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Between Sisters

Page 24

by Cathy Kelly


  ‘Your mother left because you were a crybaby,’ were the hateful words that had haunted her for years.

  The more Coco thought about it, the more she realised that she was going to be Fiona’s mother for quite a while to come.

  ‘I’ll be in rehab for fucking months and I might never be back to normal,’ Jo had hissed at her a couple of days before.

  That thought had been rattling around in Coco’s brain ever since. She’d been avoiding it, not because the idea of taking care of Fiona was so onerous, but because she didn’t think she could be a stand-in mother.

  She had never, ever planned to have children. How could she? She’d probably make a very good granny, because Pearl had been the most fabulous granny. A granny-cum-mother and a wonderful role model but still, not a mum.

  Dad had been there too, but Coco could remember Pearl and Cassie doing most of the raising. Her mother leaving had broken something inside her father.

  The Keneallys had never been an ordinary family. Coco didn’t know how to do ordinary, and she’d decided a long time ago that children weren’t in her future. But now she was forced into being a mother. The incredible thing was that she was enjoying it. Loving it, actually.

  ‘Should we get a dog?’ she asked Fiona.

  ‘Yes!’ Fiona snuggled in tighter. ‘I’d love that. I’ve been asking Mum for a dog for ages but she always says …’ She stopped, as if talking about Jo was somehow out of bounds.

  Fiona did this a lot. Talked about the past and her mother, and then suddenly reality hit and she knew what was happening. She knew that her mother was in a hospital bed, angry and upset, injured.

  In that instant, Coco felt she understood all of this almost like she could see all the cogs whirring in her goddaughter’s head.

  ‘Your mum will get better, darling,’ she said. ‘I promise you she will get better. One of the hardest things for her right now is not to be able to take care of you because she loves you so much.’

  ‘But she’s so angry!’ whispered Fiona. ‘She’s so angry when I go in, and she’s angry with you and everyone. Mum isn’t like that.’

  ‘She’s like that because she’s scared, I told you that, darling. She’s scared because she doesn’t know what’s going to happen and doesn’t realise that you, me and your mum are a team.’ Coco smiled. ‘We’re a family, Fiona. A family. I’m here for your mum and, most importantly, I’m here for you. Do you believe me?’ She looked at Fiona gravely, willing her to say yes.

  Fiona’s little face broke into a smile. ‘Course I believe you, silly billy. You are a silly billy sometimes, Coco. You’re my other mummy.’ She curled up closer to Coco, who thought her heart might explode with love.

  ‘Let’s get a dog,’ she said decisively. ‘What sort of dog would you like, Fiona?’

  For the first time in a very long while, possibly since the night of Jo’s stroke, when Lily and Beth had been in Coco’s house and they’d all been dressing up with such childish glee, Coco saw a gleam of sheer joy in Fiona’s beautiful blue eyes.

  ‘A pug,’ she said, like she was saying a fairy princess castle filled with Barbies. ‘Like Pearl’s.’

  ‘OK,’ said Coco, her heart aching to see Fiona’s joy in this simple move. ‘A pug it is.’

  ‘Can I get it clothes and dress it up?’ said Fiona.

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Coco. ‘The puglet might not like clothes …’

  ‘She will,’ said Fiona happily.

  Bribery, Coco thought, as they hugged tightly and went back to watching Frozen. But she didn’t care. If the thought of a dog brought a smile to Fiona’s face, then bribery it would be.

  The next day Coco felt glad she hadn’t offered to pick Xavier up from the airport. Look at what had happened when she’d picked Tracey up – that had gone so well. As a morning guest, Tracey was stressed until she got her coffee, and then seemed stressed even when she had it. Simply being in Silver Bay, close to her home, had ignited some anxiety in her.

  At least Xavier had sounded laid-back on the phone; so laid-back, in fact, that it didn’t even sound as if he was flying over to see his sister, who’d had a hideous, premature stroke.

  ‘I’m getting quite an early flight, but I’ll drop in and see some pals,’ he’d said casually to Coco on the phone. ‘Then I’ll head out to the hospital and possibly come around to yours later.’

  He wasn’t staying with Coco, a fact for which she was very grateful. With Fiona in her spare bedroom and Tracey on the couch, space was at a premium. Space, not to mention sanity.

  But Sunday afternoon came with no word from Xavier since the night before when they were discussing his flight arrangements.

  ‘Did he come in to see you?’ Coco asked Jo in the hospital that afternoon.

  ‘Yes, he was in this morning. He flew in early,’ said Jo, and she looked animated for the first time in ages. ‘It was amazing to see him. I’d forgotten how much fun he is. He made me laugh. He even fed me lunch and told me I was a gimpy old eejit, and the sooner I got into rehab, the better, so I wouldn’t embarrass him when Fiona and I next came to Paris. He said he’s moving apartments, somewhere in the sixth arrondissement. Very cool, I’m betting. And there’ll be a spare room for us.’

  Coco grinned. Jo hadn’t talked about the future in anything except negative terms for the last few weeks. Was it a gradual acceptance, a strength, a courage? Or just Jo’s natural optimism finally reasserting itself?

  Xavier turned up at Coco’s flat that evening with a bottle of wine, a tiny box of handmade French chocolates, and clearly no intention of staying any longer than about half an hour, which made Coco very happy because she had no more beds and only one nerve left.

  He greeted his sister warily. ‘Tracey,’ he said, and gave her a little peck on the cheek.

  Very Parisian, but only one, so only half-French, Coco wondered? Or was this some subtle Parisian way of saying: ‘You’re bonkers, so you only merit one kiss’?

  ‘And Fiona.’

  He picked his niece up in a big bear hug and swung her around and around the room, so that Coco began to fear for her table lamps. It wasn’t a big apartment and she had a lot of stuff in it. She kept thinking about what she was going to do when Jo got out of hospital and how the three of them were going to manage. Jo couldn’t live on her own as she was still relearning to use her left hand and she walked with a limp, which meant stairs might be out of the question. So Coco’s apartment – one flight of stairs – would be tricky, particularly as it had only two bedrooms. But then Jo’s own place was smaller and was up three flights of stairs, with a temperamental lift, so how would she manage that?

  Of course, Jo might not want Coco taking care of her and Fiona, but it seemed like the most obvious choice, and after all, nobody was going to be able to take care of Fiona like she could.

  ‘You’ve grown, honey,’ said Xavier when he finally put a now dizzy Fiona back on her feet.

  Fiona gave him a pitying look. ‘I’m nine. Course I’ve grown. We’re getting a dog,’ she then announced, as if there was one waiting to be delivered instantly. ‘A pug.’

  ‘Oh, I love pugs,’ said Xavier. ‘They’re très délicieux.’

  ‘You do?’ said Fiona. ‘My granny, Pearl, has one.’

  Coco grinned. Pearl wasn’t Fiona’s granny and yet she was. Pearl had been Coco’s mum. It was all a little mixed up and yet that was OK, she thought, looking with adoration at the child she loved like a daughter. Daughter.

  Suddenly her beloved rose velvet couch was behind her knees and she sank down on to it with a shock.

  She was the woman who was never, ever having children, and now here she was looking after Fiona with more love than she’d thought possible. She’d adored Fiona before, but now that love seemed to have increased tenfold. And yet Fiona would eventually go and Coco’s heart would break because she loved ha
ving her goddaughter with her all the time and—

  She wanted a baby of her own. A real baby. Her own child. A child she’d never, ever leave.

  ‘You OK, Coco?’ asked Xavier politely. ‘You’ve gone a bit white.’

  ‘Have a chocolate, Coco,’ said Fiona, cosying up to her and ripping open the chocolates with expert ease. She picked out the richest-looking one – white chocolate with pistachio pieces and caramel sugar trailing into little shapes on top of it – and handed it to Coco. ‘This,’ she said gravely, ‘will make you feel better.’

  ‘You make me feel better,’ said Coco, gazing at Fiona earnestly.

  ‘I know,’ said Fiona. ‘Bite it. Is it nice?’

  She picked an equally rich-looking one for herself and stuck the whole thing in her mouth.

  ‘Uncle Xavier,’ she said, mouth full, ‘these are yummificacious. When we have a pug, we can’t give him chocolate. Pearl told me that. It’s bad for dogs’ hearts. It’s not bad for my heart,’ she added, just to make that clear. ‘I can eat lots of chocolate and it never makes me sick.’ She took another one and ate it quickly, just to prove this fact. ‘See?’

  When Xavier was gone, Tracey was settled into a jetlagged sleep on the couch, and Fiona was curled up in her bed with her teddies and dreams of the holiday in Paris her uncle had promised her, Coco went into her own bedroom and sat on the windowsill looking out at the night sky. It was a cloudless night and she could see so many stars.

  Her father had loved the heavens. One of her fondest memories of their time together was when the teenage Cassie was out and Coco and her dad would sit outside on Pearl’s verandah and try to identify various constellations.

  ‘Dad, I hope you’re happy wherever you are,’ Coco whispered up at the sky. ‘I told you once I never wanted children and I knew it made you sad,’ she said. ‘But I’ve changed my mind. I do want children. Babies and toddlers and little girls like Fiona running around, or little boys – whatever I am lucky enough to have. I was wrong before, but I know what I want now. There are no men on the horizon, not even the safe ones you tried to get me interested in. None. But I’ll work it out. I’ll be a good mum, I promise.’

  Fifteen

  On Monday morning, Cassie wished her head wasn’t throbbing quite so much. It was all her own fault. ‘Entertainment tax’ they used to call it in college, when you had to pay the day after for too many drinks in the bar the night before. Cassie used to look down on the wild ones who were clearly paying entertainment tax most mornings. They were stupid, she’d thought in those far-off college days. Where did drinking too much get you? Nowhere. And now look at her, a married mother-of-two with a throbbing headache and the sense that her stomach was so acidic she might throw up at any moment.

  She’d shouted at the girls that morning too; shouted more when she realised Shay had got up early and had left the house before anyone was up, not so much as a cup of tea left by her side of the bed as a peace offering. He’d been out all day Sunday, barely speaking to Cassie as if it was all her fault.

  So she’d ignored him and he’d ignored her right back. Cassie had got stuck into the wine after buying another wine box from the supermarket. Fabulous things, they were: nobody could look at them and see how much was gone, she found herself thinking – and then was horrified at such secretive behaviour. Wasn’t that how addicts always said they behaved? Drinking or taking drugs secretly, hiding what they did?

  She couldn’t even phone Coco to talk about it because Coco had Jo’s family with her at the weekend and, according to Pearl, it had been stress city over there with Jo’s sister having a mini nervous breakdown now that she was on Irish soil, and therefore close to her Bible-thumping parents.

  Pearl had also been full of chat about this lovely girl she’d met and how Pearl thought the girl could come and stay with Gloria from Delaney Gardens, whose darling husband was in a home, for the college year, and wasn’t that a nice idea?

  ‘Gloria needs someone in the house. She’s so lonely and that lovely girl would cheer her up. Phoebe is the girl’s name, and she’s in a bedsit in Rita Costello’s house, which is penal servitude, if you ask me. The last time Rita cracked a smile, Nixon was in the White House. Plus that house hasn’t been painted in donkey’s years. Are you all right, Cass? You sound a little stressed?’

  ‘Me, stressed? No. Just tired,’ said Cassie.

  The modern lie when you didn’t want to answer something. Everyone was tired all the time. There was even an acronym for it: TATT. Nobody ever questioned you about it.

  Cassie phoned Coco.

  ‘Can’t talk. I’m here in the hospital and Jo’s sister is in with her.’

  ‘I’ll be quick. How’s it going?’

  ‘Attracta, who is now called Tracey, by the way—’

  ‘Tracey?’

  ‘Yeah. Guess she wanted to change everything her parents ever gave her. Anyway, Tracey came home after seeing Jo in hospital on Saturday and went into a decline. Then Fiona got really upset. I almost sent Tracey off to a hotel but it was her first night back in Ireland and I felt so guilty. Still, I have to think of Fiona. It’s not fair on her,’ Coco went on. ‘Heck, Tracey’s coming out again. She’s only been in for ten minutes. Same as yesterday. Have to go,’ she whispered into the phone and hung up.

  Cassie had opened Shay’s apology bottle of red wine then. She liked red wine but it gave her a headache if she drank more than two glasses. That’s all she’d have then, because she’d already had some of the wine box stuff.

  But somehow she’d got more maudlin, drank the whole bottle, and that was why her head was killing her now.

  Blasted Shay. Blasted Antoinette.

  The anger rose in her again, quickly followed by the anxiety: what was happening to her and her marriage? She should have smoothed things over.

  What if Shay had had enough and left her? He could: she’d pushed him enough. She spent plenty of time with Pearl, after all, but then Pearl wanted the whole family there and Cassie was in no doubt that when Antoinette wanted her son, she wanted him alone.

  She slipped into her seat at the Larousse conference table, aware that she reeked of perfume because she was sure the fumes of an entire bottle of wine and two glasses of white box wine were seeping out of her pores. An ozone-killing blast of deodorant followed by four massive squirts of her current Jo Malone perfume was adding to her headache, but better that than to be outed as a woman who’d sunk so much wine by herself.

  What sort of role model was she for Beth and Lily? And it wasn’t as if she, of all people, didn’t know how alcohol could affect a family. Not that Pearl had ever said too much about her and Coco’s mother, but the only crystal-clear fact was that addiction had been at the heart of her leaving.

  ‘She was a troubled soul,’ Pearl had said on those few times they’d actually talked about Marguerite.

  Pearl seemed to think that the less she talked about the girls’ mother, the more they’d forget about her. Which was sort of unlike Pearl, really. Pearl was surprisingly modern in her parenting and always talked about stuff: boys, periods, breasts, all the stuff younger parents needed to discuss.

  So the three monkeys approach to Marguerite was unusual.

  Still, who cared what had made their mother leave. Stupid cow had still gone and never bothered coming back, right? That was all that mattered.

  Cassie thought of her sister’s discussion about Fiona and how unanswered issues in childhood turned into exploding hand grenades later, but then pushed it out of her mind.

  Belinda was at the top of the room outlining plans for the pharmaceutical conference Lorenhad won by undercutting their nearest rival.

  ‘The highlight is the bonding day on day two,’ she was saying. ‘I’ve got footage of the wall-climbing guy explaining it. In-house, we’re calling it the Bear Grylls’ Effect – everyone wants to do something dangerous. Out
of house, obviously, it’s called the Action Adventure part of the week, as nobody wants to pay fees for the use of Bear’s name.’

  Loren smiled. She liked Belinda, admired her no-bullshit work ethic and the fact that Belinda had raised a son on her own.

  ‘If she had the slightest clue how much deranged behind-the-scenes stuff went on to manage a career and a child, she mightn’t be so admiring,’ Belinda liked to say. ‘Loren hasn’t any concept about any world apart from her own.’

  ‘Must be nice to be so emotionally isolated,’ Cassie agreed, who at any one time had a group of people looking for her help, advice on husbands, boyfriends, children, how to approach Loren for time off.

  ‘Not that I’m advocating Loren, the Ice Queen, as a role model, but perhaps you should try it sometime,’ Belinda advised. ‘You’re too nice to people. You never get a moment’s peace.’

  Today, sitting at the conference table with a raging hangover and no headache tablets inside her because she didn’t think she’d be able to keep them down, Cassie fervently wished nobody came near her for help today.

  I know nothing! That was what she’d have to say to them.

  My husband is ignoring me. He’s destroying our marriage.

  No, his mother is destroying our marriage and I’m not smoothing it all over. I screamed at my kids this morning for no good reason other than having a hangover – ME! A hangover! – and my head aches. Go find someone who actually has all the answers.

  When Belinda’s presentation was finished, she took her place beside Cassie. ‘Sauvignon Blanc or Chablis?’ she whispered.

  ‘That bad?’ said Cassie, appalled.

  ‘No, you don’t smell of wine, I just recognise the look. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, darling. You got time for lunch today?’

  Cassie thought of her desk, the email inbox from hell and the phone message slips.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. Carbohydrates might help. Plus she needed to spill out her bruised feelings to someone.

 

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