The six years between herself and her younger sister Ana had shortened over their lives so that they now spoke of ‘people our age’.
But the maternal feeling Christie had for Ana had never quite gone away and she’d always looked out for her sister, trying to take care of her the way she had all those decades ago in Kilshandra, when their father raged and their mother tried to ignore it all.
Which was another reason why the thought of Carey Wolensky hurt so much. For when he’d come into their lives, Christie hadn’t taken care of her darling little sister. And she simply couldn’t forgive herself for that.
Ever since she’d seen his name in the paper, she had thought of little but Carey and the past, which
was why she felt so jumpy and guilty when Ana phoned later that week and asked to meet her one afternoon.
‘I want to talk about Rick’s birthday surprise.’
Ana sounded breathless, as if she had a huge secret to impart.
‘In the Summer Street Cafe at three?’ Christie suggested.
By ten past, the two sisters were sitting at a window table with coffee and cake in front of them. At a table outside sat a group of girls from St Ursula’s sixth year and they’d smiled at Christie.
She grinned back, imagining them cursing her under their breath because they’d undoubtedly chosen that table so they could enjoy forbidden cigarettes - smoking while in uniform was supposed to be off limits. They were like glossy birds of paradise in the royal-blue uniform, with long colourful scarves wound round youthful necks and gorgeous long hair whipping around in the breeze, all looking far older than their years. Ella was there, and she looked diminished without Amber, her partner in crime. Where was Amber now? And how was poor Faye coping?
It was four days since Amber had gone and Christie and Maggie had dropped round to Faye’s each evening, just for a chat and a cup of tea.
Faye was travelling to the States the following morning even though she didn’t know exactly where Amber was. Ella’s information had been patchy. All she knew was that the band had talked about being produced by some company based in New York.
‘That’s not much to go on,’ Maggie commented. ‘If I’m in the same city, I’ll find them,’ Faye said firmly.
She’d spent the past few days sorting out things at work so she could take extended leave. She was being outwardly businesslike and calm, but inside, she was still broken-hearted. Each day, she sat on the bed in Amber’s room, looked around, and wondered at how she’d managed to get it so badly wrong. Amber had left one message on the house phone:
‘I’m fine, Mum. We’re going to the US. I’ll talk to you. I’m fine, really. Bye.’
If only she’d phoned on the mobile, Faye thought. But Amber had undoubtedly not phoned Faye’s mobile on purpose, and at least she knew Amber was all right.
‘You’ll get through it,’ Christie had told her.
It was good to see Faye getting to grips with her situation, but Christie was beginning to feel like a fraud giving any advice. She had her own dark cloud hanging over her and she’d done nothing to address it. She didn’t dare. She just longed for some peace in her head. Perhaps she’d never have peace again, or at least not until Carey Wolensky packed up his exhibition and left the country.
‘I love it here,’ sighed Ana, stirring her cappuccino happily and licking the spoon. ‘It’s so homey.
You can just imagine this sort of place in Kilshandra when we were growing up, everyone knowing everyone else. Summer Street’s great for that sense of community, it does remind me of home.’
Christie didn’t agree but said nothing.
The difference was that she’d have hated people in a small cafe knowing her business in the home town of their youth because everyone would have looked at Christie and Ana MacKenzie with pity. Their father didn’t confine his bullying and bad temper to his own home but spread it around liberally, so people knew what the MacKenzie children and poor Maura MacKenzie had to put up with.
‘He’s not an easy man, your father,’ was about the kindest thing anybody had ever said of him.
The idea of drinking your tea in a public room where everybody pitied you was not Christie’s idea of fun. The Summer Street Cafe was a haven for many reasons and the fact that she was happy with her own life meant she could appreciate it.
Nobody had reason to feel sorry for Christie Devlin here.
‘Actually, I don’t want to talk about Rick’s birthday,’ said Ana. ‘I’ve something to tell you. A secret. If I don’t tell somebody I’ll go mad.’
Christie felt herself go icy cold in spite of the warmth of the sun beating down on the window. ‘You won’t tell anyone, not even James? I know you tell him everything, so promise.’
‘I promise,’ said Christie, dread in her heart. ‘It’s Carey Wolensky. He’s going to be here in Ireland for an exhibition, so I contacted his hotel and left a message for him. It’s so strange,’ Ana went on, looking flushed, ‘an old boyfriend coming into your life. I haven’t told Rick. Not that Rick would really mind. He knows it’s all in the past and it was before I met him, so it’s not as if he and Carey were rivals or anything.’
‘No,’ agreed Christie automatically. ‘That might be hard for him.’
‘Well, it could be, so I haven’t told him and I feel awful about it. Not that I still have feelings for Carey or anything like that.’
Christie sat immobile and felt sick. This was the meaning of the great dark wing of fear in whose shadow she’d been ever since that morning at the end of April. This was the disaster she’d seen in the future, in her future.
‘Besides, Carey’s had women to beat the band since. I’ve followed his career; I know it’s wrong,’
Ana went on guiltily. ‘But only out of interest, honestly. I love Rick. Me and Carey would never have made it as a couple. We were wrong together, I know that. He was too old for me, too sophisticated, too mad about art. He was much more your type, really. At least you and he could talk about art together. I didn’t know a Picasso from a can of soup.
‘But it’s interesting when someone you were once
in love with is famous and you can watch them.
Of course, he’s gone out with all these younger women. How is it men can do that? Imagine me with a thirty-year-old? Everyone would fall about laughing, but men can do it.’
Ana held up her knife to look closely at her reflection, squinting so that the lines around her eyes became more pronounced. She favoured their father’s side of the family, with fair hair, pale eyes and sun-shy skin. Christie looked more like their mother and was the picture of her maternal grandmother, who’d died before she was born, a woman with the fine bones of Breton heritage, and slanting dark eyes like Christie’s.
‘Would Botox help?’ sighed Ana. ‘I have furrows like trenches everywhere and I don’t care what they say about rubbing creams and serums in. I’ve done everything I was supposed to. I’ve cleansed, toned, moisturised and dabbed eye cream on with my ring finger. I haven’t gone to bed once in my whole life with my make-up on and look at me: I’m a human SharPei.’
In spite of the knot in her stomach, Christie laughed. ‘You don’t look a bit like a SharPei,’ she said. ‘They are adorable, though. I wouldn’t mind one, although the girls would go mental.’
The velvety Chinese emperor dogs with their heavily wrinkled skin were exquisite, but Christie knew that Tilly and Rocket would be devastated if another dog invaded their kingdom. Dogs were like children: fiercely territorial.
‘You’re still lovely, you big muppet,’ Christie said, forgetting her shock to berate her sister in the way she’d been berating her for decades. Ana had gone through life thinking she was too fat, too fair, had bad ankles, and Christie had been the one who’d buoyed her up, told her they were needless worries.
‘Was I wrong to phone his hotel?’ Ana went on anxiously.
The thought that she was the biggest hypocrite ever danced in Christie’s head.
‘He might never get back to you,’ she said, hoping. Please, please let Carey have forgotten the MacKenzie sisters.
‘That’s it, you see.’ Ana bit her lip. ‘I got a call from his assistant to say he’d love to meet up and talk about old times except that his schedule hasn’t been finalised yet and she’d get back to me. But imagine, he’d love to meet up. He hasn’t forgotten after all.’
When Ana had gone home, Christie sat in the garden and sipped a large glass of wine. James would be astonished to see her drinking at this hour of the afternoon. She’d tell him she just felt like a moment of hedonistic pleasure, sitting in the sun-drenched garden with chilled Chablis. Which was all complete rubbish. She’d simply wanted something to dull the spike of fear inside her. Carey Wolensky was back in her life. All those years of trying to forget it and her guilty secret had sneaked
back into her life as easily as if it had all happened yesterday.
The months leading up to Christie’s thirty-fifth birthday were endlessly busy. She’d started working part time at St Ursula’s and in an attempt to make some extra money, was painting botanical watercolours which a dealer friend sold in markets at the weekend. James was working all the hours too, on a massive environmental study that meant late nights at the office and monosyllabic conversations when he did come home.
Christie could have coped with him working hard, but not with his withdrawal from the human race. It was as if he wasn’t interested in her any more and the only bit of affection left in him was given to their sons.
‘How was your day?’ Christie would ask when he came home, trying to keep the lines of communication open.
‘Fine,’ he’d mutter, hugging the boys. A Once the children were in bed, James worked silently at the dining-room table.
Christie started to go to bed early to read, and was often asleep when he came upstairs. If it hadn’t been for Ethan and Shane, she’d have packed her bags and left.
She adored her sons, loved every moment of their hectic days, and sometimes felt overwhelmed by love for them: two small boys who did everything passionately, whether it was cycling tricycles hell bent around the garden or fighting to the death with toy soldiers.
‘It’s scary, loving them so much,’ she told Ana on the phone one day. She hadn’t talked about the crisis in her marriage with Ana: doing so would make it more real, more raw. Part of Christie hoped that eventually, when James’s study was done, he’d come back to her. ‘When I read about a disaster or an accident in the paper, I think what would I do if anything happened to the boys?’ she told her sister. ‘It’s like a physical pain thinking about it.’
Ana, working in administration in a hospital and enjoying a series of relationships with hardworking doctors who didn’t have the time to find girlfriends anywhere else, said she wished she knew what Christie meant.
‘I’m never going to find a man to settle down with and have babies,’ she said morosely. ‘I worked it out the other night: in the past two years, I haven’t gone out with anyone for longer than three months. I must have a “ninety-day limit” sticker on my forehead. Three months and zip, they’re gone. I am so fed up of hearing “you’re a wonderful woman, but …” I’m going to shoot the next man who says “but” to me. And I’ve had it with doctors. They’re all obsessed with work. Girlfriends are just a mild diversion between shifts. Never again. I need to get out and meet different types of people.’
Christie felt guilty for being so insensitive and
reminding Ana, who was wildly maternal, that she was still childless with no hope of a daddy for her children in sight. It was James’s fault, she thought crossly. If he wasn’t so tied up with his work, so oblivious to her, she could have talked about her love for the boys with him, instead of upsetting poor Ana with it. What was the point of being married if the extent of your conversation was competitive exhaustion?
‘I’m tired.’
‘No, I’m tireder.’
‘Of course you’ll meet someone,’ she said quickly to her sister. ‘You’re gorgeous, Ana, your time will come, I promise. You’ve been going out with the wrong sort of men, that’s all. Get out and meet other people, go to museums, lectures, parties. Enjoy yourself and don’t look for a man.
When you’re least expecting it, one will come along.’
How she was to regret that advice.
The day before Christie’s birthday, she told James that they were going to a gallery to meet Ana’s latest boyfriend - a Polish artist who was years older than her and sounded like he’d be another guy for the ‘you’re a wonderful woman but …’ speech - and then on to dinner for a birthday celebration.
‘I’m sorry, I forgot to organise anything for you, Christie,’ James said matteroffactly.
He wasn’t even apologetic, Christie realised in fury. It was as if what he was doing was so important that everything else came a poor second, including her.
‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘A husband?’ she said bitterly.
‘Christie, don’t be such a nag,’ he snapped back. ‘You know how busy I am.’
‘I’m not nagging. I’m being honest. The boys and I never see you any more, James. You’re obsessed with that bloody study. I cook, clean, work and take care of our sons, and the least I can expect is you to remember to buy me a birthday present. It’s not rocket science. Even a card would be nice. I bet you haven’t got a card for me for tomorrow either.’
He grimaced and said nothing.
Which meant no. ‘Thank you, James. I’m touched by your thoughtfulness,’ she said, hurt beyond belief. Not even a card. It was like her parents’ marriage all over again. She must have been mad to get married. She should have just had kids and lived on her own. Men and women were utterly unsuited to being together for ever. It was the hunter-gatherer thing: men were warriors at heart, more suited to roaming, while women were better taking care of their children and fighting their own battles.
They were on the bus from Summer Street into the city and they sat in silence for the next ten minutes.
‘So,’ said James, keen to end the cold war, ‘tell me about this new bloke of Ana’s.’
Christie, who had many friends in the art world, had heard that Carey Wolensky was a charming and wildly sexy genius with a brilliant future ahead of him and many dumped besotted women in his wake.