Original Cyn (22 page)

Barbara boiled Mal a couple of eggs for his supper and took them up to him with some buttered toast and a cup of tea. While she was gone, Cyn made a couple of gin and tonics.

“Here, get this down you,” Cyn said to Barbara as she came back into the kitchen. “You look like you could do with it.” Her mother’s face was taut and drawn. Cyn suspected it had little to do with organizing the wedding and everything with the shock of finding Mal collapsed on the floor last week.

“You read my mind.” Barbara smiled. “Cheers.” She swallowed hard. Cyn insisted she sit down. “I’ll get the supper. Pasta OK? I found a jar of tomato sauce in the cupboard.”

“Perfect.” Barbara sat down, pulled out another chair and rested her feet on it. “This thing with your dad has been quite a shock.” She took another slug of her gin and tonic.

“I know. We were all shaken up by it.”

“I started thinking about him dying.”

Cyn lit the gas under the pasta water and came and sat down at the table. “Mum, don’t worry. Dad’s got decades left.” She took her mother’s hand.

Barbara shrugged. “I hope so. I really love him, you know—more now than ever. Something seems to happen as you get older. The children are grown up, you’re freer than you’ve ever been and life starts to be fun again. The love seems to get deeper, more intense. It’s wonderful, but I’ve been wondering if it comes about partly because you know you might not have that much time left. “

“I can see how it might,” Cyn said gently.

“Sometimes I look back and wonder where all the years went. It seems like yesterday that you and Jonny were babies. You used to wear this cute little rabbit sleep suit with ears. You looked so gorgeous. Do you remember the first time we took you on a plane and you asked if we were going to Heaven?”

“Yes, and you said we weren’t exactly going to Heaven, but Ibiza was pretty close.”

Barbara sat swirling the ice around in her glass. “My cancer really affected you, didn’t it?”

Blimey. Where had that come from? Cyn was knocked completely off balance. She couldn’t think what to say. “When I was ill,” Barbara went on, “and Daddy had to look after you, you were so good. Too good. He reminded me the other day how he never had to shout at you.”

“You talked about this with Dad?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I? Tell me, is it the reason you’re in therapy?”

Cyn looked down at her drink and up again. “Mum, now isn’t the time for this. You’ve got enough to worry about.”

“It is, isn’t it? Please tell me.”

Cyn took a sip of her gin and tonic. “I think it probably is. A lot of the time I find it hard to stand up for myself. I feel I have to be good all the time and I think maybe it’s a legacy from having to be so good when you were ill.” Barbara was looking forlorn. There were tears in her eyes.

“Oh, God, now I’ve upset you,” Cyn said. “It’s the one thing I promised I would never do. It wasn’t your fault you got ill. I’m not blaming you. It’s just that it affected all of us.”

“It certainly affected Jonny. He told me.”

“God, you really have been busy. He didn’t tell me you’d talked.”

“I’m sure he will. He said my illness made him feel insecure and frightened and that’s why he’s so scared to take risks now.”

“He told me the same.”

“Sweetie, I am so sorry.” She pulled some tissue out of her trouser pocket and wiped her eyes.

“Sorry? What for? Mum, for crying out loud, you didn’t choose to get breast cancer.”

“I know, but you weren’t much more than babies. I suppose a bit of me still feels responsible for what happened.”

“You mustn’t. It was out of your control.”

“In my head I know that, but my heart is another matter.”

“Oh, Mum.” Cyn squeezed Barbara’s hand.

“We should have talked about this years ago. It was my fault we didn’t. When it was over you both seemed pretty OK and I didn’t want to risk making you unhappy by raking it all up again.”

“And all this time I’ve been desperate not to upset you.”

Barbara smiled. “We’ve both been so stupid . . . So, is it good, this group?”

“I’m not sure. Some of the people are a bit weird.” She paused—trying to decide whether or not to tell her mother about Joe. She decided that since they had started being honest with each other, she would. “I met a man there. His name’s Joe. He was the friend I was in Derbyshire with.”

“You met a man at your group? Is that wise? I mean, some of these people in therapy are terribly unstable.”

What was it with everybody? Why did the whole world assume people in therapy were unhinged?

“He’s not remotely unstable in the same way that I’m not unstable. Quite the opposite, in fact. He’s lovely. He had a lousy upbringing, that’s all.” She decided not to say anything about his lack of a long-term relationship. Then she really would start to worry. Instead she said, “He’s Irish.”

“Catholic?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, fantastic.” Barbara smiled, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “Tell you what, you break the news to your grandmother, I’ll alert the paramedics.” Although Faye now adored Flick, her initial reaction to being told her granddaughter-in-law-to-be was Catholic had owed less to modern liberal thinking and more to late-nineteenth-century Yiddish theater.

“But you don’t mind, right?”

“Sweetie, how can you even ask? If this Joe makes you as happy as Flick makes Jonny, I couldn’t be happier and I know your dad will feel the same.” She looked hesitant, as if she was psyching herself up to ask her next question. “Are you in love with him?”

“It’s very early days, but yes. I think I am.”

They were still hugging and crying when Cyn heard the sound of water boiling over. She leaped up and turned down the gas.

“So,” Barbara said, “are you better now at standing up for yourself?”

Cyn tipped fusilli into the water. Once again she considered telling Barbara about the Chelsea affair, but she decided the time still wasn’t right. What with the wedding and Mal’s mumps, her mother had enough on her plate. She didn’t need to know her daughter was doing something so reckless it was putting her in serious danger of losing her job. “I’m getting there,” was all Cyn said.

“Good girl. You know, I’m really proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

“So are we OK?”

Cyn came back to the table and took her mother’s hand again. “Mum, we were never not OK. You can be a bit bossy and interfering sometimes, but I love you so much.”

“And I love you, too.”

Cyn returned to the counter and began spooning pasta sauce into a microwave dish.

“So, exactly when do I interfere?” Barbara said with the teensiest hint of defensiveness. “I mean, it’s not like I’m on the phone every five minutes telling you how to live your life. Just because I care about you and want to see you happy, is that interfering? Is it so wrong that a mother should want to see her daughter happily married with children? No, go on, tell me. I’d really like to know . . .”

Chapter 17

The next day Cyn e-mailed Gazza to let him know that the auditions for the Droolin’ Dream commercial had been arranged for the following Monday and that Dan, the director, was aiming to start filming the following week. Gazza came straight back to say he was happy for Cyn and Dan to be in charge of the auditions, but he would be there for the filming.

By the way, got a freebie boxed set of k.d. Lang CDs and wondered if you would like them. Thought they might be up your street.
She couldn’t help laughing. She hated lying to Gazza. In his own clumsy way, he meant well. She e-mailed back to say she would love the CDs.

She also got a voice mail message from Chelsea to say her back was improving gradually with physiotherapy and she would be leaving hospital in ten days or so. “I won’t be ready to come back to work for another couple of weeks, but I will be stopping by the office to check how everything’s going. Also, I want to go to Slough to see the Droolin’ Dream people. I hope Gary Rossiter will be back from his vacation by then.”

Cyn’s heart lurched. The moment Chelsea got back, she would find out what had been going on behind her back and there would be an explosive, probably public confrontation. The new Cyn felt she could cope with this, but she needed to be certain it would be Chelsea who was going to end up exposed and humiliated. What scared her was that the opposite might happen and that when Graham Chandler got back from New York, it would be she who was out on her ear.

The fact remained that Cyn possessed no hard, incontrovertible evidence that Chelsea had stolen her idea. Luke’s evidence was useless since he believed the potentially incriminating conversation Chelsea had had in the loo was with a drug dealer called Skippy. Only Cyn knew that it was with Charlie Taylor, the ad man in L.A. who was supplying all her ideas.

Somehow in the next ten days, Cyn had to prove that Chelsea was a fraud and that when Charlie refused to come up with any more ideas for her, the fear of being found out had driven her to steal Cyn’s Droolin’ Dream proposal. Her task seemed so impossibly ridiculous that it was almost funny. “Right, not much pressure there, then,” she laughed out loud.

She was still preoccupied with all this as she sat in the coffee shop across the road, drinking cappuccino and waiting for Joe to arrive. He was flying to Dublin from City Airport. Since his flight wasn’t until three and the PCW office was pretty much on his way, he and Cyn arranged to meet up for a quick bite. He texted her to say he would be another fifteen minutes or so.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said breathlessly. “Couldn’t find anywhere to park.”

He sat down opposite her and reached into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a plastic bag, which clearly had a book inside. “I found this yesterday in a secondhand bookshop. I thought it would be perfect for you.” He put the bag on the table in front of her. She looked puzzled. “Go on, open it,” he said, smiling.

She opened the bag and took out a battered paperback. The moment she saw the title she burst out laughing and read it aloud. “
Take a Hike—The Couch Potato’s Guide to Country Walks.
That’s brilliant. I love it.” She realized in that moment how little she minded being teased by him. In fact she adored it. It brought with it an intimacy that she had rarely felt with a man.

She reached across the table and kissed him. The kiss turned into something slightly more than a peck. It wasn’t until they pulled apart that they realized the waitress was standing next to them waiting to take their order. With a certain amount of embarrassed throat clearing, they asked for a couple of ham-and-cheese paninis and two more cappuccinos.

While they waited for their food to arrive she started telling him how worried she was about not being able to prove it was Chelsea who stole her idea rather than the other way round.

“I’m wondering if I should phone this Charlie Taylor,” she said. “See what he has to say.”

“You could try, but I’m not sure he would say anything. You told me that his father worked with Chelsea’s father. There’s a family connection. At the end of the day he’s bound to stay loyal to Chelsea, no matter what he really thinks of her.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I need to give this some thought. Maybe there’s another way of approaching him.”

Their cappuccinos arrived. As he sat scooping up the froth, a faraway look came over him.

“So,” she said, suspecting what was the matter, “all geared up for seeing your mum?”

“I guess so,” he said quietly, still looking down at his coffee.

“You sound like you might be getting cold feet.”

He abandoned his froth scooping and looked at her. “A bit, maybe.”

“That’s understandable. Seeing her is going to be hard, but I reckon it’ll be worth it.” She decided to tell him about her heart-to-heart with Barbara the night before. “Turns out she always suspected her illness had taken an emotional toll on Jonny and me, and she’s been carrying the guilt around for all these years. My only regret is that I didn’t say something sooner. It would have helped both of us.”

“Come on,” he said gently, “you did what you thought was right. You can’t start blaming yourself.”

“I know, but it’s hard not to.” She paused. “In the group you said you weren’t angry with your mother. In fact, if I remember rightly, you said you didn’t feel very much at all toward her. So, has that changed?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. You know, I realize I need to be in therapy and it is definitely helping, but I’m still not very good at all this
feelings
stuff.” His face broke into a smile. “I guess it’s a bloke thing.”

She shrugged. “Not all men find it hard. What about Ken?”

“He’s been a priest—you’d expect it.”

She thought for a moment. “What about Woody Allen? And then there’s Ross from
Friends
.”

“OK, first, Ross isn’t real, he’s made-up. Second, they’re both American. Americans don’t do anything other than talk about their feelings. I mean, Oprah’s practically had every citizen’s inalienable right to emote written into the Constitution.”

She gave a gentle laugh and said she got the point.

“Having said all that,” he went on, “maybe I have started feeling a bit angry. I was only eight when Mum sent me away—not much more than a baby. I think about being this little mite all alone in that vast school with nobody to talk to but Bostik.”

“Bostik?”

He looked a bit uncomfortable. “Bostik Bear. His eyes kept falling out and Mum used to glue them back on with Bostik. And the name sort of stuck, as it were.” He smiled at the joke.

“You know what I think?” Cyn said.

“What?”

“I think you’re frightened that if you start opening up to your mum, you might explode with all this rage that until now you’ve kept locked inside you, and she won’t be able to handle it.”

He nodded slowly. “It does feel like I’d be opening a massive can of worms.”

“And that’s not easy. After all, she’s what, seventy?”

“Seventy-two,” he said. “And on top of that my stepfather died a couple of years ago and she’s all alone. I just don’t want to give her any more upset.”

Cyn reached out across the table and took his hand. “You won’t be upsetting her. If she’s anything like my mum, she knows how she hurt you. None of it will come as a surprise. She probably needs to talk just as much as you. It’ll be a relief.”

“You are very wise, Ms. Fishbein, do you know that?”

After lunch she walked him to his car. It was only as they stood with their arms around each other saying good-bye that she realized she hadn’t mentioned Harmony’s party on Thursday. She explained. “Please say you can come. I really want you to meet Hugh and Harms.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it. Plus it’ll give me a chance to talk to Hugh about his screenplay. I’ve finished it and it really is as brilliant as I first thought. A mate of mine from Paramount is in town. I gave it to him to look at.”

“Omigod! Huge’ll be over the moon.”

“I know, but I don’t want to get his hopes up. Nine times out of ten, these things come to nothing.”

“Don’t worry, he understands that,” Cyn said.

“OK, so see you Thursday, then. And enjoy therapy tonight—if
enjoy
is the right word.”

“Joe, you know I could always tell the group about us seeing each other. It’s just that I can’t help feeling it needs to be done sooner rather than later.”

He wouldn’t hear of it. “Our relationship is half my responsibility and we have to tell them together. I don’t want you taking this whole thing on your shoulders. Now, promise me you won’t say anything.”

“God, I love it when you take control,” she said, making out she was joking, but secretly she was starting to feel quite horny.

He laughed and made her promise she wouldn’t say anything. “OK, see you Thursday,” he said, lowering his head and kissing her. She felt his hand slide under her top.

“C’mon, you’ve got to go,” she giggled.

“I don’t have to.” His hand was moving toward her breast. “You could play hooky from work and we could go back to my place for the afternoon.”

“I can think of nothing I’d rather do, but your mother’s expecting you.”

“S’pose.” He kissed her thoroughly and then, reluctantly, he pulled away. Somewhere in the background country and Western music was blaring from a car radio. “Do you know what you get if you play country and Western music backward?” he said.

She thought he was being serious. “No idea. What do you get?”

“Your wife back, your truck back, your dog back.”

She burst out laughing and gave him one last peck on the cheek. “Stop making nervous jokes and just go,” she said.

Once again Cyn was the first to arrive at therapy. As she sat down, she saw a note written by Veronica lying on the table in the middle of the circle. Apparently it wasn’t just Joe who couldn’t make it. The note explained that Clementine had phoned that morning to say she thought she was coming down with flu. Cyn couldn’t help feeling a moment’s disappointment that Clementine wasn’t going to be there. Sharp-tongued as she could be, Cyn couldn’t help admiring her wit and her ability to say exactly what she thought. When she wasn’t there Cyn missed her.

As the rest of the group arrived, the usual hiyas and how-are-yous were exchanged. Jenny kicked off with an emotional and rambling update on her state of mind about her haircut. Apparently she had gotten over the initial shock and was working her way through anger toward acceptance.

No sooner had Jenny finished than Sandra Yo-yo burst into tears. Apparently she’d been shopping for jeans in Selfridges, where she’d had an unfortunate run-in with their new BodyMetrics computer. “You type in your vital statistics and it creates this 3-D image of your body and comes up with the make of jeans that will fit you best.”

There was silence and some uncomfortable shuffling. Sandra had been gaining weight lately and, judging by the tears, it was clear that her BodyMetrics experience hadn’t been a positive one. “I crashed the damned computer and this mechanical voice booms across the entire floor: ‘Error. Error. Sandra Feldman is unfittable. Sandra Feldman is unfittable.’ I nearly died with the humiliation.” Tears tumbled down her cheeks. Jenny handed her the box of tissues.

To make her feel better, everybody started sharing stories of their most humiliating moments. Jenny said she once went to a job interview wearing a sweater she had just taken out of the dryer and it wasn’t until she came out of the interview that she discovered she had a pair of knickers stuck to her back.

Then Sandra stunned everybody by saying that when she was nineteen—in a unique moment of rebellion against her mother—she’d had sex in a cornfield. Afterward she developed an infection and her gynecologist found a kernel of corn inside her.

“Sounds like a severe case of corn on the knob,” Ken the ex-priest blurted. He immediately turned scarlet and said, “Good Lord, I can’t believe I just said that.”

But he couldn’t help laughing. Veronica said it seemed to her that Ken’s earthy side, which he always tried so hard to hide and that was absolutely vital if he was to have a sexual relationship with a woman, was, at some level, alive and kicking. “Would you like to say a bit more about that?”

It turned out that Ken wanted to say a great deal more about it—including the fact that one of the reasons he joined the priesthood was because his self-esteem was nonexistent and it was a way of avoiding female rejection. “Leaving was definitely a sign that I was changing and that I was becoming more confident. I’ve taken the first step. I just don’t seem to be able to take the next one.”

For the next hour, he became the group’s sole focus as everybody tried to encourage him to get in touch with his inner letch.

Joe phoned on Thursday morning and suggested that before Harmony’s party they have a quick drink at his place. She asked him how the trip to Dublin had gone.

“Fine. Far better than I imagined. I couldn’t believe it. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

She said she would get there around six. She’d been longing to see Joe’s flat. It felt strange being so intimate with somebody and not seeing where he lived. Since he owned a BMW, she wondered if his flat would be posh, too. On the other hand it could be pretty ordinary. Maybe she’d gotten it wrong and Joe wasn’t as well-off as she’d assumed. Perhaps he was one of those men who spent all his money on his car. There were a couple of blokes at work who spent hundreds a month repaying loans on Porsches and lived like students.

She decided to wear her Carrie Bradshaw dress—so called because whenever she wore it everybody said it was soooo Ms. Bradshaw and all she needed was a Manhattan in her hand. It was an emerald-green empire line, with a wide floaty skirt and a black band and bow under the bust. She always paired it with a tiny emerald satin bag and matching stiletto sling backs and never told a soul it was another of her cheapo Top Shop rip-offs.

Joe’s Camden flat was decidedly upmarket. It was on the tenth floor of a brand-new block overlooking the canal. He’d mentioned when they first met that he hadn’t been there long and it was still looking a bit bare.