Best of Friends (17 page)

“Or ten past …” Greg said.

The room was dark when Erin woke up and for a few scary seconds she couldn’t remember where she was. Then she heard Greg’s steady breathing beside her and she remembered. She still felt tired after their climb but mentally alert. Lying in the dark, she let the forbidden memories fill her mind.

It had all happened because Erin wanted money for her eighteenth birthday. She wanted money because she yearned to travel, to see the world, and if she got enough cash together to buy a round-the-world ticket, she could work her way across the globe.

Mum was anxious about giving Erin cold cash as a gift. “I wish you wanted a proper present and not money,” she said sadly. “With Kerry and Shan—” She stopped herself just in time. She’d been about to say Shannon, who was Erin’s older sister—not that Erin really knew her, and Mum found it difficult to talk about her.

Shannon had left home to live abroad when Erin had been a baby and there was nothing but the odd postcard home to remind people she was still alive. Erin hated Shannon for what she’d done to Mum. Kerry said Shannon was a selfish bitch who’d never cared who she’d hurt and that she’d turned Mum’s hair grey overnight.

“What did you get Kerry when she was eighteen?” Erin asked brightly, determined to get her mother over the pain of thinking of Shannon.

“Earrings, those gold and opal ones she wears for good. Your father and I would have liked to get you something you could have for ever,” Mum said. “Money is soon forgotten, Erin.”

“I know, Mum,” Erin hugged her mother, “but I want to build up memories I can have for ever, and if everyone gives me cash, I can. There are so many places I want to see—the Far East, Australia, America …” There was a far-off look in her amber eyes and her mother sighed because she knew that wanderlust was in Erin’s blood, just as it had been in Shannon’s.

The family had held a small party in an upstairs room of a local pub and it had been a huge success. Toasts had been made, many pints had been consumed and Erin had drunk her first legal vodka and tonic.

She did get cash for her birthday—not enough for a round-the-world ticket, but enough to book a trip abroad. She didn’t know where she wanted to go, just somewhere. She’d never been abroad and the family visit to a caravan park every other year had been fun but not what you’d call exotic. No, abroad, with all its exciting connotations, was what she wanted. Australia was too far and would cost a fortune, but India … Erin was fascinated by India and could just see herself there, backpacking and sleeping in shabby hostels, being one of the people. And she wouldn’t get sick, no way. She had the constitution of an ox, as Mum used to say.

There was lots to plan for her trip, but the first thing was to get a passport. She’d collected a form, but the paperwork was interminable. She had to get photos signed by the police and an official copy of her birth certificate—not a photocopy, but a real one. She’d asked Mum for that and there she ran into a problem. Mum, who kept all the family documents in a shabby accordion file in her and Dad’s room, said she’d look and then came back and said she couldn’t find it.

Undaunted, Erin sent off for it.

A couple of weeks after her party, the certificate arrived. Erin shuffled downstairs in her Snoopy T-shirt and knickers and picked the post off the hall carpet. She had the house to herself, as Dad and Kerry were at work and Mum had gone shopping, popping in to Erin’s room on the way to remind her that she couldn’t lie in bed like a big slug all day.

In the kitchen, Erin slopped cornflakes into a bowl and looked at the post. None of it was ever for her but today was an exception. “Ms. Erin Flynn” was typed at the top of an official-looking envelope. She ripped it open and for a minute thought they’d sent the wrong certificate. The name was hers all right but the rest of it made no sense. Under “Mother” was written “Shannon Flynn,” and that couldn’t be right, and under “Father” was the word “Unknown.” The date was fine and everything, but the civil service people had clearly mixed it up. Absently, Erin ate some more cornflakes, still staring at this confusing bit of paper. And then the truth clicked in her head, like those magic eye puzzles she’d always found mystifying until one day she learned how to “see” them. The form wasn’t wrong. Shannon, whom she’d always thought was her mysteriously absent sister, was actually her mother. Kerry wasn’t her sister but her aunt, and Mum and Dad weren’t her parents. They were her mother’s parents. Her grandparents. Granny and Grand-dad not Mum and Dad. It was all such a shock.

But as she sat there, dumbfounded, she realised that by far the most disturbing part was the fact that Mum had lied to her. Mum was the most trustworthy person in Erin’s world. The first time Erin’s heart had been broken by a boy from her class, Mum had held her close and promised that it would feel better soon. And Erin had believed her, even though her heart was breaking, because her mother had never lied to her. Until now. Her spoon clattered onto the linoleum but Erin didn’t bother to pick it up. No, she’d been lying before now. Mum had been lying to her for all Erin’s life.

She ran upstairs and found the suitcase on the top of her parents’ big 1930s wardrobe. It was heavy, and dust bunnies danced off the top as she hauled it down. Inside were old clothes, including a huge brown coat she remembered her father wearing for years, and a couple of old shirt boxes, their former bright blue faded with age. The first contained cards and mementoes belonging to Mum. Erin couldn’t bring herself to look through them in case she found her own childish home-made cards, painstakingly painted and glittered in school.

The second box held a few documents of the sort that were usually kept in the big accordion file. There was the original of the birth certificate Erin had just been sent, much-folded, and a few letters with photos lying in between the pages. Shannon, who’d been so absent in the family album, was the star here. Now Erin could see the resemblance between her and her mother. Both had the same sheet of coppery hair and the same smile, although Shannon’s eyes looked blue like Kerry’s and Mum’s. Erin must have got her eyes from her father, whoever he was. The sense of outrage at not knowing her mother or her father hit her forcibly. How could Mum have never told her the truth about her birth? Did Kerry know too? Erin sat among the photos and letters from her real mother and brooded on lies and deceit. Then she gathered together her papers and her newly acquired cheque book and left the house.

By the late afternoon, when Erin returned, Kerry was home from work and Mum was in the kitchen mashing potatoes for shepherd’s pie.

“Hello, love. Where have you been all day?” called Mum when she heard Erin’s familiar tread on the stairs.

Erin didn’t answer. She didn’t trust herself to speak. In her room, she threw down the papers she’d picked up from the au pair agency, along with the plane ticket to Amsterdam. The flight was in three days but Erin didn’t plan on waiting at 78 Carnsfort Terrace until then. She’d pick up her passport at the passport office the following day, a privilege that came from having pleaded an emergency situation and showing the official her plane ticket, and she’d asked her friend Mo, who’d just moved into a cramped flat in Smithfield with two other girls, if she could bunk down with her until it was time to leave the country. Packing wouldn’t take long. All she had to do now was confront her mother and Kerry about why they’d never told her the truth.

The kitchen smelled familiar: the scent of good food mixed with the comforting tang of the lemon cleaner Mum used diligently. Kerry was sitting at the kitchen table, shoes off and her feet up on a chair as she read the evening paper. Mum had laid the table for dinner and was now relaxing in her chair with a cup of tea, sorting out the receipts in her purse.

“Hello, lazy bones. What did you do today while I was working my fingers to the bone?” asked Kerry, not raising her eyes from an article about celebrity diets.

In reply, Erin dropped her passport office receipt onto the table.

“What’s that?” asked Kerry, scanning the document. “You applied for your passport?”

She didn’t get it, Erin realised. But Mum did. Her mother’s eyes locked with Erin’s and anxiety was written all over her face.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Erin asked quietly.

“Tell you what?” demanded Kerry, finally looking up.

“Tell me that Shannon was my mother.”

“Oh.” Kerry swung her feet to the floor. So she
did
know, Erin realised, and that realisation made her even angrier. Kerry knew but she, the person it most affected, didn’t.

“I had to send away for my birth certificate.” Erin was caustic. “You said it was lost,” she said accusingly to her mother. “You knew I’d find out, so why couldn’t you tell me the truth?”

“Erin, stop making it such a big deal,” said Kerry, going to the fridge and peering in to see if there was anything there to stave off the hunger pangs until dinner.

“Stop making it such a big deal?” said Erin incredulously. “It’s not big, it’s huge. It’s the biggest secret of my life and you all knew. Have you nothing to say about it?” she asked Mum, who’d stayed silent.

Mum shook her head wordlessly.

“It’s not her fault,” snapped Kerry, temper rising. “Your bloody mother created all the hassle in the first place by screwing around and getting pregnant—”

“Don’t blame her!” shrieked Erin. “Don’t you bloody dare. You could have told me and I’d have found her. I was her child and you all kept if from me. How fucking dare you? What gave you all the right to act as God and only tell me what you wanted?”

Her grandmother sat quietly at the table, holding her head in her hands as if to fend off the hurtful words.

“Talk to me, Mum,” yelled Erin. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

Her grandmother looked up at Erin’s fiery, hurt face. “I don’t know what to say, love. I’m so sorry we hurt you but there never seemed to be a right time to tell you when you were small, and then you grew up so fast and the chance had passed.” She reached out a tired, work-worn hand and beckoned for Erin to take it. But Erin stared stonily at her, refusing the gesture of reconciliation.

“That’s rubbish. You knew I’d find out one day.”

Her grandmother’s eyes filled with tears. “I knew you would but I hoped you’d be able to understand …”

“Understand what? That you lied to me about the most important thing in my life?”

Her grandmother had started crying then and Kerry had lost her temper, yelling that everyone assumed Erin knew, and how the hell could she blame anyone else for her stupidity. Still Mum cried and Erin couldn’t bear her tears but couldn’t comfort her either. She felt so betrayed that she had no comfort left in her for anyone else.

She’d packed up and left, taking only her clothes and a few photos. Everything else—her gold bracelet she’d been given by Mum and Dad for her Confirmation, the precious earrings Kerry had given her years before when her sister got her first full-time job—she left on the dusty dressing table.

For three days, she stayed with Mo, half hoping someone from the family would find her, half hoping they wouldn’t. Then she got on a plane. After six months travelling the world, working her way through bars and restaurants, she ended up working as an au pair to an American family in Greece when their own au pair left suddenly. When they went home to Boston, she went too.

A gentle knocking at the door woke Greg. “What the … ?” He sat up, his eyes sleep-filled, his cropped dark hair flattened against his skull from where his head had lain on the pillow.

The door opened a fraction and a pair of blue eyes peeked in. “Do you want your bed turned down?” said a voice.

“No, thanks,” said Greg. He couldn’t see anything except the light coming in through the slightly opened door. “What time is it?”

“Ten to seven.” The door shut quietly and Greg fumbled for the bedside light.

“We’ve booked a table for seven,” he said, climbing out of bed. “We should get ready.”

Erin sat up in the bed, her hair in the same through-a-bush-backwards condition as Greg’s. She felt tired now and had no inclination to get up and dress for dinner. She lay down again and felt the old familiar misery envelop her. She and Greg should have stayed in Chicago. When she was there, she didn’t think about her family in the same way. Well, she thought about them, but she could deal with the pain because of the distance. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe the difference was in her—because she certainly felt unlike her usual self here. She didn’t want to be here anymore. She wanted to be home. But then, where was home?

nine

H
ome was a decidedly miserable place for the Barton family. By the end of the first week in April, with the Easter holidays in sight, Abby decided she must put the arguments of the past weeks behind her and do her best to raise everyone’s spirits. Unfortunately, the emotional barometer in Lyonnais still sat firmly at “mostly cloudy÷storms expected.”

Jess was monosyllabic, despite Abby’s attempts to start mother-daughter chats.

“I know you’re stressed about school, Jess, love,” Abby said carefully, afraid she’d say the wrong thing, “but the exams will pass. Your dad and I don’t want you to feel under any huge pressure, right? We want you to do well for your sake but we don’t want you to crack up over it.”

Jess had looked at her mother with an expression that said “you don’t understand a thing.” Abby hated that expression.

At Tom’s school, the headmaster came down with a bad dose of flu, leaving Tom to deal with both the crisis over the physics teacher, who didn’t want to work out her notice, and the faulty alarm system, which was still going off at odd intervals, to the pupils’ delight.

All he could talk about every evening was the difficulty of getting a substitute teacher at short notice and the endless but vain attempts by the alarm repair people to find the fault in their sophisticated system.

Abby began to wonder whether, if she got a robot to sit at her place in the kitchen every night and programmed it to mutter, “That’s terrible,” at intervals, he would even notice.