pallet, nudged her way onto the skip edge, and it was just too bad that her skirt was riding up somewhere around her bottom as the guy looked up. She really hadn’t planned to give him an eyeful of underwear.
He staggered backwards, clearing his throat and looking away quickly. ‘Alright up there?’
She dreaded to think what kind of acreage of her knickers she was showing, but frankly she no longer cared. Two kicks sent her pumps flying through the air, then as she splayed her legs, ready to jump, she heard a rip. Crap. The last thing she needed here was to leave her skirt behind her.
‘Hang on…’ The guy sprung towards her with a strangled squawk.
‘Okay, keep your hair on.’ Izzy gasped. Two strides later his hands closed around her waist. The breath left her body as he spun her through a glorious crazy arc, before setting her lightly and neatly on the ground beside him. For a moment she wobbled against the soft fabric of his jacket, getting a blast of aftershave that was way too delicious for someone so bad tempered. And then he stepped away, and she was the one left with wide eyes, and a sagging jaw.
Wednesday Evening, 4th June
DIDA
In the kitchen at Alport Towers
One husband, thinly spread
NEW MESSAGE TO: THE CREW @ VINTAGE AT THE CINEMA…LUCE, IZZY, OLLIE, LYDIA, DAMON, HENNI, DECLAN, SUZIE, ARTHUR, LEIGHTON, MAGDA, THOM, ALLIE
Dida checked the names on the email, crossed her legs, and gave a heartfelt sigh. Even if Aidie had slammed the cinema building on the market, it was doubly important to carry on as normal. However determined Aidie was to put a hatchet through her proverbial baby, not to mention her success, she was ten times as determined not to let him succeed. Though she hadn’t yet managed to track Aidie down to actually speak to him in person, or at the end of a phone, she was certain that her husband’s motivation for selling the building was as much about trying to limit her new found success, as it was about making a profit now the property market was improving. Although Vintage at the Cinema had started out as a tentative experiment, so much creative energy and talent had gone into making it what it was now, there was no way was she giving it up without a fight. Even thinking about it made her feel like her head was about to implode with rage at Aidie for doing what he’d done, and rage at herself for being so powerless to stop him. Whereas she should have been floating around on a champers-induced cloud, basking after a fabulously successful celebration, she was instead grinding her teeth in frustration, and biting on the bitter taste of humiliation.
Tonight she’d already bustled her youngest child, Lolly, off to bed in a blur, and now she was ready to sweat the bigger stuff. The disembodied roar of a football crowd meant that Eric was fully engaged with FIFA14 in the breakfast room.
Dida scowled round her apple green kitchen. The vile green paint was another reminder of Aidie’s tyranny. That Aidie flatly refused to let her get the fifty seven kitchen units repainted in a more appropriate colour sent her round the bend on a daily basis and it was so typical of him to make this into a battleground. Now, her perpetual fuming about the argument she referred to as Granny Smith-gate only aided her incandescent rage about what had happened today at the cinema.
It was alright for Aidie, he was hardly here long enough to get tired of anything, even something as extreme as vommy green paint. He flew in, then he flew out again. Right now he was in Lithuania, working on “something big” to do with pipes, and as usual she had zero idea what. In fact some weekends he was home so little, they had barely enough time for an argument. Unfortunately for Dida there was always enough time for sex, and that would be sex not once, but twice a day. She gave a rueful eye roll at the thought of his whale-like bulk grunting on top of her, and thanked her lucky stars it was only Wednesday and so she didn’t have that to look forward to. Although given what he’d pulled today, she’d be withdrawing that privilege until further notice. As far as the kitchen repaint went, if there was any excuse to wield his power over her, Aidie grabbed it with both his chubby hands. It was time she gave him a taste of his own medicine in the bedroom.
Her husband hadn’t always been bloated. The twenty something guy she first hooked up with at the office Christmas party back in ’94 had been relatively slender, albeit in a chunky kind of way. She’d first noticed him because he was the only one in the office with his own house, and she had an idea his sense of humour had been better in those days too. But years of expense account dining had pushed his BMI through the red zone, and straight on out the other side. His success had turned into one big power trip and now he pretty much claimed to be in charge of the world as far as the pipelines industry was concerned. He got his rocks off all week, ordering people around at work, and at weekends he brought his testosterone excess back home, and slammed them all into submission here too. And today he’d even managed to exert his power remotely, in the most awful of ways.
Aidie and his control issues. Dida gave a grimace. She was well used to them. It was an ironic twist that if Vintage at the Cinema hadn’t dropped into her lap to take her mind off the most difficult thing in life, i.e. her husband, she wasn’t sure she’d even still be here, despite the gorgeous home she’d thrown herself into creating. Ice cream was a crutch she leaned on in her struggle to stay cheerful. Usually, at ten o’ clock, in a mere seventy six minutes from now, she’d be having a two scoop helping, and tonight she should be dipping into dark chocolate and raspberry, and pralines and cream. But this evening she was so wound up, she had no appetite at all, not even for ice cream.
‘Mum, I just went up a league on FIFA, have you got any cake?’ Eric, play station controller in hand, wandered into the kitchen, his floppy fringe only partially masking his glazed expression, and walked towards a large pile of plastic containers stacked on the work surface.
‘Nope, hands off those, they’re Vintage at the Cinema ones, and I’m delivering them first thing.’ How much of a bad mother did it make her that she had cake for work and not for home? ‘How about ice cream. Toffee chip okay?’ She slid off her stool, grabbed a dish, trundled to the fridge and dolloped out some soft scoop, pushing it towards Eric, who gave a grunt.
‘It would be nice if you could say thank you properly.’ She knew she had to insist on the manners thing, although she’d be lucky to get anything as complex as two syllables out of Eric in his current PlayStation induced trance.
‘Thanks.’ He mumbled and waggled his spoon at her.
‘Bed by ten, alright?’ She was talking to Eric’s back as he sidled away, sighing as she saw how he even shuffled across the marble floor in the same way as his dad.
One of the many problems with Aidie was, as her Granny used to say, the all fur coat and no knickers thing. He boasted long and hard about his six figure salary, but when it came to housekeeping she simply couldn’t get him to part with his money. Vintage at the Cinema kept her sane, by giving her something other than the warfare with Aidie to focus on, but, more importantly, it gave her access to cash. For the first time since she gave up work and had the kids, so long as she fudged the figures she showed to Aidie, she had some kind of financial autonomy.
The morning after Aidie came home from Corks Bar saying he’d got his hands on the old cinema building, she’d got straight on the phone to Luce and Izzy, and, as she’d said in her speech, before she’d been so rudely interrupted, the rest was history. And as Vintage at the Cinema emerged, so had the new independent, happier, Dida. There was no way now she could go back to being who she was before. Vintage at the Cinema had made her into
