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

She couldn’t wait to tell the girls. Leonie and Emma would be delighted, she knew it. Of course, there were things to be ironed out – like where they’d live, for a start. She knew that a lot of Felix’s work was in the UK, but with more and more films and television series being made in Ireland, there was surely a case for them living here. He could always commute on those occasions when he needed to be anywhere else and, anyway, Ireland was such a Mecca for international actors and musicians, Felix would feel right at home. He’d love it.

She felt a brief moment of regret about David James. He was a nice man, sexy really, if she thought about it. It would be easy to fall in love with him: he was a wonderful mixture of dependability and drive. A self-made man. And he certainly liked her. But he couldn’t compare to Felix, movie-star handsome and passionate. Nobody could compare to Felix, Hannah beamed. And he was all hers.

The flowers had been lovely, she thought dreamily, managing to forget how much she’d have liked even one bouquet on her thirty-seventh birthday the week before. But Felix hadn’t known about that, she thought forgivingly. Next year, it’d be different. Twenty bouquets on her birthday, she was sure of it.

Leonie put the phone down. Hannah hadn’t answered and that was the fifth time she’d tried since seven o’clock. She just hoped her friend was all right. Hannah had been so devastated yesterday, her world ripped apart by love. Or the lack of it. Normally, Hannah was the positive, optimistic one of their little group, teasing Emma when she went all maudlin about her father’s moods, cheering Leonie up by telling her the perfect man was out there for her, it was just a matter of finding him and nailing his feet to the floor. It was a shock, therefore, to see Hannah hollowed out with misery, a slave to love like the rest of us, Leonie thought gloomily. She wondered did men suffer the same pangs about love. Probably not. They wouldn’t waste valuable time thinking about whether they were hopeless specimens because they didn’t have the right partner, or worrying about whether the size of their feet might put off would-be suitors. This last bit was getting to Leonie quite a lot lately, ever since she’d gone shopping for a new pair of ‘going-out’ shoes only to discover that dainty mules didn’t exist in size nine.

Her feet had never really bothered her before: she was tall, statuesque, end of story. A big woman, in plain words. Which meant large feet. The problem was that she’d never had any trouble buying shoes up to now because she’d always stuck with low, sensible ones, not wishing to make herself look any taller.

Exposure to the glam crowd in Vail had changed this. Tall, short, built like supertankers or famine victims, they went for fierce glamour in all social situations. So Leonie had decided that she needn’t bother hiding her size in voluminous velvets and low boots. No way. It was going to be high-class elegance all the way from now on, complete with hair by the actual hairdresser, instead of by Leonie herself wearing rubber gloves to protect her hands from dye, and shoes by Cinderella’s fairy godmother. Except Cinderella shoes didn’t exist in sizes over seven. She was in love with those spindly things that looked as if you’d twist your ankles in them, sex-on-stilettos she called them. But after size seven, dainty spindly things vanished and you were left with granny shoes.

‘Would Madam like to see those in her size?’ enquired the male assistant in the last shoe shop, holding up a pair of cushioned sandals you could conceivably hike up the Himalayas in.

Not unless Madam also buys long thermal drawers, American tan support tights, a floral pinny and a zimmer frame, Leonie wanted to hiss at him. She was forty-three not eighty-three!

She came out of the shop with a pair of court shoes that looked like every other pair of court shoes in her wardrobe: plain, black and unlikely to set any man on fire. They were also a smidgen too tight, but she planned to stretch them with her trusty shoe trees.

Sighing, Leonie tried Hannah’s number one more time. It rang out.

‘Mum, are you off the phone yet? I want to ring Susie,’ yelled Mel.

‘Yeah,’ Leonie answered.

Feeling miserable on Hannah’s behalf, she went into the kitchen and started on dinner. She was half-way through chopping up bits of chicken when Danny arrived home from college, obviously in a foul temper about something. Leonie figured this out because normally he and Mel had at least ten minutes’ grace before they started killing each other on any given evening: tonight, he was barely in the door when roars could be heard from the sitting room.

‘You can’t be on the phone and be watching television at the same time,’ yelled Danny. ‘I want to watch Star Trek, not some crappy soap.’

‘Bugger off, you big pig!’ hissed Mel.

‘Bugger off yourself,’ screamed back her brother.

The advantages of paying a fortune for private education, Leonie thought grimly as the four-letter words flew. She yelled that they’d better stop fighting or they could cook their own dinner.

Moments later, Danny barged into the kitchen, having obviously lost the battle of the remote control. Mel could be tough as old boots when the need arose.

‘What’s up?’ Leonie asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said, wrenching open a cupboard and poking around inside it aggressively. Finding a packet of crisps, he slammed the door shut, slumped on a kitchen chair and crunched moodily.

Leonie knew better than to say anything else. Even when he’d been a toddler, waddling around the house with his Dinky cars, he’d been happiest with his own company, not appearing to need anyone except the family’s dog, then an elderly and sadly incontinent bitza named Otto. When he was older, that solitariness had developed into a fierce need for privacy. Once, when he was ten, he’d stopped talking to her for days because she’d cleaned out his wardrobe. Experience had taught her that giving Danny time was the best way to deal with him. Eventually, if the need to discuss the subject was strong enough, he’d tell her.

She browned the pieces of chicken in her casserole dish, chopping up button mushrooms and grabbing a handful of chives from the window-box in between stirring. The scent of sizzling meat filled the room and Penny gave up begging crisps from Danny to sit at Leonie’s feet longingly, hoping in vain that a stray bit of chicken would hop out of the dish into her drooling mouth. The casserole was finally in the oven and Leonie was measuring rice into her most invaluable piece of culinary equipment, the rice steamer, when Danny decided to spill the beans.

‘Remember that exam I had last month?’

‘Yes,’ Leonie said absently. Sounding as if you were half-listening was the best trick, she’d learned. If you became immediately intense and interested, Danny would change his mind about telling you.

‘Well, I failed it, and my tutor says if I don’t pass all the others over the next term, I’ll fail this year.’

Leonie felt her stomach lurch. Fail the year! Oh Lord, don’t let this be happening. She knew plenty of families who were at their wits’ ends with third-level students who dropped out when the going got tough. Please, please, let this not happen to Danny.

‘That sounds pretty severe,’ she said as nonchalantly as she could. ‘Is he serious about it, or is it just an attempt to scare you?’

Danny considered this. ‘Think it’s serious. Nobody else in my group failed.’

Leonie’s heart sank further. ‘How exactly did you fail?’ she asked, trying to make it sound like an innocent question and not the terrified probing of a shocked parent.

‘It was fermentation, a section I hate. I think I hate the whole fucking course.’

For once, she didn’t correct him for swearing. There was a time and a place for everything.

‘Fermentation’s all maths and I hate that. I’m good on stuff that isn’t so mathematics-related. It’s all about how the vats work and the amount of mixing and air,’ he muttered, more to himself than to his mother.

Leonie didn’t say anything about how, on a personal level, Danny was keen on fermentation. Access to lots of home-made wine was the sole reason she could see for membership of the college Microbiology Club. He’d brought home a bottle of the club wine one night. Stronger than paint stripper, it tasted roughly the same, but Danny loved it.

‘I mean, medical micro might be a better major for me…’ he was saying.

‘Danny, look,’ Leonie interrupted, ‘if you hate the course right now it’s probably because it’s not working out. Why don’t you put your head down and work hard for the next month – ask for extra tutorials, perhaps. And if you fail, we’ll look at your options then. You could always repeat the year with a view to specializing in another area, like medical micro. You liked the virology section, didn’t you?’ She knew she sounded a hundred times calmer than she felt, but giving Danny the impression that they could cope with this calmly was vital.

She patted his shoulder encouragingly. ‘Don’t let this get to you, Danny, love. There’s nothing so awful that we can’t face it realistically and without panicking. You’re an adult and you know you have to deal with whatever life throws at you. If that means more studying, then I know you’ll do it. You’re too bright to let one section of the course mess up your chances.’ She smiled and ruffled his hair, the way she used to when he was smaller. ‘I bet that tutor doesn’t have a clue what he’s up against with the Fighting Delaneys! He’ll pass out with shock when you get the best results for your year in the exams.’

Danny grinned and didn’t give out to her for messing up his hair. ‘Yeah, Mum, I’d love to see his face if I did. Tim has great notes. I’ll give him a ring and ask can I photocopy them at the weekend. I was hoping to go to Galway with the lads tomorrow morning, but I better give it a miss now. Shit.’

Leaving his empty crisp packet on the table along with the crumbs of his snack, Danny ambled off to use the phone. Leonie only hoped Mel had finished whatever conversation she’d been having, because another argument might wreck the fragile ceasefire. Feeling shattered, she sank on to the chair Danny had vacated and put her head in her hands. This was when she missed having Ray or anyone else around: when some crisis erupted and she felt hopelessly alone.

That was the difficulty of single parenthood: not worrying about childminding, fitting in doing the grocery shopping, or working out how to rob Peter to pay Paul, but the gut-clenching trauma of a crisis when there was nobody else to turn to.

Leonie always acted on instinct when it came to parenting. In this case, she’d felt that giving out to Danny would have been totally counterproductive. He’d desperately wanted to confide in her, but had been afraid she’d be furious to learn he might fail the year. So she’d decided to act very calmly, to treat him like an adult who had to take responsibility for it himself, hoping he’d actually do that.

But maybe she should have yelled at him like a fishwife, demanding to know what he’d been doing to fail the most vital part of the year and telling him he could forget about pocket money until he upped his grades.

She rubbed her temples, feeling a low-grade migraine percolating. Noise in the hall made her jump to her feet. She didn’t want to ruin the ‘let’s all be ultra laid-back’ effect by letting Danny see her moping at the kitchen table. So she was peering pointlessly into the oven at the casserole when Abby meandered into the kitchen, with her French grammar book.

‘What’s for dinner?’ Abby asked, perching on a chair and pulling her tracksuit-covered legs up under her.

‘Coq au vin with a twist – the twist being there’s no vin in it.’ Leonie rarely cooked with alcohol. When she bought a bottle of wine, she preferred to save it for those nights when she needed a restorative glass or two.

‘Yuck,’ Abby said. ‘Do I have to eat it? I’d prefer a baked potato.’

‘Yes, you do have to eat it and we’re having rice tonight, so there’s no baked potato option.’

‘Mum! Nobody should have to eat what they don’t want. Meat is murder,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘Meat has only become murder recently in your mind,’ Leonie remarked, thinking that tonight was turning into one of those restorative glass of wine nights. ‘You ate sausages on Tuesday.’

Abby sniffed. ‘Can’t I have a veggie burger?’

‘Darling, I’ve made dinner. If you wanted veggie burgers, you should have said so before I started cooking. And anyway, I can’t spend the evening making different meals for everyone. This isn’t McDonald’s.’