Cathy Kelly - Always and Forever

‘Don’t you want to get married at all?’ asked Mel’s grandmother in surprise. ‘If you get married you can have a lovely home, with babies, and be very happy.’

Mel, who liked the parts of history lessons where girls got to fight instead of stay home and mind the house, simply asked: ‘Why?’

Her father still thought it was hilarious, and regularly recounted the story of how his Melanie, even as a child, had her heart set on a career.

Mel loved him for being so proud of her, but she’d grown to hate that story. As a kid, she’d assumed that being smart meant you could have it all. She knew better now.

These days she had two jobs, motherhood and career, and even if everyone else thought she was coping, she felt as if she wasn’t doing either of them right. Mel’s standards – for herself – were staggeringly high.

The third part of the trinity, marriage, wasn’t something she had time to work on. It was just freewheeling along with its own momentum.

‘How does a working mother know when her partner has had an orgasm?’ went a recent email from an old college pal. ‘He phones home to tell her.’

It was the funniest thing Mel had heard for a long time, funny in an hysterical, life-raft-with-a-hole-in-it sort of way. But she couldn’t share the joke with anyone, especially her husband, Adrian, in case he remarked how accurate it was.

In their household, lovemaking occupied the same level of importance as time spent with each other (nil) and long baths with aromatherapy products to reduce stress (also nil).

Mel’s fervent hope was that if she kept quiet and jollied the house along, cheerily smiling at Adrian, Carrie and Sarah, then nobody would notice the places where her love and attention were spread thin.

‘Delegate, have some me-time and don’t let your family expect you to be superwoman,’ cooed magazine articles about the stress of the working mother.

After her years working with journalists, Mel knew that these articles were written by one of two types: glamorous young women in offices for whom the notion of children was a distant one; or working mothers who were freelancing at the kitchen table in between picking up the children from school, having long since realised that you couldn’t do it all, but were making a decent living telling people you could.

Me-time? What the hell was me-time? And how could you delegate the housework/weekly shop to a pair of under-fives and a man who didn’t know how to check can labels for sodium content or benzoates?

She ripped her laddered tights off and stuffed them into her bag before struggling into the new ones. With one last tug at the tourniquet-tight bit cutting into her thigh, she smoothed down the fabric of her plum-coloured skirt – last season Zara, designed to look like Gucci – and raced out of the loo to the mirrors, where she hastily combed her short blonde hair with her fingers. Her roots had grown beyond the boundaries of good taste and were teetering on the line between funky and couldn’t be bothered. Another task for her list.

At least she didn’t look forty yet, which was handy, because she had neither the time nor the money for Botox. Looking younger than she was had been hell when she was eighteen, looked four years younger and had to produce her student card to get into grown-up films. Now, two children and endless sleepless nights later, it was a blessing.

Nature had given Mel a small face with a pointed chin, pale skin and arched brows above almond-shaped eyes the same clear blue as the sky after a storm, with hints of violet around the pupils. Maybelline New York had given her thick black lashes and kiss-proof cherry lipstain that would survive a nuclear attack. A sense of humour meant she had plenty of smile lines around her mouth and she didn’t think she could stand the pain of doing anything about them. After her second labour, the one that had required the rubber ring for a week, she’d gone right off the idea of any sort of delicate stitching.

She looked at her watch. It was five past ten. Damn, damn, damn. Late. Too late for the lift. She galloped up the stairs, managing to find her lipgloss as she ran.

Edmund Moriarty, the chief executive of Lorimar Health Insurance, had just taken his seat at the top of the big conference room but there was still a mild hum of conversation, allowing Mel to slip in and make her way to a free seat on the left.

One of the biggest health insurance companies in the country, Lorimar had been a market leader for twenty years, but lots of new international firms were now on the scene and business was tough. Today’s gathering was a strategy meeting about how Lorimar could face the increased threat of competition.

Normally, strategy meetings were for high-level executives, and someone like Mel, who was one of the company’s four publicity managers, wouldn’t have been invited. But this was a ‘cheer up the team’ meeting, ‘to remind us that we’re still tops,’ as Hilary said, so lesser beings were there today with the firm’s big-hitters. Privately, Mel thought that the only things that would cheer up the Lorimar team were a pay rise and bringing in that Calvin Klein underwear model as post boy. She just thanked God it was merely a meeting today instead of paintballing in the back of beyond, which had been last year’s concept of team-building. Those paint balls bruised like hell.

Edmund Moriarty tapped his microphone to gain everybody’s attention and all heads snapped round in his direction.

‘How do we go forward? – that is the question,’ he began, his voice gravelly. ‘Lorimar is the market leader but stiff competition means we must keep striving.’

The seventy people in the room listened carefully. Mel took a pad of paper from her attaché case and uncapped the onyx and gold pen her parents had given her for her fortieth birthday. Although she dated the top piece of paper and kept her gaze on the boss, her mind was on the second sheet of paper. The top sheet was ready to be covered with gems of wisdom from the chief executive so that it looked as if she was paying attention. The other was the list of things Mel had to achieve that day – a day that was diminishing as Edmund pontificated to everyone about what they already knew. The list read:

Speech for Publicity Forum lunch.

Go over brochure photos with fine-tooth comb.

Phone Sentinel journalist re psychiatric case.

Pick up nappies, wipes and vegetables. Chicken, beans and kids’ yogurts.

Talk to Adrian about Saturday. His mother? Can’t ask mine.

Buy tights!!!

Fairy costume – where to buy?

Multitasking – a way of life, Mel knew, so that working mothers could hold on to their jobs and still keep the home fires burning.

She could see her female colleagues concentrating – or at least pretending to be – on what Edmund was saying. Hilary’s face wore that serene expression that said she was listening intently, but Vanessa was staring glassy-eyed at where he was standing and simultaneously trying to text on her mobile phone. Vanessa had a thirteen-year-old son, Conal, and apparently, thirteen-year-old boys were even harder to control than two under-five girls.

Vanessa was divorced and was Mel’s best friend in the company. They were nearly the same age, they had the same sense of humour and they’d both admitted privately to each other that balancing work and home life was ten times harder than doing the actual job at Lorimar.

‘If management knew just how good we were at doing four things at once – like organising to get the washing machine fixed, sorting out after-school activities, remembering to pick up groceries, and fire-fighting in the office, then we’d both be promoted like a shot,’ Mel had said the week before, when they were enjoying their once-a-month blow-out lunch at the Thai restaurant with the handsome young waiters.