Between Sisters (33 page)

It was a full-time job this cleaning up after a child and trying to make sure said child got enough vitamins and minerals in her food. She wondered if she should go into the chemist and get some sort of a child vitamin to be sure? Chocolate cereal was all well and good but was it the best thing? She wasn’t sure. Plus Jo really had been telling the truth when she said that Fiona was not a good person at eating her vegetables.

Why didn’t they make cereal full of green, healthy things and disguise them with chocolate? Now that was a food innovation if ever there was one.

Once breakfast was over, they both dressed, teeth were brushed and checked – Fiona was a great one for saying, ‘Of course I’ve brushed my teeth, Coco,’ when in fact she’d done nothing of the sort – and then out of the house, handbag and schoolbag in hands, ready to face the day.

‘It’s amazing what you’ve done with her,’ said Ms Ryan, the principal of the school where Fiona went. ‘Was it the counselling, do you think?’ she said. ‘They do wonderful things, counsellors. I’ve seen children who are just devastated and after a few sessions they come out and they’re miraculously able to be with us again. Children bury their feelings so deeply, don’t they?’

‘She hasn’t actually had any counselling at all,’ said Coco apologetically. ‘I had been planning it but somehow we seemed to get by without it, and her mother is improving a lot, which has helped hugely. Fiona and I are having a lot of fun in the middle of all this pain. I don’t know, I think love has fixed her. Does that sound awfully silly?’

The principal smiled. ‘Love is a fabulous thing to have,’ she said. ‘Fiona is lucky to have you, and Jo is certainly lucky to have such a real friend. I’ve been in to see her and she seems in quite good form.’

‘You should have seen her ten days ago,’ said Coco, and immediately regretted it. ‘Of course, she’s very strong and courageous, you know. It’s been very difficult for her,’ she backtracked.

‘It’s OK, Coco, you’re not letting her down, don’t worry,’ said the principal kindly. ‘When serious illness strikes, it hits us all in different ways, but the Jo I saw was full of energy and determined to get back to normal. She’s made a remarkable recovery. She’s certainly one of the lucky ones.’

‘That she is,’ said Coco fervently. ‘I’m on my way into my shop now and then, after a couple of hours, I’ll be going into the hospital. Jo’s going to be getting out and going into a nursing home for a week tomorrow, so after that she should be coming home.’

Coco paused. Where home was going to be exactly was the knotty question and she still had to work that one out. But she and Jo would work it out together; they were now working as a team.

The shop was doing marvellously. Phoebe had it running like clockwork. She’d drafted in Alice, who used to work in her father’s pet shop up the road, to do extra hours.

Alice was overjoyed to wear pretty clothes and get actual money for work.

‘Dad does his best but he can’t really employ us all,’ she said, ‘and I have been bitten by too many hamsters for my own good.’

Phoebe loved the way Coco merchandised the clothes and used the internet to sell her goods far and wide, and she’d quickly taken over updating the Facebook page and keeping in touch with people who were on the lookout for something special.

Phoebe had added a new feature: getting beautiful pieces and tweaking them with her seamstress skills to make them more modern and up to date. ‘You don’t mind?’ she’d said when she’d suggested this to Coco. ‘It’s just an idea I had after I tweaked a beautiful jacket I bought here from Adriana.’

‘Oh, don’t mention Adriana,’ said Coco, who still felt terribly guilty. ‘I worry about her, you know.’

‘Oh no, you mustn’t worry about her,’ said Phoebe sweetly. ‘Adriana will get on wonderfully well wherever she is. She’s an absolute survivor, couldn’t you tell? She’s working in a luxury boutique in town. I met her on my way to college one day.’

‘Is she?’ said Coco, in shock.

‘Yes,’ said Phoebe, ‘so worry not. She’s perfectly happy. It’s more of a full-time job and she has to turn up on time or she’ll get fired. It was good for her you letting her go. You did the right thing. Sometimes we have to be firm.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Coco, dizzy with relief at the thought that Adriana wasn’t out on the streets. ‘I’m no good at being firm.’

‘Yes, you are. Now, as I was saying … Because of that jacket I tweaked with darts to modernise it, I suddenly thought there were a few other pieces we had that I could tweak, so I’ve put them up online and it’s brought in a whole new community: the sewers who are interested in new projects and love the idea of being able to work on vintage clothes.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ said Coco, thrilled, ‘I knew it was a good idea to hire you.’

Phoebe laughed. ‘I knew it was a good idea to come in here,’ she countered.

‘It’s all down to Pearl.’

Thanks to Pearl, Phoebe was now living in a pretty turquoise and white bedroom overlooking the square in Gloria’s house, and even though she hadn’t got a penny of her deposit back from a pea-green Rita Costello, Phoebe and Gloria were getting on like a house on fire. Phoebe, who was a good cook, was making sure that Gloria ate properly, while Gloria made sure Phoebe had a wonderfully warm welcome home each night.

The cloud in Phoebe’s life was worrying about her beloved mother, and even though she was now able to send money home, the downside of her new job meant she hadn’t actually been able to go home since the trip where she’d realised how exhausted her mother was.

She’d told Coco a little bit about it, because she’d already told Ian and Gloria so much that she was terrified of boring them.

‘I love my mother so much and I know the farm means a lot to her, but here, when I’m not up there in the hills, I can see it’s all too much for her.’

‘You’re not boring me, you daft cow,’ Ian had said crossly. ‘You’re my friend. Let me put my brain in gear, all right?’

Gloria had wondered how easy it would be to sell a farm in the hills, and Phoebe had explained that while many farmers would like a bit of extra land, part of the importance of the farm was the fact that the family could build houses on it for themselves if they ever had enough money.

‘That’s another thing that makes the land important for Mum,’ Phoebe explained. ‘The planning laws mean if the land is in your family, you can build on it, but not if you just buy it, so it’s not valuable as development land.’

‘Ah, right,’ said Gloria. ‘Goodness, it all sounds like an awful lot of work for your poor mother.’

Being Coco, she never forgot another person’s problems, and checked in with Phoebe about how things were for Kate McLoughlin, Ethan and Mary-Kate.

‘Fine,’ fibbed Phoebe, seeing how stressed her boss was under all the relief about the shop. ‘Myself and Alice will keep the home fires burning here.’

When Coco finally headed off from the shop, she planned to go straight into the hospital to see Jo. But instead she drove around to Delaney Gardens, hoping that Pearl was in. She parked the car, ran up to the front door and knocked, but there was no reply. Worrying slightly because, after all, Pearl wasn’t a young lady anymore, she took out her key and let herself in, greeted by delighted barks from Daisy, who did her impersonation of an abandoned dog.

‘We might have a puppy friend for you to play with soon, Daisy,’ said Coco, getting down on the floor to snuggle with the pug.

Daisy looked thoroughly thrilled at this, but then Daisy looked thrilled at everything: food, cuddles, butterflies, rain, sun, whatever. She was easily pleased. There was no sign, however, of her mistress, so Coco left a note to say she’d dropped in and perhaps might phone her grandmother later. She signed the note with a flourish of kisses and she left thinking of all the things she really wanted to write:

I need to talk to you, Grammy. I’m so worried about Cassie. It’s like she’s heading for a total breakdown and I don’t know what to do. I’m so tied up with trying to take care of Fiona that I can’t really be properly there for Cassie, but I’m worried about her and I’m worried about Lily and Beth. We need to figure out what to do. It’s like she fell apart that night when I came home from the hospital and we started talking about Mum. I don’t know how to help her anymore.

If you want to know me, come live with me
went the proverb, and Shay could see the sense in that. Since moving in, reluctantly, with his mother after Cassie had turfed him out on to the street, he’d begun to find that there was a big difference between dropping in now and then and being the golden boy who fixed light bulbs, plugs and washing machines, and actually
living
with Antoinette after a gap of some twenty years.

That first night, it had been a relief to drive up to his mother’s house and feel her hug him. He’d felt the comfort of being told it was all right, not to worry, and he hadn’t done a thing wrong, which was precisely what he wanted to hear after having Cassie shrieking at him.

‘Cassie’s being totally unreasonable and I don’t understand it at all,’ Antoinette had said, going around the kitchen and getting out the good china dishes.

‘You poor boy. I suppose you haven’t had a thing to eat either? I’ll make you a good, decent dinner, none of that frozen stuff or ready meals from the supermarket,’ she said dismissively, as if ready meals from the supermarket were all that was wrong with the world.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Shay, and although he knew that Cassie didn’t feed their family from the frozen aisle, he didn’t say so.

He’d gone into the living room, where he’d spent so many years growing up as a kid, and sat down in the big comfortable armchair that used to be his father’s.

‘Now, pet, here are the TV zappers,’ said his mother cosily. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have the sports channels, but I could get them for you if you want. I know you like your bit of football; your father was the same.’

Shay found himself ensconced in an armchair with the fire on, something about renovating cars on the TV, and a gin and tonic on a small table beside him. His mother had even conjured up nuts in a little bowl as an appetiser.

‘Nuts, Mum!’ he roared out to the kitchen. ‘Am I in the right house?’ he joked. ‘We never had nuts when I was growing up, did we?’

‘Oh, on the odd special occasion when we had people over,’ his mother said skittishly, ‘but you deserve a treat, pet, while you’re waiting for your dinner.’

An hour later, he had a tray on his lap, he was in control of the television remote – something that never happened in his house – and he had now a glass of wine in place of the gin and tonic. It was like being in a hotel.

‘Isn’t this lovely?’ said his mother, picking at a salad as she sat on the couch.

‘Mum, why aren’t you eating this?’ he said, gesturing at the stew she’d conjured up out of nowhere.

‘Oh pet.’ His mother smiled. ‘You know I have to watch my figure, darling.’

Shay looked at her and realised that this was the moment where he was supposed to say: ‘Oh no, Mum, you don’t, you look fabulous.’ So he did, and Antoinette beamed, patted her flat stomach and smoothed her skirt over her still slim hips.

‘I always say you’ve got to look after yourself and dress like a lady.’

She touched the pearls that her husband had bought for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They weren’t real pearls, of course. There hadn’t been money for real pearls in their household any more than there’d been much in the line of gin and tonics in front of the television, but somewhere along the way his mother had gentrified the Reynolds family, and Shay – now that he was exposed to the full blast of it – wasn’t sure he liked it. When his father used to sit in this seat and watch the footie, he might have a pint of beer, just the one, and roar at the TV, telling the ref he was blind and muttering about goalies with butter fingers.

‘Now, tell me exactly what did she say?’

His mother wanted to do a complete postmortem on his throwing out and Shay did not want to talk about it at all. It felt like being disloyal to Cassie to even discuss this marital row. Keeping secrets from her with his mother was what had got them into trouble in the first place, and the more he thought about it, the more he realised that selling up and moving in together
had
been a pretty big secret. The pangs of remorse hit him hard.

‘Mum, I don’t want to talk about it, can we give it a rest?’ Shay said.

‘Of course, pet,’ said his mother, looking slightly peeved. ‘I only wanted to help you get it off your chest. I think Cassie is being completely ridiculous that she doesn’t realise how important family is to you. I mean, just because she doesn’t have a mother …’

‘Mum, I just want to watch the TV and forget about it,’ begged Shay.

‘Fine.’

His mother’s expression was one Shay hadn’t seen for quite a while, but he recognised it from his childhood, much more so than the little bowl of nuts or the gin and tonics. It was her
I’m annoyed but I’m pretending not to be annoyed
face.

She used to do that a lot, and Shay could remember himself and his father, Arthur, staring at each other, realising that when Antoinette’s face bore that particular expression, it was better to get out of the house.

Cassie never played that sort of game, Shay thought suddenly. It was one of things he loved about his wife. There were no sides to Cassie. She was straightforward. If she was annoyed, she told you. She didn’t sulk or play at being a martyr. What you saw was what you got, with one exception, and that was the tricky issue surrounding her, Coco and their mother. That was the part of Cassie that nobody got to see because she never talked about it, brushed off conversations if they so much as veered in that direction.

Fear of abandonment, Shay had long since diagnosed it as, and with another pang, he realised that his secret with his mother would be the ideal way to make his wife think she was being abandoned all over again.

So she’d abandoned him first.

He picked up his mobile phone and turned it back on. There were several messages from Lily and Beth, and he felt a surge of guilt. He put the tray down on the floor and said, ‘Mum, I’m just going out to make a few calls.’