Always and Forever by Cathy Kelly

phone into her shoulder, her voice softening with love.
    ‘How are you? Miss you, you know.’
    ‘I know, Daisy. But I’l be home tomorrow evening.’ From his businesslike tone, it was clear that he wasn’t alone. ‘Can’t talk, huh? No problem. How’s it going?’ she asked, suppressing the slightest tinge of irritation that he hadn’t slipped away from the group for a moment to phone her privately. He was on his mobile, it seemed, and she hated those brusque ‘Al fine here, how are you?’ conversations.
    ‘Al fine here,’ said Alex, right on cue. ‘And at your end?’
    Daisy laughed and did her best to let the irritation slip away. She could hardly have said, ‘Let’s do something about why I’m not getting pregnant,’ over the phone, could she? ‘My end is great but it’s lonely because it doesn’t have your end to snuggle up against in bed. It was freezing here last night,’ she added. ‘I had to resort to my fleece pyjamas and my bedsocks as I didn’t have you to warm me.’ She couldn’t resist the joke. He hated her bedsocks.
    ‘Real y?’ said Alex blankly, but Daisy knew he must be grinning. Only someone who knew him wel would hear the amusement over a crackly mobile and hundreds of miles.
    ‘Real y. So hurry home. Me and the bedsocks miss you.’
    ‘You too. Better rush. We’ve got another meeting before dinner and it wil probably be late, so I won’t phone again.
    See you tomorrow.’
    ‘Yes, can’t wait.’ She had so much to talk to him about. ‘I know you can’t talk, Alex,’ Daisy said quickly, ‘and you don’t have to reply but I love you.’
    There was silence in her ear. He’d hung up.

    Daisy made herself put the receiver back without slamming it into the cradle. How was it that women invariably wondered what was wrong, even when there was nothing wrong, and men never divined anything out of the ordinary when emotional war was about to be declared? She’d like to see how pleased Alex would be if she’d hung up on him when she was working away and when he was burning to tel her something.
    She dismal y surveyed the piles of clothes on the beige carpet. Everything in the apartment was decorated in subtle shades of beige and caramel, with dark brown accents.
    Alex loved modern minimalism.
    Daisy had once wondered how their flat would cope with a smal child in it. She loved planning new floor coverings and washable paintwork, or working out how to lay out the baby’s room. How sad was she?
    That was it: her enthusiasm had vamoosed. She’d stack everything on her side of the room and do it during the week. There was a pepperoni pizza and oven chips in the freezer, a bottle of chil ed wine in the fridge and probably some slushy romantic film on the movie channel. She could even give herself a manicure. And she’d put a conditioning treatment in her hair to bring it back to its glossy, strawberry-blonde glory.

    Her straightening irons and the colour played havoc with the split ends.
    She’d look fabulous for when Alex saw her and he’d be flattened with both guilt and longing, and then she’d tel him what she’d real y wanted to talk to him about.

    Georgia’s Tiara had two windows looking out onto Delaney Row, a street of grand, three-storey houses on the northern side of Carrickwel , and both windows had the words
    ‘SALE’ emblazoned across in giant, art deco lettering.
    Decorated in proprietress Mary Dil on’s favourite lemon yel ow, the shop was a clothes lover’s paradise and included a tiny accessory department that sold shoes, bags and costume jewel ery, three large changing rooms and, most important of al , sympathetic mirrors. Mary had most of her warpaint on and was on her second cup of hot water and lemon - awful, but great for the insides, she’d read - by the time Daisy got into the shop on Monday morning.
    ‘Sorry, traffic was brutal,’ Daisy said, which was pretty much what she always said. The snooze button was just so seductive in the