Best of Friends (15 page)

Joe managed to make the Shanahan male pattern baldness look interesting by keeping his receding thick dark hair short and wearing trendy black-rimmed glasses and casual chic clothes. But Myles would never be a trendsetter. He was a laid-back sort of man with an air of quiet intensity. And women, according to those male friends who’d tried to take him in hand when he and Lizzie had split up, were not mad for quietly intense, divorced civil servants with meagre wallets.

That was fine by Myles. He wasn’t expecting wild passion. Despite all this, he’d met Sabine, thought she was gorgeous and, incredibly, it transpired that she was interested in him. He was fitter than he’d ever been, tanned from his time on the ocean. And the contentment he felt in his new life must have shown on his face, lending him an attractiveness he hadn’t had in years. But he was still pleasantly surprised that she appeared to like him so much. He had acted as if they were just friends at first, like all the others on the scuba-diving course. For four weekends, the group of ten had driven in the minibus to Donegal to stay in the hostel and get their dives in, laughing and joking, retiring to the pub for song-filled evenings. He’d liked Sabine, was touched by her shyness and by how her light, pure voice wobbled with nerves when it was her turn to sing alone, but how she still entered into the whole thing with gusto. He’d liked the way her pale freckled skin looked almost translucent in the clear Donegal light, and he liked the way she smiled at him …

The door of the café opened and Lizzie whirled in, her cheeks flushed from running. Lizzie was always rushing. Myles’s earliest memories of her were as a laughing schoolgirl hurrying to class, weighed down with an enormous schoolbag, her hair flying. She might have been a lot older now, but the hair was still the same, a shoulder-length mop of shaggy curls, and she still had a big bag, this time an elderly leather one she’d had for donkey’s years. Lizzie’s bag used to be a family joke.

“The kitchen sink bag,” Joe would tease her, hoisting it up and pretending to groan under the weight. “No wonder you’ve good muscles, Mum, from lugging this around.”

“Sorry I’m late,” Lizzie gasped, reaching his table. “Couldn’t park the car.”

Now that she was here, Myles felt the desire to tell her his news disappear. His stomach churned with anxiety.

“You’ve finished your coffee, shall I get you another?” she said cheerily.

Myles nodded.

When she got back with fresh coffee, he’d nervously rolled and rerolled his empty sugar packets up into two taut lengths.

“How are things?” asked Lizzie, licking her cappuccino spoon. “I bet this is about the wedding. I had Debra on the phone last night raging over the band. It seems they’ve been asked to sing at a huge Abba convention in Germany and they’re desperate to get out of doing the wedding. Luckily, Barry got a receipt from them when he paid the deposit and he says that’s as good as a contract. Honestly, there’s more drama in this wedding than in the Opera House!”

She looked up at Myles, her face still rosy from her hectic dash, her big chocolate-brown eyes shining and with a frothy line of cappuccino beading her upper lip. Myles felt like someone about to club a baby seal. He’d never forget how hurt and bewildered she’d been when he’d told her he wanted a divorce. He’d been so sure she’d be as eager as he was. But Lizzie, brave, resilient Lizzie, had dealt with it and now he was about to deliver another blow. He owed it to her to tell her about Sabine before all Dunmore rushed up to the house with the news that he’d been seen holding hands with a fair-haired, freckle-faced woman.

“I’m seeing someone, Lizzie,” he said, staring down at his rolled-up sugar packets.

“Seeing someone,” she repeated, as if she hadn’t quite heard correctly and was hoping he’d contradict her.

“Yes.” Myles chanced looking at her. The merriment was gone from her face and it was as if she’d closed the shutters on her sparkling eyes. “I met her at the scuba-diving course. I’m sorry but I had to tell you.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. Why should you?” Lizzie said, shocked. “We’re divorced, you don’t even have to tell me.”

Myles with another woman?
She was more than shocked, she felt utterly stunned. When he’d left, he’d told her it wasn’t for some middle-aged chance at fresh love and she’d believed him. Now this. But she wouldn’t show Myles how shocked she was—no way. She’d hide her hurt.

“In fact, it’s none of my business what you do anymore,” she added tartly.

“I wanted to tell you before anyone else did. You know what Dunmore is like for gossip and if someone saw Sabine and me somewhere and told you before I did, well …”

“Well what?” she demanded, abandoning all attempts to hide how she felt. “You were afraid I’d be embarrassed or humiliated or upset? I’ve been all those things, Myles.” Lizzie’s voice had become shrill and Myles could sense the other coffee shop customers watching them with interest. “I was embarrassed and upset when you left me but I dealt with it. And now this.” She stopped talking, as though all the breath had left her lungs.

“It was bound to happen to one of us, Lizzie,” Myles said, hoping to comfort her, conveniently forgetting that he hadn’t planned to fall in love again.

Lizzie’s gaze caught his. “It wasn’t bound to happen to me,” she said fiercely. “What did you say her name was?”

Myles hadn’t meant to tell her the name, but he realised now that he had. “Sabine.”

“Very exotic,” Lizzie said shakily. Grabbing her handbag from the chair beside them, she got up. “I have to go. I hope you’ll be very happy.” And she was gone, handbag banging off a table as she rushed for the door.

On the street, Lizzie allowed herself to slow down. Myles wouldn’t rush after her, she knew that. He wasn’t the sort of man who ran after people. Or perhaps he was, but only if Sabine was the one who’d left him sitting in a café so abruptly.

Her name sounded exotic, all right. Not like good solid Lizzie, reliable Lizzie who could be told anything and not lose her temper. But she wanted to lose her temper now. She wanted to scream and yell because it was so unfair. She’d been a good person. She’d behaved like a grown-up and hadn’t raged or spread malicious rumours when Myles had left her. She hadn’t become a paid-up member of the local exwives’ group—nicknamed the Harridans by Clare Morgan—praying for famine, pestilence and penile gangrene to hit him.

She’d got on with her life with quiet dignity and where had it got her? Absolutely nowhere. Myles had someone else and she had no one.

She reached the car park and marched up to the automated ticket machine. Fumbling in her handbag for her ticket, she dropped it and her change purse, which was half open. Coins rolled off everywhere like freed lab rats making a dash for freedom.

“Bugger,” said Lizzie viciously. She never usually swore. She scrabbled around and found the ticket, and some of the coins. “Double fucking bugger.” For good measure she kicked the ticket machine, not caring that it hurt her toe in her soft leather boots. Shock had left her beyond pain.

The couple of young mothers with pushchairs behind her gasped. Lizzie snatched her ticket from the jaws of the machine and whirled around, glaring at the women.

“Bloody fucking men!” she growled, and stomped off to the lift.

Lizzie’s wild rage lasted for days. On the plus side, it meant that she cleaned out the attic and the spare bedroom the way local decluttering guru Abby Barton was always telling people to do. As she grimly went through the pieces of her life, Lizzie wondered did Abby ever envision people throwing out stuff because their ex-husband had just found himself a new love? Probably not, Lizzie thought, jettisoning whole bagfuls of precious cards and mementoes of her marriage, including the faded ribbon from her wedding bouquet.

“I. Don’t. Want. You,” she said staccato as she held the once-pink ribbon over the bin bag, snipping it viciously into inch-long pieces with her kitchen shears. Photos of the wedding followed, along with a big pile of the cards Myles had given her over the years. Her courage faltered at the sight of one birthday card that wasn’t even a “To my darling wife on her birthday” one. Just a plain “Happy Birthday” type with badly painted lilies on the front, the sort of card you’d give to someone you didn’t like but who, inexplicably, always sent
you
birthday cards. The legend inside in Myles’s writing read: “Hope you like the saucepans.”

Saucepans. Lizzie remembered that birthday. Ten years ago, about. Her thirty-ninth, because Myles had bought her a clothes voucher for her fortieth, she remembered. She still had the saucepans. Heavy stainless steel with a lifetime guarantee, they were built to last. Unlike her and Myles.

For a moment, she didn’t know which one of them she was angrier with: herself, for being so hopelessly unable to read the signs; or Myles, for daring to give her saucepans for a birthday.

The minus side of Lizzie’s temper meant she was too wound up every night to sleep and ended up tossing and turning until she gave in, switched both the lamp and the bedroom TV on, and watched black-and-white cable movies until dawn.

Debra was no help. She hadn’t known about Sabine but she didn’t sound too put out by the news that her father had a woman in his life.

“Well, Mum, you’ve got to move on, you’ve got to forget the pain, haven’t you? That’s what I always say,” Debra told her in the misty tones of the oracle.

Lizzie, who’d never noticed even the faintest ability in Debra to forget pain and move on, had to bite her tongue to remind her daughter how long it had taken her to move on after the débâcle of leaving nursing college. For at least two years after she’d flunked her first year, Debra had burst into noisy tears at the first sign of a medical drama on television. Joe was the only member of the family who hadn’t rushed in to comfort her, pointing out with great practicality that if Debra had studied instead of being out partying with junior doctors for the whole of her first year, she might have got through. Naturally, this wasn’t a very popular theory with Debra.

“You don’t understand,” she’d wail, reaching for a tissue. “I did my best. It just got to me. You have to have a hard core to be a nurse. I’m too sensitive.”

Debra’s much-vaunted sensitivity wasn’t evident now her mother needed it.

“It’s been five years, Mum,” she said matter-of-factly after Lizzie had sobbed her heart out while telling the story. “You have to move on.”

How could her mother be so selfish, anyhow? She, Debra, was the one who needed support. She was the one who was organising a wedding, single-handedly almost, and coping with all sorts of crises. Barry’s stupid sister had finally been persuaded into the expensive bridesmaid’s dress but due to some frantic comfort eating, the dress—violet taffeta with a scooped neck edged with violet silk rosebuds—was now too tight. Sandra would need a shoehorn and Vaseline to get her into it. Debra had offered her some laxatives but Sandra had turned her snub nose up at them. Well, if she wanted to look like Miss Piggy in a marquee, that was her business. Debra vowed that the flower girls would station themselves in front of Sandra for the bridesmaids’ photos. How could her mother be making such a fuss with all this going on? Didn’t she realise that the most important day of Debra’s life was in less than four months?

Gwen had been much more practical. “Come on the cruise with me and Shay,” she’d urged again. “We’ll lend you the money. You might meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger. Although,” Gwen added thoughtfully, “I hear the ratio of women to men is two to one on this cruise, so I might have to work hard to hold on to Shay!”

“Running away isn’t the answer,” Lizzie said dully, not even amused by the notion of any woman other than Gwen being keen on Shay. The idea of running away was actually very appealing but she was terribly broke and the leaky roof in the kitchen was getting worse. “I’m fine, Gwen, honestly.”

Although Gwen could see that her sister was anything but fine, she realised that Lizzie needed to be left to lick her wounds in peace.

In an unguarded moment, Lizzie told the truth to Clare Morgan, who couldn’t fail to notice how miserable Lizzie was at work, and who’d asked if everything was OK.

“You mustn’t let that get to you,” Clare said briskly when she’d heard. “It’s a shock when your ex moves on but I hope you haven’t been harbouring hopes of getting back together, Lizzie. That never works. You’ve a busy social life, though, haven’t you? You don’t need him. Get out there and have fun. You’re in your prime, Lizzie. Don’t become old before your time just because it’s easier to sink into lethargy.”

“Yes,” said Lizzie weakly, wishing she hadn’t been quite so successful in her attempts to convince Clare that she too was a divorced, free and single woman. Clare was a go-getting sort of person and would never understand that Lizzie’s life hadn’t moved on since Myles had moved out. Everything was still exactly the same except now she cooked for one.

The phone in the surgery rang and Clare put her hand on it but didn’t pick up the receiver. “Lizzie, life’s too short to waste it thinking about what might have been. Look at all the people who come through this surgery who aren’t going to make it, like poor Maurice Pender. Things don’t look good for him and he’d do anything to have life stretching ahead of him.” She picked up the phone.

“I know,” said Lizzie as she left Clare alone to talk to her patient, but she was only saying that she understood the doctor’s point. She felt sorry for poor Mr. and Mrs. Pender but even that didn’t dull her own misery.

At home that evening, Lizzie sat down in front of the soaps with chicken and pasta on a tray on her lap. Somehow, she couldn’t concentrate on the television. Clare Morgan’s words kept exploding into her consciousness like a nagging headache that wouldn’t go away.

Don’t become old before your time just because it’s easier to sink into lethargy.

Lethargy was just what Lizzie was in the mood for. She felt too down to want to make any decisions, but perhaps it was time for decisions. A new life or the comfortable but lonely old one? It was like being a heroine at a crossroads in a weird fairy story. In one direction lay middle age with panty girdles, beige cardigans and big plaid skirts like the ones her granny used to wear. In the other lay a new life with men like Myles, the ones who’d been trapped in unhappy marriages and were only waiting for a quick sail around the harbour on a 24-footer before leaping into bed with someone new.