‘Rosi, don’t be awkward. I can’t drive with a howling dog in the back, now can I?’ Maureen unlocked the car as Roisin opened the boot, lifting her case into it. She slammed it down mumbling something about a fecking dog coming before her eldest daughter as she ducked into the backseat. The poodle looked over the seat at her and she swore if she could talk to the animals like your man Doolittle, he’d have made a na-nana-naa-nah noise and stuck his paw to his nose to taunt her. She poked her tongue out at him.
‘Have you said hello to Pooh, Rosi?’ Maureen swivelled in her seat and Roisin knew they wouldn’t be going anywhere until she’d given the dog a fuss. She sighed and petted the top of his head; he lapped up the attention.
‘It’s lovely to see our Rosi isn’t it, Pooh? He’s been ever such a good boy after the you know what.’
Roisin assumed she was talking about his having been neutered. Hopefully that meant the end of his amorous nose diving.
‘Yes,’ Maureen carried on, turning the key in the ignition. ‘Rosemary Farrell’s taken to calling in with a packet of doggy treats for him when she pops by. They’re getting on great guns the pair of them these days, so they are.’
‘Pleased to hear it,’ Roisin said, folding her arms across her chest as her mammy reversed out of the parking space. Mammy’s hair had kinked as Roisin’s was prone to doing with the wet weather and she looked from Pooh and then back to her mammy. ‘Did you know, Mammy, it is a scientific fact that people begin to resemble their dogs.’
Maureen swung around in her seat. ‘I do not have facial hair, Roisin, thank you very much! If that’s what you’re getting at. It’s the women on your father’s side who all have the moustaches. It’s very hard to hold a conversation with your great aunty Noreen because you wind up staring at it and the more you tell yourself not to the more you find yourself doing so. You’d want to watch out because it is a scientific fact, young lady, that the facial hair gene follows the father’s side of the family.’
‘You made that up, Mammy, and would you watch where you’re going! We nearly hit that concrete bollard.’
Chapter 9
‘What on earth is going on?’ Roisin walked in through the door of O’Mara’s dropping her suitcase down beside her as she surveyed the scene. She was still feeling nauseous from sitting in the back of the car and had spent the journey trying to focus on her breathing. She’d been tempted to get in Mammy’s ear when they’d stopped at the lights and chant her childhood mantra of ‘are we there yet’ but as it happened she hadn’t been able to get a word in which was annoying because she’d hoped she might be able, while they were on their own, to pump her for information about this mysterious man-friend of hers. She’d not said a word more since her New Year’s Eve announcement and refused to be drawn on the topic. She was the proverbial closed book. Moira and Aisling had tried and now it was Roisin’s turn. There’d been no chance though, Mammy had been full of the chat about the wedding and who the latest family member to announce they were coming was. Before she knew it, they were pulling up in front of the guesthouse.
Now Maureen, with a tight hold on the prancing Pooh, shut the door behind them as Roisin checked out Aisling. Her sister was red in the face and looked sweaty which was an anomaly for the time of year. Come to that so was Bronagh. She frowned, noticing they were both dressed in their normal work attire yet Moira who didn’t have so much as a bead of sweat on her forehead was posed at the foot of the stairs looking like she could possibly be the niece of Jane Fonda and was about to follow in her footsteps by making her own fitness video.
‘How’re ye, Rosi.’ Aisling made to embrace her sister.
‘Get off, wait until you’ve had a shower. What are you three up to?’ She shot a look that conveyed the same sentiment to Bronagh.
‘You’ve heard about our friendly little competition?’ Moira asked, knowing full well she had because she’d written down Rosi’s bet in her trusty notebook.
‘I have.’ Roisin wasn’t owning up to who she was backing though. Bronagh could be fierce when she wanted to be. She surreptitiously looked from the two slimming competitors to see if either of them was looking a little less full in the face. Neither woman looked much different in her opinion.
‘It’s ridiculous. Two grown women competing to see who can lose weight the fastest,’ Maureen tutted. She was backing Bronagh all the way despite her custard cream affliction or should that be addiction? Either way she knew Aisling inside and out. Her daughter took after her Nanna Dee and not just with her colouring. When she was under pressure, you’d be sure to find her with a gob full of something she’d helped herself to from the pantry. Nanna Dee had been exactly the same. ‘I suggested they come along to line-dancing with myself and Rosemary Farrell. It’s exercise that doesn’t feel like exercise, Rosemary says. She loves it, so she does, although between us she’s not very coordinated, always turning the wrong way and sticking the wrong leg out.’ Maureen gave a demonstration of her new found line-dancing skills. ‘I can do it better when I’ve got my boots on,’ she said with a final clap of her hands.
‘Since when did you like Country and Western, Mammy?’ Roisin asked.
‘I love Country and Western,’ Maureen said. ‘It always gets the toes a-tapping.’
‘News to me.’ Roisin shook her head. ‘And what exactly are you doing, Moira?’
‘Well,’ Moira said, her hand resting on the bannister at the bottom of the stairs,
