by Cathy Kelly
“Goodie,” said Kitty happily. “Do you think Claire will have hot chocolate too? The baby might like it.” Despite Tess’s horror at having Kitty find out about the baby, Kitty was delighted with the news and told everyone.
“That’s a very good idea,” Tess said evenly. “Milk is good for babies. I drank lots when you were in my tummy.”
She managed a smile. It hurt like hell even to think about it, but this baby would be Kitty’s half brother or sister.
Which made her feel mean and nasty. She wasn’t the sort of person who felt anger toward an unborn child, was she?
Yet somehow, she did feel upset about it all in ways she didn’t even want to think about.
She quashed those feelings. Today wasn’t about her, it was about Kitty and Zach.
It fell on Tess’s shoulders to make sure Kitty and Zach saw the baby as a good thing and not as a child who could conceivably get more of their father’s love because he would be living with the baby’s mother.
On the Internet, she had read scads of information on blended families and on welcoming new brothers or sisters into a complex mix. She was determined she wouldn’t wreck it all with bitterness. She had separated from Kevin. She could not blame him for finding someone else or having a baby with that person. Exactly how she was to achieve all this was another matter entirely.
She checked her watch. It was a quarter to five. They should be leaving.
“Zach,” she yelled up the stairs. “It’s time to go.”
Zach, Kitty and Tess were to meet Kevin and Claire in the hotel coffee shop.
She put the white knitted hat on Kitty’s head.
“Coming,” mumbled Zach, taking the stairs two at a time.
Antiques were easier than people and relationships. Antiques never asked personal questions or said, “Surely you can’t expect me to pay a hundred euros for this bit of old junk?” whereas people did. Sadly, antiques were harder to sell these days.
Thankfully, Zach was now speaking to her again. Tess suspected it had something to do with his new girlfriend, a tiny sprite of a thing from his class in school who was named Pixie and lived up to the name. Pixie had short, dark hair, wore boyish clothes and slightly Goth makeup and was both beautiful and very nice.
The final plus was that Pixie’s parents were divorced and she had two sets of new siblings from each side, something she treated as entirely normal.
Tess could imagine Pixie telling Zach that his mother must be going through hell right now and it wasn’t her fault his dad had a pregnant girlfriend.
Tess wanted to get down on her knees to thank Pixie for whatever it was she’d said to Zach, because he was being his normal sweet self again.
“Sorry about, you know, earlier, Ma,” was all he’d said. “It’s been kinda tough.”
Tess had hugged him. “I understand,” she said. “It’s been tough on me, too, love.”
Now, she walked into the plush surroundings of the hotel lounge bar where afternoon tea was being served and looked around, feeling a tight knot of anxiety inside her. The place was busy and she couldn’t see Kevin. Perhaps he’d chickened out. Perhaps she should have chickened out.
“Mum, it’s Dad!”
Kitty’s small, warm hand pulled away from her mother’s as she raced across the busy room to her father. He was sitting at a prime corner table with a girl who looked both nervous and incredibly young. Very slim, Tess could see, and with no sign of any pregnancy bump under a pink mohair jumper with sequins on the outside. Claire was pretty; that lovely combination of fair hair, blue eyes and skin that tanned easily. As she rose to her feet to greet Kitty and Zach, who’d moved on ahead of his mother, Tess decided that Claire looked like a radio station’s music festival DJ.
It was easy to imagine her with tanned legs emerging from denim cutoff shorts and a floppy hat on her head at any festival.
Beside her sat Kevin, who was hugging his daughter and then Zach.
“Tess, you’re here.”
Tess knew she’d walked over toward the table, but it was as if her body had moved of its own volition. The whole scene felt a little unreal. This girl was going to be Kitty and Zach’s stepmother.
Be strong, Tess said to herself. Be a grown-up.
“Hello, Claire,” she said with steely calm, and held out her hand. “I’m Tess.”
“It’s so lovely to meet you,” said Claire, getting to her feet and knocking over her glass of juice. “Oh no, shit. Oh, sorry!”
Hand clamped over her mouth at having used bad language in front of a child, Claire went pink.
“It’s fine,” said Kitty, settling in beside Claire and looking at her jumper with interest. “Mum says that all the time, don’t you, Mum? I have,” Kitty added in conspiratorial tones, “heard her use the f-word.”
Zach laughed, while Tess wondered whether to laugh or cry.
“Kitty,” she said, “behave yourself.”
While Kevin, also red-faced, tried to mop up the juice, Tess sat down in a seat across the table. She could do this.
“So,” she said brightly, with a hint of Montessori teacher talking to her new class, “now that you’ve met Zach and Kitty, tell us all about the pregnancy. You must be so excited.”
It wasn’t the way she’d planned to play it, but now that she was here, it seemed like the only way to go. Straight and up-front.
“. . . er, we don’t have to talk about that now,” said Kevin, who was just entering the puce-faced stage of embarrassment.
Tess looked at her husband and felt terribly annoyed with him. He was responsible for this—she might have wanted the separation, but the pregnant girlfriend was all his doing. The least he could do was act a bit more mature over it all.
“Kevin,” she said, “let’s keep this simple and honest. It’s hard enough as it is.”
“I’m so sorry,” blurted out Claire. “I never meant all this to happen. I didn’t know, really . . .” Her lovely blue eyes filled with tears.
Pregnancy hormones, Tess decided.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Tess said, with emphasis on the word you. Kevin, on the other hand, she wasn’t so sure about. Did she or didn’t she have an old ceremonial sword in the back room of the shop? She might skewer him with it one day soon.
“Drinks?” said a waitress, arriving pad in hand.
“Yes, thank you. We’re all thirsty,” said Tess brightly to the waitress.
“Hot chocolate with marshmallows,” piped up Kitty.
“Tea for me,” said Tess. “No, strike that, I’ll have a glass of red wine.” They could walk up the hill home. A glass of a nice red might help.
“Me too,” said Kevin hastily.
“Sweetie—” began Claire, big eyes turned toward him. “You said . . .”
“Make that a mineral water,” Kevin amended.
Beaming, Claire looked at Tess. “He’s not going to drink during the pregnancy. You never know when something might go wrong and he’d have to rush me to hospital, and he can’t drink and drive.”
Tess nodded, thinking that she’d have a lot to tell Suki on the phone tonight. “Very sensible,” she murmured.
Somehow, they all got through it. Kitty drank her hot chocolate without melting any marshmallows, occupied as she was in discussing Sylvanian Families and her love of pink things with Claire, who also loved pink things.
“I have a lot of Sylvanians, don’t I, Mum?”
“I used to too,” Claire said. “My little sister got them after me, but I’m going to get them from her for the baby.”
“The baby could have some of mine!” Kitty said. “You can see them all when you come to our house to visit.”
Tess decided that a second glass of red wine might help.
Even Zach unbent after some time spent in Claire’s company.
She was so sweet, and strangely innocent, that it was impossible to feel any hatred toward her. And why should they feel hatred toward her, Tess pondered, as she watched Kevin a
nd Zach talk about football, while Claire entertained Kitty by discussing what bands she liked. Claire really hadn’t done anything wrong.
At the end, Kevin paid and Claire hugged everyone, including Tess.
“You’ve been so nice to me,” she said and it looked as if she might cry again.
Up close, Claire’s skin was so very clear and unlined and she smelled of a sweet, floral perfume. Beside her, Tess felt about ninety.
“Babies have a way of making things right,” Tess said.
And it was true. A new person was coming into this world and it was connected with her and her children. She would do the right thing. That was Tess Power’s way.
A few days later, she wasn’t feeling quite so well inclined toward Claire. Kitty hadn’t stopped talking about her and Zach kept saying she was “really cool,” which was high praise indeed.
Family, thought Tess, determined to do the right thing, she had to create a new family: a blended family, because that’s what they would be when Claire had the baby. How bizarre to be a blended family. Up until now she’d only read about such things in magazines. Tess’s favorite was the magazine with the psychologist answering questions; she could clearly recall a letter from a woman who’d loathed the idea of her precious children spending time with her husband’s new wife, or rather her ex-husband’s new wife. Now that was going to be her. At the time, Tess had never dreamed that she might one day find herself in that situation, so she’d read the letter and the advice in a calm, dispassionate way. Never take it out on the children, they must be allowed to see both parents, without bitterness, without rancor—that would have been the old Tess’s view of it all.
But now that it was happening to her, it was different. Despite liking Claire on one level, the thought of her having weekends with Kitty was like a bullet exploding into Tess’s stomach. The sort of bullet that left you bleeding slowly to death on the inside.
Kitty adored Claire and was so excited about the idea of the baby.
“Mum, you’ve got to knit things for the baby, it’s really important. Claire can’t knit, she doesn’t know how to make babies’ cardigans and things. You know, like the ones I have that I put on my teddies now. Please say you’ll make some. I know you’re busy, but we could get the wool together. On the phone, Claire says yellow and white are good, because we don’t know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl.”
Tess was one of those people who couldn’t bear to sit still; she was always doing something, even in front of the television. Zach used to joke that theirs was the only house with actual darned socks. She’d flirted with tapestry, and they had a few tapestry cushions, but knitting was a lifelong love. It was true that Kitty’s dolls and teddies had a wardrobe of beautiful little tiny garments, knitted lovingly by Tess when Kitty had been the size of a baked bean in her womb.
“Gosh,” said Tess, and she felt the pain of the bullet inside her, “I’m very busy these days. Do you think Granny Helen might do that, or even Claire’s mum?”
Another granny. Tess had entirely forgotten about the whole concept of Claire’s family and the fact that she would come with her own parents. Kitty would have another granny, sort of.
It was like a labyrinth: complex and never-ending.
“That’s so clever of you, Mum!” said Kitty, delighted.
Kitty was so full of love, forever blurting out the first thing that came into her mind. She was a Leo, like her father, and there were no secrets with either of them. Kevin had never been able to tell a lie to save his life, a quality that Tess had always found admirable. And Zach was somehow the same: she could always tell what he was thinking, just by looking at his beloved face.
She was a Pisces: opaque, as Suki used to say.
“Nobody will ever know what you’re thinking, Sis.”
Right now, Tess was glad for that quality. She didn’t want her darling Kitty to know what she was thinking: it was so horrible and bitter, Tess felt ashamed of herself. What sort of letter would she come up with for the magazine’s psychologist? I’m almost forty-two, my ex-husband’s girlfriend is pregnant and both my children are delighted about it. Oh yes, and I’m broke and bound to be even more broke when my ex-husband and his girlfriend try to find a house to live in.
Money, thought Tess: it all came back to money. No matter how many times she added it all up, her dwindling income and whatever Kevin was paying in maintenance wouldn’t be enough to pay the bills.
Nobody had money to spend on antique trinkets anymore. Keeping the shop open through the winter months when there were no tourists around simply wasn’t viable. The few trips she’d made out to private executors’ sales and auction houses had yielded nothing that said “Ming vase—wildly undervalued.” Instead, there was the sad sense of people’s treasured possessions being sold to pay bills and buy food.
She was beginning to wonder whether she’d have to sell the house in Avalon and move into something smaller. It wasn’t something she wanted to do, but it might be the only option left to them.
“You can’t move,” Suki said on the phone that night. “You love that place. It’s special.”
“The bank don’t care how special it is,” Tess said sadly.
The following morning, Suki sat up in bed with a jolt. She wasn’t sure what had woken her, but she was wide awake. A glance at the clock beside the bed told her it was half seven in the morning. Half seven and still dark. She moved out of the bed quietly so as not to wake Mick, who was lying beside her. She was sorry he’d moved in. The arrangement didn’t really suit Suki anymore. She felt used by Mick. His idea of contributing to the household bills was to stump up for a couple of takeouts a week and to buy beer. He never bought wine or anything she’d like to drink. God, how was she going to say it to him? Once, she wouldn’t have had any problem getting rid of a guy. The old Suki would have simply bundled up all his stuff, thrown it at him and said, “Get out.” But the new Suki, the new tireder, older Suki, didn’t have the energy for the fight.
She went quietly downstairs. The heating had come on so at least it wasn’t freezing. Bad snowstorms were promised, but they hadn’t come yet. Suki had no interest in a white Christmas, or a white anything. She didn’t like the snow, it made her feel trapped.
Having made herself a cup of coffee, she lit a cigarette and sat down at the kitchen table. She needed to work on her book today, but she felt so tired. Maybe she should go back up to bed, turn on her bedside lamp and read. She had so much research material to go through.
Back upstairs, she got quietly into bed, lit another cigarette, sipped her coffee and made herself comfortable. It was as nice a way to start the day as any. Mick shifted in his sleep, perhaps woken by the scent of nicotine. She looked at him, one muscular, tattooed arm over the bedclothes, thrown out toward her, as if reaching for her in his sleep. And at that moment she was struck with a memory of the past, a moment in time when she was with Jethro, toward the end. And despite the fact that she was in her own warm bed in the present, she shivered.
In the beautifully lit bathroom of the huge suite in the hotel in Memphis, Suki stared blearily at herself in the mirror. Last night’s eye makeup was smeared on her face. She never took it off now—why bother? It was easier in the morning to wipe of the excess, put on a bit more and then you were set for the day. Her hair was shorter than it had been when she’d met Jethro first: shorter, blonder. She looked young.
She peered at herself in the mirror. Yeah, definitely, young. That plumping-up stuff on her cheeks had worked. She looked hot, definitely, and thin; who needed food when you could have your pick of any drug imaginable? Lately, her stomach had been giving her trouble. She kept feeling like she wanted to throw up, she was all bile and acid on the inside. She couldn’t really face alcohol or drugs. Last night, only Jethro practically throwing it down her throat had made her drink that Jack Daniel’s and Coke. She felt sick again. Maybe something else would take the edge off? A line of coke, a Bloody Mary . . . something.
Or tea. She laughed at herself in the mirror, standing there in her black silk panties and nothing else. A cup of tea suddenly seemed gorgeous. Like the tea Cashel’s mum used to make, with some of her scones. Oh wow, that would be fantastic. Suki wondered if she could call room service. Yes, she would, even if it was the middle of the night. What else was room service for?
She looked at the huge watch she wore: gold, encrusted with diamonds. Jethro had given it to her. It was very flashy, not the sort of thing she normally liked to wear, but hey, she was a flashy rock chick now. She walked back into the bedroom and saw Jethro lying there on the huge bed, sprawled out like a starfish, the way he always slept.
“You take up the whole damn bed,” she used to say to him.
“Yeah, well, get your own bed,” he’d say.
And then she saw the girl: a tangle of chestnut hair, long, long hair and naked, beautiful, burnished tanned back. One of Jethro’s arms was resting on her back and he must have been waking up or coming to, because his hand began to slide up and down the girl’s silky skin. Suki stood transfixed in the bathroom doorway. She didn’t remember any girl. She remembered . . . yeah, she’d gone to bed early on her own and she’d heard Jethro come in, but she was so tired, she’d pulled a pillow over her head. He hadn’t woken her up, the way he so often did after a gig when he was all partied out and needed sex to remind himself that he was a rock god.
“Hiya, honey,” he said, finally sitting up in the big bed. Except he wasn’t talking to Suki, he was talking to the mystery brunette. She turned around to face him. She was so beautiful and so young. Suki felt as if the stiletto heels of her Manolos were piercing her heart.
“Mornin’, honey,” said the girl, reaching over to Jethro. His hand cupped her breast and he moaned appreciatively.
“No, baby,” said the girl, “let me,” and she was sliding down the bed, under the covers, while Jethro rolled over, groaning in appreciation.
Suki couldn’t bear it: he’d brought another woman into their bed.