Best of Friends (32 page)

The only time the three of them came together for anything approaching normal family life was for a lunch with Steve, Sally, Delia and Steve’s sister, Amy.

It was Delia’s sixtieth birthday and, in spite of her protests, Sally insisted that it be marked in some way.

“There’ll be about twenty of us altogether, when you count Delia’s friends,” Steve said when he phoned Abby to invite her. “Sally would love all three of you to be there. We’re going to the Hotel Dunmore because Sally says she won’t hear of Delia catering for her own birthday.”

And Sally wouldn’t be able to, Abby thought sadly.

Despite the wine flowing freely and the combined goodwill of all the guests, the party spirit at Delia’s sixtieth was forced. The bravely smiling Sally drew people’s eyes like a magnet.

“God help them,” said Abby’s neighbour at the party, an old pal of Delia’s. She said it so often that Abby wanted to beg her to stop.

“Ah now, there might still be hope,” said her other neighbour, another of Delia’s old friends.

Abby didn’t know which was worse: the woman living in cloud-cuckoo-land, or the man who still believed in miracles. Abby didn’t believe in miracles anymore.

sixteen

I
t was the middle of May. The exams were just over two weeks away and Jess’s life felt like a disaster waiting to happen.

“What sicko mind decided that exams should be in June when the weather’s nice and every other sensible person is on their summer holidays?” Steph wanted to know.

Miserable and anxious, Jess didn’t have the answer. All she knew was that she still had tons of revision to do and time was running out. She’d had to give up dropping into the animal refuge at weekends, school was a nightmare, home was an even bigger nightmare and she felt stressed out of her head.

Different people coped differently with stress, that was for sure. Steph, who was now dating Zach, the guy she’d met at Michelle’s party months ago, distanced herself by spending hours texting her boyfriend on her mobile. She also now smoked the occasional cigarette, although Jess was sure it wasn’t worth the effort involved in trying to hide the smell of smoke from Steph’s mother.

“She will kill you if she finds out,” Jess warned. Steph’s mother was pretty laidback but she believed that smoking led to drug use, and would have ripped Steph’s head off if she found her taking drugs. “And smoking causes cancer.”

Steph was not worried about the long-term effects of smoking. “Models smoke,” she countered Jess’s argument.

Jess looked at her friend with exasperation. “You sound just like Saffron, do you realise that? Being thin and beautiful doesn’t stop you getting cancer.”

“Oh, save it for the debating team,” snapped Steph. “I promise I’ll stop, OK?”

For Jess, cancer was no longer a word on a poster about the dangers of cigarettes. She had visited Sally Richardson at home after her first month of chemotherapy treatment. Sally was so thin, although her face looked weirdly bloated, and she had no hair.

“It began to fall out so we shaved it all off,” she’d said gaily, insisting on Jess touching her bare skull. “Danny and Jack love my new hairdo!”

Jess had felt confused. Sally was obviously very ill so why pretend everything was fine? But then, that’s what grown-ups did. Jess’s mother was busy pretending to the world for some reason that everything was fine in the Barton household, so lying was clearly a vital part of adulthood. But then why had they spent so much of her childhood impressing on her the importance of telling the truth? Jess didn’t want anyone lying to her anymore. She wished her parents would be honest with her and with each other, and she wished they’d tell her the truth about Sally.

She’d overheard them talking—a rarity these days—and it seemed the cancer had gone somewhere else now. Listening outside the kitchen door, Jess had heard her mother crying but she knew Dad wouldn’t put his arms around her and comfort her. He never did that now.

Dad slept in the spare room, ate his breakfast before Mum was downstairs, and managed to stay working late at school for hours every evening. Mum tried to pretend she didn’t mind.

Mum watched TV in bed late into the night and drank too much coffee. Dad busied himself poring over the plans for the building work at his school. As soon as the exams were over, the builders were moving in to build the sports hall and Dad was in charge of it all. He was always out meeting architects and contractors, which was probably good, because the tension at home wasn’t so bad when either Mum or Dad was out. Mum was never out at night. She’d arranged to avoid evening events until Jess’s exams were over.

Jess would have preferred it if both parents were out all the time. She was so afraid that one day they’d call her into a room and break the news that they were getting a divorce. Even the icy tension was better than that.

Now, when Mum tried to talk to her, Jess made a beeline for her room, muttering that she had to revise. She didn’t want to hear any more bad news.

That was why she’d decided to start studying in Dunmore library after school. She’d thought of using the school library but the trains from Cork to Dunmore were less frequent in the evenings, so she figured that the big Victorian library in the centre of the square would do instead. It wasn’t old-fashioned inside, with computers lining one wall and modern furniture. In fact, the seats were far more comfortable than the ones in the school library.

Dunmore library was busy when Jess arrived there late one Tuesday afternoon, exactly two weeks before the exams, shoulders aching from hauling her bag of school books. Exam fever seemed to have gripped the whole town, for there were plenty of other students slumped at desks with giant textbooks spread out in front of them. Jess took out her pencil case, notebook, course books and writing pad, and left her bag in one of the lockers provided.

She chose a seat at the back of the main room and spread her books out in front of her. She closed her eyes and grabbed the first book she touched: history. She liked history but the syllabus was so huge that she’d never get through all the revision in time.

Glancing round, she saw people who’d come into the library to get books to read for pleasure. Jess longed to be able to sit down and lose herself in a good story, to lounge in bed at the weekends without the guilt of studying for the exams looming over her. In the summer holidays, which started for her in one month’s time, she’d stay in bed late every day, and then spend the rest of the time in the refuge with the dogs. Lost in the daydream, she gazed towards the door of the library with a goofy smile on her face.

Gradually, she became aware of a dark shape moving towards her and then her eyes focused on a boy standing before her.

“Hi,” said the guy from the train.

“Hi,” she stumbled in reply. “Oliver.” She’d found out his name by now. “You here to study?” Doh, Jess! ’What else is he here for? To go swimming?

“I’ve got two more summer exams left,” he said, “and this is quieter than school.”

Of course, she thought, people who weren’t taking part in the public exams like the Junior Cert and the Leaving Cert finished their exams at the end of May before the big public exams started at the beginning of June. They began their summer holidays at the end of May when the fourth and sixth years were just about to go into exam rooms and sweat.

Oliver slipped into the seat beside her and Jess wondered what was happening. Cool guys like him did not seek out gawky girls like her. And Oliver was cool: he had spiky fair hair like that footballer all the girls drooled over, and he was wiry but athletic, like he played football himself, but wasn’t a musclebound jock who spent hours in the gym. He had a nice face too, clever and expressive, with eyes that could speak without him saying a word. He probably had a girlfriend in his year. Jess had seen him in school with some of the football team and those guys always had girls hanging round them.

“That’s sensible,” she said. Another clanger.
Sensible.
How lame-brained could you get?

“You studying for your Junior Cert?” he asked.

“Yeah, thought I might get more done here than at home,” she replied. Which was true. With the atmosphere at home, it was easier to stay away.

He looked at her history book. “I liked history but the course was way too long,” he said. “I didn’t choose it as one of my subjects this year.”

“What did you do?” asked Jess, thinking that talking to this boy wasn’t as hard as she’d thought.

“Physics, chemistry and applied maths,” he replied, and then laughed at the appalled look on her face. “I like them. I’m going to do science at uni, I hope. What about you?”

A girl at the other end of the table glared at them to keep quiet.

“I don’t know,” whispered Jess.

“You know, erm, we can’t talk in here. I was going to get a drink before I started. Would you like to come for a Coke or something?”

“Sure,” said Jess, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to be asked out by a guy. She gathered up her stuff at high speed but her pencil case hit the tiled floor with a clatter, earning her another fierce look from the girl at the end of the table.

Oliver didn’t seem in the slightest bit fazed by this. He simply picked up Jess’s pencil case, got his own stuff and they walked to the lockers to collect their things.

Outside, Oliver asked her where she wanted to go. “I like the place at the back of the town hall,” he said. “They play good music there.”

“I’ve never been there,” Jess said frankly.

“Really?”

She felt a bit embarrassed. “I don’t know anyone here to hang out with, and you can’t go in on your own,” she muttered. She didn’t mention that she’d gone into the coffee shop near Sally’s once and had felt like such a dork sitting there by herself that she’d left quickly.

“I’ve lived here for years,” Oliver said as they walked along in the late afternoon sunshine, “so I guess I know everyone, but it’s hard to get to know people when you move.”

Jess nodded.

“Where did you live before?”

As they walked down the road towards the town hall, she told him about Gartland Avenue and how it had been tough to leave Steph and her other friends.

“Steph—she’s the blonde girl you hang around with in school?”

Oh yeah, here it comes. Jess came down to earth with a jolt. Oliver wasn’t interested in
her,
he was interested in Steph.

She nodded, woodenly. “Steph Anderson,” she confirmed.

“Do you and Steph ever go to Killian’s disco in the city?”

“We do, but Steph goes with her boyfriend, Zach,” Jess said, emphasising the Zach part of the sentence. “You know, I don’t have time for a Coke, after all.” She turned and marched away from him, back towards the library. Who cared if she sounded rude, she thought, the tears pricking her eyes. If he wanted to go out with Steph, he should have asked her and not tried to go through Jess. It wasn’t fair. Steph had a boyfriend and now Oliver was after her too, while Jess had nobody.

“Hey, Jess, hold on!”

So he knew her name. Marvellous. If you want to ask a girl out via her best friend, find out what the best friend’s name is.

“Jess, stop. What’s wrong?”

If there hadn’t been so many things wrong in her life, Jess might have kept walking. Home was crap, school was crap, now this was crap. Somebody ought to hear how she felt.

“If you must know, I don’t like being used to get to Steph,” she said furiously, eyes blazing. “If you want to ask her out, ask her out. Don’t expect me to do your dirty work for you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking genuinely startled.

“You know,” snapped Jess. “Asking me if Steph and I ever went to Killian’s. Talk about feeble. I’ll give you her phone number and you can ask her yourself.”

He looked uncomfortable. “I’m not interested in Steph. I thought that if you were going, I could meet up with you, that’s all. I didn’t know if I should ask you straight out.”

“Ask me straight out?” Jess was astonished.

“You.” Oliver shrugged. “That’s why I went to talk to you in the library, to ask you out. But if you’d rather not—”

“No, no,” she said. “I mean, yes, I’d like to go out with you if that’s …”

They both stared at the ground for a moment.

“Sorry,” said Jess. “I thought you were … and … sorry.”

“That’s OK.” Oliver was smiling now and Jess found that she couldn’t stop smiling too. “Still want a Coke?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

They walked back up the road and Jess found herself stealing small glances at him. He wasn’t as good-looking as Ian but then, who was? Ian was dark—“brooding,” Steph called him—while Oliver was fair-haired with a strong, intelligent face. She couldn’t imagine him with lots of shadowy designer stubble but she could imagine him laughing with her, or going to the refuge and helping out with the animals. That wasn’t the sort of thing Ian would be into, she knew that for a fact. Saffron was always going on about how Ian liked going out to pubs and clubs, even though he was underage. And Jess wasn’t much of a club person.

“We don’t have to spend long,” Oliver added. “I know you’ve got to revise.”

Jess laughed. “I’m fed up with revising,” she said. “Let’s never go back.”

Oliver’s grey eyes sparkled. “Fine by me,” he said.

Later that day, Erin and Lizzie met up outside the Richardsons’ house. Erin carried an armful of magazines while Lizzie had a potted plant and a paper bag of delicate Italian pastries from the deliciously tempting Tucci Deli. They’d both visited Sally in hospital but seeing her at home was going to be different, particularly since it was known that Sally’s cancer had spread to her bones and the hopefulness of the hospital was no more.

Lizzie had asked Clare Morgan what Sally’s chances were now, and Clare had sighed and said radiation would help to control the disease and relieve the pain.

“Control but not cure?” Lizzie had asked.

Clare had nodded.

“But what about the chemo? Won’t that work on the bone cancer?”

“I’m not an oncologist and there are so many new developments in the field, Lizzie,” Clare said. “I don’t know what other therapies her oncology team have up their sleeves, but Sally’s cancer is advanced. There may be nothing they can do for her now except keep the pain away.”