Someday this house and all their wealth would be Colette’s, for all the thanks her hard-working parents were getting from their ungrateful child. It would be good enough for her if they left it all to charity.
They weren’t close, she and Colette. They’d never had that great mother–daughter bond that some of her friends enjoyed. Jacqueline had got pregnant unexpectedly at the very worst time in her career, just as she was starting to make a name for herself. She and Frank had gone into business together, and O’Mahony and Co. were clawing their way up the legal ladder. A baby was the last thing Jacqueline had wanted. It was a huge shock to realize that she was not as in control of her life as she thought she was and that the rug could be pulled from under her arbitrarily, whether she liked it or not.
Jacqueline sighed, remembering how furious she had been that, despite going on the pill and taking responsibility for her life choice, her wishes had counted for nothing in the grand scheme of things. It was the same kind of fury she felt, even to this day, when she lost a court case.
She had always been a control freak, Jacqueline conceded, wiping her Italian marble countertops with more vigour than was necessary. That had come from being the child of a mother who had frittered away housekeeping money on bingo, horses and the slot machines in the sleazy arcades in town. Money that meant eating more cheap mince and beans than she could stomach, and going to school in her sister’s hand-me-down uniform. When she grew up she would be in charge of her own life, the young Jacqueline vowed, after the umpteenth time of telling the gas meter man her mammy wasn’t in when he came to collect payment. ‘Good girl,’ her mother would say. How could her mother get her to tell lies and then make her go to confession religiously every Saturday? It just didn’t make sense.
It was her difficult childhood that had propelled her to achieve top marks at university, and that same drive fuelled her desire for success in her chosen career. And then she had fallen pregnant.
No doubt her newly conceived daughter had absorbed the energy of her mother’s immense dismay, and the other myriad emotions Jacqueline had experienced. She had been sick morning, noon and night, which only added to her resentment.
She hadn’t told her husband when a pregnancy test confirmed what she already knew. She had wrestled with the idea of going to England for a termination. She could have easily said nothing and Frank would never have known. But she loved her husband dearly, and she knew one of his dreams was to have O’Mahony and Son, or Daughter etched on a discreet gold plaque on their office door. The child was his as well as hers. Created by them both. It wasn’t all about her. To her consternation, Frank had been delighted. An only child, he’d told her when they got engaged that he’d wanted a boy and a girl to make them a ‘proper’ family.
‘But, Frank, it’s crap timing.’ She’d burst into tears. ‘I can’t take time off to look after a baby! We haven’t planned it.’
‘That’s OK! We can get someone to mind it,’ he soothed. ‘We’re getting a lot of referrals, we can afford—’
‘Exactly, we’re up to our eyes, and this is the last thing I need. Why is it the woman always has to make the sacrifices? That’s my career up the Swannee,’ she raged.
‘You won’t have to sacrifice your career. We’ll manage fine. Working mothers are becoming the norm now, it’s not like when we were growing up,’ Frank reassured her. Their parents, family and friends had been thrilled with their news so she constantly had to stifle her negative feelings and keep them to herself, putting on a façade in the face of their anticipation and delight.
Childbirth had been the most long-drawn-out, painful, embarrassing event of her life. Jacqueline had felt a complete and utter failure looking at her daughter’s screwed up little red face as she screeched loudly when placed in her arms, and felt no overwhelming bond, just exhaustion and irritation that her freedom was curtailed and life as she knew it had changed completely and she was now responsible for another being, whether she wanted to be or not.
Difficult as it was to admit now, all these years later, having a child had not brought a great deal of joy into her life. No wonder she and Colette weren’t close, Jacqueline conceded. She had put her career before her child and now she was paying the price. And, much as it pained her to say it, her daughter was making the same mistakes with Jasmine. It was something she should try and diplomatically point out. Perhaps at brunch tomorrow, Jacqueline decided. If Colette wanted a better relationship with her daughter than the one she had with her mother, something had to be said.
C
HAPTER
E
IGHT
‘She sounds very nice and a bit of a laugh as well.’ Orla munched on a slice of toast liberally smeared with pâté, snuggled up beside Jonathan on his bed as he told her all about meeting Hilary at the lighting design course the previous day.
Orla had made them breakfast. Jonathan had been too tipsy the previous night when he had arrived home with her cheeseburger to have a proper conversation and after yawning his
