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too early.’
    ‘It’s only me who’s on the way,’ clarified Roisin. ‘I’m calling from the car. Mum’s still at the house with Daisy. She was peppering about leaving and I made up an excuse about me having to go out.’
    ‘I thought you’d packed Dad off to a footie match. Mum couldn’t leave without him anyway.’
    ‘Yes, but I was afraid I’d give it away by making ever more ridiculous excuses about why they were taking so long. I should have planned it this way from the start. I get to help you and Paul will come down with the kids later.’
    ‘It’s nice of you to help,’ said Steffie. ‘But everything’s done.’
    ‘I’m sure it is.’
    Steffie recognised the tone in Roisin’s voice. It had her ‘you might have done something but not to my exacting standards’ quality.
    ‘OK, well I’ll see you later,’ said Steffie.
    ‘Yes, right. Get out of the way!’ The last remark was clearly addressed to a driver not living up to Roisin’s standards either.
    Steffie put her phone back in its leather sleeve, stepped out of the stream and went to see what preparations she could improve on.
    In the Dublin house, the bathroom was adequate but small. However the Aranbeg bathroom was huge and easily accommodated the antique roll-top bath that Jenny had bought at a market and restored, as well as a very modern separate rainfall shower. Steffie had already taken a shower that morning but she’d been saving a soak in the bath as a pre-party treat. With Roisin already on the way and nothing more she could possibly do, she decided she’d treat herself right now. She turned on the taps so that it filled with tepid water – it was too warm today to contemplate her usual skin-blistering water temperature – and then added some pink bath salts from the container on the ledge. The bathroom was immediately filled with the scent of roses, and Steffie slid her pretty cotton dress from her shoulders, removed her underwear and got in.
    The bath brought back memories too. When she was younger, and a good deal shorter, she used to lie full length in it, her long hair spread out in the water around her. She would pretend to be a drowning princess, waiting for her prince to come and rescue her. She didn’t have a clear idea of what her prince looked like, but he always gazed into her eyes and told her that she was safe with him. Years later, when a friend asked to help illustrate a self-published children’s book about a princess who fell into a lake, she drew the picture as she imagined she’d looked herself, a pale face framed by a fan of curly hair.
    Now, however, she was far too tall to be able to lie down in the bath, so she filled it as full as she could before dipping her toe into the water. Maybe Roisin was right about this party after all, she thought as she sat down and closed her eyes. Aranbeg was full of memories and was a major part of her parents’ lives. Perhaps it was only fitting to celebrate those lives together in a place that meant so much to them. Although she still thought the surprise element was a bad idea.
    However, with everything ready and in place, there was no point in worrying about it any more. Instead she allowed her thoughts to return to her recent bid for a design contract, the one she hoped would move Butterfly Creative up a notch and earn her some really decent money. She’d sent her proposal in two days before the actual deadline, initially feeling smug that for once in her life she was ahead of the game, but later panicking in case she might have had more inspiration by waiting until the last minute. Either way, she’d expected to hear the outcome before now. Landing the contract would be an enormous boost to her confidence. It would make her believe, for the first time since she’d set up the company, that she really had done the right thing. Failing to get it, on the other hand, would reinforce all the feelings of general inadequacy she had when it came to being a hard-nosed,