Best of Friends (47 page)

“Look,” said Lizzie decisively, “if I can get a couple of hours off work and come over, then perhaps we can sort all of this out. What do you think?”

“That would be great.” Myles sounded incredibly relieved. “I can’t just leave her here. She was so distressed last night. Do you think …” He sounded as though the idea had just occurred to him. “Do you think we could phone Barry and get him to come over too and perhaps they might get back together and everything would be all right?” He was like a child hoping that Santa would bring the right toy for Christmas.

“I’d love to see Debra and Barry sort things out,” said Lizzie, “but I think it might be a mistake to just bring him on over to your apartment. They both clearly need space. If Barry had wanted to talk to Debra, he would have known where to find her before now.”

Lizzie let that sink in. She’d hoped that Barry would storm up to her house, declaring undying love, and sweep Debra off to their home, but now that he hadn’t she’d begun to think that the rift was serious. “Perhaps we’d better let them cool off a little and then we can set up a meeting and be there to …”

“To referee?” Miles suggested.

Lizzie laughed. “Yes, to referee.” She couldn’t help thinking of what Joe had said—that Debra and Barry’s marriage was doomed from the start because Debra was a spoiled child and would always want her own way. Lizzie felt Joe was wrong. Debra was just a sensitive girl. She wasn’t spoiled—she was sweet and kind. She just needed delicate handling, and perhaps Barry hadn’t figured that out yet. Lizzie resolved to talk to her son-in-law and explain to him just what sort of person Debra was. She wanted her daughter to be happy and she’d do anything to make sure she was.

“I’ll see you in three-quarters of an hour,” she said to Miles, getting out of bed. Sitting up had been fine but standing up was another matter entirely. Lizzie felt the full weight of five glasses of wine hit her. “Actually, better make that an hour and a half.” She’d need the extra time just to make herself presentable.

Then, she remembered that her car was still outside the restaurant where she’d had dinner last night. She’d have to get a taxi to pick the car up first.

“Make it three hours,” she said.

Clare Morgan was very sweet about giving Lizzie a few hours off that morning for a family emergency, which made Lizzie feel even worse. There wouldn’t be a family emergency if she weren’t such a hopeless mother who had gone out partying with a load of strangers when her own daughter needed her.

Hangover and guilt combined to make her feel utterly miserable as, only an hour and three-quarters later, she headed into Cork towards Myles’s home. When they’d split up, she’d half expected him to buy a neat little town house nearby, but he’d gone for an apartment in the city centre instead and somehow that seemed to symbolise his new free life.

Lizzie wouldn’t have liked an apartment herself, but she admired her ex-husband for choosing something so utterly different. He and Sabine were serious about each other, according to Debra, but Sabine hadn’t moved in yet. Despite everything, she’d liked Sabine when they’d met at the wedding. It wasn’t Sabine’s fault that Lizzie felt old and frumpy. Lizzie had done that to herself. Nobody could be blamed for the pit of despondency into which she’d allowed herself to fall.

And her feeble attempts at making a life for herself hadn’t been very successful, had they? Look at last night—doing something as wild as making a parachute jump had only managed to start a family row.

It was well after ten when she rang the doorbell of Myles’s apartment, and she got quite a shock when Sabine opened the front door. Maybe she had moved in after all.

“Lizzie, hello,” said Sabine warmly. “It’s lovely to see you. Come on in. I’m going out in a moment,” she added, “so I won’t be in your way.”

“That’s OK,” Lizzie interrupted her. “Don’t feel you have to go out. We’re hardly having a secret family conference. How is Debra?” she added in a whisper.

“Oh, fine,” Sabine whispered back with an overbright smile, leading the way down the hall.

Myles’s living room was decorated with a nautical theme, complete with prints of ships, marine memorabilia and a huge brass clock made out of a porthole. Even the big couch was a deep ocean blue. Debra lay on it like Madame Récamier, looking wistful and miserable as if she was just about to shuffle off this mortal coil. A box of cereal, an empty bowl and some milk lay on the coffee table in front of her, showing that even if she was in the depths of despair, Debra had been able to eat some breakfast.

Myles sat on a matelot-striped armchair beside her, looking totally fed up.

“Hi, Lizzie,” he said enthusiastically when he saw his ex-wife. He got to his feet and was about to put his arms around Lizzie, the way he normally greeted her, but then he remembered that Sabine was there.

Etiquette books didn’t exactly explain how to embrace your ex-wife when your possible future wife was in the room, Lizzie thought ruefully.

“Hi, Myles,” she said fondly. “Hello, Debra,” she added.

“Hello,” said Debra in a weak little voice.

She looked so pale and exhausted that Lizzie felt a fresh blast of guilt hit her. Poor Debra. She’d been so upset about Barry, she needed her family around her.

Lizzie rushed over to the couch, got to her knees and threw her arms around her daughter.

“Oh, Debra, pet, I’m so sorry I was late last night. I just got carried away with these people I was with. It’s not that I forgot you—you know I’d never forget you. I love you and we can sort all of this out. Now, please won’t you come on home with me and …” She racked her brains to think of some tempting treat to entice her daughter back home. Whenever Debra had been miserable as a child, chocolate fudge pie from Mario’s in Dunmore’s main street had always worked a treat. When she was a bit older, the promise of going shopping with Lizzie, using Lizzie’s credit card naturally, had always worked. What exactly did you offer your grown-up daughter as a treat when she’d split up from her husband? “We could go shopping,” Lizzie suggested. “I’ll take the day off work,” she added, crossing her fingers that Clare Morgan would continue to see this as a family emergency and not fire her. “I’m sure you need lots of new clothes and—”

“Shopping would be great,” said Debra happily, sitting up brightly on the couch, all resemblance to Madame Récamier gone. “I saw some fabulous sandals in BTs the other day. They were hideously expensive but they were just beautiful and I know they’d suit me. Oh, Mum, yeah, let’s go shopping.”

“Shopping is all very well, but what about Barry?” asked Sabine in a sober tone. “Don’t you want to sort things out with him?”

Debra glared at Sabine. “I think Barry is my business,” she snapped crossly. “Family business,” she added, in case Sabine hadn’t got the message.

Sabine managed to keep the calm smile on her face. “It might be family business,” she said evenly, “but because I was staying here with your father when you came over last night, I’m involved. I’m part of the family business. You can’t run away from the argument, you have to face it.”

Both Lizzie and Myles looked at Sabine in alarm.

“Er, Sabine,” said Myles, wanting to ward off an argument, “it’s really up to Debs how she sorts things out with Barry. I’m sure they’ll work it out in their own time.”

“Yes,” said Debra sharply. “It’s nobody else’s business but mine.”

It looked as if Sabine might possibly say something to all of this but she managed to hold her tongue. “Yes, of course,” she said.

“Come on, Mum.” Debra got to her feet quickly. “Let’s go.”

On the way downstairs, Debra could barely contain her rage. “The nerve of her to say that to me,” she said with fury. “How dare she talk to me like that? What does she know about marriage? What does she know about me and Barry? Just because she was at the wedding for five minutes, she thinks she knows all about us.”

At least, thought Lizzie, with Debra so fired up about Sabine, she’d forgotten she was supposed to be angry with Lizzie. That was a relief. Lizzie couldn’t cope with Debra when she was on the receiving end of her wrath.

Debra was going on and on about Sabine and the nerve of her. Lizzie managed to tune out but found herself wondering, was it natural for a mother to be so nervous about her daughter’s moods? Because she was, wasn’t she? And so was Myles, to be frank. No, Lizzie decided. They weren’t nervous of Debra’s moods, not at all. That was the wrong way to look at it. They just hated her getting upset because Debra was sensitive, after all. And Sabine hadn’t understood that.

They reached Lizzie’s car, where it was parked beside all the shiny new cars in the apartment block car park.

“Jeez, Mum,” said Debra, “this car is such an old wreck. Why don’t you get a new one?”

“I can’t afford to,” blurted out Lizzie, almost before she’d thought of what she was saying.

“Poor Mum.” Debra patted her mother on the shoulder. “You need a new job. A new job and more money. That would be brilliant.”

“Yes,” said Lizzie weakly, thinking that she still had to ring up Clare Morgan and ask for the rest of the day off for the shopping expedition. She might be looking for a new job sooner than she thought. Still, she wasn’t going to let that ruin the day.

“OK, Debra,” she said brightly, “where to next?”

The sparkle had returned to Debra’s eyes. “The most expensive shop in town, of course,” she said happily. “Let’s burn some credit card plastic.”

“Right,” said Lizzie, putting the gas bill, the electricity bill and the mortgage out of her mind. She’d sort something out. As she drove out of the car park, Lizzie couldn’t help but think about what Sabine had said. She’d been right. Debra
did
need to sort things out with Barry. It wasn’t enough for her to put the argument with her new husband on some metaphorical back burner. But then, the argument had only just happened and poor Debs needed time to get over it. That was it.

Lizzie drove into the mid-morning traffic. She wouldn’t tell Joe what Sabine had said, she decided, because she had an uncomfortable feeling that he’d agree with her. If there was a power struggle going on, somehow Debra had won round one.

Families—who needed them? Then, Lizzie felt guilty at such a thought as she remembered Erin, who had no family. Erin had been so fired up about, finding her relations again and Lizzie wondered if she’d done anything about it. Lizzie hoped she had. Erin had obviously spent years trying to pretend that she could do without the love of her family, but Lizzie knew it had been pretence. Erin needed her roots, just like everybody else.

twenty-five

T
he number for Erin’s old home in the Dublin suburb of Kilbarrett had changed, the recorded voice told her sharply. Blast. She hung up and tried Directory Enquiries, but despite a lengthy conversation, there was no listing for Mary and Pat Flynn in Dublin and there was no way the operator would give her the current number for their old home.

Disappointed, Erin hung up. There must be another way. Then, she thought of the Gallagher family, who’d lived next door. Erin had always had their number when she was a child—Mum had insisted upon it. Mrs. Gallagher was a good friend of her mother’s and the logic was simple: “If something happens and you can’t reach me, phone Mrs. Gallagher.”

In the tattered old address book that Erin had kept all these years, she found the Gallagher number. Her heart beating loudly, she rang it.

Mrs. Gallagher didn’t answer the phone. Instead, Erin got through to a friendly woman who’d lived there since the Gallaghers had sold up. The Flynns were long gone too, the woman said. But, no, she didn’t know where the family had moved to. She’d love it if she could remember but honestly, it was four years ago and she couldn’t recall what she’d done last week.

No, it was fine, Erin reassured her, but did Mrs. Cora Flaherty still live next door on the other side? Mrs. Flaherty was the nearest thing Kilbarrett had to the all-seeing eye of the oracle, as she knew everyone and everything. Mrs. Flaherty would not only know where the Flynn family had moved to, but would undoubtedly have their phone number off by heart and would be able to relate in a flash what they’d had to eat last Sunday.

But Mrs. Flaherty had died, didn’t Erin know?

Oh yes, said the woman, it was terrible. Poor Mrs. Flaherty had never got over those young thugs breaking into her house five years ago when she was at bingo and vandalising it. Pneumonia got her in the end, but that was the official story. Everyone said she’d died of a mixture of fear and a broken heart that her beloved home was no longer safe.

Erin felt sick. Had thugs threatened her darling Mum too, or jeered at Dad over the back wall as he’d tended his flowers? Kerry would have murdered anyone who’d looked crossways at her family but Kerry was almost a forty-year-old woman now, not a feisty tear-away. Erin knew from Chicago that young thugs took no notice of anyone, least of all women, and her family would have been sitting ducks for trouble.

Remorse and fear engulfed her. Anything could have happened to them and where had she been? Feeling sorry for herself in America and still blaming her family for doing nothing more than trying to protect her.

“It’s terrible to lose touch,” the woman said companionably. “What relation are you exactly, again?”

Erin couldn’t bear to tell the truth but she felt that she couldn’t lie either. “Too close to have lost touch,” she admitted with shame.

“Well, you wouldn’t know that many people round here now,” the woman said. “We’ve had dozens of for sale signs on this road in the past year. The new industrial estate and the shopping centre have made it one of Dublin’s up-and-coming suburbs, would you believe.”

“What about the Ryans or the O’Sheas or the Maguires?” Erin asked without much hope.

“The Ryans are long gone and I don’t know any O’Shea family but the Maguires are still there.”

Erin’s heart lifted. Vanessa Maguire had been a great pal of Kerry’s. She was sure to know where the family had moved to.

“You don’t have their number by any chance?”