Three Wise Men. Martina Devlin

herself to the task until she applies her make-up. A woman has to look her best to do her worst to a man; imagine if he went home relieved. Like a lemming that couldn’t find a cliff.

      Her lips are within half an inch of perfection when the phone rings, causing a painted-on wobble instead of a pout. She contemplates ignoring the source of the interruption, reconsiders when it strikes her the caller might be Jack changing the time they’re to meet, and bolts from the bathroom before the answering machine gobbles any message.

      The caller is Mick, her friend Gloria’s husband, and he’s virtually incoherent. Kate has to make him repeat his story twice before she establishes that Gloria’s been rushed to hospital with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Whatever that is. It must have required the full ER team from Mick’s garble. Thirty-six hours without sleep are taking their toll on him. Kate, only barely assimilating the news, realises she’s still clutching her new lip-liner and grinding the pencil tip against the body of the phone. Bronze Babe is smeared between redial button and microphone. She and Gloria have been intimates for a million years, since they were cast as two of the three wise men in the Primary Two nativity play; another friend, Eimear, was the third.

      ‘Which hospital is Gloria in? I’ll go straight in to see her,’ she offers.

      Mick advises against it, to Kate’s relief when she remembers her only way of contacting Jack to cancel is by catching him in the office – a call to his home is never an option. Not unless she’s intent on setting out the welcome mat for trouble.

      ‘Leave it for now, she’s still not able to have visitors: the tears start tripping her as soon as she lays eyes on me,’ says Mick. ‘They operated on her in the middle of the night and it’s been a massive shock. We didn’t even realise she was pregnant. I was too shaken to let you know sooner but Gloria’s just asked me to give you and Eimear a ring – I’ve already told her family. Eimear’s my last call, then I suppose I’ll head off and find something to eat. I haven’t much of an appetite, to be honest. You’ve no idea what a jolt this has been; it’s the first time I’ve had to phone an ambulance.’

      Guilt pricks at Kate. She ought to volunteer to meet Mick for a drink, she’s known him even longer than Gloria and he sounds in a state, but she’s psyched up for her parting is such sweet sorrow number with Jack. And even if she doesn’t pull it off tonight she can plant the seeds … drop hints about how the end of the line is only a few stops away. In the meantime she can’t bring herself to renounce the euphoria of an evening spent in her lover’s company. Mick must have other friends who can keep an eye on him.

      ‘I’ll drop in to see Gloria before work tomorrow,’ she promises; and conscience salved after a few consolatory truisms, returns to her dating ritual preparations. Game on.

      Kate knows she should feel restrained by Gloria’s hospitalisation but decency is purged by jubilation at the prospect of Jack’s undivided attention. Her reflection smiles giddily at her as a wave of exultation bubbles up from her diaphragm and catches in her throat. He drenches her with gladness, simply the thought of him makes her laugh aloud. It’s enough to be able to look at Jack, she wouldn’t object if there was never any touching. Actually, that’s a fib; she adores the stroking, but it’s not the alpha and the omega.

      ‘Listen to me with my Latin tags. I should forget about being a lawyer and think about being a friend,’ she reminds herself.

      Kate’s aware – and only hazily concerned by the realisation – that she’s dwelling on the anticipatory pleasure of being with Jack without sparing a thought for Gloria, comatose and attached to a drip. She’ll make it up to her tomorrow; she’ll transform Gloria’s room into a bower. Meanwhile she should be plotting the direction her tryst with Jack will take.

      She’s decided to end their affair, although not because it’s turned stale – a flashback of Jack’s lean brown fingers cupping her cheek swims before her eyes and she tingles with anticipation, losing her train of thought. ‘Concentrate,’ she wills herself, a woman needs to be rehearsed before an encounter with Jack. He has a propensity for bringing the curtain down on the rational processes. Jack O’Brien tends to make you feel more and think less.

      That’s why she’s wearing her dating underwear. Kate has no intention of ending up in bed with him but to be on the safe side she slipped on a particularly sheer matching set after showering. Jack always notices and comments as he eases them off, it’s worth occasionally imagining you’ve stumbled into playing the leading lady in a porn movie for the pleasure he takes in it.

      On Jackless days she slings on whatever comes to hand – even her boyfriend Pearse’s boxer shorts when she’s cold – but if Jack’s in the vicinity Kate prefers the comfort of the uncomfortable. Style over substance is the coda, which is just as well because there’s virtually no substance to what she’s wearing.

      But back to the task ahead. She daubs at the shaky patch on the lip-line front and contemplates options in the staple declarations department. There’s that threadbare standby, ‘Let’s agree to say goodbye now before anyone gets hurt,’ closely followed by, ‘We owe it to our partners to call it a day.’ She has a sneaking fondness for ‘We both knew this liaison had built-in obsolescence’ but is wary of fielding it in case Jack accuses her of pomposity.

      Kate giggles. ‘The sure-fire way to scare a man off is to tell him you’re ready to have his baby.’

      But carrying his child – or anyone else’s – is unimaginable. Besides, she doesn’t want to put the wind up Jack so thoroughly that he’s caught in a typhoon; what’s required here is a regretful parting of the ways potholed with might-have-beens.

      Even as she rehearses, Kate instinctively recognises her chances of pulling off a dignified exit-stage-left are on a par with the likelihood of nomination for a Nobel Prize. Jack only permits disengagement when he’s ready; anyone else’s requirements do not compute. He confessed once that he ended or engineered the conclusion of every single relationship he embarked on. Apart from his marriage, which still purports to be watertight in Jack’s version of his first-class cruise through life.

      This time she’s going to take the initiative, vows Kate, scrutinising her face and deciding it will pass muster. God, but it’s time-consuming, this business of packaging yourself for an affair. The rules preclude turning up in mangy jeans and a windcheater, it has to be glamour every time. As sound a reason for bailing out as any dilatory – but better late than never – notions about loyalty or morality. She could have waded through Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy with all the hours lavished on blending, shading and defining a face that would never, not ever, earn a second glance when Jack’s wife was in the vicinity.

      She’ll call a halt tonight for sure. Fortified with this sense of clambering a few rungs up the moral ladder, Kate activates the burglar alarm and closes the front door behind her. Then she has to de-activate it to retrieve a coat – in her exhilaration at knowing she’ll be within Jack’s ambit in ten minutes, less if she trots, she forgets that she needs another layer. He might proclaim himself enthralled by her skinny freckled arms but he won’t be quite so smitten by goosebumps lurching upon them.

      That’s a characteristic of Jack, she thinks as she hurtles down the stairs. He fosters oblivion. Which just about sums up her attitude to Pearse. She has a disgraceful capacity for amnesia where he’s concerned. Make that mental obliteration.

      Her boyfriend – although Kate doubts Pearse was ever a boy because he was born middle-aged – is currently visiting his mother in Roscommon. This has allowed her the luxury of an hour in the bathroom reinventing her appearance for Jack’s delectation, allied to the elimination of any obligation to construct a plausible excuse for heading out dressed like a slut on a week night. Thank heavens for Pearse’s mother’s unsteady turn the other day propelling him westwards.

      Jack isn’t in The Odeon when Kate arrives; she’s disappointed, searching the bar decorated with a nod in the direction of a thirties theme. Then again, Jack is never there first. She always forgives him because she doesn’t want to sound girlie about having reservations at hovering in a pub on her own. The Odeon is more central