Between Sisters (34 page)

His mother looked even more piqued. ‘If you don’t want to finish your dinner …’ she said in the tones of one who’d spent hours slaving in a Michelin-starred kitchen to produce the stew.

‘It’s all right, Mum, I’ll eat it in a minute.’

He got Beth first.

‘Dad,’ she said, and he could tell from the thickness of her voice that she’d been crying. ‘Dad, what happened? I didn’t mean to start it all. I only told Mum that Granny had left a message on the answering machine, and I was so upset because I thought you were going to get a divorce and then I heard that. I phoned Mum but … I’m sorry, it’s all my fault.’ She burst into tears.

Blast his mother for leaving that message, Shay thought with irritation.

‘Beth, we’re not getting a divorce. It’s my fault. I talked to Granny about something, it was just an idea, and I never discussed it with your mum, so of course she’s annoyed with me. She’s every right to be annoyed with me. Don’t worry. We’ll sort this out in the next couple of days. I’ll make everything OK, I promise. Mum is just angry with me. Now, is Lily with you?’

‘Yes, she’s in my bed,’ said Beth, snuffling. ‘You know she’s not supposed to get into my bed with her stinky feet,’ she added, and Shay grinned at this sound of normality returning to his daughter’s voice.

‘Daddy,’ said Lily tearfully, ‘why did you leave tonight? When are you coming home?’

‘Soon,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be fine, Lily. I love you both and I love your mum. Please be good to her. She’s just upset right now, but we’re going to sort all of this out, right? Now ring me and text me any time. I’ll have my phone on morning, noon and night.’

‘You say we’re not supposed to have our phones on at night,’ Lily pointed out.

‘You can keep them on now,’ Shay said, his heart bleeding for the sorrow he heard in his younger daughter’s voice. ‘I love you. I’ll be home soon, sweetie.’

He hung up and wondered if he should ring Cassie. But no, it was probably better to let her cool off. He needed to make this better. He sent a text instead.

Sorry, Cassie. It was all a terrible mistake. I love you.

From the sitting room, a plaintive voice called: ‘Shay, your dinner’s getting cold.’

‘Coming,’ he said resignedly.

Twenty

Coco looked at the tiny apricot-coloured pug puppy and decided that puppies in general, and pug puppies in particular, were God’s way of reminding people that He existed. There could be no
reason
for such utter beauty and pure squishiness, as Fiona called it.

‘Coco! They’re so squishy and velvety,’ she’d cried when she’d first seen the three puppies in the breeder’s house.

Coco had been reminded of adorable Agnes from
Despicable Me
– which they watched on a loop – and how happy she’d been when she’d won her beloved unicorn at the funfair.

‘Squishy, squishy, squishy,’ Fiona cooed again as she got to her knees and tried to hug all the puppies at once.

The breeder, a very down-to-earth woman who lived in a house covered in dog fur, watched benignly.

‘I love watching the kiddies with dogs,’ she said. ‘Our four grew up with dogs all around them, not just pugs. We actually started with Shih Tzus but then we took in a rescue pug.’ Seeing Coco’s horrified face, she said, ‘I know, who could dump any animal, but this beautiful little creature was abandoned by the side of the road and we took her in and that was it. Once you’ve seen a pug, you’re hooked. Blossom here has a lovely temperament,’ she added, referring to the three puppies’ mother. ‘Very calm and gentle. My three grandchildren play with her all the time and she’s never so much as nipped any of them. They really are beautiful family pets. Now the puppies, they
do
try and bite everything, and those teeth are very sharp, let me tell you. So try not to let your daughter—’

‘Fiona!’ interrupted Fiona, but she didn’t add that she wasn’t Coco’s daughter, Coco noticed with a pang.

‘Fiona,’ agreed the woman, ‘don’t put your fingers in their mouths, because those teeth are like sharp needles and they’ll reach a point when they really need to chew furniture and shoes when they’re teething. They’re just like babies.’

‘Babies don’t chew furniture,’ Fiona pointed out.

And then she sighed, and somehow she was sitting cross-legged on the floor with just one pug puppy nestled in her arms. It was, inevitably, the smallest of the puppies, the apricot-coloured creature with eyes that seemed too big for the pup’s face.

‘She is an unusual colour, given her parentage, no doubt about it,’ said the woman. ‘Blossom’s a pearl and the father’s also a pearl, but somehow this darling has come out apricot. It’s so long since we showed dogs – we only showed the Shih Tzus and not the pugs – and I have this notion in my head that apricots are rarer if you want to show her.’

‘We don’t want to show her,’ said Coco quickly. ‘She’s a pet. We don’t care about pedigrees or anything like that. We only talked to my grandmother’s pal at the kennel club because we wanted to make sure we weren’t getting a dog from a puppy farm.’

She and the woman, Anna, both shuddered.

‘Horrible places, using bitches like breeding machines and treating the puppies like money. This little one is able to go with you now but you have to be sure you want her, and of course they’re purebred so they’re not cheap. Her father is Sir Wilberforce Pumpkin the Third.’

Coco and Fiona both giggled at this.

‘It is a bit of a serious moniker,’ agreed Anna, ‘but then Blossom’s own kennel club name is quite long. She’s Blossom Princess of the South Seas. Adorable, isn’t it? We did think of showing her but it’s a very intense industry and you really have to be into it.’

‘I think I’m going to call her Banana,’ announced Fiona in the car on the way home as she sat with a box on her lap and an overexcited puppy trying to clamber out of it.

‘Banana, right,’ said Coco thoughtfully. ‘That’s an interesting name. It’s, well … She doesn’t look much like a banana.’

‘OK, Minion,’ said Fiona.

The Minions from the
Despicable Me
films were her favourite creatures of all time. She had a Minion pencil case, a Minion rubber and her own cuddly Kevin Minion dressed in a French maid outfit.

They stopped at traffic lights and both gazed into the box again.

‘I’m not really seeing her as a Minion either,’ Coco pointed out.

‘Onion,’ suggested Fiona.

They giggled all the way home while Banana/Minion/Onion clambered and climbed and licked and nibbled and panted her way happily through the journey. She really was a happy puppy. She was twelve weeks old, because Anna said she believed in letting the pups stay with their mother as long as possible.

‘Works better in the long run,’ she’d said. ‘They’re more able to adjust to the separation, which I think is very important. Makes for a happier dog and that’s what we want, after all.

At Coco’s, the puppy instantly peed on the carpet in front of the couch and then ran around investigating, with Fiona beside her, explaining everything.

‘This is the bathroom. You are too small to wee in the toilet,’ she said gravely. ‘This is my room where you can sleep. On my bed.’

Coco peeped in to see the pup being hoisted on to the bed, already full of teddies. Onion instantly began chewing a precious pink rabbit’s ear. Coco waited to see how Fiona would react.

‘Isn’t she adorable?’ she said, looking at her new pet with love.

‘How about Miracle as a name?’ said Coco.

‘Ugh.’ Fiona shot her most disgusted look at Coco. ‘You are so bad at names, Coco. Miracle is really bad. I think she’s Apricot, because she’s that colour and she’s small and roundy.’

‘Apricot is fabulous,’ said Coco reverently. But she thought:
She’ll always be a miracle to me.

Daisy and Apricot both made otherworldly squeaks of pleasure when they first set eyes on each other.

‘I tried quite a few names, Grammy,’ said Fiona earnestly, ‘but I thought Apricot suited her because she looks like an apricot, except she’s sort of a different shape.’

‘She’s beautiful,’ gasped Pearl, snuggling the puppy in her arms and petting her.

On the ground, Daisy was jumping up and down insanely, trying to get near the puppy, and once she did, it was love at first sight. Daisy kept trying to lick the smaller animal’s belly and eyes, and Apricot responded by climbing all over Daisy and nibbling her ears.

‘It hurts when she nibbles,’ said Fiona conversationally. ‘She’s eaten my fingers and several of my dolls, but it’s OK because I love her. She’s very beautiful.’

Pearl agreed. ‘And I love that you’re calling me Grammy now. Can I always be your grammy?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Fiona, and threw her arms eagerly around Pearl.

Over Fiona’s head, Pearl and Coco exchanged glances. It was wonderful what a few small pounds of velvety dog could do for a child. The downside of Apricot was that she did want to chew everything and she had the most incredibly sharp teeth, like baby shark teeth. She was going around nibbling table legs, chair legs, anything she could get her tiny teeth on.

‘I’m always leaving cupboards and wardrobe doors open,’ Coco said, ‘and trust me, I don’t anymore, ever since she completely destroyed the heels on my Cuban heels. They were so beautiful: patent leather, a tiny button at the front. I’ll never wear them again.’

‘She didn’t mean to, did you, Apricot?’ said Fiona.

Pearl laughed. ‘They never mean to, darling, they just can’t control themselves. Why don’t you take the two girls out into the garden and have a play, and myself and …’ She stopped, astonished, because she’d been about to say: ‘your mother’.

She corrected herself quickly: ‘While Coco and I have a chat.’

Fiona cajoled the two dogs outside, and Coco sat down at the kitchen table in her grandmother’s gloriously coloured kitchen and stared unseeing at the azure blue wall with its family photographs.

‘Things are going so well with Jo,’ she said. ‘Her speech has returned nearly one hundred per cent. The consultant says it’s incredible, although some people, if they have very mild strokes, can recover their speech like that. There are just a few words she stumbles over but she may never get that back. And she’s nearly got total control over her left arm, it’s just her leg that’s the problem – it still drags and she’s going to need rehab for a while. But she’s happy, she’s looking forward to the future, she’s looking forward to getting out and having a normal life again. And yet … I’m just so worried.’ She paused. ‘About Cassie. I can’t believe she and Shay haven’t sorted it out yet. It’s just so unlike her.’

‘I know,’ said Pearl as she sat down.

She didn’t want to make the inevitable cup of tea to try and make everything better. She was fed up of making tea as a distraction from real life.

‘What do you think pushed her over the edge?’ Pearl asked anxiously. ‘I’ve talked to her on the phone but I think she’s avoiding me. She cries all the time when I phone, or else she’s angry and says: “It’s Shay’s bloody fault”. As for Antoinette … Oh Coco, I don’t know what to do. I mean, Antoinette was behaving in a silly manner, but for Cassie to throw Shay out …’

Coco played with the sugar bowl on the table, twisting the silver spoon around and around in the grains of sugar.

‘Should we go round together?’ Pearl said. ‘Do you think that would help? Tell her it’s crazy to break up her family for this?’

Coco thought about it. ‘I honestly don’t think that’s going to work. It’s like …’ She felt that she was betraying Cassie by even saying this, but Pearl might know what to do. ‘It’s like she’s become a little crazy ever since the night Jo had her stroke.’

‘And you think that’s it?’ said Pearl, confused. ‘Jo having a stroke?’

‘No,’ said Coco. ‘That’s not it precisely. It was the conversation we had afterwards when I came home from the hospital. We started talking about our mother and what it had been like. I was talking about how I didn’t remember her, and Cassie said she did and how she’d always tried to protect me because she didn’t want me to be scared, but that she was always afraid that people left …’

Pearl breathed in heavily. ‘Oh, poor Cassie,’ she said, her hands beginning to shake. ‘That’s … that’s so sad. I had no idea. I thought it was just something with her and Shay and Antoinette. She tries so hard to make everything perfect …’

‘I think she tries to make everything perfect because she still wants the perfect family,’ Coco said. ‘That doesn’t mean that you and Dad didn’t give us the perfect family, but there’s some part of Cassie that wants the mum and the dad thing, and she’s determined to give the girls that. Antoinette messed it up and made Cassie think that Shay could leave. That’s what she’s afraid of: that people leave. And I don’t know what to say to her about that because, well …’ Coco shrugged. ‘Look at us. Our mother
did
leave so there’s no happy answer to that.’

‘Cooeee,’ said a voice from around the side of the house.

‘Oh heavens, no,’ said Pearl, closing her eyes wearily. ‘Not now.’

‘Anybody home?’ came the voice again.

There was a barrage of small puppy and larger puppy barking, and suddenly Edie was at the back door, resplendent in a beige suit with a little fur collar and a hat more suited to Ascot than a cool autumn day.

‘I just popped round for a minute and when nobody answered the front door, I thought I’d come round the back. Hello Coco, you’re looking very well, I must say. Red suits you, you should wear it more often, but I do think something modern, maybe.’

Edie’s basilisk gaze took in Coco’s bombshell dress: a glamorous creation that wasn’t vintage but looked somehow exquisitely forties and showed off her bosom and tiny waist to great effect.

‘Nothing short or ugly like young girls are wearing these days, but perhaps not anything as tight as that either, because I did love the style of the clothes from the forties and fifties, Coco, but they
are
gone, after all.’

Despite everything, Coco giggled. Edie had that effect on her.

Pearl got to her feet and laid a hand on Coco’s. ‘We’ll talk about this later,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You and Fiona might as well get out of here because we won’t be able to talk with Edie here.’

Once Fiona, Coco and Apricot had gone, Edie sat down at the table like a duchess and watched her older sister make tea. It had always been the same: Edie had somehow managed to behave as if she was the aristocracy while everyone else in the family was there to serve her.

Sometimes Pearl knew exactly why Harry had cheated. It was very hard to live up to her sister’s exacting standards, and one always felt that one was somehow not matching up.

‘Coco looked very well,’ said Edie, rubbing a bit of fluff off her beige skirt.

Daisy did not sit at her feet. Daisy was a clever dog and knew that Edie had no time for small, velvety animals with big eyes. Instead, Daisy sat, slightly scared, behind her mistress’s chair, her eyes bigger than ever.

‘I still wish you’d tell her to wear ordinary clothes, Pearl,’ Edie went on. ‘She’ll never catch and keep the right sort of man in anything that shows off her chest. Well, she’ll catch a man, but …’ Edie paused for effect. ‘I suppose I did tell you that Red O’Neill was back in town recently? He’s quite a catch, you know. Plenty of money, apparently. I’m not sure what it is he does but he’s been in the social columns—’

‘You mean in the gossip pages?’ interrupted Pearl acidly.

‘You say tomayto, I say tomaato,’ said Edie. ‘Anyway, he’s back, he’s still not married, and I don’t see why she shouldn’t make a play for him again.’

‘Oh Edie,’ said Pearl in exasperation. ‘Coco split up with Red over four years ago, and she’s hardly likely to
make a play for him
now, as you so indelicately put it. She’s getting on with her life.’

‘No she’s not,’ Edie insisted. ‘She’s looking after someone else’s child and her life is on hold. I never hear of her going out on dates, and even if she did, who is going to look at a woman who wears outfits from the forties and fifties? For goodness’ sake, she’s a beautiful girl. She should be wearing elegant, modern clothes. Maybe something long and flowing with little court shoes and—’

‘Edie,’ interrupted Pearl sweetly, ‘I hate to tell you, but those aren’t modern clothes. Those are old-fashioned clothes, but they’re simply the old-fashioned clothes that
you
approve of. Coco likes wearing old-fashioned clothes that
she
approves of: the sort of things she sells in her shop.’