Best of Friends (67 page)

“And you’re the only one who really is acting like an adult in all of this,” Dad said ruefully. “I am sorry, Jess. Caroline means well. She’s sticking up for me in the only way she knows how. But she shouldn’t have said anything about your mum in front of you.”

“No, she shouldn’t,” said Jess. She kept walking, looking for a coffee shop.

“What are you up to?”

“Going to have a coffee,” Jess replied.

“Can I come and join you?” he asked.

Jess thought about it. “OK,” she said. “Come down the main street and go past Mango and Tesco. There’s a small coffee shop with a big green sign out in front. It’s called Have A Break. I’ll be in there.”

He got there in ten minutes. Thankfully, he was alone. Jess had had a horrible vision of Aunt Caroline coming too, ready to apologise before offering to buy Jess an ice cream or a new dolly to make up.

“Do you want another cappuccino?” Dad asked.

Jess nodded. She’d really got into the habit of drinking coffee with Oliver.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Dad said again when he came back with their coffees.

“Slagging off Mum is against the rules,” Jess informed him. “As the child of the breaking-up parents, I’m not supposed to play one off against the other and you’re not supposed to slag off Mum in my presence. Also, she’s not supposed to slag you off. And she doesn’t, by the way.”

Her father looked slightly ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I didn’t mean to do that. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Well,
you
weren’t slagging Mum off,” Jess conceded, “but Aunt Caroline certainly was and you weren’t standing up for her. I know Mum did a terrible thing but it doesn’t mean she’s a bad person and that you have to hate her for the rest of your life. I’m going to be living with Mum and seeing you too, so the two of you are going to have to try and get on or it’s going to be impossible for me.”

“Wherever did we get you from?” asked her father, shaking his head. “I thought you were my little girl and it turns out you’re the most grown up of the lot of us.”

“It’s the new human relations class in school,” Jess explained, smiling to show she was joking. “I’m going to get a degree in it. Se-riously, though, we do a lot about relationships and it’s good. And magazines are full of stuff too, so you can’t avoid it. That’s the prob-lem for boys—they don’t ever read about relationships and emo-tions so they don’t know how to get on with girls or how to communicate.”

This wasn’t strictly true. Oliver mightn’t be the sort of person to read women’s magazines, but he was pretty good at communicating. But then, he was naturally an intuitive and sensitive person. Jess knew her dad well enough to admit that, however flatteringly you could describe him, sensitive wasn’t one of the words you’d use.

“We should talk about the future, you know,” Jess said. Her dad looked startled but she went on. “Are you and Mum going to get a divorce? I’m not trying to pry but I’d like to know. Mum says that you’d like a divorce but that she’d try again if you wanted to.”

Tom grimaced. “It’s not that simple, Jess,” he said.

“Why not?” asked Jess. “You’re always telling me that the most complex problems are simple at the back of it all.”

“Ah yes,” said her father, “but this is—”

“Different?” said Jess with a hint of sarcasm. “It’s not that differ-ent after all. Why can’t you make it work again? You got on and you loved each other, and fine, so you fought sometimes and you used to be cross when she was working away a lot, but you can get over that. I know you didn’t like her earning lots of money too, but you could sort those things out.”

Tom’s face was a picture as he looked at his daughter. “What do you mean about money?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’m talking about you and Mum and her money,” Jess said. “I read in
Cosmo
that it’s hard for men when their wives are earning more money than they do, but we should be proud of Mum for what she’s done.”

“I was proud, I am proud,” Tom protested, “and there was no problem with the money,” he added.

“Oh, get real, Dad,” said Jess, sounding a bit irritated. “I’m not a child, remember?”

“I didn’t say you were,” her father said.

“You think it and you treat me like I am,” Jess said. “Don’t for-get, Dad, I was there when you and Mum argued that time that she bought the Jeep. Remember you said the family had managed perfectly well on your salary before and we didn’t need a big fancy four-wheeler. I
heard
you. Then Mum said that it was her money and she’d do what she wanted with it. And I heard you argue about the new house in Dunmore.” Jess sighed. “I mean, I know I didn’t want to move but neither did you. I didn’t want to be away from Steph but you just didn’t want to move because it was going to be mainly Mum’s money buying the house. So you can’t say you didn’t argue about money, can you?”

Years afterwards, Tom would look back and try to remember ex-actly when he’d felt that Jess had grown up, and he would think of that moment. Suddenly, she spoke like an adult, albeit a young adult, but an adult none the less.

She’d been able to look at her parents’ marriage, consider what was going on and come to some perceptive conclusions. Tom hadn’t managed to do that himself, he realised shamefacedly. He’d been so busy blaming Abby for everything that had gone wrong in their marriage that he hadn’t seen that he was at fault too. The realisation hit him like a blinding flash of light. He had a lot to be ashamed of too. He hadn’t slept with somebody else, but then there were many types of betrayal, weren’t there?

Jess had said that she was proud of her mother and what she’d achieved, but Tom knew that in his heart of hearts he’d felt jealous of Abby’s achievements. He’d never been able to admit that be-fore—not even to himself. But it was true. When she’d worked part time, he’d been able to feel comfortable in the knowledge that he was the breadwinner and the head of the family. But with her suc-cess, the lines were shakier. He’d been the brilliant one at college; all his friends had looked up to him, thought Tom Barton was a pretty bright guy. His brains had earned him a reasonably good job. He was a good deputy headmaster, although he reckoned he’d be an even better headmaster. But then, in a flash, Abby’s career had eclipsed his.

He was smarter but she was earning more money and he saw the effects of that money every day. Better clothes, better food, more expensive bottles of wine: all the subtle things that had come into their lives.

“Don’t let all of this change you,” he’d warned Abby. But the per-son it had changed hadn’t been Abby—it had been him. He was the one who felt diminished by it.

He thought back guiltily to that ten-year anniversary party for Beech earlier in the year, when he’d let those two girls flirt with him shamelessly. Abby had been furious, he’d seen that and he didn’t care. He’d hated being at the party as her consort, not Tom Barton, renowned deputy headmaster, but Tom Barton, husband to the famous Abby.

“Do you think I pushed your mother away?” he asked Jess suddenly.

It was a question he would never have asked her before today. He had thought of her as a kid and wouldn’t have dreamed of asking for her opinion on his marriage. But now he could see that Jess was not only a young adult, she was the most important witness to the disintegration of the relationship. If anybody knew what had happened, she did.

Jess shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose Mum wasn’t happy and that’s why she did it. But she doesn’t blame you, she blames herself.”

Tom knew that was true. He knew that Abby had taken the bur-den of guilt onto herself because that was the way she was. Some people blamed themselves for everything; others blamed themselves for nothing. She was in the former category and he was in the latter. But he’d had his part to play in the breakdown. She’d blamed her-self for not being able to communicate with Jess too, and Tom knew he hadn’t helped matters either. He remembered guiltily how he’d snapped at Abby so many times and told her that teenagers were just difficult, making it sound as though
he
was the expert because of his experience at work, while she knew nothing.

“Do you want to meet somebody else?” asked Jess.

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” said Tom quickly. He was always astonished by the speed with which Jess’s mind flipped from one topic to another. “That wasn’t why I left.”

And he realised then with painful clarity why he
had
left—be-cause he’d felt overshadowed by Abby in so many ways and she’d put the final nail in the coffin by sleeping with another man.

How to emasculate your husband in one easy lesson—have sex with somebody else. Even if it was a one-off, never-to-be-repeated occasion, your husband will be devastated because if he’s not the best at sex, then what is he the best at?

“I don’t want to meet anyone else,” Tom repeated. “Your mum and I have been together a long time. We didn’t split up because we both wanted other people.”

“Well, then, why don’t you get back together?” Jess said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You could have coun-selling and talk about your problems,” she suggested.

Tom allowed himself to grin at his daughter. How could he have thought of her as a kid? She was sixteen going on sixty. “So that’s the advice they’re giving in
Cosmo,
is it?” he asked.

“Talking is good for problems,” Jess pointed out loftily. “If you were a new man you’d understand that, but seeing as you’re an old man …” she teased.

“Can you teach an old man new tricks?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know,” Jess said, “but we could always try.”

Tom thought about Abby at home in Dunmore, alone and cop-ing with the fallout of the newspaper article. He hadn’t been fair to her when she had tried to talk to him about that. He knew in his heart that Abby wasn’t the sort of person to sell their story for pub-licity: he knew she’d been pushed into a corner where she’d had to talk. But because he was hurt and angry, because he wanted to hurt her back, he’d pretended that she was that tell-all sort of person. When they got back, he’d apologise to her. Even if it was too late to save their marriage, he could always tell her the truth and admit that he’d been to blame too. It wouldn’t get them back to the way they’d been before but it would be a start.

thirty-one

F
or years, Erin had thought that charity work was the preserve of bored housewives. Now that she was actually involved in fund-raising, she found out that the opposite was true—it was very hard work and took a lot of organisation and commitment. Determined to do her research properly, she’d started by investigating how to set up a charity legally. Then, she’d made contact with the Life Beats Cancer people and they’d been thrilled with her idea. They pointed out that what she was planning was a long-term project and that, in their experience, it could take anything from eighteen months to two years to get the centre running—and that was only if the fund-raising went smoothly.

The next thing to do was to discuss the idea with Sally’s family.

Abby said that she hadn’t seen much of Steve during the summer because he genuinely didn’t seem to want to talk to people.

“Maybe it’s just me,” she added. “He might hate me for splitting up with Tom.”

“Nonsense,” said Erin stoutly. “Think of what he’s been through—I’m sure he just can’t face the world; it’s nothing to do with you and Tom. Greg sees Steve every day at work and that’s what he thinks is happening. Greg’s asked him out with us a few times but Steve says no. Wouldn’t we all be the same?”

“I suppose,” admitted Abby.

In the end, Erin managed to meet Steve during his lunch break.

“I don’t have much time,” he said to her when they met in a pub near the office.

Erin took one look at his too-thin face with its haunted eyes, and felt a fresh wave of pity wash over her. If she’d been through what Steve had been through, she didn’t think she’d have wanted to face the world either.

“How are Jack and Daniel?” she asked, knowing there was no point asking how Steve himself was. That was apparent: he was suf-fering pain beyond measure.

“They’re good,” Steve said, the fierce tension leaving his face briefly. “We’ve got this wonderful nanny, Andrea, and they love her. Delia moved in for a while after… you know, but she’s moved back out now. I wanted to make things as normal as possible, if you see what I mean.”

Erin nodded. She really felt as if she might cry. She cried at the least things now.

“Daniel talks about Sally all the time but Jack doesn’t,” Steve went on. “He has nightmares, though. I didn’t think small children got nightmares but they do, apparently. I keep asking myself if it was a good idea to have them in the church for the funeral. I wanted them to be able to say goodbye so they’d have that memory when they were older, but now ⅓” He stared off into the middle distance. “Sorry,” he said. “You wanted to talk to me about some-thing, Erin, didn’t you?”

“I wanted to run an idea by you,” she said, gulping. She couldn’t cry now. She began to explain about the Life Beats Cancer centres and the plan to raise funds for one in Dunmore, in Sally’s name. Steve said nothing for the whole time she was explaining it to him and, at first, Erin thought she’d made an incredible mistake and that he hated the idea.

“It was just a thought,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You haven’t.” Briefly, Steve smiled and he looked like the hand-some man Sally had spoken about when Erin had first met her. “It’s a beautiful idea. Thank you, she’d have loved that.”

“We don’t expect you to help,” Erin said hurriedly, her relief evi-dent. “We know you’ve so much on.” Like raising two small boys without their mother.

Steve nodded. “I’d like to be involved at some point but not yet. It’s too soon for me.”

“I understand.”

Steve got up. “Sorry, I have to rush back,” he said. “Busy time at work.”

Erin nodded and he said goodbye. He’d eaten about a quarter of his sandwich. Erin looked down at hers. She wasn’t hungry either.

Next, she talked to Abby and Abby’s friend, trying to find out what sort of fund-raising events worked for them and which ones didn’t. She visited Kerry and spent many hours laughing and talking about their childhood, as well as hearing Kerry’s advice on what cancer pa-tients really wanted.