Homecoming (40 page)

His eyes were grey, she realised. A crystalline grey that seemed to see deep into her soul.

‘When Lesley died, I’d have fallen apart without Ella. I had to keep going. Ella was just seven months old.’

Connie did the maths. Ten years ago. Would a person be even slightly over that by now? No, definitely not. She’d only just begun to get over Keith, and he hadn’t even died. Pity, that.

She decided she’d be a friend and not try to flirt. There was no point and she was hopeless at flirting anyway. She and Steve were friends.

‘You’ve done an amazing job with Ella,’ she said. ‘You should be so proud of yourself. She’s such a great little girl.’

His smile was so warm that Connie wished yet again they were more than friends.

‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘that’s a very kind thing to say, but a lot of the way Ella has turned out is down to Ella herself.’

‘She is pretty special,’ sighed Connie.

‘Connie! You have lip gloss!’ shrieked Ella.

‘Don’t put too much on,’ said Steve.

‘It’s only clear gloss,’ Connie pointed out. ‘I hid all the stuff that turns me into a pantomime dame.’

Steve laughed. ‘You’re hardly pantomime dame material.’

‘You should see the wart I put on for school,’ Connie joked before she could stop herself. Well, what was the point in pretending she was a hot sexpot? They were friends.

Friends didn’t sit on the couch gazing at each other. They talked and had dinner. Maybe they’d get to the sort of friendship where he told her about his life, girlfriends and all.

‘Right,’ she said briskly, ‘I hope you like chicken casserole.’

‘Love it,’ Steve said. ‘I still owe you for last week.’

‘Oh, what are friends for?’ Connie said cheerfully. ‘There’s wine on the table, as well as water, help yourself.’ That sounded nice and casual, didn’t it? She cast a glance at the perfectly laid table. She’d laboured over it, not wanting it to look date-like. Grabbing the stereo remote, she turned the volume up a bit.

In the kitchen, she grabbed the new red gingham oven gloves she’d bought only that day in the supermarket and took out the bubbling casserole. It smelled delicious, although the cream had split. Blast.

Gaynor had made no mention of what to do if that happened. It mightn’t taste too bad, Connie thought. She stuck a spoon in, waited till it cooled and tasted. The taste was of wine, a bitter tang that did not correlate with the delicious mushroomy smell.

‘How much wine do I add?’ she’d asked Gaynor. ‘Ella’s going to be eating it too.’

Somehow, exactly how much wine to add had got lost in the discussion on making a separate casserole for Ella. Working on the theory that the more wine the better, Connie had poured in most of a bottle of white wine into the grown-up pot. Rapidly, she pulled out Ella’s smaller casserole. Perfect. No bitter tang.

There was only one little breast sitting in a pool of creamy mushroom sauce. Just enough with rice for Ella, not enough to share between the three of them.

‘Smells good,’ Steve said.

‘Yes!’ she trilled.

Maybe the actual chicken might not be too bad…But no. Immersion in nearly an entire bottle of wine had made the chicken acid-bitter and, what was more, it was overcooked. If a burglar attacked, Connie would be able to do serious damage to his head by hitting him with a piece of chicken.

‘How’s it doing?’

Suddenly Steve had loomed over her and was peering with interest into the dish. She watched him inhale and then flinch.

‘Wine stew, anyone?’ she said weakly.

‘How does it taste?’ he asked.

Connie shook her head. ‘Don’t taste it, whatever you do. I don’t have fully comprehensive insurance. If you have to have half your stomach removed, my insurance company won’t cover it.’

She waited for him to laugh, collect Ella and say they might head home instead.

So she was quite surprised when he smiled fondly at her and said: ‘Cooking disasters can happen to anyone. Even though Ella gives out about my cooking, I’m not a bad chef.’ He opened her fridge and spotted the extra chicken breasts. ‘Want me to whip up something?’

Connie swallowed. Fathers of nearly ten-year-olds wouldn’t appreciate double entendres. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d love that.’

Ella had chicken casserole, while Steve and Connie had panfried chicken served with lemon butter.

‘How did you do that and so quickly?’ said Connie with her mouth half full. It was so gorgeous, she couldn’t stop eating.

‘You like Daddy’s cooking?’ said Ella. ‘I like this the best.’ She speared a mushroom with her fork and gobbled it up.

‘Your daddy’s a better cook than I am,’ Connie said.

‘Really?’ Ella was shocked.

‘Don’t count yourself out just yet,’ said Steve, and he glinted a smile at Connie. ‘I’d say Connie has lots of talents.’

Connie smiled goofily at him and he smiled back.

‘Finished!’ said Ella. ‘Can I have dessert now?’

‘Of course,’ said Connie happily. It was strange: she normally loved profiteroles but suddenly, she didn’t feel hungry any more.

22
The Homestead

There was a long walk down the lane from the road to our house, but I never walked it without feeling a sense of peace. Over the years, we’d done our best to keep the place decent, and the house sort of welcomed you as soon as you set eyes on it. The few trees beside us sheltered us from the worst of the winter winds. Agnes’ beloved roses clung to the gable wall, giving a spot of colour on one side. Joe used to paint the front door a lovely green and with the ivy that grew around it, and the old water barrel beside the door, our house was as pretty as a picture. When you were a small child, Eleanor, you loved that water barrel. It collected rainwater that I used for the bath and I always said that hair was never as silky as when it was rinsed with rainwater.

You loved to float leaves and sticks on it, standing up on an old stool to get at the water. I used to be frightened out of my life you’d fall in, but you never did. Your father put a bit of wire across the top of it in a criss-cross pattern to keep you safe.

If I had to go into Kilmoney for a few hours, it was so nice to walk along the lane and see you there
playing with your few bits of toys outside the door. I’d see the green of the door and the trees beside the house, and I knew I was home.

Megan had forgotten how much she liked driving.

‘I have this cute Mazda sports car,’ she told Eleanor as they navigated the motorway. ‘I can’t believe how long it is since I drove. Pippa, my sister, hates driving, but I love it. You feel in charge when you’re driving.’

‘Why do you like feeling in charge?’ asked Eleanor.

Megan laughed. ‘Do you know that Carole has been on at me to have therapy for years. Everyone’s doing it, she says. I didn’t like the idea. Didn’t want to look too much into my own head. But it’s OK, isn’t it?’

‘I think so,’ said Eleanor. ‘But I’m hardly unbiased.’

‘This is probably a good place to talk,’ Megan went on. ‘I’ve read that when you’ve got something hard to say to teenagers, you say it when you’re in the car and nobody can actually look at anybody else.’

‘That helps.’

‘Here goes: I never felt in control as a kid,’ Megan said, overtaking a slow driver. ‘It was Marguerite’s show.’

‘You mean your mother.’ Eleanor normally didn’t operate at such high speeds in a session but there wasn’t time for the measured and painful progression of true psychoanalysis here.

‘She didn’t like being called mother that much. That sounds bad, doesn’t it? She loved us, still loves us, but she wasn’t motherly material. People like Rae from Titania’s Palace: she’s motherly.’

Eleanor nodded and said nothing.

‘My mother is more of a fun person. She liked being our friend. When I started acting, she always wanted to go along to the parties we had. I never thought that was odd. I mean, Mum looks beautiful. Guys loved her. I think I didn’t like that,’ Megan added thoughtfully. ‘It was like, it’s my turn now and yet she’s interested in the guys my age. Not properly interested though. Just interested in them liking her.’

‘Why do you think that was?’

Megan considered it. ‘Insecurity, I suppose. She was so pretty, still is. Prettier than anyone else’s mum, and that was important to her.’

‘More important than anything else?’ asked Connie.

‘Perhaps.’

Megan’s memories of the years when her father was alive were hazy. She wished she could remember more, like the house in Kent where they’d lived or the school they’d gone to until he died. But she could recall so little. Her strongest memories were from ten onwards: the time living with Nora in Golden Square, and the nomadic times with Marguerite. Their life had sounded so exciting to other children at the various schools she and Pippa went to.

‘You’ve lived in Madrid, Martinique, Ireland?’

Foreign countries were exciting but only as a contrast. What was important was the actual home waiting for you. When slipping gaily from one foreign country to another was your whole life, it was a different story. There was no home, nothing solid to hold on to so you could enjoy the light-as-air feeling of being on holiday.

She and Pippa had gone to school most of the time. Film sets and walking into rooms on her own held no fears for a girl who’d gone to eight different schools as a child. Megan was used to being the stranger and she’d learned early on that her beauty made it easier to gain acceptance. Not friends, no. Friends were hard to come by when you were beautiful, but unlike other kids who moved schools a lot, she was never bullied.

Her mother had always been one of the most glamorous of the mothers in the various schools. Not for her a hastily assembled outfit of faded, shapeless clothes or a haircut that was past its prime. Marguerite was petite like her daughters, and no matter how little money they had, her long hair was always artfully highlighted and she had decent face creams. There was no one thing about her face that was beautiful, but she had something else, a hint of sex about her that made men stop and stare. It was nothing a person could put their finger on.

Marguerite Flynn never dressed provocatively, but on her, the simplest white camisole took on the sexuality of a negligee.

Megan was proud to have such a pretty mum and yet sometimes, although she’d never admit it to anyone, she wondered what it would be like to have one of the other mums, the ones who didn’t care how they looked.

For all that Megan had been so pretty as a child, she’d had a great gift for hiding when she wanted to. It was partly so she could hang around the grown-ups, partly because she never seemed to have friends and was on the outskirts always.

Being able to blend into the background was useful. She heard things. And it was true: eavesdroppers never heard good things about themselves. Only, Megan hadn’t heard bad things about herself.

It was always noisy in Gunther’s house in Martinique. He liked people around, there were always guests staying from Germany and local friends dropping in for drinks. Birds squawked outside, insects hummed, music drifted from the kitchen where Yvette, Gunther’s chef from New Orleans, would be concocting a delicious lunch on instinct – no cookbooks for her.

Pippa was playing with one of the visitor’s daughters. Megan had left them to it, and was drifting around the house, out into the garden where a silent gardener was working, back into the terrace where the cocktails were.

‘Gunther will never marry Marguerite. She thinks he will, the fool. Men never marry women like that. One day, mark my words, his mother will come along with a virginal German heiress with no looks but an impeccable pedigree, and Marguerite and the kids will be thrown out.’

Nancy was speaking. Nancy wore Dior, rattled with precious jewels and was never seen without her raven hair in a perfect up-do. Megan knew that her mother idolised Nancy.

Nancy had her own money and was a friend of Gunther’s. Not Marguerite’s friend. She looked at Megan’s family as if she knew they wouldn’t be staying very long. Chantelle, one of the maids, had told Megan and Pippa that the woman before their mother had had a son. He’d had their bedroom, which was why there were posters of cars and football teams on the walls.

Pippa took them down on her side. Megan didn’t. She didn’t want to stay here. She knew they wouldn’t, anyhow. Gunther barely noticed her and Pippa. If he wanted to be with their mother, he’d like them too, wouldn’t he?

She’d never told anyone about what she’d overheard.

Nancy was right. They’d left six months later. Few of her mother’s Martinique ‘friends’ had said goodbye.

‘We’ll be fine, girls, won’t we?’ Marguerite had said with false bravado.

They’d lived with Nora for a few months, then back to London, and somehow, although Megan had forgotten how, Marguerite had fallen in love again, and they’d moved to Norfolk.

Megan and Pippa had never questioned the way they lived.

This was their mother’s world and she’d learned to negotiate it as best she could. Finding a man to look after her was what she did.

‘Is there somewhere to stop along the way?’ Eleanor said. ‘I need to use the restroom. Sorry, I know we only just had lunch.’

‘Let’s have a break on the outskirts of Galway,’ Megan suggested. ‘That’s not far.’

They chatted about inconsequential things as they drank tea in a hotel beside a vast roundabout. Eleanor had been quiet for the last few miles of the journey.

‘It’s all so different,’ she said as she stiffly got back into the car. ‘Of course it’s going to be different, I know that. But it’s almost alien to me. Not what I expected.’

For the first time, Megan sensed that this wasn’t a straightforward emigrant-returning-home trip. Up to now, she’d never questioned Eleanor’s desire to visit her old home. Eleanor hadn’t been to Ireland for many years, it was a pretty standard thing to want to do, right?

But now, Megan began to wonder if Eleanor’s visit to Ireland was that straightforward after all.