‘Hel o, Cloud’s Hil , can I help you?’ in a cheery voice.
‘Now that you mention it, I am an expert on pain,’ Leah said softly, ‘although it’s not expertise I’d wanted. My son died, you see.’
Daisy felt herself stiffen. ‘I didn’t know you had a son,’ she stammered, thinking of how she and Mary had assumed Leah was some wealthy divorcee with no ties and Jots of money. ‘I don’t any more,’ Leah said simply. ‘I’m a mother with no one left to mother.’
For the first time in a long while, Daisy felt ashamed of how she’d behaved. Her hope of having a son or daughter seemed to have died but she hadn’t had a real child who’d died. A living person you’d given birth to dying was much, much worse than the death of the dream of one.
It wasn’t as if anybody had said she’d never have a child.
There was stil hope. She might meet Mr Fabulous and be deliriously happy and pregnant within a wet week. But Leah’s son would always be dead. Always.
‘What happened?’ she asked softly.
‘I don’t like to talk about it,’ Leah said.
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK. What I meant to say was that I don’t like talking about Jesse death, but I do talk about it. Grief corrodes from the inside out and talking helps, they say.’
‘I didn’t mean to stir up memories …’
‘Memories are things you think about from time to time,’
said Leah. ‘I think about Jesse every day. He’s with me, not a memory.’ She touched the amethyst crystals around her neck. ‘He bought these for me on a holiday and I saved them and didn’t wear them much until he died. They bring me peace.’ ‘How can you have peace?’ Daisy asked in astonishment. ‘A kind of peace,’ Leah amended. ‘The peace that comes from knowing you can’t change things, no matter how many times you wake up in the night screaming. The peace of acceptance. You learn to live with it.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I guess the old cliches are the best.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘He would have been thirty-three this year. You’d have liked him, Daisy. He was tal , handsome - or I could be biased,’
she smiled, ‘but I thought he was handsome. He’d had lots of girl friends, so he must have been. Funny, clever, kind, loved his dog. I sound like a besotted mom, don’t I? He was perfect - to me, anyhow. He liked danger - that was his big flaw. Heliskiing, abseiling, rock climbing in Utah, anything the insurance companies sucked in their breath at.
Motorcycles,’ she added final y. ‘A motorcycle kil ed him.’
‘How did you deal with it?’ Daisy simply couldn’t imagine how a person would manage after such a loss. She would selfdestruct, she knew.
‘I had to learn to rely on myself,’ Leah said. ‘I looked at me and didn’t like what I saw. The only good thing in my life, apart from my husband, Sol, had been Jesse and he was gone. I wanted to end it al , but I didn’t have the courage to take the pil s. It was a scary place to be in.’
Daisy sat silently and listened.
‘For the first couple of years I was just surviving,’ Leah went on. ‘My marriage broke up - it’s not uncommon after a child’s death, so everyone told me. Then I got involved with a group helping to raise awareness for people to carry donor cards. It’s a big deal for some people. Most of us haven’t thought about it. What to do with your organs when you die wouldn’t have been a dinner party conversation in my home.
‘Working for the charity was helpful and I felt I was adding something good to the world, but it wasn’t enough. I was like …’ she was searching for the correct way to describe it, ‘a drug addict who was clean but was stil a drug addict, if you get my point. They haven’t dealt with al the stuff, they’re just not actual y abusing the drugs.’
Daisy nodded. She understood.
‘That’s what I was doing,’ Leah continued. ‘I appeared to be living - on the outside, anyhow - but I wasn’t. I was dead inside and I hadn’t dealt with any of it. It al seemed so wrong, you see,’ she said. ‘No mom should have to bury her child.’ ‘I’m so sorry,’ Daisy said again helplessly. ‘And I’m so ashamed,’ she added. ‘I thought the worst thing in the world
was happening to me and it wasn’t, it had happened to you.’ ‘Infertility is a grief too,’ Leah said. ‘You have to mourn and there isn’t a quick fix. It’s the same as when a woman has a miscarriage and people stupidly say, “Have another baby,” as if a new one wil make you forget the one who died. Parents wil stil mourn the tiny baby they’ve lost, like you stil mourn the babies you haven’t had yet. I understand that. But it’s not over for you yet, Daisy. It’s over with Alex, for sure, but nobody has told you that you can’t bear children, and, if that is the case, nobody says you can’t adopt or you can’t foster. The only limitations are the ones you put on yourself. If you adopted a baby, would that child be any less yours?’
‘No,’ said Daisy. ‘I hadn’t thought about it real y. I’d assumed we would go down the fertility treatment road first and see then. That was the first big step and everything would fol ow. And al the time the love of my life was cheating on me, getting someone else pregnant. Dumb, that’s me.’
‘You’re not dumb,’ Leah said firmly. ‘When you’re hurt, you feel stupid because you think you should have seen it coming. But if we knew everything that was going to happen to us we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Al I’m saying is, open your mind and your heart to the possibilities.’ Leah looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got work to do, Daisy. In the meanwhile, there are some lovely people here today. You should join in with them this afternoon and have a couple of treatments, and a hot tub.’ ‘It didn’t do me much good before,’ Daisy said, thinking of the last time she’d been here and how, a few days later, she and Alex had gone to the fertility clinic, from where everything had gone rapidly downhil .
‘You weren’t ready before.’
Something pinged in Daisy’s head but she couldn’t quite think what it was.
‘But I haven’t booked in or anything.’
Leah smiled. ‘We can always make room for someone who real y needs it.’
At eight in the morning of that same day, Mel had picked Caroline up from the train station in Carrickwel for their day of pampering at Cloud’s Hil .
Adrian’s mum, Lynda, was looking after the girls in the morning, and Mel’s mum, Karen, was taking the afternoon shift. Graham’s sister was picking up Caroline’s boys after school.
‘Diplomatic,’ Adrian had pronounced when Mel explained the arrangements for Sarah and Carrie that morning. ‘I fine-tuned my peace-keeping skil s yesterday when Carrie and Sarah both inexplicably wanted to play with the same Teletubby. There was nearly war and I solved it.’ ‘How?’
‘Took away Tinky Winky, switched the television on to Dora the Explorer and doled out milk and biscuits al round.’ ‘I’d run for president if I were you,’ Adrian grinned. ‘You’d get my vote.’
Mel was stil smiling when she saw Caroline walking down the platform steps, carrying a smal suitcase. ‘Hi!’ yel ed Mel happily, then stopped.
Instead of looking thril ed with anticipation of the day of luxury ahead of her, Caroline looked weary and red-eyed, as if she’d been crying al the way from Dublin.
‘What’s happened?’ Mel had visions of Graham and Caroline having had some great argument that would undo al the restorative power of the day ahead.
‘Everything’s fine, total y fine,’ Caroline said in a bunged-up voice. ‘Graham was perfectly happy that I was going to be away tonight. His sister’s staying over to babysit and he said he might § work late.’ She gave a hol ow laugh and her eyes brimmed. ‘I’d love to know where he’s going to be tonight. Some fantastic little restaurant, the same sort he used to bring me to, or an expensive hotel with … her. And his sister won’t realise. He’l say he’s taking clients out for a drink.’
‘You don’t know for sure that he’s having an affair,’ Mel said. It certainly sounded as if he was, but that didn’t mean it was, true. ‘I know, but …’
‘We’l talk in the car.’ Mel put her arm around her friend and hugged her. Poor Caroline.
‘I know I shouldn’t be crying but I can’t help it,’ sobbed Caroline. ‘I’m a mess, aren’t I? I can’t go into a swanky spa looking like this.’
‘Nobody wil notice,’ Mel said, ‘and if they do, say you’ve been having your blackheads squeezed in preparation for your face mask. That would bring tears to anyone’s eyes.’
She wasn’t sure how they got to Cloud’s Hil because she was so busy trying to comfort Caroline that the drive was a blur. Now that she’d told someone how awful it al was, in between crying, Caroline talked non-stop about the mess of her life. ‘I feel so useless,’ she sobbed, ‘as if it’s my fault.
I’ve changed, I know, but what can I do? The children do come first. Graham’s old enough to look after himself and make a sandwich if he wants one, so I don’t bother doing those things for him. But,’ Caroline added, ‘the irritating thing is that he wants al that. He wants to be mothered too, and I only have enough mothering in me for the children. He wants me to be Mum and Sex Goddess and the career woman I once was and I can’t …’ ‘Of course you can’t,’ Mel said briskly. ‘You’ve changed. I’ve changed since I’ve given up work to stay at home. It’s an enormous adjustment, and you needed Graham to understand that.’ She said a silent prayer of thanks that Adrian was the type of man who did understand. He’d taken her change of life in his stride. He loved her, not whatever role she had to play that day. It was true that if somebody truly loved you, you could be yourself with them. She’d never be able to tel Caroline this; it would sound so smug. But Mel didn’t feel smug, just very lucky.
‘Isn’t this lovely?’ she said cheerily as they parked outside Cloud’s Hil .
It was fabulous: elegant, luxurious and somehow serene in its lofty position high up the mountain.
‘Remember years ago when we used to save up and go for a load of sessions at the Beauty Sanctuary opposite the office?’ Caroline said mistily.
In their early days of working together, partying and paying rent on their apartment had taken up much of their salaries, but they’d stil managed to take time out for bikini and leg waxings, and deep cleansing facials.
‘I loved that time,’ Caroline added. ‘I thought I had life al worked out.’
‘You’l have life al worked out again,’ Mel promised, and she real y hoped so.
In the three days she’d been at Cloud’s Hil , Cleo had felt herself relax. Only then had she realised how wound up like a spring she’d been when she’d got there. She’d gone for long walks around Cloud’s Hil , enjoying climbing Mount Carraig and looking down at Carrickwel in the distance, and she’d enjoyed meeting the other members of staff.
They were al crazy about Leah.
Nial , who’d worked on the house as a brickie when it was being built, and was now the spa’s handyman, had told Cleo that Mrs Meyer had given him the best bit of advice he’d ever! been given. It seemed that his mother and his girlfriend, Liza didn’t get on with each other and Nial was torn between asking! Liza to marry him while, at the same time, knowing that his I mother would go mad if this happened. When there was such! naked dislike on both sides, what hope could there be for the future?
Mrs Meyer had said that it seemed as if both women wanted to be the only woman in Nial ’s life. Which was unfair.
‘She said I should get them both together and tel them I loved them both and couldn’t cope with them being childish’
any longer, and it was up to them to get on because they were both important in my life,’ Nial told Cleo with relish. ‘It worked! I don’t know how, but it did.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Cleo said, thinking of the long talks she’d had with Leah. She wasn’t sure how Leah managed it, but she gently prodded you along until you came up with the solution to your problems - a solution you’d known al along. Cleo was beginning to figure out what she should do.
She’d talk to Jason and Barney, and she’d phone her parents. She loved them and she’d been crazy to let this family feud stand in the way of that.
‘You’ve got to come to Cloud’s Hil - you’d love it,’ she told Trish on the phone. ‘I’d get you a discount. I’ve had the Indian head massage again and ‘
‘Never mind the Indian head massage,’ said Trish. ‘Tyler phoned the house looking for you.’
‘What?’ Cleo couldn’t believe it. ‘How did he get the number?’ ‘From the hotel, I guess. They have your private details on file and you can buy any information, if you real y want to,’ Trish said knowledgeably. ‘Nobody’s identity is safe, I’ve said it before. Once you’re on a computer, anyone can hack in and find out everything about you.’
‘Trish, you’ve got to stop reading crime novels,’ Cleo sighed. ‘What did Tyler say?’ She felt a shiver of excitement that he’d tried to contact her. He did care! She wasn’t just his Dublin stopover girl. Or was it that he hadn’t got anywhere sexual y with her and he couldn’t bear to leave any girl unbonked? ‘I didn’t talk to him. Ron did,’ Trish explained. ‘Ron answered?’ Cleo could imagine how Tyler would construe a man answering her home phone number.
‘He met Ron in the Shepherd the first night you went out with him, so he sort of worked out that we al lived together.’
So much for the cool town-house-shared-with-a-girlfriend notion Cleo had pitched to him.
‘And?’
‘And Ron told him you’d hot-footed it off back to Carrickwel and you were al upset anyway, because some awful bastard had bought your family’s hotel to rip it down and you had this great plan to throw yourself in front of the bul dozers and stop them.’
‘He didn’t!’ Cleo hoped this was just Trish’s idea of a joke.
‘Afraid he did,’ Trish said apologetical y. ‘Ron’s not the brightest bulb in the pack. I gave out yards to him and said you’d never said you were going to throw yourself in front of the bul dozers, but he thought it was the type of thing you’d do.’
‘And then what? What else did Tyler say?’
‘He asked was that the Wil ow Hotel and Ron, like a big gobshite, said yes, and it had been sold out from under your nose.’
‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ groaned Cleo. ‘OK, I do.
How did Tyler sound then?’
‘Ron is not the sort of person who tunes into people’s personal emotional frequency,’ Trish pointed out. ‘He thinks a woman saying “let’s talk” is code for “I have a deep inner problem and I want you to turn off the footbal so I can wreck your head by sharing it with you”.’