by Cathy Kelly
For the first time he wondered whether he’d be able to go through with it all.
Jennifer slammed down the phone so loudly that she was sure she heard some part of the receiver crack. Damn bloody Ryan, damn him. Just when she thought she was feeling a bit better, he came along with another piece of bad news. How was she supposed to feel when he moved in with that woman and they were everywhere in Bridgeport? She might bump into them in the supermarket, probably at the holding-hand stage as they dithered over washing powders. And how dare Ryan say she was dragging the girls into this! She didn’t want them to be hurt either. Not like she’d been hurt. No, damn Ryan and his insensitivity. Jennifer burst into tears. She’d meant to tell him about the school phoning about Ruby but she’d forgotten.
Number 4, The Close was a big house, with a cobblelock drive, no grass and an uncontrollable shaggy leylandii hedge giving it an enclosed air. A cul-de-sac lined with imposing five-bedroomed houses, The Close had once been one of the most desirable addresses in Bridgeport, but that was before a gated community of large McMansions had been built in the town at the tail end of the property bubble. Ruby knew that the only reason they could afford a big, swanky house was because Dad’s business was going so well and he’d got all the important franchises for bike and running stuff.
When they’d first moved there, Mum had loved it. Lately, though, she seemed to hate everything The Close stood for, particularly the neighbours, who were all still married and had stopped inviting her to parties and dinners as soon as Dad left.
‘Women hate single women,’ she’d said crossly. ‘Afraid they’ll steal their husbands.’
Ruby wished her mum had girlfriends. She didn’t know what she’d do without Andi, her closest friend since they’d started school. But Mum wasn’t one for close friends.
‘I don’t want to go to any of their parties anyway,’ she said airily.
Because of what her mother had told her, the normally sweet Ruby glared at the neighbours now whenever she met them. She hated them for not being proper friends to her mum, for looking down on her and Mum and Shelby, giving them fake smiles while inside they were thinking, Poor things, the father left home, the mother’s never got over it. She’s highly strung. All a bit of a disaster … Jennifer had failed to mention to Ruby that she’d brushed off all attempts at help, seeing pity in the neighbours’ gestures of friendship.
Ruby unlocked the front door and drew a deep breath to ready herself. In her head she knew how hard all of this was for her mum, but in her heart she was tired of the constant sniping. You’d think they were the only separated family in Bridgeport the way Mum went on. In reality, there were at least fifteen kids in her year at school with divorced or separated parents, and most of them seemed to have figured out how to get through it without being at war all the time.
One of Ruby’s closest friends, Eloise, had been to her mother’s second wedding the previous year and was godmother to her baby half-sister, Coco.
‘Isn’t she adorable?’ Eloise had sighed, showing them pictures of the christening on her phone.
Ruby had stared at shots of her friend holding a frankly mutinous-looking Coco dressed in white robes, but what had fascinated her most were the photos of Eloise’s mum and her new husband. They looked so happy, no taut lines around their mouths.
Ruby’s dad looked a lot happier since he’d met Vonnie. If only Mum could find someone else, Ruby was convinced life would be much easier for everyone. All the anger and rage would stop. Only how could she meet someone else when she sat at home all the time brooding?
That appeared to be the key: for both parents to find new love. Eloise’s parents hugged like friends whenever they met. They showed up with their new partners at sports day or the school play, and everyone sat together and chatted as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Ruby would have liked to go over and ask them how they’d done it, but she was sure they’d only smile at her and say something annoyingly grown-up like Time, lovey, it takes time. That was all well and good, but it didn’t help her any. How much time, precisely? Nobody ever seemed to have an answer to that. Her parents had been apart nearly four years now; surely that was time enough?
When Dad had come along to Shelby’s Christmas play last year, Mum had ostentatiously moved seats because he’d sat in the same row as her and Ruby.
‘Come on, Ruby,’ she’d hissed so loudly that all the other parents had stared at them and then quickly looked away, having figured it out in an instant.
‘No!’ Ruby had whispered fiercely. ‘You move if you want, I’m staying.’
As a result, her mother hadn’t spoken to her for the rest of the day.
Ruby wondered what her mother would do if Vonnie got pregnant like Eloise’s mum. A vision popped into her head of her mother marching round to Poppy Lane with a baseball bat to whack Vonnie over the head.
That was the problem with Mum: she overdid everything. She could never be mildly angry: she went from calm to enraged in three seconds. If she got home and found the chicken she’d just bought was past its sell-by, she wouldn’t quietly return it to the supermarket, oh no. She’d storm back to the shop as if the whole supermarket industry was against her and she’d have to do battle to get her money back.
It was so exhausting.
Ruby hung her school coat in the cupboard in the hall, then tried to creep upstairs quietly with her school bag. She could do without dinner. Better to spend the evening in the peace of her bedroom, doing her homework.
But her mother had ears like a bat and Ruby had only made it as far as the second stair when the kitchen door was wrenched open.
‘Ruby!’
‘Yes, Mum,’ she sighed.
They stared at each other across the hall and Ruby could see the anger glistening in her mother’s eyes. There was no escaping. Sighing, she dumped her bag at the bottom of the stairs and walked towards the kitchen.
‘You’re late,’ Jennifer snapped.
‘Extra sports,’ fibbed Ruby.
‘I’ve had two horrendous phone calls today,’ her mother announced, going over to the oven and taking out something that might have once resembled shepherd’s pie. It was now burned at the edges, which was what happened to dinner in their house when the person it was for arrived home late. She served it up along with some dried-up broccoli and put the plate down on the kitchen table in Ruby’s place.
All Ruby really wanted was a toasted cheese sandwich, but if her mother had made shepherd’s pie, then she had to eat it. The argument if she didn’t wouldn’t be worth it.
‘The first was from Principal Rhattigan over at the junior school, asking about Shelby. Or that’s what I thought. But she was really asking about you,’ Jennifer said in a grim voice. ‘She hoped Shelby was happy and had adjusted to the separation. Then she asked after you – that’s what she was really after: finding out what’s going on here. It’s bad enough that the stupid form teacher has been on to me about your behaviour, Ruby, without Grace Rhattigan sticking her nose in. She’s like the secret service, that woman: she knows everyone and everything. What have you been saying?’
‘I haven’t said anything,’ protested Ruby, astonished. How had Principal Rhattigan become involved?
‘Really? Nothing about a new house with your new stepmother – because I know, you know. Your bloody father just told me. Probably the whole of Bridgeport knows by now and I’m the last to find out, as per usual.’
Ruby looked at her mother warily. They were so similar in looks, both small, with dark hair and grey eyes. There had been a time when they were both slim, but since Dad left, Mum had taken to buying frozen desserts and eating them late at night when no one else was around. She thought Ruby didn’t know, but she did; she saw all the New York cheesecake and chocolate roulade packaging stuffed at the back of the recycling bin.
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Mum,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I’m tired. It’s all different for me too. None of it’s my fault.’
‘Oh, so it’s my fault, is it? I’m the one who’s messed things up by not playing the game when your father split our family up. It’s all down to me.’ She stopped marching up and down the kitchen and leaned over Ruby to hiss: ‘Your father has you brainwashed to think it’s not his fault, Ruby, but it is!’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ said Ruby glumly, staring down at her plate.
‘I suppose Shelby knows all about the new house too?’
That was enough for Ruby.
‘Don’t you dare take it out on Shelby! She’s just a kid,’ she yelled.
In an instant, Jennifer’s eyes filled with tears. As ever, faced with her mother’s pain, Ruby felt torn between anger and guilt and pity.
Mum couldn’t help the way she was. Granny and Grandad had spoiled her rotten; she’d been an only child, so there were no brothers or sisters to share with, she’d never had to learn to compromise. Whenever things weren’t going her way, she threw a tantrum – as if then she’d get what she wanted, like when she was little with her parents doting on her.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ Ruby said, the instinct to make everything all right overwhelming her the way it always did. Ruby the fixer. ‘I love you, you know that. Don’t worry, it’ll be all right. You’ve got me and Shelby. Let Dad go off and do what he wants.’
Even saying it made her feel guilty, because she adored her father and she didn’t want to have to play this game, but sometimes it was the only way. Mum needed her. Shelby needed her. Ruby had to be the grown-up, however much it hurt her to say these things she didn’t really believe in.
‘I know, honey.’ Mum was crying as she put her arms around Ruby and hugged her.
Mum didn’t hug much any more – she was so conscious of her extra weight that she didn’t like people to touch her in case they felt the rolls of flesh. She used to wear trendy jeans and nice fitted tops, but now she bought unflattering extra-large sweatshirts in the supermarket and wore them over baggy tracksuit bottoms, trying to conceal any bulges.
‘It’s not easy, accepting someone else forcing their way into your life. Your father doesn’t understand: this woman is a stranger, and just because he’s chosen to be with her, there’s no reason why you should have to see her.’
If Ruby and Shelby hated this Vonnie, things would be so simple. Ryan loved his girls, he’d do anything for them, and if they wanted nothing to do with Vonnie, he would have to drop her. The thought gave Jennifer hope. With Vonnie off the scene, there would be no competition. Not that Jennifer was convinced he’d come back, but still, they could live apart, without other people, and eventually … maybe he’d remember why they fell in love in the first place.
Vonnie was the fly in the ointment. And Ruby and Shelby needed to see that.
Ruby stilled in her mother’s embrace. Vonnie was nice. Lovely, even. She managed to be kind and motherly without acting as if she was trying to be Ruby’s mother or her friend. She treated Ruby like someone whose opinion mattered, and she seemed to know without being told that sometimes Ruby needed to see her dad alone.
‘Vonnie isn’t the problem,’ Ruby said tiredly. It came out in a whisper, and she wasn’t sure her mother had heard, because she didn’t reply.
Mum let go and went to the fridge, where she uncorked an already open bottle of wine. She took a big glass, filled it and drank deeply.
‘Eat up,’ she said. ‘That pie’s a bit overcooked but it’s good for you, full of vitamins. I was thinking: you and I could do something on our own at the weekend? What do you think?’
‘What about Shelby?’ asked Ruby.
‘She can stay with Granny Lulu. We could go shopping in the city, I could buy you new clothes.’
Ruby thought of the conversations she’d overheard between her father and Vonnie about money. Both of them worked so hard with their own businesses, but even so it wasn’t going to be easy to pay their mortgage as well as the mortgage on The Close. It would mean cutting back on luxuries like holidays and new things for the house, but they were determined to manage.
Her mother was looking at her eagerly.
‘Yeah, Mum, whatever,’ she said, too exhausted to resist.
The other classic response for kids of separated parents: Whatever. It covered every eventuality and said nothing.
Ruby waited until her mother had left the room and then scraped her dinner from the plate into the bin before covering it up with some newspaper to hide the fact that she’d dumped it.
Whatever.
It was midnight, and Vonnie was arranging her clothes in the half-light from her bedside lamp, which she’d unplugged from beside the bed and brought over to the closet. Ryan was a heavy sleeper and never minded her reading while he slept, so the light wouldn’t wake him.
She simply couldn’t lie in bed any longer. She was far too stressed to sleep.
Kneeling on the floor in front of the small sliding-door wardrobe, she was methodically folding clothes and arranging them into piles ready for the move.
Vonnie had never had a lot of clothes.
‘No shopaholic tendencies for you,’ Ryan had said admiringly when he’d seen her bedroom in the town house for the first time and looked into the perfectly organised single wardrobe.
‘I could never afford that.’ Vonnie had shrugged. ‘What with setting up the business in the early days, there wasn’t a penny to spare. After Joe died, I didn’t want to shop. I didn’t buy a single thing for at least a year.’
She’d had some money from Joe’s insurance and could have bought clothes after he died, but she hadn’t wanted anything in the house that he hadn’t seen or touched. She’d worn his T-shirts in bed, and the one he’d worn the last night he’d spent with her she kept underneath her pillow, holding on to it until his scent was totally gone.
She still had it in the box of things she kept for Shane: his father’s watch, cufflinks from their wedding, old school reports and their wedding album.
Even now, Vonnie wasn’t much of a consumer. Things no longer seemed important. She’d learned the hard way that it was people that mattered, not how many pairs of designer shoes a person had.
Her clothes, laid out on the floor, were testament to that. All simple, none expensive. Comfortable slim-leg sweat pants and tops that grazed her hips formed one perfect pile. Pyjamas, like the fleecy ones she was wearing, were in another pile. The third was made up of the small selection of good tops she wore with tailored trousers or skirts for work: several blue-hued ones because they suited her pale colouring, the remainder in shades of grey.
She’d already organised her lingerie, folding everything perfectly, but had yet to do the pantyhose. They were hardest: she hated throwing out pantyhose before they got too old to wear, years of having to make do ingrained into her. Thrift had been part of growing up because her mother didn’t believe in wasting money.
On an impulse, she got silently to her feet and looked at Ryan sleeping soundly in her bed. He was a miracle, a miracle sent into her life to make it whole in a way she’d never dreamed it could be again. In sleep, you could see that he was handsome, but sleep hid the broad smile that never seemed to leave his face.
They’d made love earlier, his strong arms supporting his body as he stared down at her, telling her she was beautiful, that they’d be so happy together and that the house on Poppy Lane would make it all perfect.
She understood why he’d wanted to make love – he’d come in looking shattered after talking to Jennifer.
‘It didn’t go too well,’ was all he’d say.
Vonnie knew he’d tell her what had happened when he was able to; there was no need to push him. He was obviously traumatised enough without her adding to the stress.
They’d gone to bed early and he’d turned to her with passion, holding her face in his big hands and saying: ‘I love you so much, Vonnie. Nothing, nothing is going to change that. I’m so lucky to have found you finally, and no one is going to take it away.’
Making love was his way of reminding
himself of what he and Vonnie had.
‘Shane loves that bedroom over the garage in Poppy Lane,’ he’d said afterwards, leaning back on the pillow. ‘He said he’d like it painted blue and I told him he can have whatever he wants. You don’t think Ruby will mind that he got first pick? He will be living there full-time …’
‘If she wants it, we can talk about it,’ Vonnie said.
The logistics were going to be trickier, no doubt about it, now that she and Ryan were moving in together properly instead of him staying over occasionally. Shelby would be thrilled with the bedroom nearest theirs. She was like a gentle kitten: happy to curl up with whoever was taking care of her. It would be different for Ruby, seventeen going on thirty.
Ruby … the poor kid had a lot on her plate. She tried to hide what was going on in her head, but Vonnie could see how torn she was about their move to the house on Poppy Lane. On the one hand she dreaded it because it would make her mother angry, but at the same time she loved being with her father – with Vonnie and Shane too, but first and foremost it was her dad she needed. Vonnie tried so hard to make sure that Ruby had time with him on his own; she knew how important the bond between father and child was.
But what good did it do, Vonnie going out of her way to make sure the girls’ weekend visits were as normal and stress-free as possible, when Jennifer tried to make them feel guilty about having enjoyed themselves?
And now Jennifer had behaved exactly as Vonnie had predicted, flying into a rage about their move to Poppy Lane.
You knew it wasn’t going to be simple, Vonnie told herself. Take a broken marriage and add children, and you had the perfect recipe for guilt.
Ryan had plenty of guilt and Jennifer knew how to stir it. One day she might stir so successfully that Ryan wouldn’t be able to take it and would leave Vonnie.
It was so unfair. Vonnie hadn’t stolen Ryan; he’d been on his own for two years when they’d met, and Jennifer, according to Ryan, wouldn’t have him back even if he came with a winning lottery ticket. So why was she making it so hard for Vonnie to live with him? It didn’t make sense. But then Vonnie knew that often there was nothing about life and human emotions that did.