My Mother's Secret (29 page)

A thump at the bathroom door startled her.

‘Colette? Are you in there? Are you OK?’ It was Alivia’s voice.

‘Yes, fine,’ she called. ‘Trying to make myself presentable, that’s all.’ She sniffed, stood up and looked at her wet hair. Presentable was almost impossible.

‘There’s a hairdryer in Steffie’s room if you need it,’ said Alivia through the closed door.

‘Thanks.’

‘Sure everything’s all right? You’ve been up here for ages.’

‘Yes, of course. Um – do you want to use the bathroom, Liv?’

‘No. It was just that Davey noticed you’d disappeared and he was wondering about you.’

Colette felt her heart beat faster.

‘I’m grand,’ she said.

‘OK. Well, on the basis that nobody’s going anywhere tonight, Paul is dispensing drinks and Summer – fair play to her – is mixing more cocktails. So don’t spend too long on beautifying yourself or you’ll miss out.’

‘Won’t be long,’ said Colette.

She leaned against the bathroom wall and exhaled slowly. Davey had asked about her. He cared about her. He wanted to know that she was OK. Even hearing that made her feel a million times better. But knowing it also seemed to flick a switch in her head. Davey cared because he liked her and because she was his cousin and because she’d driven around in the rain and the dark tonight. He didn’t care because he had any other feelings for her. If he had, he wouldn’t have crawled into Steffie’s half-submerged car looking for Camilla’s engagement ring. If he had, he wouldn’t have bought it for her in the first place.

I’m being very stupid, thought Colette. I’ve been very stupid for years.

She looked in the bathroom mirror again. She held her hand against her face so that she could see the ring on her finger one more time. It was pointless comparing it to any of hers. It outshone them by a considerable distance. Perhaps if any of her ex-fiancés had given her a ring like this, she might have stuck with them. And then she reminded herself that she wasn’t as shallow as all that, that she’d honestly thought she loved each of them while deep down knowing that her heart was bound to someone else. But his heart … she looked at the ring again … his heart was taken and it was time she accepted that fact.

You’re such a fool, she told herself as she began to remove the ring from her finger. And it’s as well that nobody knows it. She twisted the ring to get it over her knuckle. It wouldn’t move. She pulled it a little more but it remained stuck. She told herself to be calm, that she’d got it on to her finger and she could get it off again. But she couldn’t. It didn’t want to budge.

‘Don’t panic, don’t panic,’ she hissed to herself as she pumped soap from the dispenser and rubbed it around the ring. ‘All you need is to take it easy and then it’ll come off. No problem. No bother.’

She inhaled and exhaled slowly and rhythmically. Then she gently tugged the ring.

It was still completely and utterly stuck.

‘There you go.’ Paul handed Roisin the last of Summer’s cosmopolitans.

‘Thanks.’ Roisin took the drink even though she hadn’t officially lifted the cocktail ban from earlier. But it was too late now. The party had spiralled completely out of her control and cocktails were the least of her worries.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Paul as he came around from behind the table to join her.

‘Where we’re all going to sleep, of course,’ she replied. ‘None of these people are meant to be here – least of all her!’ She glanced at Summer, who’d also abandoned the table and was sitting on the sofa beside Carl.

‘Give the girl a break and chill out with your cosmopolitan.’ Paul nodded at the glass in her hand.

Roisin began to speak but then changed her mind and took a sip of the drink.

‘Not bad,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘In fact, it’s pretty good.’

‘She works in a bar,’ Paul said. ‘So she knows what she’s doing.’

‘I thought she said she was a model.’

‘That’s more aspirational than actual,’ said Paul. ‘She mostly does corporate events – you know, the kind where they need an attractive young girl to hand over an award or a prize. It’s not exactly London Fashion Week or whatever, is it?’

‘I don’t know what’s worse. Wannabe model or actual cocktail waitress.’

‘It’s time to lose the chip on your shoulder about her, Roisin.’ Paul looked at his wife with exasperation. ‘She’s a nice girl and being a cocktail waitress is as good a job as any.’

‘I suppose you fancy her.’

‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’

‘She’s young and fun and makes a mean cocktail.’ Roisin sipped again. ‘What’s not to love?’

‘Her cocktail skills are second to none,’ agreed Paul. ‘But she’s not my type, Rosie. You know that.’

‘Do I?’

‘Of course you do. But I’m flattered that you might have been even the teeniest bit jealous.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘You were!’

‘Oh, shut up.’ But she suddenly smiled at him. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help seeing her as a future contestant on some kind of reality show. And you know how I feel about them.’

‘Just as well she isn’t part of one today,’ Paul said. ‘Mind you, the ratings would’ve gone through the roof.’

Roisin shuddered and allowed her gaze to flicker around the room. ‘I can’t believe all this has happened. And I still have to find somewhere to put everyone. Given that Steffie is gone for the night, I was thinking that maybe Sarah and Lucinda could share her room and I could move the girls into ours, along with Dougie. Davey and Camilla should take his room, I suppose. But where does that leave Carl? And Summer? And what about Alivia and Colette? Bernice too? We don’t have room for everyone.’

‘None of them particularly look like they’re ready for bed,’ said Paul. ‘They’ll be fine, Roisin.’

‘Fine now,’ she said. ‘But later, when everyone’s tired, they’ll need somewhere to sleep. I have to work it out.’

‘There are plenty of sofas.’

‘You can’t ask people to sleep on sofas.’

‘There isn’t much of a choice.’

Roisin sighed. ‘After all the trouble I went to,’ she said, ‘this has been the most disastrous night of my life.’

‘Ah, they’ll get over it,’ said Paul.

‘You’re not denying it’s a disaster,’ she said.

‘As a celebratory party it is,’ he agreed. ‘But as an exciting night out – you couldn’t have done any better if you’d tried.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘It’s not just the party that’s disastrous. It’s everything to do with Mum and Dad. And Steffie.’ Her voice wobbled.

‘You’ve a right to be upset,’ agreed Paul. ‘Especially after all the effort you put in.’

‘I wanted it to be perfect.’

‘I know. And it’s not at all your fault that things turned out the way they did. You’re a great organiser, Ro.’

‘Thank you.’ She looked up at him. ‘I’m sorry if I get snappy sometimes. Especially that I always seem to get snappy with you. It’s just …’

‘You’re a perfectionist,’ he said. ‘I knew that when I married you. I like that you want everything to be just so. And even if you go over the top a bit sometimes, we’d be lost without you.’

‘Truthfully?’

‘Of course,’ said Paul. ‘You’re the one that keeps it all together. And even if today didn’t work out the way you expected, you all had to know about Pascal and Jenny sooner or later.’

‘You realise Mum lied to me too, don’t you?’ she asked.

‘I thought the whole thing was that she lied to everyone?’

‘Yes, but she always let me think that she and Dad got married because of me,’ said Roisin. ‘They didn’t. They didn’t think I was worth getting married for.’

‘You’re being silly now,’ said Paul. ‘They wanted to get married, she said so. The fact that they couldn’t is irrelevant.’

‘They could have later,’ said Roisin. ‘If it had really mattered, they would have found a way.’

‘Your mum has already explained that.’

‘Saying that they never found the right moment isn’t really a good enough explanation.’

‘It’s understandable, all the same.’

‘I still—’

‘Roisin.’ Paul’s voice was gentle. ‘Leave it. It doesn’t make any difference. It really doesn’t. To you, to me or to them. There’s been enough for Jenny to deal with this evening. She doesn’t need to be punished by another daughter.’

‘I wasn’t going to …’ Roisin’s words trailed off. She’d intended to have a go at her mother but she suddenly realised that Paul was right. It wouldn’t serve any purpose to heap more anger on Jenny. ‘All I wanted was to fix things,’ she said.

‘You can’t fix everything,’ Paul told her. ‘Sometimes you have to leave it to other people. And there are some things, Rosie, that can’t be fixed at all.’

Camilla was also enjoying one of Summer’s cosmopolitans, although Davey had stuck with beer. They’d moved to the veranda, where they were sitting beside each other on the bamboo sofa. Davey said that it was almost like their holiday in the Caribbean, what with the warmth and the rain and the cocktails. Camilla laughed and told him that the Caribbean had been a lot more tranquil. Then she asked him what the matter was.

‘What d’you mean, what’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘You’ve been like a cat on a hot tin roof since you returned,’ she said. ‘You’re tense and edgy.’

‘Are you surprised?’ He made a face. ‘My parents dropped the biggest bombshell of my life today. I spent ages out in the rain looking for my runaway sister. We’re now trapped in the party from hell. And …’ He checked himself. He’d almost blurted out that he’d lost an engagement ring worth more than three months’ salary and that if he’d had the courage of his convictions and asked her to marry him sooner, they could have been sitting here together as an engaged couple. But instead he allowed his words to trail off.

‘It’s not the party from hell,’ said Camilla. ‘It’s a far more exciting party than the last one I was at.’

He looked at her questioningly.

‘You remember?’ she said. ‘The drinks reception with Ivar.’

Davey nodded. He hadn’t wanted her to go to any social function at which her previous boyfriend would be in attendance, particularly a social function he wasn’t personally invited to, but he hadn’t said anything because Camilla wouldn’t have understood how he could be jealous about a man she considered to be in her past. As far as she was concerned, over was over. She didn’t tie herself into emotional knots about things. Which, generally speaking, was great and made her easy to live with; but sometimes, Davey thought, sometimes he’d like to know exactly what she was feeling.

‘Now that was a boring party,’ she said. ‘All of them standing around with their glasses of wine and yammering on about the critically acclaimed books they were reading and the art-house films they’d seen and me knowing that it was all bullshit because Ivar prefers crime fiction to literary work and is pathetically addicted to kids’ movies.’

‘Kids’ movies?’ Davey was startled.

‘Oh yes,’ said Camilla. ‘Cartoons and comic book hero stuff. Spiderman and the Avengers.’

‘I don’t see him like that,’ said Davey. ‘I imagined him as the arty type.’

‘Because he likes to be seen as the arty type,’ said Camilla.

‘Whereas I’m not arty and nobody would consider me arty.’

‘And that’s a good thing.’ Camilla smiled at him. ‘That is why I’m with you, Davey Sheehan, and not Ivar Nygaard.’

‘And why you’re putting up with the party from hell.’

‘I keep telling you it’s not from hell,’ she said. ‘Although your poor mother must be exhausted.’

‘I suppose so,’ acknowledged Davey. ‘It’s been stressful for her.’

‘And for you, out there in the rain, looking for Steffie.’

He nodded. ‘When we found her car in the ditch, I felt sick,’ he admitted. ‘I thought she’d be in it. I was relieved when she wasn’t and then terrified of what might have happened to her.’

‘But nothing bad did,’ said Camilla. ‘So everything is all right.’

Except that I’ve lost your engagement ring. He couldn’t keep the thought out of his mind for long. He wanted to tell her, but of course he couldn’t do that. The problem was, he didn’t really know what to do.

He was still wondering about it when he saw Colette. She’d dried her hair and was now wearing a pair of fluffy pink slippers, which, teamed with the yellow and black striped dress, made her resemble a character from
Sesame Street
. He waved at her and she crossed the room hesitantly.

‘Davey says you were fantastic tonight,’ said Camilla before he could say anything.

‘All I did was drive.’ Colette knew that she sounded like a sulky teenager, so she gave her cousin’s fiancée a wide smile to make up for it. Camilla looked slightly startled.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ asked Davey. ‘You deserve something nice after your Trojan work earlier. I might be able to persuade Summer to rustle you up one of her cocktails.’

‘Oh, don’t bother with that. A beer would be nice though,’ Colette told him.

Davey got up and went inside. Left alone with Camilla, Colette couldn’t think of anything to say. But then Camilla started talking about Steffie and Jenny and saying that people were overreacting but it was understandable when everything had come as such a shock to them all. Colette didn’t need to say anything. All that was required of her was a nod from time to time as she listened to Camilla’s logical viewpoint on the mess that was Pascal and Jenny’s anniversary party. But she didn’t really hear much of what Davey’s girlfriend was saying. She was too busy thinking of how fabulous the engagement ring would look on the Danish woman’s finger. She closed her left hand around it. Despite having spent another fruitless five minutes trying to remove it, all her efforts had done was cause her finger to swell up even more, making it impossible to get off. So she’d turned the stones around until they were facing her palm and all that could be seen on her engagement finger was a narrow band of gold.

‘So this is a very close family?’ Camilla looked enquiringly at her and Colette tried to stop thinking about the fact that she was wearing the other woman’s engagement ring.

‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘This is the first time we’ve been together in a long time.’

‘Davey says that you came here a lot when you were younger.’