My Mother's Secret

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  ‘You’re being silly now,’ said Paul. ‘They wanted to get married, she said so. The fact that they couldn’t is irrelevant.’

  ‘They could have later,’ said Roisin. ‘If it had really mattered, they would have found a way.’

  ‘Your mum has already explained that.’

  ‘Saying that they never found the right moment isn’t really a good enough explanation.’

  ‘It’s understandable, all the same.’

  ‘I still—’

  ‘Roisin.’ Paul’s voice was gentle. ‘Leave it. It doesn’t make any difference. It really doesn’t. To you, to me or to them. There’s been enough for Jenny to deal with this evening. She doesn’t need to be punished by another daughter.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to …’ Roisin’s words trailed off. She’d intended to have a go at her mother but she suddenly realised that Paul was right. It wouldn’t serve any purpose to heap more anger on Jenny. ‘All I wanted was to fix things,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t fix everything,’ Paul told her. ‘Sometimes you have to leave it to other people. And there are some things, Rosie, that can’t be fixed at all.’

  Camilla was also enjoying one of Summer’s cosmopolitans, although Davey had stuck with beer. They’d moved to the veranda, where they were sitting beside each other on the bamboo sofa. Davey said that it was almost like their holiday in the Caribbean, what with the warmth and the rain and the cocktails. Camilla laughed and told him that the Caribbean had been a lot more tranquil. Then she asked him what the matter was.

  ‘What d’you mean, what’s the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve been like a cat on a hot tin roof since you returned,’ she said. ‘You’re tense and edgy.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ He made a face. ‘My parents dropped the biggest bombshell of my life today. I spent ages out in the rain looking for my runaway sister. We’re now trapped in the party from hell. And …’ He checked himself. He’d almost blurted out that he’d lost an engagement ring worth more than three months’ salary and that if he’d had the courage of his convictions and asked her to marry him sooner, they could have been sitting here together as an engaged couple. But instead he allowed his words to trail off.

  ‘It’s not the party from hell,’ said Camilla. ‘It’s a far more exciting party than the last one I was at.’

  He looked at her questioningly.

  ‘You remember?’ she said. ‘The drinks reception with Ivar.’

  Davey nodded. He hadn’t wanted her to go to any social function at which her previous boyfriend would be in attendance, particularly a social function he wasn’t personally invited to, but he hadn’t said anything because Camilla wouldn’t have understood how he could be jealous about a man she considered to be in her past. As far as she was concerned, over was over. She didn’t tie herself into emotional knots about things. Which, generally speaking, was great and made her easy to live with; but sometimes, Davey thought, sometimes he’d like to know exactly what she was feeling.

  ‘Now that was a boring party,’ she said. ‘All of them standing around with their glasses of wine and yammering on about the critically acclaimed books they were reading and the art-house films they’d seen and me knowing that it was all bullshit because Ivar prefers crime fiction to literary work and is pathetically addicted to kids’ movies.’

  ‘Kids’ movies?’ Davey was startled.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Camilla. ‘Cartoons and comic book hero stuff. Spiderman and the Avengers.’

  ‘I don’t see him like that,’ said Davey. ‘I imagined him as the arty type.’

  ‘Because he likes to be seen as the arty type,’ said Camilla.

  ‘Whereas I’m not arty and nobody would consider me arty.’

  ‘And that’s a good thing.’ Camilla smiled at him. ‘That is why I’m with you, Davey Sheehan, and not Ivar Nygaard.’

  ‘And why you’re putting up with the party from hell.’

  ‘I keep telling you it’s not from hell,’ she said. ‘Although your poor mother must be exhausted.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ acknowledged Davey. ‘It’s been stressful for her.’

  ‘And for you, out there in the rain, looking for Steffie.’

  He nodded. ‘When we found her car in the ditch, I felt sick,’ he admitted. ‘I thought she’d be in it. I was relieved when she wasn’t and then terrified of what might have happened to her.’

  ‘But nothing bad did,’ said Camilla. ‘So everything is all right.’

  Except that I’ve lost your engagement ring. He couldn’t keep the thought out of his mind for long. He wanted to tell her, but of course he couldn’t do that. The problem was, he didn’t really know what to do.

  He was still wondering about it when he saw Colette. She’d dried her hair and was now wearing a pair of fluffy pink slippers, which, teamed with the yellow and black striped dress, made her resemble a character from Sesame Street. He waved at her and she crossed the room hesitantly.

  ‘Davey says you were fantastic tonight,’ said Camilla before he could say anything.

  ‘All I did was drive.’ Colette knew that she sounded like a sulky teenager, so she gave her cousin’s fiancée a wide smile to make up for it. Camilla looked slightly startled.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ asked Davey. ‘You deserve something nice after your Trojan work earlier. I might be able to persuade Summer to rustle you up one of her cocktails.’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother with that. A beer would be nice though,’ Colette told him.

  Davey got up and went inside. Left alone with Camilla, Colette couldn’t think of anything to say. But then Camilla started talking about Steffie and Jenny and saying that people were overreacting but it was understandable when everything had come as such a shock to them all. Colette didn’t need to say anything. All that was required of her was a nod from time to time as she listened to Camilla’s logical viewpoint on the mess that was Pascal and Jenny’s anniversary party. But she didn’t really hear much of what Davey’s girlfriend was saying. She was too busy thinking of how fabulous the engagement ring would look on the Danish woman’s finger. She closed her left hand around it. Despite having spent another fruitless five minutes trying to remove it, all her efforts had done was cause her finger to swell up even more, making it impossible to get off. So she’d turned the stones around until they were facing her palm and all that could be seen on her engagement finger was a narrow band of gold.

  ‘So this is a very close family?’ Camilla looked enquiringly at her and Colette tried to stop thinking about the fact that she was wearing the other woman’s engagement ring.

  ‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘This is the first time we’ve been together in a long time.’

  ‘Davey says that you came here a lot when you were younger.’

  Colette explained about summers at Aranbeg. ‘But when we were kids. It’s different now.’

  ‘You remain close to Davey’s parents?’

  Colette shrugged just as Davey returned with a bottle of Corona. She was careful to accept it with her right hand, keeping the left out of sight.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘Thanks again for the brilliant driving earlier, Colette.’

  ‘It was the car, not me,’ she told him.

  ‘Funny, I never saw you as a four-by-four sort of person.’

  ‘Oh? What sort of person am I then?’

  ‘A Volkswagen Beetle,’ he said. ‘Or maybe a Fiat 500.’

  ‘Comedy cars,’ she said.

  ‘Quirky,’ he amended.

  ‘You think I’m quirky?’ As she spoke, she looked down at the stripy dress and the fluffy slippers and gave a rueful smile.

  ‘They’re cars with personality,’ said Davey. ‘You have tons of personality, Colette.’

  She wished he’d said that years ago.

  ‘I don’t have a car,’ said Camilla. ‘But if I did, it would be a Leaf.’

  ‘Environmentally friendly,’ Davey agreed.

  ‘But not exactly de
signed for ploughing through flood water,’ said Colette.

  ‘If more people don’t drive environmentally friendly cars, there will be more floods in the future,’ said Camilla.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Davey.

  He and Camilla began to talk about environmental issues. Colette listened for a moment or two and then, realising that they were becoming more and more engrossed in their own conversation, left them to it.

  ‘You know what the worst of all this is?’ asked Pascal.

  He and Jenny had come downstairs and were alone in the front room. She was standing in front of the sketches she’d done of the children, remembering the feel of the charcoal on the paper, remembering how back then they’d believed she was invincible. She turned from the sketch of Steffie to look at the man she’d always thought of as her husband.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re stuck with that lot till tomorrow,’ said Pascal.

  Jenny smiled. She couldn’t help it. Pascal had sounded totally indignant at the idea of interlopers spending the night in his home.

  ‘We were already expecting a full house,’ she reminded him.

  ‘But not this full,’ he said. ‘Not nieces and nephews, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends and the unexpected new model.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And they’re all getting sloshed now because they’ve no place to go.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Summer is making cocktails and they’re going down a treat.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Jenny. ‘I suppose anyone stranded here needs something to cheer them up. It’s pretty grim.’

  ‘One day Roisin will learn to ask before she does things.’

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ said Jenny. ‘And it was hugely thoughtful.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  The two of them were silent. The sounds of muted conversation drifted towards them.

  ‘You know what?’ Jenny stood up straighter and looked at her husband.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re right. We’re stuck with them. And they’re stuck with us. But the thing is, they came to celebrate. Not to sit around having boring conversations about us and feeling embarrassed and miserable.’

  ‘Nothing we can do about that now.’

  ‘Of course there is,’ she said. ‘It’s supposed to be a party, isn’t it? Let’s get in there and turn it into one.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’ve spend enough time crying and sniffing and moping,’ said Jenny. ‘There are things I have to deal with, of course, but I can’t do it all now. I know Steffie is OK. We have guests in the house. The least we can do is look after them.’

  Pascal stared at her.

  ‘So come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go inside and be the perfect host and hostess and insist that they have a good time.’

  This time Pascal grinned. ‘OK,’ he said.

  But when they walked into the living room, Jenny realised that she was too late. Because the guests were being organised into having a good time already. Roisin had inserted the SingStar disc into the PlayStation and told them that it was time to have some party fun.

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Daisy, who’d come back downstairs a few minutes earlier, telling Roisin that her brother and sister were asleep and that she was bored. Roisin had expressed surprise that Daisy could possibly be bored, since she usually spent hours chatting to her friends on her smartphone whenever she was alone, but Daisy admitted that she wanted to know what was going on. Roisin realised that it was both unfair and unnecessary to banish her teenage daughter upstairs again, and so Daisy had curled up in one of the living-room chairs.

  ‘We should divide into teams,’ Roisin said. ‘Write your names on pieces of paper and we’ll draw them.’

  ‘This is very professional,’ murmured Camilla.

  ‘It’s Roisin in her element,’ Davey murmured back as he wrote his name. ‘Can you sing?’

  ‘Not well,’ she replied.

  ‘It’ll be a competition,’ he told her. ‘Everything with the Sheehans is. So do your best.’

  She was startled by the intensity of his voice.

  ‘Right.’ Roisin put the slips of paper into a bowl and began to call out the teams.

  ‘I’ve never done SingStar before,’ said Summer, who was on the same team as Carl. ‘It’ll be fun.’

  Bernice, who was on the third team, snorted loud enough for Carl to hear.

  ‘OK, hun,’ said Roisin, who was on the same team as Daisy. ‘You’re up first. Give it socks.’

  Daisy got up and gave a very good rendition of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’, which left her with a Superstar score.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Roisin. ‘Glad you’re on my team. OK, up next …’ she looked at the list, ‘Aunt Sarah.’

  ‘Oh well, you all know my party piece,’ said Sarah. She threw back her head and belted out ‘I Will Survive’, accompanied by much cheering and whooping by everyone else.

  ‘She’s robbed my song,’ Bernice muttered to Alivia. ‘It’s the only thing I feel like singing right now.’

  ‘Of course you’ll survive.’ Alivia squeezed the other girl’s arm. ‘You’re doing great today.’

  Bernice said nothing as Alivia took out her mobile and checked it again. Still no response from Dermot to her texts. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or concerned.

  Paul was up next and to everyone’s amusement he opted for ‘I’m Every Woman’, which he sang out of key but with lots of enthusiasm.

  ‘Full marks for interpretation,’ Roisin assured him as he sat down again. ‘Now you, Camilla.’

  Camilla stood up and took the mic gingerly. She cleared her throat a few times and then, as the music blasted out, started to sing Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’. She accompanied it with a selection of athletic dance moves that left everyone looking at her in awed amazement.

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t sing?’ said Davey when she’d finished to rapturous applause.

  ‘You were distracted by the dancing,’ replied Camilla breathlessly. ‘I had to learn that song as part of a team-building exercise at work. It’s the only one I know.’

  ‘You’re unbelievable.’ He grinned at her.

  ‘Summer!’ cried Roisin when the applause for Camilla died down. ‘It’s your turn. C’mon, do our team proud.’

  Summer beamed as she took hold of the mic. She fluffed out her blond hair, struck a confident pose and then began.

  ‘Wow,’ whispered Alivia as Summer’s tuneless voice filled the room. ‘Even Paul was better than her. She makes Cameron Diaz sound like Celine Dion.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Bernice’s shoulders were shaking with laughter. She looked up. Carl’s face was a mask of horror as he watched his date for the night.

  Summer’s score was awful but she didn’t care.

  ‘I know I can’t sing,’ she told them cheerfully. ‘But if I ever get a big break I can release something anyhow. They’ll auto-tune it or whatever and it’ll sound perfect. It’s all about the performance really.’

  ‘Right.’ Roisin looked grim as she told them that Davey was up next. She’d been counting on Summer to get a good score for the team, especially after Camilla had wowed for the opposition. But Carl’s girlfriend had totally bombed. It was unbelievable that such a terrible sound had come out of her mouth.

  ‘And now Colette,’ she said when Davey had finished singing ‘New York, New York’.

  Colette wasn’t a particularly good singer and usually tried to get out of karaoke nights, but as nobody could be worse than Summer, she got up and grabbed the mic. She’d chosen ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’, and as she sang, she lost herself in the words and skipped around the room, not caring that she was still wearing the pink fluffy slippers. It didn’t matter. Having fun was the most important thing and what was wrong with that? She needed to throw off the shackles of thinking that she was in love with Davey Sheehan and embrace life on her own terms. Which she was going to do. Right now. She was go
ing to have her own walk in the sun.

  She bowed low as she finished the song and her happy mood evaporated almost immediately. Because in her singing and jumping and skipping around the room, Camilla’s engagement ring had somehow turned on her finger so that the magnificent diamonds were clearly visible. Using the mic to shield her hand, she turned it around again, hoping that nobody had noticed. But when she looked up, she realised that her hopes had been in vain. Because Davey had. And he was looking at her with an expression of utter disbelief on his face.

  Chapter 27

  Steffie would have been relieved to know that she was missing out on SingStar. She had Summer’s voice without Summer’s confidence, so she never even got close to sounding good. The last time she’d been forced into joining in, at one of Daisy’s birthday parties, she’d sworn never to get involved again. It was mortifying to sound like a hippo on heat in front of everyone and know they were creased up in hysterical laughter wondering how it was she was so tone deaf when the rest of the family could all keep in tune.

  The music that Liam was playing in the flat wasn’t for singing along to. It was mellow lounge music and it was making her feel very chilled as she reviewed the events of the day in her mind. Her initial fury at Jenny had finally begun to dissipate and she was now feeling a certain sympathy for a woman who’d twice found herself in the situation of having an unplanned and unwelcome pregnancy. She remembered Roisin once remarking that it was disconcerting to think that her mother’s first reaction when she thought she was pregnant with her had doubtless been one of unmitigated horror.

  ‘It’s not a nice feeling,’ Roisin had said, ‘to know that your mother was probably thinking you were the worst thing that had ever happened in her life.’

  Steffie had told her not to be silly, that although Jenny must have been shocked, she’d also been happy enough to marry Pascal and become a family and so Roisin had simply hurried the inevitable along. But now Steffie was experiencing her sister’s feelings herself (half-sister, she told herself again) and she wished she’d been more sympathetic and more understanding when Roisin had spoken about it before. Basically, Steffie thought, the only one of us who was born without background drama was Davey. And who knows if they planned him either?