Foreign Affairs by Patricia Scanlan

the hard work and lack of sleep.
    They grew up so quickly. Louise had confided that she didn’t believe in Santa and Maura felt like crying. She wished she could freeze this moment for ever, that things would never change,
that her children would always stay as they were. But that was wishful thinking. It seemed like only yesterday that Paula was a baby. One day she’d want to go shopping for real high heels.
Today would be just a memory. A very treasured memory.

Chapter Eight
    A long appreciative wolf-whistle brought a smile to Paula Matthews’s lips as she made her way past the building site where the new Credit Union premises was being built.
It was early, only seven-fifteen, but the builders were there already, shinnying up and down their scaffolding with lithe agility. Paula loved walking past the site. She enjoyed covertly eyeing up
the bronze bare-chested men with their rippling muscles. They were ever so sexy. Now that she was fifteen, a teenager at last, she was almost grown-up. She had a boyfriend, Conor Harrison, Doctor
Harrison’s son. He was quite a catch and three years older than her. Conor had just finished his Leaving Cert and, if he got enough honours, was going to UCD in September to study medicine.
Much as she liked Conor, Paula was enough of a realist to know that once her boyfriend went up to the big smoke, he wouldn’t be thinking of the girl he’d left behind. Not unless she
gave him something to think about . . . She smiled to herself as she walked past the whistling workmen. There was one whom she particularly liked. He was in his early twenties, fair-haired, about
six foot, with a body that would tempt any virgin. He was a good bit older than her, of course, but then she was attracted to older men. They were so much more sophisticated, not like the spotty
gawky youths of her own age. God, she wouldn’t give them a second glance. Jim Carr and Cormac Walsh were always mooning after her, pretending to be two real hard chaws, smoking and boasting
and swaggering around in two awful moth-eaten leather jackets.
    Did they actually think that she was the slightest bit interested? Pathetic geeks like them with their spotty acne and greasy hair. At least Conor had a bit of class and sophistication. His
father, of course, being a doctor, was loaded and Conor always had plenty of money to treat her like a lady. He had bought her heated rollers and a curling tongs last Christmas and her friends, not
to mention her sisters, were pea-green with envy. Rebecca’s fella had given her one of those soap and talc sets and she’d been furious. And would you blame her? If any fella ever gave
her
one of those cheapie sets he’d have his walking papers before he knew it. Anyway, Rebecca was only going out with Niall Cronin because she was desperate to have a bloke. Niall
Cronin was a lazy good-for-nothing who didn’t even wash himself half the time. The smell off him sometimes. Paula wrinkled her pert nose as she walked past Mooney’s bar. If she’d
been Rebecca, she’d have given him back his soap and talc set and told him to use it on himself. How her sister could let that smelly oaf near her, Paula could not fathom.
    He was such a shit too, he’d actually made a pass at her. Now Paula knew that men in general found her attractive. She was rather pretty, she had to admit, she mused, as she walked past
the Star of the Sea and saw Father Doyle going in to prepare for eight o’clock Mass. Probably Father Doyle secretly fancied her as well, for all she knew. She giggled happily to herself. It
was nice that men fancied her. Conor was always telling her how beautiful she was and no doubt Niall just got carried away and couldn’t help himself. But to seriously think that she would be
interested in him with his BO and he her sister’s boyfriend. She didn’t know which she had found the more insulting. The trouble with Niall was that he thought he was such a cool dude,
well there was nothing