Best of Friends (63 page)

Nadia was matter-of-fact. “He doesn’t. You’re the famous one: it’s your story. Unfair, but there it is. I know you don’t want to do any-thing to hurt him, so it’s not as if your story is going to be too painful for him.”

“No, I suppose not,” Abby said. She thought about what she could say—how she had loved her husband, that they had drifted apart. Anything except that there was anyone else involved.

“So the actual part of the interview where I talk about our rela-tionship isn’t going to be very big?” asked Abby.

“Not a big part of the interview, no, but it probably will be a big part of the article,” replied Nadia, who believed that her clients needed to hear the truth, however painful. “Keep it short and sweet. Just give them enough to feel they’ve got something to write about. When you know what you’re going to say, we’ll go over it a few times to make sure you’re not revealing too much or leaving your-self open to criticism.” Nadia picked up her briefcase and prepared to leave. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Abby,” she added. “You’re not the first couple to split up and you won’t be the last. In a month, somebody else’s life will be the
cause célèbre
and everyone will have forgotten about yours.”

When Nadia was gone, Abby allowed herself to sit down at the kitchen table and cry. Jess was still out, Abby didn’t know where, and suddenly, now the calls had stopped, it was so quiet in the house. Abby felt lonely. She didn’t know who to talk to. She badly needed a friend. If only Sally had been around.

Sally would have understood, for all that she loved Tom. She was a realist and knew that sometimes marriages went wrong. There weren’t many people like Sally: people who’d listen to your side of the story without moralising. Lizzie Shanahan was a bit like that too, Abby suddenly realised.

Lizzie was one of life’s genuinely kind people who’d been through enough pain herself to see that nothing was simple. But Abby hadn’t spoken to Lizzie for ages. She’d been so tied up in her own misery that she hadn’t made the effort to see her, or Erin for that matter. And now she was paying the price for neglect.

She thought of her sister, Viv, in Australia. They hadn’t spoken for months. Abby hadn’t told Viv that she and Tom had separated. Abby had hoped that she mightn’t have to tell Viv at all, holding out in the vain hope that they’d get back together. Some hope. She couldn’t land all this on Viv now.

But she did need someone to talk to. Hauling out the phone di-rectory, she began to look through the listings for counsellors. It was a sad thing when she had to pay someone to listen to her side of the story.

Although Abby read the papers first thing every morning, dreading a gossip piece about her and Tom, nothing appeared. A bigger story about a sex scandal and a squeaky boyband star had broken, and everyone was interested in that, Nadia explained.

Jess was still barely speaking to her mother and Abby didn’t know which was worse: being ignored or being shouted at by a dis-traught daughter.

Nadia set up the interview with the
Sunday Sentinel
for Friday, and Abby was dreading it. Nearly as much as she was dreading meeting the therapist on Thursday. When she’d made the appoint-ment she’d felt eager to spill out how she felt but now that the meeting was imminent, the idea of talking to a complete stranger about the breakdown of her marriage just filled her with horror. Was there to be no privacy left in her life?

On Thursday, Jess and Steph went into town for the day. Abby felt guilty at resorting to the age-old tactic of cheering her daughter up by giving her money for treats but it had seemed like a good idea at the time. At least it would get Jess out of the house and off having fun with Steph. Since Monday, Jess hadn’t even cycled off to the animal refuge, preferring to sit in her room with the door shut and the music on loud. If only she’d talk to me, Abby thought mis-erably. But Jess clearly had no intention of talking to anyone about how she felt. If she was like this now, Abby wondered what she’d be like when her mother had done the interview and it had appeared in the paper. Jess was going back to school in a week and the exam results were due in two, which added to the sense of general tension.

Abby’s favourite magazine carried a big article on the strains of school for teenagers, complete with a piece on how to cope with waiting for exam results.

“Teenagers need to know you fully support them, no matter what their results are like,” advised the article.

Exam results were the least of their worries, Abby thought grimly. Jess could fail everything and Abby wouldn’t have dreamed of saying a word to her. Why was it that, these days, life was like walking on a tightrope in high heels?

Tom had barely been civil to Abby when she’d phoned to discuss the interview with him.

“I don’t want to know,” he’d snapped. “I don’t see why you have to say anything at all.”

Abby tried explaining that the story wouldn’t go away until she talked about it, but Tom wasn’t interested. The only thing he did want to talk about was taking Jess away for a week until all the fuss died down.

“For her sake, and mine,” he’d said harshly.

“Of course,” Abby replied.

Now she sat in the therapist’s waiting room and read all the posters stuck to the walls about family therapy, marriage breakdown and mediation. Mediation was the trick to family breakdown these days, apparently. Trained mediators would meet the warring couple and help them split their belongings, their money and access to the children.

“Talking is good for the family,” cooed one poster.

Abby glared at it, as if it personally was responsible for the mess her life was in. She was the only person in the waiting room and as she looked around at the shabby collection of furniture, she re-flected that break-ups were never like this in the movies. There, it was wham bam thank you, ma’am and, before you knew it, every-one had new lives, new homes and the only arguments were over who got the precious CD collection. Real life was different. This room spoke of real life, and real families who had sat in the mis-matched chairs and tried to sort out what was going on with their lives. The memory of tears and fierce arguments lingered in the air, along with a faint smell of cigarettes. Abby could imagine red-eyed people ignoring the no-smoking signs and lighting up to banish the nerves and anxiety.

This was the other end of the marriage trail, a far cry from the hopeful excitement of engagement parties and white weddings. Would people be so eager to rush up the aisle and get married in front of four hundred of their close friends if they knew that this was where it could all end up, in this doomed room with its dismal posters?

At exactly one o’clock, the office door opened and the previous client emerged.

Paul Doherty, psychologist, smiled at Abby and ushered her in. She’d been watching
Frasier
too much, Abby realised, as she sat down in his comfortable office. After years of looking at the antics of the Crane brothers, she’d half imagined that all therapists were just like them—intellectual, cultured types who could engage in long discussions about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

By contrast, Paul Doherty looked quite like a family doctor: tired around the eyes and a little rumpled. There was a big desk in the room but he didn’t sit behind it; instead he sat in an armchair op-posite Abby with a fresh notepad on his lap.

“Hello, Abby. Do you want to tell me why you’re here?” he said in a low soft voice.

Abby toyed with the idea of saying “not really,” but she knew that would be wasting both of their time. So she started to tell the story of her marriage to Tom: how her job and new salary had come between them; how she’d felt lonely and unloved. She couldn’t let Tom off the hook for that; she knew that his behaviour had cer-tainly contributed to making their marriage worse. But when it came to talking about Jay and how he’d made her feel and how she’d committed adultery with him, her voice faltered. That was no-body’s fault but her own.

“I don’t know why I’m here really,” she said suddenly, breaking off her story. “I shouldn’t be looking for help or absolution because it’s all my fault. It was my fault my husband left me and it’s my fault that my daughter won’t talk to me. I did it. One stupid action and the whole house of cards has come tumbling down.” She waited for Paul to say something.

But he said nothing and just looked at her, his face expectant.

“I have to do all the talking, don’t I?” Abby asked.

The glimmer of a smile touched the psychologist’s lips. “I’m afraid you do need to do most of the talking,” he said. “That’s how it works. Words can unburden us. I’m not saying that by talking about what happened you’ll be able to magic it all better. Nothing can do that. But if you can work out why you did what you did, you can learn from that and you can move on with your life.”

It made sense, Abby realised. She just wished it could happen quickly, that she didn’t have to go through all this pain and self-flagellation.

Getting over what she’d done stretched out in front of her like a desert road with no water in sight. But she fixed the cushion behind her back to make it more comfortable and began to talk.

The interview with the
Sunday Sentinel
was a nightmare. The jour-nalist was lovely, a far cry from the sharp-eyed Maria Carroll, who’d probed Abby’s personal life so relentlessly. But despite that, Abby found the whole experience horribly painful.

At least she was able to speak positively about her career and the new opportunities coming up. The first episode of the new series of
Declutter
had just gone out, and both the critics and the public loved it. They liked the new format, they liked the inclusion of the twins, and they still loved Abby.

“Abby Barton is still the best thing about this show,” one television critic had said.

Strangely enough, this accolade didn’t thrill Abby the way it once would have done. There was more to life than getting a good review in the papers. But she did feel a sense of relief. And she fielded the questions about the rumour of her moving to the new chat show with ease. Nothing had been signed, she said, truthfully, although she’d love to work on the show. She liked new challenges, she added.

She knew she looked well too. Nerves had helped her lose the extra five pounds she was always desperately trying to shift. Now her clothes hung even better on her frame than before. Another one of Ruby’s magical facials had made her skin look bright and youth-ful, and she’d had her hair highlighted just before the interview.

But these were all surface things. Abby knew now that they weren’t the really important aspects of life, and it was very hard hid-ing her devastation at the break-up of her family from someone who was gently but firmly trying to get her to divulge her inner-most secrets in an interview. By the time it was over, Abby felt stripped of her defences and exhausted.

On Sunday, the day the article was to be printed, Abby woke early. It was still too soon to go down to the newsagent’s and, be-sides, she didn’t want to buy the paper in her local shop. So she drove to a twenty-four-hour garage outside town where she knew she would get her hands on the earliest edition.

Sitting in the car in the garage forecourt, she cringed at the front page headline flagging the article: “The secret misery behind Abby Barton’s bright smile, see
pages 6 and 7
,” and riffled through the paper until she found it.

Nadia had insisted on copy approval and had read the article to Abby over the phone the night before. There was a difference, how-ever, between hearing it read and seeing it in full colour, with un-flattering photographs of herself and Tom.

Her hands shaking, she read. It was a balanced article and talked about her career success, merely mentioning the fact that her mar-riage had recently broken down. Everything she said had been faith-fully reported, but to Abby’s eyes it still looked like a horror story.

Tom had taken Jess away for the weekend to London, but some well-meaning person would be sure to keep a copy of the paper for Tom. They’d see it when they got back all right, and they’d be hurt by it. Abby turned the car for home. She was too sad even to cry. She’d never felt lonelier or lower in her life.

Lizzie got the Sunday papers on her way back from ten o’clock Mass. She’d been feeling a bit low and had hoped that a spiritual hour in God’s presence might cheer her up and distract her from thoughts of Simon but it hadn’t quite worked out that way. Instead of communing with a higher power, she’d found herself fascinated by the two small children in the pew in front of her. Adorable twin girls, they’d spent the entire service playing incey wincey spider with their parents, making it absolutely impossible for Lizzie to concen-trate on the ceremony. Mass was over before she knew it, and Lizzie felt hideously guilty for having gone with the intention of praying and ended up doing nothing but amusing herself. Honestly, what was she like? Her concentration was shot to hell. She vowed to go again during the week to make up for it. Lord knew, she’d prayed enough for God’s help in sorting out the whole problem of Debra and Barry—the least she could do was actually listen when she was in His house.

At home, she dumped the bag containing the papers and the makings of Debra’s breakfast on the kitchen table. Debra was very fond of a proper cooked breakfast and Lizzie, who normally had nothing more than toast and tea, had got into the habit of provid-ing a full fry-up for her daughter and eating some herself. All those bacon and eggs were doing nothing for her figure, Lizzie thought ruefully. Debra was still slim as a reed and never put any weight on. Lizzie wished she could say the same thing about herself. She’d have to go back on her diet soon.

When the breakfast goodies were stowed away in the fridge—Lizzie wouldn’t dream of cooking anything until Debra decided to get up—she sat down at the table and scanned the
Sentinel
quickly.

“Oh no,” she breathed when she came upon the big double-page article on Abby Barton. Poor Abby. Her heart went out to the other woman.