Someone Like You (19 page)

‘It’s Dad …’ Abby began slowly.

Mel couldn’t bear it. She had to interrupt: ‘He’s getting married,’ she cried. ‘To Fliss! She’s gorgeous, she can ski, and we’re all invited to Colorado with them - and for the wedding too. She’s going to get us dresses made. I want a short one with high boots ‘

She shut up at a quick poke in the ribs from her twin.

‘I know it sounds a bit sudden, Mum,’ said Abby delicately, wise beyond her years and knowing the news might be hard for her mother to take.

Sudden, thought Leonie, struggling to keep her eyes focused on the road. Sudden wasn’t the word. Ray was getting married again. She could barely take it in. She was here with nobody and no romantic prospects while he, the one she thought would flounder because he was so quiet, so introspective, so broken-hearted when they’d split up ten years previously, was in love and getting married.

A lump swelled in her throat and she was glad that it was Danny in the front of the car with her, unobservant Danny who was locked into his Discman and some thumping ambient beat. Watchful Abby would have noticed her mother’s eyes filling with tears right away.

‘Well,’ she managed to say, the words nearly sticking in her throat, ‘that’s great. When is the big day?’

‘January,’ said Mel wistfully, already imagining herself in groin-level flimsy silk, her long legs in knee-high boots giving middle-aged men heart attacks. ‘Fliss’s family have a cabin in Colorado and they’re going to have a winter wedding in the snow. Imagine! Us skiing. That’ll teach snotty Dervla Malone to boast about her holidays. Stupid cow thinks going to France is posh! Huh. She can kiss my ass.’

‘Melanie!’ Leonie narrowly avoided a daredevil bus driver and shot her daughter a fierce glare in the rearview mirror. ‘If that’s the sort of language you’ve picked up on your holidays, you won’t be going anywhere. We don’t swear in our house.’

Mel flicked back her straight dark brown hair insouciantly, crinkling up her perfect little nose as she did so.

‘Lighten up,’ she muttered under her breath.

‘I heard that,’ Leonie replied tightly.

‘Aw, Mom,’ pleaded Mel, deciding to be conciliatory in case she wasn’t allowed to go to the wedding. ‘Sorry. But that’s not bad language. In Boston, people say that all the time. I mean, everyone in Ireland says “fuck” every five minutes. All Dad’s friends say so. They think we say “super-fucking-market”.’

‘Mel!’ hissed Abby.

‘We do not say that word all the time, and I don’t want to hear you say it either, got it?’ Leonie snapped, wondering why the Von Trapp family reunion wasn’t working out the way she had planned. So much for giant hugs and tearful murmurings of: ‘Mum, we missed you so much, we’ll never go away again.’

One child had become an American overnight and couldn’t wait to get back there to see her father’s fiancee, another was immersed in music and had refused to be hugged. Only dear sweet Abby seemed vaguely pleased to be home.

‘Tell me about this gorgeous fella you’re not going out with,’ Leonie requested in an attempt to get the conversation back on an even keel.

Both girls giggled. ‘Brad is his name,’ explained Abby eagerly. ‘He’s sixteen, tall, with naturally blond hair and he drives a jeep. He was nuts about Mel. He brought us both for a pizza.’

‘Brad, mm,’ said Leonie with a fake smile, her mind doing cartwheels. A sixteen-year-old with his own transport going out with her little girl! Melanie was only fourteen - a very knowing fourteen it had to be said, but still fourteen for all that. What the hell was Ray thinking of!

She could have been assaulted, raped, anything!

‘His parents are Dad’s friends, and we weren’t out long,’

Abby added. ‘Dad said he’d murder Brad if we were gone more than an hour and a half, and the pizza place is just down the street.’

‘I wasn’t that interested,’ Mel said airily. ‘He’s too immature for me.’

‘He wasn’t,’ protested Abby and, with a catch in her voice, added, ‘he was lovely.’

I wished he’d fancied me instead of Mel, were the unspoken words.

Leonie’s heart ached for her much-loved daughter, the one who looked just like her. Abby had none of her twin’s effortless prettiness. Abby was as tall as Mel but stocky, with a solid body, mousy brown hair like Leonie’s before she got at it with the bleach, and a round, pleasant face that was only enlivened by her mother’s startling blue eyes.

She was a steady, reliable estate car to Melanie’s sleek, capricious Ferrari, and she knew it.

Leonie adored her and saw such beauty and strength of character in Abby’s kind, loving face. But fourteen-year-old girls didn’t want strength of character: they wanted to look like drop-dead gorgeous movie stars and have teenage boys falling at their feet like flies. Mel did, Abby didn’t.

And there was nothing their mother could do to even matters up.

At home, the girls rushed out of the car, eager to see their beloved Penny, Clover the cat and Herman.

‘Penny,’ they squealed in unison as their grandmother opened the front door and Penny sprang out like a caged tiger, hysterical with delight. A huge group hug ensued, with everyone trying to cuddle Penny and have it proved that they were her favourite and had been missed the most.

With typical feline indifference, Clover refused to have any truck with cuddles, flicked her tail sharply in disapproval and shot off into the garden.

‘She’s affected by the paint fumes,’ muttered Leonie’s mother wickedly.

Luggage was dropped carelessly in the hall, waiting for Leonie to haul it to the various bedrooms.

‘Mom!’ said Mel, aghast, on entering the kitchen which had been magnolia the last time she’d seen it. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘Having an orgy with Francis Bacon,’ laughed Danny, coming up behind his sister and staring at the brightly coloured disaster area which his grandmother had failed to tidy up completely. ‘Were you helping, Gran?’

‘No, and don’t tease your poor mother. She’s been trying to brighten this place up,’ she said sternly, heading to the cooker where a chicken stew was bubbling appetizingly.

‘Your mother needs a hand to tidy up.’

‘I’ve got people to phone,’ said Mel, backing out of the room rapidly at the notion of ruining her nails cleaning up all that horrible newsprint and emulsion. Fliss had given her a French manicure before they’d left for Logan Airport. Domestic work would ruin the effect and she wanted her hands perfect for the next day when she’d pay a visit to her arch enemy and supposed friend, Dervla Malone.

The too.’ Danny was gone like a shot, leaving Abby, her mother, grandmother and a still joyous Penny amid the endless paint-splattered newspapers and cans of paint.

‘I’ll help, Mum,’ said Abby loyally.

‘No, love, we’ll eat in the living room,’ Leonie decided, looking dismally at the chaos and deciding that she couldn’t face a proper clean up. She’d bag all the newspaper and that would be it for the moment. ‘Thanks for cooking,’

she added, giving her mother a peck on the cheek.

They ate on their knees in the living room with the TV

on while Danny controlled the remote and flicked from channel to channel in between wolfing down chicken and rice.

Green, thought Leonie, looking around the small but cosy room with its apple-green walls and profusion of plants. Green was the colour she should have painted the kitchen. Not horrible midnight blue. If they could cope with blue for a week, she’d re-do it all next weekend.

Maybe a paler green …

Mel’s words intruded into her brain, dragging her away from paint.

‘… Fliss is really nice,’ Mel was whispering to her grandmother, who was nodding wisely and trying not to look at her daughter.

Leonie felt her face burn, knowing her mother pitied her and hating it. Claire had loved Ray and had been heartbroken when they’d got a divorce. ‘There aren’t as many fish in the sea when you’re actively looking, Leonie,’

she had said gently at the time. ‘You love each other: can’t you gee on with it and stop looking for true love? I’m so afraid you’ll regret this.’

Ten years on, she’d been proved right, Leonie thought bitterly. Ray had had several longterm girlfriends while she, the great believer in true love, had had so few dates that flirting with the postman was her idea of romantic excitement. And he was past sixty and grizzled looking.

She pretended to concentrate on the sitcom Danny was watching and surreptitiously listened to Mel telling her grandmother all about the holiday.

‘Dad’s house is lovely but not big enough for us, Gran, although it had en suites everywhere,’ said the girl who’d been raised in a succession of small homes and now lived in a cottage with one bathroom and a constant queue for it.

‘Fliss wants to convert one bedroom into a dressing room for herself. She has so many clothes!’

Yeah, snarled Leonie to herself. Probably all band-aid skirts and second-skin leather things. She imagined a cheerleader type, shimmering blonde hair and teeth that had never eaten too many sugar-laden Curly Wurlys as a child. Or maybe she was a hard-bitten businesswoman,

Suddenly Leonie stopped, horrified at herself. What was wrong with her, she wondered blindly. She’d wanted to leave Ray, she’d started the whole agonizing process of separation and divorce - so why was she now jealous of this gorgeous Fliss? He was entitled to another life; she’d practically pushed him into it, hadn’t she?

What sort of person was she turning into if she begrudged Ray a little happiness? A bitch, that’s what. A cast-iron bitch.

Abby was eating very little of her dinner. She normally wolfed it down, eating far more quickly than her twin who nibbled daintily. Now, Abby pushed bits of chicken listlessly around her plate. ‘Are you feeling all right?’

Leonie asked in concern, staring across the coffee table to where Abby sat beside her grandmother on the sofa-bed.

Abby smiled brightly. ‘Fine, Mum, fine,’ she replied.

‘I’m just not hungry.’

‘That’d be a first,’ guffawed Danny.

Abby’s eyes glistened but she said nothing.

Leonie gave her an encouraging grin and vowed to kill Danny when she got him alone. He wouldn’t know how to spell ‘thoughtfulness’, never mind know what it meant.

Abby silently took the plates out to the kitchen while Mel rummaged around in a very trendy vinyl handbag Leonie had never seen before. More holiday goodies from a doting father.

‘The holiday snaps,’ Mel announced happily, finding a huge wad of photo envelopes. ‘I can’t wait any longer to show them to you, Mum.’

Leonie cranked her jaw into a steely smile and hoped she could fake a bit of pleasure at the sight of the beautiful Fliss.

Leonie, Claire and Mel squashed up together on the two-seater to view the precious pictures. The first batch of photos were typically Mel - ones where people had their heads chopped off or shots of the glamorous shops in Boston where the reflection from the glass meant you couldn’t see anything.

‘I don’t know how they didn’t work out so well,’ Mel said in consternation as they all tried to figure out who was who in one particularly blurry picture.

The next batch was better.

‘I took them,’ Danny said loftily from his position as king of the remote control.

After a couple of photos of the girls and Ray, who looked healthy and tanned, there was Fliss.

‘That was the day we took the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard,’

Mel said wistfully as she passed the photo along to her mother.

Leonie stared in shock. Instead of the young, gorgeous girl she’d imagined, Fliss was at least her own age. But there the similarity ended. As tall as Ray, she was slim with dark, boyishly cut hair and the sort of beautiful unlined face that made Leonie wonder when Revlon would be signing her up for a moisturizer advertisement for stunning women over forty. She wore faded jeans on endless legs and a navy polo shirt tucked in at the waistband.

In every picture, she was smiling, whether she was hugging Ray or laughing with Mel and the notoriously camera-shy Abby. Even Danny had been coerced into the photos and had posed, long hair windswept, on the ferry beside Fliss.

‘She’s lovely and she’s very clever, you know. She’s a lawyer in Daddy’s firm,’ Mel prattled on, unaware that Leonie was passing the photos along to Claire with the frozen movements of a robot. ‘She has the most wonderful clothes. Daddy teases her for being voted Best Dressed Lawyer in the firm two years in a row!’

Leonie knew she’d never be voted best dressed anything, not unless outsized silk shirts and all-encompassing voluminous skirts suddenly became haute couture.

‘The most incredible thing is she practically never wears make-up,’ Mel added in awe, knocking the final nail into her mother’s coffin. ‘Mascara and a little gloss, that’s all.

Although she gets her nails done. Everyone does in America.’

Leonie thought of her own pancake-plastered face and the long minutes she spent applying her goodies every morning. She wouldn’t leave the house without lipliner, kohl and blusher, never mind just a bit of gloss and mascara.

The pride in her daughter’s voice when she talked about this elegant, glamorous stepmother-to-be made her wonder what Mel really thought of her. Had Mel longed to have a mother just like Fliss, instead of a faux-jolly one who flirted outrageously and laughed loudly at even the most unfunny jokes in order to cover up her insecurities?

Painfully, she saw herself through Melanie’s eyes: a big fat woman who tried to hide her bulk with ludicrous flowing clothes and tried to make herself interesting with makeup.

‘Time for Coronation Street,’ announced Claire loudly.

‘You’ll have to show me the rest of your pictures tomorrow, Mel - I can’t miss Coro. Now, get out to the kitchen and make us a pot of tea. I’m an old woman and I need sustenance. Biscuits would be nice too.’

Mel responded to her grandmother’s voice with total obedience. It was Claire’s manner that did it, Leonie thought, grateful for the interruption. If Leonie had asked for tea, Mel would have moaned, ‘Let Abby do it. She’s out there.’

As it was, she collected up her photos and went out to make tea, humming happily to herself.