but he’s come round a bit,” said Daisy, munching on a handful of nuts that she’d found in a bowl on the coffee table. She spat them back into her hand when she realised they had been sitting there so long they’d almost grown a beard. “He picked me up in Belfast this morning, so we had a good long chat on the journey here. Jonathan seems in bad form, though.”
“Yeah, he is. You do know he got engaged at the weekend.”
“I heard.” Daisy’s head dropped but she shook herself and gave a weak smile.
“That’s another piece of news I’ve been putting off telling you, love. Shannon’s her name. I’ve only seen her once but she seems a nice girl. A little outspoken for Jonathan, but pretty, and they’re getting married really soon. I wasn’t sure how you’d react. After all, at one stage we all thought it would have been you…” said Maggie shaking her head slightly. She could still remember her daughter posing nervously with Jonathan on the night of her debs ball. “It could have been, you know.”
“Anyway, whatever.” Daisy felt a childish rant coming on but she couldn’t control herself. The reason she had come home wasn’t to talk about Jonathan and she’d no intention of doing so. “I’m sure you would rather want to know what brought me here when I should be in Spain. Lorna should be with me, but she’s not because she’s sitting in a jacuzzi drinking posh mineral water and being treated like a princess!”
Maggie considered the subject closed. She reminded herself not to mention Shannon’s name again. It was for the best, obviously.
“What a terrible disappointment that your holiday collapsed.” Maggie commented to her only daughter. “What’s up with you anyway? I hope it’s nothing more than a bit of man trouble. I could have come to stay with you for a few days up in Belfast if I’d known you were lonely.”
Maggie was delighted at Daisy’s unexpected arrival. However she wondered what was behind the surprise visit. She stood up and straightened her yellow t-shirt. It said “The Virgin Tour 1985” across the front.
Daisy made a mental note to hide the Madonna t-shirt or dump it before she went home. She could always recycle it and use it as a polishing rag if she was stuck, although Lorna would die of shock if Daisy suddenly started taking an interest in housework! Her flatmate had a strange fetish for micro-fibre cloths and could spend hours pondering over lotions and potions at the supermarket while Daisy headed straight for the pizza aisle or towards the special offers on red wine.
“I think I’ll put the kettle on,” muttered Maggie. “Sod my detox plans; I have a feeling I’ll need a caffeine fix before I hear the end of all your news.”
Daisy followed her mother closely through the narrow hallway, chattering non-stop into the cosy kitchen and almost treading on Maggie’s heels when she stopped at the fridge to take out some milk.
“Mum,” she said, having finally used up all her small talk on the weather and the smell of fish outside. “Does Isobel know that Eddie is gay?”
Maggie swung around and looked her daughter in the eye.
“Of course she does. Well, at least I assume so,” she shrugged and poured some milk into a jug. “Yes, of course, she has to know.”
Daisy paused. “But he said he’s never told her.”
“Does he really need to? Isn’t it obvious?”
“Mmm,” said Daisy. “You have a point. It’s just, if she does know, my whole life will be so much easier.”
When the kettle finally whistled, Maggie made two cappuccinos and sat them on the chequered table. Daisy scraped her chair along the floor and sat down, hugging the cup in her hands. Please let Isobel know the score, she prayed to herself. Please, please let all this monkey business be totally unnecessary.
“Well, it’s hardly something we’ve ever sat down and discussed,” said Maggie, wondering where on earth all of this could be leading. “Isobel, as you know, would hardly speak of such things, so she has never really said so. However even a blind man could see that Eddie is gay. Since he was a child, his destiny has been so unbelievably obvious. His passion for Barbie dolls, clothed Barbie dolls, gave the game away when he was about ten years old.”
“But she hasn’t actually said it, has she? Has she even hinted?”
“How do you mean?”
“Like, does she ever mention how Eddie is living in the gay capital of the world, or that he perhaps has a very special friend called Brad, or that he has shirts in multiple shades of pink, as well as posters of his icon, Ellen DeGeneres, on his wall, just beside his altar to Cher?”
Maggie thought for a few seconds while dunking a Kit Kat Chunky into her cup of froth.
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m afraid not. Anyhow, what’s the big deal? I’m sure Isobel has realised it by now. But even if she hasn’t, what has it got to do with you?”
Daisy fidgeted with the edge of the tablecloth.
“This is going to sound crazy,” she said. “Because it is crazy. Pure mental, actually.”
Her mother frowned. “OK, just spit it out, for crying out loud.”
Daisy coughed quietly and shifted in her chair. She could sense her mother’s patience was wearing thin.
“Eddie wants me to pretend we’re an item.”
Maggie seemed startled but then started to laugh.
Daisy ignored her. “Eddie wants me to pretend we’re an item so that Isobel’s last few months are content in the knowledge that her son’s a heterosexual.” She paused for breath. “He wants his mother to think he’s just a run-of-the-mill lad’s lad whose main ambition is to settle down here in Donegal and have two point four children.”
There, she’d said it. And it was beginning to sound more stupid every time.
“Wow,” said Maggie. She loved that word. It really was so effective when she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Silly, isn’t it? And I’m even worse for agreeing to go along with it,” said Daisy.
Maggie opened another Kit Kat and handed half of it across the table.
“I see,” she whispered. “And have you thought of Jonathan’s feelings at all?”
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” said Daisy dismissively, licking the melted chocolate from the side of the biscuit in a ritual that mirrored her mother’s.
“Will he? Look, don’t you think Eddie would be better just to tell Isobel he’s gay? I know she’s a Holy Joe but she does live in the twenty-first century,” Maggie pointed out. This all sounded a bit over the top, ridiculous even. “I’m sure she knows in her heart anyway.”
“He just doesn’t want to put her under any more stress. It would be nice for her to think that Eddie was planning to follow in his older brother’s footsteps … in more ways than one. Oh it doesn’t feel right at all.”
Daisy couldn’t even bring herself to mention Jonathan’s name again.
Maggie shrugged her shoulders and sipped her cappuccino, trying to take it all in. Daisy’s home visits were normally to escape from work frustration, or to moan about the lack of good men. Pretending to go out with a gay guy she was practically reared alongside was definitely a first.
“Well, I don’t really think there’s any need for this, Daisy, but if it takes Eddie’s mind off the bigger picture, then why not just run with it for his sake? For a while anyway. Isobel didn’t come up the river in a bubble. She will know from the outset it’s his wee way of coping, so if it makes him feel better, go along with it knowing that the rest of us all know it’s as unlikely as…well, it’s just not even logical in the first