Best of Friends (79 page)
Myles shook his head. “Don’t,” he said. “Lizzie’s not a bit like that. She’s the least prima donna-ish and most loving person I know. She’ll be so thrilled for you both.”
Joe and Nina linked their fingers and beamed at each other.
Debra quenched a pang of envy. It wasn’t their fault that she’d messed up her own marriage. She thought back to her engagement and wedding with more than a hint of guilt: it would never have occurred to her to remove her engagement ring at any point to save her mother from anything. She thought too of how she’d asked to invite Sabine to the wedding. That must have been hard on her mother, but Mum had dealt with it for Debra’s sake.
Everyone in the big hall of Lyonnais was holding their breath, all except Kim, who didn’t see why he couldn’t yap happily. Just be-cause Tom and Abby were welcoming Lizzie and Simon at the front door didn’t mean he couldn’t make some noise, and why were all these people standing silently, eyes glued to the porch door?
“Shush,” said Jess, kissing Kim’s adorably soft little head. She loved his velvety chestnut-coloured ears. When he lay upside down, he looked like a naughty little bat, shining eyes full of mischief and bat ears dangling down.
Oliver tickled Kim’s tummy and the puppy squirmed in delight.
Jack and Daniel Richardson stood beside Jess. They’d been promised sole charge of Kim once the surprise bit was over and the party was in full swing.
Steve’s hand was on Jack’s shoulder and on his other side was Ruby, who was determined not to leave Steve’s side all evening. Par-ties must be hell for him, she’d said to Erin and Abby. She owed it to dear Sally to keep an eye on him.
“He was really good to come,” Erin agreed, but she knew Steve had been trying to make an effort to get out a little bit, and that Lizzie’s surprise party was his first foray into the real world since Sally’s death.
“You, Lizzie and Abby have been so good setting up this charity in Sally’s name,” he’d told Erin when she’d invited him to the party. “I’ll drop in with the boys. We probably won’t stay long but...”
“Stay for as long or as little as you want,” Erin said. “We’ll all be thrilled to see you.”
“Can you hear anything?” whispered Greg to Erin.
Through the glass doors separating the porch from the hall, everyone could see the tall figures of Tom and Simon coming into view.
“Where’s Lizzie?” asked Clare Morgan, putting on her glasses to peer through the glass doors.
“She’s behind them, I think. Get ready,” whispered Erin.
“… and he’s just the cutest little devil of a thing,” Tom was say-ing, as the porch door was opened and suddenly Lizzie and Simon were in the hall with at least sixty people screaming “Happy Birth-day, Lizzie” at the top of their voices.
Speechless, Lizzie felt for Simon’s hand, turned to look in aston-ishment at Abby, and then looked back into the smiling faces of all her friends and family raising glasses to her. Balloons, lights and a huge banner decorated the hall.
“Oh, it’s perfect,” she breathed, “perfect.”
Lizzie Shanahan’s surprise fiftieth was certainly a hell of a party, as any of the people of Dunmore who weren’t invited would have said if they could have peered in through the windows at the laughter-filled scene in Lyonnais. And despite the loud music, laughter, and vast quantities of drink whizzing around, it was very civilised.
The Shanahans really were people to admire, because of the way Myles and Lizzie had moved seamlessly on from their broken marriage to forge new relationships, and yet remained true to their family. Because that’s what it was all about: family, blending new families and old families but keeping it all on an even keel. Myles was there with his new partner, Sabine, and she and Lizzie had talked for ages, laughing no less, while Lizzie’s new man, a tall, handsome fellow called Simon, was stuck in a corner having great chats with Lizzie’s son, Joe. Of course, it was a pity that young Debra’s marriage to Barry Cronin hadn’t lasted, but all fam-ilies had their burden, and certainly Joe Shanahan seemed deliri-ously happy with that lovely London girl who worked in the art gallery.
Gwen Hoban, Lizzie’s sister, and always the first person to call a spade a spade, was telling that lovely Dr. Morgan that Debra had settled down a lot since the wedding and added that she wouldn’t be surprised if Barry and Debra managed to make it up after all. They hadn’t sold their house, Gwen said, tapping her nose as if this was an important clue to what might happen in the future.
The Shanahans weren’t the only ones enjoying themselves. Greg and Erin Kennedy were squashed up on one armchair and Erin was tearfully telling Greg that she was sorry she’d been such a crosspatch and she didn’t know what had come over her. They’d certainly settled in well after moving from Chicago. He was doing well in the telecoms company and all the staff had nothing but good to say about him, while Erin had thrown herself into the community, helping out in The Beauty Spot when poor Sally Richardson had passed away. And now she was energetically setting up some sort of cancer centre in the town in Sally’s name, some-how managing the neat trick of getting everyone else just as enthu-siastic as she was, without making them feel guilty for not having thought of it first.
She’d sounded very American when they’d first arrived, but it turned out she was Irish after all, and her family often came to visit her from Wexford and Portlaoise. She often walked down the pier with a woman with streaked blonde hair who was obviously her sister, two little girls in tow. One was a dote of a thing with poker-straight dark hair, about six, who skipped along, holding her aunty’s hand and talking nineteen to the dozen. The other was a little angel in a pushchair with shining dark eyes in a tiny face. Erin would have her own pushchair soon—she was as big as a house with her pregnant belly and she couldn’t walk too far, so the sister made her sit with the older child while she pushed the little one so she’d drop off to sleep.
And the Bartons, well, they were quite the success story of the town. There had been some talk in the papers of a split but from the way they were arm in arm as they talked to that nice Steve Richardson, it was difficult to believe that the journalist had got it right. That marriage was rock solid: anyone with half a brain could see that.
Their daughter was a nice girl too; done really well in her exams, apparently. She was doing a great job minding those two little Richardson boys, bringing them outside into the garden to play with the puppy, a tall, smiling young lad accompanying them.
Yes, it definitely looked like the party of the year in Dunmore, a party where nobody had a care in the world. It was a pity that poor Sally Richardson wasn’t around to see it: she’d always been a great one for marvellous parties, but sure, she was bound to be sitting on a cloud somewhere smiling fondly down at them all, getting the other angels to hurry up with the nectar punch and cranking up the celes-tial choir so there’d be some music. If ever there was a woman who’d known the value of laughter and enjoying life, it was Sally.
afterword
Writing this book, I was painfully aware that the character with breast cancer was going to die and hated to think that this would upset anybody who is fighting cancer. As around one in eleven women develop the disease, every one of us knows brave and courageous women who are successfully fighting breast cancer. The severity and speed of Sally’s cancer are very rare and represent the worst-case scenario possible. The fact is that the vast majority (75%) of women with metastatic breast cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis and the percentages are getting higher all the time.
Life Beats Cancer is my fictional invention, but there are, of course, a huge number of genuine cancer charities that deserve our support.
Thanks to Lucy Kelly and Deborah Hutchings of Cancer Research U.K. for their advice. Needless to say, all mistakes in the novel are mine.
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