Best of Friends (34 page)

“This isn’t about my nails,” insisted Lizzie. “Who’s going to be looking at my nails?”

“That’s not the point.” Debra’s pretty face flushed with irritation as she crumpled up her biscuit wrapper. “People will be looking at you because you’re my mother. There must be another beauty salon round here. Anyway, that’s not why I came. Barry’s cousin is organising the stag night and I thought it was supposed to be in Cork. It’s not, it’s in Dublin. Fifteen guys alone in Dublin. I’m furious. I told Barry, I said, ‘That is not what we agreed.’ And he said that it wasn’t his fault. Imagine! Not his fault. His stag night and he’s going to let them organise whatever mayhem they like.” She folded her arms. “You have to start where you mean to go on, Mum. Men have to be shown that you’re not a pushover.”

“That’s not what marriage is about,” interrupted her mother. “I hate the idea of wild parties where the poor groom gets stripped and tied to a tree, but you’ve got to let Barry and his friends do what they want, haven’t you?”

“No.” Debra was adamant. “No, I don’t. I don’t want him having that sort of stag night.”

“Well, it’ll be over soon and you can forget about it,” soothed her mother.

“I thought you’d agree with me,” Debra retorted. “Rita in work does.”

Rita was under Debra’s thumb and would say that white was black if Debra wanted her to, Lizzie reflected.

“Why don’t you tell him why you don’t like the idea but let him make up his own mind?” Lizzie counselled. “After all, you don’t want to have a huge row now, do you? The wedding’s less than two months away.”

“Oh, Mum,” groaned Debra in exasperation, “you really don’t understand men, do you?” She snatched her suede bag from the back of her chair. “I should go. Talk later.”

Lizzie was left standing impotently in her kitchen, wondering why, when Debra was angry with Barry, it was her mother who somehow got all the flak.

She began to tidy up the kitchen and consider what to make for dinner. She wasn’t very hungry, which was unusual. Lizzie’s appetite was a hearty one, and no trauma had ever affected her ability to polish off a decent meal and possibly some hazelnut cluster ice cream for afters. But this evening, she had no inclination to eat.

Instead, she took the paper out into the garden and sat on the iron bench on the patio, letting the evening sun warm her bones.

The garden was looking good, proof of the weekends Lizzie had spent weeding, transplanting and burying bulbs where the everravenous birds wouldn’t find them. Yet despite her sense of pleasure at the result of her hard work, Lizzie felt sad. She wondered why it took someone else’s misery to make people aware of how lucky they were. When the children had been young, she remembered a neighbour being killed in a car accident, leaving a wife and four small children under ten. Lizzie, exhausted with a teething Debra and a very naughty Joe, had suddenly felt very grateful for what she had.

Ten years or so ago, an acquaintance of Myles’s had watched his family business go bankrupt and had lost his home. Lizzie, who’d once envied the man for not being a wage slave like her and Myles, had felt enormous relief at the humdrum security of their jobs. Of course, the relief and the gratefulness had worn off and Lizzie had forgotten about the widowed mother and the bankrupt man. But she shouldn’t have, she realised. Tragedy could strike at anyone’s lives.

She sighed. Debra was probably too young to understand that, she decided, and she was tied up with her wedding. That must be why her natural compassion was a little blunted and why she’d been so sharp with her mother. Yes, that was it …

seventeen

T
he day that Jess started her exams, Abby got a phone call from Beech about the new series of
Declutter.
She’d already filmed five shows on her own while the endless auditioning and reauditioning of new presenters went on, and had begun to hope that nobody else suitable would be found for the programme. No such luck. Two other presenters had been picked and Brian was keen for Abby to meet the new team.

“Can you come in this afternoon?” he asked, without so much as an “if that’s convenient” tacked on to the request.

“Well, this afternoon’s not very easy,” began Abby, thinking of her plans to collect Jess from school after the English exam.

“You should try and make it,” Brian said querulously. “It’s your future too, Abby.”

Not so much a request as a command, Abby realised grimly. “Fine,” she said crisply.

“See you at two thirty.”

Once, she realised, Brian would have suggested lunch before an afternoon meeting and she, Flora, Brian, Selina and anybody else they could round up would have gone off to enjoy a few glasses of vino and some enjoyable industry bitching, all the while congratulating themselves on how incredibly well
Declutter
was doing.

“You’re the star,” Brian had told her on numerous occasions. “You’re the one who made it a success. People love you, they can relate to you.”

Ironic really, Abby reflected. For two seasons, she’d been the star and the reason why the show was a success. Now, suddenly, on someone’s whim, they thought she was too old to carry it on her own. Abby felt as if she was the only one who hadn’t noticed her sell-by date slip past. She wasn’t going to bother to change out of her faded jeans and little pale blue T-shirt or to do anything to her face except slick on more lipgloss. Tarting up was clearly a waste of time. Roxie and Brian had found youthful new talent and it didn’t matter how many layers of Mac foundation Abby painted on, she was still forty-two with forty-three looming. They could take her or leave her.

“You look fabulous,” said Flora when Abby arrived in the Beech boardroom at two thirty on the nail.

Abby grinned. “This is my casual look.”

“But it suits you,” Flora replied. “You never wear jeans on camera. You should.”

Thinking of the fortune she’d spent on dress-to-impress clothes, Abby laughed to herself at the effect her old Levis were having.

Roxie, not wearing jeans, marched into the room and, after a perfunctory hello to Abby, clicked the blinds shut and rolled the video clip of the two new presenters.

“Identical twins,” breathed Abby quietly as two gorgeous brunettes hit the screen and introduced themselves as Linzi and Mitzi Devine. They were not a day over twenty-five and stunning, each grinning at the camera with utter confidence.

Abby couldn’t find fault with their performance either. In a set-up de-junking scene they looked and sounded very natural as they sorted through tons of documents in an untidy office somewhere in Beech, gaily consigning reams of paper to a rubbish box, chorusing as they went: “Shred it! Shred it!”

Their untrained style of de-junking wasn’t like Abby’s polished professional approach but she didn’t doubt that they would be a success because of their attractiveness and their obvious good humour.

The short clip ended.

“Great, aren’t they?” said Roxie, smirking directly at Abby.

With a blinding flash, Abby realised she wasn’t nervous of Roxie anymore. After all, what more could Roxie do? Only fire her, and being fired couldn’t be any worse than anything else that had happened recently in Abby’s life.

“They’re excellent,” she said, matching Roxie’s nasty little smirk with a grown-up expression of benevolence. “I think they’ll be a huge hit.”

She meant what she said and it gave her a rush of pleasure to see Roxie’s self-satisfied expression falter.

“Yeah, well done,” said Flora. “They got my thumbs-up the first time we met them. They’re so enthusiastic.”

Abby tackled the remaining problem. “It’s taken so long to find suitable presenters, how do we fit them in with what we’ve already filmed?”

“That’s sorted,” said Roxie stiffly. “I know it took longer than I’d planned to find Linzi and Mitzi but they’re worth the wait. And I know how we can segue their appearances into the show.”

Roxie’s plan was simple: for the shows already in the can, the new presenters would de-junk a single room, and footage of this would be shown in cutaways from Abby’s de-junking of the rest of the house. For the seven as yet unfilmed shows, Abby and the two presenters would continue to work separately, but link up at the end of each episode.

“Would you like to meet the girls?” Roxie added, with another smirk at Abby.

“Yes, very much,” she said, correctly guessing that everyone else had approved the new recruits already so that this meeting was purely cosmetic.

Stan’s expectant face as Roxie went out to fetch them was a picture. Clearly he was smitten with Linzi and Mitzi. Brian even went so far as to readjust his tie in preparation.

In the flesh, the twins were even more lovely than on the screen. As tall as Jess, they looked like Olympic athletes: rosy-cheeked and glowing with health. Dressed up for the occasion in chic beiges and creams that complemented their sparkling blue eyes, they were beauty salon perfect. And they were dying to meet the famous Abby Barton.

“We’re huge fans,” said one—Linzi or Mitzi?

“We love the show,” gushed the other.

Their eyes were wide with excitement and Abby couldn’t help but respond to their friendliness and enthusiasm. “Which is which, or is that a terrible question?”

“I’m Mitzi.”

“And I’m Linzi.” Linzi grinned. “I have more freckles.”

“But that’s no use in telling us apart unless we’re together,” Mitzi pointed out.

Selina, who had come in behind her newest charges, raised elegant eyebrows at Abby, obviously delighted to see they were all getting on so well.

“Abby, do you have time to come for a coffee with us now? We’d love to talk to you and we’d really value your advice.”

“I’m sorry,” Abby said, “but my daughter has just started her Junior Cert exams today and I have to pick her up soon.”

“Oh, of course,” the girls said respectfully, as if Abby had just mentioned that she was splitting the atom until Tuesday week. “We’d hate to intrude; we know you’re busy.”

“But then Selina’s bound to be able to fix a lunch up or something soon,” Abby added quickly, “although I’m sure you’re going to be very busy doing publicity.” These girls were made for magazine photo shoots and Abby knew that Brian and Roxie wouldn’t fail to capitalise on this fact. The new series wasn’t due on air until the end of August but, by then, Linzi and Mitzi would be firmly imprinted on the nation’s consciousness.

Selina wasn’t going to lose a chance, and took Abby aside while everyone else chatted. “How about coffee tomorrow morning?” she asked.

“If you’ve time, sure,” Abby said.

“The girls are genuinely keen to talk to you,” Selina whispered, “and it would serve that Roxie bitch right if you all got on. She’s dying to spread the story that you’ve stormed off the show because you can’t stand the competition.”

“Coffee would be great,” Abby said loudly, patting Selina’s arm in thanks. “Say eleven, the patisserie in the Mall?”

“Brilliant,” said Linzi, or was it Mitzi?

Abby made it to the school in time to see Jess and Steph walking slowly out, talking nineteen to the dozen.

“I thought you might like a lift.” She smiled.

“I’d love one,” said Steph, opening the back door and throwing her school bag in as if it was contaminated.

“Thanks, Mum,” said Jess, giving her a rare grin.

The exams had been awful, dreadful, and as for that question on W.B. Yeats and imagery … there was no word to describe it.

“How can you answer a question like that in ten minutes?” wailed Steph. “I don’t know how they work out what time you need to spend on each question, but it’s all wrong.”

“And I made such a mess of the modern novel question,” sighed Jess.

“Oh no,” interrupted Steph, “
I
made a mess of that.”

It was like old times, Abby thought happily as she drove to Steph’s house.

After Steph got out, Abby was afraid that Jess would clam up but no, she seemed keen to keep talking.

“I know I should stay up all night doing maths but I’ve revised so hard now that I feel like I’ve no more room in my head for anything else,” her daughter said as they sped out of the city towards Dunmore.

Once, Abby would have instantly said that staying up all night was a nonsense idea anyhow, but she’d learned something in the last few weeks of family strife.

“I was never much good at staying up all night myself,” she revealed. “And I’ve read that it doesn’t do much good anyhow: you’re too wrecked the next day to function properly.”

“Yeah,” Jess sighed. “I’m wrecked enough as it is.”

“I got ingredients for a really nice wild mushroom risotto,” Abby said. “Would you like that when we get home and then you can study, or do you want to work first and then eat?”

“Eat first,” said Jess. Then: “Thanks, Mum.”

Abby told Jess about her day, with a light-hearted version of her meeting with Beech, leaving out the malicious intent behind every second word Roxie said.

“But it’s still your show, isn’t it?” asked Jess in concern, when she’d heard about Mitzi and Linzi.

“Sure,” Abby replied easily. “But television shows have to move on and having new presenters is a part of that.”

“Oh, OK,” said Jess, not sounding convinced.

“Don’t worry about me.” Abby smiled, squeezing her daughter’s arm. “I’m fine. Nobody’s going to take
Declutter
away from me.”

“Good,” said Jess. “You deserve your success.”

Abby decided that it was worth being sidelined at work if it brought her closer to her daughter.

Tom got home at the same time as they did and said he’d love some risotto. So, for the first time in ages, the Barton family sat down for dinner at the kitchen table chatting as though nothing had changed. Tom was too good a teacher to interrogate his own daughter about her exam, and instead cheered her up by recounting tales of students who’d left exams in tears, convinced they’d failed, only to get a decent mark months later.

“I hope that happens to me,” Jess said vehemently.

She got herself a yoghurt for dessert, smiled at both parents, and went off upstairs to tackle the next batch of revision. She also hoped there might be a text message from Oliver. She knew she didn’t have time to see him in the middle of her exams, but he’d promised to text her every day and see her at the weekend. Thinking about him thinking about her gave Jess a warm feeling inside.