Between Sisters (42 page)

‘Tell me,’ Cassie went on, ‘did you sort out the seating plan so that you know where to put Aunt Edie so she can do minimum damage?’

‘Red says he has a sweet, churchgoing widowed uncle on his father’s side. He was captain of his golf club, so he’ll do nicely. I’m putting her beside him.’

‘But she might get angry because she’s not close enough to the action,’ Cassie pointed out.

‘Oh, don’t worry – she couldn’t get any closer to the top table unless she was sitting on the cake,’ said Coco. ‘I don’t want her shrieking at me for the next twenty years.’

Coco suddenly saw that the bathroom was free and raced into it. Taking out her mobile, she rang Red.

‘Hi darling,’ she said.

‘Hi beautiful,’ replied Red. ‘I was thinking about you wearing stockings … Are you?’

‘I might be,’ said Coco saucily. ‘But we are going to a church, remember. No groping.’

‘Right, no groping,’ repeated Red. ‘None at all?’

‘Perhaps in the car on the way back here,’ said Coco, relenting. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you,’ said Red.

In her perfect
eau-de-Nil
house, Edie dithered over which diamond brooch to wear. She hated dithering; it annoyed her so much in other people and she couldn’t bear such behaviour in herself either. But the right impression was important today. She wanted the O’Neills to know they were marrying into a substantial family. Just because Pearl had never had two ha’pennies to rub together, and her verandah was still made out of those old packing cases that got painted blue every summer, didn’t mean that the other branch of the family hadn’t done well.

Edie was determined to wear her little mink jacket to demonstrate this. She’d thought of wearing a lemon short-sleeved sheath dress, but then decided her lower arms might look crêpey and decided there was nothing worse than a lady of her vintage showing off crêpey arms. It had to be long sleeves, she decided, even though it was a fabulous day for May and the weather forecast was for a marvellously sunny day.

‘Wear what you feel like,’ Pearl had said in exasperation when they’d had this discussion. ‘Nobody’s looking at your arms to see if they’re wrinkly or not, and if they are, do you really care for the opinion of those sort of people? As I said, wear what you want. You’re beautiful.’

A lifetime of being thought of as Pearl Keneally’s sharp, harsher and much less pretty younger sister reared up in Edie’s mind like a wild horse. Nobody had ever said she was beautiful, not even Harry.

‘No, you’re the beautiful one, everyone always said so,’ said Edie, stung. ‘Even Harry never said I was beautiful, so don’t make fun of me.’

Pearl looked at her sadly. ‘Harry was a good man but he had a roving eye, and there was nothing you could have done about that, Edie. Even if you’d been Rita Hayworth, he’d have been off. You were always so beautiful and elegant, so perfectly turned out. You made him, you made that business flourish, and he loved you. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have come back.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Edie, too upset to realise that Pearl had known about Harry’s peccadilloes after all.

‘He loved you and so do I. Plus, I think you’re beautiful,’ said Pearl simply. ‘You’re my sister; I’ll always love you. Stop worrying about if you’re showing too much wrinkly arm and wear what you want to Coco’s wedding. She’d want you to be happy. I want you to be happy. I’m sure that Harry, sitting up there chatting up angels, wants you to be happy too, so if you happen to catch some dashing gent’s eye, you’ll do it in your lemon yellow faster than in that dull beige dress that’d make anyone look like they’d been embalmed.’

Edie couldn’t help herself: laughter burst out of her. ‘Pearl, you’re dreadfully irreligious, you do know that?’

‘And you can be terribly po-faced, Edie, but I love you all the same.’

Phoebe and Ian took a moment from fixing headdresses on to people to sit out in the sun on the front step and breathe.

‘We must have been mad to go into fashion,’ Ian said, face still triumphant from how wonderful everyone looked in his amazing headpieces.

‘Mad,’ agreed Phoebe, smiling at how proud he looked. He was such a darling. So talented, and not just at fashion either. Right at this moment, his mother – handsewer extraordinaire – was in the McLoughlins’ house with Phoebe’s mother discussing the whole McLoughlin organic hand-dyed and handmade craft range.

‘It can’t be like any old craft range,’ Ian had said when he explained the idea to Phoebe. ‘Not just lavender sachets, etcetera. No, you need a USP.’

‘Is that like a UFO?’ teased Phoebe.

‘We can’t have her involved in the business,’ Red had said, amused.

‘No bullying,’ Coco had intervened.

‘I am not bullying. I am giving them the benefit of my business acumen,’ Red said.

‘And seed money!’ said Phoebe in a loud whisper. ‘He can say what he likes.’

Ian and Phoebe had designed the range: hand-dyed linen bags for laundry and travel, herbal sachets, and all quirkily embroidered with words like ‘lingerie’ or ‘knickers’, depending on the market. Red and Ian, who was proving to have a fabulous business brain, were already thinking along the lines of luxury bed throws and cushion covers, and three potential premises in an industrial estate in Bray were currently being looked at.

The McLoughlin farm’s sheep had been sold, although the hens and the ducks remained.

‘They’re pets,’ Kate had told her daughter. ‘Besides, Prince needs something to herd or he’ll go mad.’

Ethan and Mary-Kate were astonished to hear that their mother would be earning money, and had already asked if they could buy paint and do up the inside of the house.

‘A salary for definite,’ Red had said gruffly, before mentioning the sort of money that made Kate and her children gasp.

‘You are a kind man,’ Coco had said, kissing him.

‘How long has it taken for you to figure that out?’ demanded Red.

‘It will work out, won’t it?’ Phoebe asked Ian now.

Ian gave her his
I am a genius
stare and then laughed. ‘Course it will, you daft maggot. How can it not with us behind it.’

They had to leave for the church in half an hour. The house was chaotic with laughter and joy, so Elsa – who wasn’t used to so many people around her all the time, unless she was in a television studio – went into the back garden for a moment’s peace.

She sat down on a bench that looked hand-carved and wondered if it had been there all those years before. She thought it might have been. She might have sat on this very bench with Cassie and hugged her as a little girl, with Pearl’s old roses nodding their heads peacefully in the sun beside them.

She still felt nervy about returning home. No matter how much they all wanted it to work, she’d been gone a long time and her daughters had been through so much since – plenty of it because of her absence.

‘Pearl said you were out here.’

It was Cassie, looking elegant and beautiful with her hair piled on top of her head with tendrils snaking down around her cheekbones. Her gown was the sort of thing Cassie never normally wore. It was fitted close to the body and Cassie had been quite shocked to see how slim and feminine it made her look.

‘You look lovely,’ said Elsa to her older daughter.

There was the most work to do with Cassie, she realised. Coco was so full of joy about getting married, but Cassie had endured more pain, Elsa knew.

It was Cassie who’d been the grown-up when Coco was small, Cassie who’d taken care of her sister and protected her from all harm. Elsa could see it in their relationship: the way Coco turned to Cassie all the time, showing her things, smiling and asking questions.

Coco had really had two stand-in mothers: Pearl and Cassie, while Cassie had only had one and the memory of another one who’d abruptly left her.

Cassie sat down beside Elsa on the bench.

‘Do you hate me?’ asked Elsa. ‘I could understand if you do. It’s all right to hate me. What we feel deeply inside isn’t always what we think we ought to feel, but you have to honour your feelings. There are no good or bad ones, just what we experience.’

Unexpectedly, Cassie laughed. ‘I’m glad I know where my desire to fix people and my over-analytical brain comes from,’ she said.

Surprised, Elsa smiled. ‘I want you to feel what you need to feel …’ she began again.

‘Elsa, I have been overanalysing my feelings about you for my whole life,’ she said. ‘Everything that happened in my life, I wondered if it happened because I didn’t have a mother or a conventional upbringing. I have my husband back, my family back and my mother back. Right now, I have had enough of analysing.’ She turned to face Elsa, which was difficult on the tiny bench. ‘And I believe that you can’t analyse me because I am your daughter.’

‘Not professionally,’ agreed Elsa, beginning to smile, ‘but I can’t help myself.’

‘Let’s make a deal.’ Cassie took Elsa’s hand in hers. ‘Let’s put off the analysis till after the wedding – but if we see someone with a particularly weird hat or an odd tic we need to discuss, we can analyse the heck out of them. Deal?’

‘Deal,’ said Elsa, smiling.

‘Now, I have to round up the troops and get everyone ready. Are you OK out here?’

‘Perfect,’ said Elsa, and she was.

When Cassie had gone inside, Elsa looked at the house with its cheerily painted walls and the south-of-France blue verandah hung with tea lamps and flowers, and let the pain go. It had been such a long journey but she was here now and she could be happy. She’d battled to be here and she deserved it.

There might be tough times ahead but she would be thankful for her beautiful daughters and her family and try to get through it. It was all any of them could do.

Then she raised her face to the sun and let the heat bathe her skin.

Today was all they had; tomorrow they would cope with when it came.

Acknowledgements

I love reading other people’s acknowledgements. You see names you recognise because publishing is such a lovely business and people move around, so you might know someone; and you see that other writers dribble hysterical thanks to that person who found a vital notebook on the bus and can be thrilled that it’s not just you who loses stuff.

My dedications go a bit mad, but I don’t care: I love thanking all the lovely people who had a part in a book or in my life when I was writing the book. Writing is part of living, so you don’t have to have a plot idea to assist (I am dreadful at keeping the plot to myself when I am writing, so nobody really gets a chance to have a plot idea), but you might have dragged me off for a skinny cappuccino and a chat when my head was bursting with book, and that is a gift beyond rubies.

First, thanks to my readers, without whom I’d still be writing on that second-hand kitchen table with nobody reading a word. Please keep talking to me: I love your emails and messages. It’s talking to friends. I love it when we meet on tours and I recognise people.

I love social media, but it is so obsessive – I go on benders of Facebook and oh, Pinterest … I have never been a person to spend hours whizzing through my phone but Pinterest is hideously addictive: cute pics of animals, yoga moves to make all the aches go away and ideas of how to crochet adorable things: I no longer crochet adorable things – I just
look
at pictures of how to crochet adorable things.

For friendship and professionalism, thanks to dear Jonathan Lloyd, Lucia Rae, Melissa Pimentel and all at Curtis Brown; thanks to my wonderful new family at Orion, especially dear Susan Lamb, Kate Mills, Juliet Ewers, David Young, Gaby Young, Louisa Macpherson, Marissa Hussey, Hannah Atkinson, Jemima Forrester, Julia Pidduck, Pandora White, Bethan Jones, Susan Howe, Jon Wood, Emma Dowson, Jenny Page, Dallas Manderson, Andrew Taylor, Breda Purdue, Jim Binchy, Ruth Shern, Joanna Smyth and everyone who does such a glorious job selling my books and doing the really hard work. Also thank you to lovely Olivia Caffrey for doing such a sterling job on the Audible version of my last book.

Thanks also to lovely Anna Egelstaff, Christine Fairbrother, Louise Sherwin-Stark, Justin Ratcliff, Adele Fewster and all the gorgeous people in Hachette Australia, as well as Ruby Mitchell, Mel Winder and the whole team in Hachette New Zealand. Last year’s tour was simply glorious and I met such wonderful people (as ever), and a special hello to all of you.

Thanks to the fabulously talented Emily Griffin and Fareeda Bullert at Grand Central Publishing for making US publication so blissful.

Thanks to all the wonderful booksellers around the world who sell my books and are such a vital part of the team. There is such a thrill to go into a shop in an airport and see my name.

Thanks to my wonderful translators all over the world who have somehow managed to take my words and make sense of them, especially lovely Nelly Ganancia who came here with her darling daughter Clémentine and her husband. Nelly Laurent translates my books for Presses de la Cité, and I am in awe of her ability.

Boundless thanks to Aileen Galvin who runs publicity with such fabulous skill, charm and utter professionalism and to the inimitable Terry Prone of The Communications Clinic who is such a wonderful friend. Thanks to Sarah Conroy for much more than organisation, and wonderful Joanne McElgunn, the vintage queen!

Thanks to the charming Michael Doorly who generously gave a donation to UNICEF Ireland in order to have his name used in the book. Thanks to Jojo Hennessy who gave generously to CLIC Sargent, for children with cancer, for her name to be used – I am using it in my next book as I have plans for this name … It will not be you, Jojo, but your name lit a light in my head.

Thanks to my friends in UNICEF Ireland, both past and present, for all the incredible work they do for children around the world. Last year’s trip to Jordan to see a Syrian refugee camp, the Al Zata’ari Camp, showed me how much work we, the luckier part of the world, need to do to help people around the world in crisis.

For research, thanks to Garry Connolly, Jane Devitt and Laura Drake – and I never even got round to talking to lovely Jane. Sorry!! Thanks to Aine for telling me her story and Sadhbh McLoughlin for medical research (can’t do spoilers here!) for some of the most vital research of the book.

Thanks to my dear friends, without whom I might go mad. OK, madder. Thanks to Emma Hannigan, Patricia Scanlan, Fiona O’Brien, Ella Griffin, Marian Keyes, Kelly Callaghan, Judy McLoughlin, Kate Thompson, LisaMarie Redmond, Aidan Storey, Karen-Maree Griffith, Christine Farmer, Aisling Carroll, Nadia Pfeiffer, Santina Kennedy, Lorna Byrne, Evan Stewart, AnneMarie Casey O’Connor, Dr Mary Helen Hensley, Kate Kerrigan. If I keep listing, this will be huge! There are so many others, and I shall just have to hand out books! Thanks to my dear yoga friends, Marguerite, Anni, Anne, Gary, Dennis, Marese, Catherine, Shane, Mick, Mairead, Carol, Bernie and all the other friends who make my life so lovely.

Enormous thanks to Margaret Fagan and Becca Kavanagh, who keep me entirely sane and happy. What would we do without our coffee breaks?

Thanks to my beloved family, as always: Lucy, Francis, Mum, Dave, Anne, Naomi, Laura, Emer and Robert, not to mention Dexter the Superdog. Thanks to Dinky, Scamp and Licky who cover me with dog fur and love.

Finally, thanks to Dylan, Murray and John, without whom I wouldn’t be able to do any of it.