Between Sisters

by Cathy Kelly

  When Coco finally headed off from the shop, she planned to go straight into the hospital to see Jo. But instead she drove around to Delaney Gardens, hoping that Pearl was in. She parked the car, ran up to the front door and knocked, but there was no reply. Worrying slightly because, after all, Pearl wasn’t a young lady anymore, she took out her key and let herself in, greeted by delighted barks from Daisy, who did her impersonation of an abandoned dog.

  ‘We might have a puppy friend for you to play with soon, Daisy,’ said Coco, getting down on the floor to snuggle with the pug.

  Daisy looked thoroughly thrilled at this, but then Daisy looked thrilled at everything: food, cuddles, butterflies, rain, sun, whatever. She was easily pleased. There was no sign, however, of her mistress, so Coco left a note to say she’d dropped in and perhaps might phone her grandmother later. She signed the note with a flourish of kisses and she left thinking of all the things she really wanted to write:

  I need to talk to you, Grammy. I’m so worried about Cassie. It’s like she’s heading for a total breakdown and I don’t know what to do. I’m so tied up with trying to take care of Fiona that I can’t really be properly there for Cassie, but I’m worried about her and I’m worried about Lily and Beth. We need to figure out what to do. It’s like she fell apart that night when I came home from the hospital and we started talking about Mum. I don’t know how to help her anymore.

  If you want to know me, come live with me went the proverb, and Shay could see the sense in that. Since moving in, reluctantly, with his mother after Cassie had turfed him out on to the street, he’d begun to find that there was a big difference between dropping in now and then and being the golden boy who fixed light bulbs, plugs and washing machines, and actually living with Antoinette after a gap of some twenty years.

  That first night, it had been a relief to drive up to his mother’s house and feel her hug him. He’d felt the comfort of being told it was all right, not to worry, and he hadn’t done a thing wrong, which was precisely what he wanted to hear after having Cassie shrieking at him.

  ‘Cassie’s being totally unreasonable and I don’t understand it at all,’ Antoinette had said, going around the kitchen and getting out the good china dishes.

  ‘You poor boy. I suppose you haven’t had a thing to eat either? I’ll make you a good, decent dinner, none of that frozen stuff or ready meals from the supermarket,’ she said dismissively, as if ready meals from the supermarket were all that was wrong with the world.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Shay, and although he knew that Cassie didn’t feed their family from the frozen aisle, he didn’t say so.

  He’d gone into the living room, where he’d spent so many years growing up as a kid, and sat down in the big comfortable armchair that used to be his father’s.

  ‘Now, pet, here are the TV zappers,’ said his mother cosily. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have the sports channels, but I could get them for you if you want. I know you like your bit of football; your father was the same.’

  Shay found himself ensconced in an armchair with the fire on, something about renovating cars on the TV, and a gin and tonic on a small table beside him. His mother had even conjured up nuts in a little bowl as an appetiser.

  ‘Nuts, Mum!’ he roared out to the kitchen. ‘Am I in the right house?’ he joked. ‘We never had nuts when I was growing up, did we?’

  ‘Oh, on the odd special occasion when we had people over,’ his mother said skittishly, ‘but you deserve a treat, pet, while you’re waiting for your dinner.’

  An hour later, he had a tray on his lap, he was in control of the television remote – something that never happened in his house – and he had now a glass of wine in place of the gin and tonic. It was like being in a hotel.

  ‘Isn’t this lovely?’ said his mother, picking at a salad as she sat on the couch.

  ‘Mum, why aren’t you eating this?’ he said, gesturing at the stew she’d conjured up out of nowhere.

  ‘Oh pet.’ His mother smiled. ‘You know I have to watch my figure, darling.’

  Shay looked at her and realised that this was the moment where he was supposed to say: ‘Oh no, Mum, you don’t, you look fabulous.’ So he did, and Antoinette beamed, patted her flat stomach and smoothed her skirt over her still slim hips.

  ‘I always say you’ve got to look after yourself and dress like a lady.’

  She touched the pearls that her husband had bought for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They weren’t real pearls, of course. There hadn’t been money for real pearls in their household any more than there’d been much in the line of gin and tonics in front of the television, but somewhere along the way his mother had gentrified the Reynolds family, and Shay – now that he was exposed to the full blast of it – wasn’t sure he liked it. When his father used to sit in this seat and watch the footie, he might have a pint of beer, just the one, and roar at the TV, telling the ref he was blind and muttering about goalies with butter fingers.

  ‘Now, tell me exactly what did she say?’

  His mother wanted to do a complete postmortem on his throwing out and Shay did not want to talk about it at all. It felt like being disloyal to Cassie to even discuss this marital row. Keeping secrets from her with his mother was what had got them into trouble in the first place, and the more he thought about it, the more he realised that selling up and moving in together had been a pretty big secret. The pangs of remorse hit him hard.

  ‘Mum, I don’t want to talk about it, can we give it a rest?’ Shay said.

  ‘Of course, pet,’ said his mother, looking slightly peeved. ‘I only wanted to help you get it off your chest. I think Cassie is being completely ridiculous that she doesn’t realise how important family is to you. I mean, just because she doesn’t have a mother …’

  ‘Mum, I just want to watch the TV and forget about it,’ begged Shay.

  ‘Fine.’

  His mother’s expression was one Shay hadn’t seen for quite a while, but he recognised it from his childhood, much more so than the little bowl of nuts or the gin and tonics. It was her I’m annoyed but I’m pretending not to be annoyed face.

  She used to do that a lot, and Shay could remember himself and his father, Arthur, staring at each other, realising that when Antoinette’s face bore that particular expression, it was better to get out of the house.

  Cassie never played that sort of game, Shay thought suddenly. It was one of things he loved about his wife. There were no sides to Cassie. She was straightforward. If she was annoyed, she told you. She didn’t sulk or play at being a martyr. What you saw was what you got, with one exception, and that was the tricky issue surrounding her, Coco and their mother. That was the part of Cassie that nobody got to see because she never talked about it, brushed off conversations if they so much as veered in that direction.

  Fear of abandonment, Shay had long since diagnosed it as, and with another pang, he realised that his secret with his mother would be the ideal way to make his wife think she was being abandoned all over again.

  So she’d abandoned him first.

  He picked up his mobile phone and turned it back on. There were several messages from Lily and Beth, and he felt a surge of guilt. He put the tray down on the floor and said, ‘Mum, I’m just going out to make a few calls.’

  His mother looked even more piqued. ‘If you don’t want to finish your dinner …’ she said in the tones of one who’d spent hours slaving in a Michelin-starred kitchen to produce the stew.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum, I’ll eat it in a minute.’

  He got Beth first.

  ‘Dad,’ she said, and he could tell from the thickness of her voice that she’d been crying. ‘Dad, what happened? I didn’t mean to start it all. I only told Mum that Granny had left a message on the answering machine, and I was so upset because I thought you were going to get a divorce and then I heard that. I phoned Mum but �
� I’m sorry, it’s all my fault.’ She burst into tears.

  Blast his mother for leaving that message, Shay thought with irritation.

  ‘Beth, we’re not getting a divorce. It’s my fault. I talked to Granny about something, it was just an idea, and I never discussed it with your mum, so of course she’s annoyed with me. She’s every right to be annoyed with me. Don’t worry. We’ll sort this out in the next couple of days. I’ll make everything OK, I promise. Mum is just angry with me. Now, is Lily with you?’

  ‘Yes, she’s in my bed,’ said Beth, snuffling. ‘You know she’s not supposed to get into my bed with her stinky feet,’ she added, and Shay grinned at this sound of normality returning to his daughter’s voice.

  ‘Daddy,’ said Lily tearfully, ‘why did you leave tonight? When are you coming home?’

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be fine, Lily. I love you both and I love your mum. Please be good to her. She’s just upset right now, but we’re going to sort all of this out, right? Now ring me and text me any time. I’ll have my phone on morning, noon and night.’

  ‘You say we’re not supposed to have our phones on at night,’ Lily pointed out.

  ‘You can keep them on now,’ Shay said, his heart bleeding for the sorrow he heard in his younger daughter’s voice. ‘I love you. I’ll be home soon, sweetie.’

  He hung up and wondered if he should ring Cassie. But no, it was probably better to let her cool off. He needed to make this better. He sent a text instead.

  Sorry, Cassie. It was all a terrible mistake. I love you.

  From the sitting room, a plaintive voice called: ‘Shay, your dinner’s getting cold.’

  ‘Coming,’ he said resignedly.

  Twenty

  Coco looked at the tiny apricot-coloured pug puppy and decided that puppies in general, and pug puppies in particular, were God’s way of reminding people that He existed. There could be no reason for such utter beauty and pure squishiness, as Fiona called it.

  ‘Coco! They’re so squishy and velvety,’ she’d cried when she’d first seen the three puppies in the breeder’s house.

  Coco had been reminded of adorable Agnes from Despicable Me – which they watched on a loop – and how happy she’d been when she’d won her beloved unicorn at the funfair.

  ‘Squishy, squishy, squishy,’ Fiona cooed again as she got to her knees and tried to hug all the puppies at once.

  The breeder, a very down-to-earth woman who lived in a house covered in dog fur, watched benignly.

  ‘I love watching the kiddies with dogs,’ she said. ‘Our four grew up with dogs all around them, not just pugs. We actually started with Shih Tzus but then we took in a rescue pug.’ Seeing Coco’s horrified face, she said, ‘I know, who could dump any animal, but this beautiful little creature was abandoned by the side of the road and we took her in and that was it. Once you’ve seen a pug, you’re hooked. Blossom here has a lovely temperament,’ she added, referring to the three puppies’ mother. ‘Very calm and gentle. My three grandchildren play with her all the time and she’s never so much as nipped any of them. They really are beautiful family pets. Now the puppies, they do try and bite everything, and those teeth are very sharp, let me tell you. So try not to let your daughter—’

  ‘Fiona!’ interrupted Fiona, but she didn’t add that she wasn’t Coco’s daughter, Coco noticed with a pang.

  ‘Fiona,’ agreed the woman, ‘don’t put your fingers in their mouths, because those teeth are like sharp needles and they’ll reach a point when they really need to chew furniture and shoes when they’re teething. They’re just like babies.’

  ‘Babies don’t chew furniture,’ Fiona pointed out.

  And then she sighed, and somehow she was sitting cross-legged on the floor with just one pug puppy nestled in her arms. It was, inevitably, the smallest of the puppies, the apricot-coloured creature with eyes that seemed too big for the pup’s face.

  ‘She is an unusual colour, given her parentage, no doubt about it,’ said the woman. ‘Blossom’s a pearl and the father’s also a pearl, but somehow this darling has come out apricot. It’s so long since we showed dogs – we only showed the Shih Tzus and not the pugs – and I have this notion in my head that apricots are rarer if you want to show her.’

  ‘We don’t want to show her,’ said Coco quickly. ‘She’s a pet. We don’t care about pedigrees or anything like that. We only talked to my grandmother’s pal at the kennel club because we wanted to make sure we weren’t getting a dog from a puppy farm.’

  She and the woman, Anna, both shuddered.

  ‘Horrible places, using bitches like breeding machines and treating the puppies like money. This little one is able to go with you now but you have to be sure you want her, and of course they’re purebred so they’re not cheap. Her father is Sir Wilberforce Pumpkin the Third.’

  Coco and Fiona both giggled at this.

  ‘It is a bit of a serious moniker,’ agreed Anna, ‘but then Blossom’s own kennel club name is quite long. She’s Blossom Princess of the South Seas. Adorable, isn’t it? We did think of showing her but it’s a very intense industry and you really have to be into it.’

  ‘I think I’m going to call her Banana,’ announced Fiona in the car on the way home as she sat with a box on her lap and an overexcited puppy trying to clamber out of it.

  ‘Banana, right,’ said Coco thoughtfully. ‘That’s an interesting name. It’s, well … She doesn’t look much like a banana.’

  ‘OK, Minion,’ said Fiona.

  The Minions from the Despicable Me films were her favourite creatures of all time. She had a Minion pencil case, a Minion rubber and her own cuddly Kevin Minion dressed in a French maid outfit.

  They stopped at traffic lights and both gazed into the box again.

  ‘I’m not really seeing her as a Minion either,’ Coco pointed out.

  ‘Onion,’ suggested Fiona.

  They giggled all the way home while Banana/Minion/Onion clambered and climbed and licked and nibbled and panted her way happily through the journey. She really was a happy puppy. She was twelve weeks old, because Anna said she believed in letting the pups stay with their mother as long as possible.

  ‘Works better in the long run,’ she’d said. ‘They’re more able to adjust to the separation, which I think is very important. Makes for a happier dog and that’s what we want, after all.

  At Coco’s, the puppy instantly peed on the carpet in front of the couch and then ran around investigating, with Fiona beside her, explaining everything.

  ‘This is the bathroom. You are too small to wee in the toilet,’ she said gravely. ‘This is my room where you can sleep. On my bed.’

  Coco peeped in to see the pup being hoisted on to the bed, already full of teddies. Onion instantly began chewing a precious pink rabbit’s ear. Coco waited to see how Fiona would react.

  ‘Isn’t she adorable?’ she said, looking at her new pet with love.

  ‘How about Miracle as a name?’ said Coco.

  ‘Ugh.’ Fiona shot her most disgusted look at Coco. ‘You are so bad at names, Coco. Miracle is really bad. I think she’s Apricot, because she’s that colour and she’s small and roundy.’

  ‘Apricot is fabulous,’ said Coco reverently. But she thought: She’ll always be a miracle to me.

  Daisy and Apricot both made otherworldly squeaks of pleasure when they first set eyes on each other.

  ‘I tried quite a few names, Grammy,’ said Fiona earnestly, ‘but I thought Apricot suited her because she looks like an apricot, except she’s sort of a different shape.’

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ gasped Pearl, snuggling the puppy in her arms and petting her.

  On the ground, Daisy was jumping up and down insanely, trying to get near the puppy, and once she did, it was love at first sight. Daisy kept trying to lick the smaller animal’s belly and eyes, a
nd Apricot responded by climbing all over Daisy and nibbling her ears.

  ‘It hurts when she nibbles,’ said Fiona conversationally. ‘She’s eaten my fingers and several of my dolls, but it’s OK because I love her. She’s very beautiful.’

  Pearl agreed. ‘And I love that you’re calling me Grammy now. Can I always be your grammy?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Fiona, and threw her arms eagerly around Pearl.

  Over Fiona’s head, Pearl and Coco exchanged glances. It was wonderful what a few small pounds of velvety dog could do for a child. The downside of Apricot was that she did want to chew everything and she had the most incredibly sharp teeth, like baby shark teeth. She was going around nibbling table legs, chair legs, anything she could get her tiny teeth on.

  ‘I’m always leaving cupboards and wardrobe doors open,’ Coco said, ‘and trust me, I don’t anymore, ever since she completely destroyed the heels on my Cuban heels. They were so beautiful: patent leather, a tiny button at the front. I’ll never wear them again.’

  ‘She didn’t mean to, did you, Apricot?’ said Fiona.

  Pearl laughed. ‘They never mean to, darling, they just can’t control themselves. Why don’t you take the two girls out into the garden and have a play, and myself and …’ She stopped, astonished, because she’d been about to say: ‘your mother’.

  She corrected herself quickly: ‘While Coco and I have a chat.’

  Fiona cajoled the two dogs outside, and Coco sat down at the kitchen table in her grandmother’s gloriously coloured kitchen and stared unseeing at the azure blue wall with its family photographs.

  ‘Things are going so well with Jo,’ she said. ‘Her speech has returned nearly one hundred per cent. The consultant says it’s incredible, although some people, if they have very mild strokes, can recover their speech like that. There are just a few words she stumbles over but she may never get that back. And she’s nearly got total control over her left arm, it’s just her leg that’s the problem – it still drags and she’s going to need rehab for a while. But she’s happy, she’s looking forward to the future, she’s looking forward to getting out and having a normal life again. And yet … I’m just so worried.’ She paused. ‘About Cassie. I can’t believe she and Shay haven’t sorted it out yet. It’s just so unlike her.’