The Year that Changed Everything

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘Sometimes you simply have to learn the lesson and sometimes you have to confront someone,’ she said in her talks.

  Now was her chance.

  ‘Why did you come here for help?’

  Liza employed her tried-and-tested wobbling bottom lip technique: ‘You’re my best friend after all, Ginger, and I need you.’

  The sheer gall of that answer spurred Ginger on.

  ‘If I am your “best friend”,’ began Ginger, ‘where have you been this past year?’

  Liza still did not look remotely ashamed.

  Time for the big guns.

  ‘Why did you dress me up like some seventeenth-century bar wench in that bloody awful dress and let James tell your cousin that I was in possession of virginity that needed to be got rid of like a bad case of lice? Why would you do something like that, if I was your friend? Or was I someone to use?’

  All of this had occurred to Ginger recently. The prism of time allowed her to see their friendship for what it was: and it had been more equal than she’d remembered. She had been the clever one, the one who’d corrected Liza’s homework, the one who made sure Liza scraped through school. Yes, Liza had given Ginger a protection of sorts, but perhaps, without Liza’s bitchy influence, Ginger might have made other friends, the people like herself who were clever and definitely not a part of the fabulously beautiful gang. Without Liza scaring those clever but shy girls off, Ginger could have built up real friends during her years in school. That way, she might not have felt like the cuckoo in the nest of Liza’s glittering entourage.

  ‘You used me, Liza, and I couldn’t see it because I trusted you.’

  ‘Look where trusting James has got me,’ sniffed Liza, self-pity evident in every word.

  Ginger’s mind flew through the months when Liza had pursued James. How she’d gone out of her way to capture him, weaving a web until he was caught. Their relationship had suited them both. Liza had a handsome, wealthy boyfriend and James had a beautiful, party-going girlfriend who always had the right clothes, the perfect hair and make-up. It was hardly a firm basis for a strong marriage.

  ‘You chose James because of what he was on the surface,’ Ginger said, not wishing to be cruel but dropping all attempts to be conciliatory. ‘He chose you for the same reasons. How did you think it would end?’

  Liza’s face crumpled. ‘We had a fairy-tale wedding,’ she cried.

  Did fairy-tales allow for random cruelty in the middle of them? Ginger wondered. Of course they did. That was how the lessons of the past were passed down. The wolf ate Grandma, after all.

  ‘That day wasn’t a fairy-tale for me,’ she said simply. ‘It was devastating.’

  ‘Then you know how I feel now,’ wailed Liza. ‘Devastated.’

  Ginger looked at Liza, still beautiful even though her face was streaked with tears and her long blonde hair could have done with a wash. The shine had gone from her, as if the fairy godmother who’d promised her beauty had taken the gifts away.

  Even now, when Ginger had asked why Liza had hurt her so much, Liza couldn’t answer. Either she had no answer or, simply, Ginger was not important enough for her to think one up.

  ‘Why did you let your mother talk you into making me chief bridesmaid?’ she asked, the journalist in her coming to the fore.

  ‘She nagged me,’ said Liza absently.

  ‘You could have said no.’

  ‘She and Dad were paying for the wedding,’ snapped Liza, as if this explained everything.

  ‘And you were going to dump me as a friend afterwards?’ The questions that had once haunted her no longer hurt as much as Ginger thought they would.

  ‘People move on. You’re in your fancy job now, mixing with all the celebs.’ There was no disguising the jealousy in Liza’s voice. ‘Let’s forget and be friends again.’

  Ginger shook her head. ‘No, I can’t forget it. I don’t do friendship edits,’ she said. ‘But you and I haven’t been proper friends for a long time. I didn’t realise that, I used to be a bit blinkered. I have friends in my life now that I can rely on. Let’s go our separate ways.’

  ‘No!’ For the first time, Liza sounded anxious. ‘We’ve known each other since we were four, Ginger, we’ve history together. You can help me go to cool events like the things you go to now. James will see me in the papers and magazines and get jealous.’

  Even by Liza’s standards, it was a breathtakingly callous plan.

  It deserved Liza being thrown out on the street and screamed at. It deserved well-aimed insults . . .

  But Will would be there soon. And if Ginger had learned anything in this past year, it was that, sometimes, you had to let things go and take the wiser path.

  ‘I deserve a friend who really is a friend, Liza,’ she said softly. ‘You’re not. I have good friends now you don’t want to use me. I’m sorry about James.’

  She meant it. She hated anybody to suffer, but Liza needed to learn her own truths.

  Liza stood up, shaking back her hair defiantly. ‘So you won’t help me?’ she demanded.

  Ginger opened the front door.

  ‘Take care,’ she said. ‘I mean that, Liza. Have a good life. Take care of your friends.’

  Liza’s face was screwed up with fury as she tried to think of something to say.

  ‘Hey Ginger, darling,’ said a voice and Will stood in the doorway.

  Automatically, he reached in to grab Ginger and pull her into a hug. He’d changed out of his gym clothes into jeans and a T-shirt and with his hair wet from the shower, he looked like a magazine advert come to life. ‘Who’s this?’ he murmured into Ginger’s ear.

  ‘Liza. Someone I went to school with.’

  Liza was gazing at Will as if he was the answer to all her prayers.

  ‘Liza?’ he said to Ginger. ‘The bride . . .?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Liza was clearly about to launch into full-on flirt mode with Will. Ginger had seen it before. But not this time.

  Will reopened the front door. ‘Thanks for calling, but goodbye, Liza.’

  Ginger was stunned.

  Liza was stunned.

  ‘I just—’

  ‘You should go.’ Will smiled a polite, businesslike smile and opened the door wider.

  ‘He’s right,’ agreed Ginger. ‘We’re not friends anymore and we have nothing to say to each other. Goodbye.’

  Slowly, Liza walked outside but turned quickly. ‘I never meant—’

  ‘That’s the past, Liza.’ Ginger put an arm around Will. ‘Goodbye.’

  And Will shut the door.

  ‘Right,’ he said, picking her up, ‘I think you need a serious kiss after that.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Ginger.

  Epilogue

  The big living room in the biggest house you could rent on the posh golfing estate in Ballyglen had been transformed with fairy lights and flowers into a birthday bower.

  The dining table was immaculately made up with the finest napkins, candles, glasses, silver and plates, all from Grace’s home. Piles of wrapped boxes sat on one side, ready to be opened.

  Grace Devaney looked around the house with pride. She and Esmerelda had worked hard – well, instructed hard – to get the place into shape. This was going to be a very special birthday party, a party where the three birthday women had been through the fire and had come out the other side. Grace had it planned perfectly.

  The rental agent hadn’t batted an eyelid at the list of instructions.

  ‘I can get you people to do all this,’ she’d said, calmly, studying the list typed up on Grace’s state-of-the-art computer. ‘You’re supplying the extra furniture, I see, and the movers will put it into place. But a butler with his shirt off . . .? We’d all love one of those, Mrs Devaney, but Ballyglen is a bit short on help of that sort or—’ The rental agent
threw her head back and laughed so much that her cat’s eye glasses fell back off her face and into the nest of her purple rinse. ‘I’d have hired him myself. Personally, you’d do better with a few of the agricultural college students helping around the place. They’re all gorgeous.’

  ‘On the scale of, what is it – one to ten?’ demanded Esmerelda, who had very specific views on men and their beauty. She liked these Irish men more now that the country contained so many nationalities and a lusty woman could find a man with skin of any colour and a voice like honey. Variety was the spice of life, as her grandmother, God bless her in heaven, used to say.

  ‘Esmerelda,’ chided Grace. ‘it’s so hard to grade men.’

  ‘Not impossible,’ said the rental lady, fanning herself now with her clipboard. ‘These boys are all handsome and polite. But I don’t think we can ask them to serve the party with their shirts off. It would be sexist.’

  She caught Grace’s eye and they grinned evilly.

  ‘But such fun,’ said Grace. ‘Fine. Dinner jackets for them all. Add the rental to the price.’

  Since everyone had arrived, Grace had been enjoying herself thoroughly as hostess, greeting everyone, making sure all of them were happy with their bedrooms, hugging randomly, telling Ginger she was beautiful and looked so on the television.

  Ginger had blushed.

  ‘Redheads are so darling when they blush,’ Grace said to Will, and then she chucked him under the chin. ‘He already thinks so, Ginger,’ she called out. ‘He’s besotted.’

  Pat, Phil and Grace had had a marvellous time with Esmerelda recounting tales of their youth, and Poppy had listened in, fascinated.

  Callie went over to Sam and Ted’s cottage and gave them a hand with India while they dressed.

  ‘Babies smell so delicious,’ she said, inhaling the scent of India’s little dark head.

  ‘We’re thinking that we might try for a second baby,’ Sam said. ‘Is that madness at my age?’

  Callie smiled. ‘What’s mad about loving another child. Why not?’

  At seven on the dot, everyone had to assemble and toast the birthday girls: Ginger, Callie and Sam.

  Grace had made up a glorious elderflower cocktail for the non-drinkers and had champagne for anyone else.

  ‘Who would have thought that three such incredible women would have significant birthdays on the same day,’ Grace said, her voice clear as a bell. ‘And you have all had, let me say, interesting years.’

  Everyone laughed, the three women most of all.

  ‘Time does not go backwards for any of us so we are not celebrating thirty, forty or fifty, but the joy of thirty-one, forty-one and fifty-one and surviving with grace and courage. That is the true mark of a strong woman.’ She raised her glass. ‘To Ginger, Sam and Callie.’

  ‘To Ginger, Sam and Callie.’ Everyone drank, the waiters watched and lovely dance music from Grace’s favourite era, the 1940s, came on in the background.

  ‘The staff,’ said Grace wickedly. ‘They follow my every silent command. Now, you must all sit.’

  Everyone sat, with Grace at the head of the grouping, standing with her stick in one hand.

  ‘I believe they call them DLEs,’ said Grace proudly, with her bifocals on and looking deliciously eccentric with her fluffy hair and her new – shopping channel – pink lace dress dolled up with plenty of new jewellery – off the internet – accessorised with the old porridge cardigan she was devoted to.

  ‘DLEs?’ asked Phil. ‘I never know any of these new words.’

  ‘Damned Learning Experiences,’ finished Grace, like the opera singer delivering the final, triumphant note. ‘It means you have all gone through a year of learning and really, darlings, haven’t we all learned enough?’

  Everybody laughed. Even the handsome agricultural students in the kitchen could be heard giggling.

  ‘I am a big fan of the old ceremonies . . .’

  ‘The old whatsits?’ said Ginger’s father, who was definitely going a bit deaf. That darned bandsaw, Ginger thought, whispering ‘Old ceremonies’ to him loudly enough so he could hear.

  ‘When we get back, I am taking you to get your ears sorted,’ said Grace. ‘Men always go deaf first when, in fairness, it should be us women who get deaf first so we no longer hear when we get roared at about when dinner is ready.’

  Declan and Mick laughed out loud. Grace had never tolerated anyone shouting at her about their dinner.

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying, we need a ceremony to say goodbye to this learning year so we can usher in the new one.’

  ‘Is this from some new book you and Esmerelda got off the internet, Grace?’ demanded Ginger.

  ‘No look at me for this madness!’ said Esmerelda. ‘I do the praying like all my family.’

  ‘Only when you want something,’ said Grace testily. ‘I don’t believe in all that praying. I like my smudge stick—’

  ‘The thing that smells like the drugs the people smoke in the wacky cigarettes,’ stage-whispered Esmerelda.

  ‘It’s dried herbs, not that cannabis muck,’ said Grace. ‘It has cleansing properties. Tonight—’ She raised her arms like a pink-lace-and-porridge-clad goddess and gently shooed the dogs away, who had decided it was a game and wanted to join in. ‘Tonight, we all need to think of all the pain we went through, write it down on these pieces of paper in the centre of the room and burn them in the fire, then I will smudge the room, we will wish for better things. And tra la la! The old year will be gone, and the new one will come.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ said Poppy enthusiastically. ‘Do we wear special make-up?’

  ‘If you want, sweetie,’ said Grace, who had taken a real shine to Poppy from the first time she met her when Poppy, Callie and Sam had come to visit her and Esmerelda in Dublin. ‘Something ancient . . .?’

  ‘Egyptian,’ decided Poppy and ran upstairs to get her make-up kit. She loved the Egyptian look.

  ‘What’s the aim of it all?’ asked Callie with interest. Nothing surprised her anymore and she loved Ginger’s crazy old great-aunt. Grace had such spirit. Nobody would cheat on her or run a fraudulent business under her nose.

  ‘Ah, Callie,’ said Grace softly, ‘it helps you move on, forgive yourself and stop thinking that only you were stupid.’

  Callie felt suddenly that Grace must be a witch because she had seen so clearly into her soul. She teared up at the idea of her soul so open.

  ‘You have a beautiful face and those eyes tell everything,’ said Grace gently. ‘Why is that a bad thing? It’s not. It’s only bad if the person with the eyes has not learned to protect themselves and if a bad person takes advantage of them.’

  Callie could only nod. Grace had pretty much laid out her whole year in that statement.

  Sam reached over and touched Callie’s fingers with her own.

  ‘Courage,’ she whispered.

  ‘I keep thinking that you could go back to modelling, Cal,’ said Phil, wiping away a tear.

  ‘Older models are in,’ said Ginger, not adding that bigger, sexy ones were too. Her billboards for the sportswear were up all over the country and if there were negative comments, Will was hiding them from her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Callie. ‘I was so young and I felt like a non-person. It’s different for you, Ginger, because you are in a position of power.’

  Ginger felt her heart swell with happiness at the compliment.

  ‘You’re going to be helping me with my study on music on people with dementia,’ said Sam. ‘I need you. And you’ll definitely have to travel – so no time to model.’

  ‘Write down the pain,’ said Grace loudly. ‘Because I’m starving.’

  Dutifully everyone wrote.

  Ginger, Sam, and Callie were slowest.

  Normally, Ginger wrote so fast but she couldn’t just now.

 
Liza betraying her? Working with Carla who’d done her best to humiliate her? Feeling betrayed by Will for that horrible period? And yet, Liza had done her a favour. So had Carla – without her, she’d never have met Will, and he’d always been true. It had all been terrible at the time, and yet she had risen from it all like a phoenix. Tomorrow, she was going alone to visit her mother’s grave and she was determined to face up to both the past and deal with the long-buried ache of not having a mother as she was growing up. She closed her eyes and wished that the love and friendship she had in her life would continue. She wished for strength and courage, always. Then she threw her empty piece of paper into the fire.

  Callie stared at her paper blankly. ‘Jason,’ she wrote. His fraud, his life, his abandoning them, his other woman . . . the lack of money. She still worried about money, always would. The damn Xanax. That had been terrible but she hadn’t touched one since and never would again, if she could possibly help it. Then she thought of what she had now: Poppy; her family; herself. Perhaps Jason had done her a favour. She scrunched up her paper and threw it into the fire. To appreciating all that I have and to being me, always, she said silently.

  Sam looked at India asleep in Ted’s arms. Joanne was right: the more noise a baby got used to, the more she could sleep when you were out or hoovering. She thought of the darkness of the post-natal depression. It had been terrifying, devastating, and yet she had come out of its black embrace. She had India and Ted, her darling sister and her family, her father and, yes, her mother too, who was trying very hard to change.

  ‘Pain’ was the one word she wrote on her paper; she threw it into the fire and wished for her happiness to continue. And please, please, another baby.

  ‘Smudging,’ announced Grace.

  Ted brought India outside in case it was bad for her baby lungs.

  It took a few goes for Grace to light the fat bundle of what looked like dried twigs and herbs and then the scent hit the room. It was a combination of sage and lavender and thyme and after that, nobody was sure what it was. But it had a smoky herbal scent as well as a hint of singed twigs