Best of Friends (70 page)

“His name was Paul,” Shannon said, “Paul Whelan. He wanted to go to university and study arts but there was no money. His dad had a butcher’s shop, so he went into that. We’d always been friends—nothing like boyfriend and girlfriend, but we got together a couple of times. You know how it is. Then we both got on with our lives. He was working in the shop and he began seeing this girl who worked there too. I had other things in my life and then I found out I was pregnant. I couldn’t tell him.”

“So he never knew that you were going to have a baby?” Erin asked quietly.

“He did in the end,” Shannon pointed out. “I was as big as a house and when he asked me, I told him it wasn’t his. It was the easiest thing to do. His mother was very religious; she would have killed him. He didn’t need to know. I told him it was someone else.”

“Did you ever see him again afterwards?” Erin asked.

“No,” Shannon said blithely. “He was clever, though. He should have gone to university, that was for sure. If only there’d been the money, if only his father had thought university was a good plan. He probably has a whole fleet of butcher shops now, you never know.”

Suddenly Shannon looked worried. “You’re not going to go off and find him and tell him he’s your dad, are you?” she asked.

Erin knew there was no point in trying to explain. Mum and Dad were her real parents: they were the ones who had been there for her when she had been growing up. But that didn’t mean she didn’t feel this burning need to find her true dad either. He would never replace her dear old father, but she needed to know where she’d come from.

“The whole family knew this guy, Paul?” Erin said his name for the first time. “Why didn’t you tell them he was the father?”

“Because Mum and Dad would have wanted me to do the sensible thing and settle down with him, try and make a go of being together and bringing you up. I didn’t want to do that; that wasn’t the way I wanted to live my life. You can’t blame me for that,” Shannon said. “I wouldn’t have been much good as a mother, anyway. I gave you the best start I could, didn’t I?”

She was eager to be forgiven and Erin knew there was no point in denying Shannon that forgiveness. She thought about what life would have been like if Shannon had brought her up—a lifetime of travelling, with no security, no money, and Shannon scrabbling round, trying to make a living for herself and her child. It wouldn’t have been any sort of life, Erin knew. Whatever Shannon’s motives for leaving Erin behind, it had turned out for the best.

“Yes, you did the right thing,” she said now. “Mum and Dad were great parents.”

Shannon beamed at her and finally Erin smiled back. “You did the right thing,” she repeated.

thirty-two

B
y the time three weeks had passed since Debra and Barry had split up, Lizzie began to abandon hopes of them ever getting back together again. There had been one or two phone calls between the newlyweds, but they had always ended with shouted recriminations. The situation was at stalemate.

It wasn’t that Debra was morose—if anything, she seemed quite happy, enjoying her freedom and clearly loving being fussed over at home by Lizzie. Since Lizzie had promised her daughter that she wasn’t interested in men—meaning Simon—they’d been getting on brilliantly. Gwen, ever the doom merchant, said that was largely because Lizzie had given her daughter free rein with Lizzie’s credit card.

Lizzie hadn’t mentioned the scene with Simon to her sister for a long while. It was too humiliating, and she couldn’t have faced it if Gwen had been as disgusted as Debra over Lizzie’s behaviour. She was relieved when she was sympathetic. Simon had phoned the next day but Lizzie, the memory of the night before in her mind, had explained that Debra was going through a difficult time and would he mind if they took a raincheck on another date?

“Fine,” said Simon evenly. “I’d love to see you again but you call me when things have calmed down.”

Lizzie hadn’t called. That was easier with Debra on full alert for any signs of a man phoning, and anyway, maybe Debra had been right: men did complicate matters.

At least Debra was easier to live with—as long as Lizzie didn’t make any other plans in the evenings. But her mother worried that if the split went on any longer, it would be irreparable, and she hated to think of what that would do to Debra.

The problem, Lizzie felt, was that Debra was still utterly confident that Barry would come crawling back to her, saying he was sorry, and that they could start all over again, with Debra having the upper hand. Yet this scenario was growing more unlikely by the day.

Then Myles came up with the idea of having a conference between both families, to give Debra and Barry a chance to talk on neutral territory. “Perhaps if she sees us all there, then she might come to her senses and realise what family and marriage are all about,” he said hopefully.

Lizzie suspected the hand of Sabine in all of this. It was unlikely that Myles would ever have come up with this idea on his own.

Joe thought a family conference was ridiculous. “If Debra has decided not to go back with Barry, then she’s unlikely to change her mind just because you and Dad and Barry’s parents and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all turn up to talk to her about it,” he pointed out to his mother on the phone.

“Yes, but we have to try,” said Lizzie.

“Mum,” said Joe, “the only thing you’ve got to try and do is stop treating Debra like a child. She’s a grown-up and if she wants to leave Barry after five minutes of marriage, then that’s her business.”

“I know it’s her business—” his mother protested, but Joe interrupted her.

“Well then, why don’t you leave her to sort it out by herself? If she was truly an adult, then she’d have to find somewhere else to live and get on with her own life. Because you and Dad are molly-coddling her, she doesn’t have to do that. She can run to either of you when things get rough.”

That wasn’t absolutely accurate, Lizzie thought. Debra couldn’t really run to Myles anymore, as had been proved the night of Lizzie’s parachute jump. Debra had fled to her father’s apartment and had ended up back with Lizzie the following day. Sabine’s influence had changed his relationship with his daughter. Myles now treated Debra more like an adult than an adored young daughter, and clearly expected her to get on with her life in the way that he was getting on with his. Naturally, Debra chose to see his behaviour as casting her off in favour of another woman. Suddenly, Debra didn’t like Sabine anymore.

“I don’t know why I invited her to the wedding in the first place,” Debra said. She still hadn’t forgiven Sabine for making it clear that night in her father’s apartment that she disapproved of Debra’s juvenile behaviour.

Lizzie held her tongue, while privately asking what did it matter who had been to the wedding, seeing how the marriage hadn’t lasted? She had become very good at holding her tongue. Joe was the only person who seemed to realise this. Everyone else thought it was sad that the newlyweds had teething troubles, but that until these were sorted out it was wonderful for Debra and Lizzie to be living together. They appeared to think that Lizzie was bored and lonely on her own and that having her daughter around was a treat.

“Mum, you’ve got to tell her to move out and make her own way,” Joe said. “You’ve taken care of her long enough.”

Lizzie hadn’t told Joe about Simon either. Lizzie still shuddered to think of that evening. The embarrassment haunted her in the middle of the night.

In her heart, she knew that Joe was right. She’d come a long way since the divorce, even though she mightn’t have realised it before. But she had got used to living on her own and not having to order her life around someone else’s. Perhaps there was another reason for not looking for romance.

“I can’t tell her to leave, Joe,” Lizzie told her son. “It wouldn’t be right. I’m her mother.”

“Mother smother,” said Joe, doing his best Jewish momma impersonation. “You have to let go, Mum, or she’ll take over your life. I’m not just saying this for you, I’m saying this for her too.”

“Well, then, you tell her,” Lizzie said, getting cross. She was fed up with everyone else telling her how to act. Why did nobody discuss this with Debra?

“All right, I will,” said Joe. “Get her for me.”

Lizzie didn’t know exactly what Joe was going to say to his sister, but when Debra walked back into the kitchen after the conversation, her pretty face was set with rage.

“Who the hell does Joe think he is?” she demanded at the top of her voice.

“What’s wrong? What did he say?” asked Lizzie, hating herself for being a coward and pretending she hadn’t the slightest idea.

“He said I should either go back to Barry or move out,” Debra said furiously. “He said if Barry and I were serious about splitting up, we should just sell the house and set about getting a divorce, and that I shouldn’t stay here any longer because you have your life to lead. As if he knows what he’s talking about!”

Debra went straight for her packet of cigarettes and lit one furiously. Lizzie didn’t like her smoking in the house but there was no point saying anything. Debra did what Debra wanted to do.

“I told him you liked having me here, that it was a comfort for you to have someone to come home to at night after years on your own,” Debra said. “Wasn’t I right to say that?”

“Oh yes,” said Lizzie weakly, feeling even more of a coward than ever.

“And then …” Debra inhaled heavily, “he said what if you got a boyfriend, how would that work out? How ridiculous, I told him. Mum never loved anyone except Dad.”

Lizzie realised with a pang that part of the reason Debra had been so furious that night she’d discovered Simon and Lizzie together was because she couldn’t cope with the idea of her mother with any man other than her father. It was obviously hard enough for her to accept Myles having someone else in his life; but it was impossible for her to deal with Lizzie doing the same thing. Debra might have been in her early twenties but when it came to her mum, she was still a kid. Mums shouldn’t have boyfriends.

In the end, it was Barry’s mother, Flossie, who took action. She phoned Lizzie one day at work and said they had to do something about the kids.

Lizzie got quite a shock when she heard Flossie’s voice, partly because she wasn’t sure if Flossie considered the whole split to be Debra’s fault. If that was the case, Flossie might have been phoning to rage about her, and Lizzie wasn’t prepared for such a confrontation.

But assigning blame seemed to be the last thing on Flossie’s mind. All she wanted was for Barry to be happy and he wasn’t happy right now, was he? “Stuck in that house on his own, miserable without Debra, coming home for his supper sometimes—we have to get them to sort it out, Lizzie,” Flossie said sincerely. “Poor Barry’s in bits. I hate to see him like this, and the problem is they’re just so young, they don’t know how to talk about things and get all the arguments out in the open, do they?”

“No, they don’t,” agreed Lizzie, thinking of her own marriage and how she obviously hadn’t been able to get all the arguments out in the open, either. If she had, maybe she might still be married. “Myles suggested we have a family conference,” she said. “That way they wouldn’t be able to shout and scream at each other because we’d all be there.”

“That’s a great idea,” said Flossie enthusiastically. “You know, at the moment they’re just too stubborn to meet up and discuss it all. That’s what this is about: stubbornness.”

The plan was made there and then: Lizzie would get Debra to a certain restaurant at a certain time next Sunday while Flossie would inveigle Barry there too. Given time and opportunity, surely the hapless couple could work things out?

Only Joe and Gwen thought this was a bad idea, but then Gwen and Debra had never seen eye to eye. Gwen thought her niece was a smart little madam who only cared for herself. Debra, on the other hand, regarded her aunt as old-fashioned and bossy—nothing like her soft old mum.

“I suppose, no matter what happens, you’ll end up paying for a big dinner,” Gwen said when she heard of the plan.

“It’s not about money or who pays for dinner,” Lizzie pointed out impatiently.

“I beg to differ,” said Gwen, “but it is about money. Think of all you and Myles spent on that bloody wedding. If Debra knew that she and Barry were totally incompatible in the first place, then you wouldn’t have needed to shell out all that cash on the most expensive day that the whole of County Cork has ever seen.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Lizzie, finally losing her temper. First, Joe never stopped telling her how to live her life, and now Gwen was at it too. “I wish everyone would just leave me alone.”

“It’s not me you should be getting angry with, Lizzie,” Gwen pointed out. “It’s Debra. That daughter of yours needs to hear a few home truths, and one of these days I’ll let her have them,” Gwen added with grim relish.

The venue for the big reconciliation was a large family restaurant in Dunmore, cleverly picked by Flossie on the grounds that there’d be so much noise anyway, nobody would notice the odd raised voice from the Shanahan÷Cronin table. Lizzie was sick with nerves, thinking about the whole thing. It was her job to get Debra there looking her best, and the ploy she’d used was to tell her daughter that they deserved a nice Sunday lunch out and why didn’t they both dress up for a glamorous lunch?

“Glamorous Sunday lunch? Here?” said Debra in disbelief when they pulled up outside the restaurant. The Hungry Hunter was indeed not known for its style, but had a reputation instead for being the sort of place where small children could throw chips on the floor without the waiters minding.

“Er, well, you know, they get a different crowd in at lunchtime on Sundays,” lied Lizzie, terrified that Debra would pull out. “Oh, come on, Debra, it’ll be fun.”

Grudgingly, Debra followed her mother inside. Lizzie just hoped that everyone else was there already because, if the waitress seated them at a table with empty spaces for four other people, she’d smell a rat. Then, Lizzie spotted Barry and his family, and relief washed over her. She’d done her bit; the rest was up to the newlyweds.