Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming - Cathy Kelly - Страница 20

Izzie, Anneliese and Brendan sat at the kitchen table around untouched cups of tea. The tea made Izzie realise she was home, for sure: only in her birthplace was everybody convinced that, when all else failed, making tea helped.

Her father sat opposite her, looking much older than he had the last time. She hadn’t been home in over a year – how was it that time between visits home seemed to expand the longer you lived abroad?

The plus of emigration was that you never spent long enough at home to be irritated by all your family’s annoying little idiosyncrasies, stuff that niggled when you were in close contact. The minus was that your family aged so much in your absence.

Every time she came home, she had that feeling of watching another frame in a speeded-up piece of film.

Dad was sixty-seven and when she said it fast, it didn’t sound old at all, until they’d embraced in the hospital and she felt that he was no longer her solid father, just skinny, diminished and older. But then, she was older too.

Older, just not much wiser, she thought with bitterness. Joe had left two messages on her phone. She’d listened to his voice and wished she had the strength to erase the messages without having to hear all of them. But she couldn’t do that. Like an addict, she had to hear his voice, just in case he said what she longed to hear above all else:

I love you and need you. I’m coming to be with you, Izzie.

But that wasn’t what he’d said. Instead, he’d gone for a safe message that managed to say nothing:

‘I know you’re upset, but please call me back, I hate to think of you away with us not talking, call me.’

Call me.

Izzie knew what she wanted to hear him say: I was wrong, I love you, I totally understand what you want from me and I was stalling for time in New York.

But even when she’d gone away from him, saying she didn’t want to see him again, he hadn’t said those words.

For the first time, she began to link up the two Joes – the one she loved, who was funny, warm and sexy; and the business version, who obviously hadn’t become wealthy and powerful by being Mr Pushover. Had she made the classic female mistake of thinking that underneath the tough businessman was a teddy bear only she could see? And all along, the only thing underneath the tough businessman façade was a tough man.

‘I do love you, but it’s not that simple,’ he’d said.

She’d known it wasn’t simple. And she’d done her best to block that out because the lightning strike of love was so strong that it had seemed it must be their destiny to be together. This wasn’t a scheming, sex-fuelled fling: it was the real thing. True love trumped a marriage that was a marriage in name only, surely? Or so she’d assumed.

Assume makes an ass out of me and u, as somebody once said.

Izzie Silver might be a dumb broad, but nobody was going to make an ass out of her twice.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said her father, clearly desperate to break the silence round the kitchen table. ‘Is it possible Jamie is a brother of Lily’s, somebody who died when she was young and that’s why we’ve never heard of him? Infant mortality was terrible eighty and ninety years ago. If Jamie was her little brother, it would all make sense…’ Brendan’s voice trailed off. ‘Maybe Edward knows, or maybe there’s something in the family records.’

Even in her exhausted, jet-lagged state, Izzie was astute enough to sense Anneliese sitting up uncomfortably when Brendan spoke. It was the mention of her uncle Edward’s name that had done it, Izzie decided.

Dad had said something when he phoned her in New York about Edward seeming oddly reticent about speaking to his wife. Dad hadn’t known what was going on, but Izzie knew now, without anybody telling her in words, that there was something wrong between her aunt and uncle.

‘If Edward knew about another uncle who’d died, he’d have told us years ago,’ she said now, and again she could sense Anneliese relax a little. ‘You know how close Gran and I were. She’d have told me about a little brother who died, wouldn’t she? There was just her and Tommy, I’m sure of it.’

‘Well,’ said Anneliese glumly, ‘we don’t know who this Jamie person is, so maybe we don’t know as much as we thought we did. Even when you know people terribly well, you can discover they have secrets from you.’

‘True,’ agreed Izzie, thinking of Joe and how she’d been deceived by him. Or maybe he hadn’t deceived her. Maybe she’d wanted to be with him so much that she’d been blind to reality.

Still, it was harder to know people than you thought. And for whatever reason, dear Anneliese clearly felt the same way.

‘Do you think Lily will ever come back to us?’ Anneliese said listlessly.

‘Nobody knows, love,’ Dad said. ‘It’s up to God now.’

The three of them had stayed in the hospital for an hour with her grandmother and after that brief moment of lucidity when Lily had cried: ‘Jamie!’, there had been nothing else, just her grandmother lying there, still absent. She hadn’t opened her eyes or moved or said anything. All the hope that Izzie had felt on the flight over had melted away.

The young doctor who’d talked to them really hadn’t known what to say.

‘Sorry, there are no straightforward answers right now.’

At least she was being frank, Izzie thought. The young woman’s honesty was preferable to the ‘I am the doctor, I know everything’ mode of communication.

‘We’ve done a CT scan, she’s on heparin to arrest progression or prevent recurrence of further strokes, but I’m afraid there has been a considerable bleed in your grandmother’s brain. And when there’s coma following a stroke, it does present an unfavourable prognosis. It’s not all doom and gloom, there might well be spontaneous neurological recovery, but we really don’t know if that will happen. It’s a matter of waiting now, I’m afraid.

‘The added problem is that, because of your grandmother’s age, there are other risks now, including heart problems and pneumonia. And I’m afraid her heart activity has been a little erratic in the past twenty-four hours. That’s our primary concern.’

‘There’s a problem with her heart too?’ Izzie buried her face in her hands. It kept getting worse. ‘I thought, because she talked, that she might come out of this. It’s got to be a good sign, hasn’t it? It means she’s coming back, right?’

‘I’m sorry, it’s not that simple,’ the doctor said. ‘Who knows what your grandmother is seeing or believing right now? People in her position can respond in some way to voices, so it is perfectly natural that your voice sparked something in her, but as to what she was thinking, I don’t know. As to whether she will ever come out again, we don’t know that either. We’re monitoring her and trying to keep her vitals stable.’

‘And if she doesn’t come round properly?’ Anneliese asked what Izzie couldn’t bear to.

‘Every case is different. If a person in her condition hasn’t recovered in some neurological way within the first three weeks to a month, then it doesn’t look good, I’ll be honest with you. We’ll have to wait and see. Right now, we want to keep her stable and see what happens next.’

The first three weeks to a month? Izzie felt ill at the thought of watching her beloved gran fade away over a month. When they left the hospital, she was conscious of a sensation of emptiness in the world.

Twenty-seven years ago, when her mother died, she’d felt the same thing. It was, Izzie remembered, like part of the earth had crumbled away leaving a huge, gaping hole.

The difference was that there had been some time before Mum had died, some warning. Not enough, but it had at least given Izzie a chance to say goodbye.

The thought of that goodbye gripped Izzie’s heart tightly. Move on, think about something else, she told herself.

Anneliese moved her chair to sit beside Izzie. God, she was so intuitive, always had been. She and Gran had been brilliant when Mum died. It wasn’t the same as having Mum to turn to, but they’d been there for her, forming a sort of parental triangle with her father. It was a new family of sorts: not conventional, clumsily made up, but still a family.

Now it was coming apart and there was another gaping hole there. But it had all happened so quickly. There had been no time to prepare, no time to say all the things that hadn’t been said. Gran might die without ever smiling at Izzie again or telling her that it would be all right, that she was loved…

Izzie couldn’t bear it.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t cry again because, if she started, she genuinely didn’t think she’d be able to stop the grief from pouring out, and it hurt too much. Anneliese reached out and wrapped her arms around Izzie, saying nothing, just holding tightly.

‘Parish records,’ said Dad suddenly. ‘We could search the old parish records for births and deaths to see if there’s a Jamie or a James anywhere.’

‘Yes, Dad.’ Izzie untangled a hand from her aunt’s embrace to take his hand in hers, and they sat, making a clumsy, irregular trio around the old kitchen table. Sometimes, Dad’s habit of focusing on the not-so-important details irritated Izzie. But now, she could see it for what it was: a survival tactic.

His mother-in-law had been with him for the darkest parts of his life and now she might be dying. Rather than face that cold, stark fact, Dad was training his sights on something else.

‘Does it matter who he is?’ Anneliese asked with a touch of irritation. ‘You heard the doctor: nobody knows what’s going on in Lily’s mind. Jamie might be someone important or he might be the postman.’

‘The postman’s called Calum,’ said Brendan stubbornly.

‘Not the postman, then,’ said Izzie quickly. It was unlike her aunt to be so irritable. She gave Anneliese a final hug to show that she was all right. Anneliese resettled her chair and pulled her mug towards her.

‘Is Beth coming?’ Izzie asked Anneliese to deflect the irritation, and felt guilty as soon as she’d done so because her aunt looked away as if she could hide the anxiety that had flared in her eyes.

‘No, she can’t come yet and I don’t want to worry her,’ Anneliese said.

‘Of course,’ Izzie replied, in the cheery voice that she used to clients on the phone who were telling her they didn’t want to use one of the models on her books.

Not worrying Beth was a mantra she’d grown up with. In the family tree, Izzie was the one who had it all sorted out, who knew where she was going with her life. Beth was younger, the fragile, sometimes dizzy one, the one who wouldn’t quite make it in the world. How wrong that had turned out to be. Beth was happily married to Marcus and Izzie had notched up another failed relationship. Not even a proper relationship, actually: a relationship with a married man. Who was the fragile, dumb one now?

Damn, she had to stop thinking like this. She was going round and round in circles and her brain was numb. She should be thinking about her grandmother and not about bloody Joe Hansen.

Suddenly Izzie felt so very tired. It was a sad, lonely homecoming with nothing but misery. She wanted it to be the way it had been before; before Gran was ill; before she’d realised Dad was getting old; before she’d known about something wrong between Anneliese and Edward. Before it had all gone wrong with Joe.

She got up from the table quickly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I think the jet-lag is getting to me. I’m going to go to bed.’

‘Of course.’ Anneliese got up and gave her another hug.

Izzie sank into her aunt’s arms and bit back the desire to burst into tears.

‘I’ll phone you later,’ Anneliese whispered, for her ears only.

‘I’d like that,’ Izzie said.

Izzie woke up to light filtering in through floral curtains. She’d been having the most amazing dream and she wanted to tell Joe. They’d been on a holiday somewhere sunny, maybe Mexico, and she could feel the heat burnishing her skin. Then there was a ride in a teeny plane and now they were back in their lovely home, a light-filled loft apartment. She felt utter contentment fill her and she rolled over in the bed to touch Joe. Just then, she came fully awake. There was no Joe in the bed beside her. She’d never slept with him, she realised suddenly. It had all been a dream. Their sleeping together was relegated to small naps after those times they’d made love: correction – after they’d had sex.

They would never live in an airy loft apartment in New York together; he’d probably hate it. She wasn’t sure what he liked in apartments or houses. She’d never seen anywhere he’d ever lived. Instead, she was alone in her childhood bed in Tamarin, with the pale wallpaper she’d picked herself when she was eighteen and the apple tree banging in the wind against the window. Joe would never see this, he would never know about her childhood, he’d never come here, he’d probably never get to meet Gran.

Izzie, you are a moron, she said out loud.

She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, threw back the covers and got up. No looking back: it was time to look forwards. It was after eleven. She’d slept for fifteen hours and she was hungry and thirsty.

Still in her T-shirt and pyjama bottoms, she went downstairs. There was no sign of Dad, but there was coffee in the pot and a note left on the counter beside the coffee.

‘Izzie, there’s food in the fridge. Hope the coffee’s drinkable when you get up. I’m on my mobile phone and I’m going to drop into the hospital later. Call me if you need a lift, otherwise, I’ll be back at one.’

Izzie drank her coffee, ate two rounds of Irish soda bread toasted and smothered with bitter marmalade, then showered and checked her messages on her BlackBerry. There was one from Carla, wishing her well, hoping that everything was OK, a couple more from people at work, another from Andy, who lived two apartments below her, saying he’d called and did she want to go to the movies with him and some friends?

She’d have to ring him later and tell him she was in Ireland. There was one from Stefan, about the SupaGirl! competition. More work, she’d pass that on to Carla. Nothing from Joe. Not that he’d ever emailed her before – he was far too clever to want electronic evidence of their fling, she thought acidly. But he had her email address, he could have mailed if he’d been that desperate to get in touch with her.

It seemed that when the going got tough, the tough found themselves other sex playmates. Thanks a lot, Joe, delighted to find out that you could last the distance.

Leaving a note for her dad on the counter – Gone to the hospital, probably see you there. In case I don’t, I’ll be back this afternoon – she stepped out the door and set off. She’d forgotten how small Tamarin was. One of the joys of Manhattan was that it was such a compact city compared to places like LA, but Tamarin was so wonderfully small, and she’d forgotten that. It was possible to walk from one side to the other in half an hour, and in the process one would probably have to stop ten times to talk to acquaintances.

As she walked, Izzie found herself wondering what it would be like to live in Tamarin again. Maybe that was the answer: get away from New York and all the toxic men she met, live somewhere simpler, where she belonged. But then New York was the perfect place to live if you didn’t feel you belonged anywhere else. Everyone belonged in New York.

Gran had never pushed her to come home. She wasn’t the sort of person who laid guilt trips on people. Not once, in all the years that Izzie had lived away, had her grandmother complained about Izzie not phoning, writing, visiting or moving home.

Walking through the town where her grandmother had lived most of her life, Izzie wished they’d talked about it.

Why was it that when someone was ill, you thought about all the things you hadn’t said? Up until now, Izzie was pretty sure she’d said everything, and yet there were some gaps in the conversation, gaps she wished she could fill.

‘Gran, I’m sorry I haven’t got married and had kids. I know you’d love to have great-grandchildren, and you’re so good with children. You were so good with me. But it just hasn’t happened.’

What else would she say?

‘How do you find love, Gran? You loved Granddad so much. But how do you know when you’ve got that and how do you get it? Was it easier when you were young? Did you get married more quickly? Is it because we date people and have sex and go off them and don’t have to marry them, is that the difference?’

Izzie thought she’d read somewhere that relationships where people lived together for years before they got married were more likely to end in divorce, than the reverse. It didn’t make sense.

Knowing the person by living with them seemed preferable, but Gran could hardly have lived with Granddad Robby before they’d got married. The net curtains in Tamarin would have been twitched off the windows in outrage if that had happened fifty-odd years ago. Yet they’d stayed together, even though going from singledom into marriage must have been a big leap at a time when women were virgins before marriage and the marital bed was a place shrouded in mystery.

Did people stay together years ago because it was preferable to splitting up?

Izzie had reached Harbour Square and she sighed with pleasure at the beauty of it. This really was the heart of Tamarin, had been for centuries when the local market was held here, where the salty-fresh smell of fish mingled with the heat of farm animals penned up to be sold. Now, there was no straw underfoot and the only creatures were the local dogs that congregated outside Dorota’s café with their owners, but the sense of timeliness continued. The squat palm trees reminded Izzie that once ships had sailed into the harbour from exotic climes. The wide boulevard style of Harbour Square was a legacy of the nineteenth-century Mayor Emmanuel Kavanagh who’d come from Argentina on a ship, stayed to marry a local girl, and planned the elegant expanse of the square to rival the airy open spaces of his beloved Buenos Aires.

Seagulls wheeled around in the sky, calling to each other as they considered where to sit and watch the fishing boats unload their catches.

It was a busy scene but never frantic. Tamarin had a calming effect on people: as if the very bricks of the town murmured a message that there was enough time in the day for everything, and if there wasn’t, whatever was left could wait till morning.

When she had a moment, Izzie decided, she’d come back and sit in Dorota’s and watch the town unfold around her, the way she used to when she was at school and would sit there with her friends gossiping and pretending they didn’t see the boys from school doing the same thing. For now, she only had time to buy a takeaway coffee of Dorota’s strong Colombian blend. Gran loved that coffee and Izzie decided that if she sat at her grandmother’s bed, the scent could drift over her. If Izzie’s voice had woken her up yesterday, maybe Izzie’s voice and that wonderful smell could wake her up today.

She never got to try her theory out because when she reached the hospital with her coffee cup in her hand, she saw her aunt sitting on a bench in the small hospital garden to the right of the ambulance bay. Anneliese didn’t notice her: she looked as if she wouldn’t notice a meteorite unless it landed directly on top of her. The hospital was built high up on the east side of the town and looked out at the harbour. Anneliese was staring out to sea blankly.

Watching her, Izzie fought the desire to go into the hospital and not confront whatever was troubling Anneliese. She didn’t have the energy for someone else’s pain. But that was the coward’s way out.

‘Hello,’ she said, sitting down beside her aunt.

‘Hi, Izzie,’ said Anneliese dully, then turned back to the sea.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ Izzie continued. When in doubt, make small talk.

Anneliese nodded. ‘Beautiful,’ she repeated.

Izzie took a deep draught of her coffee for moral courage. She figured that there was some problem in Edward and Anneliese’s marriage. She hoped it wasn’t serious. At home in New York, marriages flew into turbulence every day and such a thing was quite normal. But here, it felt different. As if the ‘till death us do part’ vow simply couldn’t be broken.

‘What’s wrong, Anneliese?’ she asked softly. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

She’d expected Anneliese to pause and to tell her slowly. But no. Still looking out to sea and in a voice filled with emotion and anger, Anneliese said: ‘Edward left me for Nell. You remember Nell, my best friend?’

‘What!’ said Izzie. ‘I can’t believe it. When?’

‘Nearly a week ago,’ said Anneliese, matter of factly. ‘I would tell you exactly how many days and hours, but that sounds too much like a smoker working out how long it is since her last cigarette, so I won’t do that.’

‘He left you for Nell?’ repeated Izzie.

‘I came home from Mass and they were together; not in bed together, although they might have been. It’s funny,’ Anneliese added, almost thoughtfully, ‘that sleeping with someone else is seen as the ultimate betrayal. Fucking someone else is believed to be the worst thing, isn’t it?’

Izzie winced at hearing her gentle, elegant aunt use such harsh, crude language. In all her life, she had never heard Anneliese speak in such a way.

‘But you know, fucking isn’t the worst thing,’ Anneliese went on. ‘The intimacy, the closeness, the sharing thoughts: they’re the worst things, that’s what I keep thinking every moment of every day. I keep thinking about what they were doing. Did Edward phone her or text her at night, saying, “How are you, darling? I’m bored, wish I was with you.” And knowing it was all because he wasn’t interested enough in me, I wasn’t enough for him.’ She turned to face her niece. ‘Can you imagine what that feels like, Izzie?’

Izzie wondered if her face was red with the flush of guilt. She had no idea what to say to help ease Anneliese’s pain. There wasn’t a lot she could say. But she had no right to say anything. Somewhere in New York was a married woman just like Anneliese and her husband was cheating on her with Izzie. He might have insisted he was no longer with his wife, but his actions proved otherwise.

‘And what did Edward say?’ Izzie asked, wanting to help, but knowing she wasn’t the right person to do it.

‘He didn’t know what to say. I asked him to leave and then, when he left the room, bloody Nell insisted that I’d known about them all along. Because any fool would have known if their husband was in love with somebody else,’ she said bitterly. ‘And that’s the thing, Izzie: I didn’t know. I really didn’t. After thirty-seven years of marriage, you think you know somebody. Of course, that’s the other hard thing, one of many hard things.’ Anneliese almost laughed and she sounded a bit crazy, Izzie thought.

‘There are so many horrible things, it’s hard to pin down the worst, but certainly one of the startling bits of information out of this entire situation is the realisation that you really don’t know anybody. I thought he loved me. More fool me.’

Anneliese was quiet for a moment. ‘God, Izzie, I hope you’re never betrayed like this. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I really thought Edward loved me. We’d been through quite a lot together and I thought we’d be together until the end. And now, it’s like everything wasn’t true, everything we did together was a big lie. I was looking at our lives one way and he was looking at it another way. Perhaps that’s where the expression rose-coloured glasses comes from,’ she said suddenly. ‘I had rose-coloured glasses on. I was looking at the truth and I simply didn’t see it. He must have been bored, fed up and hated me. Otherwise why would he want Nell?’

Izzie quickly scanned her mind for Nell. Nell was nowhere near as attractive as Anneliese. Her aunt had those huge blue eyes, a graceful face and the amazing silvery blonde hair that made her look like a fey, other-worldly figure. As if she might dance down the street and disappear like a mermaid into the water. Compared to her aunt, Nell was shockingly ordinary. What had Nell got that Uncle Edward wanted? None of it made any sense.

‘Did you tell Lily?’ said Izzie. She knew how close her grandmother was to Anneliese. Maybe that had shocked her grandmother so much it had contributed to her stroke. But Anneliese had clearly followed her train of thought.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I hadn’t. I was too ashamed and embarrassed and all the things you are, when your husband walks out on you for your best friend. Now, I’m sorry I hadn’t told her. That’s what I do every time I see her: sit down, hold her hand and tell her, because she has that warmth, that wisdom. You understand, Izzie: you know you can tell her anything. There can’t be too many nearly ninety-year-old women with her open-mindedness. I know Lily would have had no problem grasping the fact that myself and Edward had split up, and she’d have been there to tell me how to move on with my life. And I didn’t tell her because I was so ashamed, and now I may not ever be able to tell her.’

It was Izzie’s turn to be silent. The shame overwhelmed the guilt now. Guilt was too insubstantial an emotion for what she felt: it was pure shame.

All her life, she’d been against the idea of dating a married man, and yet Joe had got under her radar before she’d had time to put up the barriers, so that by the time she’d realised just how complicated it all was, before her moral compass cranked into action in her head, her heart was trapped.

Loving him was the only option.

Hearing Anneliese’s story was like having a magnifying mirror held up to the biggest blemishes on her face. She could see every giant pore and big spot. Anneliese’s story had magnified Izzie’s under the cruellest light.

Just as Anneliese had done, Joe’s wife might still think her husband loved her. That he was there for her, didn’t want anyone else to share his thoughts and dreams.

The only difference was that Edward had left Anneliese for Nell. He’d had the moral courage to walk away to be with the woman he apparently loved. But Joe hadn’t. There was a nice simple message for her in all of this – Joe hadn’t loved her enough. Whether he’d been lying or not when he said he and Elizabeth were no longer together was immaterial: he hadn’t wanted to be with Izzie when she needed him.

Despite the guilt and shame, she felt as if she might cry.

Anneliese gazed at her niece and felt incredibly guilty for having told her what was happening. It seemed so bloody ridiculous that with darling Lily lying in the hospital, here she was having to reveal the sad details of her own life.

Poor Izzie, no wonder she was shocked, silent and tearful. And if Izzie was shocked, Anneliese didn’t even want to think about what Beth would do when she heard. Oh Lord, Beth. Anneliese knew she’d taken the coward’s way out by not telling Beth yet, but she simply couldn’t face it.

She recalled her mother explaining the mother-child bond when she’d been pregnant with Beth: ‘It’s the greatest love,’ her mother had said. ‘The greatest. I can’t explain it to you, nobody can. In a few months, you’ll have this child who depends on you utterly, and nobody else matters, nobody, even Edward.’

‘Ma, don’t be daft,’ Anneliese had laughed.

‘No, really,’ her mother had insisted. ‘Wait and see.’

And she had seen. Anneliese had never thought of herself as particularly maternal until she’d had her daughter. Up until then, she’d felt she was capable, almost masculine in her ability to turn her hand to just about anything. She’d always loved the physical side of gardening – the digging, planting, hauling things around. She had such great strength and energy. So she thought she was one of those women who might not be terribly maternal. And then Beth had appeared, and it was like being hit hard over the head with one of her gardening spades: bash.

Suddenly she was in love and enthralled with this tiny, squalling, mewling infant who screamed a lot. The first six months of Beth’s life, Anneliese had existed on practically no sleep.

She’d gone half crazy, thinking that she could manage through sheer force of will to push the depression out of her mind. If only such a thing were possible.

Her mother had been right: Beth had become her life. And now she had to tell that sweet, fragile person that her parents were splitting up.

She only hoped that Beth wouldn’t stare at her and say: ‘You must have known!’

Anneliese thought of a politician she’d read about in the papers, who’d told his wife he was gay an hour before he gave a press conference telling the whole world. His wife had stood beside him in front of the cameras and reporters, holding his hand, and somehow, that became the most talked-about part of it all. How could she? She must have known.

The story was no longer about him. It came down to the question: How could she not have known?

Years later, the woman gave her side of the story and made sense of the strange events of that day. She hadn’t known. They were married, they had a child, why should she doubt him?

When he told her, she was stunned, and was still stunned an hour later when they stood together.

‘Anneliese,’ said Izzie, and Anneliese was sure poor Izzie was about to cry. She looked on the verge of it. ‘I thought I wanted this coffee but I don’t, actually. I’m going to get myself some water from the coffee shop. Will I get you something too?’

‘No thanks,’ Anneliese said. She didn’t feel hungry or thirsty these days. She couldn’t feel anything other than the big, black hole inside her.

With Izzie gone, she could go back to torturing herself, thinking about the past. It was a movie reel she couldn’t turn off in her head. She kept going back over their lives together, analysing everything, working out when Edward had been telling the truth and when he hadn’t.

At Christmas, Beth and Marcus had come to stay and the house on Milsean Bay had been full of laughter and joy. Anneliese had loved it. She’d gone overboard with finding the perfect Christmas tree, decorating it, turning the whole house into a Christmassy bower with lots of holly, mistletoe, shiny gold balls and enough Santas to sink a ship. On Christmas Day, she’d had a lunch party for seven: her and Edward, Brendan, Lily, Nell, Marcus and Beth. Nell had brought her famous dark chocolate meringue, which they’d had with raspberries.

So often over the years, when they’d invited Nell to their house for something, Nell would say gratefully: ‘Thank you for having me.’

And she hadn’t said it that Christmas. Anneliese remembered it most clearly because at the time she’d thought, with pleasure, that Nell had finally accepted that they were friends, that she didn’t need to thank them for their kindness every single time. How wrong she’d been.

‘Can I do anything to help?’ Beth had said, coming into the kitchen, looking like a Christmas fairy with her glossy, dark hair curling around her face and wearing a beautiful moss-green silky sweater, over a grey velvet skirt that twirled around her legs.

‘No, darling,’ said Anneliese, looking up from the cooker. She’d changed out of her Christmas outfit after church and had put on a pair of jeans and an old shirt for doing the cooking, which was terribly messy. She would change quickly as soon as dinner was ready. Meanwhile Nell had covered up her finery in a big apron. Nell was looking great, Anneliese thought fondly. Edward and Anneliese had bought her these beautiful handmade earrings shaped like little fuchsia drops and a necklace with a fuchsia drop pendant. Nell wore them with pride.

‘How’s the turkey doing?’ she asked Nell. Nell was the turkey expert.

‘I’d say another twenty minutes, just to be on the safe side,’ Nell said, sounding professional.

‘Right, I’ll open the oven if you manhandle it in,’ Anneliese replied.

Edward had come in when they were finished. ‘How are my two favourite cooks?’ he said cheerily.

‘We’re fine,’ said Anneliese, going over to poke around in the saucepan where the sprouts were steaming away.

‘Everything is going wonderfully,’ said Nell. ‘Doesn’t it smell amazing? I know you’re ravenous, Edward, it’s going to be fabulous though. Better to take that teeny bit longer and have it just perfect.’

‘You’re the expert, Nell,’ he said.

And dinner had been perfect. Every moment of it. Anneliese had felt proud to think that so many people fought like cats and dogs over Christmas dinner, while her family and friends enjoyed this warm, civilised meal where they laughed over appalling cracker jokes and reminisced about Christ-mases past.

That night, when everyone had gone home and Marcus and Beth were downstairs watching something on the TV, Anneliese and Edward had lain in bed and held each other.

‘It was a lovely day, wasn’t it?’ Anneliese said.

She was exhausted. All that standing around in the kitchen was so tiring and she’d wanted to make the day just right. It seemed to have gone just right anyway, but she still felt the need to be watching, a bit like flying and never going to sleep, as though the psychic will of all the people with their eyes open could keep the plane in the sky, and if they concentrated hard, the plane would land safely. That’s how she felt about days like Christmas.

‘It was wonderful, darling,’ Edward said, giving her a chaste kiss on the forehead and turning over. ‘You’re tired,’ he said magnanimously. ‘Let’s go to sleep.’

Once upon a time, they made love at night after big events like anniversaries and birthdays. It had become a part of their marriage, Anneliese remembered now. She should have realised there was something wrong then, when Edward didn’t want to hold her and undress her gently, making love to her with the combination of passion and gentleness that came after thirty-seven years of marriage. She should have known something wasn’t quite right. But she hadn’t because she was so busy concentrating on the wrong thing.

Was that going to be her epitaph? Anneliese kept her eyes open so the plane would stay in the air, but she’d watched the wrong plane?

No matter how angry she was with Edward, Anneliese realised that she felt even angrier with herself. She hadn’t seen what was happening and she couldn’t forgive herself for that.

It was no good: she couldn’t face seeing Izzie again and seeing the shock on her face, not when she felt this close to screaming. She’d come back to spend time with Lily later. Better to go home and have Izzie briefly wonder where she’d gone, than to fall apart in front of her niece.

At home, she could give in and take one of the tranquillisers she had left over from years ago. There were a few left in a small bottle in her bedside table, enough to do her until she went to the doctor. There was no point putting that off, either. She’d fought it, determined not to have to go back on bloody antidepressants again, because taking them felt like such a sign of failure. But the time had come for the big guns: if Dr Whelan had something to take away the grim darkness in her head, then she needed it. Lots of it. Otherwise, who knew what might happen?

It was seven that evening when she returned to the hospital, in a state of tranquilliser-induced calm. She hoped that Izzie’s jet-lag meant she’d have left and returned home to her father by then, but even if she hadn’t, Anneliese could cope.

It was amazing how one little tablet could make her feel better. Well, not so much better, but calmer. As if she was on a tiny lifeboat in the middle of a huge, deep ocean, and with the little tablet inside her, she didn’t need to look over the edge of the boat to see the vast inky blueness beneath her. It was still there, she knew that. But she didn’t need to look at it. She could exist and not look, which was much nicer than forcing herself to stare at it and feel the anxiety flooding in.

The hospital was busy with visitors rushing to and fro, carrying flowers, bottles of mineral water and magazines in to their loved ones. Anneliese smiled at them all serenely. People were so kind, really.

When she got to Lily’s ward, she was surprised to see a woman sitting by Lily’s bed, holding her hand. It wasn’t Izzie: it was a younger woman, perhaps late twenties, and she had long streaked blonde hair piled on top of her head in an untidy knot, and wore the loose trousers and thonged shoes that Anneliese always associated with students on gap years in Thailand.

‘Hello,’ she said curiously.

‘Oh, hello.’ The girl leapt to her feet and her lightly tanned face looked anxious.

‘I’m Anneliese, a relative of Lily’s.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. I’m Jodi, I’m not a friend or anything.’

Anneliese blinked at her in surprise. The girl’s freckles looked Irish but her accent was pure Australian.

‘I never actually met Mrs Shanahan, but we talked on the phone. I came to visit her because I feel…’ She bit her lip. ‘I feel responsible.’

Anneliese stared at her, taking in the friendly, open face. She hoped the tranquilliser wasn’t making her stupid, but this didn’t make sense.

‘How?’

‘I phoned her, you see,’ Jodi went on, even more anxious now, ‘asking her about the history of Rathnaree, and she said she’d meet me, and Yvonne, who’s my next-door neighbour, says Mrs Shanahan hasn’t been to Rathnaree in years but I still asked her and then she has a stroke, and it’s all my fault!’

‘You poor thing,’ said Anneliese. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s not your fault.’

‘You don’t understand – it is!’ insisted Jodi. ‘She’s an old lady and I knew I should have talked to somebody else about it. I upset her, I must have, because one day I’m talking to her on the phone arranging to come and see her, and the next, Yvonne tells me she’s in here in a coma.’

‘You didn’t cause the stroke,’ Anneliese soothed. ‘You clearly didn’t know my aunt. Lily could cope with just about any bit of news you cared to throw at her and the fact that she’s an old lady doesn’t matter a whit. She’s young on the inside and she has the most open mind of anyone I ever met. If she didn’t want to see you or if you upset her, she’d have said, I’m sure of it. Tell me, what particularly did you want to research?’ Anneliese asked curiously.

‘All about Rathnaree House. I found this photograph, you see, and I mentioned it to her…’

‘Was there anybody called Jamie in it?’ Anneliese asked.

‘No, I’ve only got the name of one person, a Lady Irene. Why?’

‘The thing is, Lily hasn’t been conscious since her stroke, except for one moment when she called out “Jamie”. None of us knows of any Jamie in her life and, well, her son-in-law thinks it might be important. Now that you tell me you were talking to her about the past, it makes sense that she was thinking about it. He might be someone connected to when her parents worked in Rathnaree.’

‘I could try and find out,’ said Jodi. ‘I mean, if you want me to, if it’s not being intrusive. It’s just that…’ She stopped.

‘That would be great,’ Anneliese said. ‘I think Izzie, my niece, and her dad would like to know who Jamie was.’

‘Oh Izzie, she’s the one from New York,’ said Jodi excitedly. ‘Yvonne told me all about her. It sounds so exciting.’

‘Yeah, it is,’ said Anneliese, who thought she would never find anything exciting ever again. But then, excitement was overrated. Calm was nicer. ‘The thing is,’ she added, ‘the doctors don’t know if what Lily is saying is important or what it is. I suppose it’s like dreams, nobody knows what they mean. So it might be useful to know who Jamie is, and then again it might mean nothing.’

‘But it could put all the puzzle together and let her go happy,’ said Jodi.

Anneliese looked at this eager Australian girl with the kind eyes and open heart. To Jodi, it was very simple. Lily was probably going to die and the best thing to do for her was to put all the pieces of the puzzle in place so that she could go happily, with her life sorted out. And of course, Anneliese thought bitterly, nobody’s life was ever sorted out.

If she died right now, nobody would be able to put her pieces back together, or if they did, it would look like a pretty weird jigsaw puzzle.

In her pharmaceutically induced calm, she felt able to look at her life from a distance and see how out of control it suddenly was.

‘We could check the local records and the census,’ Jodi said, enthusiastically. ‘I did some historical research and archaeology modules in college and I know how to research correctly. It’s fascinating once you get into it. I feel there is so much history here, so much to be told. Would Mrs Shanahan like that, do you think?’

Anneliese considered it. Normally, she felt as if she had the answer to most questions, but right now, she had no clue what Lily would want her to do – if Lily would like the past gently opened up and examined, or if she would prefer it left alone, all neatly and mysteriously packaged up. None of them had ever heard of this Jamie person, so perhaps Lily had her secrets after all.

Perhaps Izzie would like this man tracked down. Izzie had a closer claim on Lily than she did. Yes, that made sense: Izzie could make the decision. Anneliese was fed up making decisions. All the ones she’d made hadn’t turned out very well, had they?

‘Jodi,’ she said now, ‘let’s talk to Izzie. If she thinks it’s a good idea, we’ll go for it. But it might be a good plan to wait a few days before suggesting looking for clues. It’s probably a little raw now. I know you think it might help her come out of the coma, but we’ll give it a few more days.’

‘Of course,’ Jodi agreed. ‘I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset her: she sounded so lovely on the phone. It’s sad to think of her calling for somebody and we don’t know who that person is. It’s like in a film, isn’t it? Like there’s so much we don’t know about other people.’

Anneliese nodded. She couldn’t quite trust herself to speak.

‘You must be worn out,’ Jodi added kindly. ‘Would you like to go and get a cup of coffee or tea or juice? Hospitals can be tiring. My granddad died a couple of years ago and it was rough.’

The idea of a simple cup of tea, with no intense conversation and no need to think of the person sitting opposite her mentally working out why Edward had left her and what she was going to do about it, suddenly seemed very appealing to Anneliese.

‘That would be lovely,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to sit with Lily for maybe ten or fifteen minutes and maybe we could go then? We could go into town and have something there.’

Tamarin shone like a little jewel nestled in the curve of the hills as they walked out of the hospital and down into the town twenty minutes later. Anneliese saw her home through Jodi’s eyes and she thought how beautiful it must look.

Their path took them along the curve of Plunkett Street, where all the residents had painted their houses in pretty pastel colours like a row of houses in a child’s colouring book. It had rained heavily the day before and the combination of the downpour and the beautiful sunlight of the previous few days had done wonders for the window boxes and small gardens. The fierce colours of hot pink and red geraniums blistered out at them, offset with snowy tufts of pale lilac lobelia.

It was all so calm and beautiful, and for the first time since Edward had left, Anneliese found herself able to take pleasure in its postcard prettiness.

‘Dorota’s?’ suggested Jodi as they reached Harbour Square.

Anneliese was about to say yes, and then she remembered that she’d been avoiding it lately, in case she bumped into Edward and Nell. There were so many places she was avoiding, including the supermarket, except late at night, because she knew she couldn’t cope with a chance meeting with either her husband or Nell.

Moral superiority was no match for the double whammy of betrayal and depression. Anneliese knew that no matter how much she’d want to glare at the two of them should they meet, she’d be far more likely to collapse in tears on the floor.

‘How about we try the Nook?’ she suggested. The Nook was a small bar-cum-restaurant, with a cosy name, but a modern décor. Anneliese wasn’t much for minimalism, but they always had lots of pastries from Oma’s Kitchen, the Austrian pastry shop next door. Although Anneliese hadn’t felt hungry lately, the thought of a sugar hit from lots of almond, honeyed pastry, made her mouth water. Plus, Edward hated the place. Perfect.

They ambled along towards the Nook and, once there, Anneliese pushed open the door. Standing directly inside, talking to a couple at a table set up for dinner, was Nell.

Anneliese stopped as if she’d been turned to stone.

Thanks to her late-night shopping and careful choosing of places to go in Tamarin, she hadn’t seen Nell since that day a week ago when Edward had left. After so much time spent obsessing over her, it was odd to actually see Nell in the flesh and realise that she didn’t have horns or a forked tail but was still a middle-aged woman with frizzy hair and pale eyelashes. At the table beside Nell sat Geraldine, a friend of both of theirs, and her husband, Benny.

The three of them looked shocked as well as guilty and Anneliese had a suspicion that she was the subject of the conversation.

The sharp pinprick of another betrayal struck Anneliese. Geraldine hadn’t rung her to commiserate or talk, even though she clearly knew what was going on. Without Anneliese’s realising it, Geraldine had turned into an ex-friend. She’d already picked which side of the split she was on.

‘I was going, I’m just going,’ said Nell hurriedly, her eyes dark with shock and embarrassment.

‘Isn’t this the cutest little place,’ said Jodi, who’d come into the Nook just behind Anneliese and was looking around the pub. ‘It’s so pretty. Look at those suede purple seats. They’re fantastic!’

Nobody answered her.

‘Anneliese, I meant to call,’ said Geraldine, getting to her feet, clearly even more embarrassed than Nell. She attempted to hug Anneliese, but Anneliese shrugged her off. Every bit of staid conservatism seemed to have left her and the effects of the tablet must have suddenly worn off because she felt wild with rage. Who cared what people thought of her? She must have been mad to be avoiding her normal haunts – Nell deserved to face her rage.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she snapped at Geraldine. ‘You’ve chosen your side and I bet you’ve been sitting here listening to Nell’s story.’

‘It’s not like that,’ Geraldine said soothingly. ‘We’re worried about you.’

Anneliese snorted. ‘Worried about me? You’re not worried enough to pick up the phone to ask how I am when my husband walks off with this cow! And she –’ she gestured fiercely towards Nell ‘– she’s hardly worried about me, no matter how she tries to paint the situation in a flattering light. Isn’t that right, Nell?’

Some core inside Anneliese told her she shouldn’t be doing this, that she would regret standing in a bar in Tamarin, screaming everything that came into her head. But she couldn’t help it, she wanted to say it. She could as lief stop herself as the sea water could stop pouring into the harbour, ebbing and flowing in the tides.

‘Actually, I’d give anything to know what Nasty Nell has been telling you, Geraldine. Has she been giving you the edited, poor-me-and-poor-Edward version or the truthful version? Hmm, let me see: the edited one, I think.’

Nell flushed even more. ‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the time or the place.’

‘You’re the expert on everything these says – what is the time or the place?’ Anneliese demanded. ‘I think the old conventions were smashed up when you took Edward off me. Yes, you took him, didn’t you? Don’t pretend otherwise. You sickened me the other morning when you tried to pretend that I must have known about you and Edward. You know damn well that I had no idea what was going on behind my back. I still thought you were my friend.’

There wasn’t a sound in the whole place: everyone in the Nook was listening. Even the waiting staff who didn’t speak English were motionless with their mouths open, trying to follow the conversation.

‘You knew almost every thought that went through my head, Nell, and if I thought Edward was having an affair, you’d have been the person I’d have confided in. I’m glad I didn’t know because imagine telling you I suspected Edward was having an affair and you sitting there smiling and simpering and going “oh no!” only for it to turn out that you were the one he was having the affair with.’

Outraged muttering noises could be heard coming from the other customers.

‘I’m going,’ Nell said angrily, and tried to push past Anneliese.

‘No, you’re not!’ hissed Anneliese back. She was taller than Nell and stronger. She was so angry that she wanted to hit out and wipe that simpering lipsticked smile off Nell’s stupid face.

‘Anneliese,’ said Benny, speaking for the first time. Geraldine’s husband was a gentle giant of a man and he got slowly to his feet to intervene.

Jodi stepped in before he could.

‘Anneliese,’ she said, ‘please, don’t.’

Anneliese felt Jodi’s hands on her, gentling her the way someone would gentle a young horse. ‘You don’t want to do this, not now.’ Jodi was stronger than she looked and somehow she managed to manoeuvre Anneliese away from the door. Immediately, Nell pushed it open and rushed off into the dusk.

Geraldine stood for a moment, staring at Anneliese.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ineffectively. ‘Sorry.’

‘Sure,’ muttered Anneliese.

Jodi hauled her into the bar part of the Nook and found a corner as far away from the door and her ex-friends as was possible. There, Anneliese slumped on to one of the purple suede seats and put her head in her hands, not caring what she looked like or who saw. Let her life be lived in the open with her dirty linen fluttering around in the breeze for all to see. Nell would tell her side of the story anyway.

Jodi didn’t wait for a waitress but went to where the mugs and coffee jug were kept for the waiting staff.

‘Here,’ she said, putting a steaming mug down on the table. ‘Have this.’

She sat as close to Anneliese as she possibly could and put her arm around her. ‘I know you’re in shock, but have some coffee, it’ll give you a jolt.’

‘I thought brandy was the answer for shock,’ Anneliese said, wrapping her hands around the steaming mug.

‘Bad for the heart,’ Jodi said briskly. ‘I don’t want to have to drag you right back up to the hospital on a stretcher.’

Anneliese laughed weakly. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Sorry you had to see that. Guess you aren’t looped into the Tamarin rumour mill or you’d have heard that my husband left me for her, my ex-best friend.’

‘No, I didn’t know,’ Jodi said. ‘We’ve not lived here long enough to be in on the round-robin emails. Does Yvonne know?’ she asked, referring to her next-door neighbour and Anneliese’s friend from the Lifeboat Shop.

‘I don’t know.’ Anneliese shrugged. ‘I didn’t tell her yet, couldn’t face it. Although she’s a good friend and she’d probably be on my side. God,’ she said, ‘why do there have to be sides in marriage break-ups?’

‘Most people don’t want to take sides,’ Jodi replied.

But Anneliese wasn’t listening.

‘Actually, it’s not a marriage break-up,’ she said. ‘It’s a marriage grenade launch or landmine or something. Break-up is far too innocuous a word for it. Break-up implies you knew it was coming, and I didn’t. I hadn’t a clue. How stupid does that make me? Don’t make that mistake, Jodi. Keep your eyes open in your marriage. Forgive me,’ she apologised. ‘You don’t need my advice. You young people, you’re better at relationships than my generation. We think we have to stay in them no matter what; it’s a sign of weakness if you walk out. Maybe it’s a sign of weakness to stay when it’s all pretty crap. I didn’t know it was crap, I thought it was OK. Forgive me,’ she said again. ‘You don’t want to be burdened with this. The tawdry details of other people’s marriages. I didn’t mean to shock you.’

‘You didn’t shock me at all,’ Jodi said, shrugging. ‘Breakups happen all the time. My parents are divorced.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Anneliese said.

‘Don’t be,’ Jodi replied. ‘It’s better this way. When I was a kid, they did nothing but fight when me and my brothers were in bed, and then they’d pretend everything was perfect when we were up, like we were deaf and couldn’t hear them shouting. It’s better this way. They’re both happy, just not together.’

‘And that didn’t put you off marriage?’ Anneliese enquired.

‘No, it put me off arguments. Dan and I don’t argue. I used to think there was something wrong with us. Everyone says you need passionate fights in a marriage, but we’ve never had that. We have disagreements and we both get really upset because we’re fighting with the other person. I don’t think we’ve ever had a stand-up screaming match. I wouldn’t want to.’

‘Me neither,’ said Anneliese, thinking that she should have used the past tense because she wasn’t likely to be having a significant other ever again, so her not liking marital arguments was very much in the past. ‘I didn’t like screaming matches,’ she amended. ‘We never had stand-up screaming matches in our marriage. Edward and I got on pretty well. Not saying it was always easy, but we had Beth and we had to try and just muddle through the hard times.’

‘Beth’s your daughter? What does she think of all of this?’

‘She doesn’t know.’

‘You haven’t told her?’

‘No, I haven’t told her. I’m going to have to because she’s coming to Tamarin to see Lily and she’s going to go crazy when she finds out that her dad and I aren’t together.’

‘Why haven’t you told her?’ Jodi asked.

‘I don’t know how,’ Anneliese sighed. She thought of how she’d tried to keep things from Beth all her life. To make everything perfect. It was over-protectiveness, she knew, but she’d always felt it was the right thing to do. Beth was such a gentle, fragile soul that she couldn’t cope with life’s pain. It was Anneliese’s job as a mother to shield Beth from the pain, and now there was no option but to land her right in the middle of it.

‘I’m going to have to tell her. I just don’t know how I’m going to do it.’

‘Say it out straight,’ Jodi advised. ‘That’s what I’d like, if I was your daughter. Your niece, Izzie, she knows, right?’

‘Yes, I told Izzie. I told her today, actually, and she was pretty shocked.’ Anneliese winced at the thought of that conversation and how appalling it had been. ‘Izzie’s very strong and sophisticated and the fact that she was so shocked really upset me. Made me wonder how I am going to tell my daughter the same news. I didn’t think anything would shock Izzie, but this did.’

‘It might be hard for her to hear the news because she lives abroad,’ Jodi said thoughtfully. ‘When you’re not living at home, bad news makes you feel guilty for being away. You’ve got guilt for that and then you’re a teeny bit grateful you’re away because it means you don’t have to deal with it so much. That sounds awful, doesn’t it?’

‘No,’ Anneliese said. ‘Just honest. I wish I was far away right now, then I wouldn’t have to deal with anything awful. But that’s not an option. I have to be here for Lily and Beth and Izzie. You’d like them both. Beth won’t be here long but Izzie has an open-ended ticket, so she’ll be around for another week certainly.’

An idea struck Anneliese. Inactivity wasn’t normal for her niece and it was quite possible that Lily would remain in the same state for some time to come, so that Izzie would have nothing to do except sit at her grandmother’s bedside.

It might be good for her to hang out with Jodi, doing a little investigating into Rathnaree and this Jamie person. It would take her mind off Lily, because Anneliese was beginning to wonder if Lily would ever come back to them.

‘She could help with the research. She’s very clever and it’s going to be hard for her to be here with Lily so ill. She left such a long time ago, and you lose touch with the place. It could help her feel a part of it all,’ Anneliese said.

‘That would be great,’ Jodi replied. ‘I’d like that. She wouldn’t mind, do you think, helping me?’

‘No, Izzie’s very hands-on, very clever. If you want someone to help you get to the bottom of a mystery, I’d say Izzie is your woman. She can charm information out of anyone and she’s very driven and focused, that’s why she’s so successful in her job. I guess she’s sort of married to it, really. It’s a pity,’ Anneliese added. ‘She’s a gorgeous-looking girl. But everyone makes their own choices and I guess Izzie’s choice is to be on her own.’

‘Hard for her if Lily doesn’t make it,’ Jodi said.

Anneliese nodded sadly. ‘Hard for all of us,’ she agreed, ‘but especially for Izzie. It would be like losing her mother all over again.’