The Art of Friendship (31 page)

‘But she said she’d only had a few!’

Sarah sighed. ‘I never saw her that night – I was already in bed when she got in. But she told me she threw up in the toilet when she got home. She said she was pissed. She told me all this in confidence, Mum. Promise me you won’t say anything to her?’

Patsy said nothing. Her heart ached with disappointment and a sense of betrayal. Laura had lied about that night. Patsy let out a heartfelt sigh.

But she would not say anything, either to Laura or Martin. Because Laura had suffered enough for her foolishness – she had learned her lesson. What was the point of raking over the coals of a past they were all trying very hard to forget? And the knowledge would break Martin’s heart. He couldn’t bear it.

‘I promise. But there’s one thing I don’t understand, Sarah. Why are you telling me now?’ Patsy was annoyed at being burdened suddenly with something she did not want to know. Something that challenged her perception of events. Something that interfered with her righteous anger and blurred the lines between right and wrong.

‘Because it isn’t right to put all the blame on Pete. And I don’t want to see you and Janice fall out over this.’

‘We’ve already fallen out.’

‘Well, I don’t see why you should. Why should you lose your best friend over something stupid that Laura – and Pete – did?’

Patsy put her head in her hands. ‘I think it might be too late for me and Janice.’ She thought of the things she had said in her rage. ‘Sometimes you can’t take things back.’

She looked up and Sarah was regarding her curiously. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘it’s kind of ironic that this has happened to Laura.’

‘I don’t see anything remotely ironic in it,’ said Patsy wearily.

‘I was the one you worried about. You were always nagging me to go out more, see more of my friends. You more or less told me that I was weird, wanting to spend my spare time at home.’

Patsy sighed. ‘I never said that.’

‘Not in as many words. But I got the message loud and clear. And all along it was Laura you should’ve been worrying about, not me.’

Patsy rubbed her temples with the tips of her forefingers. ‘Sarah, where are you going with this conversation?’

Sarah smiled crookedly. ‘I know that Laura’s always been your favourite.’

Patsy’s heart missed a beat, then raced the way it did on the very rare occasions when she exercised. ‘I never favoured Laura over you,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, feeling like she was walking into a mine field. ‘I always treated the two of you exactly the same.’

‘Materially, yes. But she’s the one that makes you light up when she walks into a room, not me. It was never me. And I think that blinded you. You let her get away with far more than me at her age, you were always on at her to go out and
enjoy herself. Like she could do no wrong, do whatever she liked. Well, she certainly did that.’

Patsy stared at her eldest daughter, appalled by the resentment in her voice. The cold hand of fear gripped her heart. All these years she had striven to convince herself, as much as the girls, that she loved them equally. And she had completely failed. Had she been so transparent? Was she responsible for creating the sibling rivalry between her daughters that she had so feared?

‘You sound as though you hate Laura.’

‘I don’t. I love Laura. I just think that maybe if you hadn’t been so indulgent with her, then maybe this might never have happened.’

It was her fault then. Just as she’d suspected. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m sorry if I made you feel that way.’

Sarah shrugged. ‘I don’t mean to make you feel bad, Mum. It’s just better, I think, if we’re all completely honest about these things,’ she said sanguinely, impressing Patsy with a maturity well beyond her years. ‘At the end of the day, I’m alright. It’s Laura that’s come out of this the worst.’

And it was true. It was Laura who would carry the scars of this with her for the rest of her life. And so would Patsy.

The summer holidays came and Clare welcomed them with relief. Because it meant that Zoe took Izzy on holiday to Cyprus for the first two weeks of July.

Lucky them, she thought enviously, as she pushed Rachel around the local park in the buggy on a fine warm day. Either Zoe’s shops were doing really well or Liam was paying her too much maintenance. But it had been nice these past two weeks not to have to deal with either of them.

After three weeks of refusing to allow Izzy anywhere near Clare or the house, Zoe had relented and things had returned, more or less, to the status quo, apart from the stipulation that Clare wasn’t to take Izzy ‘anywhere in the car,
ever
again’. She said she was only agreeing for Izzy’s sake so she could see her father. But the fact that Zoe’s stance had lasted less than a month had more to do, Clare suspected, with the restrictions Izzy being around all the time imposed on Zoe’s lifestyle.

Clare had seen Izzy only a few times after that, before she went off on holiday, and she hadn’t had much to say to her stepmother. She had reverted to her old self – secretive, reserved and cautious. Aside from injuring Adam, that was Clare’s greatest regret. She wondered how much of Izzy’s attitude was a survival response in the face of Zoe’s renewed hostility towards Clare.

Josh ran erratically along the path beside the buggy in a pair of combat shorts and matching t-shirt, and a floppy sun hat on his head, looking like a cute mini-soldier. The trees in the park were in full, vibrant leaf, the ferns, wild flowers and tall grasses in the wild part of the park were at their zenith. Every now and then Josh would be captivated by something and stop dead in his tracks, mesmerised by a fallen leaf, a stick, a clod of earth. He found two battered pine cones that had been lying in the long grass all winter. He gave one to Rachel, who squealed with delight.

Clare wished she could live in the moment, like the children. But her problems weighed too heavily on her mind.

Liam, Zoe, Izzy, Kirsty. There was so much to be put right, Clare didn’t know where to start. And that wasn’t even counting the quarrel between Janice and Patsy, not that there was much she could do to solve that dispute. She looked at her babies and thought of what Laura had been through and shivered involuntarily even though the sun was blazing and it was in the twenties.

Clare had met both women recently for coffee, separately of course, and Janice was anything but defensive of Pete. In fact, she was furious with him. It wasn’t as if she and Keith were defending what he’d done – but Patsy wasn’t swayed. She remained strident in her views. It saddened Clare to think that the four of them might never meet again as friends. She missed their get-togethers terribly. She missed Kirsty most of all. She could still see Janice and Patsy on their own, of course – but it wasn’t the same. The spark had gone from all of them, it seemed to Clare.

Just as the spark had gone from her marriage to Liam. She tried to remember exactly when it had happened – round about the time she decided to start painting. Had she been selfish in single-mindedly pursuing her dream? Had she
asked too much of Liam to support her ambition, when the children were so young and demanding? Had she put her needs above those of everyone else in the family? The answer was probably yes, at least some of the time. But isn’t that what men did all the time? The weekend game of golf, for example, was taken as a God-given right. When had Liam ever expressed guilt about spending upwards of three to four hours on the golf course, while she kept the children occupied almost every weekend?

She sighed and tried to put him and everyone else out of her mind, just for now. Just so that she could have one afternoon of peace and tranquillity without being eaten up inside by anxiety.

Eventually, they came over the brow of the gentle hill and the play-park came into view. It had been refurbished the previous year with new equipment, the chief attraction being a ‘flying fox’ – a wire attached between two poles down which shrieking children, clenching a small button-shaped seat between their legs, launched themselves. There was a crowd of kids around it now, all much older than Josh.

Josh cried, ‘Swings!’ and immediately set off at a canter across the grass. Rachel screamed to be released from the buggy and Clare bent down and undid the safety restraint. The toddler spilled out and followed her brother, stumbling across the grass in a remarkably effective manner. Soon she was many yards ahead of Clare, who found herself obliged to run across the grass to keep up.

It was then, jogging breathlessly, the wheels of the buggy clogging up with the damp, recently cut grass, that Clare saw Kirsty. She was sitting on one of the benches facing the play-park, wearing a pink t-shirt, white jeans and a black baseball cap on her head. An opened book lay in the palms of both hands. Clare stopped, and put her hand to her heart. She
hadn’t seen or spoken to Kirsty since the accident. She’d sent a letter of heartfelt apology but received no reply. Should she approach her? Should she risk being shunned?

Kirsty lifted her head, looked in Clare’s direction, then quickly dipped her head. She had seen her, Clare was sure of it. Kirsty closed the book and stood up. Swiftly she collected garments off the bench and put them, along with the book, in a rucksack by her feet. She walked away from Clare, towards the Coast Road exit, hoisting the bag over her shoulder and calling to the boys as she went.

After a few moments’ delay, David and Adam emerged from the gaggle of children swarming over the play equipment. They ran over to the bench, picked up bikes that were lying on the grass and mounted them. Adam’s was bright red – the one Clare had had delivered to Kirsty’s house three days after the accident. She was pleased to see that the gift had been accepted, that Kirsty had allowed her to make some reparation at least. The boys sped after their mother, standing on the pedals and zigzagging haphazardly across the grass. Kirsty did not once look back.

Abandoning the buggy by the edge of the barked area, Clare reached the play-park in time to scoop Rachel out of the path of a well-built twelve year old whizzing down the flying fox. She deposited her and Josh on the roundabout and gave it a brutal shove. The roundabout spun round and round and the children waved at her, their little faces illuminated with pleasure.

She stood with a smile on her face, the muscles on her neck taut with anger. She was fed up being ostracised. How long must she be treated like a pariah? It was ridiculous. The punishment far outweighed the crime. She knew she had done wrong, she had tried to make amends.

But it would not be enough in a small town like Ballyfergus.
Every detail was pored over, repeated a hundred times, exaggerated a hundred more and each telling glazed with a liberal dose of indignant outrage. Clare wished some other, more juicy piece of news would hurry up and eclipse her embarrassing tale. Until then she was the hottest topic for local gossips.

No-one had the nerve to say anything to her face, of course. But she knew people were talking about her. At the last playgroup before the holidays, groups of women clammed up and scattered like chickens when she approached, as if they’d suddenly found a fox in their midst. And she knew for a fact that her reading group, an informal affair of like-minded women, had held a meeting without telling her. And now Kirsty had walked off.

Only Janice and Patsy had shown her any compassion. Liam had shown her little. She ought to be able to count on his support no matter what. If the roles were reversed and he had done something stupid she would be there for him, standing up for him, fighting his corner. Liam’s apparent unwillingness to do this for her hurt most of all. And to Clare this said more about the sorry state of their marriage than anything else.

She watched Kirsty’s retreating figure, now just a specksized dolly mixture on the other side of the park, and something inside her snapped. Enough was enough.

How many of them could put their hand on their heart and swear that they had never, in their entire lives, taken a drink before driving a car? Probably only a handful would pass that test. She had to keep reminding herself that she had been within the limit because, the way everyone was getting on, you’d think she spent her entire life behind the wheel of a car tanked up on bottles of gin and running down hapless cyclists.

The irony was that it wasn’t the drink, primarily, that had made her lose control of the car. It was Izzy. Demanding to
know why her dad was late again and why she had to go out in the car to collect Rachel and Josh. Why couldn’t she stay in the house? Why was Clare treating her like a baby? Who did she think she was? On and on she went, until Clare’s knuckles, clutching the wheel, were white with tension and her head, a pressure cooker of exhaustion and misery, felt like it would burst.

Of course, at twelve years old, Izzy was perfectly capable of being left alone in the house for a while, but there was no way Clare was allowing that. Zoe would find some way to turn it against her – she would no doubt accuse her of neglect and irresponsibility. In the final analysis (and Clare had scrutinised the events of that day ad nauseam) a combination of factors had led to the accident. Drink was just one of them.

She remembered looking over her shoulder at Izzy, screaming ‘Shut up! You self-centred little cow,’ and the next thing she knew she was sitting in the car face to face with a lamp post. It was the first and only time she had ever used such language to Izzy. She was deeply ashamed. And that was why she hadn’t told Liam the entire truth about what had happened that day. And Izzy hadn’t either. In the end both of them were to blame.

Liam had never offered an explanation as to why he was late home the night of the accident and Clare couldn’t help but imagine him cosying up to Gillian over an after-work drink. The thought that this might have been the cause of his lateness enraged Clare. If he had been on time, none of it would even have happened.

‘Do it again!’ shrieked Rachel, as the roundabout wound down slowly to a gentle halt.

‘No! I want off,’ cried Josh, holding up his arms. ‘I want to go on the swings.’

‘Me too! Me too!’ hollered Rachel, her voice like a foghorn.

The children scrambled off the roundabout and ran over to the swings. Clare trailed in their wake, hoisted them into the baby seats and set them off swinging. It was hard work, keeping both of them in motion at the same time.

‘Faster!’ cried Rachel.

‘Higher!’ shouted Josh.

She pushed harder, higher, sweat forming on her upper lip.

Liam had not mentioned Gillian since the accident and Clare was too scared to ask him about her – too afraid to find out that he was still seeing her, or worse, that their ‘friendship’ had developed into something more intimate. Since the night of the accident Liam had been even more remote, disconnected from her. He was never rude or unkind and he helped around the house as much, or as little (depending on how you looked at it), as he had always done.

He treated her with a formal kind of respect, which felt like disdain. He was quite often home from work late – he said he was very busy at the office. Nights, he either played golf, worked at the dining table in the lounge ‘til late or watched TV. He blamed her for the accident, that much was clear, and for the renewed difficulties between him and Zoe. Clare, for her part, could not forgive him over Gillian. She was deeply upset that Liam had chosen to make a confidante of another woman. But her overriding feeling when she thought of Liam was one of disappointment, on many fronts.

And so they reached a frosty truce, which involved living pretty much separate lives. After the children had gone to bed at night, and the many household chores were done in preparation for the next day, Clare would retire to her room with a book. She was always asleep before he came to bed.

Well, it couldn’t go on. She’d had enough of living in an
emotional vacuum. It was worse than arguing all the time. At least she felt alive then. If this was the best the marriage could offer both of them, perhaps it was time to get out. And it was certainly time to ask Liam the question she had avoided for the last six weeks: what did he really want? If the answer was the end of their marriage she had better get ready to face that too.

‘More! More!’ cried the kids and she realised she had stopped pushing and was standing with her hands on her hips, tears streaming down her face. She brushed the tears away and put her shoulder to the wheel, lunging and pushing and heaving until the two little bodies were flying through the air screaming with delight, and she was soaked with sweat.

Clare was in no hurry to leave. Izzy was coming to stay tonight, her first visit since her return from holiday, and Clare was dreading it. But here, in the park, if she tried very hard, she could pretend there was no Izzy and no Zoe and her life with Liam was perfect.

Eventually, though, the children started to complain about being hungry. She gave them a mottled banana each and set off for home with a heavy heart. It was time to face up to reality.

When she arrived at the house, Liam and Zoe’s cars were parked in the drive and the front door was open. Rachel had fallen asleep in the buggy and so Clare left it parked outside at the bottom of the steps leading up to the front door. Josh climbed the steps on tired legs and stumbled through the door. He ran to Liam and wrapped his arms around his right leg. Zoe, dressed in white linen, with a tan the colour of an old leather bag, completely ignored Josh as usual. Liam looked up and nodded at Clare as she stepped into the hall. She gave him a weak smile. When she heard Zoe’s voice her stomach tightened with anxiety.

‘…and don’t forget she starts hockey summer school tomorrow at ten,’ Zoe was saying. ‘Her kit’s in that bag. She’ll need a lift over there in the morning.’

Izzy was standing between her parents, with her thin arms folded, two bags at her feet, a bored expression on her face. She wore a tartan mini-skirt and a t-shirt and she was brown all over like a sun-kissed Californian teenager from an American TV show.

‘Hello, Josh,’ said Izzy, kneeling down so she was at the boy’s level. ‘Where have you been?’