Best of Friends (40 page)

She noticed Lizzie and Erin outside the coffee shop, just as they were hoping to catch her eye.

“Oh, hi,” she said, clicking off her mobile.

“Hello, Abby,” said Lizzie warmly. “Long time no see. Erin and I are just going for a quick sandwich. Want to join us?”

Erin expected Abby to make some sort of excuse and say no, but she didn’t. In fact, she looked touchingly grateful to be asked.

“That would be nice,” she said. “I’ve been rushing round going to the bank and stuff, and I never make time for lunch when I’m running errands.”

“I always make time for lunch,” Lizzie said ruefully. “I suppose that’s why you’re slim and I’m not.”

Abby
was
looking very slim, Erin noticed, but from the strain on her face, it wasn’t the result of careful attention to the Dr. Atkins diet. Something must definitely be up
chez
Barton.

She, like most of Dunmore, had no idea that Tom had actually moved out. Abby, fearing that if one person knew, everybody would soon know, had done her best to keep the split a secret.

“Your daughter’s wedding is soon, isn’t it?” Abby said conversationally once they were seated with sandwiches and drinks.

“Next weekend,” said Lizzie. “I can’t believe it’s nearly here. We’ve been planning it for what seems like a hundred years.”

“Is it going to be a big affair?” asked Erin.

Lizzie nodded. “Huge. The burglars in Dunmore will have a field day because half the town will be whooping it up in the hotel on Saturday.” Then she felt embarrassed because neither Erin nor Abby were on the guest list. In actual fact, Debra and Barry hadn’t left her much room to invite her own friends.

Gwen had given out to her sister over this. “You’ve paid for the damn thing,” she had pointed out. “The least you should be able to do is invite a busload of your own pals.”

Seeing Lizzie’s embarrassment, Erin pushed on to show that she and Abby hardly expected to be asked. “What are you wearing?”

“A lemon suit.” Even as she said it, Lizzie’s face fell. “I’ll probably look like a big lemon in it.”

“It sounds lovely. You should come in and get Ruby to do your face in the morning,” Erin said. “She’s brilliant at make-up for special occasions.”

“That’s a good idea,” Lizzie said quietly. She’d always planned to ask Sally to do her make-up. Sally would have calmed her pre-wedding nerves and made Lizzie feel good about herself. “It feels strange to be talking about weddings and make-up when Sally’s gone,” she added. “When I’m doing normal things like grocery shopping and I get cross because I can’t find a parking space or something, it hits me that I shouldn’t complain because at least I’m here. Sally isn’t.”

Both Erin and Abby nodded at this.

“I feel the same,” Abby admitted. “Jess and I dropped in on Steve last weekend and he’s really one of the walking wounded. He tries so hard for Jack and Daniel, but he looks like he’s dying inside. It makes me feel ashamed of what I have and don’t appreciate.” Or what she
had
and didn’t appreciate, Abby thought.

Erin didn’t feel hungry anymore. “What I keep thinking,” she murmured, “is how do you get on with your life when you lose the person closest to you?”

It was a rhetorical question and the others didn’t try to answer it.

“Do you know what the really awful thing is?” Lizzie said. “That it takes someone else’s tragedy to make you appreciate what you have in life. I look at Debra, for example, and think how lucky I am to be here for her wedding. Or I think of Joe and how he had asthma when he was younger, but he’s fine now. And I’m lucky to have him.”

Lizzie was so rooted in her family, Abby realised.
She’d
never have risked her daughter or her husband’s happiness for a stupid fling. She pushed her tuna sandwich away half eaten. “More coffee?” she asked.

She was drinking too much coffee but she needed the kick it gave her. Nothing else gave her any energy anymore. She felt drained most of the time and, in desperation, had started taking an iron tonic, which played havoc with her stomach.

The others said no and Abby got herself a cup.

Lizzie would have said yes to one of the fat cream cakes sitting under the glass case on the counter, but she was determined to be slim-ish for the wedding.

She wondered if she should mention the idea she’d been toying with since coming back from London. Erin and Abby were the very people she wanted to share it with but would they think she was mad or had too much time on her hands? Abby had her TV show and she was bound to be busy all the time, as was Erin, who was doing so much to keep Sally’s salon going, never mind cope with her pregnancy. Lizzie would have loved to know if Erin had done anything about getting in touch with her estranged family but she didn’t want to intrude.

“I wish we could do something that Sally would be proud of, the sort of thing she’d do.” There, she’d said it. Lizzie looked at the other two for their reaction.

Abby was listlessly stirring sugar into her second coffee and Erin was wriggling on her chair, trying to get comfortable.

Lizzie tried again. “Imagine if one of us had died, Sally would be doing something to remember us or make a statement about our lives or
something.
”

Erin was nodding now and, emboldened, Lizzie continued.

“Sally was one of the most special people I ever met. She got us together and made us feel part of something bigger. She deserves more than us feeling sorry for ourselves or for her. She’d hate that.”

“That’s for sure,” agreed Erin. “She didn’t feel sorry for herself, even at the end. She was just worried about Steve and the boys and how they’d cope.”

“I don’t know how she did it,” said Abby sadly. “I’d have gone to pieces.” She was already in pieces, she thought, and she hadn’t been given a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Even in the depths of her own misery, she marvelled at Sally’s incredible courage when she was dying.

“So, what could we do? Have you any ideas?” asked Lizzie enthusiastically.

Neither Abby nor Erin said anything for a minute.

Then: “It’s a brilliant proposal,” Erin said, “but what were you thinking of?”

“I was asking you two for ideas, really,” Lizzie pointed out. “You’re the creative ones.”

“Well, how about raising some money for a cancer charity?” suggested Abby lamely. She felt as creative as a plank of wood right now.

“Yes,” said Lizzie slowly, “but I was thinking of something more special … I don’t know what. Let’s all think about it, OK?”

She picked up her jacket from the back of the chair. “I ought to rush back to work.”

“Me too,” said Erin automatically.

“You will think about some ideas, won’t you?” Lizzie asked both of them outside.

“Yes,” said Abby and Erin in unison.

Honestly, thought Lizzie, heading back to work, she’d hardly consider herself an ideas person. People like Abby and Erin were creative types, but they didn’t seem to feel motivated. It would be up to her to think of a fitting tribute to Sally. There had to be an idea out there and she was determined to come up with it.

At home, Abby went into her study and filed the bills she’d paid in the bank. She hated filing with a passion. Tom used to tease her about it, joking that her
Declutter
fans should see the mess she kept at the bottom of the filing cabinet, a huge pile of paperwork waiting to be assigned a proper place.

“At least I do file,” she’d retort. “I’m not like some people who have the school secretary do it all—yes sir, Mr. Barton, no sir, three bags full, sir!”

“Are you jealous of Miss Peabody?” Tom had demanded, grinning.

“No, but she’s definitely jealous of me,” Abby had replied sweetly. The school secretary had a crush on Tom and blushed from her pearl earrings to her toes every Christmas when he gave her whatever gift Abby had picked out during her high-speed present sweep.

She and Tom had had fun, Abby realised. Despite their recent problems, their marriage had been a good one after all. Looking back made that obvious. It was too late to go back now, though. She hardly saw Tom at the moment. He had moved out a week after Sally’s funeral and was living with Leo, the old colleague he’d met at the funeral. It didn’t make Abby feel any better that she’d been correct in assuming that Leo would be keen to help Tom make the break from married man to separated pal about town. Recently, he’d been staying at Lyonnais for the odd weekday night while Abby was away filming. Then at the weekends, he came to see Jess, and Abby did her grocery shopping then, leaving them on their own because she knew Tom didn’t want to see her. She’d tried to ask Jess how she felt about this split, but Jess didn’t seem to want to talk about it.

“Leave me alone, Mum,” she’d said wearily whenever Abby had tried to raise the subject.

And Abby, who’d remembered what she’d been like as a teenager—self-contained, quiet, unwilling to talk about her feelings—knew that pushing Jess would not work. Time, she hoped, would be a great healer. She would do her best to make Jess feel loved, and wait for her daughter to come to her. Perhaps with time, she and Jess could become close again. Perhaps.

That afternoon, Abby wasn’t the only one reflecting on the notion of appreciating what she had. Despite Ruby tying the entire salon in knots with her description of her latest blind date, Erin’s mind kept drifting back to Sally, and Lizzie’s observation that it took a tragedy for people to see what was important in life. She was right.

Sally’s death had brought Erin and Greg even closer together, if that was possible, and now that she could feel the baby moving inside her, Erin felt even more aware of the fragility of life and how precious it was. But she still hadn’t actually
done
anything as a result of this greater awareness. She hugged Greg more tightly than usual when he left for work in the morning, conscious that a freak accident could take him away from her. Yet for all her talk of doing so, she still had done nothing to seek out her family.

“You OK, Erin?” asked Ruby in concern. “You look a bit wrecked.”

“I’m fine,” Erin said. “Fine.”

Greg was due home late that evening. Perhaps she could start her detective work. A whole family couldn’t disappear completely. They had to be somewhere in Ireland, and she’d find them.

twenty-two

L
izzie sat on the edge of Debra’s bed and watched her daughter admiring her wedding dress in the mirror. Despite all the trauma over the colour of the dress and the shape of the tiny buttons down the back, the dress was glorious: fairy princess style in antique white silk, with a full skirt and a nipped-in bodice from which Debra’s lightly tanned shoulders rose magnificently. Her streaked hair was coiled up into artful ringlets and she wore a headdress of white roses as well as a rippling lacy veil.

Debra had said she wanted to look like a princess on her wedding day and she did.

“It will be all right, Mum, won’t it?” Debra said tremulously, half turning away from the mirror, anxiety on her face for the first time that day.

Lizzie dusted aside her misgivings about twenty-three-year-old teenage sweethearts getting married.

“Of course it’s going to be all right, love. It’s going to be wonderful. Barry is a special man and adores you. That’s the best start there is for a marriage.” She handed her daughter a tissue before the threatened tears spilled over and ruined the carefully applied mascara.

“I know, it’s just …” Debra dabbed her eyes with the tissue. “What if we’re making a mistake?”

Lizzie didn’t need a degree in psychology to work out the unfinished bit of the sentence. What if we’re making a mistake
like you and Dad?

In her heart, she wanted to say that nobody ever knew for sure what life would bring and that there were no guarantees. Look at poor Steve Richardson. But even as a child, Debra had seen the world in black and white. There were no grey areas, no maybes for her. Saying that she could learn from her parents’ mistakes would not send Debra down the aisle with a smile on her face.

“You’re not making a mistake,” Lizzie said gently, taking her daughter’s hands. “This is going to be a wonderful, special day and you’re marrying a wonderful, special man. I only hope he realises what a prize he’s won.”

“Oh, Mum.” Not caring if she crushed the delicate silk roses on the skirt, Debra sank onto the bed and clung to her mother. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

And at that moment, Lizzie felt that every single second of worry over the wedding was worth it. Debra deserved a glorious day and she would have it.

The doorbell rang loudly.

“Dad’s here,” roared Joe from downstairs, where he was providing tea and biscuits for everyone because it would be hours before they’d be tucking into the starter of filo prawns (with parmesan and mushroom tartlets for vegetarians).

“It’s ten to two, we should go soon,” added Nina from Lizzie’s bedroom where she was putting the finishing touches to her outfit.

“Yes,” Lizzie agreed. As the wedding was scheduled for two fifteen, they had a few minutes to drink their tea and head off in the wedding car for the five-minute journey to the church.

She stroked the bride’s cheek gently, trying to drink in every feature so she’d remember this moment for ever. “You look beautiful, Debra. I’m so proud of you today.”

“Thanks for everything, Mum,” Debra said. “You’re right, this is the most special day of my life.”

Lizzie felt the back of her throat constrict with emotion. She loved Debra so much. This mother love was the real love of life, she knew, not the other kind, the kind men and women had for each other. With your children, there was never any end to the love affair. Or the fear. Still holding on to Debra, Lizzie prayed a silent prayer that nothing or no one would hurt Debra or take away the innocent hopefulness of her wedding day.

“Dad!” squealed Debra excitedly as, over her mother’s shoulder, she saw the door open and her father appear.

“I’m not interrupting, am I?” asked Myles, standing at the doorway.