Best of Friends

They walked in silence, Erin reserving her energy for the hike rather than wasting her breath talking. As she climbed steadily, she couldn’t help her mind slipping off the path in front of her and back to her estranged family in Dublin.

Greg didn’t understand her reluctance to go home. He was a black-and-white sort of person. Families loved each other and no stupid argument, no matter how bitter, should stop people from being there for each other.

But a long time had passed since she’d left. Erin knew she’d changed beyond all recognition. She was a different person from the angry eighteen-year-old who’d packed her suitcase and stormed out of her home one evening. What really scared her was what if everything else had changed too in the years she’d been away? What if her grandparents had died? Erin wouldn’t let herself think about that.

Kerry was eleven years older, so she’d be thirty-eight now, maybe married with kids, or maybe not. Kerry’s love life had never run smoothly. She looked a lot like Erin, without the red hair but with the same long nose. Dad used to joke that Kerry, who had mousy hair dyed blonde, had got the red hair temperament. He’d been right. However the rest of the family reacted, Kerry would find it hard to forgive Erin.

The landlady of the Mountain Arms Hotel was attractive and middle-aged, with a genial manner and shrewd eyes. Meg Boylan had come to the Mountain Arms thirty years before when she’d married the proprietor’s son, Teddy. Then, the hotel had been a family concern with just ten rooms and a small clientele who hadn’t minded the shabby décor or the fact that the rooms were often cold. Thanks to Meg’s hard work and drive, the Mountain Arms was now a thriving business with thirty rooms, a spacious, high-ceilinged room for weddings, a cosy bar named The Devil’s Elbow and a small but elegant dining room called The Haven. Teddy, God bless him, was no help at all when it came to running the hotel, although it had taken Meg several years to discover this after his parents retired.

Nowadays, Teddy made an enjoyable daily circuit between the bookies and a small corner of The Devil’s Elbow where he liked to peruse the racing pages and sip a couple of small ones.

‘I like to make sure everything’s run all right in the bar,’ he told people cheerily when they enquired about his part in keeping the hotel running smoothly.

This left Meg free to run her empire, keeping a careful eye on the kitchens, not to mention overseeing the hotel’s staff. She enjoyed being on the front desk and had long since realised that valued customers felt even more valued if they got a welcome from the proprietor herself.

She’d been on the desk when the young couple from Dunmore had arrived and found there was something refreshing about the way they’d laughed when she’d asked if they were newlyweds.

‘We’re married four years,’ grinned the husband.

‘And we can’t afford the bridal suite this time, I’m afraid. The budget won’t allow it,’ added his wife. ‘Not that that’s going to affect our enjoyment.’ She patted her husband’s arm affectionately.

They had that glow of the just-married about them, Meg thought. And she admired them for their candour in admitting that they weren’t in funds.

‘Let’s see what we’ve got for you,’ she said, checking the hotel’s computer, a machine she adored, even though Teddy wouldn’t go within an ass’s roar of it. The hotel had a bridal suite, which was the biggest room, with a pretty sitting room that looked out over the bay, and a four-poster bed draped with crimson and gold brocade decorated with medieval bower scenes, including maidens, unicorns and woodland glades. It wasn’t booked until the following week when the Gerrard/O’Shea wedding party would take over the entire hotel.

Marriage to Teddy had long since drummed the romance out of Meg but the Kennedys had touched her heart.

‘I have just the room for you,’ she said. ‘It’s an upgrade but it’s the same price as we originally agreed upon.’

The Kennedys grinned at each other. ‘Thank you,’ they said.

Meg’s face softened as she smiled back at them. Wait till they saw the room.

Greg and Erin adored their luxurious suite, and when they got back from their hike they wanted to do nothing more than throw themselves onto the voluptuously soft bed, but they were both mud-splattered. In the bathroom, they stripped off their dirty clothes and Erin began to run a bath.

‘I’ll seize up if I don’t soak,’ she said, adding some of the hotel’s lavender bath oil.

‘Can I join you?’ begged Greg.

Erin took a look at the bath. Greg was such a giant that most tubs were too snug a fit on him, and as for sharing a bath…forget it. But this elderly claw-footed creation was obviously built for large people who liked a bit of space to move around. It could have accommodated three at a push.

‘We might go through the ceiling underneath,’ Erin teased, as she tested the water with a toe, ‘but why not?’

They lay back, luxuriating in the hot, scented water, feeling stiff muscles unknot.

‘Is that your foot?’ demanded Erin as she felt something prodding her ribs. ‘No tickling.’

‘Spoilsport.’ Greg sank deeper into the water and Erin could feel his toes wriggling under her armpit, insistent and ticklish.

‘We’ve got the bridal suite – we’ve got to do things like this,’ he pointed out, still burrowing.

‘Like this, you mean,’ Erin retorted, sliding under the water, making him jerk upright when her big toe made contact with his groin. Laughing, her hair clinging to her like a water nymph, she sat up and shook the water from her head.

‘You wanna play, missy?’ Greg said, grabbing her ankles and hauling her through the water onto his lap.

‘Is the periscope up?’ Erin murmured into his neck.

‘Nearly. Why don’t we try dry land?’ Greg said, his fingers finding the slippery nubs of her nipples.

Erin clambered out of the bath and wrapped a bath sheet around her, drying herself carefully. No point in drowning the bed too. Out of the bath, the steaming hot water began to have its narcoleptic effect. The bed, when they pulled off the coverlet, looking so inviting and so soft. Erin had suddenly never felt so tired and warm and soothed in her life.

‘What a bed. Can we buy one like this?’ Erin moaned as she lay down.

‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful?’ yawned Greg, bashing his pillow a bit to get it right. ‘It’s so comfortable. I slept like a log last night.’

They curled up beside each other, bodies entwined, Greg’s right hand gently stroking the curve of Erin’s back.

‘We could have a little snooze,’ Greg muttered, his stroking slowing down, ‘to get our strength back.’

‘A little snooze,’ agreed Erin sleepily. ‘Ten minutes.’ She somehow raised her head to look at her watch on the bedside table. ‘Ten to four. We’ll snooze until four.’

‘Or ten past…’ Greg said.

The room was dark when Erin woke up and for a few scary seconds she couldn’t remember where she was. Then she heard Greg’s steady breathing beside her and she remembered. She still felt tired after their climb but mentally alert. Lying in the dark, she let the forbidden memories fill her mind.

It had all happened because Erin wanted money for her eighteenth birthday. She wanted money because she yearned to travel, to see the world, and if she got enough cash together to buy a round-the-world ticket, she could work her way across the globe.

Mum was anxious about giving Erin cold cash as a gift. ‘I wish you wanted a proper present and not money,’ she said sadly. ‘With Kerry and Shan—’ She stopped herself just in time. She’d been about to say Shannon, who was Erin’s older sister – not that Erin really knew her, and Mum found it difficult to talk about her.

Shannon had left home to live abroad when Erin had been a baby and there was nothing but the odd postcard home to remind people she was still alive. Erin hated Shannon for what she’d done to Mum. Kerry said Shannon was a selfish bitch who’d never cared who she’d hurt and that she’d turned Mum’s hair grey overnight.

‘What did you get Kerry when she was eighteen?’ Erin asked brightly, determined to get her mother over the pain of thinking of Shannon.

‘Earrings, those gold and opal ones she wears for good. Your father and I would have liked to get you something you could have for ever,’ Mum said. ‘Money is soon forgotten, Erin.’

‘I know, Mum,’ Erin hugged her mother, ‘but I want to build up memories I can have for ever, and if everyone gives me cash, I can. There are so many places I want to see – the Far East, Australia, America…’ There was a far-off look in her amber eyes and her mother sighed because she knew that wanderlust was in Erin’s blood, just as it had been in Shannon’s.

The family had held a small party in an upstairs room of a local pub and it had been a huge success. Toasts had been made, many pints had been consumed and Erin had drunk her first legal vodka and tonic.

She did get cash for her birthday – not enough for a round-the-world ticket, but enough to book a trip abroad. She didn’t know where she wanted to go, just somewhere. She’d never been abroad and the family visit to a caravan park every other year had been fun but not what you’d call exotic. No, abroad, with all its exciting connotations, was what she wanted. Australia was too far and would cost a fortune, but India…Erin was fascinated by India and could just see herself there, backpacking and sleeping in shabby hostels, being one of the people. And she wouldn’t get sick, no way. She had the constitution of an ox, as Mum used to say.

There was lots to plan for her trip, but the first thing was to get a passport. She’d collected a form, but the paperwork was interminable. She had to get photos signed by the police and an official copy of her birth certificate – not a photocopy, but a real one. She’d asked Mum for that and there she ran into a problem. Mum, who kept all the family documents in a shabby accordion file in her and Dad’s room, said she’d look and then came back and said she couldn’t find it.

Undaunted, Erin sent off for it.

A couple of weeks after her party, the certificate arrived. Erin shuffled downstairs in her Snoopy T-shirt and knickers and picked the post off the hall carpet. She had the house to herself, as Dad and Kerry were at work and Mum had gone shopping, popping in to Erin’s room on the way to remind her that she couldn’t lie in bed like a big slug all day.

In the kitchen, Erin slopped cornflakes into a bowl and looked at the post. None of it was ever for her but today was an exception. ‘Ms Erin Flynn’ was typed at the top of an official-looking envelope. She ripped it open and for a minute thought they’d sent the wrong certificate. The name was hers all right but the rest of it made no sense. Under ‘Mother’ was written ‘Shannon Flynn’, and that couldn’t be right, and under ‘Father’ was the word ‘Unknown’. The date was fine and everything, but the civil service people had clearly mixed it up. Absently, Erin ate some more cornflakes, still staring at this confusing bit of paper. And then the truth clicked in her head, like those magic eye puzzles she’d always found mystifying until one day she learned how to ‘see’ them. The form wasn’t wrong. Shannon, whom she’d always thought was her mysteriously absent sister, was actually her mother. Kerry wasn’t her sister but her aunt, and Mum and Dad weren’t her parents. They were her mother’s parents. Her grandparents. Granny and Granddad not Mum and Dad. It was all such a shock.