Hush Hush (19 page)

Angela woke up, assailed by bird-song. She jolted
upright. It was mini-market Sunday. Sadie would meet Shane. And Conor
would finally meet Rachel.

Angela felt the familiar surge of
insecurity.

Was it wise to have a stunning
friend? Even though Rachel’s affections were currently
accounted for, the object of them, a businessman called Marshall, was
abroad. Angela suddenly wished she was running a stall. She longed to
look capable and sweetly magnanimous, marking down designer cast-offs
for wary Wilmesbury matrons in the name of charity.

Although it was well out of her
way, she presented herself at Sadie’s at ten-thirty, in time
for the ten-forty-two bus that stopped outside St Anselm’s.

‘We could have just met
there,’ grumbled Sadie, locking her front door.
‘
I
can still hobble to the bus-stop without a Zimmer frame.’

‘I know,’ said
Angela, instantly nettled by such ingratitude.
‘
Shall
we go? Best foot forward.’ She set off at a smart pace, leaving
Sadie puffing in her wake.

Conor and Shane were waiting, as
instructed, in the church vestibule. Conor looked sleek and
uncomfortable in his dark linen suit. Shane, complete with new
glasses, was picking papier-mâché splinters off the
giant thermometer that dominated the vestibule, a felt-tipped line of
red nudging upwards towards the total sought for the roof repair
fund.

‘Half the mini-market
proceeds this year are for the roof,’ said Angela, stepping
protectively in front of her mother.
‘
Hi
there, Shane.’

Sadie took Shane unawares,
grabbing his shoulders and shaking him gently but firmly in a
top-to-toe appraisal.
‘
Give
us a twirl, young feller, and let’s see if you’re as tall
as your dad. Almost! Must be the growth hormones they put in
beef-burgers these days.’

‘Don’t eat
beef-burgers,’ muttered a truculent Shane. He looked miserably
press-ganged into the outing.

‘How are you keeping,
Sadie?’ asked Conor, avoiding eye contact with Angela.

‘Well now, I’m just
fine, thank you. Not quite ready to chuck in the towel, despite
well-meaning attempts to brick me into a corner with a knitting
pattern and a jar of joint liniment for company.’

‘Mum!’ muttered
Angela, looking exactly like Shane.

Sadie cocked her head
mischievously.
‘
Seeing
as we’re all here and all Catholics, I thought we could say a
little prayer in the church before we go to market.’

Shane shrugged.
‘
Dad’s
lapsed as anything. He never makes me go.’

‘Shane! That’s not
quite true, Sadie. I have been remiss some Sundays, due to work and
whatnot.’

‘Huh!’ said Shane.

‘Mum knows full well that
I’m lapsed too,’ shrugged Angela.
‘
But
I’ve no objection. Probably do us all a world of good.’

She met Sadie’s eye,
refusing to be embarrassed by her mother’s rampant display of
practising Catholicism.

‘Robert was a great
churchgoer,’ Sadie told Conor.
‘
He
really showed my daughter up, I’m afraid. Since he left us,
she’s only been to his funeral and midnight Mass at Christmas.’

Conor said politely,
‘
I’ve
no excuse, as a former altar boy. Mind you, they say we’re the
first to fall by the wayside. The ones who had it shoved down our
necks from the word go.’

Sadie nodded at Shane.
‘
In
that case, he should be up for Pope. I don’t believe in all
this
“
I was
force-fed
”
nonsense.
How else do you learn the basics, except through your catechism? He’s
not likely to grow up and choose religion, is he, if he’s never
been grounded in the basics? Letting people find out for themselves ‒
that’s just a woolly-minded cop-out.’

Conor watched Sadie and Shane bob
into a pew. Shane genuflected and blessed himself on automatic pilot.

Conor slumped into the pew
behind, leaving room for Angela beside him.

He was assailed by inadequacy on
all counts; as a father, an ex-husband and as a prospective lover of
funny, sweet, good-natured Angela.

Angela knelt beside him and
prayed for selfish things. For Sadie’s decrepitude to
stabilise, for Shane to admire her as a feisty big sister, for Conor
to kiss her again.

She cast him a sidelong glance
from beneath lowered lashes. He was staring at the back of Shane’s
head, mentally burrowing under the tufted brown hair on his son’s
scrawny neck. Angela couldn’t be sure of anything about him ‒
least of all, that he was thinking about her.

When Sadie signalled an end to
quiet reflection by rising on creaky hips, they spilled out into
brittle sunshine like prisoners released from solitary confinement.

Cars now filled every corner of
the car-park. The Wilmesbury faithful and bargain-hunters streamed
towards the primary school playground at the rear of the church,
followed by the quartet emerging from the church porch, walking in
couples.

Sadie strolled with Shane,
pointing out ancient dog turds encrusting the grass verge and asking
nosy questions about school. Shane replied in a flat, unemotional
monotone. Angela couldn’t hear his answers, but he didn’t
seem annoyed.

‘Ange?’

She looked up in surprise. Conor
had been silent so long ‒ without quite ignoring her ‒
that she’d fallen back on her own thoughts for some time now.

‘Look, is my name still mud
after last Saturday? I couldn’t avoid buggering off. Some big
cheese engineer flew in unexpectedly and I had to meet him at the
airport.’

‘Oh, well.’ Relief
warmed her veins at this simple explanation ‒ though he
could’ve told her when he rang to apologise.
‘
No
harm done,’ she said bravely.
‘
I
got the chance to bond with Shane at the Nuremberg rally that passes
for a school sports day. We both belong to the fellowship of wimps ‒
or deep thinkers, as I prefer to call it.’

Conor grunted.
‘
Let
me buy you something to make up for it.’

They rounded a corner and hit a
sea of humanity flowing between haphazardly arranged stalls. Shane
and Sadie vanished under a wave.

Conor stepped back and stubbed
his toe against a trestle table he hadn’t seen, heaped with old
thrillers and sports annuals. The table wobbled dangerously.
‘
Watch
it!’ said a man behind teetering Mills & Boons novels.

Conor reddened and picked up a
dog-eared Alistair MacLean, studying it closely.

Angela felt a wave of affection
for him. For all his money and his smart house and everything, he’d
never be Mr Cool. He couldn’t handle the simplest social
challenge ‒ thank God.

She saw Rachel waving at them and
grabbed Conor’s arm.
‘
Time
to meet and mingle, I’m afraid. Don’t worry, Rache is
harmless compared to my mother.’

Harmless wasn’t the right
epithet for Rachel, in Conor’s opinion. She left a rail of
floaty, diaphanous dresses to ignore his outstretched hand and kiss
him warmly on the cheek. He reddened again.

‘I’m Rachel, famous
for leading Ange astray,’ she smiled, managing to charm without
sounding coquettish.
‘
We
must all get together when the madding crowds subside, go for a drink
or whatever.’

Rachel wore a creamy, hip-hugging
dress of gold-embroidered lace, her only concession to March a
matching shawl looped over both shoulders. The fringe canopied
tastefully exposed cleavage.

Conor looked determinedly into
Rachel’s eyes. Angela pulled at the seams of her navy-blue
jumper and asked Rachel,
‘
How
long is Marshall away?’

‘Too long,’ replied
Rachel mildly.
‘
When
you’ve only just met someone and they zoom off into the sunset
again, it’s hard on the old libido. Still, he’s hinted at
an April weekend in Paris to make up for things.’

‘Marshall is Rachel’s
current
…
’
began Angela.

‘Project? Experiment?’
laughed Rachel. She lifted her brows at Conor.
‘
Angela
disapproves, however silently, of changing men like wallpaper, simply
because they’ve gone a bit tatty and blend into the
background.’ She held a deep green sari against a silent Conor.
‘
You could never be
colourless, Conor. Ange, be an angel and run and get me a coffee from
Mrs Thomsett’s stall, will you? Conor and I want to discuss you
in your absence.’

‘Hah!’ said Angela,
with a sisterly solidarity she didn’t feel. Never until this
day had she realised how dangerous Rachel was. Talking about libidos,
dazzling Conor with her chic sophistication. And boy, was he dazzled.
He had that rabbit-trapped-in-car-headlights look.

Angela stomped off to get coffee
and bumped into Sadie.
‘
Oh,
hello. Where’s the kid?’

‘I’ve lost him,’
reported Sadie, already weighed down with a pot of chutney the colour
of snot and cut-price Tupperware that still reeked of school lunches.

‘Lost him?’ squeaked
Angela.
‘
Was that
wise?’

‘It’s not exactly a
Moroccan bazaar, lovey. He can’t come to much harm.’

Famous last words. When Angela
returned to Rachel’s stall with a scalding cup of coffee, she
found father and son engaged in A Scene.

‘
Christ,
what have you done now?’ Conor was demanding of Shane, watched
passively by Rachel.
‘
I
give you a few quid, I tell you to spend it on what you like, and you
use it as down-payment on a bloody useless heap of junk!’

‘
What’s
up?’ demanded Angela unwarily.

Conor
groaned.
‘
He’s
just bought a games console that probably doesn’t work, and
promised the shyster selling it that I’ll cough up ninety quid
for it!’

‘
Yeah,
well, if I waited for you to buy me a proper one, I’d be
drawing my pension. An Xbox is like an arsehole.’

‘
Eh?’
goggled Conor.

‘
Everyone’s
got one.’

‘
I
told you to wait until Christmas, when I would’ve bought you a
decent one.’

‘
Arsehole
or Xbox 360?’

‘
I’m
coming to the end of a fraying rope here.’

‘
This
is a bargain. It just needs a bit of tinkering.’

‘
Who
by?’ yelled Conor.
‘
You
and I can’t even set the Sky+ thing.’

Angela
folded her arms. Yet again, Problem Child was monopolising Conor and
claiming all his attention. Perhaps Kate had left because she’d
grown sick of being ignored.

‘
Anyway,
you’ll have to buy it now, cos I promised,’ sulked Shane.
‘
An
Englishman’s word is his bond.’

‘
Lucky
I’m not an Englishman,’ snorted Conor. He caught Angela’s
eye.
‘
You
should see it, Angela. It’s scrap without the scrap metal
value.’

Angela
went and saw it.
‘
I’m
no expert,’ she told father and son,
‘but
Robert had an Xbox ‒ briefly, and it looked very much like
this
. Think it
might be OK.’

After
she’d helped Conor carry the purchase to his car, she joined
him on the patch of grass outside the church. Sadie and Shane had
adjourned to the cake stall to guess the weight of the large pound
cake on display. Shane had prophesied that any weight resulting from
edible ingredients would be supplemented with ball bearings.

‘You were a bit harsh on
him,’ said Angela.

Conor scowled.
‘
You’ve
no idea what it’s like, raising a stroppy teenager.’

Angela pulled up stubborn tufts
of grass.
‘
So where
does that leave us? You’re always busy working or
paternalising. I think the longest conversation I’ve had with
you was on the plane.’

Conor’s scowl deepened with
contrition.
‘
Look,
Angela, forget the fatherly breast-beating bit. I’m sorry. Can
we start this afternoon again?’

She shrugged.

‘Let’s go away!’
he said impulsively.
‘
Just
the two of us. If Rachel’s bloke can run to Paris in April, I
can do my bit. How about Ireland?’

‘You serious?’ Angela
peered at him.
‘
What
about Shane?’

‘He’s always angling
to spend a weekend with Matty Hyde. Matty has a mother who bakes
things, feels sorry for Shane, and is endlessly susceptible and
shockable when it comes to practical jokes. Shane loves it round
there.’

‘You and me ‒ just
the two of us ‒ in Ireland.’ An expedition laced with
promise and danger. Forty-eight hours of enforced togetherness in a
stone-clad cottage, Conor coming on to her after several pints of
ice-breaking Guinness.

‘Angela, what do you say?’
She felt a stroking tickle on her wrist and jolted. Conor was
touching her with a grass stem.
‘
I
was thinking, the weekend after next. I can clear the decks at work
and turn off my mobile, so they can’t spring any last-minute
surprises. Please. I owe it to you. There are things I want to talk
about.’