Best of Friends (44 page)

“What’s worse, I think he showed up, took one look at me and went home again,” the blonde girl added miserably.

“Don’t say that. You’re so pretty,” Lizzie said kindly.

Casey beamed at her. “What are you here for?”

“Not the men, that’s for sure,” Lizzie laughed. “I’m doing the jump for charity.”

“Oh, us too,” Casey said hastily. “And for the men.”

Inside, reception did not look like the sort of place where handsome men were likely to be lurking looking for dates. The walls were painted army green, and battered metal chairs made up the furniture, while a stocky man with a beard stood behind a desk and looked sternly at the assorted novices busily filling out forms. The majority of the form-fillers were, however, male, mostly young at that, and Lizzie saw Casey and Dolores exchange thrilled glances. The men noticed Casey and Dolores back and Lizzie felt a faint pang at how her age appeared to have rendered her invisible.

The three women checked in and were handed forms from the taciturn receptionist. When they’d filled them in, he collected the forms and took the novices, now numbering twenty, down a corridor and into another bare room furnished with rows of chairs.

Two men with military haircuts were at the top of the room. One, Tony, was young and innocent-looking, with red hair and freckles. The other was older, with a lean weather-beaten face, shrewd eyes and a toned physique in his worn grey flying suit. Sitting on the edge of a desk, drinking from a mug of coffee, he watched the novices find seats.

Lizzie perked up. There was something about men in flying suits that sent a little shiver up her spine. He looked muscular and exciting, not the sort of man who’d ever look twice at her, but who cared? It was good to have something to admire to take her mind off the panic she felt at the thought of jumping. She located her strawberry lip balm in the front of her little bum bag, slicked a bit on her lips and listened as the man introduced himself as Simon, one of the co-owners of the centre.

Simon—nice name, she thought. And was she imagining it, or had his eyes flickered over her several times?

The training was repetitious and Lizzie could see how it worked. After a day and a half leaping from a bit of plane fuselage, counting “one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, check canopy,” she’d be doing the procedure in her sleep. And if she could do it in her sleep, she’d hopefully be able to do it once she exited the plane. “This will save your life if for some reason your chute fails to open,” repeated Simon again and again. “If that happens, you need to pull the cord on the emergency chute. I know it’s repetitive but it will save your life. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, check canopy—if it’s not open, go to plan B and pull emergency chute. That’s the difference between a safe jump and death, right?”

Lizzie decided she must have been imagining that he was interested in her: he was so utterly professional about the training, giving each recruit the attention they needed, that she told herself she’d been dreaming. At least this meant he hadn’t allowed his gaze to land on Casey too often, like the younger, redhaired trainer.

When the day was over, bonded by exhaustion and the thrill of what was to come, the new recruits took off to the pub.

“Isn’t it fantastic?” said Casey, her make-up gone and her mane of silver-blonde hair flattened under a baseball cap. She looked even prettier with her face flushed from exercise, Lizzie thought.

“Wait till we have to do it tomorrow,” said Dolores, who’d hated jumping even from the second floor of the hangar wearing the harness.

What else was on her list, Lizzie thought happily as she drove back to Dunmore that night, tired but invigorated. Visit Paris? No problem. Buy jewellery for herself? A problem in the financial sense. Ask a man out? Easy peasy. Rock climbing the sort of wall Tom Cruise scaled in
Mission: Impossible 2—
now perhaps
that
was a challenge enough for her, after all. She could do anything, anything!

Debra’s Mini was in the drive when she got home and Lizzie felt a bolt of pleasure. Wonderful. She hadn’t seen that much of Debra since the honeymoon, although the newlyweds had presided over a family lunch in their new town house and Lizzie had felt proud of her grown-up, married daughter. The honeymoon in Mauritius had gilded Debra’s skin, giving her a healthy glow, and she and Barry had looked lovingly at each other all during lunch, describing each other proudly as “my husband” and “my wife” until Barry’s father had burst into laughter and told them how funny it was. Barry had laughed too, although Debra had not been amused.

“Hi, love,” said Lizzie cheerily as she threw her keys on the hall table and hung her bum bag on the newel post of the stairs.

Debra was in the garden, with a bottle of wine on the iron table in front of her and a cigarette dangling from her fingers. She did not look like the healthy woman who’d come back from Mauritius with her beloved husband. Her face was pinched and angry, and it was clear she’d been there some time because she was halfway down the wine bottle and there were six butts in the saucer she was using as an ashtray.

“Mum …” Debra’s face crumpled and Lizzie automatically rushed to throw her arms around her daughter.

“What’s wrong, love?”

“It’s Barry,” sobbed Debra through a stuffy nose. “He’s a rotten bastard. I’ve left him.”

It took a pot of tea to get the full story out of Debra. Barry was a slob, for a start. He was perfectly happy to let the house descend into a tip before doing any housework.

“He has what he calls a system of using up every shirt in his wardrobe and not giving a toss where he throws them until the day before he runs out and then he does a wash. And only his stuff, not mine!” This was clearly the final straw. Debra had assumed that the washing would be done together and when she’d come home to find the clothes horse hanging with all Barry’s clothes and not so much as a pair of her own knickers, she’d flipped.

“He did live in a flat with two other guys,” countered Lizzie, wanting to explain to her daughter that it took time for couples to sort out details like housework. Barry and Debra had, for some old-fashioned reason, decided not to move in together to their adorable town house until they were married, so there was definitely a culture shock for both of them in sharing now. Debra probably hadn’t expected her female flatmates to be her soulmates, so had coped with messy domestic arrangements. Now, though, she seemed to expect perfection from Barry. True love equals everything perfect. Wrong, thought Lizzie.

“You’ll have to talk to each other about this and come up with a proper system,” Lizzie went on. “You know, you do shopping and cooking for half the week and he does the laundry, then you swap. Something like that.”

Debra wasn’t having any of it. In not doing her laundry from the start, Barry had proved one simple truth: he didn’t love her.

“Debra, of course he loves you,” said her mother, privately diagnosing post-wedding depression now that all the fuss was over. She thought of the tiny, beautifully proportioned house Debra and Barry had bought, and which Barry had moved into three weeks before the wedding. Then, their lives had been the whirl of the about-to-be-marrieds, full of dress fittings, lively nights out with friends and obsessive worrying about the reception. There would have been no time to notice whether he was any good at washing up or cleaning the bathroom.

Yet, playing house when they were just married, when they were the most important people in their own small world, should be fun. Why had Debra failed to see that?

Debra lit another cigarette.

“You gave up,” Lizzie said reproachfully.

“I did, but if he doesn’t love me what’s the point of not smoking?” Debra said defiantly.

“It’s just a squabble over silly things,” soothed Lizzie. “I’ll call you a taxi so you can go home and make it up.”

“Home! I’m not going home!” shrieked her daughter. “We’re selling that house and getting a divorce. I should never have married him. It’s about more than just housework. I can tell you that I thought I knew Barry bloody Cronin but I didn’t at all!” She shoved her tea cup aside and poured herself some more wine. “And I’m going to take him to the cleaners in the divorce courts too! It’s all his fault—that must mean something when the judge is working out who gets what.”

Lizzie began to think that she needed a glass of wine too. She collected some cheese and crackers from the kitchen, and returned with a tray of food and another glass.

“Now, tell me what else Barry’s done,” she said.

“We were supposed to be going to Crete in October,” Debra sniffed. “I know we’ve had the honeymoon but that was different and Barry said we’d need another break.”

Lizzie quashed the desire to enquire where they were getting the money for another holiday. Barry’s job in car sales and Debra’s in a double glazing firm meant they weren’t exactly in the highest tax bracket.

“But now he says we can’t. He says we’re stretched with the mortgage as it is, and if we don’t go we can get a dining-room table and chairs. I don’t know why we can’t get both! I said if he hadn’t spent so much money on his crappy stag night and on getting new tyres for that gasguzzler of a car, we could have both and then he said I was spoiled and didn’t I know you had to earn money before you spent it!” At this, Debra burst into noisy sobs.

“Oh, love, it’s not always easy coping with financial problems,” Lizzie said, trying to be comforting. “Most couples argue about money and you two have never lived together before, so it’s going to take a bit of adjusting.”

“I don’t want to adjust. I’m good with money! I’ve supported myself for years.
He
needs to adjust!” Debra sobbed.

Lizzie thought of Debra’s Mini, to which she and Myles had both contributed because Debra’s heart had been set on it. She remembered the deposit on Debra’s second-last flat, which hadn’t been returned because of some dispute, meaning Debra had needed a loan of money from her parents for the next flat’s deposit. Like all loans to Debra—and there had been many—it had never been returned. And she thought of the wedding fund started by Barry and Debra—“we want to pay for our own wedding”—that had never really got off the ground until Myles and Lizzie had got involved, at which point the plans for the big day grew more grandiose. Barry’s parents, along with Lizzie and Myles, had even contributed whatever they could to the deposit for the new house, something all four would be paying for for a long time to come.

Lizzie didn’t begrudge her darling daughter any of this but it would have been nice if Debra had ever been in the slightest bit grateful for it. But Debra’s approach to money was that once it was given, it didn’t need to be mentioned ever again. In Debra’s book, parents did not wish to be thanked for their financial sacrifices. “Eaten bread is soon forgotten,” as Gwen might say.

“Perhaps you should economise a bit,” Lizzie ventured. “New houses are expensive and you’ve just been to Mauritius …”

“You’re taking his side!” Debra was back to shrieking again, and Lizzie hoped her neighbours weren’t earwigging on the other side of the garden fence. Then again, maybe it didn’t matter if they were earwigging. Heaven knows, it wasn’t as if they’d had anything interesting to listen to of late.

“I’m not taking Barry’s side,” she said gently. “All I’m saying is that marriage is about compromise and learning how to get on with each other. You’ve spent a lot of money lately and Barry’s probably worried about the bills. Why don’t you suggest a weekend away somewhere at home instead of a week abroad? There are great deals around if you book early, and that way you’d both get what you wanted.”

“I don’t want a crappy weekend in Ireland,” snapped Debra. “I want a week somewhere hot where I can get a tan, not a wet weekend shivering in this bloody country.” She drained her wine. “I’m going to unpack. And if Barry phones, tell him I won’t speak to him.”

She swept off, leaving the table messy and Lizzie with her mouth open. Unpacking. What did Debra need to unpack? And why?

Lizzie said nothing as she helped Debra drag three suitcases—newly purchased for the honeymoon—upstairs. She was Debra’s mother, after all, and what was a mother for if not to provide comfort in times of need?

“What will we do tomorrow?” Debra asked cosily, once she had her former bedroom back to its usual glory, with the dressing table crammed with jars of far more expensive creams than her mother could afford, and a pile of precious cuddly toys staring from the bed like disapproving maiden aunts shifted from place to place without their say-so.

“I’m going to be out tomorrow,” Lizzie replied.

“Out? Where?”

For some reason, Lizzie didn’t want to tell her daughter about the parachute jump until it was over. She had a feeling that Debra wouldn’t understand or might even say she was mad to be doing it, and Lizzie needed to feel utterly confident to make the jump.

“Out with some girlfriends of mine,” she said, feeling terrible for lying.

“Oh.” Debra managed to invest that one syllable with myriad meanings. “You won’t be gone all day, will you?” she added.

“Well …”

“Goody. We could go out to dinner,” Debra said happily. “There’s this new place in town that everyone’s raving about. I’ll book.”

Lizzie wondered who was going to pay for this feast but said nothing. Debra just needed a little mothering and then she and Barry would sort out their problems.

“Mum, you shouldn’t take her in,” Joe said that evening after Debbie had gone to bed.

Lizzie, who was beginning to regret phoning him for moral support, was more than a little shocked at his reaction. “How could you say such a thing?”

“Because Debra has to stand on her own two feet and she’s never going to do it if she can run to you all the time.”

“I hope I’m a good enough mother to be here for both of you, no matter how old you are,” Lizzie shot back.

“You’re a great mother,” Joe said, placating her. “It’s not about you, Mum. It’s about Debra. She wanted the big wedding that cost a fortune and she got it. She wouldn’t listen to a word any of us told her about how there was no rush to get married yet, or why didn’t she just live with Barry to see if they had a future together. No, it had to be the whole wedding extravaganza. Three bridesmaids, remember? And now it isn’t working out. She should have to face up to her own actions. If they’re going to split up, Debra should stay and face the music, not run home to you.”