Once in a Lifetime (46 page)

‘It’s not defeatist,’ Dolores said. ‘I overheard Lena speaking to Tom about a meeting with the auditors, and she said something about Ingrid having to make a decision soon. See?

They’re not talking about whether to repaint the facade.

They’re talking about selling - they have to be. It’s been like a ghost town since David died. If they close the place down to revamp, we could all be out of a job.’

Charlie thought about this and found that, strangely, she didn’t care all that much. She loved Kenny’s, loved the family atmosphere, but in the past week, since sitting through Iseult’s play and feeling her life shift on its axis, she realised that you could survive change. Nothing stayed the same, after all. What was important was how you managed the change. That, and having the people you loved around you, was what mattered.

Charlie was due to work on Saturday, but woke up feeling ill.

She lay listlessly in bed, unable even to sip the tea Brendan took up to her.

‘I’ll phone and tell them you’re sick,’ he said decisively.

‘No, I’ll be better ‘

‘No,’ he said. ‘You need to stay at home in bed. It’s all your bloody mother’s fault,’ he added.

Privately Charlie agreed with him.

Mikey had football that morning, and once the pair of them had gone off, Charlie lay there with the remote control in her hand and flicked through the channels. She was deep in Oprah when the phone rang. ‘Hello, Charlotte,’ said her mother. ‘I’ve been phoning your mobile, but it’s off. I thought you worked on Saturdays. Are you sick?’

‘You missed your calling as a private investigator,’ snapped Charlie, and they were both a little surprised. Charlie never spoke like that to Kitty.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Well, I don’t need to talk to you,’ Charlie said.

‘I’m coming over,’ Kitty went on.

God, she was a one-woman army, Charlie thought. She

decided to hang up, but it was too late: her mother had already done so.

Charlie had, on occasion, put on make-up before her mother arrived because she didn’t like the inevitable ‘You look shattered!’

expostulations when she didn’t.

Today, she stayed in bed, wrapped in her dressing gown, a bulky cream towelling creation that was very cosy but did nothing for her face or figure.

When her mother’s furious doorbell ringing started, she went downstairs, opened the door, and marched back up to bed.

‘You’re not well,’ said Kitty in surprise when she followed Charlie up.

‘What are you here for, Mother?’

Again, Charlie surprised herself. Where had this tough cookie character been hiding all her life? Or perhaps she’d always been there but obscured because Charlie had thought that being a chameleon was the way into her mother’s heart.

She tried so hard to make her mother love her, trying to be everything her mother wanted, blending to fit in with every backdrop, and she’d always failed.

Now that she knew it was pure DNA that had altered the picture, the please-everyone chameleon was gone. ‘I thought you were upset the other night,’ Kitty said lamely, and sat on the bed.

‘I was upset for two reasons,’ Charlie snapped. ‘Can you guess what they were?’

‘I didn’t mean to say it like it sounded to that reporter,’

Kitty began. ‘Of course, I’m proud of you ‘

‘Of course!” roared Charlie, and suddenly she didn’t feel ill any more, she felt invigorated. ‘What do you mean, “of course”? You’ve never told me you felt proud of me, never.

It was always Iseult - and I love her, don’t get me wrong, but it’s hard to always come second best. And now I know why.’

Under her usual layer of make-up, Kitty blanched.

‘My father isn’t Iseult’s father, is he?’

It was like watching the energy go out of a prizefighter.

‘I don’t know why she put it in the play,’ Kitty said.

‘I doubt if she knew she had,’ Charlie said. ‘But it was what made you love her more, wasn’t it? Whoever he was, you loved him more than my father, and you love her more than you love me.’

‘No I don’t!’ roared Kitty. ‘I love you too.’

‘You don’t!’

‘Yes I do!’

They glared at each other furiously.

‘All right, I screwed up!’ Kitty shouted. ‘I was never Mrs Perfect Bloody Mother. Iseult was easier because she was more like me. Tougher. You were so gentle; I could see you watching me with those big sad eyes when I did it wrong. Nobody else needed to point out my failings in the mothering department, just one look at your little face was enough. Motherhood is supposed to be instinct, we’re all supposed to be able to do it. Bloody monkeys do it, why couldn’t I?’

‘Is that it?’

‘That’s enough!’ Kitty said. ‘You’re not considered a woman if you’re a useless mother, never forget that. Well, you’re good at it. Mikey worships the ground you walk on.’

It wasn’t a false compliment. Kitty meant it, Charlie realised.

‘He does, doesn’t he?’

‘I never had that, not with either of you.’

‘What about Iseult’s father?’

‘I was pregnant when I married your father. He doesn’t know, never will.’ She didn’t plead. Kitty held her head high.

‘I love you, Charlie, and I’m sorry about the other night.’

‘How did Iseult find out?’

‘I told her once when I was drunk, told her not to tell you.’

At least, Charlie realised, it solved the mystery of why Iseult hadn’t shared that information with her sister.

‘Stupid mare for putting it in a play,’ Kitty went on. ‘Iseult has no sense when it comes to some things. You’d never have done that. You can keep a secret, at least.’

Charlie couldn’t help herself: she burst out laughing. It was as close to a rapprochement as anyone would get with her mother.

Kitty laughed too, then took advantage of the change in mood. ‘Would you not get rid of that hideous dressing gown, Charlie? I know Brendan’s not the type to stray, but merciful hour, no man would stay with a woman who wears that to bed.’

Charlie looked down at the dressing gown. Brendan had given it to her a few years ago for Christmas. She loved it.

‘No, Mother,’ she said cheerfully, ‘it’s like the rest of me: take it or leave it.’

When her mother was gone, Charlie felt unaccountably better.

Lighter, almost. She showered, dressed and on impulse, picked up her anti-gratitude diary and read it from the beginning. It was strange to read her own words and yet time lent a dispassion to her reading. From that distance, she could see glimpses of the child who’d always wanted to please her mother and had grown up not appreciating the value of pleasing herself.

Both her mother and Iseult said what they thought and did what they wanted to, irrespective of who it hurt or affected.

Charlie ran every sentence and every action through her mental filter first to see if it might hurt anyone else.

But since she’d been writing this gratitude diary, she’d seen the patterns in her behaviour and learned, slowly, that she really couldn’t please all the people all the time.

She needed to start pleasing herself first.

The phone rang and she answered it automatically.

‘Charlie?’

It was Iseult and she didn’t sound like her usual, wildly confident self.

‘Hello,’ Charlie said coolly. She might have felt better about the whole thing but she wasn’t letting Iseult get off scotfree.

‘Mother just phoned me. Oh, Charlie, I never meant you to find out this way. I didn’t think anyone would realise …

well, I almost didn’t realise it myself. I wasn’t writing about us but ‘

‘Iseult,’ interrupted Charlie, ‘I’d rather not talk about this over the phone. Can you come round?’

‘Well, I’m busy and I have a stack of meetings this morning because everyone’s so excited about the play ‘

There was the pause where Charlie knew she was supposed to say that of course Iseult was too busy, Charlie must have been mad to even ask; after all, Iseult could see Charlie anytime. But Charlie said none of these things. She merely said ‘oh,’ and waited calmly.

Iseult, used to picking up inflections in people’s voices, grasped the extent of the ‘oh’.

‘I’ll be round in half an hour, is that OK?’ she said.

‘I’ll brew coffee,’ Charlie said, smiling into the phone.

Marcella was feeling miserable and unsettled. Her entire view of life had taken a battering. Up to now, the planet could self-combust with bitterness every day over the price of oil and budget cuts, and she could handle it, but there needed to be a few constants in her life. Ingrid and David had been that. Their existence proved that true love could exist; there were nice, decent people out there; and good things came to those who waited.

All entirely false, as it turned out.

Ingrid’s life had been based on a lie and David, dear David whom Marcella had simply adored, had been seeing someone else.

What was worse was that there was nobody she could discuss this with because Marcella simply had nobody else in her life to trust with such sensitive information. If she’d had

a partner or a husband, she could have talked to them about it.

Poor Ingrid, thank God we have each other. She imagined lying with her beloved in bed holding hands, simply being glad that they were together and weren’t ripped apart by infidelity.

But

she didn’t have that. No man to hold in bed and talk quietly about how horrible it was for dear Ingrid.

No prospect of a man in her life, either. It wasn’t that she needed romance or rampant sex, just companionship. That was all she craved. David’s very existence had made her think there were decent men out there and that perhaps one day she might find one. Well, she’d found Harry, but she and Harry had been too different and that had never really worked.

But another decent man. There was little hope of that now.

The plumbing system in the office had broken down completely despite the speedy fix-up job when the reception area had been flooded.

‘The whole thing?’ said Marcella when her business partner Connor gave her the bad news.

‘Heating, sanitation - the works. It’ll cost thousands,’

Connor said grimly.

‘We spent thousands getting it installed in the first place,’

Marcella said.

‘We can sue,’ said Paul, Connor’s assistant, who was new and hadn’t yet been jaded by life.

Connor and Marcella exchanged a will-you-tell-him-or-will I glance.

Marcella got the honour.

‘We probably will sue,’ she said, ‘but suing is a little like Dr Johnson’s description of marriage - a triumph of hope over experience. And we still have to sort out the problem now.’

‘In other words, we need a good plumber,’ said Connor, in

a voice that implied Dr Johnson’s remarks might have been on the money when it came to plumbers too.

This, Paul could do. ‘My cousin’s a plumber. It’s his own company, he set it up and he’s doing very well. No discounts for cash or any dodgy business. He’s your man. He’s very ambitious, wants to start his own empire, we all say.’

‘Get the emperor to come in and give us a quote,’ Marcella said. ‘I have to go out for a meeting. I’ll be a couple of hours.’

Her meeting had gone on for ages and Marcella stormed up the stairs of SD International, coat flying, thinking about the cost of fixing the office plumbing. The expense would be stratospheric. She’d kill those other incompetent muppets if she got her hands on them.

One wrench of the door on to second floor and Marcella walked headlong into Connor, Paul and another man deep in a conversation.

Her handbag hit the floor, she cannoned off Connor and stepped clumsily back into the third man, who grabbed her arms to steady her.

She shot away from him as if she’d been scalded. She was not in the mood to be grabbed, by anyone.

‘This is my cousin, Lorcan McNamara,’ said Paul in a squeaky, surprised voice.

‘Oh.’ Marcella whirled round to glare at him. If he so much as looked at her with an expression that said she didn’t understand plumbing, so help her God, she’d …

Her brain gave a little cavewoman throb of lust.

‘Hello,’ she said. This was Paul’s cousin?

It had been a long time since Marcella was jolted by a man.

Longer than she could remember. But this man, he was something else. It wasn’t entirely his looks - although Marcella could imagine Julie from reception muttering that she wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crisps, which was high praise indeed and few men earned it. He was dark-haired,

that type of darkness that brought heavy eyebrows that could beetle in a moment, and stubble that needed two shaves a day to control it. His eyes were blue, glinting a smile at her, and he was at least ten years younger than her, far too young to be giving her such a knowing smile.

No, it wasn’t any of that, even the lean perfection of him, narrow hips encased in old denims, broad shoulders in a plaid shirt. It was the air of absolute confidence and control, the sense that he did things his way, and that if anybody didn’t like it, that was fine; unless he was in charge, in which case it wasn’t fine and the entire place would march to the beat of his drum, no matter what, and he’d make it happen by sheer force of will.

The bit of her brain still operating gave her cerebral cortex a good shake.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, with a stab at a normal voice. ‘So you’re taking on the mammoth task. What’s the verdict?’

‘It’s an interesting job,’ he said, eyes assessing her.