Star Sullivan (5 page)

‘Just keep me well out of it. I’m simply his banker, better that way.’

Star hardly remembered her date with Kenny, except that he was nice but very dull.

She said she couldn’t go out with him again as she had family problems, which was very true. She was worried sick about what she and Laddy were planning for her father.

He had been interested enough when she spoke about the trainer, said he had two good horses in a race next week. One was called Lone Star, that was the more heavily fancied. Then the day before the race, Laddy told her to tell her father that she had heard in the supermarket that Lone Star was limping, but that Small Screen was home and dry.

‘Where do you hear all these things? They never tell me anything like that,’ Molly complained.

‘That’s because, unlike little Star here, you wouldn’t bring the news home with you,’ Shay said.

‘Well, it’s not going to be any use to you, Shay, you don’t have any money,’ Star’s mother said. Shay’s mouth went into a hard, sad line.

Later that evening Laddy came in to know if he could borrow Shay to help with some furniture that had to be shifted upstairs. Young Michael was off having a driving lesson before his test next week. Laddy’s father was out at the pub. Laddy said he would be so grateful and there would be twenty euro in it in case Shay wanted a bet.

Star could see them from her bedroom
window. Arms waving, assurances being given. Life and hope had returned to her father’s face again.

He came back holding the twenty-euro note, but Star could see a bulge in his hip pocket where he had the wad of extra notes. Molly, glad to see Shay so happy again, said he could also have the fifty euro she had been saving for a treat.

‘No, no, you’re all right,’ Shay said, gruffly.

‘Go on, Shay, take it, then that’s a real bet for you,’ Molly said, and Shay looked embarrassed and a bit red in the face.

They sat and watched the race next day, Shay, Molly, Lilly and Star. Small Screen was ten to one.

‘Imagine! That would be seven hundred euro if you won, Shay!’ Molly said.

Star couldn’t speak. She knew that it would be 10,700 euro if he won. And that he would owe Laddy Hale 1,000 euro if he lost. She could barely watch, until she heard them cheering.

‘What happened to Lone Star?’ she asked weakly.

‘Your friends at the supermarket weren’t wrong, my angel, though how they knew I’ll
never know. Poor little Lone Star stumbled after a hurdle and went lame. Jockey couldn’t get anything out of her after that.’

Star’s dad went out for a pint with Laddy to collect his winnings and celebrate. Star watched them with anxious eyes. Had she made a pact with the devil? Laddy
must
have known that Lone Star was going to fall. Was he a fortune-teller? Could he tell the future? Or did he know something about the race that he should not have known?

Whatever the reason, did it now mean that her father was more addicted than ever to the horses? Star bit her lip and said nothing while her mother and sister planned how they would all ideally spend the 700 euro that they believed were the winnings.

Then her father came home with what seemed like a fistful of money.

‘Your mother gets five hundred, that was her investment, so that’s fair,’ he began. They looked at him open-mouthed. ‘And one hundred each for Star and Lilly. That’s it, fair and square.’ He handed it out.

‘But what about you, Daddy? It was your bet.’ Star was hardly able to get the words out.

‘No, I had a good race, and a good lesson. I realised how nearly I had put it all on Lone Star, how very, very nearly.
All
that huge amount of money.’

‘It was only seventy euro in the end, Shay, it wasn’t the biggest bet you ever had,’ Molly said.

‘Enjoy your winnings, girls,’ he said, and went to watch a sitcom.

‘Whatever they say or write about it,’ Molly said eventually, ‘there’s no way to understand men. No way at all.’

Star got herself a new hairstyle and bought a new outfit with her 100 euro. The dress was copper-coloured, just like her hair, with a big cream collar. It was oddly old-fashioned but it suited her perfectly. The girl in the shop said it made her look like someone in a painting. Even Lilly, who normally never said anything nice, praised it.

Laddy was full of admiration. ‘Is that to dazzle Kenny the Fish?’ he asked.

‘Who?’ Star said.

‘You know, the guy who took you for the Chinese meal,’ Laddy said.

He had remembered. That was good. ‘No, no,
not at all, just spending my father’s winnings before he changes his mind about them and wants them back for the three-thirty somewhere tomorrow.’

‘He won’t do that,’ Laddy said.

‘How do you know?’

‘I told him how the race was fixed, I told him how I knew. I told him how you all worried about him, laid it on a bit thick, but it worked. He’s cured. So say, “Thank you, Laddy,” and give me a kiss.’

‘Thank you, Laddy.’ Star closed her eyes and held her face near his. Laddy kissed her. She opened her mouth slightly like people at school had said you should do, but he didn’t put his tongue into her mouth so she closed it again. Eventually Laddy pulled away from her and looked at her.

‘You are one lovely girl, Star Sullivan,’ he said. ‘One day you’re going to make a man very, very, very happy.’

‘One day?’ she said, disappointed.

‘Well, not yet, surely?’ he laughed. ‘You’re not even seventeen. You have the world to see, the Kenny the Fishes to go out with, lands to visit, things to do, all before you settle down.’

To Star it all seemed a great waste of time. She was so ready to settle down. Now. This minute.

E
VEN THOUGH SHE HAD
come home from hospital, Lilly still had to go to the special clinic there twice a week and keep a food diary. The doctor said she was getting on fine.

Michael had been in no trouble lately that anyone had heard of.

Kevin and Gemma announced that they were getting married in a year and a half’s time. When they had saved for a proper reception.

Molly was doing fewer shifts at the supermarket. She had had her veins injected and had been told to walk long distances every day. On one of her long walks she saw Laddy Hale with his arm around a pretty little blonde. Every few yards they stopped to kiss each other.

Molly didn’t intend to tell Star this news. The child was barely seventeen now and still hung around the small front garden of 24 Chestnut Street in the hopes of meeting the handsome boy next door.

Star had developed an interest in gardening so that she had an excuse to talk to Mr Hale about plants. He brought her nice winter pansies and ornamental cabbages, as well as little heathers and dwarf azaleas and a bag full of the right soil to plant them in.

Sometimes he gave her sweet-smelling plants like night-scented stock, which she planted for poor blind Miss Mack at number 3.

It was easy to talk to Mr Hale but he was quite hopeless if she tried to bring the conversation around to Laddy. He seemed to know nothing about his own son. Not a thing about what he was like as a child, or who his friends were, or if he missed his mother when she went away. Mr Hale just shrugged helplessly about it all.

‘And suppose she came back, you know, Laddy’s mother? Would you all like that?’

‘I don’t suppose Biddy would like it,’ he said, after some thought.

‘No, but I mean you and Laddy?’

‘Well, I don’t know, it would be interesting to know where she had been, what she was doing, I suppose. That’s all.’

‘But wouldn’t you have liked her to stay?’ Star persisted.

‘No one would want someone to stay if they wanted to be off somewhere else,’ he replied, as if that was obvious.

Star felt very foolish indeed.

She wished she had a friend, someone to talk to, but Rita, who had been her pal in a way at school, had gone to work as a travel rep in the Canary Islands, and Miss Casey was still in Spain with the man called Watches, and Nessa, who lived a few doors down Chestnut Street, was always busy and never had time to talk to Star. Miss Mack was so old that she wouldn’t be much help.

There was nobody at work, because all the other girls said she was mad not to fancy Kenny, who now ran not only the whole fish section, but a lot of the deli as well. He was going onwards and upwards and was real management material. Star was crazy to tell him that she didn’t really want to go out with him again in case it was leading him on.

Wouldn’t it be great to have someone you could talk to about everything? Isn’t that what everyone wanted? Or was it only in movies and magazines that people had those kind of friends? Someone who would sit and listen
about Laddy, and tell her that he didn’t
really
care about the stream of young, barely dressed women who paraded in and out of number 23. A friend who would tell her that yes, OK, he might have been moving some stolen goods that night she had lied for him, but basically he wasn’t a criminal. And even though he did know someone who knew someone who had fixed a horse race, it didn’t mean that he moved with the underworld all the time.

A friend who would tell Star what to wear, how to act in a way that would make Laddy love her now, just like she loved him.

Her mother tried to be that friend but it was useless. Nobody confides properly in a mother. Molly had asked Star many times whether she was being sensible. She meant, was she using condoms or taking the pill. Star couldn’t explain that she had not had sex with Laddy, or indeed with anyone, because she had told everyone that she and Laddy had spent the night together in the single bed under the red rug. In fact Star almost believed that they had.

Lilly looked on Star with more respect these days, too. Normally she thought of Star as
someone who didn’t tell tales about her hiding food. Lilly was well enough to work now, and she sold clothes in a smart boutique. Laddy next door had helped her get the job because he knew someone. He said she had great style, and that if she could eat a bit more to get some curves and a nice bottom she’d do great, and maybe even get discovered. The boutique owner asked Lilly to wear long-sleeved blouses so that nobody could see her thin, bony arms and the great sockets in her shoulders. All Lilly’s time at the clinic was helping her, and nobody had heard the sound of her vomiting in the night, not for a long time now, and she didn’t hide food all over the house as she once used to.

Michael had a job too. In a video shop where he worked very odd hours. Sometimes he was out all night. When asked about it, Michael just shrugged. A lot of people were shift workers, he said, and they needed to rent a couple of movies at any time of the day or night. No one else in the family thought it was odd, so Star said nothing. But she worried about Michael as she worried about everything. She couldn’t ask Laddy, as it would sound like just what she was, a nagging little sister.

Laddy didn’t seem to have anyone particular at the moment. Between girlfriends, maybe. But he wasn’t in the garden as much as he used to be. Star watered the Hales’ mixed borders as well as their own, and she did a little weeding as well. Laddy might not notice, but his father would and might praise her across the fence.

One afternoon, when she was working in the Hales’ garden, Star looked up at the house and saw Laddy pulling the curtains closed in the front bedroom. That was odd. She hadn’t seen him go in with any new girlfriend. And anyway he slept at the back of the house. As she looked she caught his eye. Quickly, Star lowered her eyes and finished weeding the flower bed. The curtains in Laddy’s father’s room were still drawn when she stood up and walked back home.

By the time Owen Hale came back from the garden centre, Biddy had gone off to her job at the bar. His son Laddy had driven off in a van to this or that. And his neighbour Star Sullivan was sitting on the little wooden seat, staring straight ahead. Not able to believe what she
knew was true. Not wanting to think about it but unable to get it out of her mind.

Next day at the supermarket, one of the women customers suddenly broke down. She was about fifty. She started to cry and couldn’t stop. Then she began to hit out at things and knock them down from the shelves. All the time she was calling out: ‘No, Declan, no, don’t go away, Declan, stay with me and love me, Declan, like you used to.’ Over and over again.

People watched, shocked, and all of them powerless to do anything in the face of such grief. All except Star Sullivan who went over and guided the woman to a chair. Then she removed from her hand the folded umbrella that was doing all the damage and replaced it with a paper cup of very sweet tea. She knelt beside the woman who was still crying out in despair and spoke to her gently.

As people watched in disbelief, Star Sullivan murmured and soothed. ‘He’s not really gone away, he
does
love you, he only
thinks
he doesn’t. It will all be all right. It will all be fine. Sip your tea now. Slowly. He hasn’t gone away really, just for now . . .’

And Kenny, who ran the fish and deli counters, held the security men back, and told the other customers that the show was over. By the time he had got the staff nurse to the scene, Star had it all under control and had used the woman’s mobile phone to call one of her daughters.