Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets

Emma stood behind the door into the dining room and felt cold rage flood through her. How dare he tell people he’d given them the deposit money for the house! How dare he! That was their private life. And he hadn’t given it to them, anyway. She and Pete had insisted on treating it as a loan and were paying money into her parents’ account every month. But to casually tell a neighbour about it, as if she and Pete were kids or freeloaders who used and abused…That was terrible, awful. A fierce rage for her father burned in her peaceful soul. God she hated that man!

CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_76f4603d-fe16-556c-b6a2-2b4efa657d51)

Leonie was not thrilled with herself. Despite spending many arm-aching hours painting, the kitchen did not look the way she wanted it to. The plan had been simple: inspired by endless television make-overs, Leonie had convinced herself that she too could turn a small cottage kitchen into an exotic Egyptian-inspired room with the aid of midnight blue paint, some artistic stencilling and a can of metallic spray paint. Unfortunately, what looked easy in half an hour on the telly with scores of helpers, expert carpenters, an interior designer and an entire TV crew ready to help out if necessary, wasn’t easy in real life. After three evenings and her entire Sunday spent knee-deep in old newspapers with the animals sulking in another room, the kitchen looked desperate. Two of the walls were a frighteningly dark midnight blue with silver stars supposedly reflecting the silver of the knobs she’d bought for the cupboards. The cupboards themselves had been painted primrose to go with both the freshly painted woodwork and the other two walls, but instead of gliding on to the carefully prepared surfaces, the paint had dried in myriad globules so it looked as if the doors had developed smallpox.

Her idea of having stars on the ceiling had been lovely and very celestial, but midnight blue everywhere had made the room – small and, luckily, south-facing – a bit gloomy. So she’d wearily repainted two walls. It took three coats of primrose to cover the blue.

Meanwhile, the stencilled border, which the stencil book she’d borrowed from the library described as ‘an Egyptian-inspired motif of birds and animals’, resembled something inexpert four-year-olds might daub on their first day at school in between peeing in their seats and sobbing for their mummies.

‘It’s a bit ambitious, Leonie,’ her mother had remarked kindly when she arrived that afternoon with some flowers from her garden and home-made tea brack to celebrate the children’s return.

‘I like it better today,’ Claire said, finding a vase for the off-white roses and putting the kettle on to boil at the same time. ‘It was too dark when it was all blue.’

‘I know.’ Covered with paint and exhausted after forty-eight hours of decorating, Leonie was shattered. Her black leggings were like a Rorschach blot of primrose and blue paint, and Danny’s old grey sweatshirt wasn’t much better. Every inch of her hands was crusty with emulsion and she needed an hour in the bath at least.

‘What have you been up to all day, Mum?’ Leonie asked, reaching under the table to pet Penny’s silky ears. Penny, who’d been largely ignored during the painting, hummed in bliss.

‘I worked on Mrs Byrne’s daughter’s wedding dress for hours. The pair of them should be strung up. Every time I do something, she changes her mind and I have to rip it. Mrs Byrne insists on hanging around while I sew and the cats keep winding themselves round her legs so she’s permanently covered with fluff. I’m going to run out of Sello-tape getting cat fur off her dress.’ Leonie’s mother had been a seamstress and, on retirement, had started her own dressmaking business. She was very good, and her tiny Bray front room was permanently full of hopeful clients wanting a debs dress or wedding outfit knocked up for half-nothing.

Claire took out her cigarettes and lit up. ‘I stopped at five and came down here for a break. Will I make us some tea, or are you rushing?’

‘You stopped at five o’clock?’ Leonie shot up in her seat as the words sank in. ‘What time is it now? I’ve taken my watch off so it wouldn’t get covered with gloss and I thought it was only three at the latest.’

‘It’s half five.’

‘Oh, Mother of God, the kids are coming home in an hour,’ wailed Leonie. ‘I’ll never change and make it to the airport on time.’

‘Well, I did think you were being very relaxed about getting to the airport. Sure, what do you want to change for? Just go like that,’ said her mother sensibly.

‘I wanted to look lovely for them coming home,’ Leonie said, rooting around under newspapers for her keys. ‘I wanted the house to look lovely too…’

‘They’ll be so pleased to see you, they won’t mind a bit of paint. I’ll rustle up some supper for you all, shall I?’

Tired from the transatlantic flight, the trio emerged half an hour late behind a trolley jammed with plastic bags, rucksacks and bulging suitcases. Mel and Abby were fashionably pale, thanks to many teen magazine articles warning of skin cancer. Danny, on the other hand, was mahogany. All three wore new clothes which made Leonie instantly guilty: their father had obviously decided they were dressed like ragamuffins and had kitted them out from head to toe in new gear. She was a bad, spendthrift mother for frittering away money on a holiday when the kids needed new stuff. The knowledge that at least three-quarters of her clothes came from second-hand shops remained firmly at the back of her mind.

Mothers were supposed to dress in desperate, cast-off rags as long as their offspring had the newest designer clothes and whatever variety of trainers Nike were advertising twenty-four hours a day on MTV.

‘You’ll never guess,’ squealed Mel excitedly as soon as the new clothes had been admired and they were in the car, rattling along the motorway.

‘Yeah, Mel’s got herself a boyfriend,’ interrupted Danny.

‘Have not!’ shrieked Mel.

‘Yes you have,’ Danny said, sounding less like a nineteen-year-old and more like his fourteen-year-old twin sisters. Well, more like Mel. Not Abby. Abby was so grown up she wasn’t fourteen – she was going on forty.

‘Haven’t! And that wasn’t what I was going to say!’ roared Mel.

‘Stop it,’ said Leonie, wishing they’d waited at least until they were a mile away from the airport before the inevitable row. Danny and Mel sparked off each other like pieces of flint. Every conversation between them turned into an argument. It was because they were so alike. Abby was thoughtful and grave, like her father. Her siblings were the complete opposite.

Mel’s favourite sentence when she’d been four was, ‘I want Danny’s…’ Danny’s dinner, Danny’s drink, Danny’s toys. If it was his, she wanted it. And he, at the wise old age of nine, had been just as bad. Mel’s favourite cuddly toy – without which she refused to go to sleep – had been hidden with Danny’s Action Man collection for three whole murderous, sleepless nights before Leonie found it when she was hoovering.

The current argument subsided purely because Danny decided to play with his new Discman and stuck his earphones in with a bored shrug that said, ‘Women, huh!’ Leonie shuddered to imagine what a Discman cost. Hundreds of dollars, no doubt. Ray must be making a mint.

‘Will I tell her?’ Abby whispered to Mel.

‘Yes.’ Mel was sulking now. She stared out of the window with her pointed little face in a sulky pout. The beauty of the family, Mel could even sulk prettily. With her father’s big dark eyes, delicately arched eyebrows, translucent skin and full lips, she looked like a teenage catwalk model trying to look moody for a photo shoot.

‘Tell me what?’ asked Leonie, fascinated and dying to hear every bit of their news.

‘It’s Dad…’ Abby began slowly.

Mel couldn’t bear it. She had to interrupt: ‘He’s getting married,’ she cried. ‘To Fliss! She’s gorgeous, she can ski, and we’re all invited to Colorado with them – and for the wedding too. She’s going to get us dresses made. I want a short one with high boots –’

She shut up at a quick poke in the ribs from her twin.

‘I know it sounds a bit sudden, Mum,’ said Abby delicately, wise beyond her years and knowing the news might be hard for her mother to take.

Sudden, thought Leonie, struggling to keep her eyes focused on the road. Sudden wasn’t the word. Ray was getting married again. She could barely take it in. She was here with nobody and no romantic prospects while he, the one she thought would flounder because he was so quiet, so introspective, so broken-hearted when they’d split up ten years previously, was in love and getting married.

A lump swelled in her throat and she was glad that it was Danny in the front of the car with her, unobservant Danny who was locked into his Discman and some thumping ambient beat. Watchful Abby would have noticed her mother’s eyes filling with tears right away.

‘Well,’ she managed to say, the words nearly sticking in her throat, ‘that’s great. When is the big day?’

‘January,’ said Mel wistfully, already imagining herself in groin-level flimsy silk, her long legs in knee-high boots giving middle-aged men heart attacks. ‘Fliss’s family have a cabin in Colorado and they’re going to have a winter wedding in the snow. Imagine! Us skiing. That’ll teach snotty Dervla Malone to boast about her holidays. Stupid cow thinks going to France is posh! Huh. She can kiss my ass.’

‘Melanie!’ Leonie narrowly avoided a daredevil bus driver and shot her daughter a fierce glare in the rear-view mirror. ‘If that’s the sort of language you’ve picked up on your holidays, you won’t be going anywhere. We don’t swear in our house.’

Mel flicked back her straight dark brown hair insouciantly, crinkling up her perfect little nose as she did so. ‘Lighten up,’ she muttered under her breath.

‘I heard that,’ Leonie replied tightly.

‘Aw, Mom,’ pleaded Mel, deciding to be conciliatory in case she wasn’t allowed to go to the wedding. ‘Sorry. But that’s not bad language. In Boston, people say that all the time. I mean, everyone in Ireland says “fuck” every five minutes. All Dad’s friends say so. They think we say “super-fucking-market”.’

‘Mel!’ hissed Abby.

‘We do not say that word all the time, and I don’t want to hear you say it either, got it?’ Leonie snapped, wondering why the Von Trapp family reunion wasn’t working out the way she had planned. So much for giant hugs and tearful murmurings of: ‘Mum, we missed you so much, we’ll never go away again.’

One child had become an American overnight and couldn’t wait to get back there to see her father’s fiancée, another was immersed in music and had refused to be hugged. Only dear sweet Abby seemed vaguely pleased to be home.

‘Tell me about this gorgeous fella you’re not going out with,’ Leonie requested in an attempt to get the conversation back on an even keel.

Both girls giggled. ‘Brad is his name,’ explained Abby eagerly. ‘He’s sixteen, tall, with naturally blond hair and he drives a jeep. He was nuts about Mel. He brought us both for a pizza.’

‘Brad, mm,’ said Leonie with a fake smile, her mind doing cartwheels. A sixteen-year-old with his own transport going out with her little girl! Melanie was only fourteen – a very knowing fourteen it had to be said, but still fourteen for all that. What the hell was Ray thinking of! She could have been assaulted, raped, anything!

‘His parents are Dad’s friends, and we weren’t out long,’ Abby added. ‘Dad said he’d murder Brad if we were gone more than an hour and a half, and the pizza place is just down the street.’

‘I wasn’t that interested,’ Mel said airily. ‘He’s too immature for me.’