Brood by Sue Norton

SHE SAID, “His name is Adam and hers is Olive.”

The tinkling of glasses receded. The room vaguely reeled as Lauren felt a slight fever coming on.

“Olive?” Lauren repeated.

“She’s named after Tom’s grandmother, Italian if you remember.”

“Right, Italian. I do remember, she was a – a painter of landscapes, wasn’t she?”

“That’s right. And our Olive takes right after her. She’s forever with the finger paints and the glitter pens.”

Lauren listened in a head-nodding sort of way, as her companion rattled on about Olive’s art and Adam’s soccer. How happy they must be as a family, how senior Tom must be by now. No doubt they often nipped away to where pool waters lapped the edges of sunny courtyards. Olive, such a sweet name, a girlish name, but sophisticated too. So nouveau, yet so vintage.

Lauren herself had wanted to name her own daughter Olivia. Her daughter; what did she mean thinking that? She had wanted a little girl so badly. She wondered now whether her prattling acquaintance, whom she hadn’t seen in years, had learned of her failed attempt with the vodka and the Valium. Mid-life just hadn’t yielded what it should have; it hadn’t yielded at all. Lauren’s jaw began clenching. Her wrist ached with the weight of her brandy glass.

Did she know? Did her acquaintance know that Lauren had had so dark an hour? Had she heard that her life had unfolded so flatly? Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe that wasn’t a note of pity that Lauren detected in her shrill party voice.

But Lauren began to wish that she hadn’t rallied herself into the taxi that had deposited her here at this high-heeled gathering, this whirling, chandeliered descent into longing and inadequacy. For nothing gave her a heavy-yet-hollow heartache more than the knowledge that yet another of her peers had become a mother. Lauren rarely thought about men anymore. But the glimpse of a pastel bundle in a passing pram sometimes sent her seeking refuge in public restrooms where she privately dabbed at her eyes and searched her reflection for – for what? Hope?

But here in this festive room, full of urbane anecdote, all she could do was smile brightly, make subtle reference to her work at the magazine, and try not to name-drop too obviously. If nothing else, she still had her figure. As others headed home to relieve their child minders, Lauren blazed hotly on into the dawn.

Flash fiction will be a regular item in The Irish Times. E-mail a story of no more than 500 words to flashfiction@irishtimes.com