‘Cream cakes, yummy.’ Millie cheered up, twiddling the knobs to change the radio stations until she heard Whitney Houston belting out ‘My Love Is Your Love’.
‘Aw turn off the radio and play Christina Aguilera – it’s in the deck,’ Sophie protested, starting to hum ‘Genie In A Bottle’.
‘No, I’m listening to this,’ Millie retorted.
‘If you start arguing I’m switching back to RTÉ,’ Hilary declared.
‘Mam, because it’s my birthday sleepover I don’t suppose we could go to Wes?’ Sophie asked hopefully. ‘After all I’m fifteen now.’
‘You suppose right. You’re too young,’ Hilary said firmly, not in the humour for having an argument about being allowed or not allowed to go to a popular disco. It was such a nuisance The Grove, a disco in their neck of the woods, had closed a couple of years back. It was an institution and going there with a gang of friends had been a rite of passage for local teenagers for several decades.
She and Colette and their friends had felt so grown-up the first time they’d gone to the famous disco. They had been in Seventh Heaven to finally walk past the bouncers through the hallowed doors. Thereafter the weekly night out had been the highlight of their teen years. They had bopped their hearts out to The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Eagles, Thin Lizzy, Bruce Springsteen; the music had been class, she remembered with a smile. She would have had no problem with her daughters going to The Grove, but Wesley FC in Donnybrook was a different kettle of fish and not comfortingly near like the disco in Raheny had been. And she hated driving over to the Southside when it was her night on collection duty.
‘Mam, it’s not fair! Millie’s allowed to go.’ Sophie’s remonstration interrupted her reverie. ‘Some of the girls—’
‘Millie’s seventeen. I’m not going to argue about it, Sophie.’
‘But—’
‘No!’ She glanced in her rear-view mirror and saw her youngest daughter sitting with a mutinous expression on her face and felt like slapping her. Sophie knew the rules. Knew she wasn’t going to be allowed to go to Wesley until she was sixteen, and until then would have to make do with her youth club and sports club discos.
‘You’re not missing much, it’s not that great,’ Millie assured her. But Sophie was not to be mollified.
‘I didn’t ask you, did I?’ she said rudely.
‘Be like that then,’ Millie snapped.
‘You’re just so rude.’
‘And you’re—’
‘Girls! Be quiet!’
Whitney Houston’s melodic tones filled the air as Hilary’s daughters obeyed her dictate. ‘Take that puss off you in Gran’s,’ Hilary warned as Sophie stomped up Mrs Hammond’s garden path ten minutes later.
‘Take a chill pill, Mam!’ Sophie scowled.
‘Less of your cheek, miss,’ Hilary snapped.
Had she been as moody and stroppy when she was a teen? she wondered when she’d dropped the girls home an hour later before going to do her supermarket shop. She’d been hoping Sophie would get out of her huff and offer to come shopping with her and queue at the meat counter while Hilary shopped around the narrow aisles of the old-fashioned supermarket. And then unload the trolley for her at the checkout. But neither of her daughters had offered and she felt grouchy and tired, with the beginnings of a headache. She circled the large car park hoping to get a spot near the door. Luck wasn’t on her side and she had to park at the far end and got drenched before she made it to the shelter of the shop.
By the time she put her key in the front door, fifty minutes later, Hilary was starving and weary to her bones. She was going to put away the shopping, order their Chinese takeaway and pour herself a big glass of red and that was it for today. The housework could wait until tomorrow.
The house felt warm and welcoming and she tried to overlook the two school bags dumped on the hall floor beside the hallstand. Millie’s leaking shoes were left in the middle of the floor where she had stepped out of them. God Almighty, was it too much to expect them to put their stuff away when they came in from school? Laden with bags, she shoved open the kitchen door and felt a rush of anger at the sight that greeted her. ‘Ah for God’s sake, you pair, look at the state of the place! The least you could have done was filled the dishwasher,’ Hilary ranted, seeing the breakfast dishes still on the kitchen counter.
‘It needs to be emptied,’ Sophie muttered from where she lay sprawled on the sofa in the family room.
‘Well why didn’t you empty it? Do I have to do every bloody thing in this house? Sophie, you empty it and put those dirty dishes in it and, Millie, you get over here and help me unpack the shopping.’
‘Why can’t she do it – most of this stuff is for her sleep-over,’ Millie grumbled, unpacking mini Twixes and Crunchies. ‘I have to study.’
‘You could have studied while I was doing the shopping instead of lolling on the sofa watching rubbish on TV.’
‘I was tired, Mam!’
‘And I’m not?’
‘Oh give it a rest.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that.’
‘Well you’re just so cranky,’ Millie retorted furiously.
‘Maybe if I got a bit more cooperation in this house I wouldn’t be so cranky. Perhaps if my daughters got up off their backsides and gave me a hand now and again instead of behaving like two lazy lumps, I wouldn’t be so cranky. Did you ever think of that?’ Hilary raged, giving vent to her frustration.
‘Why don’t you just go and get someone to replace Magda?’ her eldest daughter said exasperatedly. ‘It can’t be that hard to get a cleaner.’
‘Listen, madam, it’s far from cleaners you were reared. And let me tell you when I was your age, myself and your aunt used to spend every Saturday cleaning Granny and Granddad’s
