘Oh, you know, Mammy’s Mammy.’
‘You don’t think she seems a little,’ Aisling cast about for the word she was looking for. ‘Preoccupied?’
‘I hadn’t noticed. Why?’
‘I don’t know. She had dinner at the yacht club a weekend or so back. She got her hair done and everything for it because it was quite a posh do she reckons, and she’s been wandering around with her head in the clouds since. Moira reckons she’s after meeting a fella.’
‘No!’ The thought of Mammy with anyone other than their daddy was a bizarre one, but it was over two years since he’d passed now and while their mammy was their mammy, she was also a woman in her own right. That was a bizarre thought too! ‘Although she did say there was dancing and that she’d had a grand time.’
‘Well, something’s up and she’s not saying whatever it is but when I quizzed as to how her night was, she was very cagey. She had that look on her face, you know, the one where she’s after borrowing something like your lipstick, or—'
‘Yoga pants and I know the look well.’
‘Yeah,’ Aisling smiled.
‘How would you feel about it if she did meet someone?’ Roisin probed.
‘Weird at first, I guess, but she has every right to be happy and it wouldn’t mean she loved Daddy any less.’
‘No, you’re right. I hadn’t thought about it like that but it wouldn’t.’
‘Moira surprised me because you know how much of a daddy’s girl she was. I always thought she’d struggle if Mammy did meet anyone else but she was kind of nonchalant about it all. That trip to Vietnam changed her. For the better too.’
‘Who’d have thought?’
‘I know, and I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself. We don’t know she has met anyone but with all the clubs she belongs to she’s bound to hook up with a merry widower at some point.’
‘Yes, I suppose she is.’
They finished their task in silence and then Roisin remembered the dessert. ‘Do you reckon, Moira’s cut into the cheesecake yet?’ Seeing as she was the only sibling who would not be doing any riding tonight, she planned to compensate with a big helping.
‘I hope not, I want to
