Between Sisters

by Cathy Kelly

  Ethan and Mary-Kate, despite having homework to do, trailed them, eager to spend time with their big sister. Finally Phoebe suggested they go in and get started on dinner. She’d brought cream cakes for dessert, she said, from money eked out of her college savings, and that had them racing in to have a look at the cakes, with Prince racing after them, always eager for a game when he’d rounded the poor sheep up to his satisfaction.

  ‘How’s it going?’ asked her mother when they were alone, fixing a gate where a second person was needed to hoist the iron gate off the ground in the first place. Phoebe knew that if she weren’t here, that gate might never be fixed, because neither Mary-Kate nor Ethan had the strength to lift it.

  ‘It’s going fine, I’m making friends,’ said Phoebe, and told her mother some more about Ian, her new best friend, about college, and about how she might be moving out of the bedsit from hell and into somewhere nicer.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re happy,’ said her mother.

  ‘I miss you all.’

  Phoebe watched as a tear dripped down her mother’s face.

  ‘Yes, but that’s to be expected,’ said Kate, wiping the tear away with the sleeve of her ancient fleece, as if tears had no place on this windswept hill. ‘This is your dream, Phoebe.’

  ‘Mum,’ said Phoebe cautiously. ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way, but coming back makes me think we should sell up, the way Dad wanted us to.’

  Her mother stopped what she was doing and was uncharacteristically still.

  ‘Sell? How can we sell? This land has been in your father’s family for years. We can’t. It was his birthright; it’s yours too. Mary-Kate’s and Ethan’s …’

  ‘It’s killing you, Mum. Look at how shattered you are. I didn’t really see it when I was here because I could help, but when I’m not here … Mum, you can’t go on doing this. You’ll keel over and have a heart attack or something. Please …’

  ‘Oh Phoebe,’ said her mother, white-faced. ‘Don’t, OK, just don’t. I know you mean well but I’ve got to keep going. You can’t understand what it means to me.’

  Phoebe backed off. For now.

  ‘I love you, Mum,’ she said simply. ‘I want what’s best for all of us, and that means you too. I don’t want to see you run yourself into the ground.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Kate staunchly, standing there as thin as a wraith in her old clothes. ‘I want you to have every chance you’d have had if your father was still alive. That’s what he’d have wanted too.’

  Phoebe nodded. She didn’t trust herself to say anything else.

  Normally Cassie hated arguments, but tonight she felt as if she wanted an argument with just about everyone who lived on the street. Bring it on!

  Shay came back from his mother’s at six on the nail, filthy dirty and with a Tupperware container full of scones.

  ‘Ma made them,’ he said, putting them down on the counter, where Cassie was angrily dishing up the Thai green curry the girls loved. With one move, Cassie shoved the container to one side and went on dishing up silently.

  ‘She made them for all of us,’ Shay said, determined not to have any arguments.

  ‘She made them for you,’ hissed Cassie. ‘And don’t think you’re going to sit and eat with us when you’re covered in muck from her garden.’

  At this, Shay put the small bouquet of flowers and the bottle of Spanish red wine down on the table too. Cassie looked at them and then glared at her husband.

  ‘You’re gone all day, after everything I’ve said to you about your mother trying to drag you back into her life, and to make up for that, this is what I get?’ Cassie said with fury.

  At the table, Lily and Beth traded silent, stunned gazes. This was a side of their mother they’d never seen before. Mum never got really angry or shouted, or if she did, it was for something rare, like that time they were late for school because they’d overslept and she’d had an important meeting that morning, which she was now going to miss because everyone was dawdling. Beth had yelled: ‘Chillax, Mum!’ and Cassie had laughed and instantly said sorry.

  Mum had yelled at Lily the time she’d nearly been hit by a car because she let go of Mum’s hand and ran across the road. That had been yelling, but it was different.

  ‘She asked me nicely,’ said their father, sounding as if he was losing his temper too, which never happened.

  ‘Why can’t she ask Ruth or Miriam nicely? Better still, why can’t she pay for someone to do it or get up off her precious backside and do it herself, like Pearl does? Pearl is fifteen years older and she does her own garden!’ Cassie was roaring now. ‘I told you before, Shay: I am fed up with your mother! She needs her own life! She needs to let you go!’

  ‘Maybe you’re the one who needs to let go,’ said Shay quietly. ‘It’s not a battle between you and my mother. Why are you making it into one? I’m going to shower,’ he added, and left the room.

  Both girls held their breath. The shouting had been terrible. Dad was easy-going, everyone said so, but what if he went mental like Mum too? Mum had been really scary.

  Their plates were slammed down on the table in time with the sound of the kitchen door slamming.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Lily, then whispered, ‘Why are you so angry with Dad?’

  Beth kicked her under the table. ‘It’s Gran,’ she whispered. ‘Say nothing.’

  ‘Parents fight,’ said their mother icily.

  She didn’t bother putting her own plate on the table. Instead she went to the cupboard, where she kept bottles of wine or gin for visitors, and picked up a fresh bottle of white. The fridge wine box was empty. This wine wasn’t cooled but, to be frank, she couldn’t care less. Perfect temperature wasn’t the point. Uncorking it, she poured a huge glass into one of Shay’s special red wine glasses. Lots of rubbish spoken about glasses, she thought grimly, taking a huge slug. She wouldn’t, on principle, drink his wine gift. Bought in the convenience store on the way home, she knew. She recognised that type of bouquet too. Not cheap, no, because of the ludicrous mark-up in the local shop, but not proper flower-shop flowers. An emergency present to try to smooth things over. Well, there would be no smoothing over with dreadful flowers and cheap wine. He had gone off to his mother’s house for the whole of Saturday, not lifted a finger at home, and hadn’t even thought that this might be a problem, even after what she’d said.

  Although it was a family rule that they never had the TV on while they ate dinner, Cassie angrily flicked it on and found something innocuous about animals on the Discovery Channel. Then she sat at the table, picked at her meal, finished her glass and poured another. A tiny voice inside her head told her that this type of rage-induced drinking was not good. She was relying on alcohol to calm her, to soothe her. That was a mistake. And she was certainly going beyond the weekly allowance of fourteen units of alcohol in the past couple of weeks. Unhealthy too.

  But, she reminded herself, as she filled up her glass: people with drinking problems had to race out and slam vodka into themselves first thing in the mornings. Their hands shook, they went out and got drunk at night, they messed up at work. She was nothing like that, so a few glasses of wine could hardly hurt. After all, wasn’t wine o’clock practically in the dictionary now?

  By the time they heard Shay come downstairs, they were putting their dishes into the dishwasher, the girls helping silently, without their mother even having to ask. They could all hear the front door loudly slam shut.

  ‘Dad’s gone out?’ said Lily, sounding scared. This never happened. Dad always came into the kitchen for dinner, tousled her hair, tickled Beth, although she said she hated it, grabbed Mum and hugged her.

  He never just went out – and without saying anything, either.

  ‘Must have forgotten something at your grandmother’s,’ said her mother, and slammed the dishwasher shut so fiercely that all the glasses rattled pe
rilously.

  The girls fled and Cassie retreated to the old kitchen couch with her bottle of wine and the TV remote. From a distance, Fluffikins stared at her.

  ‘I don’t think you can heal me tonight, honey, even if you are a healing cat, as Coco believes,’ Cassie told him grimly. ‘It’ll take more than a cat to sort this one out.’

  She stared at the television and brooded.

  Beth sat on her bed texting her best friend, Mel.

  Wsh I woz at urs. Boring here. Mm n mood. Rlly bad md. Sumtin V V wrng. Plz fone n say uve emergncy???!!! Nthin on tv. Wish we’d Ntflix. ☺

  After that, she had nothing else to do. Well, she could do her nails but her glue pen was in Mel’s house and she hated just painting her nails. Sticking art on: that was the fun bit.

  What other fifteen-year-olds were in alone on Saturday nights? None, that’s who.

  Dad was a useless cretin and Mum was being weird. She was drinking the wine again. Beth hated that. When she had wine, Mum changed. She never used to drink, but these days there was often a half-open bottle in the fridge and it was always gone next day. Always.

  Mum used to lecture her on alcohol and how bad it was. It was all something to do with her and Coco’s mum drinking. Beth knew this because Coco had told her once, explained that Mum was too sad about it all to ever tell them, but that Coco and Mum’s mother had left them and she’d been some sort of addict.

  Now Mum was drinking wine when she used to drink herbal tea, Dad had gone off without telling anyone, and it all felt horrible and scary.

  Beth’s eyes were spiky with tears. Stupid tears. She didn’t know why she was crying. She wanted everything to be the way it was before, and it wasn’t. Were Mum and Dad going to get a divorce? It felt like that.

  And Gran, stupid Gran, was somehow involved. Why couldn’t Gran be more like Pearl?

  Pearl.

  She might talk to Pearl about it all. She’d understand even if nobody else did. Coco would be better but Coco was so busy with poor little Fi these days. Beth shuddered and snuggled closer into her bed and her soft pillows. It was scary how things could change in an instant. She’d always admired Jo: she was tough and cool even though she was old and everything. But now Mum said she couldn’t talk properly and couldn’t walk. How horrible was that?

  Beth rubbed at a bit of something wet in one eye and tried to concentrate on how to do proper smoky eye. There were brilliant demos on YouTube but Mum had this thing about nobody using computers at night. Still, Mum was stuck into her wine, so she mightn’t notice. And Beth needed some comfort. She hauled the laptop from under her bed and fired it up. She’d go on to Facebook first, then YouTube, whatever she felt like.

  She was breaking the rules. So what? Everyone else in the family was.

  Saturday was one of the busiest days at the shop, and Coco wouldn’t get her head in the door that day what with Jo’s family coming to visit, so she had to content herself with phoning in.

  ‘You’re sure things are doing OK at the shop? And you’re keeping up with the Facebook page? That’s so important.’

  Coco had a list of things in her head to talk to Adriana about Twentieth Century, but now that she’d grabbed a moment to make the phone call, it had all run out of her brain. Like what was the stock situation like? Had a delivery come from that auction in Belfast? Would Adriana drop any mail off at Coco’s?

  Before she got a chance to ask these questions, Adriana assured her employer that the shop was a haven of customers, that it was clean and tidy, and did Coco want her to drop any mail off?

  ‘Yes,’ said Coco in blessed relief, and hung up feeling pleased at how hard Adriana was working.

  It was so nice to have someone offer to do something for her like drop off the post, something practical. Friends of hers and Jo had phoned, all saying they were thinking of Jo, Coco and Fiona, and if there was anything they could do, to just ask. But Coco was so frantic with worry that thinking of what she needed most made her head ache.

  Ludicrously, she knew, she wanted help without having to conjure up visions of what that help might entail. She really wanted someone with kids who might bring them over to play with Fiona, who didn’t want to go out at all. Now that would be a help.

  She’d like a round-robin system so that someone else would phone all Jo’s teacher friends to pass on information about Jo’s progress instead of everyone phoning all the time, meaning Coco had to spend ages on the phone repeating herself when she got in at night.

  ‘No, she’s not in good form. Yes, do go in, but prepare yourself for her to be very tearful. No, there’s no miracle cure, I’m afraid. Time, hope for spontaneous recovery and rehabilitation are what it’s going to take. Fiona is here beside me,’ she’d add brightly when they asked, in low, sad voices, how Jo’s daughter was.

  Some people didn’t take the hint and would keep saying how awful it was for a child, and Coco would have to say, even more loudly: ‘Fiona, who is right beside me, and I are having fun. We’re doing baking tonight! Purple and pink cakes, right, Fi?’

  What would be especially lovely would be if someone else would cook dinner for her and Fi one night. They’d been to Cassie’s three times last week after being in the hospital, but Fiona needed some normality, and right now that was Coco’s flat.

  And besides, there was something going on with Shay and Cassie, which was subtle, just under the surface, but there all the same. Normally Coco would insist on knowing what was wrong and would help out in some way. But now, burdened with a friend in hospital and a child to look after, she didn’t have any part of her left over for coping with anyone else’s problems; even her sister’s. Cassie would sort it out – Cassie could sort anything out.

  Fiona had been due to go into school for the first time in a week since her mother had been rushed to hospital.

  The school had been very helpful about Fiona having some time off to be with her mother in hospital under these difficult circumstances.

  ‘I’d like her to have some routine, and school is a great routine,’ the principal had said, ‘but if she really wants to go into the hospital first thing, you should do that. She could come in for a few hours in the afternoon, if possible, to see her friends, to get some normality into her life, and then start her back full-time on Friday,’ said the principal. ‘Then she’ll have the weekend to adjust.’

  Fiona had got up quietly, put on her school uniform and even sat at the table with Coco, poking at her Pop-Tarts (desperation food as she wasn’t eating much), as if she might possibly have some, and then she’d whispered: ‘I can’t go to school without seeing Mum, Coco. I can’t.’

  She’d cried then. Not loud, noisy tears like the ones Coco had seen many times before when Jo was well. ‘I need Chunky Monkey ice cream or I will explode!’ ‘Can we go to the cinema, pleeeeease …?’ ‘Can you write a note saying I don’t have to do my homework, Muuum …?’

  These tears were different, silent grief pouring out, and Coco couldn’t bear them.

  She shoved her chair away, threw her arms around Fiona and held her tightly.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Coco wildly, knowing she was saying the wrong thing, but desperate to say anything to help. ‘Mum is going to be OK, darling. It may take time, but she will, and you have me with you. I’ll never let you down. I am here for you always. I’ll keep you safe, Fi, darling.’

  Somehow they ended up on the floor in a sodden heap, with Coco rocking Fiona like she was a baby, and Fiona making little mouse-like noises that Coco somehow knew weren’t bad noises. It was like she was finally letting go of the fear and pain she’d been holding inside her small body. The pain of seeing her beloved mum in hospital, the pain of Jo not being able to walk or even hold her properly or talk. The pain of loss, and the fear that that loss might come again, bigger or worse.

  Coco, who’d never known her mother, understood those
fears. One loss made you frightened that there would be many more. It made you wear a cloak of armour in case you got hurt again, and that never worked, not in the real world.

  ‘It’s all right, darling, I’m here now Fi. Mum will get better, I promise you, and I am going to be here for both of you.’

  Fourteen

  ‘I can’t believe you’re off again.’ Myra O’Neill’s current expression was what her loving husband might have described as ‘a face that would stop a clock’.

  ‘Business,’ said Red blandly, sitting in his parents’ kitchen for a quick cup of tea before heading to the airport.

  Saying ‘business’ covered a multitude of excuses. Nobody could argue with a man like himself when he said he had to leave because of business.

  ‘But you only just got here,’ wailed his mother.

  ‘Ah, leave the man alone,’ said his father. ‘If he needs to be in New York, he needs to be in New York.’

  Red didn’t need to be in New York. He just knew that he didn’t want to be in Dublin anymore. The dinner party the night before had unsettled him so much. Michael and Barbara had said the sort of things he didn’t want to hear, reminding him about Coco and telling him he should see her.

  Why would he want to do that? Why put himself through the pain?

  The driver dropped him off at terminal two departures.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Red, getting out of the car.

  Just ahead of him was a woman with long black hair curling down her back. She was muttering to herself.

  ‘I always get these floors mixed up,’ she said, even though she was alone and there was nobody else to hear her.

  Red recognised that voice; he’d have recognised it anywhere, under any conditions.

  ‘Impossible to know if you’re in arrivals or departures,’ the woman muttered.

  Dressed in a long pink circle-skirted dress with a nipped-in waist that showed off her Venus curves and slender ankles was Coco Keneally. She used to worry they were fat – they weren’t.