Читать книгу Best of Friends - Cathy Kelly - Страница 16

Home was a decidedly miserable place for the Barton family. By the end of the first week in April, with the Easter holidays in sight, Abby decided she must put the arguments of the past weeks behind her and do her best to raise everyone’s spirits. Unfortunately, the emotional barometer in Lyonnais still sat firmly at ‘mostly cloudy/storms expected’.

Jess was monosyllabic, despite Abby’s attempts to start mother-daughter chats.

‘I know you’re stressed about school, Jess, love,’ Abby said carefully, afraid she’d say the wrong thing, ‘but the exams will pass. Your dad and I don’t want you to feel under any huge pressure, right? We want you to do well for your sake but we don’t want you to crack up over it.’

Jess had looked at her mother with an expression that said ‘you don’t understand a thing’. Abby hated that expression.

At Tom’s school, the headmaster came down with a bad dose of flu, leaving Tom to deal with both the crisis over the physics teacher, who didn’t want to work out her notice, and the faulty alarm system, which was still going off at odd intervals, to the pupils’ delight.

All he could talk about every evening was the difficulty of getting a substitute teacher at short notice and the endless but vain attempts by the alarm repair people to find the fault in their sophisticated system.

Abby began to wonder whether, if she got a robot to sit at her place in the kitchen every night and programmed it to mutter, ‘That’s terrible,’ at intervals, he would even notice.

To cheer herself up, she went to Sally’s beauty salon for what Sally called ‘the works’. Since she’d moved to Dunmore, Abby went to The Beauty Spot once a month, a luxury unheard of in the pre-Declutter days, when a trip to a salon like Sally’s happened a couple of times a year.

The works included a manicure, an anti-ageing facial, possibly an eyelash tint and sometimes leg waxing, all the while chatting with Sally and letting the relaxing gossipy atmosphere drift round her. Other posher beauticians were now keen to get Abby to patronise their establishments but Abby stayed loyal to Sally and her jewel of a salon. Their friendship actually went back ten years to when Sally was working in Cork as a junior teacher with Tom. When Tom had raved about this new recruit and spoke of how she was a breath of fresh air in St Fintan’s, Abby had half expected an earnest do-gooder with mousy hair, jam jar spectacles, bitten-down fingernails and a crush on Tom.

Sally turned out to be nothing like Abby’s imaginings, of course, and far from being keen on Tom, she was wildly in love with Steve Richardson, the dashing Zhivago to Sally’s Lara. Sally had left teaching long ago to follow her dream of setting up a beauty salon. She and Steve had been idealists and when he’d left the corporate world to teach art, Sally had taken the plunge and given up teaching to do a beauty course. The Beauty Spot was the result. With its fifties-inspired décor, complete with raspberry-pink gingham curtains, the salon was certainly different from the normal temples to beauty. The women of Dunmore loved it and, from its humble beginnings, the business went from strength to strength.

‘What colour would you like?’

Sally’s pixie face stared expectantly up at Abby’s from behind the manicure trolley. Her fingers hovered over the creamy beige Abby usually favoured, because she insisted that her fingers were too short to take rich shades of polish.

But Abby was in a wild mood. ‘That one,’ she said, pointing out a juicy cherry colour.

‘Femme Fatale,’ Sally read the label. ‘Gorgeous and very different.’

‘I’m in the mood for something different,’ murmured Abby.

After an hour relaxing as Sally’s sensitive fingers did their anti-ageing magic, Abby was feeling light-headed and prone to day-dreaming. There was something so sensual about Sally’s facials: when her gentle fingers massaged the heavenly, sweetly scented oils into Abby’s face, neck and décolletage, she found herself thinking of how wonderful it would be to have Jay touching her skin like that. His fingers trailing along the sensitive hollows at the base of her throat, and her beautifully manicured fingers touching him in return…

‘Have you ever thought of cheating on Steve?’ said Abby idly now.

Sally looked up from the polish she was carefully applying to Abby’s fingernails. ‘Why?’

‘Well…just…you know, seven-year itch,’ blustered Abby, feeling caught out. Whatever had possessed her to say that?

‘It’s the three-year itch these days,’ interrupted Ruby, who was doing a French manicure beside them. Ruby was a statuesque thirty-something with hair the colour of a raven’s wing, a warm, eager face, and notoriously bad luck with men. Her last boyfriend had thrilled Ruby when he’d murmured how he’d never felt this strongly about any woman ever before, and two weeks later he’d ended up in bed with a girl in his office. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but she’s not even thinner than me!’ Ruby had raged for at least a month afterwards.

‘He wasn’t the right one for you, Ruby,’ comforted Sally now, knowing that Ruby was reflecting on her ex. ‘If he’d been the right one, he’d have been able to resist other women. Oh, sorry, Abby.’ She wet a cotton bud in nail varnish remover to wipe away the splodge of cherry-pink polish that had dripped onto Abby’s finger.

Abby, who knew it was her fault because she’d jerked convulsively at Sally’s words, shook her head. ‘My fault. I’m jittery today. Hormones, I suppose,’ she lied.

‘Steve wouldn’t want to cheat on you, Sally,’ Ruby went on mournfully. ‘He really does cherish the ground you walk on. Until I met you pair, I thought that was just a cliché – a sickening cliché at that,’ she teased, ‘but now I know it can be true.’

Sally flushed to the roots of her hair. She was one of the few people Abby knew who could blush prettily: that creamy complexion flushed a delicate rosy pink, unlike Abby herself, who developed a wildly unflattering scarlet fever circle in the centre of each cheek at times of stress.

‘Steve has his moments,’ Sally said sternly.

Both Abby and Ruby burst out laughing at this.

‘What?’ demanded Sally.

‘You never say a bad word about him, do you know that?’ Abby said affectionately.

‘Well, you never say a bad word about Tom,’ countered Sally, recovering.

Abby felt the scarlet fever hit her face with vigour. It was all very well for Sally, she thought as she sat with her fingers splayed to dry. She and Steve were only married eight years, not seventeen numbing ones. Nobody could be expected to feel passionate about anyone or anything after seventeen years. Where was the excitement, the thrill?

Seventeen years of watching someone leave their socks on when they’d taken off their trousers, so they stood there in underpants and socks. Not a pretty sight. Women made such an effort with their underwear, trying thongs and low-slung pants that bypassed comfort utterly, but try getting a man to wear anything other than the boring sort of jocks he’d worn since the year dot.

And that way he cleared his throat when they were watching television that made him sound like an elderly sea lion coughing up a fishbone. Abby was convinced he didn’t even know he did it but it was so irritating.

Wait till Sally and Steve had been together as long as she and Tom. Then Sally mightn’t feel the same way.

‘Dry?’ Sally checked Abby’s fingernails for tackiness. ‘A minute more, I think. Now, Steve and I are throwing an impromptu party on Saturday and we’d love you to come – all of you, Jess included.’

‘Lovely. What’s the occasion?’

‘It’s to introduce Steve’s new boss and his wife to the area. They’ve lived in the US for years and they don’t know anyone here. I thought it would be nice, and this is the only weekend we can do it. He and Steve get on like a house on fire and Steve keeps saying Greg is taking the company places.’

Abby perked up. Sally and Steve’s parties were legendary. They’d thrown one for Steve’s birthday six months before. The police had come at three and politely asked for the music to be turned down. One man had put his back out showing everyone that he could still stand on his head, while even Abby, who’d planned to take it easy because she didn’t know any of the people of Dunmore, had joined the drunken conga around Sally’s tiny alpine rockery. Tom had the photographic proof: a picture of a glassy-eyed Abby clinging to a dwarf conifer, wearing a hastily improvised Carmen Miranda headdress of two bananas and an orange all tied up with a tea towel.

Spur-of-the-moment parties, the type Sally and Steve were so good at, were always fun.

‘Their names are Erin and Greg Kennedy and they’re lovely. You’re going to love her, Abby,’ Sally continued. ‘She’s funny, very warm and absolutely stunning-looking.’

Abby, who’d had a mental vision of a glossy corporate wife determined to patronise the inhabitants of Dunmore, was even more turned off by this description. Stunning-looking women made her feel insecure. She wasn’t entirely sure that she’d like this paragon.

‘Does she work?’

‘She used to be something big in personnel in the States but she’s not working yet. They’re both Irish, both glamorous. Ruby has a crush on him.’

‘He’s something else,’ Ruby sighed. ‘If I didn’t know from experience how painful it is when another bitch runs off with your man, I’d go for Mr Kennedy in a big way. We’re talking double chocolate chip with real chocolate sauce.’

‘That good?’ said Abby, impressed. She’d bet that no matter how cute Greg Kennedy was, he couldn’t be better looking than Jay Garnier.

She paid the bill, hugged Sally goodbye carefully so as not to smudge her nails, and left the salon. There were three messages on her mobile phone when she switched it on. One from Tom: ‘Can you pick up my grey suit from the cleaner’s? I’ve got a parent-teacher tomorrow night and I’ll need it. Oh, I’ll be late tonight. Half seven probably. I won’t have eaten. See you then.’ Abby felt the kernel of dissatisfaction inside her swell. What was she – chief cook and bottle-washer or a career woman who was responsible for their financial success? Tom’s bloody deputy principal’s salary wouldn’t have bought them a house in Dunmore, that was for sure, and yet she was still the one hauling her ass all over town, buying groceries and picking up suits.

The second message didn’t improve her temper. It was Cheryl, the production assistant from Beech. ‘Hi, Abby, it’s Cheryl. Sorry to bother you but there’s been a change of plan on the shooting schedule next week. Instead of shooting in Dublin on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we’re just doing Wednesday and Thursday. I’ll phone you later in the week with the details and we’ll change your plane ticket and hotel reservation. Byee.’

Why did things change now? Abby had had to reschedule a lucrative private decluttering job from Monday and Tuesday simply so she could fit in the TV show. The client hadn’t minded but Abby had to delay the work several weeks, which she hated doing. If she hadn’t been so irritated by the first two messages, she might not have responded to the last one.

‘Hello, stranger. I can’t stop thinking about meeting you.’

The gravelly, late-night sound of Jay’s voice was so seductive. Abby put a finger in her mouth and nibbled her nail nervously, uncaring that she was ruining her polish.

‘Do you think there’s any chance we might have that dinner we promised ourselves? We’ve a lot to catch up on, after all. Please call, Abby. I’ll be waiting.’ He’d never even said who it was, she realised, but he’d known she’d recognise him. For a moment, she gazed out at the traffic, possibilities running through her head. Then she took a deep breath, hit the message button, and clicked until she reached ‘return call’. When the phone had rung six times, Abby decided it was fate. She’d leave a polite message and tell him, no, she was busy, but maybe they’d have that dinner for the four of them one day, her and Tom and Jay and Lottie…

‘Hello, Abby.’ It was Jay.

‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked stupidly.

‘I’ve got you programmed into my phone. Your name appears on the screen when you phone and I’m so glad you did.’

A silly grin spread across Abby’s face at the thought of Jay going to the bother of programming her number into his phone.

‘So, dinner?’ he said easily. ‘Just you and me, I mean.’

Abby suddenly felt grateful to Cheryl and didn’t stop to think about how the chatty dinner for four had suddenly become an intimate dinner for two. ‘I’m going to be in Dublin on Tuesday of next week. I was supposed to be filming, but I’m not,’ she blurted. ‘I mean, we could meet or –’

‘We’ll think of something,’ he interrupted silkily and Abby felt that exquisite quiver of pleasure ripple through her body. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘McGregor’s Townhouse,’ bleated Abby. McGregor’s was a small but beautifully formed hotel in the centre of Dublin. All the Beech staff stayed there and since the show had become successful, Abby somehow got the best room. Last time she stayed, she’d been upgraded to a junior suite, complete with cast-iron four-poster – an extravagance that she knew Beech had certainly not paid for. She must ask Cheryl to keep the reservation unchanged.

‘I’ll phone you there on Tuesday afternoon,’ Jay said, and he was gone.

Abby was left staring at her phone, unsure as to whether guilt or wild excitement was the primary emotion surging through her heart.

To save petrol – and money – Lizzie started to walk to work. The first week of April turned out to be so glorious that the two-mile walk to the centre of town was a pleasure. On Friday, the forecasters had predicted record temperatures for the time of year, and even at half-past eight in the morning, the sun was warm, reminding Lizzie of holidays in foreign climes. As she walked past the tiny town park with her sunglasses on and only a light jacket over her shoulders, Lizzie could almost convince herself that she was on holiday. Somewhere exotic, like the Adriatic coast of Italy, where men appreciated women with a bit of meat on their bones. Years ago, she and Myles had been on holiday in Italy, and Lizzie’s confidence had soared at the admiring looks she received from all and sundry.

Gwen and Shay were off on their cruise in a couple of days and despite everything she’d said, Lizzie was sorry she wasn’t going with them. Imagine real sweltering sun on her face and the scent of coconut sun lotion on warmed, relaxed skin. She tried to put holidays out of her mind on the grounds that she couldn’t afford one, and turned her thoughts instead to the wedding.

Debra, in tactful mode, had mentioned that Dad would like Sabine to come to the afters, which was the informal bit following the reception, when the band would play and people who hadn’t been invited to the main event turned up to admire the happy couple. Only if Lizzie didn’t mind, Debra added.

Lizzie minded like hell, but her mothering instincts came to the fore as usual. ‘Do you mind?’ she’d asked Debra, worried that the introduction of another person into the family dynamics might upset Debra’s big day. After all, Debra had been devastated about the divorce, and, as a true father’s girl, she might find it a betrayal too far to see Myles with another woman.

‘Well, I don’t mind her being there. She’s not pretty or anything,’ Debra said blithely, content as long as her father’s new girlfriend wasn’t in danger of stealing her thunder on the day. ‘She’s got mousy, reddish hair, mousy eyelashes and doesn’t wear lipstick. I saw a photo of her at Dad’s. And she’s old. Certainly in her forties.’

Lizzie considered this information mournfully. Sabine clearly wasn’t a red-hot mama, and if she appeared discreetly at the afters, nobody would faint into their gin at the sight of Myles Shanahan’s girlfriend. They’d be pleased, probably, that nice old Myles had found someone.

The only problem was that then they’d begin to realise that Lizzie would be there on her own. The happy and civilised Lizzie and Myles partnership, which had survived the earthquake of divorce, was over. Myles had moved on. Lizzie hadn’t.

Lizzie didn’t like people talking about her and she certainly didn’t like them feeling sorry for her. That was why she resented Sabine’s existence.

Outside the surgery, Lizzie caught sight of Clare Morgan’s indolent ginger cat, Tiger, delicately walking along the garden fence to find a hot spot to lie in.

‘Hello, Tiger, you gorgeous thing,’ she called.

Typically, Tiger pirouetted off the fence at just that moment and Lizzie was left facing Mr Graham, the solicitor whose office was joined on to the surgery and who was now standing open-mouthed on the far side of the fence, his car keys dangling limply in his hand. Lizzie hadn’t seen him in time and she flushed at the thought that he’d imagined she’d called him Tiger. Mr Graham was as round as he was tall, and had both overwhelming halitosis and the misplaced conviction that he was something of a ladies’ man.

‘Sorry…talking to the cat…’ she mumbled, before rushing into the surgery in a lather of embarrassment.

Oh Lord, how had she managed to do that? Next thing she knew, Mr Graham would be paying court to her, chatting to her if she sat in the surgery garden at lunchtime and winking at her at every opportunity. He’d tried it with Clare, who had given him very short shrift. Trouble was, Lizzie found it impossible to say no to people who turned up on the doorstep selling tickets, no matter what the tickets were for and no matter how broke she was. How would she say no to Mr Graham?

The other consequence of the beautiful morning was an empty surgery. It had always surprised Lizzie that the number of patients who wanted appointments was in direct proportion to the state of the weather. Perhaps the horrible flu that had seemed life-threatening in the rain magically transformed into a light sniffle as soon as the sun appeared.

Lizzie was tidying up before lunch when the phone rang. ‘Cork Road Surgery,’ she said pleasantly.

‘Lizzie, it’s Sally Richardson. Did I call at a bad time?’

‘No, it’s quiet here, Sally. What can I do for you? Is it for you or the boys?’

As she spoke, Lizzie opened the appointments book.

‘No, the boys don’t need an appointment, thank God,’ Sally said gratefully. ‘They’re getting their tonsils out next month, as you know, and since we made the booking, they’ve been fine. I was phoning to ask you to a party tomorrow. I’m sorry it’s such short notice – I meant to ask you last week but I was so busy it slipped my mind.’

‘Lovely,’ said Lizzie with pleasure. She hadn’t been to a party for ages. ‘Is it a special occasion?’

‘It’s fifty per cent a welcome party to these lovely new people who’ve moved in, and fifty per cent because we haven’t had one for ages, not since Steve’s birthday party with the drunken conga.’

‘I’d love to come,’ Lizzie replied.

‘Great. Come around eight and there’ll be food – a paper plate and a plastic fork each, mind you – and hopefully fun. Dress code is whatever you feel in the mood for. Bring someone or come on your own, Lizzie, whichever you want. See you then.’

Lizzie drew a big star on tomorrow’s space in her diary, thinking that it was ironic how Sally could make it sound so normal when she said ‘bring someone or come on your own’, while all Lizzie and Myles’s old friends either stumbled over the words with embarrassment or else made a big fuss about it.

Sally and Steve had never met Myles and clearly saw Lizzie as a single woman. Even better, they were perfectly happy to accept this, instead of either commiserating with her about the awfulness of life or trying to fix her up with single friends, who were uniformly so strange that it was quite apparent why they were still single. These two options were the most popular, Lizzie had found. The old friends she and Myles had seen when they were married didn’t seem to know what to make of her. They never invited her to parties and only asked her to the occasional dinner when they had a man to spare, as though Lizzie was so desperate she’d launch herself on any roving husbands like a nymphomaniac cruise missile if there weren’t any unattached men around. There was no point explaining that she wasn’t interested in men, married or otherwise. Married women didn’t believe her, preferring to behave like anxious medieval monarchs peering over the ramparts of their castles – always scared of invaders and always ready to whisk the drawbridge up.

She’d never widened her circle of friends enough to meet other divorced women, with one notable exception. Lillian, a woman she knew from the surgery, had invited her along for a night out with some other divorced friends, the ones that Clare Morgan nicknamed the Harridans.

It had not been the enjoyable bonding session Lizzie had hoped for. The night had involved plenty of good food, lots of drink and some harmless flirtation with the waiters, but had moved on to dark depressed rumblings about what ‘He’ had done now.

The worst venom was reserved for when a particular He appeared to be getting on with his life. Taking holidays, buying a new car, or, worst of all, enjoying himself, were top of the list of hate crimes. Lizzie was shocked. She’d expected the positive approach to singlehood that Clare Morgan espoused, not this outpouring of rage. She hated the venom with which the exes were discussed, and the malicious glee with which His failures were greeted. Myles had never been the sort of pig these women talked about, and even if he had been, Lizzie wouldn’t have wanted to ill-wish him like one of the witches in Macbeth.

Clare Morgan hadn’t been surprised by her reaction. ‘I knew you’d hate it. Lillian has a PhD in bitterness. I’ve known her and her husband for years and it’s a miracle the poor idiot stayed with her so long. Lillian likes to imagine that she’s the victim but it’s all her own doing. Keep away from her and those women she hangs around with,’ she advised Lizzie. ‘Bitterness is catching.’

Clare’s advice on enjoying life did not mean either finding another man or grieving over the loss of a husband.

‘Wash another man’s dirty socks and worry over what to cook for his dinner?’ she said scathingly, although Lizzie found it hard to imagine the clever, self-possessed Clare ever washing any man’s socks. ‘You’d want your head examined if you went back to that drudgery. I date men when I feel like it, but I don’t need them in my life all the time. I’ve learned to enjoy my own company, Lizzie. This is the fun way to enjoy life and I don’t intend to go back to the other way, ever.’

Fun. Lizzie flicked on the surgery answering machine. What was fun when it was at home?