Best of Friends

After another five minutes of waiting for Tom to come up and change, Abby marched downstairs. She wasn’t going to say anything but she was ready and it was time they were out of the door.

Tom and Jess were in the kitchen together, laughing at some shared joke.

‘Dad, you old hippie,’ Jess was saying fondly. She had her chair pushed back and her feet up on another, black-stockinged legs stretched out comfortably. ‘Go off and listen to your old Jethro Tull records, right? You are never going to be cool.’

‘I can watch MTV with the best of them,’ Tom retorted mildly. He gave his daughter a pretend slap on the wrist. ‘I was just saying I like that Chad Kruger song. Don’t send me into the old people’s home just yet.’

‘Next week, then,’ grinned Jess. ‘Shooo. I’ve got chemistry homework and you’ve got some posh do to go to.’

Tom ruffled Jess’s hair. Jess didn’t move her head away. She smiled at her father.

Abby watched them silently, half pleased that they got on so well, half jealous that she no longer shared that same easy relationship with either of them. It was as if Jess and Tom were a tight little family unit and she was out in the cold.

Selina Carson slid through the throng with all the practised ease of someone who could throw a party for three hundred people in her sleep. As publicity director of Beech Productions, Selina knew better than anyone how to stretch budgets and coax favours out of people. Without her help, the tenth anniversary party would be above a grubby pub with sausages and chips to eat and one free glass of limp champagne each. Thanks to her, it was being held in a divinely proportioned new gallery with lots of outrageous modern art on the walls, including a modern version of Ingres’s voluptuous ladies of the harem, which was being ogled by many of the male guests when they thought nobody was looking.

The wine was good (‘Think of the publicity, darling!’ she’d said to the beleaguered wine importer she normally rang when organising parties) and clearly the dim sum were going down a treat. She just hoped that nobody got food poisoning, because the caterers were new and scarily cheap. Still, you had to economise somewhere.

‘Abby, darling, how lovely to see you. And Tom.’

Selina was relieved to see Abby, as she was running out of celebrities to introduce to the big advertisers and the company’s backers there tonight. Abby would be the perfect person to feed into the slightly bored groups and make them feel like movers and shakers. Even better, Selina could quietly explain this to Abby and Abby would know just what to do. She was a professional down to her fingertips, a direct result, Selina thought, of being that touch older when fame hit.

‘Your hair’s fabulous.’

‘Thanks, Selina.’ Abby grinned. She never entirely believed it when people complimented her, a trait she’d unknowingly passed on to her daughter. They were just being nice, she felt. Didn’t they know she was just a forty-something housewife who’d struck it lucky?

‘And, Tom, you look marvellous. Now, Abby…’ Selina grasped her star’s shoulder, whispered in her ear briefly, and then steered her round to a small group of men in suits. ‘Gentlemen, you must meet Abby Barton.’

A cigar-chomping advertising mogul, who was fed up with having to make small talk to lesser beings, grabbed Abby’s hand and shook it firmly.

‘Lovely to meet you. My wife adores your show,’ he said.

‘How nice of you to say so,’ cried Abby. Selina treated this like work but it wasn’t at all. People were really so sweet.

Duty done, Selina grabbed Tom’s arm and led him to the back of the gallery where small pockets of people stood on the edge of the crowd. To the left stood two very young women who were talking quietly together but eyeing the group as though they longed to be part of it but were too shy to approach.

‘Do me a huge favour and talk to those two, will you?’ Selina begged. ‘The red-haired one is the MD’s niece. She’s coming in to work as an assistant next week but she doesn’t know anyone yet and he wants me to keep an eye on her.’

‘They’ll want real TV people.’ Tom grinned lazily down at Selina. ‘They’ll be bored with a dull old teacher.’

‘Stop fishing for compliments,’ Selina scolded, thinking how lucky Abby Barton was. With his ruffled greying hair, angular face and eyes like deep-set pools of midnight black ink, Tom Barton definitely did not fit the mould of a dull old teacher. Just because he was utterly without vanity and clearly never bothered about what he wore, it didn’t mean that he wasn’t an attractive man. There was, she thought, something sexy about all that intense brain power, and his other-worldliness reminded Selina of a patrician Knight of the Round Table, always choosing the hard path because suffering was nobler. Tom made such a change from the thrusting young things who worked in television and who wore much better suits than Tom’s shabby grey one, but who could only talk about their new cars or their high-tech mobile phones. Tom could blind you with brilliance over the fall of the Byzantine Empire – Selina knew; she had hung on every word of that particular conversation, and, strangely, she’d never been interested in history before. He’d definitely grown better looking with age too. Lucky Tom. No, Selina corrected herself, lucky Abby.

She’d bet he was a darling at home. Those gentlemanly types were always rushing to open doors and carry in the shopping for you. Selina was unattached and had to drag her own shopping in from the car, more’s the pity.

For three-quarters of an hour, Tom and Abby didn’t catch sight of each other. Abby charmed her way through several groups of people, aware that her husband would be perfectly happy on his own. Tom said that years of suffering through parent-teacher nights meant there was no social occasion on which he was stuck for words.

It was nearly nine when Abby escaped from the final group, all of whom were nicely merry and already planning where they’d go next. She herself had stopped after one small glass of wine – it was her turn to drive home. She peered round the room and finally spotted Tom in a corner with two attractive young women. Twenty-somethings, dolled up in the high-street version of the designer suede skirt and cashmere knit that Abby was wearing.

The three of them certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves and were laughing as though they’d found more to talk about than television ratings and tax breaks for production companies. The blonde was nearly as tall as Tom and, from Abby’s viewpoint, she was definitely giving him the come-on, angling her skinny pelvis towards him, smiling, even flicking her hair coquettishly.

Abby felt the mildest tinge of irritation. Not that she was worried about Tom – heavens no. Tom was quite genuinely immune to flirting. If offered a choice between a discussion on the intellectual concept of school league tables or a torrid session in bed with a supermodel, he’d plump for the discussion. But that girl should know better. If she got any closer to Tom, she’d be on top of him.

‘Hello,’ Abby said breezily, and slipped an arm through her husband’s. ‘Ready to go yet?’

‘Oh, you can’t go now,’ wailed the blonde, her pretty face assuming a child-like petulance. ‘We’re having such a nice time. Nobody ever explained things to me in school like Tom can. He’s telling us all about girls in harems like in that picture over there.’

Abby wondered who she was. Somebody’s model girlfriend? A would-be TV star?

‘My wife says we have to go and we have to go,’ Tom replied, giving the blonde a warm smile.

Abby’s irritation level ratcheted up another notch. Tom made it sound as if she was a martinet dragging him away from fun. All she needed was a rolling pin to hit him over the head and she’d be perfectly in character.

‘Don’t let me tear you away, darling,’ she said, with heavy emphasis on the ‘darling’.

‘Yes, stay a bit longer,’ begged the blonde leggy section of his audience. ‘Just for another drink?’

‘Yes, do,’ said the other girl.

Tom shot a glance at his wife. His weakness was a captive audience.

‘Of course, stay,’ Abby said easily, her professional mask firmly in place. ‘I have lots of people to talk to, anyhow. I just thought we should get home to Jess before too long. Our daughter,’ she explained politely to the blonde.

Bright-faced, she surged back into the party and found Selina.

‘Anyone else you want me to talk to?’ she asked.

‘You look very flushed, Abby,’ said Selina in surprise. ‘Are you all right?’

The journey home was silent. Abby, glad to have the diversion of driving, stared grimly at the road and told herself that she was overreacting. Tom had simply been polite. Selina had asked him to talk to the girls, he’d explained.

All he’d been doing was enjoying a relaxing glass of wine after a long day, Abby thought. Nothing more. And it was probably nice to have people listen to him when he talked: he was always saying that the pupils in the boys’ school where he worked were so focused on exams that they only wanted to hear things they could use for the Junior or Leaving Certs.

‘I’m tired,’ he said, through a Grand Canyon of a yawn, without bothering to put his hand over his mouth. ‘Those duty parties are always exhausting.’

Abby’s anger resurfaced and she had to bite her lip so she wouldn’t point out that he hadn’t seemed in the least bit exhausted earlier. ‘Mmm,’ was all she said.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got a headache.’ And that was more or less true, she thought. Irritation always gave her a headache because she clenched her jaw so tightly.

‘Oh.’ With that, Tom leaned back against his headrest and closed his eyes. He could sleep anywhere.

Abby gripped the steering wheel tightly and drove on into the night, thinking of all the smart remarks she should have made to put the blonde twenty-something bimbo in her box. If only Tom still gave her that kind of attention.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_4a7416ba-8040-5481-b7b7-20dce70b2cbd)

The weekend whizzed past with the whole family resolutely doing their own things. Jess spent most of Saturday in her room revising, then Abby dropped her off at Steph’s to get ready for their friend’s party. Abby had given permission for Jess to stay the night at Steph’s, and she couldn’t very well argue when Steph’s mother phoned on Sunday to say the family were going out to lunch and they’d love to have Jess along.

Tom was caught up in rehearsals for the school drama group’s play all day Saturday and didn’t get home until late. On Sunday, he told Abby he’d have to spend the entire day marking homework, and he positioned himself at the kitchen table, his papers spread in front of him and a solemn look on his face. Feeling strangely abandoned, Abby retired to the living room with the papers and ended up dozing off in front of the television, only waking up later that evening when Jess slammed the front door.