Best of Friends (68 page)

Greg was delighted to see her so excited about something, partic-ularly as she had been a bit subdued since her ill-fated meeting with Shannon. But he was worried that she was taking on too much when she was so heavily pregnant.

“I don’t want you overdoing it, love,” he said. “I know that ‘rest’ isn’t a word in your vocabulary but you’ve got to have a few hours off every day.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Erin said. “I like being busy. I’m only doing two days at the beauty salon as it is, so I need something else to keep me occupied. It’s either that or spend every penny we have buying new baby clothes.” She already had quite a selection of baby clothes—all white because they didn’t know what sex the baby was going to be—and both Mum and Kerry were knitting furiously. Erin thought the notion of Kerry knitting at all was absolutely hilarious.

“I just can’t see you with wool and needles,” she said in amusement one day on the phone when Kerry told her she was halfway through a tiny white matinée jacket.

“Ha bloody ha,” retorted Kerry. “Course I know how to knit. Just because your vision of me is that of a wild party animal from ten years ago doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do domestic things, I’ll have you know. I can make cookies and garden too,” Kerry said indignantly.

“You sound just like one of the Waltons,” giggled Erin. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed her sister all these years. “It’s great to be back, Kerry,” she said impulsively. “Really great. Thank you, thanks for everything.”

“You mightn’t thank me when you see this matinée jacket,” Kerry said dubiously. “I know I can knit but I’m not exactly brilliant, and doing sleeves is very hard च”

“I wasn’t talking about the matinée jacket,” Erin replied.

The following weekend the whole family were coming to Dun-more to spend quality time with Greg and Erin. Erin had set them up in an excellent bed and breakfast nearby.

“Somebody has to make sure you’re getting enough rest,” Mum had fussed over the phone. “I know you’re all tied up in that Life Beats Cancer work now, Erin, but you need your rest—babies need rested mothers. You’ll be sorry you didn’t have more sleep when the baby is born and you’re run off your feet.”

“Oh, Mum, aren’t you and Kerry coming down to help me when I have the baby?” Erin said mischievously. “You know I won’t have a clue. I’m not planning to do a tap of work—the pair of you can do it all!”

Her mother laughed, a joyous, musical sound that Erin had almost forgotten.

“You’re a right brat, Erin Flynn,” her mother said cheerfully. “I’m too old to be looking after another baby.”

“You’ll never be too old, Mum,” said Erin fondly. Neither of them mentioned that this would be the fourth-generation Flynn child. They didn’t have to. Erin’s baby would be an adored member of the family, whether she or he was a grandchild or great-grandchild or whatever.

“So get your feet off the floor,” Mum insisted. “Lying down with your feet up is vital.”

“Yes, Mum,” said Erin obediently. It was like old times. And she loved it.

The following Thursday was one of Erin’s days working in The Beauty Spot. She was perched behind the reception counter, care-fully looking through the appointments book and trying to find a cancellation for a customer who’d phoned to beg to be fitted in for a bikini wax for her holidays. Business was good and the salon was permanently busy.

Today, the place hummed with activity and all the treatment rooms were full. Ruby, whose facial had just cancelled, had popped out on an afternoon latte-and-muffin shopping run and was due back any second. Erin couldn’t wait. In the last few weeks, her ap-petite had suddenly increased and she felt as if she was eating for three, never mind two. She’d phoned the grateful bikini wax lady back with an appointment, and was just flicking through a sheet of papers to find the figures she planned to go over later, when the door of the salon opened. Erin looked up and her mouth fell open in astonishment. It wasn’t Ruby with the familiar coffee shop bags.

Instead, there stood Shannon, her long copper hair secured in a haphazard ponytail, a flowing caftan-style garment in shades of yel-low worn over her jeans. She carried a big army rucksack in one hand and a carton of juice in the other.

At the sight of Erin, Shannon’s face lit up.

“Hello. I didn’t know if you’d be here or not,” she said as casually as if she and Erin were friends always occasionally popping into each other’s places of work.

After a moment, Erin found her voice. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“I wanted to see you,” Shannon said, with child-like simplicity. She set her big rucksack down on the floor. “I felt bad about the last time—Kerry said it upset you.”

Erin looked in amazement at a woman so lacking in normal intuition that it had taken another person to tell her their meeting hadn’t gone well. Only someone like Shannon, someone completely on another planet, could have failed to notice this all by herself.

“When were you talking to Kerry?” asked Erin bluntly.

“The other day.” Shannon was vague. “It was a shock for me, seeing you and the fact that you’re all grown up. And pregnant,” she added, gesturing to Erin’s belly, almost as if this was the first time she’d noticed.

The salon door tinkled, heralding the arrival of Ruby and her fragrant haul of goodies.

“Herbal tea that smells like horrible old socks for you, Erin,” she said, placing a paper cup down on the counter in front of Erin, “and a blueberry muffin. I know you’ve been dying for that,” Ruby went on, then stopped, suddenly aware of the strained atmosphere.

“Ruby, this is a …” Erin paused, “a relative of mine who’s dropped in to see me. I’m just going to nip out and have a cup of tea with her. Will you have time to keep an eye on everything here while I’m gone?”

If Ruby thought it was strange that Erin a) hadn’t introduced her to this relative by name and b) possessed a relative who looked as frankly unusual as Shannon, then Ruby was far too polite to say anything.

“Sure thing, girl,” she said easily. “I’m free for the next three-quarters of an hour.”

Three-quarters of an hour should certainly do, Erin thought as she got her handbag and led Shannon out the door and into the coffee shop across the street. In fact, three-quarters of an hour was probably too much time. She was curious as to why Shannon was here in the first place. Dunmore was a long way from Shannon’s home in Wexford, particularly as she didn’t have a car and had to rely on public transport, so why was she here? Erin hoped that she wasn’t looking for money—Kerry had said that Shannon was always broke and on the scrounge, however innocently. It would have been the final nail in the coffin of their relationship for Erin if Shannon had turned up just to borrow.

“What do you want?” she said as they stood at the counter in the coffee shop, conscious that her voice was a little sharp.

Shannon gave this question great consideration and spent ages looking at the board behind the counter where all the various teas and coffees were listed. Finally, she settled for blackcurrant and apple tea. Erin went for ordinary tea, paid, and they sat down at a small table in the corner, as far away from people as possible.

Erin decided to let Shannon speak first, but Shannon showed no inclination to actually say anything—instead she sat there happily, staring around her as if the small café was the most interesting place she’d ever been. Erin was not the sort of person given to filling in every conversational gap with chatter, but even so, she found Shan-non’s quietness unsettling.

“What are you doing here?” she asked finally.

“Oh, I’ve got these friends who live in West Cork and I thought I might go and see them,” Shannon said. “They’ve got this lovely cottage and a bit of a farm and it’s paradise. Then I thought of you being here in Dunmore and I decided it’d be great to drop in and visit, get to know you a bit better.” She beamed at Erin as if this innocent little plan was the cleverest thing she’d ever come up with in her whole life. Going to West Cork to see friends—why not drop in on her long-lost daughter and kill two birds with one stone? Erin thought bitterly.

“And what time are your friends in West Cork expecting you to arrive?” enquired Erin, with the sneaking suspicion that she already knew the answer to that question.

Shannon’s youthful face was carefree. “Ah sure, they’re not really expecting me at any particular time,” she said. “I can roll up when I please. I thought I might spend the night with you. You’ve got a spare bed or an old sofa I could kip down on, don’t you?”

Shannon was quite happy to sit in the car while Erin whizzed around the supermarket to buy groceries for their dinner. As she shoved the small trolley down the aisles with haste, Erin phoned Greg.

“What are we going to do?” she hissed. “She expects to stay the night. What are we going to talk about?” She threw all sorts of un-necessary food into the trolley without stopping to think.

Greg sounded unperturbed. “You did want to get to know her better,” he said reasonably.

“Yes, but I didn’t expect her to turn up out of the blue and say she was going to stay, did I?” said Erin. “That’s hardly normal be-haviour.”

“I don’t think Shannon is exactly normal, from what you’ve told me,” Greg pointed out. “Anyway, it might be good for the two of you to spend some time together. I can make myself scarce tonight…”

“Don’t you dare,” said Erin, shocked. “I don’t want to be left on my own with her.”

Next she phoned Kerry.

“She asked where you lived and I knew she’d go there eventu-ally,” Kerry said, sounding remarkably laid-back about it all, as if Shannon turning up out of the blue was perfectly natural. And it probably was, for Shannon.

“But I don’t even know what to say to her, how to talk to her,” protested Erin as she threw a couple of supermarket ready meals into the trolley.

“You were the one who wanted to get to know her,” Kerry pointed out.

“That was before I’d met her,” Erin said. “I thought we could bond. I didn’t know she was going to be the hippie from hell.”

“Well, bond with her tonight,” Kerry said. “Look,” she added, “forget that she gave birth to you. Imagine she’s your sister; a long-lost very eccentric sister, whom you don’t know very well. It’s the mother thing that’s messing it all up in your head. Try and forget that she’s your natural mother at all and imagine she’s just dippy Shannon, the forgotten sister who ran off years ago. Because that’s what she is, after all.”

“I suppose,” Erin said slowly. She was so thrown by Shannon’s reappearance that she didn’t know what to think. But maybe Kerry was right: she should treat Shannon like a long-lost sister, and stop tying herself up in knots thinking that Shannon really was her mum and had left her all those years ago.

“Right,” she said with a confidence that she didn’t really feel. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll phone you tomorrow and tell you how we got on.”

Greg was there when they got home and Erin was really relieved to see him.

“Thank God you’re here,” she whispered to him as they hugged.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go out and leave you two alone?” Greg whispered back.

“No way,” hissed Erin.

Shannon seemed pleased to see Greg, shook his hand politely, and wandered into the big, airy living room.

“Wow, this is really nice,” she said, meandering around, picking up pictures, books and knick-knacks, admiring things.

Erin felt the knot in her stomach tighten. She didn’t know how to react, but what was it Kerry had said earlier? Imagine she’s your eccentric older sister, the one you don’t know very well. Sister, right. Erin could do that.

“Do you like those malachite platters?” she said, seeing Shannon admiring the two rich green carved discs that hung on one wall. “We bought them in Mexico when we were on holiday there. We drove through at Nogales and then we went a little further in country, stayed for a few nights and bought those. There’s something nice about getting a memento of where you’ve been on holiday, isn’t there?”

“Yeah.” Shannon sounded wistful. “I never got to Mexico. I always meant to because myself and some of the gang were living in New Mexico for a while, but we never made it over the border.”

“Oh,” said Erin cheerfully. “Why ever not?”

Shannon looked a bit shifty. “Oh, some hassle with documents, you know …”

Erin could work out what had happened. She and Greg exchanged a glance. If Shannon’s friends had been people who regularly protested outside military bases, then perhaps some of them were in trouble with the law and travelling into a different country would involve being noticed by the authorities. Time to change to a different subject, Erin decided.

“You must have picked up some great stuff from your travels around the world. Tell us, where have you been?”

It was the right question to ask. With a glass of water in front of her—Shannon didn’t drink, said she didn’t want to pollute her body with alcohol—she talked about some of the places she’d been over the years, starting with the anti-nuclear protests in America. She’d certainly travelled a great deal in her life. Erin and Greg were astonished at how many places she’d visited, and Erin was particularly surprised at how movingly Shannon talked about the various protests she’d been on.

It was clear that the lifestyle had held many charms for Shannon: normal responsibilities like paying the rent or the electricity bill didn’t appear to matter in the free-wheeling group with whom she’d travelled the world. But it was equally clear that she genuinely beieved in the causes she’d fought for. There was no doubt that when Shannon talked about the dangers of war, she meant what she was saying.

As the evening progressed, Erin knew she couldn’t have coped without Greg there to keep the conversation flowing. She would have found Shannon’s presence too difficult, because Shannon never talked to Erin as if there was anything but the most tenuous link between them. There were no references to “when you were a baby,” no mention of the Flynn family at all. And Erin found that hurtful.

Instead, Shannon regarded the people she’d travelled with as her family, a sprawling group of friends she’d picked up over the years who now lived in the four corners of the globe, like the people she was travelling to meet in West Cork.