Star Sullivan (9 page)

W
HEN
S
TAR WENT BACK
to work in the supermarket she had great plans of making it all up with Kenny. He had been put in a really bad position and it was all her fault. She had practised over and over what she would say to him. She would ask him home to supper in Chestnut Street. Everything would be all right again.

But she didn’t get a chance to speak to him. Every time she approached him there seemed to be some reason that he had to hurry away. Finally she tugged at his sleeve to get his attention.

‘Shouldn’t you be back at your counter, Star?’ he said, and she saw that his face was very cold.

Star felt as if she had swallowed a lot of iced water. Kenny was avoiding her. Kenny who had said he loved her.

She returned to the pastries and scones with her heart heavy.

There was a postcard from Michael when Star got home. It was addressed to the Sullivan family and it said that he was travelling for a bit and would be in touch later when things got clearer. A friend of his was posting this in Poland. It did not mean, of course, that this was where he was.

‘God, that boy is getting harder to understand every day,’ Shay said.

‘I hope he’s all right,’ Molly said, worried.

‘I was going to ask him to be our best man, what do you think he means by later?’ Kevin asked. Kevin thought only of his wedding day the following year, and his upcoming health-food snack bar project.

Nick, who was most definitely Lilly’s boyfriend now, was keen to see the best in things. ‘Looks as if he has everything under control,’ he said vaguely, and Lilly patted his hand.

Only Star said nothing. It was as if she was hardly listening to the conversation. There was a time when she would look from face to face, hoping that everyone was getting on well, trying to head off any trouble before it began. Not any more.

That night Star went and read to Miss Mack. But her voice was faltering and she had to stop. Miss Mack said they could sit and listen to music instead. Perhaps Star could put on some Haydn, she said. It would fill up your soul for you. Miss Mack’s eyes were probably closed behind her dark glasses. Star sat twisting a small handkerchief until she eventually tore it into three pieces.

‘Go home, child,’ Miss Mack said. ‘You’re getting no peace from this lovely music, go home and sort it out.’

‘It isn’t all at home to sort out,’ Star said.

‘Well, go wherever it is, Star. I can hear your heart breaking from here,’ said Miss Mack.

‘Laddy, can I come in please?’ she asked.

‘No, Star, you can’t.’

‘I promise it will only take ten minutes.’

‘Not even for ten seconds. Go home.’

But she was into the Hales’ kitchen before Laddy could stop her. She took a seat opposite him as he sat reading the evening paper.

‘Do you know any of Haydn’s music, Laddy?’ she asked.

‘Nope,’ he said.

‘It’s meant to fill your soul,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he said, not even looking up.

‘You said you liked me, once,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

‘So what went wrong, how did I lose you?
Tell
me, Laddy. Even if I can’t get you back, I may get somebody one day, and not annoy them and drive them mad as I did with you.’

‘You didn’t have me to lose, stop talking crap,’ he said.

‘Tell me what I did wrong, then I’ll leave you alone,’ she begged.

For the first time he looked up. He was so handsome, she wanted to cry. ‘Promise?’ he said.

‘Promise,’ said Star Sullivan.

‘Right. Where do I start? We came here to live, my dad and I. My mam had done a runner, things weren’t great. Biddy was exactly what we said, a friend. She had been in some trouble and needed somewhere to stay, so she came to us. My dad fancied her, of course, but she was much too young for him and she never slept with him. She was great fun to have around the place, she kept us on our toes a bit . . . Look
what a mess the place is, now that she’s gone. Anyway she and I were mates too, not lovers, not at all. Not ever. My dad was very upset when she said she was moving on. I had just got him persuaded that it was all for the best when you started shouting the odds and saying that I was having an affair with her. Now he’ll never be sure.’

‘But I didn’t mean –’ Star began.

‘You never mean anything, Star. That’s your problem.’ He was very cold. ‘You didn’t mean it when you asked me to help your brother, Michael. Now I’m under heavy police suspicion myself, even though I’ve never done anything more than buy a dodgy video or DVD.’

‘But I thought –’

‘Sure you thought. You thought I might cure your father’s gambling. A nice man, Shay, I always got on well with him, and now because of you we’ve ended up bad friends.’

‘I didn’t know . . .’

‘No, you never knew . . . You didn’t know that your mother looks at me as if I were the devil out of hell, because she thinks I seduced you when you were a child and then abandoned you –’

‘She does
not
think that!’

‘Of course she does, and why not, you told the world you slept with me.’

‘To save your skin.’

‘Like hell. I was doing nothing, just sweeping up after your brother and his crim friends.’

‘But –’

‘And you go on telling me how much you want to listen to me and you never listened to one thing I said.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you should tell your mother about Lilly hiding food, then she would have been helped much sooner. Like telling Michael you would shop him, then he wouldn’t be on the run in Eastern Europe at this very moment.’

Star looked at him with a white face.

‘And then you told that poor gobshite Kenny the Fish that I’d beaten you up and he came after me and I had to hit him. So where’s the friendship in any of this, Star?’

‘I didn’t tell him you hit me.’

‘Well, you sure didn’t tell him quickly enough that I hadn’t.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I’m sure you are.
Now
will you go home, and remember you promised to leave me alone. You know that you promised you would.’

‘All right.’

Star got up and left. She paused at the door to look back at him but he was reading the paper again.

‘I brought you a cup of tea, Star,’ her mother said.

‘Thanks, Mam.’

‘You look very sad, pet, very sad, is your head hurting?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘Star, what is it?’

‘It’s too much to tell, Mam, I’ve made such a mess of everything.’

‘Ah, we all make a mess of most things,’ Molly said soothingly.

‘We don’t, Mam.’

‘We
do
actually, Star. We just shuffle along. No one gets it all right, the wise person knows that.’

‘I don’t want to get it all that right, I just want people to be happy. Is that a crime?’

‘No, love, of course not, but it’s just that it
won’t happen. It doesn’t happen. We have to put up with what we’ve got.’

‘But I
hate
when people fight, I’d do anything on earth to avoid a row,’ Star said.

‘Not always the right thing to do,’ her mother said.

Star thought of her brother Michael, and shivered.

‘So are you are all right? Wouldn’t you like to come downstairs?’

‘No, Mam.’

‘What are you thinking about, love?’

‘I was thinking that I’d like to work somewhere else, rather than near Kenny. You know, after everything.’

‘I hear he’s going off to Head Office shortly,’ her mother said.

‘Oh.’

‘So that’s not a problem. What else are you worrying about?’

‘My real name is Oona,’ Star said.

‘Of course it is, love.’

‘So that’s what I’m going to call myself from now on. Star hasn’t worked for me, I wasn’t bright enough or glittery enough, no light to shine on things. I’d like to be Oona now. In a
year’s time people will forget I was ever called Star.’

‘All right, sweetheart,’ her mother said. It was just one more thing to cope with in the day.

And in a year’s time when Oona Sullivan won the Employee of the Year Award in the supermarket chain, it was Kenny, the Area Manager, who presented it. He was astounded to find it was the girl he knew as Star. He had never guessed it was the same person.

And when she was bridesmaid at Gemma and Kevin’s wedding, her picture was in the evening paper as Ms Oona Sullivan, sister of the groom.

And she got a postcard from Laddy who now lived far away. It said: ‘Welcome to the real world, Oona Sullivan. May you be much happier and much nicer than all those silly little stars.’

And because she was so grown up now, Oona smiled and was pleased, rather than thinking, as the old Star would have done, that the love of her life was on his way back to her.

We would like to thank all our partners on the
Quick
Reads
project for all their help and support:

Quick
Reads
would also like to thank the Arts Council England and National Book Tokens for their sponsorship.

We would also like to thank the following companies for providing their services free of charge: SX Composing for typesetting all the titles; Icon Reproduction for text reproduction; Norske Skog, Stora Enso, PMS and Iggusend for paper/board supplies; Mackays of Chatham, Cox and Wyman, Bookmarque, White Quill Press, Concise, Norhaven and GGP for the printing.