Between Sisters (41 page)

‘Fiancé?’ whispered Cassie to Pearl when the doctor was gone.

Pearl smiled and held tightly on to Peter’s hand. She couldn’t speak anymore. But her family knew she’d never lie to them about something so important. She would never have done what Jim had done. Never. And yet he was her darling son and she could understand his pain.

Still, there would be no more secrets from now on.

‘Yes, fiancé,’ she finally said, looking tremulously up at her granddaughter. ‘No more secrets,’ she said.

Twenty-Five

LONDON

Sitting in the small London hotel, where Mari appeared to know the manager who’d sat them in a tiny private room upstairs, Coco didn’t know who was more nervous: her sister or Mari, who looked utterly stunning and dressed with such exquisite flair that Coco wanted to inquire as to the vintage of every one of her pieces of clothing. She knew that this was hardly the time or the place, but she kept staring at Mari. She looked familiar, so beautiful, like a model from an Ossie Clarke spread in
Vogue
.

‘It’s like an intervention in reverse,’ Mari said nervously as they waited for Elsa and her friend, Anastasia, to appear.

‘She might run straight out the door,’ said Cassie. ‘I still think we should have told her.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Mari in her cut-glass accent, ‘your mother thinks she doesn’t deserve the joy of seeing you ever because she was a drunk.’

‘You can’t call her that!’ said Coco, shocked and furious.

‘Course I can,’ said Mari. ‘I was one too, and a junkie. We’re both one day away from going right back there. We use those words so we don’t forget. That’s what being an addict in recovery is about: one day at a time.’

‘I thought that was a corny old saying,’ muttered Cassie.

‘Not corny at all,’ said Mari. ‘Honestly, I’m going to have to teach you everything. We all have a chance to make it up to people we’ve harmed in the past and your mother never had the chance to make it up to you two, so she has never really forgiven herself. I don’t know how she’s stayed sober all these years with that pain inside her, but still, she’s very strong. ‘

‘What does she do exactly?’ asked Cassie as they waited.

Mari grinned. ‘You really won’t believe it so I won’t tell you, I’ll let her tell you, but you’ll be very proud. You should be proud of her for all she’s achieved in her life, and getting sober is one of the biggest things. Without that, you’d never have the chance to see her.’

‘Is drinking genetic?’ asked Cassie suddenly.

Mari angled her beautiful head and stared hawk-like at her. ‘It can be,’ she said slowly.

Cassie felt herself pale under that stunning gaze.

‘Your mother is an incredible person to talk to about that,’ she said. ‘She’s looked after so many people during their first sober years.’

‘I’m not saying …’ began Cassie. ‘It’s just things have been tense …’

‘Don’t tell me, look inside and ask yourself for the truth,’ murmured Mari.

‘It’s her, it’s got to be her.’ Coco’s voice interrupted them and the three women turned.

Cassie and Coco saw a tall, slender woman walking into the hotel, holding on to the arms of an older lady with white hair. The younger woman was in her sixties, certainly, but with chic, short hair shot through with only a little grey and a white flash of hair rippling from her forehead. She had angled dark brows like Coco, beautiful cheekbones, midnight dark eyes, and an elegance about her despite the casual jeans and crimson coat she was wearing.

‘Over here,’ said Mari, and both women looked over.

The woman who had to be Elsa stopped dead. She let go of the other woman and both hands flew to her mouth.

She saw herself in those two younger women: one with long curling hair dressed in pretty vintage clothes; the other, taller with shorter hair, with Elsa’s own eyes and a slightly wary expression that suddenly dissolved into tears.

‘Coco, Cassie …?’ she said.

Coco was transfixed but Cassie felt overcome with emotion.
This
was the woman she remembered, even if the hair had been longer and streaky then, and the clothes different, but this was her mother.

Her mother.
The person from her dreams as a child. The person she’d never been able to replace.

She ran to her and put her arms around Elsa. The scent –
that
scent – filled her nostrils.

‘I dreamed of this,’ she murmured. ‘Your perfume, I searched for it everywhere …’

‘Guerlain’s Jicky,’ said Elsa, one arm around Cassie and the other held out to her baby, who wasn’t a baby anymore.

‘Mum?’ said Coco tentatively, and then the three of them were holding each other, clinging on as if they would never let go.

‘I told you it was a good idea,’ Mari said proudly to Anastasia. ‘I think we can go.’

When Mari smiled and waved goodbye, Cassie led Elsa to the couch to sit down and the three women sighed at the same time.

‘I need tea,’ said Cassie.

‘Coffee,’ said Coco.

‘The anaesthetic has turned me totally off both,’ said their mother. ‘But Earl Grey I can manage.’

‘I love Earl Grey!’ said Cassie.

Elsa wanted to touch them, to trace the contours of their faces the way she had when they were children, and yet they were grown-ups now and she was still scared. This was all so tenuous. Any word might make them bolt, like nervous, unbroken horses.

‘Elsa, Mum – I’m not sure what to call you,’ Coco said, taking her mother’s hands. ‘I don’t remember you, so this is easier for me than for Cassie. She’s had a tough time lately.’

Elsa wanted to hold her older daughter by the shoulders and pull her into her embrace, but she was too anxious such a move might be too soon.

‘Cassie is married and has two daughters—’

‘Oh, can I see them – pictures, I mean,’ said Elsa. ‘Sorry.’ She was shaking. This might be all she’d ever have of her daughters, this meeting. They might leave and never return. She must go slowly and be grateful for anything they gave her.

Cassie smiled for the first time. ‘Of course.’ She took out her phone and the three of them wriggled closer as Cassie scrolled through her photo album.

‘Beth’s going through the tricky teenage stage right now,’ Cassie said, ‘but she’s a wonderful girl, so strong and loving.’

‘So beautiful,’ breathed Elsa, touching the phone as if it was a priceless ancient scroll.

‘Here’s Lily, who’s thirteen.’

Again, Elsa’s fingers touched the screen. ‘Lovely.’ She couldn’t help it: she began to cry. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘This is all my fault.’

Over their mother’s bent head, Cassie and Coco looked at each other.

‘Nothing’s ever that simple,’ Cassie said. ‘We both know that. Now that we’ve found you, we’re not letting you go again. Why don’t you tell us about your life?’

The story took them through tea and coffee, then a taxi ride to Elsa’s house, where her daughters wandered around touching everything, tears in their eyes as they saw the precious pictures of them their mother had kept in her bedroom: several of Coco as a tousle-haired baba, Cassie as a baby, then a toddler, then as a serious little girl in her school uniform.

Coco cried when she saw the letters sent back from their father: a fat wad of them, clearly read and sobbed over endlessly because they’d been folded and refolded so many times, and had water marks on the paper.

‘I never knew he was that bitter.’

‘It’s my fault,’ Elsa said. ‘My fault. I take responsibility.’

When Elsa felt weak and needed painkillers for her surgery pain, the sisters lay on her bed and the three of them talked some more, with Coco getting up to make scrambled eggs on toast and more tea, and Cassie going around the house turning on lamps, closing curtains, making up the fire in the small sitting room.

Coco talked about Jo, darling Fiona, and the wasted years when she and Red could have been together.

‘Pride, stupidity, not listening,’ she ticked them off.

‘And fear of abandonment,’ said Elsa sadly.

‘Listen!’ Coco took her mother almost roughly by the shoulders. ‘We have you back now. We can go two ways, Mum – into the mire of who did what to whom and whose fault it is, or forwards. Do we blame your mother for being schizophrenic and putting fear in your life so you found solace in drink? Do we blame our father for not being able to let go of his pain and do the right thing for us? If we keep searching for someone to blame, we will never stop!’

Cassie began to laugh – the old Cassie’s laugh. ‘Meet your feisty, passionate daughter, Mum,’ she said. ‘Coco Keneally, crazy lady. Did I tell you that she jokily wanted me to bitch fight my mother-in-law? No?’

Even Elsa giggled.

‘It’s just a phrase,’ said Coco. ‘I didn’t mean to run round and whack her with your handbag …’

And suddenly they were all laughing, nobody was walking on eggshells, Elsa was muttering that she’d have to bring ‘bitch fighting’ into her practice, Coco was saying it should be all the rage for getting rid of anger issues.

Cassie grinned. ‘Wait till we get you back home, Mum,’ she said, ‘and get the whole family together, including Red – who you will love – and Lily, Beth and Shay—’

‘And Fiona, my baby, and Jo,’ added Coco.

‘And Pearl,’ finished Cassie. ‘Pearl wanted so much to come because she feels so guilty.’

‘She feels guilty?’ said Elsa.

‘She thinks she didn’t look after you properly. You know Pearl. Anyway, Peter, who she is marrying in a few months, insisted she wasn’t well enough to travel.’

‘I always loved Pearl,’ said Elsa, her eyes growing misty. ‘I’m so happy she’s happy.’

‘She’s going to be the most fashionable seventy-nine-year-old bride ever,’ Coco said. ‘And talking of weddings, you’re going to have to come to mine too.’

Elsa examined her cuticles. ‘You both might go home and decide you don’t want me in your lives,’ she said slowly. ‘We are all getting carried away with the happiness of the occasion now but you have a lot to work through. I left and, for whatever reasons I didn’t return, so it’s not that easy for me to slip back into the family now. You will go through anger and resentment towards me; you will have to. I have hurt you enough. I want to be in your lives but …’ How could she say that she was no longer sure if she could be strong enough to face their hatred?

‘I’ve wanted a mother all my life,’ said Coco.

‘I’ve wanted my mother back all my life,’ said Cassie.

The two sisters held hands and looked at each other. They’d talked endlessly about just this. They knew there would be difficult times: there’s been so much pain, so much time had gone by, and Elsa would always be a slightly different mother from the ones who’d grown up with their daughters, the ones who’d helped with homework and comforted over lost boyfriends.

‘We know it won’t be easy,’ Cassie said. ‘But can we try?’

Elsa could no longer see, but two hands reached towards her with tissues. Two hands touched her comfortingly.

‘Let’s try,’ her daughters said.

Epilogue

SIX MONTHS LATER

Elsa was wearing a turban: a beautiful silken thing from the 1930s with an exquisite marcasite brooch pinned to the front. The turban matched the flowing, long-sleeved dress that swirled around her figure and hid the fact that she was mildly bloated from steroids because of an infection she’d picked up as a result of her immune system being so diminished.

Pearl, who wasn’t much of a woman for jewellery, had found an old glass bead necklace in her drawer and was putting it carefully around Elsa’s neck.

‘That doesn’t hurt you, does it?’ she said, afraid the glass beads would scratch the skin already fragile from chemo.

They were all experts in chemotherapy now, thanks to Elsa’s illness. Coco had bought special cancer-skin-sensitive shower gels and creams in honour of her stay, and Cassie had sourced an amazing organic rose facial oil, which had made Elsa nearly cry with happiness at their kindness. All this from two daughters she’d thought never wanted to see her again.

‘No, the beads don’t hurt at all,’ said Elsa, staring at her mother-in-law behind her in the mirror. It still felt incredible to her that Pearl, particularly, was so welcoming.

‘I behaved so very badly all those years ago,’ Pearl had said to her that first night Elsa had come back to Delaney Gardens. ‘I wanted you to go, I wanted you gone out of the children’s lives because I thought you were a danger to them. I didn’t think about how badly it would affect both of them in the future – and I didn’t think about how devastating it was for you. I am ashamed that I never looked for you afterwards to see where you were or how you were doing.’

‘I
was
a danger to them,’ said Elsa. ‘I agree, there might have been better ways to help me face what I was doing, but perhaps not. I hadn’t reached my rock bottom, I didn’t realise how much I was throwing away. Nobody could stop me drinking. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that nobody but you can decide to put down the glass or the drug.’

‘But you’re here now,’ Pearl said and stroked one of Elsa’s arms through the long-sleeved dress.

Elsa caught one of Pearl’s hands. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for letting me back into this family. And I love Peter. I am so happy for you.’

‘I am very lucky,’ Pearl said, and her face looked serene. Their wedding had been a tiny affair with Father Alex in his element, happier even than when he’d been able to present the cheque to the school for the parish’s fundraising week for Africa.

‘Two special occasions this week,’ he’d said after the ceremony, when everyone was in Pearl’s house. ‘One: we fulfilled our obligation to those less fortunate, and two: I have married two of the most wonderful people in our parish.’

Pearl hadn’t wanted her wedding to overshadow her granddaughter’s, and today was to be a grand, Delaney Garden’s affair, the wedding Coco had been dreaming of for years.

‘Oh my goodness, ladies, you both look beautiful!’ said Coco, arriving into her old bedroom in a froth of antique lace. She may have not have been able to coax Cassie into vintage for
her
wedding, and Pearl had worn a pale blue modern gown with a flowered hat for hers, but for her own nuptials, Coco had gone all out. She was the very vision of a 1930s bride with a creamy Brussels lace veil and a headdress made of incredible filigree silver trails twisted into wildly random curlicues. Her richly dark hair had been persuaded into thirties’ movie-star kiss curls around her beautiful face and there were flowers along with diamanté pins in her hair. Her dress was elegant: ivory silk and lace with a sheer high bodice that skimmed her creamy throat, highlighting the softness of her décolletage underneath. Delicate kid dancing shoes finished off the look. She was a voluptuous bride, rather than the perfect rail-thin version of the thirties with their held-down bosoms, and she looked wonderful.

‘You’re not supposed to be worrying about how
we
look, sweetie,’ laughed Pearl, turning to admire her stunning granddaughter.

‘It’s fabulous, isn’t it?’ said Coco, without a hint of narcissism, because she was referring to the dress and not herself. ‘If Phoebe hadn’t worked so hard on it, I’d be dressed in rags, because really, when it came into the shop, it was nothing but a fragile reminder of a dress. She tweaked and patched and sewed tiny slivers of lace on top of other bits of lace until it’s like a mermaid’s dress now: exquisite lace and embroidered scales on top of one another. But we knew it was the one. I touched it and I knew it was a happy dress, that I could marry Red in it.’ Her face assumed the rosy blush that emerged whenever she said his name. Entirely aware of this and determined to go back to her normal colour, she raced on. ‘Phoebe is a genius and I don’t know how Ian managed to create this tiara.’ She reached a hand up to touch the headdress.

‘He loves working with metals, doesn’t he?’ said Pearl, moving closer to examine the amazingly twisted filigree wires laced with crystals and pearls, with little whorls set at the perfect angle for flowers to be pinned into them. ‘It’s ingenious.’

‘Yes.’ Coco peered into the bit of mirror left over and sighed. For once in her life, she didn’t feel as if this was all too good to be true. This was good and true; miracles could happen.

Fiona, dressed as a thirties flower girl and looking mildly put out not to have been allowed to incorporate bright purple into her ensemble, even with much cajoling of the soft-touch Coco, marched into the room. Jo had put her foot down about the purple. The immoveable force that was Fiona met the immoveable force that was her mother, now nearly entirely recovered from her stroke and, thanks to her brush with near-tragedy, living life with vigour. Jo won.

‘Coco,’ Fiona said now, ignoring everyone else because she was on an important mission, ‘Red is on the phone and he wants to know what to do about the courier and the champagne he sent round to the house, because the courier company rang up and said you’d sent it away.’

Coco shot an anguished glance at her mother. ‘Erm, tell Red we are not a champagne house today,’ she said in a high voice.

Elsa smiled at her daughter – she could barely believe she was able to look at her own beautiful daughter on her wedding day! – and said: ‘Don’t worry, Coco. I’ve gone twenty years with plenty of temptation in my face. It’s my job not to drink it, not your job to hide it from me. Have your champagne, honey. Peter has got some lovely elderflower cordial for myself and the other non-drinkers.’

Elsa knew that her other daughter would be joining her on the elderflower cordial.

‘How do I tell people I’m not drinking?’ Cassie had asked, who had given up alcohol for a year because she was determined that wine o’clock would not destroy her the way it had destroyed her mother.

‘Don’t say anything,’ said her mother. ‘Your life: your choice.’

‘Gosh, well, tell Red to send it back then,’ said Coco.

In the other upstairs room, Cassie was fiddling with Lily’s headdress.

‘You are going to have to call Ian,’ she said. ‘I can’t do this. I am no good with flowers or girlie stuff.’

‘Yes you are, Mum,’ said Beth, surprising them all. ‘You just don’t do it. I don’t know where you got the idea that you’re not good at girlie things. Just because you can change a tyre doesn’t mean you can’t be girlie. You can be a feminist and still wear lipstick, you know. They’re not mutually exclusive.’

Cassie stared at her daughter for a moment and then burst out laughing.

‘Thank you,’ she said, delighted at both the sentiment and the fact that her clever, darling elder daughter knew words like ‘mutually exclusive’ and was interested in feminism.

Shay roared up the stairs: ‘I need help down here! I’ve opened some wine but someone needs to bring it upstairs. I’m sure I’m not allowed to see all you visions of beauty. Plus the dogs are going insane and I can’t leave them or they’ll totally trash the place.’

Fiona raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Some people just don’t know how to handle dogs,’ she said, sounding so much like her mother that everyone laughed. She marched out of the room, calling: ‘Lily, dog duty.’

‘My headdress isn’t fixed,’ complained Lily.

‘Come on,’ said Fiona impatiently. ‘I can do it later. I am very good with headdresses.’

Downstairs, Shay had opened two bottles of wine and was simultaneously trying to stop four dogs from entirely wrecking Pearl and Peter’s beautifully organised house. Peter was outside overseeing some final flower deliveries.

‘Girls, can you please get the dogs off the cushions?’ he said.

‘Doggies,’ said Fiona in her best stentorian dog-training voice, ‘kitchen,
now
. Treats!’

Daisy, Apricot, and Cassie and Shay’s two rescue spaniels, King and Charlie, followed her excitedly.
Treats
was a word they knew well. And Fiona was very good at giving treats.

‘It’s all in the way you say it,’ she explained to Lily, raiding the cupboard where the doggie treats were hidden.

Fiona loved spending time with Lily. Lily was one of the few people who let Fiona boss her around – well, apart from Coco, who was putty in Fiona’s little hands. Red, whom Fiona adored entirely, liked to tease her by saying she’d have to stop bossing Coco around once they were married.

Fiona loved that. ‘As if!’ she’d say, sounding like a teenager.

Her mother was back to not letting anyone boss her around. Now that her leg was not wobbly anymore, Jo was determined to be in charge of her life, so Fiona was stuck with telling the dogs and her beloved Apricot what to do, as well as twisting Coco around her little finger.

Jo was still getting her hair done in the dining room and the noise of the hairdryer could be heard blasting alongside loud conversation from Ian and the make-up artist.

‘You really could go into business with those headpieces,’ the make-up artist was saying. ‘I love your work. They’re perfect for weddings: so easy to fit on and work flowers through them. Genius.’

‘Nah, I’m still in college,’ said Ian. ‘I want to learn it all and then decide what I want to do. Headpieces are just a hobby at the mo.’

‘But you could make a
fortune
,’ the make-up artist went on.

Ian shot her a withering gaze. ‘I am so not into avarice,’ he said dismissively. ‘There’s more to life than money.’

In the O’Neill house on Longford Terrace, Myra was back from the hairdressers and was watching as one of her daughter-in-laws applied a faintly shimmering pale lilac eyeshadow to her eyelids.

‘Is this my colour?’ she said anxiously, one eye half-open as she peered at herself in the mirror. ‘I don’t normally wear anything shimmery. I don’t want to be looking like mutton dressed up as lamb.’

‘Myra, will you relax? It’s already looking lovely. I’m good at this,’ protested Alix, who had several years of beauty college behind her before settling down to have her two children.

‘I want to look perfect. You know they’re having a make-up artist at the house and everything,’ added Myra, still not convinced.

‘You could have gone over,’ Alix reminded her. ‘Coco offered and Red said he’d hire one here.’

‘I don’t hold with that sort of thing,’ said Myra, who knew she’d feel anxious until the priest had said ‘amen’, the register was signed and it was all over.

‘Besides, you’re not doing badly, Alix, just not so much purple-ness,’ she added.

‘Fine,’ said Alix resignedly, who knew there was no point mentioning her trophy for make-up application in college.

Upstairs, in the bedroom he’d shared with Dan and Mike for so many years, Red was thinking that he was glad he’d chosen to leave for his wedding from his own family home. He could have had his pick of any of Dublin’s swankiest hotels, but somehow it seemed right to be leaving Longford Terrace to marry Coco, when she was getting ready in Delaney Gardens, just around the corner. He knew she was probably already wearing the spectacular dress she’d been giving him endless hints about.

‘It has to be a surprise,’ she’d say mysteriously, any time he tried to get more information.

‘If it’s a surprise, stop giving me hints,’ he pointed out.

‘Oh, I so want to share it with you,’ she’d sighed in exasperation.

‘Crazy woman!’ Red had said and pulled her close. ‘How did I manage without you to drive me mad for four years?’

‘I can drive you mad for a long time to come now,’ said Coco, nestling against him.

Red allowed himself to think briefly of when he’d get to take off the glorious, much-hinted-at dress that night and smiled to himself. There had been a mention from Phoebe of stockings. The thought of Coco’s curves in stockings was enough to make him want to cancel the whole party afterwards and drag her off to a hotel like a caveman.

‘Hey, lover man,’ said his brother Dan, popping his head round the door. ‘Can I run through the best man’s speech with you? I don’t want to put my foot in it anywhere ’cos I know you will kill me, so can we talk? Might wipe that sappy smile off your face!’

Cassie looked out the window to Delaney Gardens where the garden had a small marquee with bunting, balloons and flowers strewn all over the place. Coco, who’d worked very hard, had wanted fairy lights attached on to everything that didn’t move.

Please let it not rain
, she begged frantically the night before.

‘Those lights aren’t suitable for outdoors, you know,’ said Cassie, stalwart of many, many functions in the open air.

‘None of them?’ wailed Coco. ‘Oops. Pray harder for no rain. You see, I wanted to do it myself and didn’t want you to have to work at my wedding. It’s hard enough with your new business without having to do all of this yourself too.’

‘I’m not on my own,’ Cassie reminded her. ‘I’ve got Belinda and Kenny working with me.’ She smiled. ‘It’s so nice not being shouted at in the morning anymore.’

‘Red says he’ll put all his Irish business your way,’ promised Coco. ‘The Keneally sisters stick together.’

‘I think learning that you’re marrying Red is what made Loren back off with her wild threats to sue us,’ Cassie said. ‘Plus the round-robin email where everyone who left said she’d bullied us all the time and if she decided to sue, we’d counter-sue for constructive dismissal. That doesn’t look good on any events company’s CV.