Louise struggles to stay in the dreaming space but her daughter's persistent voice tugs her back from its weightless cocoon. She surfaces from underneath the duvet just as Lori appears around the bedroom door. "Mam, it's Saturday and you promised..." she says in an admonishing tone. Her hair, swept in an up-style, makes her look even younger than her 16 years. Loose silky tendrils brush her shoulders and she's pulled her fluffy dressing gown tight, revealing the curves of her slender body. "Dad's been up ages and gone for bread. There's mould on what's left in the breadbin. Yeuch!"

"Sorry, I thought we had plenty," Louise says through a half-yawn. Her head throbs a little. She's sorry now she had that third glass of wine and hates the lingering tang it's left in her mouth. "Dad will get lovely fresh rolls. He'll be back soon. I'll be down in a minute, okay?"

"Okay. But don't forget your promise. It's Jo-Anne's sleepover next..."

"Friday. I know, as if I needed reminding. It's all you've been able to talk about...."

"... and I don't want to look like a skaaanger..." Lori interrupts, drawing out the word as if holding her breath, enjoying the look on her mother's face.

"What did I tell you about words like that?"

"You're just old fashioned Mam... and you had your day on Wednesday, remember?"

"Just give me a few minutes. I need to shower first."

Lori nods and sticks her earphones in, already mouthing the words of a song and bouncing out of the room. Louise flops her arm across to Dave's side of the bed, the sheet cold under her skin. A few hours earlier he'd reached for her, caressing the small of her back, but when his hand moved along the length of her thigh she'd bucked her body against him. He'd turned away abruptly, falling into sleep again as she had, out-sleeping him by at least an hour, she guessed from the quality of the light and the raucous sound of the neighbourhood 'barbers'. "Saturday mowers, Lou, almost as bad as Sunday drivers," Dave often says.

Hot water slicing over her back is a sensation Louise normally savours for as long as possible but her arms swish so fast with sponge and suds that her body is a blur, as if legs, belly and breasts belong to someone else. She sluices off the razor blade left on the soap tray. Lori began shaving her legs a few months before, despite the warnings it would grow back twice as thick and not necessarily blonde either. Unwanted hair. Surely the bane of every woman's life? Like a secret, no knowing when it would find her out. Louise wipes steam from the mirror and plucks a stray hair from underneath her eyebrow line. Dave's muffled voice drifts up. She imagines him filling the kettle, plugging it in, waltzing the cups to the table, adding side plates, cutting up the rolls, rubbing his hands briskly. She splashes a rush of cold water onto her face and rubs a towel over it vigorously until it stings.

"So, what time are my girls off to town?" Dave asks, a few minutes later, lifting the teapot and pouring the dark liquid into Louise's cup. "I can take you to the Luas, no problem." Louise smiles at him, relieved he bears no outward grudge at least over her earlier rejection. "I think we'll go local. I was in town the other day. I don't think I could face it again..."

"And you came home empty-handed, not even a pair of tights," Lori reminds her, shooting her mother a look of total bewilderment.

"I was meeting a friend," Louise says, busying herself with sugaring her tea, "not parading around shops."

"Maybe you'll find something you like today," Dave says, his eyes meeting hers briefly across the breakfast table. For a fleeting moment his mouth tightens. But the moment passes and he recovers his good humour. "Here Lou, have some more roll. You'll need all your strength." He winks at Lori and playfully punches her shoulder.

They eat in silence, absorbed in their own thoughts, listening with half an ear to the news and weather forecast. There's a faint crackle but none of them moves to adjust the tuning knob. Lori's expression shows she's already in shopping paradise, her earphones draped around her neck ready to be pushed into her ears the minute her breakfast's eaten.

Despite her warm fleecy tracksuit, Louise shivers. No matter what the position of the sun or the time of the year, there always seems to be a chill in the house, like cool-to-the-touch cotton sheets. The sun just never reaches farther than halfway up the garden. Sometimes, there's only the tiniest patch of it.

Lori used to say "I'll pull down the sun for you Mam. I'll get a big lasso and pull it down towards the kitchen window until the whole place is toasting". Was it only a year ago since Lori said that?' "Been watching Bruce Almighty again have we?" Louise'd say, tousling her daughter's hair. Lori was growing up for sure, moving into teenage bras, lipstick, "growing her feathers", as her own mother used to say.

Louise looks at the pile of washing waiting in the laundry basket to be loaded into the machine and wonders if there's any powder left in the box. It's got a mermaid on the front, a sea woman with long hair and a big fishy tail, swishing about in a cloud of bubbles as if washdays were for blowing bubbles while the machine rocked from side to side, vibrating through the floorboards. Nine out of 10 women prefer this brand, so the jingle goes. Nine out of 10 women prefer clear, perfectly formed bubbles that are just the right weight, the right buoyancy, resilient yet graceful.

"I'll run this lot through while you're gone," Dave says, noticing the direction of her gaze. "No sweat." He wipes his mouth with a paper napkin and slides out of the chair, turning off the radio with a grimace of disgust. "Nothing only bad news as if there's not enough," he says, already gathering up the delph, stacking it neatly on the sink. He's all movement lately, hardly able to sit still long enough to eat. There's been talk of lay-offs in work, but as usual he's told her only the bare minimum.

After a brisk walk to the shopping centre, Louise is sitting on a shoe shop bench watching Lori try on sneaker after sneaker. Lori tries on high heels too, "just for the laugh", walking up and down as if auditioning for America's Next Top Model. Lori could be on the red carpet, she seems so poised, so unselfconscious, like those gorgeous girls Louise saw on the Golden Globes. Beautiful, with low-cut evening gowns.

It still strikes her as funny in an odd sort of way. The Golden Globes on the television, in a waiting room filled with women like herself, most of them around the same age, others as young as Lori almost. Women with husbands or partners at their side, holding their hands or absently rubbing the inside of their wrists. Others on their own. The silence, apart from the television droning, is stifling in the high ceilinged room. Louise is glad Dave's not there. She knows he's definitely not one of the nine out of 10 husbands who prefer to be there... even if he knew she was there in the first place. He wouldn't be happy sitting so still for so long. He'd fidget, need to go out for air or just to walk up and down the busy city street watching taxis take off from or land at the kerb, as if they were aeroplanes at busy terminals. He'd be shaking out cigarette after cigarette, blowing smoke all over passer-bys, the same way he did the night Lori was born. Louise was glad to be on her own in the grey carpeted, colour muted room, watching the Golden Globes, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

"I really like these Mam... Mam, you haven't been listening to a word!" Lori nudges her arm, bringing Louise back into a shop-full of shining shoes, unpaired, their partners in tissue-packed boxes.

"We agreed on €40 max," she says, unable to keep tension out of her voice. "These are nearly twice that."

"They'll last twice as long, Mam. You know they will," Lori replies in a wheedling tone.

"You get what you pay for," the assistant chips in, seizing the moment with years of professional practice behind her.

"You get what you pay for," Louise repeats as she punches in the number of her credit card with more force than she intended.

Two changing rooms later and each time she sees her daughter in another outfit Louise is reminded of an exotic macaw, so painfully beautiful that to look at its startling shades hurts her eyes. The boutique fills up with other young women, glossy hair, pouting lips, their scent mingling in a heady cocktail. All of them wanting something new to wear, something that will show off their ripening curves, float them over their ordinary lives, at least for the weekend. Colours that brighten dimly-lit nightclubs or restaurants... or swirl onto bedroom floors in the heat of a moment. Louise blushes, an old habit from years back that still plagues her. She lowers her head and hopes Lori hasn't noticed but already her daughter is gone behind the changing room curtain, shucking out of yet another outfit Louise decides is "too old" for her. In the end, a compromise is reached.

"Thanks Mam, you're the best," Lori says when they reach home. Dave has the fire started, which is a welcoming sight.

"Grateful enough to pull down the sun for me?" Louise asks. Her throat feels tight as if the old words are suddenly too big. Lori looks abashed but only for a moment. She playfully hugs her mother and says "definitely!" before scampering upstairs with her treasures.

Louise sinks into an armchair and eases her feet out of her shoes. She notices the shiny secateurs on the coffee table, its heavy silver head shaped like the beak of a parrot.

"It's time to tackle that overgrown triffid in the driveway Lou. It's practically out of control... and scratching the side of the car," Dave says with a grimace. The car is his pride and joy, washed and polished religiously, rolled out like a limousine from their narrow driveway for ceremonial occasions like taking Lori to sleepovers. "Sit by the fire and warm yourself," he says. "I'll be done before you know it. See if there's anything on the box for later."

She looks up at him and he seems to be a great distance above her, his head like a small, dark disc. Perhaps she could tell him now? But before she can say anything he takes up the secateurs, its size and shape making an awkward fit in his hand.

She closes her eyes, sees again the room with the chairs lined up against the wall, the acrid smell of geraniums drifting from the windowsill, a smell reminding her of grief and anger. Her mother always had geraniums, her green fingers coaxing them from the smallest slips, dead-heading faded blooms to encourage healthy plants. Their scent permeated the small council house she grew up in. Her mother died when Louise was in her teens, her body shrivelled, her illness detected too late to save her. Her father had shrivelled up too, and threw out all the geraniums, saying he couldn't bear the sight or smell of them.

She hears Lori moving around overhead, dancing her body into the small spaces between the furniture. Another sound comes, faint at first but as Dave moves nearer to the house, she hears the distinct clip of the steel cutting through the tender branches of her cotoneaster. Dave would be thorough, pruning back to the boundary wall, practicality winning over sentiment. She feels a sharp sensation in her right breast and her hand closes protectively around it. Its familiar softness surprises her briefly. How had she expected it to feel?

She wonders what Clark Kent – at least that's what he looks like to her – is doing. Probably relaxing with his children, or just enjoying a pre-dinner drink with his wife. Why shouldn't he? After all it was the weekend, he was only human, certainly no Superman, no matter how much he resembled Clark Kent with his thick black hair and glasses. Why would he be sitting in his oakwood office on a Saturday afternoon, drawing diagrams with a scalpel-thin pen for a virtual stranger? First a small circle, then a biggish one, as if an eclipse were taking place, one circle threatening to obliterate the other. He spoke in such measured tones they might be discussing the weather instead of the results of the call back screening, patterns of family history, statistics, choices of treatment, possible outcomes.

All the while he is speaking to her, Louise's eyes stray to the photo of his wife and children on the bookshelf behind his desk. Their faces lit up, the children wearing summer clothes – sailor-type shirts and little pleated skirts. Perhaps the photo was taken in their own backyard, sun flooding the whole way up, not just over a patch, barely big enough for a young girl like Lori to stand in, her head tilted back, temporarily out of reach from the shadows working their way relentlessly around her. Clark's wife wears a straw hat that freckles her face. Louise will wear hats, she decides. She couldn't bear the thought of someone else's hair. Or she will buy a turban, its bright colour startling the paleness of her face. And they have good insurance, treatments more advanced. Her heart beats wildly. If she doesn't tell Dave today, then definitely tomorrow, she decides.

He eventually comes in from the garden, the secateurs gripped in his hand, stray green wisps of leaf and bud trailing from the blade.

"That should hold it, for another while at least," he says. "You know how Lori complains when it snags at her clothes."

Louise notices the tired look on his face, the awkward lean of his body against the doorframe. She must tell him and now is as good a time as any. The ticking in her chest is like a time-bomb, so loud she thinks it will explode any minute. Words form – fragile, distorted, not the ones nine out of 10 women prefer. Words that wobble from her mouth and awkwardly teeter around the edges before breaking apart.

About the writer

Eileen Casey published her debut poetry collection Drinking The Colour Blue (New Island Books) last year. She was short-listed for a First Fiction Hennessy X.O Award in 2005. She is originally from Offaly but now lives in Dublin, where she is a creative writing facilitator in adult education