Between Sisters (35 page)

Seeing as she was getting nowhere, Edie changed the subject. ‘How’s Cassie?’ she said. ‘I hear she threw the husband out. Girls today – they haven’t a notion how to handle men.’

Pearl’s lips tightened as she poured the tea. ‘Shay and Cassie are having some problems. I wouldn’t say she threw her husband out; I’d say that they are living separately while they work it out.’ She closed her eyes momentarily and said a prayer that she wouldn’t burn in hell for such a blatant lie.

Cassie had indeed thrown Shay out, and even though Pearl had been around twice and had phoned most days to talk to her about it, Cassie refused to talk about the idea of Shay coming home, beyond saying: ‘There’s no coming back from what he did, Pearl. No coming back at all.’ All of which was followed by bursting into tears.

Pearl would then hang up and feel like bursting into tears herself.

‘I hope you aren’t spreading stories about our family business, Edie,’ Pearl said, slightly cross now.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, of course I’m not. It’s just people ask and I need to have some story made up to tell them. I could say he’s gone off somewhere for work. His mother lives on the other side of the city, after all, so I’d get away with that. Stupid woman, always trying to look younger than she is. I don’t know why people don’t give in to growing old gracefully.’

‘So says the woman who dyes her hair,’ Pearl added with a hint of rancour.

Edie got to her feet in a stately manner. ‘There’s no pleasing you today, is there, madam? I don’t know what upset you but I’m going to go,’ she said. ‘I know when I’m not wanted.’ And she sailed out to the front door, closing it with an almighty slam.

Pearl reached down, picked Daisy up and put her on her lap. ‘For a woman who says she’s quite frail, Edie can certainly slam a door,’ she told her dog. ‘Come on – let’s go to Peter’s. I need to talk to someone who’ll listen to me.’

‘So what am I going to do?’ said Pearl.

She was sitting in a deep, comfortable armchair in Peter’s house and as she looked around, she wondered why they hadn’t held the Thursday night poker club in other people’s houses over the years. Somehow they’d all got into the habit of having it in hers, and yet Peter’s house was so beautiful, the walls full of paintings done by his late wife, Loretta, who was a talented botanic artist, and everywhere else decorated with things from his travels over the years when he and Loretta used to go on cruises to exotic lands.

Loretta had loved Egyptian pictures on papyrus, and they vied for space with her exquisite watercolours and funny prints of New Orleans chefs in patisseries making beignets and other delicacies. Pearl had never spent a lot of time in Peter’s house. It was as if there was some old-fashioned idea in her head that a lady never went to a gentleman’s house, and there’d be less talk if a gentleman visited a lady.

What poppycock that had all been,
she thought now. Who really cared if they saw her crossing the garden to visit Peter in his house?

Peter hadn’t offered to make tea. Instead, recognising the stress on Pearl’s face, he’d opened a bottle of good French white wine, and put it on the table in front of them.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

It was one of the many things she liked about him, the way he wanted all the information before he made any pronouncements on any subject; entirely different from her sister, who decided her opinion long before she had any of the facts.

Pearl explained how Coco had come to visit and how she’d put down Cassie’s total misery and anxiety to the night they’d talked about their mother leaving.

‘I knew that’s what it was but I kept hoping I was wrong, so when Coco made it obvious that Cassie’s abandonment issues are at the heart of it, I wanted to cry,’ Pearl said to Peter. ‘I wanted to say: “It’s all my fault, Coco. All my fault.” I thought I was doing the right thing and, over the years, I’ve realised I didn’t do the right thing at all; it just seemed like the right thing at the time. But when you don’t tell the truth at the start, when do you tell it later?’

Peter knew the story: she’d told him before and she trusted his judgement.

‘I think at the time it didn’t look as if you had any other option,’ he said gently. ‘You were trying to protect those two girls, Pearl, and you did. You raised them, looked after them, loved them. You gave them everything you could—’

‘Except a mother,’ Pearl interrupted. ‘I helped take their mother away from them and she never came back.’

‘Jim was involved too,’ said Peter. ‘And he was the girls’ father, after all. He knew what could happen. He’d seen what had happened with Marguerite and the car crash. He knew it was just a matter of time before there was a really serious accident. You did what you thought was right at the time, Pearl. Marguerite needed rehab and you had to use tough love to make her get it.’

‘But I don’t know if she ever did get to rehab – she just disappeared. I can’t get that thought out of my head, Peter. She was a lovely woman and she was damaged, I see that now. I should have tried harder to keep her here and help her.’ Pearl buried her face in her hands. ‘I wish I could turn the clock back and make things different. We thought we were doing the right thing but we were so harsh, so tough, and now look: two wonderful women both terrified of being abandoned. That’s why Coco and Red split up, you know. She was sure he was leaving her for someone else, so she pushed him away, and that’s what Cassie’s doing now. She’s pushing Shay away before he can leave her, before he can choose his mother over her. Now where do you think they learned that lesson?’

Twenty-One

Having children as a single mother: it was the sort of huge subject she once would have talked about with Jo or Cassie, Coco thought as she went around tidying up the apartment. Fiona was asleep in bed, snuggled up happily with the nightlight on in her room and all her precious teddies clustered around her. Apricot was asleep in a furry dog bed on the floor, also surrounded by teddies. Coco had explained that if Apricot fell out of the bed in the night, she could seriously hurt herself, so she lay in her bed on the floor beside Fiona’s, snoring gently.

The spare room was totally Fiona’s now. Coco couldn’t see it any other way but with a child in it. It was amazing how difficult it was looking after a child on your own, and yet how incredibly rewarding. She went around picking up pencils, dolls’ clothes, bits of paper, all the stuff that seemed to fall and drop on to the floor. There were tiny Barbie shoes in the fluffy rug under the coffee table, half-chewed by Apricot, a couple of kids’ CD cases open with their discs missing, stuff everywhere – stuff that was a sign that this apartment was fully lived in. Coco loved it. She loved taking care of Fiona and the sense of sheer joy it gave her.

Fiona had stayed over before, a couple of times but not often, except then Coco had felt that they were both on their best behaviour, because even though she was Fiona’s godmother, Coco wasn’t a mum; she didn’t understand how things were done, but now she did. Now she realised that you had arguments over cereal in the morning and teeth-brushing, and were able to say things like: ‘Oh, stop complaining, you little monkey,’ or tickle Fiona to ease things along when she tried to brush Fiona’s hair with a special brush to remove tangles.

Before, she wouldn’t have known how to do those things, would have been afraid to say the wrong thing in case she upset Fiona, but now their relationship was so much stronger, pliable, able to withstand the give and take of two human beings living together – even if one of them was nine years old going on for twenty-three.

All of which had brought Coco to her current state: of thinking about how she could have her own baby – and with neither her closest confidants around with whom to discuss it.

Cassie was living in a devastated wasteland of misery over Shay having gone.

‘You told him to go,’ Coco had reminded her, because it was her job as her sister to make Cassie see the truth. She’d even told Shay he needed to come and see his wife, but he hadn’t done that either. Idiot.

And there was no point in talking to Jo. Jo was coming out of the black hole that was her stroke and was still emotionally fragile. She wasn’t able to cope with other people’s problems, so Coco was researching seriously on the internet herself how single women could have babies. There were so many choices: sperm banks, friends, or – more controversially – friends who didn’t know what she wanted them for.

She hated the idea of her baby’s father being a man she’d used purely as a donor and not told. But there was no point waiting anymore for Prince Charming to come along either. She’d had that before and he’d betrayed her.

The little niggle in her heart that said:
maybe you didn’t give him a proper chance?
was pushed firmly to the side.

If he’d really been the one, he’d have come back, wouldn’t he?

Dan O’Neill met his brother for a pint in the bar in the Merrion and started the conversation by saying: ‘What’s up, bro?’

‘Does anything have to be up?’ said Red testily.

‘It does if you clandestinely slip into the country, ask to meet me and Mike, and tell us to say nothing to the parents. Ma will disembowel you, by the way, if she discovers you have been in Dublin and haven’t called in. I don’t care how many millions you have in the bank – you’re toast.’

‘I told him that,’ said Mike, coming back from the lavish bathrooms. ‘I love this place,’ he said. ‘There’s art everywhere – even on your way to the loo.’

‘You know, money has changed me – I can’t go unless I’ve passed an expensive, highly insured painting on the way,’ deadpanned Red.

‘You won’t be able to stop going once Ma has ripped out your intestines,’ Dan laughed.

The two Dublin-based brothers roared until they thought they might throw up.

‘I’ll drop in, all right?’ said Red.

‘And you never met us,’ Mike warned. ‘Or we’ll be killed too.’

‘So, what is up?’ Dan asked.

Red cradled the pint he didn’t really want and looked at the two men he was closest to in the world: men who’d fallen in love and had managed to stay in love, get married, and even have children. It all seemed like a miracle to Red now.

‘I want your honest opinion here: did I screw things up with Coco? Should I have stayed around, tried harder?’

Mike and Dan sat back in their chairs.

‘
Now
he asks us,’ said Dan. ‘Four years later.’

‘I told you at the time: women can be tricky,’ Mike pointed out. ‘But would you listen? No. You knew it all.’

‘Cut the sermon,’ begged Red. ‘Just tell me if I screwed up because I’m going crazy here. I don’t think I’m over her—’

‘Knew it!’ said the brothers in unison, high-fiving each other.

‘If it’s any help,’ said Mike, ‘Dolly’s cousin, Trixie, is a stylist and she’s in and out of Coco’s shop all the time, and apparently Coco is never with anyone. No man in her life. Trixie tried to set her up with some bloke last year but Coco said there was no point, she was hopeless with men.’

‘Really?’ breathed Red.

‘Yeah, really,’ said Mike. ‘So Dolly comes home and tells me, and I wanted to tell you but you were seeing that Latvian model at the time.’

‘We weren’t going out, I just met her at a fundraising dinner!’ said Red, irate. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because Dolly said after the way you’d treated Coco, you didn’t deserve her. And I said what had she heard about the whole thing, and she said you’d two-timed Coco—’

‘Which is why both our wives glared at you for the first year after you broke up with Coco. Alix said you broke her heart,’ said Dan.

‘Dolly said the same,’ agreed Mike. ‘Now you told us that Coco dumped you, and everyone else thinks you two-timed her, so what did happen?’

Red sighed. ‘I was asked to do a favour for a friend …’ he began.

‘She’s a brilliant accountant, Red,’ said Teddy Mitchell. ‘She just needs a start and she’s having trouble getting off the starting blocks.’

‘Why?’ said Red.

‘The country’s falling down with kids with good degrees, and there are no jobs right now. The other problem is that she’s drop-dead gorgeous, got a Cameron Diaz thing going, and everyone thinks she’s going to walk out of the job one day and straight on to the set of
Britain & Ireland’s Next Top Model
, so why would they bother hiring her.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’ said Red wryly.

‘I’m not. Her father told me one HR person actually said that to her. They told her to tone down her looks, but to be honest, and I’ve known her since she was a baby, she can’t. Unless she goes in like a plain-clothed nun, she hasn’t a hope.’

‘I don’t buy that. Rightly or wrongly, good-looking people do better in business,’ said Red matter-of-factly. ‘She needs to try harder. Has she tried getting female mentorship?’

‘Look, Red, just talk to her, give her a job for a few months,’ begged Teddy. ‘You must have a space somewhere for her, just to get her started. All she needs is some job on her CV. Her father’s my oldest pal and she needs a start someplace.’

‘Fine, Teddy. Send me her CV, but I’ll need to meet her too. Lots of places to hide on a CV, but none in person. I can’t believe that being good-looking is a disability in getting a job. Now I’ve got to rush, Coco and I are off out to dinner.’

‘You’ve set the date, I hear?’

Red smiled. ‘Yup,’ he said. ‘I can’t wait.’

The brilliant accountant’s name was Kirsten Marker, and her CV sounded pretty brilliant too. She’d aced her way through college, so there had to be a good reason why she wasn’t employed yet. Red didn’t buy all this stuff about being too beautiful and scaring people off – there had to be more to it than that. So he phoned her up and she sounded shocked to hear from him.

‘I’m off on a trip on Friday but I could see you Thursday night,’ he said. ‘I’ve a business dinner in the city at six thirty, so I could meet you briefly afterwards. L’Ecrivain at nine. Coffee for half an hour and then I’m gone.’

Kirsten searched her wardrobe for something to wear: something as unsexy as possible. She had clear glasses and tied her naturally blonde hair back into a knot to try to dampen her natural sex appeal, but then guys kept saying she looked like a really hot ice-maiden type. She’d had four years of that in college and she was sick of it.

‘Dye your hair, why don’t you?’ her sister had said, who didn’t have Kirsten’s looks and was fed up with being told how being good-looking was a problem when it came to getting a job.

There was just no winning.

If tonight didn’t work out, she might well go for the hair dye, she thought grimly. Tonight she was going to look like Ms Corporate when she met Red O’Neill. Her grey trouser suit, which kept her long legs hidden, with the button-up white shirt underneath, was perfect. As well as tying her hair back, she wore almost no make-up.

‘Don’t I know you from TV?’ asked the guy on the bus as Kirsten paid her fare.

‘No,’ she sighed. Brown hair might be nice. Or should she go the whole hog and go for coal black, which really wouldn’t suit her and therefore might be the answer?

Red had asked Kirsten to wait downstairs for him in L’Ecrivain until he phoned and asked her to join him upstairs.

Didn’t want the guys he was with to see him with her, Kirsten reasoned, which made her like the sound of him even more. According to the gossip columns, Red was engaged to a girl named Coco, who ran a fabulous vintage shop and looked like a petite and gloriously dark-haired showgirl in all the photos. Red looked pretty good in the photos too – the tall, brooding type.
Lucky Coco,
thought Kirsten.

Finally, at five past nine, she got a text on her phone.

Come on up, Ms Marker.

This is it,
Kirsten thought nervously. This man had the power to give her a job and finally get her started on her career. People would stop thinking she was nothing but a good-looking girl and appreciate her brain.

Red O’Neill was better-looking in the flesh than in photos, but he looked sternly forbidding as he showed her where to sit, which was as far away from him as a four-person table with two empty spaces could allow.

‘Tell me about yourself, Ms Marker,’ he said, ‘and how you could help my company if you came to work for me, as Teddy thinks you can.’

Definitely not a cheesy flirt merchant,
Kirsten thought with relief, and found herself relaxing a little.

Coco loved late-night city shopping on Thursdays. Red was still hinting about their honeymoon, and even though Coco knew for a fact that they were going island-hopping in Greece via a luxury yacht, he was still pretending she might need a few sweaters.

‘You can’t penguin-watch without a few sweaters,’ he kept saying. ‘A few fleeces too. Take that old navy one with the paint on it: I love that.’

Messer,
she thought fondly.

Tonight she’d bought two bikinis and a colourful chiffon cover-up, along with a sun hat and a pair of sandals far more expensive than the sort of footwear she’d normally buy.

Red was always going on about how it was their money, but Coco was sort of old-fashioned that way and liked buying her own stuff.

She bundled everything into her car and thought about Red’s business dinner. It was in L’Ecrivain, he’d told her, which was only a few minutes’ drive away. He said he hoped to be finished and home by ten, so she thought she might meet him there for a drink. Normally she didn’t crash his business meetings, but he was always so precise about times, so if she got there at twenty-five past nine, he was sure to be nearly on his way out the door.

Red liked Kirsten. She was smart, savvy and was clearly trying very hard not to look even vaguely attractive with that ugly grey suit and a shirt buttoned up to her neck.

‘Are those real glasses?’ he asked, gesturing to the heavy black frames that took up so much of her face but still couldn’t hide her natural beauty.

She blushed. ‘No, but I hope they’re off-putting.’

When he laughed, she blurted out: ‘It’s not funny! Guys say why do I want to work in accountancy when I could be a model or an actress. I don’t want to be either of those things. I’d like to run my own consultancy eventually, but I’ll never get my foot in the door when people keep thinking I’m nothing more than the sum of my looks.’

‘Sorry,’ Red apologised, and rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s been a long day. Hey, do you want a glass of wine? I am not hitting on you, by the way,’ he added, holding his hands up, but grinning at the same time. ‘I’ve only had water myself because I wanted a clear head, and a nice glass of wine would be lovely. By the way, I’m getting married in a month and I adore my fiancée, right? So I’m not falling for what Teddy calls your drop-dead gorgeous looks,’ he said with heavy irony.

Kirsten blushed.

Lucky, lucky Coco.

‘You’ve a first-class degree,’ he said, flicking through her CV. ‘Teddy Mitchell says the problem is you’ve got the face to be a model, and in this day and age, people assume that if you look like one, why the heck would you not want to be one.’

‘And I don’t,’ said Kirsten earnestly. ‘Nothing against models, but I want to use my degree, and I need a start. Please, Mr O’Neill, that’s all I’m looking for.’

Red was tired and his eyes felt gritty. Thank heavens that dinner meeting was over; he just needed to sort out this thing for Teddy Mitchell and he could go home to Coco. He liked this girl, though – she had determination and he liked that in an employee. He opened his top button and loosened his tie, while Kirsten signalled a waiter and they ordered two glasses of wine.

Red had Kirsten’s CV open on the table but wasn’t looking at it by the time Coco made it up the stairs and looked around the room for her fiancé. They’d gone through her college highlights and Kirsten, in an attempt to make herself sound like a rounded person, because that’s what you were supposed to do in interviews, was telling him the story of how she’d done a sky-diving jump, even though she was terrified of heights, and how she’d screamed the poor tandem guy’s ears off all the way down.