Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [65]
“You’re going to be just fine, Frankie,” he said over and over as he rocked her in his arms. If only he could have a drink to steady his nerves. He contemplated calling Malachy, but he was all right. The child was more important than the drink. He would manage.
“Here, Frankie, I’m going to stop talking to myself, I’m going to read you a story,” he said. He put all the concentration in the world into reading her a story about a bird that had fallen out of its nest. It all ended very happily. It worked for Noel: it drove all thought of a large whiskey way out of his mind.
It worked for Frankie too, as she fell into a deep sleep.
Three days later Lisa Kelly phoned her.
“Oh, Moira, Noel asked me to call you. He said you want to go over some of Frankie’s routines with me.”
“Did you have a good time in London?” Moira asked.
“So-so. What routines did you want to discuss?”
“The usual: bath time, feeding, changing. You know she had an accident while you were away?”
“Yes. Poor Noel is like a hen on a hot griddle about it all. No harm done, I gather.”
“Not this time, but it’s not good for a baby to fall on its head.”
“Well, I know that, but Declan has been round and he says she’s fine.”
Moira was pleased she had obviously scared Noel enough to make him aware of the gravity of it all.
“And did your friend do well in the celebrity chef thing?”
“No, not as well as he should have. But then I’m sure you read that in the papers.”
“I thought I saw something, yes.”
“It was all totally slanted the wrong way. You see, this woman April turned up out of the blue there, talking about column inches and potential. She knows nothing really, except how to get her own name into the papers.”
“Yes, I saw she was mentioned. I was a little surprised. Noel told me that you had gone to assist him, but it made it seem as if she did all the work.”
“If drinking cocktails and handing people her business card is work then she did a lot of that, all right,” Lisa said. Then she pulled herself together. “But about this routine you wanted?”
“I’ll call round this evening,” Moira said.
Not for the first time Lisa told Noel that Moira’s social life must be the most empty and dull canvas in the whole world.
“Let’s ask Emily to be here. She can take some of the heat away from us,” Noel suggested.
“Good idea,” Lisa agreed. “I was going to ask Katie to come to supper. The more lines of defense we can draw up, the easier it will be for us coping with Generalissimo Moira.”
Moira was surprised to see the little flat full of people. She wished that she had not been wearing the heather-colored suit she had bought from St. Jarlath’s Thrift Shop. Now they would know that she had sent her friend Dolores to make the purchase!
Noel showed her the new positioning of the table. He stood obediently while she measured the formula out, even though he had been doing these bottles perfectly for months. Frankie went off to sleep obediently like a textbook baby.
“Please join us for some supper this time, Moira,” Lisa suggested. “I put two extra drumsticks in for you.”
“No, really, thank you.”
“Oh, do, for God’s sake, Moira. Otherwise we’ll all fight over the extra bits,” Lisa’s sister, Katie, said.
They sat down and Lisa produced a very tasty supper. Moira decided that for a brainless blonde she did have some skills. But then, of course, she was a chef’s girlfriend.
Katie was practical and down-to-earth. She showed them pictures of her trip to Istanbul and talked affectionately of her husband, Garry.
Neither she nor Lisa talked about their home life. But then, to be fair, Moira told herself, she didn’t talk about her home life much either.
Instead they talked about Noel and Lisa’s lectures, and when Katie mentioned that Father Flynn was away visiting his mother in Rossmore, Noel mentioned that he’d first met the priest when he used to bring Stella cigarettes in hospital.
“Hardly a helpful thing to do under the circumstances.” Moira was very disapproving.
“Stella’s view was that it was already way