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

She reached Maam’s Cross and waited to turn right at the crossroads while a very modern tractor progressed steadily past her. The tractor driver waved energetically but Hannah didn’t respond because she didn’t recognize him. She’d moved away twelve years ago: it was hard to recognize people she’d been to school with since they’d all grown up and now looked totally different. She looked totally different, that was for sure.

She’d always worn her long hair tied back when she’d been growing up and her daily uniform had been sloppy cardigans and jeans. Now her hair was shoulder-length and loose, waving gently around her face. She’d abandoned the loose, shapeless clothes she’d habitually worn to hide her curvy figure and now favoured classic, fitted clothes.

Her Felix wardrobe – a selection of party-ish clothes he’d helped her buy – was another matter entirely. She wouldn’t dream of wearing any of them here. Her mother would have a fit, not to mention what everybody else’s reaction would be. Fifteen years ago, anyone stupid enough to wear a mini-skirt near the environs of Macky’s Pub got catcalls, ‘Gerrup ya girl, ya!’ and the odd cry of ‘Shameless hussy’ roared at them. Once done it was never repeated. Hannah doubted if the local young fellas had changed much. Nor the old fellas, for that matter.

After another twenty minutes on minor roads, she reached the familiar gate-posts. There hadn’t been gates there for as long as Hannah could remember: just the big concrete gate-posts with the hinges still attached, blackened with ancient rust. Her father had spent years promising to get gates but, like most of his promises, it had been unfulfilled. Hannah swung down the potholed drive and feared for her suspension.

The Campbell home, like many homes in this most beautiful and remote part of the world, was situated half a mile back from the road. The little Fiesta bounced and jiggled along the drive, past the windbreak of pine trees her grandfather had planted thirty years before, until she turned a bend and could see the house. Imposing, it wasn’t. Originally a one-storey building with two windows on each side of the front door, the house had been extended over the years the Campbells had lived in it. Now the whitewashed façade was lopsided with a bit added on to the right side, a flat-roofed extra room which housed the bathroom and back scullery. A stranger might have wondered how they’d got planning permission for a bathroom leading on to the kitchen, but when Hannah’s grandfather had been building his extension, planning permission hadn’t crossed his mind.

Beyond the house were the outbuildings: a piggery now used as an all-purpose shed and a selection of rickety little buildings where the hens and the geese used to live. Hannah’s mother hadn’t bothered with hens for years. Cleaning them out was such a nightmare and they were always getting killed by the foxes. The hens had been Hannah’s pets when she was a kid; clucking inquisitively and angling their red-feathered heads sideways when she talked back to them, the twenty or so Rhode Island Reds were better companions than the rest of her family.

It was six months since she’d been home but nothing appeared to have changed. The water barrel was still peeling away outside the corner of the house, white paint stripping off it like flakes of scurf. The patch of garden was as barren as ever, but the family’s old Ford wasn’t parked where her father always abandoned it, with a big puddle at the passenger door so anyone getting out that side would be soaked. Good. She didn’t fancy meeting him right now. If the car wasn’t there, he was out on the booze instead of sleeping off the previous day’s excesses.

Hannah could see the kitchen curtains being pulled back as she parked. She hadn’t even opened her car door before her mother was at the porch.

‘This is a surprise,’ Anna Campbell said, a small smile on her worn face. ‘I hope you brought your sleeping bag. Mary and the children are here too.’ Hannah gave her a small peck on the cheek. Mary was Hannah’s cousin and she wondered briefly why Mary had rolled up here for Christmas. Her mother was looking very tired. But then, Anna had been looking tired for years. They looked alike, mother and daughter. Both had the same oval-shaped face, the same toffee-coloured eyes and the same dark hair that curled wildly and refused to be tamed with hairdryer or spray.

But while Hannah’s lush, high-cheekboned face had an inner light and her beautifully plump mouth was often curved up in amusement, her mother’s face was wary and worn. Her bone structure was clearly visible under the thin skin.

Anna Campbell wore no make-up except for a bit of lipstick when she was going out and the brown eyes under strong, never-plucked eyebrows were hard. She was thinner too, from a lifetime of having to work hard to keep her family fed and from the cigarettes she could not do without. That there wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on Anna’s body had nothing to do with any exercise plan Jane Fonda had come up with. Her daily life was a hymn to the dual efforts of hard work and nicotine. Hannah knew that her mother had to walk to McGurk’s supermarket up the valley most of the time because her father had taken the car and ended up sleeping the booze off in the back seat up a boreen somewhere, leaving the family carless and clueless about his whereabouts. But they were used to that. Keeping their elderly house clean, tidy and damp-free was a job for more than one person and the years of doing it on her own had taken their toll.

Today, in old navy cords and a faded blue print blouse under a bottle green hand-knitted cardigan, Anna looked older than her sixty-two years.

‘Give me your things,’ she said now, reaching into the car and effortlessly pulling out Hannah’s suitcase with strong arms. ‘Mary said she needed somewhere she and the kids could come for a couple of nights. She wouldn’t say why, but Jackie lost his job in the factory and I bet he’s taking it out on her, screaming and roaring all the time. She says she had to get away and I didn’t want to interrogate her.’

And she came here? Hannah wanted to ask incredulously. Christmas in a damp old house in the wilds with a drunken eejit was hardly ideal for a woman and two small children, but then again, maybe it was better than spending the holiday with Mary’s husband, Jackie, whom Hannah reckoned was living evidence of the missing link between humans and apes. She knew that Mary Wynne, her mother’s niece who lived in a pretty bungalow outside Galway, had nowhere else to go with her two small kids. Her parents were dead and her brother lived in the UK.

‘How did they get here?’ asked Hannah, scooping up the rest of her belongings from the car.

‘She got a lift. She says she’s going to leave him. About time too. That man can’t hold down a job for more than six months without getting the sack. He’d just been promoted too, but he had to go and screw it up. He’s an amadán,’ she said, using the Gaelic word for fool.

Hannah said nothing. It struck her as surreal sometimes that her mother was the emotional mainstay of her female friends and relatives, advising wisely on matters of bad husbands, when her own spouse was a raging alcoholic who hadn’t earned an honest penny in years. Hannah was relieved that, for all his addiction to booze, Willie Campbell had only ever hit his wife in a once, never-to-be-forgotten incident. Bad poteen, he’d said cravenly in his defence when Anna was in hospital having her arm plastered up. Her mother would have thrown him out instantly if he’d been violent, Hannah knew. It was a pity that he wasn’t aggressive when drunk. At least then she’d have dumped him.

Jackie Wynne certainly wasn’t violent but Hannah found him intensely irritating. As for his devotion to football, it’d drive a sane person mad. If his team lost a match, he was inconsolable. Hannah had long ago decided that, if she’d been married to him, she’d have walked out years before. She couldn’t handle the unreliability.

‘Mary insists she’s going to go back to work as well. I don’t know how she’ll manage with the children.’ Anna sighed. ‘Don’t say anything to her. She gets so embarrassed by Jackie and, well, you know she’s always looked up to you and thought you had your life sorted out, Hannah. She’ll be mortified that you’ll know she had to leave him at Christmas. If you read about something like that in the papers, you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Of course I won’t say anything,’ Hannah said, silently thinking that if Mary knew precisely how well Hannah had sorted out her life, she wouldn’t feel in the slightest bit embarrassed by her own predicament. They were the same age, although they’d never been close. At least Mary had two kids she adored out of her mess of a marriage. All Hannah had as proof of her thirty-seven years on the planet were a string of failed romances and a rapidly developing sense of cynicism. Oh yes, and a disgruntled boss because she’d been rude to him the night before. Hannah still felt guilty over poor David.

There was one advantage in Mary’s being there: nobody would be that interested in details of Hannah’s abortive Christmas plans when they could be discussing what a bastard Jackie was and what sort of lawyer Mary needed to take him for every penny he didn’t have.

The huge kitchen was the heart of the Campbells’ house. Anna still loved floral prints and the walls and the big armchairs were all covered in a variety of rosy patterns, the walls blue and yellow, the armchairs pink and gold and awash with cushions. A profusion of potted plants stood on all surfaces as proof of Anna’s green fingers.

It was all very pretty for a house that looked so cold and lacking in comfort from the outside. Hannah had long since worked out that her mother needed her flowery nest to help her cope with the rest of her life, which was more than a little bleak.

The house was warm after the icy grip of the Atlantic breeze. Curled up on an armchair beside the big cream stove that heated the entire house, was Mary, pretending to read a magazine. Her mouth wobbled when she saw Hannah, who went over and gave her a hug.

‘Hannah, did your mother tell you?’ said Mary tremulously, big baby-blue eyes filling with tears.

‘A bit,’ lied Hannah, perching on the edge of the chair, pleased to see that misery hadn’t ruined Mary’s looks. She was still very attractive with her short curly dark hair, rosy, freckled cheeks and eyes like saucers fringed with long lashes clogged with mascara.

Two little girls who were the spitting image of their mother erupted into the room from the spare bedroom, dressed in grown-up clothes that trailed clumsily after them. The younger one, who had to be about four, Hannah reckoned, was wearing purple eyeshadow and a splash of bright lipstick all over her rosebud mouth.

‘Look at me, Mummy!’ she squealed happily. ‘I’m going to the dance.’ She twirled and nearly fell over in her trailing outfit.

‘Me too,’ said the older one, whom Hannah remembered was nearly six and who was wearing Anna’s old black weddings-and-funerals hat with the grey feathers curling limply down instead of jauntily up the way they had when it had first been purchased twenty years ago.

‘Courtney and Krystle, don’t you remember your Auntie Hannah?’ Mary said.

Whatever had happened at home didn’t seem to have left any lasting impression on the two children, Hannah decided hours later, when they’d played dressing-up games for hours, followed by half an hour of stories from a big blue book of fairytales. They loved Hannah and fought over who got to sit on her lap in front of the fire as she read to them about Cinderella’s adventures and how she married the prince but got a wonderful job just so she could keep her independence. Hannah was determined that her fairy stories should have a modern, realistic twist.

‘You’re great with children,’ said Mary fondly. She seemed much cheerier after another pot of tea and a slice of Anna’s fruitcake.

Hannah grinned at her. ‘Nobody’s ever said that to me before.’

By seven, the two girls were finally fast asleep in Anna’s bed and Hannah felt worn out. Driving all the way from Dublin and playing with two energetic children had exhausted her. But Mary didn’t appear tired at all. Or even very emotional, for that matter.

‘Will we drive up to the pub for a quick drink?’ she asked Hannah.

‘What about the girls?’ Hannah asked in surprise.

‘I’ll look after them,’ Anna said. ‘I’ve never set foot in that pub all my life and I’m not going to start now. I’ll put the camp-bed up in the spare bedroom for the girls. We can move them from my bed later. I didn’t air the bed in your old room, Hannah, so I’ll do it now. You two go off and enjoy yourselves for an hour.’

Hannah shrugged. It was obvious that Mary wanted to tell her all the grisly details of the break-up with Jackie. But she felt too tired of driving to take the car out and, besides, with the stringent drink-driving laws, she wouldn’t be able to have even one drink if she brought the car.

‘Let’s walk,’ she said. ‘It’s only a mile and it’s stopped raining.’

She pulled on a pair of old flat boots of her mother’s and, with a raincoat on, just in case, they set off up the drive.

‘The pub’ll be crowded, I suppose,’ Mary said, sounding remarkably enthusiastic for someone who was theoretically fleeing from misery. She’d painted on another coat of mascara and her lips gleamed with glossy pink lipstick.

‘Always is on Christmas Eve,’ smiled Hannah. ‘You’d swear nobody was going to get a drink all Christmas the way they go mad for it this night.’

Hannah was welcomed into the pub with delight, which was just as well, because otherwise, they’d never have got a seat in the crowded lounge. They refused all the kind offers of drinks and ordered their own, Mary deciding she needed to visit the loo before their glasses of Guinness had arrived. Hannah rarely drank the black stuff any more, but going home made her long for the bittersweet taste.

‘Won’t be a minute,’ Mary said cheerfully, slipping into the crowd.

A lively session was starting up in the corner beside the fire. Several people pushed an elderly man to the front and roared at him to take down the fiddle from its place on the wall and play.

‘I’ve not a note in my head,’ said the old man sweetly as he took the fiddle and began to expertly play a lively foot-tapping tune. The bar exploded into roars of laughter and a few of the hardier souls started dancing a jig in the centre of the room, amazingly not cannoning into each other although they were very drunk.

Hannah sat back in her seat and tapped her feet to the rhythm, keeping an eye out for Mary. She was surprised to see her cousin emerging not from the loo but from the left-hand side of the bar where the telephone was. Mary had a glow on her rosy face as she wound her way over to Hannah.

‘Why didn’t you use the phone at home?’ Hannah asked, puzzled.

Mary went brick red. ‘I didn’t feel as if I could use Auntie Anna’s phone,’ she said shamefacedly.

‘Why? You’re not going back to Jackie, are you?’