Between Sisters (25 page)

When Xavier was gone, Tracey was settled into a jetlagged sleep on the couch, and Fiona was curled up in her bed with her teddies and dreams of the holiday in Paris her uncle had promised her, Coco went into her own bedroom and sat on the windowsill looking out at the night sky. It was a cloudless night and she could see so many stars.

Her father had loved the heavens. One of her fondest memories of their time together was when the teenage Cassie was out and Coco and her dad would sit outside on Pearl’s verandah and try to identify various constellations.

‘Dad, I hope you’re happy wherever you are,’ Coco whispered up at the sky. ‘I told you once I never wanted children and I knew it made you sad,’ she said. ‘But I’ve changed my mind. I do want children. Babies and toddlers and little girls like Fiona running around, or little boys – whatever I am lucky enough to have. I was wrong before, but I know what I want now. There are no men on the horizon, not even the safe ones you tried to get me interested in. None. But I’ll work it out. I’ll be a good mum, I promise.’

Fifteen

On Monday morning, Cassie wished her head wasn’t throbbing quite so much. It was all her own fault. ‘Entertainment tax’ they used to call it in college, when you had to pay the day after for too many drinks in the bar the night before. Cassie used to look down on the wild ones who were clearly paying entertainment tax most mornings. They were stupid, she’d thought in those far-off college days. Where did drinking too much get you? Nowhere. And now look at her, a married mother-of-two with a throbbing headache and the sense that her stomach was so acidic she might throw up at any moment.

She’d shouted at the girls that morning too; shouted more when she realised Shay had got up early and had left the house before anyone was up, not so much as a cup of tea left by her side of the bed as a peace offering. He’d been out all day Sunday, barely speaking to Cassie as if it was all her fault.

So she’d ignored him and he’d ignored her right back. Cassie had got stuck into the wine after buying another wine box from the supermarket. Fabulous things, they were: nobody could look at them and see how much was gone, she found herself thinking – and then was horrified at such secretive behaviour. Wasn’t that how addicts always said they behaved? Drinking or taking drugs secretly, hiding what they did?

She couldn’t even phone Coco to talk about it because Coco had Jo’s family with her at the weekend and, according to Pearl, it had been stress city over there with Jo’s sister having a mini nervous breakdown now that she was on Irish soil, and therefore close to her Bible-thumping parents.

Pearl had also been full of chat about this lovely girl she’d met and how Pearl thought the girl could come and stay with Gloria from Delaney Gardens, whose darling husband was in a home, for the college year, and wasn’t that a nice idea?

‘Gloria needs someone in the house. She’s so lonely and that lovely girl would cheer her up. Phoebe is the girl’s name, and she’s in a bedsit in Rita Costello’s house, which is penal servitude, if you ask me. The last time Rita cracked a smile, Nixon was in the White House. Plus that house hasn’t been painted in donkey’s years. Are you all right, Cass? You sound a little stressed?’

‘Me, stressed? No. Just tired,’ said Cassie.

The modern lie when you didn’t want to answer something. Everyone was tired all the time. There was even an acronym for it: TATT. Nobody ever questioned you about it.

Cassie phoned Coco.

‘Can’t talk. I’m here in the hospital and Jo’s sister is in with her.’

‘I’ll be quick. How’s it going?’

‘Attracta, who is now called Tracey, by the way—’

‘Tracey?’

‘Yeah. Guess she wanted to change everything her parents ever gave her. Anyway, Tracey came home after seeing Jo in hospital on Saturday and went into a decline. Then Fiona got really upset. I almost sent Tracey off to a hotel but it was her first night back in Ireland and I felt so guilty. Still, I have to think of Fiona. It’s not fair on her,’ Coco went on. ‘Heck, Tracey’s coming out again. She’s only been in for ten minutes. Same as yesterday. Have to go,’ she whispered into the phone and hung up.

Cassie had opened Shay’s apology bottle of red wine then. She liked red wine but it gave her a headache if she drank more than two glasses. That’s all she’d have then, because she’d already had some of the wine box stuff.

But somehow she’d got more maudlin, drank the whole bottle, and that was why her head was killing her now.

Blasted Shay. Blasted Antoinette.

The anger rose in her again, quickly followed by the anxiety: what was happening to her and her marriage? She should have smoothed things over.

What if Shay had had enough and left her? He could: she’d pushed him enough. She spent plenty of time with Pearl, after all, but then Pearl wanted the whole family there and Cassie was in no doubt that when Antoinette wanted her son, she wanted him alone.

She slipped into her seat at the Larousse conference table, aware that she reeked of perfume because she was sure the fumes of an entire bottle of wine
and
two glasses of white box wine were seeping out of her pores. An ozone-killing blast of deodorant followed by four massive squirts of her current Jo Malone perfume was adding to her headache, but better that than to be outed as a woman who’d sunk so much wine by herself.

What sort of role model was she for Beth and Lily? And it wasn’t as if she, of all people, didn’t know how alcohol could affect a family. Not that Pearl had ever said too much about her and Coco’s mother, but the only crystal-clear fact was that addiction had been at the heart of her leaving.

‘She was a troubled soul,’ Pearl had said on those few times they’d actually talked about Marguerite.

Pearl seemed to think that the less she talked about the girls’ mother, the more they’d forget about her. Which was sort of unlike Pearl, really. Pearl was surprisingly modern in her parenting and always talked about stuff: boys, periods, breasts, all the stuff younger parents needed to discuss.

So the three monkeys approach to Marguerite was unusual.

Still, who cared what had made their mother leave. Stupid cow had still gone and never bothered coming back, right? That was all that mattered.

Cassie thought of her sister’s discussion about Fiona and how unanswered issues in childhood turned into exploding hand grenades later, but then pushed it out of her mind.

Belinda was at the top of the room outlining plans for the pharmaceutical conference Lorenhad won by undercutting their nearest rival.

‘The highlight is the bonding day on day two,’ she was saying. ‘I’ve got footage of the wall-climbing guy explaining it. In-house, we’re calling it the Bear Grylls’ Effect – everyone wants to do something dangerous. Out of house, obviously, it’s called the Action Adventure part of the week, as nobody wants to pay fees for the use of Bear’s name.’

Loren smiled. She liked Belinda, admired her no-bullshit work ethic and the fact that Belinda had raised a son on her own.

‘If she had the slightest clue how much deranged behind-the-scenes stuff went on to manage a career and a child, she mightn’t be so admiring,’ Belinda liked to say. ‘Loren hasn’t any concept about any world apart from her own.’

‘Must be nice to be so emotionally isolated,’ Cassie agreed, who at any one time had a group of people looking for her help, advice on husbands, boyfriends, children, how to approach Loren for time off.

‘Not that I’m advocating Loren, the Ice Queen, as a role model, but perhaps you should try it sometime,’ Belinda advised. ‘You’re too nice to people. You never get a moment’s peace.’

Today, sitting at the conference table with a raging hangover and no headache tablets inside her because she didn’t think she’d be able to keep them down, Cassie fervently wished nobody came near her for help today.

I know nothing!
That was what she’d have to say to them.

My husband is ignoring me. He’s destroying our marriage.

No,
his mother
is destroying our marriage and I’m not smoothing it all over. I screamed at my kids this morning for no good reason other than having a hangover – ME! A hangover! – and my head aches. Go find someone who actually has all the answers.

When Belinda’s presentation was finished, she took her place beside Cassie. ‘Sauvignon Blanc or Chablis?’ she whispered.

‘That bad?’ said Cassie, appalled.

‘No, you don’t smell of wine, I just recognise the look. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, darling. You got time for lunch today?’

Cassie thought of her desk, the email inbox from hell and the phone message slips.

‘Sure,’ she said. Carbohydrates might help. Plus she needed to spill out her bruised feelings to someone.

They sat in the barrel-shaped cavern of a bustling restaurant near the office and, as a waitress cruised past with a martini and several glasses of wine on a tray, Cassie suddenly thought she knew what would fix her.

‘A martini, vodka,’ she said confidently to their waitress when she arrived.

Belinda’s eyebrows raised the fraction they were capable of thanks to her three-monthly applications of Botox but she said nothing as she ordered tap water.

‘Hair of the dog,’ Cassie said when her drink arrived.

‘’Fess up – what’s wrong?’ said Belinda, studiously ignoring the bread. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink alcohol at lunchtime. Now you’re hungover and ordering martinis. I was half expecting you to demand it shaken and not stirred … Is everything OK?’

Cassie avoided answering the question by taking a deep drink of her martini: sharp, kick-ass and instantly hitting the spot. She’d hardly ever had one before. They were pre-marriage and pre-kids drinks, fun and frivolous, along with cosmopolitans and mojitos – silly expensive things for fun nights out with single girlfriends.

‘Of course, we don’t have to talk about it but I will have to use my mind-bending techniques on you,’ Belinda went on. ‘And the thing with the thumbscrews gets pretty messy …’

‘That’s not mind-bending.’ Cassie laughed for what felt like the first time that day.

‘Yes! A smile! Spill.’

Cassie grabbed a fat bread roll, spread it liberally with butter – because what was the point of staying slim? – and explained.

‘And do not,’ she said at the end of her tale of Antoinette’s hostile takeover attempt, ‘take Shay’s side and say you can see how tough it is for him.’

‘As if.’

A salad appeared in front of Belinda, and fish and chips in front of Cassie.

‘Never having been married, I have never had a serious mother-in-law problem,’ Belinda said thoughtfully, removing all the croutons from her salad. ‘Jake – remember him? Many years ago, casualty of a dreadful divorce and with a mother who thought he was a prophet in disguise? Now
she
was a nightmare. Straight out of a Stephen King novel. He was living with her and she felt it was her job to protect him from making any other relationship mistakes again. Any girl – royal descent, movie star, charity worker who gave all her money away to lame dog foundations, you name it – they weren’t good enough for her Jake. I’d say she had a hand in dismantling the previous marriage. We were together one Christmas and she bought me this perfume for a fiver; smelled like air freshener but not as nice. Plus she wore Guerlain perfume herself, so it wasn’t as if she didn’t understand how to buy nice perfume. I don’t mind if you can’t afford a present, but just buy a nice card instead. But she had money for sure and she was simply taunting me.’

‘Antoinette’s not like that,’ sighed Cassie. ‘She’s lovely to me, kind, all that stuff, but—’

‘But she wants her son to take over where her husband left off.’

‘Yes, that’s it in a nutshell.’

‘So Shay’s torn. He’s being the hero to his mother, while you, being Mrs Capable, are supposed to be able to keep the home fires burning. You should have been the fainting, useless type from the start.’ Belinda grinned. ‘You know, the women who can’t change light bulbs, take out the bins or phone the gas people to argue about the bill. Tough Scarlett O’Hara versus delicate Melanie Wilkes.’

They both smiled at this, as they were both
Gone With the Wind
fans.

‘I was sensible from when I was seven,’ said Cassie.

Belinda knew her mother had walked out, knew that Cassie had felt responsible for Coco as a child.

‘Even when I went through my “wild period” in my teenage years, I was still sensible. My Great-Aunt Edie thought I was out smoking pot and having sex with college kids, but I wasn’t. I was too sensible to do anything but fake being wild.’

They both laughed at this and Cassie slurped some more of her martini.

‘What about Shay’s sisters?’ Belinda asked. ‘Can’t they help out with their mother?’

‘Miriam and Ruth?’ Cassie considered this while she looked at her cocktail glass and wondered if she could possibly have another martini because all the stress had gone with the drinking of this one, and she felt another one might make her perfectly calm, which would be lovely. ‘Now
that
does annoy me,’ she confessed. ‘Antoinette never asks them to do anything, and they don’t offer either.’

The more she thought about this, the more annoyed she got. Ruth didn’t have a family to care for and she lived near her mother. Why didn’t Antoinette phone
her
as if she were the fire brigade?

‘There’s your answer,’ said Belinda with the firmness of one who liked straightforward solutions. ‘Talk to them. Say they need to pull their weight and help their mother through her grief. It means you don’t have to go into battle with Shay, and yes, I do feel sorry for him, poor love. He’s one of the good guys, Cassie, and you know it.’

Cassie nodded and felt tears well up. She never cried in public. Never. She’d learned that lesson years ago when she was seven. This was ridiculous. What was happening to her?

Suddenly she decided that she didn’t care what Belinda said or how shocked she looked: she was having another martini instead of dessert.

Yes, Shay was a good man, she knew that, but it seemed as if Shay had made his choice – and he’d chosen his mother. Doing this had broken Cassie’s heart.

He wasn’t the first person who’d chosen to leave her: her mother had too.

A martini might not be the answer but, for today at least, when she felt in such emotional pain, it might help anaesthetise the hurt.

Coco’s visitor was gone. She’d put Tracey into a cab for the airport just before twelve on Monday and had even hugged her goodbye, which was like hugging a board, as Tracey clearly didn’t do physical stuff.

‘I’m sorry I’m going home early but I can’t cope with any of it, being here or seeing poor Josephine,’ said Tracey, trying not to cry as she sat, all dressed in black, with her long-distance neck pillow – also black – sitting on the cab seat beside her.

‘I understand,’ said Coco, who didn’t but who was deeply relieved that her guest was leaving. She had no idea how Tracey had reorganised her flight details and, to be frank, didn’t care.

Once Tracey was gone, Coco decided she had time to drop in unannounced to the shop and do some work, because she hadn’t been in for nearly a week and no matter how well Adriana said things were going, there would always be things only Coco could do.