Can Anybody Help Me? Read Free Page B

of tea in one hand, a Jaffa Cake in the other. Yvonne thought for a moment of the plates, unused in the drawer and then decided to keep her anger for a bigger battle.
    â€˜You can’t keep working like this.’
    â€˜I have to, sweetheart.’
    Gerry Mulhern was over six feet tall, but standing, looming over her with a melting biscuit halfway to his mouth and a lock of blonde hair flopping over one eye, he managed to look like a guilty schoolboy. As Yvonne glared at him, he pushed the hair back from his face, his blue eyes wrinkling against the blast of sunlight coming through the sitting-room blinds. It was the wrinkles that finally dragged her back from the brink of outright nagging. Yes, he was working like a slave, yes, he’d made a big deal about getting one of the assistant producers to take over to give them a precious evening together, and now he hadto go into the bloody office AGAIN. But it wasn’t his fault. This was what they had signed up for. The whole point of moving back to Dublin, at a time when all the traffic was going in the opposite direction, was so that Gerry could take up this job. His dream job, the one he’d spent years in London working towards. Executive producer of
Teevan Tonight
, a current affairs programme that was rapidly becoming Ireland’s most talked-about television show.
    And so, if Yvonne was left spending most of her time alone with the baby, well, that was the price they had to pay. After all, it was Gerry’s new salary that was allowing her to live like this. She knew how stressed other women were, trying to juggle work and children, she read about it all the time on Netmammy, an internet discussion forum to which she was rapidly becoming addicted. She knew she was lucky, sitting in a fantastic house on a designer sofa, feeding her baby and keeping an eye on daytime TV while other women were battling through rush-hour traffic and panicking that the crèche was about to close. It was just she hadn’t actually realised, when they’d agreed to move to Dublin, just how much sitting around there would be, and how much of it would be on her own.
    Gerry was in the office most days at 10 a.m. and usually didn’t make it home until the programme came off air at midnight. Even when he was around he had one eye glued to the television, an ear cocked to the radio news and a finger permanently poised on the twitter app on his phone. But there was no point complaining about it now.
    â€˜Why don’t we eat, so?’
    Realising the likelihood of a bollocking was fading, Gerrygrinned, the lines from his face disappearing almost immediately. Yvonne could almost see his thoughts detaching themselves from domesticity and racing ahead to that evening’s meeting, where nappies and colic would be set aside in favour of opposition spokespeople and rating wars. She nodded, and he turned towards the door.
    â€˜Great. Thanks, love. I’ll call for the takeaway now?’
    â€˜Fantastic.’
    Yvonne wasn’t hungry. Róisín had slept for two hours in the middle of the morning and she’d celebrated with two slices of Rocky Road. The thought of a plate of chicken tikka made her feel queasy. Still, Gerry must be starving. She could keep hers for later. The baby was feeding all night at the moment, it would give her something to do at 2 a.m.…
    â€˜â€¦ pick up my suit?’
    â€˜What’s that, Ger?’
    Lost in thoughts of late night feeds, Yvonne had only heard the second half of the sentence.
    â€˜My suit, the pinstripe. You said you’d pick it up today? We’re meeting the Minister’s people before the show; I need to look half decent.’
    Yvonne stared at him, blankly. ‘You never said anything about a suit …’
    Gerry closed his eyes, slowly, and inhaled. ‘I did, sweetie, we had a chat about it yesterday? It’s been in the cleaners for a week. You said you were going to the shops