Bibliofemme: Extras

Chapter One
Maeve braked hard then cursed, as the car in front of her stopped at the amber light. She needed to be in early today. Her husband, Fintan, had offered to take the children, but it was Maeve's turn and to change routine would be to admit she was nervous.

And Maeve wasn't nervous, at least not so as anyone else would notice. She could out-negotiate Peter in her sleep and she'd get a good deal out of him for the sake of everyone in the company.

And if I have to be devious, tough! Maeve thought, swallowing her non-existent nerves further down into her fluttering stomach. We've wasted enough time negotiating ­ Ofiscom's ready to deal, we're ready to deal and Peter's the only one holding things up.

Maeve looked at the baby strapped into his seat beside her and her face softened into a smile. She stroked his cheek gently with the back of her finger. The only one of her children to resemble her, with dark eyes and straight brown hair, Darragh was struggling to keep his eyes open. He turned his head sleepily towards her, opening his soft mouth against her hand. Then she glanced at the older two children in the back.

'Take your fingers out of your sister's face, Ciaran! Ciaran! Ciaran! Ciaran! If you don't stop that right now . . .' she tried to sound menacing. 'I said stop it! Don't make me stop the car!
Ciaran straightened up.
'I wasn't doing anything, Mummy. Fiona was crying so I tried to make her happy by tickling her.'

His father's brilliant blue eyes beamed out of Ciaran's angelic face and Maeve tried not to break into a grin matching his.

'If you can be good all the way to Sarah's house,' she offered, 'I'll ask her if she'll let you watch one cartoon off her new Rugrats video.'

Maeve had long since overcome any guilt she felt about using television as a bribe. She reckoned that children were programmed by evolution to torture their parents and anything she could use to even the odds had to be fair. 'All right, but it has to be the Bug's Life video, not Rugrats!' Ciaran replied, tilting his head to one side. 'I saw Rugrats yesterday, and it's boring!'

Not for the first time, Maeve wondered exactly how much television her children watched while she was at work. But Sarah was the perfect minder; Ciaran and Fiona loved her, and they came home exhausted and full of stories of trips to the park and games of football. The kitchen walls at home were covered with drawings and paintings the kids had done at Sarah's ­ and besides, some television could be educational, couldn't it? It never did Maeve any harm, and she was raised as much by John Noakes as by her own parents.

As they pulled into Sarah's housing estate in Stillorgan, Darragh finally gave up his battle with sleep. Maeve knew he'd be in a foul mood when she woke him to bring him in, but that wasn't her problem. Although she hated leaving her kids to someone else when she went to work, there were always those few moments, just after she pulled away, when the car was blissfully quiet.

Sarah opened the front door as Maeve pulled up. As usual, she looked as if she was just dressing when the doorbell rang. A red cardigan hung from one shoulder as she hitched up her jeans and tucked a tiny white T-shirt into an even tinier waistband. Then she ran a hand through her short red hair, making it stand up on end.

She waited while Ciaran, with Fiona in tow, clattered out of the car and into her sitting-room, and then went out to help with Darragh. 'Hi, Maeve, how are you doing for time?' she asked. 'I've just put the kettle on.'

'Hi, Sarah, sorry, but I'm in a mad rush.' Maeve looked at her watch for emphasis. 'I'm supposed to be in early, but just as I put my jacket on Darragh threw up and we both needed a complete change of outfit.' 'Aah . . . the joys of Motherhood!' Sarah grinned and rearranged the baby in her arms to minimise the chance of a repeat performance. 'Okay then, how about this evening? I need to have a word with you.'
Maeve's heart sank. 'Oh? What about? Can it wait?'
'Oh, sure it can wait ­ this evening's fine.'
'Alright . . . I should be able to leave early,' she promised, getting into her car, relieved that Sarah's problem, whatever it was, wasn't urgent. 'We'll have plenty of time for a chat.'

But, as she pulled away, Maeve wondered what was on the other woman's mind. It couldn't just be a chat; Sarah never saw the need to plan ahead for that. Maybe Ciaran was acting up and Sarah had read in one of her childcare manuals that his behaviour was typical of a developing axe-murderer. How Anita and Mark had ever successfully reached the ages of sixteen and fourteen respectively, without the benefit of their mother's recent fascination with child psychology, was one of the twentieth century's great mysteries.

Or maybe she was after another pay raise, Maeve thought. The last one was only eight months ago, but Maeve knew she would pay up before the hints got too obvious.

Then Maeve put Sarah out of her mind to enjoy the rest of her drive. Unlike most people she actually enjoyed her commute with its half-hour or so of solitude. She thought about the weekend ahead. She and Fintan were taking Friday off, farming the two older children out to Œthe grannies' and hoping that Darragh would sleep for a few uninterrupted hours to allow Maeve and Fintan to spend some time together.

Romance had been on hold in the Larkin household for the past few months, leaving Maeve with a strange mixture of guilt and regret. Towards the end of her last pregnancy, she'd gone right off sex. And after Darragh was born she went back to work early and was so exhausted that she would have questioned the sanity of anyone who suggested there were things to do in bed other than sleep.

Maeve pulled out of the heavy traffic on Leeson Street and turned into the car park in front of Leeson Business Solutions. She parked in the space marked M Larkin, then walked up the granite steps of the redbricked Victorian building and into a small reception area, recently painted a gentle primrose yellow. She smiled in greeting at the receptionist who already looked busy despite the early hour.

Leeson Business Solutions was a friendly, family-run firm, founded in the 1960s by the late Seamus Breslin, who had run it until he retired due to ill health ten years ago. Originally his main business was office supplies, but in the '80s he moved the company into computers. When his son Danny joined him from a background in computer programming, he in turn pushed LBS into software. Then, when his father retired, Danny took over and Maeve was the first person he appointed. Her first official role was in sales and marketing, but gradually she became Danny's second in command as she saw opportunities for them to expand and diversify. Now Danny relied on her completely.

The company employed thirty-two people, providing a complete computer and office-machinery service to their impressive list of clients. They had also developed some interesting software, which needed capital to develop further, so Danny had decided to merge with the American giant Ofiscom. In reality it was a buy-out, but Danny was to stay on as chief executive and LBS would keep its own identity.

Maeve was doing most of the work on the merger along with Peter Fisch, a Texan seconded from Ofiscom's headquarters. And although Maeve managed to maintain a working relationship with Peter, she really thought he was a pain in the ass. Too much the stereotypical, thirty-something, company man for her to take seriously. She'd bet any money he sang the Ofiscom company anthem every morning, standing to attention in front of the mirror after flossing his teeth.

Maeve walked into an open-plan office area that had been the hallway and part of a spacious drawing-room in the original Victorian house. Over the rest of this floor, and at garden level below, the building had been extended and adapted over the years to provide a hotchpotch collection of small cramped offices, but with ceilings at the original height giving an impression of space. Danny once told Maeve that when his father bought the building at the end of the 1950s, some of the original plaster mouldings remained. But because he couldn't afford to have them restored and because they were in a state of dangerous disrepair he had been forced to have them ripped out. However, he hadn't touched the main reception room on the second floor so, when there was more money available, it had been transformed into a large bright boardroom with a giant central ceiling rose and an ornate plaster frieze and cornice.

'Maeve, Danny's waiting for you in his office,' Danny's secretary, Amanda, called from behind the photocopier. 'He knows you weren't due to meet till half nine, but he saw you parking and wondered if you could go in to him now?'

Maeve resisted the temptation to laugh. Her boss couldn't wait to discuss what they were going to squeeze out of Peter this afternoon. She gathered together her organiser and laptop and went into his office. Danny was staring out the window, frowning.

'Cheer up, boss, it might never happen!' Maeve sat in one of the comfortable armchairs near the window and accepted Amanda's offer of a cup of coffee. 'After all the work we've put in, it bloody well better,' Danny growled, referring to the merger. Then he turned and grinned. The boyish grin lit up his face and made him look younger than a few months off forty. He was a handsome man with a crop of dark, curly hair cut short. And he was one of those men you knew were Irish before they even opened their mouth ­ Maeve could never decide whether it was his smile, his gestures or the self-deprecating expression that said that he was going to laugh at himself before anyone beat him to it.

'Don't mind me,' he said. 'I'm just in one of those ŒOh God, am I doing the right thing?' moods.'

Danny sat in the other armchair and held out his cup for Amanda to top up. 'Would Dad have approved? I can't get Mum to express an opinion. She says I'm running things now and I've got to do things my own way.' Knowing Mrs Breslin, Maeve reckoned she was even less interested in the goings-on at the office now than she had been when her husband had been alive. Besides, the family stood to make a lot of money from the sale of the company. As did the staff. Seamus Breslin had been a man ahead of his time, who made sure all his employees had a stake in LBS in the form of a profit-sharing scheme under which employees earned Œshares' based on their years of service and performance. It was a stake Ofiscom would now have to buy out.

Maeve sipped her coffee and waited for Danny's mood to lift because, typically, his bouts of introspection lasted no more than a few minutes. Maeve could spend longer agonising over whether she'd ordered the wrong sandwich for lunch than Danny spent wondering if he was making the right decision for the welfare of thirty people.

'I wanted to have a chat before your meeting with The Fish this afternoon,' Danny said at last. He always referred to Peter as ŒThe Fish' outside his hearing. 'He says Texas won't agree the figure we proposed on Tuesday and are trying to pare it down further. It's standard negotiating tactics, but you know how much I hate these games.' Danny began to dismantle his pen with a frown of concentration. 'Still, we must be approaching a figure they'll accept if they let him come that close to an offer.' He looked up hopefully at Maeve.

'I think we can still get our figure out of him, if we structure it differently.' Maeve pulled out some papers and spread them out on the low table between them. 'I'm convinced Ofiscom would accept our figure, except for Peter holding them back, telling them he can do a better deal. So I'll try to sweeten it a bit. Let's tell him we'll accept an offer of two and a half Ofiscom shares for each of our LBS shares upfront as long as they'll commit to another share over the next three years for anyone who stays with the firm. Maeve looked to her boss for approval. He nodded slowly.

'Okay, run with that.' Danny looked relieved to have made a decision. 'It works to their advantage to keep people. And we still have to run this joint after The Fish goes home.'

Maeve was going to feel like Santa Claus if she pulled this off. Of course Danny would officially get the credit, but most people knew she had done the hard bargaining. And she stood to make a nice little sum herself, enough to pay off a good chunk of her mortgage, and have a little spending spree. With the main business discussed, Maeve and Danny spent the next half-hour going over other issues. The company was too busy for its own good at the moment and a lot of Maeve's time was spent re-deploying staff to fill gaps. It made for a crazy time for everyone, but morale was at an all-time high because of the imminent cash windfall.

The meeting wound down and Maeve returned to her own office. She rang her friend Andrea to remind her they were meeting for lunch and then knuckled down to her morning's work.

The early spring sun had brought the warmest day of the year so far, so when Maeve left the office just before one, she decided to walk to Andrea Egan's beauty salon at the end of Leeson Street. Her friend had opened the salon, simply named Egan's, eight years ago on the ground floor of a building owned by her father. He thought he was just humouring his youngest daughter's latest whim, but the space had just been vacated by a previous tenant, so he gave her one year to get the business up and running, and to pay a proper commercial rent. Andrea surprised everyone, putting her failed beauty diploma and two years' sporadic attendance at an expensive hairdressing school to spectacular use. Within six months she was well capable of paying her way, but kept to the original agreement and only started paying rent one year to the day after she had moved in. Instead, she Œreinvested' the money in business development. Which, in Andrea's language, meant supporting her lavish social life and moving with the beautiful people. It clearly paid off, as the beautiful people soon began to flock to the salon. Maeve was never sure if it was Andrea's skill as a stylist, or her encyclopaedic knowledge of the private lives of Dublin's rich and famous that kept her clientele loyal, and the salon now occupied the basement, the ground floor and an office and small private treatment area on the first floor.

It was into the office Maeve was ushered when she arrived. The receptionist, Jane, brought a tray of delicious finger food and said that Ms Egan would be up shortly. As Maeve sipped a fashionable mineral water, she listened to Andrea's high-pitched ŒOooh's' and ŒAaah's' through the floor as she flattered a children's television presenter and extracted an obscene amount of money for the latest Egan hair creation. Then she heard Andrea usher her client to the door and run up the stairs two at a time. Sometimes Andrea's inability to do anything at normal speed exhausted Maeve.

She burst through the door, all five foot ten of her. Slim, blonde and tanned, the kind of woman Maeve guessed she would hate if they hadn't been friends so long.

'Darling, how wonderful to see you, it really has been toooo long!' Andrea kissed the air beside Maeve's cheek.

'You've ten seconds to start behaving like a normal human being or you won't see me for dust,' Maeve growled.

'Oops, sorry! Busy day, busy week, I've been Œin character' for too long without a break.' Andrea flopped onto the armchair opposite Maeve, knocking her head on a hairdryer on the way down. 'Shit! I'm going to chuck that fucking thing out the window one of these days!'rr

'That's better,' Maeve laughed, 'but don't feel you have to swear on my account.' It was an ongoing joke between them ­ Maeve had drastically cut down on her use of four-letter words since she'd had kids, while Andrea, who could curse like a sailor, never did in front of clients. 'So, Madame, what can we do for you today?' Andrea asked. 'What I really need is a good gossip and my roots touched up. Not necessarily in that order.' Maeve stretched back in the chair, ready to be pampered.

Twice a month, religiously, the two friends met up. Once at the salon, where Andrea worked her magic over a takeout deli lunch, and once when Maeve took her friend to dinner at whichever restaurant was trendiest in Dublin at the time. Maeve reckoned she had the better half of the deal. She always walked tall and felt beautiful and sexy when she left Egan's, and for a woman only a couple of inches over five foot and very self-conscious about her looks, this was no mean achievement.

As Andrea worked, they both picked at the sandwiches and fingers of quiche. Soon Maeve's roots were cooking under the drier and, as she enjoyed a manicure, she told Andrea about her plans for the weekend.

'What?' Andrea gasped, a mischievous expression lighting up her face. 'You didn't tell me you needed the full romantic-weekend treatment. Cancel the rest of your afternoon and we'll send you home looking and feeling in the mood for lurve!'

'I wish I could, but I've a meeting with that horrible Fisch-Man this afternoon.' Maeve groaned, pretending to dread it, when really she couldn't wait. 'We have to squeeze as much money out of him as possible in the takeover.'

'You really will have to explain all this high finance to me some day,' Andrea yawned theatrically. 'Remind me to call you some night when I've got insomnia. But, if that's all you've got to look forward to, escape as soon as you can, and pop in here on your way home. You need a facial and ideally an aromatherapy massage. Francoise, who started with us last month, is magic with the smelly oils. Not only will you be relaxed, you'll smell irresistible. The ingredients in her oils are some dark French secret, known only to the initiated. Costs a bloody fortune, but I'm going to put her prices up as soon as she has a regular list of addicts.'

'I could do with a bit of that,' Maeve sighed, 'but I've got to collect the kids today, and Sarah wants a chat ­ which reminds me, I need cakes to soften her up. So if you're not going to eat all those gooey things wrap them up in a doggy-bag for me ­ it'll save me stopping on the way home.' Andrea always ordered large quantities of sticky buns for their monthly lunch and then wouldn't eat any in sympathy with Maeve who was always on a diet. Well, not always, but after each child she had at least a stone to lose, so for the past five years it had felt like always.

'What does Ms McEvoy want now?' Andrea asked, her dislike of Sarah barely concealed. The two women had not hit it off the only time they had met, at Darragh's christening. Andrea, who was Darragh's godmother, had worn a flawless cream suit and enormous hat, and displayed a tan that looked almost ridiculous in Ireland in February. Sarah decided at once that Andrea was a spoilt rich bitch whose business was underwritten by Daddy's money while Andrea in turn resented the way Sarah was always first there with a kiss-better for Fiona or to reprimand Ciaran when he got boisterous in church. She seemed to be implying by her actions that she was more motherly to Maeve's children than their own harassed parent.

'She's probably reached the chapter on how to recognise a dysfunctional family in her Child Psychology for Dummies book,' Maeve groaned, 'and she's going to tell me where I'm going wrong.' Fond as she was of Sarah, Maeve could get a little weary of her theories. 'Or she's after another pay raise.'

Andrea nearly choked on her mineral water. 'She wouldn't have the nerve, would she, Maeve? You pay her far too much already. Give her another pay raise and I'll chuck in this place, and take them on myself. It's much better money.'

Maeve let Andrea rant until she climbed off her high horse. 'Yeah, yeah, I know,' Andrea said at last, 'St Sarah the Blessed of Stillorgan is worth every penny, for your peace of mind. You're lucky to have her. A crèche would cost more. Blah, blah, blah! I've heard it all before. Just do me a favour and don't tell me if you do give her a raise ­ I couldn't handle the depression about my lousy career choice.' She finished drying Maeve's hair, then stood back to admire the results. 'There now, Mrs Larkin! No more roots visible. Only Fintan could tell you're not a natural blonde and by the sound of things he's about to be reminded in a big way this weekend.'

Andrea grinned wickedly and held up a mirror for Maeve to examine her hair. She had trimmed the ends and Maeve's straight, now blonder hair stopped just above her collar, turning in at the end to frame her delicate oval face. As always after having her highlights redone, her brown eyes seemed bigger than ever. As Andrea looked at her friend she thought it was a pity that Maeve didn't appreciate her own looks. She would have killed to have bone structure like that. But ever since Maeve was only nine or ten and her mother had none too subtly expressed disappointment that her only daughter was going to favour her husband's shorter side of the family and not inherit her own Twiggy-like physique, Maeve had idolised a model of beauty which encompassed height, skinniness and the ability to wear clothes like a hanger.

'Are you sure I can't tempt you to the full treatment? Romantic weekend and all that?'

Maeve groaned. 'Don't tempt me . . . maybe another time. Hopefully, we'll get a few more of these weekends. And now that Darragh's weaned we may even be able to book that weekend in Paris we've been promising ourselves since Fiona was born.'

'And you might have already been there, if you hadn't proceeded with such indecent haste on to Darragh ­ ŒAll-the-hassle-over-with-in-one-go,' my foot!' Andrea was fishing for information as usual. Fintan and Maeve had never admitted to anyone that Darragh was a surprise arrival. 'Wait till you have a few of your own, then you'll understand,' Maeve teased back. 'Tick-tock, tick-tock!'

Andrea's biological clock had grown louder when she turned thirty and she had stopped dating in favour of interviewing future husbands. Although she had plenty of applicants, none survived the rigorous selection process. Few were even called back for a second interview.

'Get out of here, Maeve, before I get nasty and start boring you with the details of my disastrous love life,' Andrea threatened. 'Socialising for the sake of promiscuity was really so much more fun than this hunt for Mr Right. If you were a real friend, you'd poison that cow Cathy Houlihan's coffee next time she was in the office, and release Danny back to being one of Dublin's most eligible bachelors.'