Maureen raised her glass and looked around the table, her heart suddenly full as she gazed at her children’s faces. They, were happy, all of them and a mammy couldn’t ask for more than that. New Year was also for remembering those they loved who were no longer with them. ‘To Brian,’ she said a tear in her eye.
‘To Brian.’ ‘To Daddy.’ Came the collective reply but before they could get so much as a taste of the silky liqueur Maureen held her hand up.
‘Hold your horses. I’m not finished. Now then,’ she licked her lips, ‘here we go. Always remember to forget the troubles that pass away. But never forget to remember the blessings that come each day.’
‘Slàinte, Mammy,’
‘Slàinte, Maureen.’
‘Oh, and I’ve one more.’
‘Oh, for fecks sake,’ Moira said. She wasn’t having a Baileys but she was keen to drink her hot chocolate before it got cold.
Maureen ignored her. ‘To, the lovely lads from Westlake and may they have many more songs on the hit parade.’
‘It’s Westlife, Mammy!’
The End
A Wedding at O’Mara’s
By Michelle Vernal
Copyright © 2020 by Michelle Vernal
Michelle Vernal asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel, A Wedding at O’Mara’s 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.
A Wedding at O’Mara’s
by
Michelle Vernal
Chapter 1
Dublin 2000
Aisling O’Mara was feeling very grown up as she tottered down Baggot Street all tucked up inside her coat. She didn’t have time to tap the young man on the shoulder who she’d spied spitting on the ground as he waited for the bus. She’d have liked to have told him spitting was a disgusting habit but had she done so, she knew she’d then fret she was morphing into her mammy. Nor did she have time to wonder why on earth that woman with the lank, greasy hair and a cigarette in one hand, a child clutching the other hadn’t seen fit to put a hat on her little one. It was a day that clearly called for a hat. Never mind either the fact she was a woman in her mid-thirties about to be married at long last because Aisling was about to do the most grown up thing of her life. She was off to meet her soon-to-be husband and they had an appointment at the AIB Bank where they were going to open a joint account. It was very exciting!
Moira had called her a sad arse that morning over her enormous plate of toast which had been smothered in thick, sweet Magiun, plum jam. The jar had come courtesy of the guesthouse’s weekend breakfast cook, Mrs Baiku who hailed from Romania and Aisling was extremely partial to it. Mind you she was partial to most things with copious amounts of sugar in them. Life, she often lamented would have been a lot easier if her secret fantasy wasn’t to roll in a ball pit filled with coconutty, marshmallow Snowballs. At that point in time too, finding herself staring at her paltry boiled egg with NO soldiers to dip because she was frantically trying to lose a few pounds before her big day, it had taken all her strength not to try and divert her sister from her breakfast.
Diversion tactics had worked a treat when they were younger and had saved her from many a serve of the broad bean or pile of spinach. It was simple, she’d turn to Moira, being the youngest and most gullible of her siblings and exclaim, ‘How did that cat get in here?’ Moira’s head never failed to spin searching for a non-existent cat while Aisling would dump whatever was causing her angst on her plate onto her sister’s. It worked the other way too when it came to snaffling an extra fish finger or the like. She never felt a smidgen of guilt either when she was allowed to leave the table thanks to her clean plate while Moira sat staring mournfully at a mound of something green and, by that time, stone cold while Mammy prattled on about how the starving children in Africa would be grateful for a good meal like Moira’s to be placed in front of them and how she ought to be grateful. Aisling would think it served her right for always helping herself to her stuff. She’d tried the diversion tactics on Patrick once, given Mammy always gave him an extra fish finger because he was the boy, but he’d caught her out and smacked her hard on her knuckles with his fork.
This morning at the breakfast table, however, Aisling had drawn on her inner willpower, of which there wasn’t much, but what little there was had been enough for her to leave Moira’s toast alone. She’d been tempted to pick it up and flick her in the face with it though as she sneered across the table at the fact her elder sister was about to share her finances wholeheartedly with her fiancé.
‘A joint account? What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine. Feck that, what’s mine is mine thanks very much,’ she’d stated.
Given that Moira, a self-proclaimed poor art student these days, didn’t have anything other than a collection of pricey cosmetics and some expensive and very impractical items of clothing in her wardrobe, Aisling had rolled her eyes, cracked the shell on her boiled egg and told her sister in a suitably condescending manner that one day if say Tom, for instance, was to pop the question then she’d understand.
Now, spying Quinn up ahead, waiting as he’d promised he would be, with his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket as he stamped his feet against the cold, she grinned at him waving out. He spotted her through the bobbing heads of people ducking and diving along pavements not designed to cope
