Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming

There wasn’t any real need for models to be that thin. People weren’t stupid, they could work out what the clothes looked like on real women. Apart from the ones who’d bought into the whole thin-is-fabulous mental state, most of the people buying the clothes were real women, anyway. It would be handy to see how the garments moved and flared on similar figures, instead of on six-foot beauties who wore size zero.

Even the beauties couldn’t stay that thin for ever, which was how girls like Shawnee ended up in hospital beds on heart monitors.

Izzie felt ashamed when she thought about the SilverWebb Agency she and Carla had been so excited about. She’d lost that excitement in the last few months because of being involved with Joe.

She bet he hadn’t stopped improving his business. But she’d done that dumb woman thing of taking her eye off every single ball while she was with him. She’d also neglected her friends: she hadn’t been to see Sorcha for months, even though Sorcha had been ringing her up, begging her to visit.

Naturally, Izzie hadn’t been able to explain why she couldn’t come.

‘Just busy at work,’ she’d said.

‘Come on,’ Sorcha had groaned, ‘you can’t be busy all of the time. At this rate, you ought to own the company by now – or do they own you?’

And Izzie had promised to make the trip to Washington sometime in the future, but not just yet, because she couldn’t very well tell her old friend that she didn’t want to leave New York in case she missed spending time with her not-really-married lover.

Then there were Laura and Jacob, friends from yogalates. The three of them had been friends for ages. Laura and Jacob had shared dating stories for years until one day they’d looked at each other in a different way and, kapow – cupid’s arrow skewered them. They’d got married the previous Christmas and Izzie was ashamed to realise that she had only seen them once since.

Joe Hansen had taken over her life and she had nothing to show for it. Tish was another Joe casualty. How long had it been since Izzie had dropped in to see her and her new baby?

She was going to change, she decided. When she got back home, she’d phone all the people she’d neglected. The Joe days were over.

Dear Lola, I’m so sorry to hear about Shawnee. That’s truly terrible. It’s the one thing I really hate about this industry and I’ve hated it for a long time. It makes you wonder what’s going on when someone like Shawnee looks in the mirror and hates what she sees. I know we all do our best to take care of the girls we work with, but it’s a big world out there and we can’t protect them from that, unless we try and change that world. I’d love to talk to you about it sometime when I get back to New York.

She dared not say any more; this email was being sent to the office, after all.

But it’s wrong that someone as beautiful as Shawnee thinks she’s not good enough.

It makes you wonder what’s going on in our world when girls like her look in the mirror and hate what they see. She shouldn’t hate what she sees.

Things aren’t good here. My grandmother had a stroke and still hasn’t recovered. It’s a waiting game now and the longer she stays in a coma, the less chance there is of her coming out of it without neurological damage. I guess I’m saying goodbye to her.

Izzie wiped away the wetness that suddenly came to her eyes.

But I was thinking, before I wrote this, that at least Gran has lived her life. She’s done so much, not like poor Shawnee. Talk soon, Izzie.

Izzie wasn’t entirely sure of everything her grandmother had done, but she knew it had been a packed life. A person didn’t get the wisdom Gran had without having seen and understood a huge amount. Anneliese had mentioned that Jodi, the Australian girl, had offered to find out who Jamie was. Maybe Izzie should talk to her too.

‘Everything happens for a reason,’ Gran used to say. She’d said it when Izzie missed out on a job in London and decided it was time to go to the States.

Perhaps Gran had called out the name ‘Jamie’ so that Izzie would look into her past and learn something from it. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Looking into her grandmother’s past would be as near as she could get to actually talking to darling Gran. Her brief moment of lucidity had to be a message to them all.

And this email from Lola was another.

Remember your dreams, was what it said. Before Joe, she’d had a dream about starting an agency where girls wouldn’t have to starve themselves like poor Shawnee in order to be successful.

Perfect-NY was a good and reputable agency. They had never condoned the practice of checking how skinny girls were by measuring their fingers. It worked better than measuring wrists, because some people were big boned; but fingers gave a pretty accurate indication of whether someone was thin or not.

Reputable agencies didn’t do things like that. Nobody wanted sick models on their books and most of the companies had really good relationships with their models, but the industry itself had a dark, cruelly commercial heart that was oblivious to kindness.

If the darkness was to be driven out, the battle would have to be fought from inside the industry. SilverWebb could do it, Izzie hoped. But first, she had to let go of Perfect-NY. And Joe Hansen.

TWELVE (#ulink_101561ec-9e1f-520c-9b17-4fd2f3b5495e)

Anneliese had changed the sheets in the spare bedroom for Beth and Marcus. She’d tidied and polished, and had even roused herself enough to buy fresh flowers for the house to lift the place somewhat. There was only one big housekeeping screw-up and that was that Beth’s father no longer lived there.

Anneliese hadn’t the energy to practise telling her daughter the news. Goodness knows, she’d tried.

Darling Beth, your father and I have decided…

That wouldn’t work because it wasn’t true.

She hadn’t decided anything, it had been decided for her. Try as she might, she couldn’t put a Beth-friendly spin on this one.

Your father dumped me after having an affair with my so-called best friend sounded too like a television true-life confession. All she needed was a studio audience and an eager host with a microphone and a faux-worried manner and her spiel would be perfect. So no, that wouldn’t work either.

Blunt was going to be the only answer. When Beth arrived, eager to see them, her father’s absence would start a conversation rolling. Anneliese wished Edward was the sort of man who’d be able to tell their daughter the news, but she knew he wasn’t. All the difficult talks in their house had been left to his wife.

Beth and Marcus were due in Tamarin at lunchtime, so Anneliese had cold chicken and salad ready for them and had tried to buoy herself up to deal with her daughter’s tears.

But when she heard Beth’s key in the door a little after one o’clock, Anneliese wished she could run away.

Why hadn’t bloody Edward found the courage to phone his daughter and tell her…?

‘Mum!’

Beth stood in the kitchen doorway, her dark hair framing her face, and Anneliese instantly realised that her daughter knew.

‘Dad told me this morning,’ Beth said.

‘Ah,’ Anneliese replied flatly. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I wanted to tell you and I didn’t know how.’

‘Mum, this happened ten days ago and you never said anything. Why didn’t you tell me when you rang to say Lily was in hospital?’

Anneliese had no answer. Fear, she supposed: fear of falling apart when she told Beth the news and fear that if she began to fall apart, she wouldn’t stop. For a woman who’d tried to face life head on, this avoidance tactic felt strange but also, weirdly, like the only option.

Beth was still raging on. ‘If I hadn’t rung on his mobile this morning asking if he wanted anything from Dublin before we came, I still wouldn’t know. I found out by fluke! Dad assumed I knew and hadn’t been phoning him on purpose. Did you ever plan on telling me? You’re my parents, I love you. I could have come, you needed me, you both needed me, what with Lily being sick and everything.’

Anneliese smiled, Beth had always been a fair person. Even now, in the midst of her anger, she was gently telling her mother that she loved her dad too, that she wouldn’t be a pawn in any game between them.

‘Don’t worry,’ Anneliese said, ‘there are no sides, Beth, you know us better than that. There’s no battle, no fight for your feelings. It’s not the sort of news you can say over the phone, is it?’

‘Of course it is. You could have told me when you phoned about Lily being sick, couldn’t you?’ Beth demanded. ‘I would have come right down.’

Anneliese was about to say how she hadn’t wanted to worry Beth, but Beth was too angry now and interrupted her.

‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you’d split up. You’re my parents, I have a right to know. You always think I’m weak and stupid, that I’m not able to cope with stuff and you can’t rely on me.’

She looked so furious that Anneliese reeled back in shock.