Best of Friends (61 page)

At dinner on their last night, they sat in the medieval themed restaurant of their hotel and ordered pizza again. There wasn’t an enormous choice of vegetarian dishes, and they’d discovered that the easiest thing for Jess to eat was pizza, so they’d had it practically every night. Once they’d ordered, Jess sat back in her seat and looked around the restaurant. As usual, it was full of exhausted-looking families with happy children. It really was the perfect place for small kids, Abby realised with a pang, thinking that she’d never have small children again herself. Another sign of getting old, she realised, astonished to find herself yearning for the days when she’d been looking after a toddler.

At the time, it hadn’t seemed much fun. Between the ages of two and three, Jess had been into absolutely everything and her tantrums outdid anything covered by the phrase “terrible twos” in the childcare books. Running around after her had been a full-time job. Abby had felt she couldn’t look away for an instant or disaster would strike. Yet somehow, Jess had still managed to get the normal complement of kids’ injuries, like bumps to her head and scraped knees. It was weird, Abby thought, to look back on those days with such nostalgia. Life was like that, though. Nostalgia was what hap-pened when you remembered only the best bits, editing out the sadder times.

Maybe that’s all this yearning was—nostalgia. She kept looking back over the past and thinking what an idiot she had been to mess it all up, because really it had been great. But what if it hadn’t been great after all? What if she and Tom had really had a terrible rela-tionship and it was only nostalgia that made it seem wonderful in retrospect?

“I’ll never eat another pizza again,” Jess announced. “You’d think they’d have some veggie options. I’d kill for a veggie burger. Or a veggie sausage,” she added dreamily.

Abby couldn’t help but laugh. “You always say you hate those veggie sausages I buy for you,” she pointed out.

“I promise I’ll never say I hate them again,” Jess vowed.

Their drinks arrived: Coke for Jess and Diet Coke for Abby. She definitely had to go on a diet when she went home. Those enor-mous American portions had certainly added a few pounds to her waist, inch-reducing wraps notwithstanding, and she didn’t want to go back to all the pre-
Declutter
publicity with a fat tummy.

The two small children at the next table were clearly bored and started roaring to get out of their high chairs. There was noise all around them and in the background they could barely hear Britney Spears singing. It might have been noisy but it was as good a place as any to have an in-depth conversation with Jess. Abby steeled herself for what was to come.

“We need to talk, Jess,” she said.

Instantly, the haunted look came into Jess’s eyes. “Talk about what?” she asked.

“Talk about the future and what’s going to happen,” Abby said slowly. She felt terrible to be bringing this up, but she had to. Not for the first time, she wished with all her heart that she’d never slept with Jay. She was a mother and her primary job was to protect her family. In sleeping with Jay, she’d broken up her family and the end result was having to sit in a restaurant surrounded by happy families and talk to her beloved daughter about selling their home, about di-vorcing her father, and about moving away from everyone she knew.

“I feel guilty,” Abby said, “because I’ve never spoken to you in depth about what happened and what’s going to happen in the fu-ture. I suppose I was treating you like a child and you’re not, are you?”

Jess resisted the impulse to stare down at the place mat in front of her. If her mother was going to talk to her like an adult, she’d act like one too. She looked at her mother’s face, into the blue-green eyes so like her own. Oliver loved Jess’s eyes: he was always saying how beautiful they were. When he said that, Jess never really re-flected on the fact that she’d inherited her eyes from her mother. She just felt proud of them for her own sake. But now, as she looked at her mother from across the table, she felt strangely aware of the bond between them. Her mum wasn’t a bad person, she’d just messed up, like everyone else did.

“So,” Jess said, “what do you want to talk about?”

Abby took a deep breath. It was now or never. “I know it’s im-possible for you to understand, Jess, why I did what I did and, to be honest, I can’t explain or excuse it. I love your dad. I’ve spent my life telling you how important love is and that you have to respect other people. And then…” Abby looked down at her place mat sadly. “I messed up because I didn’t respect your dad. For a little while, I forgot about him and thought only about myself. I’ll never stop regretting that; I’ll never stop regretting hurting your dad and hurting you.”

She looked back up at Jess, the heartfelt plea in her eyes. “I’d do anything if I could turn the clock back, Jess, but I can’t and that’s why we have to go forwards. Your dad wants a divorce.”

“Has he asked you for a divorce?” asked Jess.

“No,” admitted her mother, “but he’s going to. He’s so hurt and devastated by what I’ve done. Men and women are different, that’s a fact,” she added wryly. “I think women can get over affairs more easily than men can. When their pride is hurt, there’s no going back for them. That’s what’s happened with your dad and me. I’d have him back in an instant,” she said truthfully. “I want you to under-stand that. If we could be a family again, I’d do anything to make it work.”

On the other side of the table, Jess’s eyes filled with tears and she looked away, desperate not to let her mother see how upset she was. There was nothing she wanted more in the whole world than for her parents to get back together, but it wasn’t going to happen, was it?

Abby didn’t seem to have noticed the tears pooling in her daugh-ter’s eyes. She too was staring off into the middle distance, trying to find the right words to explain to Jess how their family had broken down and couldn’t be fixed. “I have to consider the possibility that your dad might meet somebody else and want to marry her,” Abby said slowly.

The idea horrified her but she had to bring it up. It wasn’t fair otherwise. What if Tom did meet someone else and the only thing stopping him having a proper relationship was the fact that his teenage daughter would disapprove, would still hope that her par-ents could get back together? Abby owed it to Tom to set him free, if that’s what he wanted. It wasn’t fair to cling to him when she was responsible for the split. And she had to make sure Jess understood that her father’s life would go on.

“We’ll have to sell the house,” Abby went on. “I know you hated moving to Dunmore in the first place, so at least you won’t miss it.”

Jess thought about Oliver. For months she’d hated Dunmore, hated the fact that she had no friends there and hated the fact that she had to take the train out from Cork every evening after school. For so long, Dunmore had felt like a wasteland in the back of beyond where she knew nobody. And then she had fallen in love with Oliver: Oliver, who lived in Dunmore. She said nothing.

“With the money we get from selling the house, your dad can buy a new home where you can stay with him. You and I will have a home of our own: you, me and Wilbur.” She smiled at Jess, hoping to make her daughter smile back at the mention of her beloved tabby cat.

“So I’d stay with Dad sometimes and you other times?” Jess asked slowly.

A terrible thought struck Abby. What if Jess didn’t want to stay with her? What if she wanted to live with Tom, after all?

“I thought you’d want to live with me,” Abby said hesitantly. “That’s what normally happens—the children stay with their mum—not that you’re a child or anything …” Her voice trailed off miserably. Kids might want to stay with their mum if their mum hadn’t been the person who had broken up the marriage in the first place. It might be different in this case.

“No, that’s OK. I’ll stay with you,” Jess said. “It’s just going to be weird having two homes. Where do you think we’re going to live?”

The waitress, in full medieval serving wench costume, arrived with two pizzas. “And that’s one vegetarian pizza for you,” she said cheerfully, putting an enormous pizza down in front of Jess, “and one four seasons for you, ma’am.” She placed an equally enormous pizza down in front of Abby. “Can I get you anything else?”

Abby looked at the huge pizza and wondered how she was ever going to eat it. Her appetite had totally vanished. But politeness took over.

“No, thank you, that’s fine. We’ve got everything, thank you very much.” She found herself saying thank you even more than normal in Florida because all the serving staff were so incredibly polite. It seemed churlish not to be three times as polite back. The waitress left and the Barton women surveyed their food.

“Do you ever feel as if you’ve ordered too much?” Jess asked.

“At every single meal,” her mother replied grimly.

Jess laughed. “Steph would really hate these sorts of meals,” she said lightly. “She’s always on a diet these days—not that she needs to because she’s totally skinny, but she’s always going on about her weight.”

“You don’t worry about your weight, do you?” asked her mother anxiously, fearing that Jess was going to get caught up in the teenage diet syndrome.

Jess shook her head. “I can’t wait to get my train tracks off and I’d love to have, well, proper boobs.” She blushed a little bit. “But I can honestly say I don’t think I’m fat. Although I’m probably the only girl in the class who doesn’t think she is,” she added thought-fully.

“Thank God for that,” Abby said, grateful for small mercies.

“Hey, I’ll probably need therapy when I’m older to help me cope with having had braces and glasses,” Jess said, and then she laughed to show she was joking.

They made an attempt to eat some of their pizzas, and began to talk about issues like women who thought they were too fat and people like Steph who were permanently on a diet. It was a good conversation and, for a little while, it felt to Abby like she was talk-ing to a friend and not her daughter, after all. Jess really was so clever and could talk about anything. Funny how her mother had never seemed to realise that before.

Jess was not a child anymore, she was a young woman. They ate, talked, laughed, and Abby decided that she couldn’t bring herself to mention the whole notion of leaving Dunmore.

It wasn’t as if anything was decided, she reflected. Just because she’d done a really good audition for the TV chat show didn’t mean the whole thing was going to happen. She’d wait and see. For now it was enough that she and Jess had shared this evening.

It was nearly ten by the time they’d finished their meal and began to walk back to their room. They still had to do some last-minute packing before tomorrow morning’s early flight.

Abby knew she wouldn’t sleep—she never did before a flight. She always got so wound up about whether she’d wake up in time and whether she’d remembered the passports and the tickets.

“I think I’ll have a bath when we go up,” Jess said companionably as they got into the lift.

“Good idea,” said her mother. “It’ll take me ages to finish pack-ing anyway and then we can try and get some sleep.”

On their floor, they got out of the lift and began the walk to their room.

“Mum,” began Jess carefully, “do you think Dad knows that you’d take him back and have everything go back to the way it was before, if he could forget what had happened? Do you think that he knows that you want to forget it all and try again?”

Tears pricked Abby’s eyes. Oh poor, poor Jess.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I think he knows. I’ve certainly told him so. But I don’t think I could ask him to come back to me and be married to me if he didn’t want to. Do you understand that?”

She wanted to tell Jess that she
had
tried but that Tom hadn’t been interested. As far as he was concerned, it was over. Abby had hoped that perhaps it had been Tom’s pride speaking that day when she’d asked him to reconsider ending their marriage. But as time had gone by and he still hadn’t made some move towards reconcilia-tion, it seemed as if she was wrong. Tom had made his mind up and he didn’t want to be married to Abby anymore.

“You can’t make someone love you when they’ve stopped, can you?” Abby said sadly.

Jess nodded. She was afraid to speak. Abby unlocked their room and they went inside. Instantly, Jess went into the bathroom and began to run the bath, the noise of the water blocking out any chance of further conversation.

“I’ll be in here for a while,” she called to her mother.

“OK,” Abby replied.

Jess shut the bathroom door, sat on the edge of the bath and finally let herself cry. Outside the bathroom, her mother sat on the edge of the bed and did exactly the same thing.

twenty-nine

R
ested and relaxed after her holiday, Abby flew home on Sunday to find herself in the eye of a storm. Somehow the news of Abby’s audition with the 727 Network had just reached Roxie’s ears and she was furious. Even worse, Brian was furious too. Roxie had left one and Brian had left three outraged messages on Abby’s an-swering machine that morning, screeching that if Beech hadn’t taken up her idea of the show in the first place, she’d be a nobody today. Abby listened to the rantings of the Beech MD for a few minutes, before pressing the delete button. Let Brian rant and rave, she decided. There was more to life than work. On holiday, she and Jess had managed to regain some of their old closeness and that was far more important than a stupid bloody job. And, she told herself, she hadn’t ranted and raved when Roxie had hired two new presen-ters for the TV show. She’d behaved like a professional at all times and her reward was to listen to Brian screeching like an overgrown schoolboy on the phone.

She clicked the answering machine back on and phoned Mike Horowitz’s mobile. It was a Sunday but, what the hell, this couldn’t wait. Mike, who turned out to be in Paris on business, wasn’t un-duly worried over Brian’s rage. But then he was not the sort of guy to get upset just because one TV company had the hump with one of his clients—especially when he had irons in the fire for that par-ticular client.