Between Sisters (5 page)

But Red … He came to Dublin often to see his mother, a woman who glared at Coco if she so much as spotted her, and he’d never come back to see her since. Which proved she’d been right about him. Red, like her mother, hadn’t planned to be around forever.

Pricing done, Coco went to the iPod dock and switched on her current favourite music – her namesake, Coco Emerald. Forties-style, big band and almost burlesque with Miss Emerald’s sassy tones singing that she was coming back as a man, it suited Coco’s mood today and the shop.

She wondered what Coco Emerald had been christened. Coco had been baptised as Coraline Patricia Keneally but nobody had ever called her Coraline.

‘Little Coco’ everyone had called her from the get-go and the name had stuck. Now people wondered if she’d changed her name because of a certain Gabrielle Chanel but Coco said that would be like changing your name midlife to Missoni because you liked the classic Italian design brand.

‘I was Coco from when I was little,’ she always said. Coraline was a bit of a mouthful. So too was Cassiopeia, which was Cassie’s true name.

She’d asked Dad once why they had such unusual names. He’d prevaricated. ‘Must have been something from the TV,’ he’d said eventually, scratching what was left of his hair because he’d been bald from as long as Coco could remember.

Coco hadn’t believed him. It was her mother, she knew it. Her mother had liked unusual names. But nobody talked about her mother. Asking her father used to result in his going into a dark place where he spoke to nobody for hours. It was simpler to let it go.

She sniffed the air. Jo was right: there was a certain pub-after-hours smell to the place. Hastily she sprayed some room spray on the mat inside the front door and wedged it open with a little rubber wedge to let some air in.

Jo returned a few minutes later carrying takeaway cups and a box containing two iced cupcakes.

‘We need the energy,’ said Jo.

Coco eyed her one mournfully – a perfectly miniature carrot cake with a teeny iced carrot on top. Jo knew it was her favourite.

‘I was thinking of doing a juice diet,’ Coco said, thinking of how tight the belt felt on her classic swing skirt.

‘Think about it tomorrow,’ advised Jo. ‘People need pleasure in their lives.’

Despite the fact that she regularly stroked soft marabou, sleek velvets and exquisite silks, the way her friend said the word ‘pleasure’ pierced Coco like a sneaky, minuscule arrow as she realised how little pleasure there was in her life. Pleasure made her think of Red and she was never thinking of him again. He meant nothing but pain and heartbreak and she’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.

They were silent for a while as they ate and drank, then Jo talked about work and how she ought to be getting back.

Coco loved chat from the school. School life was so crammed with incident and people: funny teachers; the handsome new geography guy who had half the staffroom and most of the girls staring at him in awe; how the transition years were working on some Machiavellian plan to have TY turned into a non-uniform year.

‘Anything new with you?’ Jo asked, after she’d binned her debris and washed her hands in the shop’s tiny loo.

‘Only the possibility that Adriana is taking the mickey out of me by never being on time. She said she had a flat tyre today and, you know what, I don’t believe her. Is that mean of me?’ Coco asked anxiously.

Jo, not as soft as her friend and possibly a better judge of character, laughed.

‘Coco, you need to harden up, babe. Adriana has you totally figured out. She knows she can come in late and you won’t do a thing. You deserve better. Fire her.’

‘I couldn’t!’

‘Fine. Get Cassie to do it.’

Coco didn’t reply and watched as Jo made a beeline for a fifties prom dress in polka dot chiffon yellow.

Jo had absolutely no eye for colour; never had, never would. And she would never wear the prom dress, either.

‘Step away from the yellow,’ Coco said in a mock-stern voice, relieved to be able to change the subject. ‘You wearing yellow will frighten the heck out of your next class. Yellow is for people with warm complexions, ideally exquisite Indian girls with silken, mocha skin. Or people from the Caribbean. You and I with our milk-bottle-blue skin look like we’re about to die of consumption when we wear it.’

Coco grinned at her best friend to lessen the blow.

‘And you are successful at selling clothes
how
, exactly?’ demanded Jo, moving down the rail.

‘By being truthful and not allowing either customers or best friends to buy things they will never wear,’ Coco said. ‘You know I put all my efforts into you and for that reason, I can’t let you buy yellow, lovie. You’ll never wear it and it will stare at you reproachfully from your wardrobe. Do you know we wear only twenty per cent of our wardrobes—’

‘Yeah, eighty per cent of the time,’ finished Jo with a sigh. ‘That’s people like me, boring worker ants of thirty-one. People like my daughter wear one hundred per cent of their clothes over the course of one weekend. She changed four times on Sunday. Fairy at breakfast, princess in the park, a fish –
don’t ask,
something to do with a science project – all afternoon and then, when it was time for bed, she went into serious dress-up mode and wanted a fashion show wearing my shoes, which are pretty boring, it has to be said. She wanted to know why I didn’t have cool shoes like you.’

Coco glanced down at her red patent Mary Janes fondly. She was afraid they gave her fat ankles but she loved them so much.

‘Her energy levels rise just before bed. Why?’ asked Jo. ‘Nobody can tell me. Unless it’s competitive parenting, every other nine-year-old I know is apparently asleep by eight. Whereas Fi’s gearing up for fun. She’s just like you were about clothes.’

Coco laughed at the thought of her beloved goddaughter tearing through her wardrobe, flinging what she didn’t want on the bed until she found the perfect outfit.

Unlike her mother, nine-year-old Fi had an innate sense of personal style and the determination to carry it off. Fi was petite by comparison with her mother’s tallness, with skinny legs, a mischievous smile and hair as dark as Coco’s. All a debt owed to her father, who’d been handsome and dark-haired as well as cavalier with other people’s lives.

Looking at how happy Jo and Fiona were, Fiona didn’t seen damaged by not having a father in her life.

But then, Coco worried – as did Jo – that one day, Fiona would demand to see her long-gone father and insist that his absence had destroyed her. It was the great fear of Jo’s life because how could you tell a child that a man simply hadn’t had it in him to stay around to be a dad?

Coco hoped Fiona wouldn’t go through what she and Cassie had. After all, Fiona’s father had simply never been there at all, while Marguerite had – and had
then
abandoned them.

Coco loved having Fiona as a goddaughter: it was almost like having her own child but without any of the responsibility that went with it. Coco was never having children herself.

Never.

To distract herself from having landed on this horrible thought, she asked, ‘Have you thought of asking Mr Geography out for coffee?’

Jo snorted. She’d been put off romance for life when Fiona’s father had run a mile as soon as she got pregnant.

‘I’m saving myself for someone perfect,’ she said sarcastically.

‘Oh, me too,’ joked Coco. ‘Let’s say that next time we get asked why two such lovely girls are on our own.’

‘The people who ask that are always married and want everyone else to be paired up too,’ Jo said. ‘Dating and bringing up a small child on your own are mutually exclusive.’

‘At least you have an excuse,’ Coco said. ‘I think I’ll start saying I’m gay.’

‘People will simply start introducing you to their lovely
femal
e next-door neighbours and workmates instead of the male ones,’ Jo pointed out. ‘No, celibacy is the only way. That and a diet of sexy novels where men are men and women are never too tired or hormonal.’

‘Yeah, I suppose,’ murmured Coco thoughtfully.

Two customers came in and Jo waved goodbye, making an
I’ll phone you
gesture as she left.

It was a wonderfully busy morning in the shop. Coco sold a small frame handbag with a tortoiseshell clasp, a set of diamanté drop earrings and a matching brooch to a bride-to-be, and a 1930s astrakhan and velvet coat in Chinese lacquer red to a tall, dramatically dark-haired woman who slipped it on, looked at herself in the mirror and then beamed. ‘I’m not taking this one off.’

Coco was thrilled.

Adriana made it in by eleven, dressed in a flowing floral dress she’d got with her staff discount, and not looking as if she’d been frantically wrestling with the car jack as she changed her tyre. Instead, she looked soothed and happy, with the relaxed face of a woman who’d just spent the morning in bed with her boyfriend. Coco didn’t have a shred of evidence except there was no stress on Adriana’s face from the trauma of the flat tyre, plus Adriana’s blonde hair looked so very bed-head, and Coco knew for a fact that Adriana possessed very fine hair that flopped no matter what products Adriana used. In that case, there was a pretty good chance that bed-head hair meant actual
bed
-head hair.

Within five minutes, Adriana had made herself tea, had ignored the duster Coco had left out on the counter for her, and was on the phone, whispering.

‘You too? I feel wonderful … What a start to the day … Sooo sexy …’

Coco raged: she’d been
right!

She watched with irritation as her single staff member slipped past a customer to drift over to the stairs where she sighed and whispered some more sweet nothings into her phone. Adriana only worked part-time to help fund her college work, but she’d missed an hour and a half of her shift and yet would expect to be paid for it. When Adriana had been late before, Coco had paid her full wages without question, but this was now the fourth time in a few weeks that Adriana had been late.

Plus – and Coco felt annoyed with herself over any irritation about this – it was clear that Adriana, for all her slacker lifestyle, had a healthy, wonderful sex life with her boyfriend, while the only things to keep Coco in bed late were either her phone alarm clock not going off or a vomiting virus.

She hadn’t had a date since her last blind date, which had turned into a disaster of epic proportions and had made her decide, finally, that men were a waste of time.

By half one, Coco was tired and looking out on to the street where the September sunshine shone down, and thought a quick walk down at the sea wall might blow the cobwebs away. She’d grab a sandwich on the way back and let Adriana take her lunch then.

‘Adriana,’ she began, as she got her purse, ‘I’m going for a walk and then—’

‘Oh, Coco,’ said Adriana, twirling a strand of bleached blonde hair. ‘Er, remember I said I had to go early today for, er, that essay I’m finishing for college? If I could go now, as I did ask …’

Coco, who never lost her temper and who knew she was a complete pushover when it came to both staff and people haggling in the shop, suddenly lost it.

‘You want to leave at half one instead of half three, when you didn’t get here till eleven?’ she said furiously. ‘And you no doubt expect me to pay you for six hours when you’ll have worked two and a half? Am I correct?’

‘Well, it’s only fair. I got a flat,’ Adriana said, looking injured.

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Coco.

There, she’d said it.

‘This is your fourth time late since the last week in August. Do you want this job or not? Because I need someone I can rely on, not someone who waltzes in late and leaves early.’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘Adriana, it’s totally fair. I pay you to be here working, not spend hours on the phone to your boyfriend!’

The burst dam inside Coco was pumping out a flood, but Adriana brought out the ultimate weapon: tears.

‘I’m so sorry, Coco. You’re so good to me, like a big sister, and I never had a sister, and I love you, you know that.’

‘Hush.’ Without almost knowing what she was doing, Coco instinctively put an arm around the sobbing Adriana.

‘It’s fine, you can go early now.’ Coco cringed inwardly, wondering if she could discuss not paying Adriana for the missed hours. No, she decided. Cassie would be able to do it. Cassie could take on anyone and did, but Coco wasn’t built that way.

‘Please don’t let it happen again. I need you, Adriana.’

‘Course, I understand,’ snuffled Adriana. ‘It won’t happen again. I promise.’

It took five minutes and an emergency chocolate biscuit to get Adriana smiling and out of the shop, after which Coco began to wonder if she’d done the right thing.

It was just hard to be tough with people you worked closely with … Yes, that was it. Adriana would buck up. Coco knew it.

As for now, she’d have to shut the shop to grab a sandwich and she hated doing that. The success of the shop rested entirely on her shoulders and though the place was doing pretty well on the internet, a random person shopping on her lunch break and encountering a ‘closed’ sign on the door might assume Twentieth Century was always closed and never come this way again.

Coco took off her heels, put on a pair of flats, grabbed the keys and her purse, stuck a ‘back in five minutes’ sign on the door and ran out into the September day, racing to the café where she could grab a ready-made sandwich.

Maybe she should have done what Great-Aunt Edie wanted and done something boring in college, instead of Fine Arts, she thought, panting as she ran. But then she wouldn’t be her own boss. And Coco loved that more than anything.

Life was too full of twists and turns, decisions taken out of your hands, people leaving and never coming back. Her mother and Red came to mind.

No, if you were your own boss, you were in charge and nothing happened if you didn’t like it. Because when random things happened, people got hurt and nobody recovered from the hurt. That was what Coco feared most of all.

Coco always said she’d never minded not having a mother.