Читать книгу Crazy For You - Emma Heatherington, Emma Heatherington - Страница 9

Home Is Where The Hurt Is

Daisy wasn’t sure whether to use her front-door key and walk on in unannounced, or knock on the green door of number 9, Ivy Cottages. She lifted the huge brassy doorknob and then set it back down easily so that it didn’t make a sound.

Knocking on the front door of her childhood home seemed a bit over the top, but the last thing she needed was her mother collapsing from the unexpected sight of her standing soaked in the hallway. Especially as she bore an uncanny resemblance to the Bride of Frankenstein right now. As she stood on the doorstep collecting her thoughts, she remembered fondly back to the time when she couldn’t reach the doorknob herself and would have to shout through the letterbox to announce her arrival home from school. She remembered when her dad would lift her up to let her knock it, even though he had a key. It was still hard coming home, knowing that he was no longer around. Daisy shook herself. She was determined not to get all mopey on this visit. She took a deep breath, knocked on the door twice and then turned the key.

“Mum,” she called. “Mum, it’s me. Are you in?”

The house smelled fresh and clean, with Maggie’s incense hanging in the air. Once a hippy, always a hippy, laughed Daisy and inhaled the familiar scent of her childhood.

“Daisy, is that you love?” Her mother’s shrill voice came from the converted second floor of the cottage. Daisy was sure she was hanging upside down from the rafters from the way her voice sounded. “This is a pleasant surprise. Is everything OK?”

“Yes, it’s me and I’m fine. Where are you? Are you doing handstands up there?” asked Daisy, running her hand along the pine dado rail and then wiping the fine layer of dust onto the leg of her wet jeans.

A huge thud came from the first floor and Daisy shuddered.

“Sort of,” answered Maggie. “I’ll be with you after I finish my mantra. Nearly done.”

Yoga. That’s right. How could Daisy forget? Her mother had lately developed an inexplicable obsession with Madonna. Anything the pop star could do, Maggie could do better. Daisy had vowed that she would address the issue once and for all if she ever saw her mum sporting a red stringy band around her wrist, bagging a toy boy and snogging women. Yoga was one thing, but changing her religion or messing with her sexuality to keep up with her idol would be taking things a step too far.

“Take your time, Mum. I’m not going anywhere.”

Daisy grabbed a towel from the hot press and dried off her sodden hair so that it frizzed up even more. Then she sank into the soft, brown leather armchair that faced out onto the small herb garden. It was like a mini jungle, full of lush countryside greenery, with huge flowered bobbles of pink and baby blue swaying in the light breeze. The patio doors were splashed with summer raindrops and a white metal summer seat sat on the patio waiting for the real summertime to come. Nothing quite beat lazy Sundays for fun-filled barbeques or quiet reads.

Outside, the faint smell of the sea was a reminder that the ocean was near, and when the sun came out, the sound of fishing boats mixed with the scent of flowers in full bloom meant that the family home was a little haven away from the world. The cottage was quieter now that she and her brother, Richard, had flown the nest, but there was still a delightful atmosphere you could almost touch.

Daisy thought of poor Isobel Eastwood, who had helped to plant the garden with her mother many years ago. Isobel had initially sniffed at Maggie’s choice of wild, overgrown shrubbery but soldiered on, adding minimal water features and decking.

She and Maggie were still great companions, which was perfectly understandable considering the circumstances that had gelled their friendship. However, two more opposite souls could never have met. While Maggie Anderson owned her own mobile phone, iPod and drove a black Volkswagen Beetle, Isobel Eastwood’s dearest accessory was her rosary beads. Jonathan and Eddie’s mother’s idea of a good night out would probably be a Missionary Mass followed by the Credit Union tea dance.

Despite such vastly differing tastes, the women propped each other up like two bookends and knew exactly when the other needed a time to laugh, a time to grieve or a time to shout out obscenities. But neither friend blamed the other for what happened that warm, tragic July night nearly eight years ago.

The two gardens, separated by a narrow brook, which led into the Atlantic Ocean on the mouth of Donegal’s finest fishing port, illustrated their differences perfectly. Isobel’s landscaped setting was immaculately groomed, while the Anderson household’s colourful blooms reflected the colour and life that bounded from Maggie and Daisy’s bubbly personalities.

“Hey, Dad. What do you think of all this?” whispered Daisy to the large portrait of her father that commanded the entire room. “Say a prayer for poor Isobel and her boys, won’t you?” Danny Anderson’s smiling eyes twinkled back at his daughter from above the high mahogany mantelpiece. Even now, Daisy could still hear his laughter in this very room. His smell still filled the air, diluted ever so slightly by a faint aroma of furniture polish. Very faint. Her mother wasn’t exactly known for being a domestic goddess. But Daisy was sure that if she listened hard enough, she would hear her dad mumbling to himself like he used to when he was trying to work out a cryptic crossword clue.

Could it really be eight years since the accident had happened? She remembered it like it was five minutes ago. She missed her father so much, as if she hadn’t seen him in eighty years. So why then had she came back to Killshannon on such a whim? Under normal circumstances, it would have taken a herd of highland cattle to drag her there. Funnily enough, something had urged to her follow Eddie’s crazy path back to the village this time. A village where she’d locked away all of her earlier memories, and in her mind, had virtually thrown away the key.

A drama course at Queen’s University in Belfast had supposedly been her ticket to freedom and she’d left vowing never to form a bond with Killshannon again. There was too much pain involved. Now, as she daydreamed, she realised her hand was automatically resting on her stomach as the memories flooded back. Her mother’s footsteps entering the cosy room interrupted her silent musings.

“Hello, my love,” said Maggie in a lively voice, her arms spreadeagled. Her face was make-up free and women ten years younger would have envied her complexion. “This really is a lovely surprise,” she added, beaming from ear to ear.

Daisy stopped staring at the painting of her Dad, dragged herself from the depths of the armchair and hugged her mother tight.

“Hi, Mum. How are things in this little neck of the woods?”

“Oh, Daisy, you’re damp right through,’ she fussed, handing her daughter a second towel. “I was going to phone you this evening. I’m afraid I have bad news about Isobel.”

“I know, Mum. I heard. Eddie told me…”

“Have you seen him? The poor boy thought he was coming home for Jonathan’s birthday party but walked into all of this. I can’t imagine what those poor lads are going through. How was he when you spoke to him?”

Maggie sat down and curled her feet under her legs. Her yoga session had reduced her tension slightly but the shock of Isobel’s illness was etched like a scar on her mind.

“Well, he was very emotional at first, but he’s come round a bit,” said Daisy, munching on a handful of nuts that she’d found in a bowl on the coffee table. She spat them back into her hand when she realised they had been sitting there so long they’d almost grown a beard. “He picked me up in Belfast this morning, so we had a good long chat on the journey here. Jonathan seems in bad form, though.”

“Yeah, he is. You do know he got engaged at the weekend.”

“I heard.” Daisy’s head dropped but she shook herself and gave a weak smile.

“That’s another piece of news I’ve been putting off telling you, love. Shannon’s her name. I’ve only seen her once but she seems a nice girl. A little outspoken for Jonathan, but pretty, and they’re getting married really soon. I wasn’t sure how you’d react. After all, at one stage we all thought it would have been you…” said Maggie shaking her head slightly. She could still remember her daughter posing nervously with Jonathan on the night of her debs ball. “It could have been, you know.”

“Anyway, whatever.” Daisy felt a childish rant coming on but she couldn’t control herself. The reason she had come home wasn’t to talk about Jonathan and she’d no intention of doing so. “I’m sure you would rather want to know what brought me here when I should be in Spain. Lorna should be with me, but she’s not because she’s sitting in a jacuzzi drinking posh mineral water and being treated like a princess!”

Maggie considered the subject closed. She reminded herself not to mention Shannon’s name again. It was for the best, obviously.

“What a terrible disappointment that your holiday collapsed.” Maggie commented to her only daughter. “What’s up with you anyway? I hope it’s nothing more than a bit of man trouble. I could have come to stay with you for a few days up in Belfast if I’d known you were lonely.”

Maggie was delighted at Daisy’s unexpected arrival. However she wondered what was behind the surprise visit. She stood up and straightened her yellow t-shirt. It said “The Virgin Tour 1985” across the front.

Daisy made a mental note to hide the Madonna t-shirt or dump it before she went home. She could always recycle it and use it as a polishing rag if she was stuck, although Lorna would die of shock if Daisy suddenly started taking an interest in housework! Her flatmate had a strange fetish for micro-fibre cloths and could spend hours pondering over lotions and potions at the supermarket while Daisy headed straight for the pizza aisle or towards the special offers on red wine.

“I think I’ll put the kettle on,” muttered Maggie. “Sod my detox plans; I have a feeling I’ll need a caffeine fix before I hear the end of all your news.”

Daisy followed her mother closely through the narrow hallway, chattering non-stop into the cosy kitchen and almost treading on Maggie’s heels when she stopped at the fridge to take out some milk.

“Mum,” she said, having finally used up all her small talk on the weather and the smell of fish outside. “Does Isobel know that Eddie is gay?”

Maggie swung around and looked her daughter in the eye.

“Of course she does. Well, at least I assume so,” she shrugged and poured some milk into a jug. “Yes, of course, she has to know.”

Daisy paused. “But he said he’s never told her.”

“Does he really need to? Isn’t it obvious?”

“Mmm,” said Daisy. “You have a point. It’s just, if she does know, my whole life will be so much easier.”

When the kettle finally whistled, Maggie made two cappuccinos and sat them on the chequered table. Daisy scraped her chair along the floor and sat down, hugging the cup in her hands. Please let Isobel know the score, she prayed to herself. Please, please let all this monkey business be totally unnecessary.

“Well, it’s hardly something we’ve ever sat down and discussed,” said Maggie, wondering where on earth all of this could be leading. “Isobel, as you know, would hardly speak of such things, so she has never really said so. However even a blind man could see that Eddie is gay. Since he was a child, his destiny has been so unbelievably obvious. His passion for Barbie dolls, clothed Barbie dolls, gave the game away when he was about ten years old.”

“But she hasn’t actually said it, has she? Has she even hinted?”

“How do you mean?”

“Like, does she ever mention how Eddie is living in the gay capital of the world, or that he perhaps has a very special friend called Brad, or that he has shirts in multiple shades of pink, as well as posters of his icon, Ellen DeGeneres, on his wall, just beside his altar to Cher?”

Maggie thought for a few seconds while dunking a Kit Kat Chunky into her cup of froth.

“No.”

“No?”

“I’m afraid not. Anyhow, what’s the big deal? I’m sure Isobel has realised it by now. But even if she hasn’t, what has it got to do with you?”

Daisy fidgeted with the edge of the tablecloth.

“This is going to sound crazy,” she said. “Because it is crazy. Pure mental, actually.”

Her mother frowned. “OK, just spit it out, for crying out loud.”

Daisy coughed quietly and shifted in her chair. She could sense her mother’s patience was wearing thin.

“Eddie wants me to pretend we’re an item.”

Maggie seemed startled but then started to laugh.

Daisy ignored her. “Eddie wants me to pretend we’re an item so that Isobel’s last few months are content in the knowledge that her son’s a heterosexual.” She paused for breath. “He wants his mother to think he’s just a run-of-the-mill lad’s lad whose main ambition is to settle down here in Donegal and have two point four children.”

There, she’d said it. And it was beginning to sound more stupid every time.

“Wow,” said Maggie. She loved that word. It really was so effective when she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Silly, isn’t it? And I’m even worse for agreeing to go along with it,” said Daisy.

Maggie opened another Kit Kat and handed half of it across the table.

“I see,” she whispered. “And have you thought of Jonathan’s feelings at all?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” said Daisy dismissively, licking the melted chocolate from the side of the biscuit in a ritual that mirrored her mother’s.

“Will he? Look, don’t you think Eddie would be better just to tell Isobel he’s gay? I know she’s a Holy Joe but she does live in the twenty-first century,” Maggie pointed out. This all sounded a bit over the top, ridiculous even. “I’m sure she knows in her heart anyway.”

“He just doesn’t want to put her under any more stress. It would be nice for her to think that Eddie was planning to follow in his older brother’s footsteps … in more ways than one. Oh it doesn’t feel right at all.”

Daisy couldn’t even bring herself to mention Jonathan’s name again.

Maggie shrugged her shoulders and sipped her cappuccino, trying to take it all in. Daisy’s home visits were normally to escape from work frustration, or to moan about the lack of good men. Pretending to go out with a gay guy she was practically reared alongside was definitely a first.

“Well, I don’t really think there’s any need for this, Daisy, but if it takes Eddie’s mind off the bigger picture, then why not just run with it for his sake? For a while anyway. Isobel didn’t come up the river in a bubble. She will know from the outset it’s his wee way of coping, so if it makes him feel better, go along with it knowing that the rest of us all know it’s as unlikely as…well, it’s just not even logical in the first place.”

Daisy shrugged and then nodded. “I said I’d give him a week. In the meantime, I’ll try to convince him to come out with it gracefully, sooner rather than later. He would feel much better for it.”

“Good idea. And if all this settles his mind for a short time, it won’t do either of you any harm. It’s Jonathan I’d be more concerned about. You two haven’t been in touch in years.”

Maggie thought carefully before she broached the next subject. “By the way, guess who I saw today? With Jonathan?”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re another Sexy Shannon fan? I’ve heard enough about her today already, thanks very much.”

“I wasn’t talking about Shannon. Three letters,” she said with a bright smile.

Daisy’s cheeks went a deep shade of pink and her eyes widened.

“TLC? No. Way. With Jonathan?”

“Way.” That was Maggie’s second-favourite response. She’d overheard it from a teenager standing in the express aisle at Asda.

“Where was he?” Daisy’s face lit up. Suddenly she felt like doing a chant or a dance on the kitchen floor.

“At Isobel’s. Briefly. He and Jonathan are teaching in the same school in Donegal. They’re big buddies, apparently.”

“What? Really? Oh, Mum, I’d love to have been here. Did you get a good, long look at him? Did he see you?”

Maggie raised an eyebrow. “Ah, Daisy, I wasn’t staring. You should know me better than that. I was in the front garden tidying the flowerbeds and he pulled up with Jonathan in a taxi. They must have been coming from the pub, and he didn’t hang around, but yes, I took in every last detail for you. And I have three words.”

“I can guess.”

“Drop. Dead. Gorgeous.”

Daisy bit her lip with excitement. TLC, or The Lovely Christian, to give him his full title, had once been the lust of Daisy’s life. Well, the lust of half the village’s life, to be more accurate. Young married women mostly, but Daisy strongly believed that there was something about Christian Devine that would make a nun weak at the knees. Devine by name, divine from top to toe. If he was around town again, this little unexpected visit home might not be so bad after all.

“Right,” Daisy brightened. “Hit me with all the details. Long hair? Short hair? Yummy scale one-to-ten?”

“Short…ish. And a bit messy, but nice messy if you know what I mean. Yummy scale is a huge ten out of ten. No, eleven.”

“Tanned skin, pale skin?” Daisy wanted a full description. Christian couldn’t be long home from his worldly travels. The last she’d heard of him, he’d been trekking across Australia.

“Tanned as always. Deeply tanned. Black t-shirt, faded jeans, very hunky…in a rugged, arrogant sort of way that only Christian Devine could get away with.”

Daisy swooned.

“Single or attached? This is the most important bit.”

Maggie thought for a moment. How could she let her daughter down gently? She scrunched up her face and then told the truth.

“Heartbroken, actually. Yes, heartbroken is definitely the word that Isobel had overheard. His latest girlfriend has left him for six months to do some travelling and apparently he’s gutted.”

Daisy gulped. “Heartbroken and gutted? That’s not good … ”

Heartbroken was better than single, but worse than attached. How do you ensnare somebody who is heartbroken? It would be like competing with a ghost, thought Daisy. A living ghost, if there was such a thing.

“How heartbroken can he possibly be? I didn’t think Christian Devine even had a heart. I can’t believe Eddie failed to tell me all of this.” Daisy shook her head in a haze of excitement and disbelief. “I mean, this is high-quality need-to-know information, and I, of all people, have a real need to know. He is the biggest eye totty ever to come out of this backwater! He is like the Killshannon version of Colin Farrell. Phwoarr!”

She reached for the kettle and poured a second cup of cappuccino.

“I’m sure the tracking of TLC’s love life is at the very bottom of Eddie’s ‘to-do’ list at the moment,” said Maggie. “Anyhow,” she continued, “that’s as far as my research has gone. The rest, I’m afraid, will be up to you.”

Daisy was very impressed with her mum’s work to date. Most mothers would have locked up their daughters at the sight of someone like Christian Devine. His reputation had left bleeding hearts all over Killshannon when he was a teenager, but he had been born with charm and a reputation as his own father had been a serial womaniser too. Maggie knew all about that from her own single days growing up around the village. Besides, the looks and charm of a movie star could get you further than most in a small town, and Christian, like his father, had certainly made the best of his finest assets over the years.

“Ah well,” sighed Daisy. “He’s probably caught some terrible, nasty STD on his travels.” There was no hope competing with an absent girlfriend, so she figured she’d try and dwell on the negatives.

Maggie looked at her in horror. “Daisy! Christian is a schoolteacher now. Don’t be so quick to judge people. Didn’t I always preach that to you?”

“So, what? He’s a teacher. Big deal. A leopard never changes his spots and if he’s heartbroken, I’m the Virgin Mary.”

Maggie straightened her Like a Virgin t-shirt and Daisy started to laugh.

“I’ll really have to update your retro wardrobe some of these days, Mum. That yellow is wild and mothers aren’t supposed to dress in t-shirts from the eighties.”

“If that’s what you think,” said Maggie with a nod. “Mothers shouldn’t really dress like their daughters, but some do. English teachers aren’t supposed to be sexy. But some are.” She cleared the table and made her way over to the tiny pantry. “Now, what would you like for tea?”

Daisy’s stomach grumbled. Why had she left it so long to come home? This was better than Spain, she thought. Well, almost. So far, Killshannon was showing fantastic potential for a week of fun. All she needed now was for the sun to come out, for Eddie to come out, and she would happily reignite her friendship with her miserable suitcase and suntan lotions once and for all.