Best of Friends (50 page)

“Why’s Aunty Erin crying?” demanded Lianne, stopping for a moment in her cycling odyssey.

“Because she’s happy,” observed her mother sagely.

Lianne, mystified by the strange ways of grown-ups, cycled off again. Why would anyone cry because they were happy?

“We could phone them, if you like,” Kerry said when Erin had managed to stop crying.

Erin nodded.

“You watch the little one,” Kerry ordered, and went in for the phone.

Erin watched Kaylin as if her life depended on it. Kaylin was fascinated by the notion of putting sand in a tiny striped bucket, then tipping it out again. Every time she did it, she giggled and looked up at Erin for approval.

“Aren’t you clever?” cooed Erin.

Kaylin cooed back.

When Kerry returned, she was already speaking on the phone. The butterflies fluttered in Erin’s stomach. She’d waited so long for this but now that it was happening, she was nervous. What if …?

There was no time for worrying. Kerry simply handed her the phone, saying: “It’s Mum.”

“Hello,” said Erin.

“Erin, my love, I knew you’d come home to us,” said her mother simply. “I knew you would. We’ve missed you so much. If I had it over again, Erin, I’d do it differently …”

“Mum, me too,” said Erin earnestly. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have run off.”

“My fault too,” replied her mother. “I should have told you. I was wrong and it all came out badly. But we can move on, can’t we?”

“Yes. I need a grandmother for my baby.”

“Oh, love,” sighed her mother. “You’ll have that. Here’s your father for a wee word.”

“Erin.” Her father was choked with emotion and could barely speak. “When can we see you?”

“Next weekend? Greg and I will come to you.”

“Greg’s your husband?” asked her father.

“Yes. You’ll have to vet him, Dad, see if he’s suitable,” said Erin warmly.

“He’s brought you back to us,” said her father. “That’s good enough for me.”

They had salad and Kerry’s home-made brown bread for lunch. Then Kerry urged her sister to lie down.

“Kaylin goes down for a nap after lunch and I’ll break the habit of a lifetime and let Lianne watch a video.”

“You don’t approve of letting children watch television, then?” Erin asked seriously.

Kerry roared with laughter. “I’m joking. All parents plan to keep their children away from the box until they actually have them and realise they’d never get a lie-in at weekends without resorting to
Postman Pat.
Video is a great invention.”

With Kaylin sleeping and Lianne wide-eyed in front of a Disney video, Erin lay down on a soft couch and Kerry sat in an armchair beside her.

“Rest for an hour, then I’ll make you some tea and you should drive home so you miss the rush-hour traffic.”

“I wish I had longer.”

“Next weekend we’ll have two whole days to talk and remember,” Kerry consoled her.

They reminisced some more, talking and laughing quietly about their past.

“Vanessa’s done well for herself,” Erin said.

“Well, you know how driven she always was,” Kerry pointed out. “She’s a celebrity in her own right now, you know. Her photo’s in the paper all the time at parties and she sometimes goes on radio for those Sunday morning talks about what’s in the papers.”

“Good for her,” Erin said. “I’m glad she’s happy.”

“Yeah, she is. Settling down with hubbie and kids was never on the agenda for Vanessa.”

“Like Shannon,” Erin said before she could stop herself.

“Vanessa is nothing like Shannon.” Kerry was firm. “If Vanessa had got pregnant at seventeen, she’d have faced up to it, not run away and let someone else handle the hassle. That was always Shannon’s answer to any kind of trouble—run from it and hope that by the time she got home, it would all be over.”

“When did you know that I wasn’t your sister?”

Kerry grimaced. “I always did. Shannon was pregnant when I was nine or ten and I remember her wailing about it all the time.”

“Wailing?”

“She was a drama queen,” Kerry said. “Shannon never grazed her knee when she fell: she tore ligaments. She never failed an exam at school because she hadn’t bothered studying: she failed because she had these blinding migraines and a person could hardly be expected to do well under such circumstances. There was always some excuse.”

“Didn’t you get on?” Erin asked, although it seemed patently obvious that they hadn’t.

“There was a big age gap; we didn’t know each other.”

“There was big age gap between us and we did,” Erin remarked.

“I don’t know why, Shannon and I just didn’t.” Kerry looked as if she did know but didn’t want to talk about it.

“Why did you never tell me?” It was the one question Erin had been dying to ask.

“Mum said it was an important secret and it would hurt you if it came out,” Kerry sighed. “She adored you and I think she was always scared that Shannon would arrive and take you away to live with her. Mum didn’t want that sort of life for you—I mean, Shannon was barely able to look after herself. She’d have never been able to take care of you. Dizzy, that was the best way to describe her. Although she could be calculating enough when she needed to.

“And Mum was scared of losing you too. You weren’t really her child and she had no legal hold over you. Shannon never hung around long enough to sort out adoption. That wouldn’t have been her style.”

“Did you ever find out who my father was?” Erin asked hesitantly.

Her sister shook her head. “Only Shannon knows that. She wouldn’t tell us. Said it didn’t matter. Typical Shannon, that was.”

“I’ll ask her,” Erin said quietly.

“You’re going to meet her.” It wasn’t a question, more a statement of fact. “I knew you would some day. But you won’t find what you’re looking for, Erin. Not with Shannon. She was always different from us.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a horrible thing to say about your sister, but Shannon can be very selfish, for all her posturing about caring for the universe.”

“You could say the same thing about me,” Erin said guiltily. “I left too.”

When she grinned, Kerry looked just like the wild girl Erin remembered. “Yeah, well, there were extenuating circumstances with you. You’re forgiven, just as long as it doesn’t happen again. No, Shannon’s different. When she had you, she could have kept you. Ireland wasn’t stuck in the dark ages then. Yes, she was seventeen but Mum and Dad were supporting her, she could have managed. Instead, she couldn’t wait to be gone and she never came back. I can’t forgive her for that.”

“You were only a kid at the time,” protested Erin, “you don’t know what she was going through. She must have been scared and upset …”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Kerry looked thoughtful. “Perhaps I’m so hard on her because I spent so long trying to have children and not managing to. I get annoyed thinking of someone like Shannon, who has a baby and blithely lets someone else bring it up, when Peter and I went through so much and couldn’t have them.”

Erin’s heart went out to her sister. Kerry had gone through such hell and she hadn’t been there for her.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Kerry went on. “I’m just being a grumpy old cow. I find it hard to forgive her for what she put us all through over the years.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

Kerry glanced at her sister sharply and appeared to be considering answering the question. “Yes. She keeps in touch sporadically.”

“I want to meet her. I know I met her when I was a kid but I can’t remember that,” Erin said. “I have to meet her again, to talk to her.”

“And to ask her why she left?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Erin sat up on the couch and turned pleading eyes to her sister. “I know you think it’s a bad idea, but I have to see her.”

Kerry relented. “She lives quite near to Mum and Dad. Apparently, she was living with this guy and they ran a youth hostel for ages but they went bust. She moved last year. I have her address.”

“Do you ever see her?”

“Occasionally, although not for a long time.” Kerry sounded hard. She was perfectly capable of cutting her sister from her life, Erin knew. There was only one way for Kerry: you were either with her or against her. “Last time she tried to contact me was when I was in hospital. She got talking to Peter and, God love him, he’s too decent to understand our weird family situation. He thought she’d rush over to visit me when she heard I was sick.” Kerry snorted. “Some hope. I haven’t heard from her since, although I know Mum gave her some money before Christmas.”

“Is she broke?”

“Shannon always is and always was broke. She’ll tap you for a few quid if you meet her.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I just wish I’d known all this,” Erin said slowly, “so I would have had a proper vision of her in my head.”

“Did you think she was a perfect wonderful mummy figure who couldn’t take care of you due to circumstances beyond her control?” Kerry asked bitterly.

“Don’t sound so hard,” begged Erin.

“If I’m hard when I talk about her, it’s because she made me that way. She hurt Mum so much when she left, and it’s because of her that you left. And that wasn’t a barrel of laughs either.”

“I know. But, hey, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her,” Erin added.

“True for you,” Kerry said, the bitter look going from her face. “Let’s have a cup of tea for the road and you can set off home, OK?”

The traffic was light as Erin started her journey back to Cork. It would take her perhaps two hours to get there. She switched her mobile phone on and left a message on Greg’s voicemail to tell him that everything had gone well and to phone her when he got a chance. He’d already left several messages for her and she smiled as she listened to them.

“Phone me back if you’re upset,” he said on one. “If everything’s OK, there’s no need to phone. I know you want time to talk to Kerry without interruption, but remember, I love you. And Baby.”

Everything was working out so well, Erin thought as she drove out onto the main road between Cork and Portlaoise. She’d met Kerry and spoken to her darling parents. The baby, wriggling away inside her with little dolphin flicks, was healthy, and she was married to a man she adored. But she didn’t have it all. Buried deep inside her was a core of pain, hard, cold and compressed like a lump of coal. No matter how much love there was in her life, the lump of coal was always there, reminding her that her real mother had betrayed her. Shannon had left her and had never come back. She could have but she chose not to. Erin was determined to get to the bottom of it all.

twenty-six

L
izzie knew it was wrong to be deliriously happy about going out to dinner with someone she’d only known a few days, but she couldn’t help it. When Simon had phoned to ask her out on the evening of the day after her parachute jump, she’d been thrilled.

“It was a good night, wasn’t it?” he’d said, while Lizzie’s heart did somersaults of excitement at the thought that she hadn’t been imagining it—Simon had fancied her.

“Wonderful,” she said, the stresses of the day forgotten. Debra had cheered up thanks to the shopping trip that had involved the purchase of an expensive pair of spindly sandals. When Simon phoned, Debra was upstairs trying them on with everything in her wardrobe, and the radio was blaring loudly, proof that all was well in Debra’s world.

“I thought you might like to come out to dinner again, just with me,” Simon added.

“Yes,” breathed Lizzie, totally forgetting that modern women were supposed to play hard to get. “I’d love that.”

Wednesday was the day picked for their date because Lizzie had to work late on Tuesday.

“Where will we go?” she asked with enthusiasm.

They thought about it for ages before settling on a lively seafood restaurant where a jazz band played on Wednesday nights.

“I’ll pick you up at seven, if that’s all right?” said Simon.

“Er, no, I’ll meet you there,” said Lizzie, thinking of Debra, who wasn’t used to the idea of her mother going on a date.

“Who was that on the phone?” asked Debra, coming downstairs to have her new sandals admired.

“Oh, er, just a wrong number,” Lizzie lied.

She spent Tuesday and most of Wednesday in a state of delighted excitement. She had a date! The girls who wrote those “Things to Do …” lists would have disapproved of such enthusiasm.

“Make him beg” would undoubtedly be their advice, along with some helpful hints for getting him to improve his technique in bed so that she, the woman, had wildly improved climaxes before he even thought about his. Lizzie knew all this because she secretly flicked through the younger women’s magazines on a regular basis now.

She also knew that in the highly unlikely event of her ending up in bed with Simon, she’d be too conscious of her own rusty bedtime technique to criticise his. Modern women were so strong and knew what they wanted, she thought wistfully. They were like Clare Morgan’s cat, Tiger—aloof and careful about whom they favoured. She, on the other hand, was more of a bouncy sheepdog-type person—so so thrilled with the companionship that she’d rush up and lick Simon’s face. Well, maybe not lick his face but certainly act in a sheepdog, waggy-tail manner.

The only fly in the ointment was what she should wear. Lizzie, who’d spent years utterly at home in her traditional evening outfit of nice blouse and skirt or trousers, was suddenly wildly uncomfortable at the notion of such a rig-out. What would be suitable? After her disastrous purchase for the Richardsons’ party, and the acid-yellow wedding suit, she didn’t have the courage to go and buy something.

Debra was going out clubbing with her friend Frieda on Wednesday.

“Barry stifled me for a long time—I haven’t been clubbing for ages,” she told her mother. She planned to race home after work to change before racing off again.

Great, thought Lizzie. This meant she’d have time to try on everything in her wardrobe and parade in front of the landing mirror once Debra was gone.

But when she got home from work, Debra was still there and she looked sulky. “Frieda called it off,” she said. “And I was so looking forward to going out.”