Free Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden Page B

subtext here, and she saw for the first time on Fintan’s face a look with which she is familiar to this day: the narrowed eyes and the wry set to the mouth, the look he uses to silence and to warn, most usually when Niall or Rob say something in front of Lucy which he would rather that she did not hear.
    â€˜Not yet,’ he said evenly, ‘but we did call to see Christy and Beth a couple of Sundays ago.’
    And with that it was Martina who suddenly appeared childlike, looking up from the drawer, all irony gone. ‘I love Christy and Beth!’ she cried wholeheartedly. ‘And isn’t their house just the nicest place ever? All those funny woolly pictures, and the cat, and that thing for the music with the big golden horn? And they always make you tea, and even if you’re fed up when you go there, you’re always happy by the time you leave. Oh they’re just the best! I’m glad you met Christy and Beth.’ She pushed the drawer in with her hip and handed the carrier bag to Colette. ‘I have stuff here for men too,’ she said to Fintan, ‘but you’re a lost cause, you fat old badger.’
    Oddly enough, Martina was mistaken in this; or at least, Colette thinks, Fintan has changed a lot in the years since then. He has become very particular about grooming, with a taste for expensive aftershave, and an impressive collection of cufflinks about which his sons rib him all year, but to which they add at Christmas and on his birthday.
    When she arrives at the shop today Martina is serving someone. Another customer is browsing through the rails, and there is someone behind a curtain in one of the changing rooms. Sitting on the counter is a turquoise carrier bag, tied shut with a dark-brown grosgrain ribbon, and with the name of the boutique, Chocolat, written in the same colour on the side of the bag. The customer is tapping the number of her credit card into a machine, and Martina takes advantage of this to smile over in greeting at Colette, who smiles back and turns away to look at a rack of dresses, to indicate to her sister-in-law that there is no rush.
    Colette has no great confidence that she will find something that suits her, as least not without help. She knows that Fintan thinks she always puts comfort above looks, but that isn’t strictly accurate. She has never felt at ease in her own body, has never seen it as something to adorn and enjoy, as Martina clearly does. Colette may see clothes and accessories that she likes, scarves and pieces of costume jewellery, but she does not know how to put them together as a ‘look’. This is strange, given how good she is with her domestic space, for in another life she might have been an interior designer or a stylist. She has an unerring instinct for what might look right in a room, for choosing furniture, lamps, rugs and pictures which all enhance each other, to create something elegant and harmonious. But when it comes to dressing herself, all that skill and taste mysteriously vanishes, and she succumbs to clashing colours, to garments that are in themselves perfectly fine, but the cut or fabric of which is unsuitable for her build or complexion.
    The only time Colette has been fully at ease in her own body was when her sons were born. She had felt like an animal then, but in a good way. Even when Lucy came along it hadn’t been the same, because she hadn’t wanted a third child. This is something she doesn’t like to admit to herself, even now. But with Rob, and then Niall, she had felt like a thing in a lair, in a nest; instinctive, elemental; and she thinks that it would hardly have surprised her then had she found her whole body covered in thick fur: certainly it wouldn’t have bothered her. Sometimes, even now, she looks at Beth and Martina’s tabby cat, poised and sculptural, and she envies it its neat coat, the fan of fine black lines in the fur on the top of its head, the elaborate