The Mother-in-Law(42)

“Great!”

I feel like I’m babysitting a friend’s teenage daughter. She is wearing a sports bra and Lycra leggings with a clear slicker over the top. To lunch! Through the slicker I notice that her breasts look suspiciously round for her slender frame. I spare a sudden thought for my own deflated breasts, destroyed by two pregnancies and two hungry babies. Ollie doesn’t seem to mind my breasts, in fact he seems rather fond of them, but all the same I indulge in a moment of mourning for my pre-baby boobs, all upright and roughly the same size as the other.

A door slams and a moment later Eamon appears, a bottle of champagne in each hand. He waggles them around like an idiot. “It’s party time, ladies!”

Eamon’s shirt is unbuttoned too far. He’s lost a bit of weight lately, the way men do when they are going through affairs or midlife crises. (Ollie, God love him, has maintained a stable weight, even gaining a little with each passing year, which is good news on the affair front.)

“Champagne glasses, Luce?” Eamon says.

A few minutes later he returns with four glasses, filled to the brim. “I said I didn’t want any!” Bella exclaims, as he pushes a glass into her hand. “I’m on a cleanse.”

“Nothing better for cleansing than champagne,” he says cheerily.

“Who is cleansing?” Ollie asks, appearing in the kitchen with a tray of overcooked meat.

“Bella,” Eamon and I say together.

Ollie glances at the meat on his tray the same way I looked at my salads.

“Don’t worry,” Bella says, smiling. “I brought my own food.”

Ollie gawps at her. “You brought your own food?”

She unzips a brightly colored cool-bag that I’d previously thought was her purse. “I meal prep at the start of the week, so it’s no trouble, really. All I need is a plate. Easiest guest you’ve ever had, right?” She laughs.

I can already hear Ollie and me impersonating her tonight after they’ve left. Easiest guest you’ve ever had, right? For this reason, and this reason alone, I manage to smile.

I give Bella a plate and she dishes up a sad-looking salad that appears to be brown rice and lettuce. The rest of us tuck in to potato salad, sausages and burgers.

“So how’s business, Eamon?” I ask. “Things going well?”

The one upside of Eamon being here is that I get to ask about the business. Since it started, Ollie has been working around the clock, but when I ask him how things are going, he says very little. He has a tendency to be a worrier, and I console myself with that when he seems less than optimistic. But today I’d be hoping for a little reassurance from Eamon as well.

“We don’t need to talk shop today.” Eamon puts down his glass. “It’s the weekend.”

“I’m happy to talk shop,” I say.

“You know what would be more fun? Truth or dare.”

Midsip of my champagne, I choke. Truth or dare? Eamon is forty-three, I remind myself. Forty-three.

“Come on. It’s a good ice-breaker. We played it the other night, didn’t we, Bells?”

Bella nods, spearing a spinach leaf. She’s listening, it seems, but her entire focus seems to be on her food. The poor little thing is probably starving.

“Okay, you can start, Bells,” Eamon says. “Truth or dare?”

“Hmmm. I should say dare. Because I like a physical challenge. But given the location, and the fact that we’re having lunch I’ll say . . . truth.” She shrugs gaily.

“What was it about Eamon that you found attractive?”

It comes out of my mouth before I can help it. Normally I’d be cautious, in case it inferred that there wasn’t anything attractive about Eamon, but lately I am lessconcerned about his ego. As for Bella, I expect her to fumble, to be shy, but she just reaches across the table and takes his hand, smiling unabashedly. “Before him, I’d only been with boys. Eamon is a man.”

Ollie and I exchange a glance. I try not to vomit.

“It’s a tough job,” Eamon says, stretching his arms out, “but someone has to do it.”

“All righty then,” Ollie says, clearly as appalled as I am. I take a moment to bask in the simplicity of my mostly-normal husband.

“Your turn, buddy,” Eamon says to Ollie. “Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” he says, which is a surprise because who, above the age of twelve, says dare? I tell myself he’s just answering quickly to move things along. I am trying to think of something, my mind going to ideas of knocking on the neighbors’ doors and running away, when Eamon puts down his glass.

“I dare you to borrow a million bucks from your dad!” he says. “His dad’s minted,” he explains to Bella. “He’d probably have a million bucks in pocket change.”

He laughs loudly, and I’m reminded of Jeffrey Greenan, Tom’s friend. Same awful laugh, same chauvinistic manner. At least Jeffrey though, had a very nice wife.

“Unfortunately . . .” Ollie wipes the corners of his mouth with a paper serviette. “There’s my mum to deal with.”

“His mum’s tight,” Eamon explains to Bella, and Ollie bristles. Eamon’s treading on rocky terrain here. Ollie understands that his mother is difficult, but she is, after all, his mother.