Hush Hush (24 page)

‘It’s Kate,’
shuddered Conor. ‘She’s taken an overdose.’

Angela had no appetite for Sadie
’
s
birthday lunch, a tradition started by her and Robert after Fenton
’
s
death. Sadie bore the ordeal gracefully. This year, Angela had clean
forgotten to book Baggio
’
s
for the Sunday, so she, Sadie and Rachel (a stand-in for Robert) had
decamped to Wilmesbury
’
s
newest eatery, a garish American bistro, where waist-coated staff
whizzed around on roller skates, claiming they found it a pleasure to
be at your service.

‘I don
’
t
like anything on this menu,
’
Sadie informed their waiter, hoping to wipe the dazzling,
transatlantic smile off his face.

The waiter, whose name tag said
‘
Davey
’
,
hunkered down beside Sadie. Angela had seen him adopt the same pose
with a stroppy toddler three tables away.
‘
If
it
’
s a question of
soft food for the teeth,
’
crooned Davey, exposing his own gleaming set,
‘
I
can have chef rustle up a nice runny omelette with a bit of salad.
Would madam like that?
’

Sadie put her menu to one side,
rejecting the idea of hitting Davey over the head with it. If only
she had a stale bread stick handy.
‘
Madam
would like to see a little more imagination on the vegetarian dishes.
I
’
m not a
vegetarian, but I like a rest from meat every now and
then. This menu assumes vegetarians eat truckloads of
spinach
with everything.’

‘We do a vegetarian burger
made of soya extract,’ said Davey humbly.

Sadie pondered while Davey held
his breath, swaying uneasily on his cracking thigh joints. Not easy
to hunker down on roller skates, reflected Angela.

‘I’ll have it,’
said Sadie imperiously. Davey stood up with relief, but Sadie wasn’t
letting him away that lightly. ‘Is it in a sesame seed bun? I
don’t like those sesame seed yokes. Can chef pick them off for
me?’

Davey looked at Angela in pity.
‘I’ll see what I can do, madam,’ he sighed, pushing
off on his skates.

Angela had a thumping headache.
Rachel, resplendent in mint green, looked like a crisp lettuce leaf.
She patted Angela’s hand sympathetically.
‘
So
how is Conor’s ex-wife after her little fiasco?’

Angela grunted, swivelling away
from Sadie’s beady look. ‘Chucking paracetamol and
whiskey down your gullet is hardly a
“
little
fiasco
”
. The doctor
who pumped her out gave her a huge rocket, according to Conor. And,
being Yanks, they’ve bunged her in compulsory therapy for
alcohol abuse and its depressive side-effects.’

Sadie clicked her dentures
speculatively. ‘I feel sorry for the woman, I really do. It’s
the classic cry for help, I suppose, and Conor certainly went
running.’ Sadie paused. ‘As he should have done. He still
has a responsibility to his ex-wife.’

Angela grabbed her bag off the
back off her chair and scrabbled about for the birthday present. She
laid the small, gift-wrapped parcel by Sadie’s plate.

‘Here you are, it’s
nothing special,’ she said almost shyly. ‘You can take it
back if you don’t like it.’

In fact, she had spent several
lunch hours window-shopping for it with Pauline and Val.

Sadie unwrapped the silver and
amethyst Celtic brooch. ‘It’s lovely!’ she said
sincerely. ‘With a lovely big clasp for my clumsy old fingers.
Thank you, lovey.’ She puckered up for a kiss.

Angela leant gingerly over the
table and grazed the papery cheek with cool lips.
‘
Did
Owen remember this year?’

Sadie, who’d considered
trying to pin the brooch to her blouse, decided against with
diplomatic haste and laid it back in its cradle of purple tissue.

‘I got a card. And a
cheque.’

‘Oh?’ Angela was
about to say something mean about her brother salving his conscience
with a stroke of his pen, but took a sip of water instead. ‘For
how much, if it’s not impertinent to ask?’

Sadie glanced meaningfully at
Rachel, who turned tactfully away to buttonhole a waiter. ‘A
little something towards a new washer-dryer,’ hissed Sadie. ‘I
mentioned in a letter a while back that it was on the blink. I think
Candace must be behind it. I can’t see Owen giving a second
thought to a wonky washer-dryer. Doubt he’s ever used one.’

‘Good for Owen
‒
and Candace,’ smiled Angela, raising her glass of fizzy water.

‘So,’ said Sadie,
noting Angela’s ginger sips of water. ‘Are you ever going
to tell us why Conor’s ex-wife made this desperate cry for
help, or is it that he hasn’t told you?’

Angela blinked over her glass at
Sadie’s pert gaze and Rachel’s benign baby blues. ‘Look,
if it’s a family thing,’ began Rachel mildly,
‘
I
can slip off and powder my nose for a few mins.’

‘Don’t be silly!’
countered Angela edgily. ‘You are family where my
far-from-private private life is concerned. Fact is, Kate wanted to
come back and take up residence at 23 Pacelli Road, in a platonic
context, to be with Shane. But Shane, as final arbiter of a parental
patch-up, gave it the thumbs down. Conor’s plan B was to help
Kate buy her own flat over here, so she could still return to England
and be close to Shane. Kate agreed to plan B, then went off and took
an overdose. I don’t think it’s fair to call it a
deliberate act of sabotage,’ she ended defensively, as a
knowing look passed between Sadie and Rachel. ‘We don’t
know what was going through her head, what state she was in.’

‘Granted,’ said
Rachel. ‘But she got what she was after, didn’t she? Her
ex-hubby’s flight to her bedside, slap bang in the middle of
his weekend with you. At least for the time being. It is a temporary
arrangement, isn’t it, Ange?’

‘For God’s sake, I
don’t know!’ Angela looked around for Davey to save her
with the arrival of the first course.

‘But what did he say on the
phone?’ probed Rachel. ‘Come on, he’s been gone
over a fortnight! When’s he coming back?’

Angela’s throat went dry.
‘He couldn’t be specific.’ No way could she tell
them that Shane had gone out to New York to join his parents. That
the family McGinlay were now reunited in Kate’s loft apartment,
with Conor and Shane dividing the cooking between them, Conor phoning
when he could from his makeshift office, sounding ever more
defensive, embarrassed and distant.

Not half as embarrassed as
Angela, though. In their last conversation, she had blurted down a
crackly line, ’I love you!’ and been rewarded with a
final burst of static and a dialling tone. Had he heard her before he
hung up in embarrassment? Had he successfully decoded those three
little words as a plea not to be abandoned in favour of an ex-wife
with whom he shared a lengthy past and a child?

She turned to Rachel. ‘How
goes it with Marshall?’ she challenged mildly.

Rachel pinkened prettily. ‘We
haven’t exhausted our sell-by date yet! You know, dare I say
it, I think he might be the man for me.’

‘Honest to God?’
Angela faked a bit of polite enthusiasm, ashamed of her
self-absorption. Not long ago, an update on Rachel’s love life
would’ve shaken her out of even gloomy Robert-thoughts. But two
nights of passion with Conor
‒
which was all their relationship really amounted to
‒
had been enough to throw her off-centre and off her guard.

She picked at her meal. Then it
was back to Sadie’s for the cake-cutting and sherry. Angela
nibbled a strand of almond icing and examined the cards on the
mantelpiece, while Sadie watched her carefully and Rachel kept the
conversational ball rolling. But eventually, even she tired of
flogging a rapidly expiring horse.

‘I must be off. I’ve
got three evening shifts on the trot coming up. Thanks for the cake,
Mrs F.’

‘Thank you for my lunch,
Rachel.’

‘Can I give you a lift
home, Ange?’

Sadie stacked cake plates.
‘Angela will be staying to help me clear up.’

‘Huh? Oh, apparently I’m
staying for a bit.’ Angela exchanged a conspiratorial look with
Rachel over Sadie’s head. She was due either a toe up the rear
end for ‘sulking’ doing her civic duty in the restaurant,
or a bracing pep talk about not giving up on Conor/not chasing after
Conor.

The front door shut. Sadie glared
at her. ‘Time of the month, is it?’

‘No, as it happens,’
scowled Angela. Despite telling Sadie firmly, at the age of fifteen,
that she wished a conspiracy of feigned ignorance to prevail on this
subject whenever the bathroom bin filled up with blue boxes, Sadie
had persisted with motherly intrusion ever since. Back in Angela’s
teens, she’d insisted that Angela spirit away the blue boxes to
the bin outside the back door, in case Fenton or Owen glanced into
the bathroom bin and fainted.

‘I’ll put the kettle
on,’ muttered Angela as her opening time-buying gambit.

Sadie followed her into the
kitchen. ‘I rang Conor in New York last night to find out the
state of play.’

Angela banged down the tea caddy.
‘You did what?’

‘Shane answered. They were
all going out to dinner, so he couldn’t hang about. He offered
to get Conor, but I decided not to bother, in the circumstances. Face
it, lovey, Conor will have other things on his mind for a while. But
just be patient. He’ll come back to you in the end if you don’t
force the pace.’

Sick disappointment flooded
Angela. Now they were gallivanting off to family dinners! What man
could resist falling in love with his wife all over again as he
helped her recover from a brush with death? She could just imagine
the touching reunion that had taken place at the hospital bed, Kate’s
Titian locks flowing across the pillow, Conor covering her frail
little hand in frenzied kisses: ‘Oh my God, Kate, I thought I’d
lost you for ever! And with so much left unsaid.’

This little tableau had been
torturing Angela for some time. She didn’t need to hear about
shared dinners! And she’d be none the wiser if Sadie hadn’t
poked her snout in. ‘You’re the one forcing the pace, you
interfering old trout! Now Conor will think I asked you to phone,
that I’m pestering him from afar. For once in your life, will
you kindly butt out and treat me like an adult!’

Sadie sank into a chair, her face
quivering with a spasm of pain. Physical, Angela presumed. She turned
to the sink, shoulders braced and teeth clenched, deciding to
interpret any signs of infirmity as play-acting. She began twisting a
tea towel round and round the inner rim of a clean mug. ‘Where
did you get the phone number of Kate’s flat?’

‘He gave it you, didn’t
he, when he rang from the hospital in New York?’

‘But how did you get it,
Ma?’

‘I looked in your address
book in your bag one time, on the off-chance you’d written it
down, and you had. I’m not proud of it!’ she added, as
Angela gaped. ‘But you’re such a fool to yourself
sometimes, you left me with little choice but to – take the
initiative.’ Her instinct told her to now shut up. But force of
habit, formed over years of dispensing unwanted maternal advice, got
the better of her. ‘I liked Conor from the start, as you know.
And I still believe he’ll come back to you. But it might be
wise to brace yourself. There’s the odd chance he could be a
dodgy bet for the long-term now, with the divorce papers still warm
from signing, carrying all that guilt from his marriage failure first
time round. What I mean is …’

Angela turned. ‘I know it’s
your sixty-eighth birthday, Ma, but you can decide now to forever
hold your peace on the subject of me and Conor, or face celebrating
your sixty-ninth alone!’

‘God, you always were a
touchy one!’ clucked Sadie, a lemming hurtling towards the
cliff-edge. ‘Calm down, lovey. You’re right, I shouldn’t
poke my nosy old beak into your messy old life. Where’s that
cup of tea?’

‘God! Now you’re
patronising me! You’re doing exactly what you did to me as a
kid. You wind me up until I snap and then you sit back with a
superior little smile and humour me
‒
because that’s what you do to people whose childish reactions
have to be soothed back into
‒
into whimpering passivity!’

‘Paranoia,’ muttered
Sadie, needled. ‘You’ve had a paranoid streak ever since
you were a little girl. Remember Caroline Lynch’s birthday
party? You came home and said everyone got a bigger slice of cake
than you. It was the same with Owen. You were always watching out in
case his Easter egg was bigger or he had more presents under the
tree.’

She shook her head so sorrowfully
that molten rage poured through Angela’s veins.

‘For God’s sake!’
she yelled at her mother. ‘You can’t even admit your own
blatant prejudice. I’ll tell you what I remember from
childhood. Owen pinching me black and blue when we were both lying on
the settee, recovering from the measles. And you telling me that I
was making a fuss and imagining things. Christ, I even had bruises
all over my defenceless little body to prove it!’ Angela’s
voice wobbled with self-pity as unrighted wrongs overwhelmed her.
‘But oh no, you took the side of your favourite, your golden
only son. You weren’t interested in justice. There’s
nothing worse to a small child than realising your parent isn’t
interested in fair play. From an early age, I thought boys must be
more important than girls. I thought you could never love me the way
you loved Owen because I was too ordinary to matter!’

Tears sloshed down her chin. She
buried her chin in the tea towel and sobbed with passion for her
childhood self.