Free Foreign Affairs by Patricia Scanlan Page B

you want a cup of tea to cool your ardour?’
    ‘Spoilsport! Your sister was trying to seduce me in front of the turkey. She gets her kicks in strange ways. I’m worn out with her. Look at the pathetic wreck of a man I am compared
to when I got married.’
    ‘You’re not looking too bad,’ Helen said fondly as she filled the kettle.
    ‘I’d better go and start decorating, I suppose.’
    ‘You’d better!’ his wife grinned. ‘We’ll bring you in a cup of tea.’
    ‘What will I do for you?’ Helen plonked herself on the little red cushioned seat beside the fire. Maura sat herself on the opposite one and they toasted their hands against the
blaze.
    ‘Would you do the sprouts?’
    ‘Sure I will,’ Helen smiled. The flames lit the creamy skin on her face, and highlighted the burnished glints in her chestnut hair. Maura felt dull and dowdy beside her. Helen was so
elegant and
soignée,
never a hair out of place. Her nails were always perfectly shaped and varnished, her eyebrows plucked so that not a stray hair showed. Maura had meant to do her
own, and she’d meant to get to the hairdresser today as well, but she just hadn’t managed it.
    ‘I wanted to get my hair done today.’ She ran her hand through brown curls that were beginning to show faint traces of grey.
    ‘Wash it when you’re ready and I’ll set it for you,’ Helen offered.
    Maura brightened. ‘Thanks, Helen, sure that’s as good as going to the hairdresser. I’m really glad you’re able to spend Christmas with us. It’s a big treat for us
and Paula’s in the seventh heaven because her favourite aunt is here.’
    ‘It’s a real treat for me too, Maura. A real treat and thanks for having me. You and Pete. I’m lucky to have you.’ Helen got up from her little seat and leaned across and
hugged her sister.
    Maura hugged her back tightly. Helen and she had always been close. It was a closeness that had sustained her all her life. ‘You’re a great sister, Helen.’ She smiled, giving
Helen a squeeze. ‘You’re so good to my children and they all adore you. I hope this will be one of your best Christmases ever.’
    Helen lay wide-eyed, watching the magnificence of Pete’s Christmas tree with pleasure. In a minute she would hop out of bed and switch off the lights. But it was so
delightful to lie in her comfortably made up bed toasting her feet against the hot-water bottle that Maura had filled for her. It reminded her of childhood Christmases, being in this room with the
garlands lacing the ceiling and the rich red and green holly adorning the pictures on the walls. Maura’s shining old-fashioned candlesticks held two red candles on the mantelpiece and between
them Christmas cards lay along the top, giving it a most festive air.
    Helen sighed. She hadn’t bothered to decorate her home in Dublin this year. It just hadn’t seemed worth it. Anthony was going to his mother for Christmas and she had made the
spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Maura and Pete’s. To hell with it, she’d thought. After spending Christmas with the Matthews, it would only be an anticlimax coming home to her
silent elegant house.
    She wondered how her husband was getting on. Poor Anthony, he’d felt so bad about spending Christmas with his mother and leaving her. But there was no point in her going with him.
Stephanie Larkin couldn’t stand Helen and had never given an inch from the moment she had married her son. In her eyes Helen was not of the same social class as the affluent Larkins, and
never would be. She was an intruder who had wormed her way in. Stephanie always referred to her, in the most disparaging of tones, as ‘the country girl.’
    Helen had made a tremendous effort for her husband’s sake, enduring the snubs and rebuffs and downright rudeness of her mother-in-law.
    Anthony had rebuked his mother sternly, several times, because of her treatment of Helen but this had only increased her antipathy towards her only son’s wife.