Free Hush Hush by Gabrielle Mullarkey Page A

norm for Shane and
his peers.
    Conor decided the shirt would do.
For some unfathomable reason, he felt guilty about what he was
embarking on ‒ or at
least, planning to embark on.
    He almost felt as if he was
cheating on his son. A ridiculous notion, given Shane’s supreme
indifference to his comings and goings for work. But then again ‒ what did he expect? He came and went so often that both he and Shane
would be wrecks by now if his son was at all needy and clingy by
nature.
    He was not a skilled father.
Guilt made him overcompensate for his absences with lavishly
indiscriminate amounts of pocket money and gifts (bribes, Kate called
them). Still, Kate paid her own blood money and spoilt Shane with his
latest heart’s desire. Thank God he wasn’t a scheming
child, playing them off against each other. Shane would return home
from Kate’s New York loft, laden with trainers (soon forgotten
about), softball racquets (never used) and fleece-lined jackets (lost
within a week). He wasn’t overly acquisitive. He accepted
parental largesse with a certain amount of well-bred embarrassment.
    Returning to his bedroom, Conor
hung the shirt on the back of his wardrobe door. It smelt OK. If in
doubt later, he could slosh a bit of aftershave over key areas. He
wondered, with a brief flicker of panic, if he’d become a total
barbarian since Kate left, a raging troglodyte in matters of
etiquette, cleanliness and civility. Sometimes, he caught Mrs Turner
looking at him in astonishment as he polished off a KFC chicken
bucket after living on nettle soup up some godforsaken mountain for a
week. And Angela Carbery had thought him a pig on the flight from
Morocco.
    At
such times, Conor had the grace to blush. But he was a man ‒ a man who had to shave twice a day to look human ‒ and as such, he had to grunt his way out of embarrassment,
dismissing and deflecting all put-downs. If there was a more
civilised approach to life, he longed to find it, or find someone
who’d point him in the right direction.
    It was Friday. At the end of Angela’s first
week, she was still doing the eleven-o’clock beverage run. But
she didn’t really mind. She could escape from her desk and
daydream by the kettle for a few minutes. She tried hard not to
wonder about Conor McGinlay. Maybe, if she’d been nicer to him,
sparkled with a bit of feminine gratitude for taking up his time … if she’d made an effort to give him her phone number properly.
    Luckily, she’d been too
whacked to see Sadie in person during the week. By tactical skill,
she’d kept Sadie’s midweek phone call within the
parameters of her first week at Goss!
    Braving the office kitchen no
longer fazed her. The kitchen coven had crystallised into
individuals, one of whom was Mandy of admin fame. Angela now realised
they were far less threatening than she’d first thought. They
were simply bored women having a raucous laugh.
    Cradling her noon mug of coffee
(she’d already done the group beverage run), she tip-toed back
to her desk. She didn’t look at Pauline, in case she blushed at
being caught with a unilateral beverage.
    Val looked up from a proof and
gazed past Angela, puffing down her nose like a horse on a frosty
morning. ‘ Who,’
she whinnied, ‘ is
that?’
    Angela and Pauline turned.
    Angela’s heart squeezed
into a ball that hurt her chest.
    Conor McGinlay was ambling
through the open-plan office like a bull in search of a
thirty-two-piece dinner set. His thick hair gleamed a foxy red under
the strip lights. He wore a surprisingly attractive dark linen suit.
He was clutching a small bunch of freesias to a
crumpled shirt-front the colour of a mango mousse (though it was
probably called something manly like ‘sandstorm’ on the
label). Aware of being gawped at, his expression was one of
pained fury.
    Finally spotting Angela, he
cantered over like a mettlesome charger. ‘ I’ve
had to donate a kidney at reception to get into this place,’ he
announced, thrusting