Between Sisters

by Cathy Kelly

  They giggled again.

  ‘I do feel sorry for Antoinette,’ Dilys said after a few moments. ‘She was always the most beautiful woman on the road, all glam and with the husbands running around to fill her wine glass. Now she’s older the parties with nice men have dried up and she doesn’t know where she fits into the world. Widowhood’s not easy, no matter what age it happens, but there’s no running and hiding from it.’

  ‘No running and hiding from anything,’ agreed Josette, who’d seen her husband die painfully from cancer. She had no children to run to, no daughter-in-law to get on with or not, as the case might be. She’d got through the first few years of her widowhood one painful day at a time.

  ‘I feel sorry for Cassie,’ Dilys said. ‘When Antoinette gets an idea into her mind, there’s no shifting it. But I feel sorriest for Shay. Talk about being stuck in the middle.’

  Nine

  ‘I’ve gone off pizza,’ announced Fiona on Monday evening, making her blue eyes very big to emphasise that this was a serious matter. She was sitting on one of Coco’s two stools at the breakfast bar in Coco’s minuscule kitchen, even though Coco had expressly forbidden her to sit on them until her feet reached the ground. Fiona was a great believer in pushing the envelope.

  ‘Totally gone off?’ asked Coco, thinking of the fridge with the two margarita pizzas residing in it, waiting to be heated up, along with oven chips. She even had ketchup and garlic dough balls. All the major food groups.

  ‘Yup,’ said Fiona, swinging her legs. ‘Totally.’

  Earlier, Jo had said pizza was fine.

  ‘Parent/teacher nights are enough of a nightmare without hassling over food,’ she’d said when she dropped her daughter off at Coco’s flat at half five that evening.

  ‘I’ve chocolate biscuit cake for dessert, we’re going to watch half of one of her Disney movies, and then bed at eight because tomorrow’s a school day,’ Coco recited.

  ‘Did you hear that, Fiona?’ said her mother. ‘Bed at eight.’

  Fiona had done that thing with the big, blinky eyes again. It was her current look, a sort of trust-me-I’m-sweet look that made Coco anxious. Jo seemed used to it. It was clearly a look designed to make babysitting godmothers sweat.

  At nine and a half, Fiona was frighteningly grown-up. Coco was quite sure she had nothing like Fiona’s self-possession when she was the same age.

  Fiona could narrow her eyes when her mother and Coco were discussing something she wasn’t supposed to understand and hiss ‘explain’ in her best menacing voice, which was a growl she’d copied from watching Beauty and the Beast too often, and which made Jo and Coco laugh.

  Ever since the night they’d discussed Coco joining a dating website, they’d become very wary of letting Fiona hear anything.

  ‘Not so much little pitchers have big ears but more the type of child that spy agencies will be signing up because of her ability to hear and analyse the information with total accuracy.’ Jo had sighed. ‘Just as well I am never dating again because I’d hate to try to do anything naughty on the couch with a man. I can just see Fiona emerging from her bedroom wearing her outraged expression and wielding some sort of weapon. Probably a gun she’d figured out how to print on a 3-D printer.’

  ‘She’s innovative,’ Coco agreed.

  Now Coco contemplated Fiona’s new-found dislike of pizza.

  Fiona was staying the night because of Jo’s parent/teacher meeting. They went on for hours. She and Coco had decided it was better for Fiona to stay over at Coco’s and for Jo to drop in first thing in the morning to take her daughter to school.

  Jo had just left and Fiona was already setting the ground rules, which was Coco’s job.

  Coco gazed at her goddaughter and thought that being a headmistress or boss of a large company might be more in Fiona’s line than anything in hairdressing – her current favourite thing if the number of cropped-head Barbies were anything to go by.

  ‘How about a compromise?’ Coco said, wise to children’s wiles after spending many holidays and weekends with both her nieces, and Jo and Fiona. ‘You eat the pizza and afterwards, if you eat enough slices, you get to have some chocolate biscuit cake – the one from the cake shop, not one I made myself.’

  Fiona looked at her beadily.

  ‘I can dress up in your clothes as well?’

  Coco gave in. It was important to know when you were beaten.

  ‘Deal.’

  That evening, Cassie was running late.

  Loren, boss/bitch extraordinaire, had decided on an impromptu late management meeting and even though Belinda had pointed out that she had an appointment at half six, which she’d have to cancel, Loren had been firm.

  ‘It’s a battleground out there. If you want to hold on to your jobs, see you in the boardroom at six,’ she’d snarled as she stalked out, leaving her small management team looking at each other miserably.

  ‘Bet she’s been dumped and she wants someone to take it out on,’ said Kenny, who’d worked with Loren since the start-up and knew her better than anyone. Not that it meant she was nicer to him than to anyone else. Just that he had a head start on them as to her moods.

  ‘You mean guys actually date her?’ asked Belinda sardonically, dialling to cancel her appointment.

  ‘I know, incredible, but yeah,’ Kenny said. ‘They see the whole vision –’ he impersonated Loren, explaining to new staffers how important a person’s look was: a look which included perfectly blow-dried hair, manicured nails and designer clothes, in Loren’s case – ‘and they fall for it. Straight men are idiots,’ he added.

  Cassie stepped into the hall, phoned Shay and got his voicemail.

  ‘Honey, can you phone me as soon as you can,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to work late and I need you to pick up the girls from afterschool.’

  She sent a text message too and waited for him to reply.

  After ten minutes, she texted Beth:

  Running late at work. Can’t get Dad. Can you get a lift with Mel’s mum?

  Since Lily had started first year, Cassie had been relying on the school’s after-hours programme where homework classes were held until six. Previously she’d got both girls picked up by a neighbour who worked as a childminder. So far it had worked out, but then neither girl had been sick. Nessa, the childminder, said she’d step in if absolutely necessary, but Cassie knew it was a big ask.

  Mel’s gone already. Dentist apt.

  Beth replied.

  ‘Damn,’ said Cassie out loud.

  She phoned Shay again and again, but his phone went straight to voicemail. In her irritation, Cassie bit a nail – unmanicured, as Loren would be displeased to see.

  There was only one other place he could be, but Cassie couldn’t quite believe it. After Saturday she’d got the sense that she had her husband back. They’d both been more affectionate towards each other: it was like a real marriage again. She’d felt, without him saying it, that he’d try to offload some of his mother’s demands on to his sisters.

  Still, just in case, she’d phone her mother-in-law …

  ‘Cassie!’ said Antoinette in obvious delight when she picked up the phone. ‘How lovely to hear from you. Shay’s been such a pet with the washing machine. I knew all it needed was the filter cleaned but I can’t do things like that …’

  Cassie hadn’t known she was grimacing until she caught a passing member of staff looking at her strangely, so she quickly adjusted her expression.

  ‘He’s very handy with washing machines,’ she lied, thinking that Beth – who treated the utility room as a luxury hotel laundry facility where things dropped off that morning were returned, dry and ironed that night – actually knew more about the washing machine than her father. He never used it, to her knowledge, but some part of her was damned if she’d let Antoinette know this.

  ‘He’s with yo
u, then?’ she asked brightly.

  It was five forty-five on a Monday evening, Shay had left the office to be with his mother, and who cared how many frantic phone calls he missed while he was there. Work, family – who cared? Mummy dearest had called.

  ‘Yes. Well, he’s at a delicate bit …’ Antoinette said, and Cassie wondered had her mother-in-law always sounded so croaky and fragile. It was as if widowhood had made her frailer, or at least made her sound frailer.

  Antoinette went on: ‘He’s trying to reach in behind the machine to unplug it, you see, and I can’t find the torch. Goodness, I know it’s here somewhere …’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Cassie, managing to summon up a bit of kindness from the depths of her bile. ‘Ask him to look at his phone messages, would you, Antoinette? Must dash. Bye.’

  She stalked into the office kitchen, found a squashed-up chamomile teabag in the corner of a herbal tea box, and dashed hot water on it. She hated chamomile tea, thought it tasted like lawnmower dust, but it might help. Because without something vaguely calming, there was a possibility that she would race out and thump the first person she saw.

  She picked up her phone again.

  Coco answered straight off.

  ‘Thank God,’ breathed her sister. ‘I have an emergency. I won’t even go into it but let’s just say, Shay is unavailable. I have to work late so is there any way you can you pick up the girls from school now, take them to yours and feed them?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Coco, thinking that she could pick up more margarita pizzas in the shop on the way back. She hadn’t even put hers and Fiona’s in the oven yet. And there was enough chocolate biscuit cake for all. ‘You sound harassed. Should I text Beth and tell her about the change of plan?’

  Cassie took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If you don’t hear from her—’

  ‘I know what to do,’ Coco said. ‘Stop worrying. I’ll take care of Lily and Beth. I’ve got Fiona here, so we can have a teenage girls’ night in.’

  Fiona, who was listening, beamed at both being called a teenager and the thought of spending time with Lily and Beth, whom she idolised.

  ‘Right,’ said Coco, flicking off the oven and grabbing her keys once she’d hung up, ‘we’ve got to get Lily and Beth from school, buy more food and we need to set out now.’

  ‘Ready!’ said Fiona, racing eagerly to the door.

  No mention of where Shay was, Coco thought, as she locked the front door and hurried down the stairs after Fiona. Strange.

  Pearl was on the verandah with a cup of tea, enjoying the last of the evening sun and wondering if she could afford a winter holiday this year, because the heat did help her bones. She and some of the Thursday night poker club had gone away to Ibiza the year before. They’d rented a small villa, nothing fancy, just a little place in the hills close enough for taxis to decant them all into the local village, where they’d feasted on local seafood and good wine.

  She and Peter had shared a room and nobody had so much as mentioned it.

  ‘They all know anyway,’ Peter had said as he put her suitcase on the bed so she could unpack it when they’d arrived. ‘They see the way I undress you with my eyes.’

  Pearl had laughed and thrown a cushion at him.

  ‘That’s not undressing me with your eyes, you crazy man; that’s you trying to see if I have the fourth ace or not,’ she teased.

  ‘Oh no, undressing, definitely,’ Peter went on. ‘I love the heat in Ibiza.’ He nuzzled the soft place between her neck and shoulder. ‘Makes me feel younger. Not so achy.’

  Pearl leaned into his kiss, knowing how lucky they were to have this wonderful second chance of love at their time in life. ‘But let’s be thoughtful, honey,’ she said. ‘Poor Gloria will never be kissed by Louis again and we don’t want to rub her face in it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter, straightening up, instantly serious. ‘It wouldn’t be easy for Annette, either.’

  ‘I think Annette’s in a better place,’ Pearl pointed out. ‘She’s chosen to be alone after Dai’s death. Gloria’s in the never-never land. People like Edie would be shocked if Gloria so much as smiled at another man with poor Louis in a nursing home.’

  ‘Why is it that the Edies of this world are judgemental when it comes to other people’s happiness?’ asked Peter. ‘Louis and I were the best of friends, but he’s in a different place now. Alive and yet not here. If he could choose, he’d never choose this life for him or Gloria. He’d truly want her to be happy. Who could judge Gloria if she did meet someone and get a bit of happiness after so many years of pain?’

  ‘Lots of people would judge,’ sighed Pearl, thinking of her sister’s firmly held views on just about everything.

  On her verandah now, she deadheaded a few roses with her ever-present secateurs and tied up a few trailing stems of violet-tinged Rhapsody clematis with green wire. The garden needed a big makeover but she no longer had the energy for it. Neither did Peter. He had his own garden to look after, although he said he was planning to turn it into a Zen shrine so he’d have gravel and no lawnmowing to do.

  Perhaps they should have married years ago, when it would have made more sense. She’d been so busy trying to keep all the balls in the air and protect the girls from more change that she’d refused Peter when he’d asked her.

  And now they were both old, living apart, and who knew why?

  Daisy panted and dropped on to Pearl’s feet, making Pearl smile. It was hard to feel anxious around a pug, she thought, as she had thought so many times in the past.

  A warm drop of rain fell on her face and she looked up to see a dark cloud had settled over the house. A dark cloud full of heavy September rain. Even the temperature had suddenly dropped. Pearl shivered. She felt anxious, as if the cloud held some dark portent.

  Jo Kinsella sat at her desk in the big sports hall in St Fintan’s school and looked past Mrs Boyne to the line of parents waiting beyond. The parent/teacher meeting system in St Fintan’s was haphazard and Jo longed for a time when people would get specifically allocated ten-minute slots instead of wandering frantically and randomly from desk to desk, lining up to meet teachers and getting more and more annoyed as every moment passed. Jo had a dull nagging headache at the back of her skull, slightly to the right. She never got headaches. Must be her neck from leaning over doing all the correcting of French verbs, she thought.

  By Jo’s calculation, she wouldn’t be home before eleven. At the back of the line she could see the parents of a sweet child who was being forced to study higher-level French by her pushy mother and who really would be better off in the lower-level class.

  It was the living vicariously problem. The teachers talked about it in the staffroom all the time: parents who’d been hopeless at sports and who now stood on the sidelines at school matches and screamed themselves hoarse, wanting, insisting upon, championship performances from wildly unsporty kids.

  Or the parents with delusional memories who insisted that they’d been fabulous mathematicians themselves and wanted their children studying physics, applied maths and higher-level maths when said children were clearly far more right-brain than left-brain, suited to happy hours being creative in art class or writing essays in English.

  ‘Martha loves French but she worries a bit,’ Mrs Boyne was saying. ‘I don’t want her to worry; I just want her to be happy.’

  Jo beamed at Mrs Boyne: a woman after her own heart. Who cared what Fiona did in school as long as she was happy? Children were gifts, not puppets whereby parents got to correct all their own mistakes and make their kids do what they’d always wanted to do.

  She thought of her parents and the rigid upbringing she and her siblings had undergone. It wasn’t the prayers that had been hard, but the fierce moralising, the hypocritical denouncing of everyone who didn’t follow their creed; and finally the screeching that her brother Xavier was wicked and needed
to be saved, because ‘God couldn’t stand the very thought of homosexuality’. They’d actually tried to have him visit a retreat where his gayness could be ‘cured’. Devastated, poor Xav had eventually left the country and settled in Paris. Jo doubted if he’d ever come home. He was happy now, with a partner called Thomas and with friends who loved him for himself.

  ‘Ms Kinsella, are you all right?’

  Jo was conscious of Mrs Boyne suddenly staring at her. The headache coalesced from dull and aching into something more – something sharper and intense. In an instant, Jo was conscious that her arms had slumped down to her lap and that her head was lolling to one side. Very strange. Her face felt funny, the left side – was that the right word? Left …? Yes, the left part felt odd and … and … darkness.

  Jo knew no more. She didn’t hear Mrs Boyne scream or grab her, she didn’t hear someone shouting for the school nurse, or another person yell for an ambulance. She was gone, into another world …

  The margarita pizzas went down a treat and by half seven, Beth, Lily and Fiona were all dressed up in Coco’s clothes, having consumed the entire container of chocolate biscuit cake. All homework had been done, Beth promised.

  Coco, having been styled by Fiona, now sat in a white flouncy 1970s dress from the shop, wearing Fiona-applied lipstick (heavy pink gloss) and with a diamanté necklace attached to her head like a headpiece, with the help of many painful hair clips. Her eyebrows were Frida Kahlo dark and all she needed was a striped shawl, a few necklaces and some major art talent to complete the look.

  Beth’s phone was playing her favourite Taylor Swift album as Beth herself, clad in tight black, tried on every pair of Coco’s high heels. Lily was experimenting with a 1940s dress with a fitted bodice and huge cartwheel skirt with acres of tulle underneath. She kept twirling to enjoy the effect of the underskirts of tulle.