Between Sisters (20 page)

Perhaps it was because she was about to get the bus home and she’d had just about enough of being on her own, but she felt a most un-Phoebe-like surge of self-pity. She was so lonely. She couldn’t do this, she couldn’t. Why was she even trying to learn to be a fashion designer in Larkin College. She could work at home and do it there, couldn’t she? Plenty of people who worked in fashion were self-taught.

‘Daisy seems to like you,’ said the lady, and Phoebe looked down to see the dog’s soft black nose pushed through the gate, desperately trying to reach Phoebe’s jeans for a sniff.

‘Oh, you are cute.’ Bending down, she crooned to the small dog, who shook her entire body in greeting. ‘Hello, darling,’ Phoebe whispered. She missed her family and she missed the animals. It was so lonely here …

‘Come in and say hello,’ the lady said. ‘It’s impossible to give Daisy the adoration she wants through the gate bars.’

Faced with such a welcome, and a beautiful animal who was clearly in need of loving, the dog-deprived Phoebe was in like a shot. She got to her knees and petted Daisy. ‘She makes the most adorable noises,’ she said delightedly. ‘It’s like she’s purring.’

‘I know,’ said the old lady. ‘She’s half pug, half cat, I think. I’ve noticed that a lot with the pugs I’ve had over the years. They all make different sounds of happiness. I had a beautiful boy pug called Basil, and he used to make little growls of pleasure. But Daisy here, she just sounds like a kitten who’s being adored.’

‘Oh gosh,’ said Phoebe, getting to her feet quickly. ‘I’m so rude. My name is Phoebe and I live across the road in—’

‘In Rita Costello’s. Yes, I know. My name is Pearl Keneally. It’s lovely to meet you, Phoebe. I can tell you’re an animal lover.’

Phoebe sank to her knees again. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I live on a farm in Dromolach in Wicklow and I have to say I’m missing all the animals so much. I’m missing my family. It’s sort of all connected, family and animals.’

‘That’s the way it should be,’ Pearl said. ‘When I was bringing my girls up, the animals were a huge part of it.’ It seemed as if she was about to say more but then she stopped herself. ‘So Phoebe, what has you out and about so bright and early this morning? Would you like a quick cup of tea or some lemonade? I have a lovely nine-year-old little poppet coming over later today and I’ve got home-made lemonade ready for her.’

‘That sounds fabulous,’ said Phoebe. ‘My mother used to make that years ago but she doesn’t really have time now.’

‘Come on in,’ said Pearl decisively.

The three of them went inside and Phoebe looked around in delight, marvelling that a house, which was basically the same in structure as Mrs Costello’s, could have such a different atmosphere. This place was alight with beautiful blues and whites, with pretty coloured pictures, scenes of lovely places on the walls, sculptures and artwork, plump couches and lovely crocheted throws – one all white with periwinkle and turquoise accents.

‘Come on into the kitchen,’ said Pearl. ‘Let’s not stand on ceremony here. Besides, I’ve some biscuits just out of the oven and Daisy can smell them. She will abandon you, I’m afraid, for the biscuits. Cupboard love rules Daisy’s heart.’

Phoebe giggled. ‘Our dog Prince is a bit like that,’ she said. ‘He is a sweetie. Not terribly clever but very kind and entirely ruled by his belly.’

‘It’s the same here,’ said Pearl. ‘I have to be very careful with Daisy, though, because inside every normal-sized pug is a really fat pug dying to get out, and they have breathing issues because they’ve such flat faces and small noses that it’s doubly wrong to let them get fat.’

The kitchen was just the same as the rest of the downstairs: bright, airy and looking out on to a verandah and the most glorious garden Phoebe had ever seen.

‘How beautiful,’ she said.

‘It’s my hobby,’ Pearl explained. ‘I spend a lot of time out here now. I love gardening but it has to be said, digging up weeds is great for stopping you worrying.’

‘I understand,’ said Phoebe. ‘We have ducks and hens at home, and cleaning out their sheds is not the most glorious job in the world, but it does take your mind off other things.’

‘Now,’ said Pearl, ‘given my advanced age, I am allowed to be a nosy neighbour and ask you what has you in Dublin and, more importantly, what has you living with Rita Costello? I was always afraid that she boiled and ate her lodgers.’

Phoebe, who had just taken a sip of some glorious homemade lemonade, almost spat it out. ‘Don’t say that,’ she said, giggling. ‘I think it might be true. I’m slightly convinced that she stands outside my door and presses a glass up against it to hear what I’m doing. She warned me against parties with such intent, I think she’s either had dreadful experiences with students or else I think she doesn’t like us very much.’

‘Rita doesn’t like anyone very much,’ Pearl said drily. ‘I think there should be some sort of bad-tempered landlady register because she would certainly be on it. Why on earth did you move in with her?‘

‘I was desperate, her son showed me around the place, and I thought I could change the paint a little bit to make it nicer,’ Phoebe admitted. ‘My room is at the front, which is nice, but it’s a dreadful green. And I definitely wouldn’t have moved in if I’d met her because she’s a bit scary. But I’m stuck now. She has my deposit and woe betide me if I break so much as a cup.’

‘Darling,’ said Pearl, ‘no matter what you do, even if you leave that place spotless afterwards and get an entirely accurate version of the Sistine Chapel painted on the ceiling, you will not be getting your deposit back. Rita is renowned for it. There are lots of nice people around here who’d like to take in a lodger, would take much better care of you, and probably wouldn’t charge as much.’ Suddenly Pearl’s eyes gleamed. ‘I have the most perfect idea,’ she said. ‘My friend Gloria lives four houses down from here. You’ve probably seen it, the house with the white roses – she loves her white roses, Gloria. Her husband has been in a home for some time and she’s terribly lonely. You could live with her. What a wonderful idea!’

‘But,’ said Phoebe, feeling anxious and excited simultaneously, ‘does she
want
a lodger?’

Everything was happening very quickly and she wasn’t sure if she’d fallen in with an incredibly kind lady or with somebody who was maybe a few marbles short of a set.

‘She doesn’t know she wants a lodger yet,’ said Pearl beadily, ‘but trust me, she does. It’s a four-bedroomed house with two bathrooms and a garden of white flowers in the back. Gloria’s an amazing cook, too. What are you studying in college?’

‘Fashion,’ said Phoebe, looking around to see if there were any other signs of madness. She had such a good feeling about Pearl but one had to be careful because who knew, after all?

‘Fashion,’ said Pearl thoughtfully. ‘Are you looking for part-time work, by any chance?’

‘Actually, that’s what I was doing this morning,’ said Phoebe, ‘dropping my details into the last few places. I’ve seen almost every shop, café and pub in Silver Bay and nobody has any space for part-timers except perhaps the pub, and I’ve done a lot of pub work before. I’m not overly keen on doing that anymore but it does pay the bills and you get tips.’

Daisy had settled herself in a comfy dog bed and was looking longingly up at Phoebe and the shortbread biscuits with beseeching eyes that implied she hadn’t been fed in at least a month.

‘My granddaughter has a lovely shop around here and she’s been very busy lately because there’s been a sort of family illness, which means she’s not in the shop much. She has someone but …’ Pearl’s sniff implied what she thought about her granddaughter’s ‘someone’. ‘I wonder …’ Pearl seemed lost in thought. ‘I wonder,’ she said again. ‘Just let me work on it, all right? I’ll have a little chat with Gloria too. You need to meet her. How about this afternoon?’

‘I’m getting the bus home to Wicklow,’ said Phoebe apologetically.

‘Right,’ said Pearl, ‘when you get back we’ll set it up. No darling, I’m not deranged, I’m just … well …’ Pearl put her head to one side and smiled, and Phoebe could see how nobody could ever refuse Pearl anything. ‘I am either an organiser in the parish or a bit of a meddler, whichever way you want to look at it. But I see you, a lovely girl, who is living with terrible Rita – who never got over her husband leaving and who views the world through charcoal-tinted glasses – when you could be living with lovely Gloria who needs the company and would be so grateful. It’d be far more fun and you could, if I manage it, have a new part-time job into the bargain.’ Pearl beamed at Phoebe. ‘Leave it with me,’ she said.

Cassie never stayed in bed at the weekend. She was an early bird, but this weekend she felt as if she could never get enough sleep. The anxiety she felt over the tragedy in Jo’s life had made her sleep badly all week.

The other anxiety – the one she’d been trying to blot out – was the influx of feelings about her mother; feelings she was sure she’d sorted out years ago. Coco’s talk about the grenade of undealt-with issues had been slowly ticking in her mind all week.

‘So, my mother’s gone. So what?’ she’d told an old boyfriend who wondered about the unusual family set-up at the house in Delaney Gardens. It had been during her leather mini-skirt and dangerous years when she’d gone out in spite of all curfews set by her father: clubbing, drinking, pushing everything to the limit to see how else she could be punished. Because someone had punished her by taking away her mother – that had to be the only answer.

Anyone who’d asked about her lack of a mother had been told: ‘She dumped us, preferred drinking and drugging to us,’ in brutal tones, as if Cassie didn’t really care either way.

But she had and she still did. How, she thought now, with two beautiful daughters growing up with her, could any mother abandon their children and simply never come back?

She’d felt those feelings most intensely when Beth had been born. As she held her baby, squalling with rage at having been taken from her cosy cocoon inside her mother’s womb, Cassie had felt love like no other and found that she now hated her own mother for abandoning her and Coco. A mother abandoning her children was the most unnatural act in the world. The most heinous.

Being loved by that special person who took care of you from the start was the key to the most important development in humans. For that person to behave badly, to not love or to abuse the child, or to suddenly leave, could destroy the child left behind.

Her mother had done that.

As her daughters grew, Cassie had learned to bury her feelings about her real mother. She was too busy trying to do everything right to worry about herself, but now, partly because of how little Fiona was coping with her ill mother, and definitely due to Shay endlessly choosing his mother over her, it had all come rushing back.

The fear of abandonment was irrational, she knew, but it was there all the same: fear of abandonment and of the grenade going off.

Come that Saturday morning, her body had responded by being overcome with aches. Even her head ached, and she wasn’t a woman for headaches. She had a million household chores to do after she’d taken the girls to their netball matches, but still she wanted nothing more than to lie in bed and try to doze.

Shay, seeing how tired she looked, said he’d take over. Would she like tea or to try to sleep again?

‘You never have a rest,’ he added kindly, and Cassie wanted to cry with relief at the gesture.

Kindness, she thought gratefully:
that
was the secret to marriage, the one they never mentioned in magazines – having someone say they’d bring you tea and let you stay in bed when you thought your whole body might collapse if you had to haul it out of bed again.

There was much bad-humoured moaning in the house. Nobody liked Saturday morning sports fixtures.

‘It’s torture,’ said Lily, her oft-repeated theme.

‘Hush, your mother’s trying to have a rest,’ hissed Shay.

There was silence for a beat.

‘Mum’s not taking us?’ said Beth, shocked.

‘No. Now brush your teeth, and not ten seconds of vaguely rubbing the brush near them – the whole two minutes,’ their father went on.

Cassie burrowed under the covers to block out the noise. This was the reason why she didn’t stay in bed often. Shay turned into an army general when he was in charge in the mornings and a row was inevitable. His favoured military approach at leaving the house antagonised the girls used to Cassie’s more laid-back and fun morning routine.

She tickled them in the morning sometimes, put on loud music, dropped long-forgotten fluffy teddies on top of them – anything to make them laugh at the notion of getting up. One laugh in the morning was strangely worth two more at any other time of the day.

Even under her duvet, she could hear the row brewing.

‘I
do
wash my teeth!’

She burrowed deeper.

‘Mum! Dad’s been mean to me. He said I don’t brush my teeth properly and I do!’ wailed Lily, arriving at the bedroom door.

Cassie knew this to be recently true because Lily was beginning to find boys attractive and knew that stinky breath was not desirable in girlfriends because Beth had told her. Not that Cassie had mentioned this information to Shay, who would have trouble learning that his thirteen-year-old daughter had even the slightest interest in boys, never mind knowing that fresh breath was an important part of this dating ritual. He’d probably have a seizure at the notion that Beth knew this too. It appeared that all the books were right: fathers
did
have huge problems adjusting to their daughters growing up and becoming interested in the opposite sex.

‘Honey, tell him I know you brush them properly,’ Cassie murmured. She reached a hand out from under the covers for a hug.

Lily sat heavily on the bed. ‘I wish you were taking us. He won’t take us for hot chocolate afterwards. Can you make him take us to the café?’

Was this what it was like being a judge – always having to be the higher authority?

There was no getting away from it – she’d have to get up and referee. Cassie hauled herself from her duvet nest. On the landing, another argument was going on about how Beth’s netball skirt and shorts combination – a garment known as a ‘skort’ – had grown scandalously short when compared to Beth’s ever-growing long legs.