Best of Friends

‘Lizzie, I’m not saying I regret any of it but we had to get married. It seemed like the only option at the time. We did it and we’ve stuck together but we both knew it wasn’t what we’d wanted. Didn’t you always think there should have been more?’

She had never thought there should have been more. True, there were no violins playing in her head when Myles kissed her, but had there been violins in her parents’ heads during their marriage? Marriage wasn’t about that, surely? Did her happily bickering sister and brother-in-law share some secret hand-holding when they were out of the public gaze? No way. Violins were for soppy movies, not real life.

‘We’re still young enough to enjoy life,’ Myles said, desperately trying to make her understand. ‘We can make up for lost time.’

‘What’s her name?’ demanded Lizzie, suddenly finding her voice. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Oh, Lizzie…’ The look Myles gave her was full of pity. ‘There’s no one else. Dunmore is too small to hide a secret like that. I just want out before I’m too old, before I lose the confidence to do it.’

And that was the most painful thing of all. There was no one else. No other woman had made Myles decide to leave his wife. The only woman involved was Lizzie herself. The spur was the nature of their marriage.

For months after he’d gone, she asked herself how she, who thought she was in touch with the world, missed what was plainly obvious to everyone else – that there was a magic ingredient to marriage and that hers lacked it?

She replayed Myles’s words over and over again: ‘Is that what you want, Lizzie? Us here, stuck together by necessity and children, unable to live full lives together but never having had the courage to live apart?’

Debra had been devastated and had arrived home from nursing college shaking and crying. ‘How could you do this to us?’ she’d shrieked at her mother. ‘How could you?’

And Lizzie, who longed for Myles to stay but who wouldn’t hold him against his will no matter what, had calmly told her daughter that people grew apart and wasn’t it better to admit to it instead of living a lie?

‘Life goes on,’ she said with a serenity she didn’t feel. ‘This is still your home, but your father won’t be living here any more. His home will be like another home for you.’ Lizzie did not know how she managed to get that measured, ‘everything will be fine’ tone into her voice but she did it. Debra’s sobs lessened, the way they had when she was a child and had a hurt only Lizzie could cure. Did mothers ever stop mothering, Lizzie wondered as she stroked Debra’s head.

Joe had reacted differently. Then twenty-one and living happily in London, he’d come home for a few days, and when Lizzie had confided her genuine shock and bewilderment at what had happened, Joe was momentarily lost for words for possibly the first time in his life.

‘Oh, Mum,’ he said sorrowfully, ‘even when I was younger, I knew you and Dad were staying together for me and Debs. I thought you’d both made a choice to do that.’

Lizzie stared at him. He looked so like his father: a wiry frame, the shock of receding dark hair that defied all brushing, the same gentle brown eyes. Even he had seen it.

She never told anyone what Joe had said to her. From then on, she was stoic about the break-up.

‘People change and move on,’ she said when anyone commiserated with her.

‘Myles and I had our good times but you know we married too young and for all the wrong reasons,’ she told her sister, Gwen. ‘What did we know of love at our age? There should be a law against people getting married before they’re thirty!’

‘We should have split up years ago,’ she said to Dr Morgan. She hid her misery and bewilderment from everybody.

Myles made it easier by moving out of Dunmore into the city and by virtue of the fact that there wasn’t anybody else in his life – though, at first, nobody quite believed that.

‘There must be another woman,’ they said suspiciously, and all the single women in the squash club got fed up with being asked about Myles Shanahan.

‘He wasn’t the chatting-up sort of man,’ they insisted time and time again. ‘He was sweet and sort of lonely.’

But as time passed, and it became clear that he was genuinely happy but single, the chattering in Dunmore ceased.

Myles and Lizzie became the watchword for the modern world: they’d made brave choices and lived with them. They’d had the courage to swap two sets of slippers in front of the fire for the single life.

Myles had taken up sailing and, during a month’s leave, had become one of a crew taking part in a big yachting race. Who’d have thought it? Quiet Myles braving the Atlantic and coming home full of energy, with a windburned face and his middle-age spread gone, looking ten years younger.

There was no problem talking about this to Lizzie either. She knew all about it. She, Myles and the kids still had their Christmas dinner together in Dunmore. They went to the hotel in the square for it and, the first year, people had stared at the family smiling over the turkey and wearing paper hats as if nothing had happened. Civilised was the word for it, and while everybody in Dunmore admired them, nobody had a clue how they’d managed it.

The house was silent as the grave as she opened the door. Look on the positive side, Lizzie told herself firmly. A quiet house meant she hadn’t disturbed a gang of drugged-up-to-the-eyeballs burglars ransacking the place in vain for money.

The answering machine light was winking merrily and Lizzie felt her heart lift. Maybe it was Debra. She hadn’t phoned for a couple of days but she never left it longer than a week before getting in touch.

Without taking off her coat, Lizzie hit the button and smiled as her daughter’s light voice filled the hall.

‘Hi, Mum. Oh God, you won’t believe it, you just won’t. Barry’s sister is being impossible. She doesn’t like the pattern I’ve chosen for the bridesmaid’s dress. A-line suits everyone – I don’t know what the problem is. She’s just being difficult. She says she’ll buy her own dress but we can’t have that. It won’t be what I want. I think I’m going to hit her. Can I come over and talk to you?’

Dear Debra.

It was wildly ironic that Debra, who wasn’t pregnant and was of the generation who could have happily had a fleet of children without ever marrying the father or even introducing him to the rest of the family, was set on marrying her childhood sweetheart. The very words ‘childhood sweetheart’ made Lizzie shudder.

Both she and Myles had, separately, gently advised Debra that perhaps she should live with Barry for a couple of years first. Just because they’d been together since school and gone on holidays together for five years didn’t mean that they were going to make it as a couple.

But Debra wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Marriage is fashionable now,’ she told her mother, as if she was speaking to someone very elderly and very stupid. ‘Commitment is important. I don’t think older people understand that. What with terrorism and stuff in the world today, it’s younger people who know what matters. Barry and I are committed to each other and this is the proof. We’re trying to see if we can have doves at the wedding too because they symbolise peace. And just because you’re jaundiced about the whole marriage thing, Mum,’ she’d added tartly, ‘that’s no reason to put me off it.’

Lizzie, hurt at the idea that she was jaundiced about anything or that she’d harm a hair of Debra’s head because of her own problems, withdrew her gentle objections and began to help plan the wedding.

‘Commitment, commitment,’ said Myles bitterly on the phone to Lizzie later. ‘I’ve a good mind to remind her that she didn’t have the commitment to stick with nursing.’ Debra now worked in the offices of a double-glazing firm and shared a house with friends.

‘You can’t say that,’ said Lizzie. ‘She’d be upset.’

‘I’ve a good mind to,’ Myles went on, but he didn’t, as they both knew he wouldn’t. Debra was and always had been her daddy’s girl.

Lizzie dialled her daughter’s mobile.

‘Hi, love, you can come over. I’m home.’

‘I’m already on my way, actually,’ Debra answered. ‘I’ll be just five minutes.’

‘Great. I’ll make tea.’

Lizzie hurried off to whisk cushions into place and to check if the house still looked like the welcoming home Debra had grown up in. She put on lipstick to brighten herself up too and was ready with tea and home-made shortbread biscuits (Debra’s favourite and always ready for whenever she dropped in) when her daughter’s Mini stopped in the drive. The car, an eye-catching dark red, was her pride and joy, and Lizzie never caught sight of it without feeling glad that she and Myles had been able to contribute to its purchase. Lizzie’s part of the car had been money she’d saved to fix the leak in the roof in the kitchen, but there was plenty of time to deal with that. Debra’s happiness was more important than a bit of damp.

Debra let herself into the house with her own key and went immediately to the kitchen.

‘I shouldn’t have any shortbread,’ she said by way of greeting. She put two sugars into her tea, added lots of milk, and took a biscuit.

‘How are you, darling?’ said Lizzie, not wanting to sound too like a concerned mother. Debra hated that.

‘Fine,’ said Debra through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘Whatever am I going to do about Sandra? Fine bridesmaid she’s turning out to be. You’d think she’d be happy to have a dress bought for her. Stupid girl’s the size of an elephant.’

‘Not everyone’s skinny like you.’ Lizzie felt sorry for Sandra, a sweet-natured girl who didn’t share her brother’s good looks or slim physique.

‘That’s not my fault,’ Debra said with the disdain of one who’d never been less than pleased with her reflection in the mirror. She finished her biscuit and took another. ‘I just don’t want her to ruin my day because of this. We’ve only got a few months to go – you’d think she’d say something before this, wouldn’t you? But that’s typical of Sandra. Troublemaker.’

Debra’s temper made her face flush, and Lizzie did what she’d always done when her children were upset: she reached out and comforted her.

‘It’ll be fine, love. Barry will talk to Sandra. He’ll explain that this is your special day, that everything’s got to be perfect and that you want to pick the dresses.’