Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle (95 page)

‘The whole thing is career suicide,’ Carole said, almost to herself. ‘What were you
thinking
?’

Megan felt the rawness inside her and was glad she’d kept her feelings to herself.
Thinking
had had nothing do to with it, but it was better that Carole didn’t know that. She would rather no one knew it. Public hatred might be painful, but it was marginally better than pity.

‘Time is the only healer now, at least in the media,’ Carole went on.

And what about my heart, how is that meant to heal? Megan thought, but instead she said, ‘If my sister can’t have me, I could go to my Aunt Nora’s in Dublin.’

Nobody would expect her to go there when she had many jet-setting friends with yachts and islands and Manhattan apartments, although the friends seemed to have made themselves scarce. Katharine Hartnell was too powerful for anyone in the industry to risk offending. Only a few of the people Megan had thought of as friends were phoning up now, and more for prurience’ sake than out of friendship.

Still, Ireland was the last place anybody would expect her to go.

It was also the last place she wanted to go. Aunt Nora would not throw her arms around Megan and say ‘poor diddums’. She’d probably ask ‘What the heck were you doing?’

But it was a home, and one the press were unlikely to know about. Her peripatetic childhood on exotic islands had been widely reported; interviewers had always been much more interested in her recollections of Martinique and Formentera than Dublin Bay.

Ireland and Aunt Nora would do, but really she wanted to hide with Pippa: lie on the bed in her big sister’s attic spare room reading novels, hidden from prying telephoto lenses by rolling Welsh hills. But she couldn’t compromise Pippa’s family in that way.

When they’d been younger, the gorgeous Flynn sisters had set London, and occasionally LA, on fire. It seemed nothing could stop them. But that, like everything else, had changed. Now Pippa had taken herself out of the rat race and, much as she loved her sister, she had other loyalties to consider.

A couple of days earlier, on one of her sneaked forays from the London flat to get groceries, Megan had treated herself to a fashion magazine – one which had featured her in their ‘in the closet’ series a year ago. She’d opened it to find a big article by a leading female journalist on the evils of predatory women, and there she was, Megan Bouchier, vilified as the worst offender. Horrified, she’d thrown the magazine in the bin, but it carried on taunting her, even from underneath the wet teabags.

‘Who are these people who hate me so much?’ Megan had sobbed on the phone to Pippa. ‘It’s cruel, the stuff these newspaper columnists write – the women are the worst. How can they be so vicious?’

For once, there was quiet from Pippa’s end. Normally, their calls would be punctuated by an endless chorus of ‘Mummy, I want…’ or the dogs barking or someone laughing or crying – Megan had become used, although it had been hard initially, to the constant demands of her sister’s life. Kim, four, and Toby, twenty months, came first now.

‘I don’t know,’ Pippa said after a while. She sounded as if
she was too tired to even answer the question at the end of a long day chasing after her small children. ‘I suppose it’s like the pack instinct, isn’t it? Women feel threatened and blame the other woman. It’s easier to see her as the snake charmer, the evil seductress, than to blame your own man for straying. You know, it’s not his fault, therefore you can still trust him. It’s other women you can’t trust.’

It was Megan’s turn to be silent. When the news had first broken, Pippa had been her greatest ally. ‘He seduced you, he told you their marriage was over, it’s his fault,’ she’d said back then.

Even when the press had arrived at Pippa’s farmhouse, scaring the chickens so much that two had run off and never returned, she’d been on Megan’s side. Now suddenly she wasn’t. She was fed up with it all and the effect it was having on her life. Attuned to every nuance of Pippa’s voice, Megan could tell that her sister had had enough of the Rob and Megan saga.

Worse, Pippa was looking at the story from a distance, thinking about how other women would view her beloved sister, instead of standing beside her in the trenches.

It was hard to know what was the most painful: Rob vanishing, her subsequent crucifixion in the press, or the knowledge that the whole scandal had somehow severed her bond with her older sister.

How, Megan thought bleakly, could a love so glorious have brought such pain?

She could see the lights of the curving arms of Dublin Bay through the plane window. Her throat felt tight at the sight. Home. It was home in lots of ways. Since their father had died when Megan was ten and Pippa thirteen, they’d lived in many different houses with their free-spirited mother. Sometimes the houses of their mother’s boyfriends, sometimes houses they rented. The one in Peckham was the one they’d lived in the longest, and that had been for two years, when
Megan was starting out acting. She’d done her best never to say where she lived. Peckham didn’t sound cool enough. There had been an awful problem with damp. It was a three-bedroomed house and each bedroom reeked of damp. Pippa had had to throw out her favourite brown leather jacket because of the mould on it.

Nora’s house in Golden Square was the only home which had remained constant in all that time. Not as fancy as the villa in Martinique, or as cool as the top-floor apartment in Madrid, which had only lasted six months anyhow, because Pablo had been a bit of a perv and had clearly fancied both Marguerite’s daughters, so they’d left there sharpish.

Golden Square wasn’t cosmopolitan, smart or trendy. It had seemed like the most boring place on the planet to fourteen-year-old Megan in the two years she’d lived there and attended the Sacred Heart Convent. The only reasonable shops in the area were the book shop and the vintage clothes shop, Mesopotamia, where Megan had once found a tattered Pucci scarf for a fiver. Granted, a lot of the clothes there were tragic, but if you rummaged, you could get bargains.

Golden Square was both homely and home. Everybody knew Aunt Nora and liked her, respected her. If Nora forgot her purse when she went to The Nook convenience store, the owner would happily wave her away and tell her to pay another time. Megan couldn’t think of anywhere in the world where she knew people in the same way.

The plane banked over the city, lower all the time. Like Megan’s spirits.

It was horrible, feeling that she’d entirely messed up her life almost before it had begun. She had wanted to do everything right, to be the best she could be, to be wise and kind, and yet somehow she’d ended up in a world where it was easier to go to night clubs ‘til dawn, easier to hang around as part of some rock star’s entourage, easier to do the wrong
thing. And all the while it was as if her life was a film; she was just playing a role
,
just pretending she was real. It felt as though one of her choices actually meant anything because tomorrow she’d wake up and be a different character.

Except it wasn’t a film and the choices she’d made had been real. So were the consequences.

Overnight her fairytale world had turned very real and very ugly.

She didn’t know whether Nora or the comfort of Golden Square would solve any of that. All she knew was that she would give anything to be able to go back and start again.

Nora Flynn saw the last client off the premises and locked the practice door with relief. The heavy curtain she pulled over the door was a sign to regulars that Golden Square Chiropody Clinic was closed for the day. It had been a long one; seven clients ending with a very difficult woman at six who wanted something done about a fungal nail infection but did it mean her nail polish would have to come off?

‘What?’

‘I don’t want my pedicure ruined, I’ve just had it done,’ the woman said.

‘You are kidding, aren’t you?’ said Nora.

The woman gazed at Nora, who had poker-straight undyed grey hair and not a shred of make-up on her face.

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Probably not.’

Nora could be endlessly patient. But when the woman had finally left, moaning about her messed-up pedicure, Nora had felt like shrieking,
And a plague on you too!
after her. Hell was definitely other people.

She checked her watch. Half six. Megan would be on the plane now.

‘Get a taxi,’ Nora had told her on the phone. ‘No point me trekking through evening traffic to the airport.’

‘OK,’ Megan stammered, clearly taken aback but trying not to show it.

‘Shall I make dinner or will you eat on the plane?’ Nora went on briskly, noting Megan’s surprise and moving on.

‘Don’t bother with dinner,’ Megan said, and she sounded more like the old Megan, less like the grand movie star who’d insisted fame wouldn’t change her and yet had been changed all the same.

It would do her good to be back in Golden Square, Nora thought. Nobody would be running round after her here. There was only Nora and Nora didn’t do running around. Not with her knees. She was glad she didn’t have to cook tonight, either. Nora knew her limits and cooking was one of them. A bit of salmon in the microwave and some plain rice would do her nicely.

The practice occupied the ground floor of the house. Normally, she’d have been sharing the space with Kevin, who was a wonderful chiropodist, but he had a week off.

‘Surfing,’ Kevin had said when he booked his holidays.

‘Whatever floats your boat,’ said Nora. ‘It’s supposed to be hard.’

‘Not for me,’ said Kevin, with the innocence of a child, and Nora thought he was probably right. For all Kev’s innocence, he was very competent.

She turned off the lights and opened the door on to the stairs leading to the rest of the house. She lived on the two upper floors.

The basement was a flat let out to a pair of girls who used to work in the bank, and now worked in a bar, making far more money in tips than they’d ever made when they were changing euros into rands and yen on the foreign exchange. The agreement was one party every two months, and so far, they’d kept their side of the bargain. Nora generally got invited
to the parties, went for an hour to show that she wasn’t the sour-faced old bag from upstairs, and then retreated to bed with a cup of cocoa, her double-strength wax earplugs and her silk mask.

They all shared the garden at the back, although on weekend mornings, Nora wasn’t bothered by the girls because, like vampires, they rarely rose before noon. Even then, they looked quite undead.

This evening, Nora thought she might sit by the window overlooking the garden and drink a glass of wine to set her up for Megan’s arrival. Nora didn’t like to rely on anything unnatural for relaxation but it had been a stressful day, and she wasn’t entirely looking forward to her niece’s arrival. Megan thought nobody in Golden Square knew what had happened, as if Ireland were some provincial backwater without newspapers or the internet. Like all young people, she thought the current city she was in was the centre of the universe, and everyone who didn’t live there was to be pitied.

But Nora knew it all. And if she hadn’t, Prudence Maguire from the other side of the square had nearly burst a gut to tell her a few days before.

‘Your Megan is in a bit of trouble, is seems. Got herself involved with a married man, broken up the marriage, or so it says in the papers. Just in case you hadn’t heard,’ Prudence had added, smiling like a cobra as they stood in the queue in The Nook with their groceries.

On that particular day, Nora had some soya milk, lemons for her tea and a tin of dolphin-friendly tuna in her basket. Prudence had a half-price chocolate cheese cake and a litre of lambrusco hidden under a copy of the
Irish Times.
Nora knew because she’d seen Prudence put them there.

Not that she’d say anything, any more than she’d say a reproving word to the girls in the basement flat who drank two weeks’ worth of alcohol units on a Friday night. Nora didn’t tell other people what to do. Didn’t believe in it.
Everyone had their own path to follow, was her motto. If Prudence wanted to be a bitch extraordinaire, destroy her arteries with cholesterol and turn into an old soak at home on her own, far be it from Nora to say anything.

‘Thank you for telling me, Prudence,’ Nora had replied calmly, adjusting her spectacles so as to get a clear view of Prudence’s face with its delighted smile. ‘Great day, wasn’t it? Nice to have a bit of heat in your bones with the really freezing weather gone.’

Prudence’s smile faltered at this. She was entirely unaccustomed to people receiving her carefully aimed gossip with politeness. Normally, the recipient would look stunned or hurt or on the verge of needing a restraining order. Nora Flynn just looked as calm as ever, round face serene. Even her smoothly tied-back long grey hair had a serenity about it. Silly cow. Probably growing magic mushrooms in her back garden, Prudence thought crossly. Stupid old bag. Nora had to be at least sixty-five, and didn’t look a day over fifty. And she was still going strong. Had to be drugs,
had
to be. Those alternative health people were all growing marijuana plants in their sheds and insisting it was for their health.

It was easier to have Prudence come out and say it, Nora knew. The news would be all round the square at high speed, and this way everyone would be over the embarrassment should they bump into Megan. Even Kevin, who wasn’t much of a reader, had seen it in the paper.

‘Poor Megan. It’s a bummer, isn’t it?’ he’d said.

‘Yes, a bummer,’ Nora agreed.

Another reason why she loved Kevin. There would be no sly glances from him, betraying the unspoken judgement that her actress niece had really screwed up this time. No, Kevin knew that things happened to people and you got on with life.
Shit happens
, he liked to say. It was a comforting philosophy, although not necessarily one you’d want embroidered on a cushion.

When she opened the door to her apartment, Leonardo and Cici, her two dogs, were waiting inside, tails wagging furiously. Leonardo, who was part-greyhound and very shivery, danced his quivering dance, while Cici, who was mainly shih tzu, all dictator, bounced up and down like a dog who hadn’t been petted for at least three hours and was on the verge of phoning the animal rescue people in outrage.