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prologue Brush hair, brush teeth, forget about eyeliner, just go for mascara and a dust of bronzer. Squirt of deodorant … blast, none left. Put that on the shopping list. Where is the shopping list, anyway …? Sally Richardson had a million and one things on her mind as she hastily buttoned up her shirt and pulled on a pair of black trousers over skin still damp from the shower. Friday mornings in the Richardsons’ house were even more manic than usual because on Fridays and Saturdays, The Beauty Spot, the beauty salon that Sally owned and ran, opened at nine instead of half-past. That extra half-hour made a huge difference, Sally thought, every time Friday rolled round. She had to be out of the front door at eight forty-five on the nail to drop the boys at the day nursery instead of the rest of the week’s more leisurely nine fifteen. There was no time to dawdle over toast and coffee—not that much dawdling ever went on at the Richardsons’, with two working parents. Sally told her friends
prologue
one A bby stared into the cold hard depths of the hairdresser’s mirror. As if she hadn’t enough problems, now she was sure she could see fresh lines fanning out around her eyes. Ageing was like the San Andreas fault, she thought grimly: you never knew where the next crack was going to appear. Hitting forty had been the start of the slide, definitely. Since then—unbelievably two years ago—she felt her entire face had gone to pot. Beside her, Cherise, who secretly thought Abby looked even more attractive in reality than she did on television, gazed critically at Abby’s newly cut hair. Cherise, like every member of staff in Gianni’s Salon, was glowingly young, with dewy skin. She wore the hairstylist’s uniform of black hipsters, slinky little T-shirt and belly ring. Abby whipped her envious eyes from Cherise’s flat, toned stomach and smiled into the mirror. The wrinkles obligingly smiled with her. Despite her lovely new haircut, her smart Armani shirt, and the admiration of most of the sa
two E arlier that afternoon, Jess Barton had glanced quickly at the classroom clock. Ten to three. Another forty minutes of science. Boring. Being a teenager was crammed with boredom, Jess felt, what with train-track braces, horrible exams and people constantly bossing you around, but double science was surely the most boring thing of all. Noticing Miss Nevin’s gaze roaming over the class, Jess stared down dutifully at her science textbook, trying to appear as if her mind was firmly fixed on the knotty issue of what sort of chemical formula you came up with if you mixed sulphur, oxygen and hydrogen. Nobody acted dutiful interest better than Jess Barton. She was award-winning material, Oscar-nomination stuff. “It’s the angle of the head,” she often explained to her best friend and partner in crime, Steph Anderson, who was always the first person to be hauled out of her seat and left in disgrace outside the classroom door for not paying attention. “And the pencil sucking. There’s somethi
three T he weekend whizzed past with the whole family resolutely doing their own things. Jess spent most of Saturday in her room revising, then Abby dropped her off at Steph’s to get ready for their friend’s party. Abby had given permission for Jess to stay the night at Steph’s, and she couldn’t very well argue when Steph’s mother phoned on Sunday to say the family were going out to lunch and they’d love to have Jess along. Tom was caught up in rehearsals for the school drama group’s play all day Saturday and didn’t get home until late. On Sunday, he told Abby he’d have to spend the entire day marking homework, and he positioned himself at the kitchen table, his papers spread in front of him and a solemn look on his face. Feeling strangely abandoned, Abby retired to the living room with the papers and ended up dozing off in front of the television, only waking up later that evening when Jess slammed the front door. “How was the party?” Abby asked eagerly, coming into the hall to greet
four T hat same afternoon, in the doctor’s surgery in the centre of Dunmore, Lizzie Shanahan searched the correspondence pile for a letter to the specialist. Mrs. Pender stood in front of the desk, looking only slightly less shocked than she had the previous day when she and Mr. Pender had emerged from the surgery with the gently delivered but nonetheless startling news that Mr. Pender needed to see a specialist for further discussion on the results of his blood test for prostate cancer. Lizzie found the letter and the attached Post-it note on which she’d written directions to the specialist’s office. She smiled warmly at Mrs. Pender, doing her best to radiate both calmness and complete ignorance of whatever was in the letter to the specialist. Lizzie knew exactly what it said because she’d typed it and because the doctor’s receptionist knew almost as many secrets as the doctor. But the patients were better off not really being aware of that. This patient was too worried to go along wi
five T he other travellers boarding flight NR 706 from Chicago to Cork that Saturday morning watched the tall elegant young couple with interest. They were definitely both somebody, even though they wore comfortable faded jeans and didn’t make a fuss or anything when there was a horrendous queue down the gangway because the plane was delayed. Martine Brady, flying home to Cork after a colder-than-expected month in the States staying with her sister, watched them enviously. She hadn’t seen a single famous person in all her time here. Not even a glimpse of Oprah, and she was supposed to be Chicagoan through and through. Martine, five people behind the glamorous couple in the queue, and bored, watched them with naked curiosity. The woman was someone from the television, for sure. Her auburn hair was glossier than a Kentucky thoroughbred’s coat, her fine-boned face was clear-skinned and subtly made up. And that camel overcoat she wore to keep out the Chicago chill was definitely cashmere.
six T hree days later, on Friday morning just after nine, Abby pulled up outside a big house in a swish Cork suburb for a private de-cluttering job. Many people thought that Abby no longer took on private commissions since her television success but, in fact, the op-posite was true. Although television paid well, it wasn’t as lucrative as everyone imagined. The big sums of money bandied about in the who’s-earning-what articles in newspapers were generally wrong and often represented what Abby would earn if she sold herself and her entire family into slavery for ten years. A successful television series meant a reasonable amount of money in the bank and the possibil-ity of making more money if the series kept on attracting high rat-ings. It did not mean, as lots of people thought, that someone came round to her house with a Vuitton holdall stuffed with tenners. Pri-vate jobs were her bread and butter. This morning’s job was one she felt wary of: Tanya Monaghan, a local socialite much gi
seven T hat weekend, Lizzie couldn’t resist the roses at the Saturday market. Their velvety crimson petals were just beginning to unfurl and she thought how beautiful they’d look in the old crystal vase standing on the polished hall table. Throwing caution to the wind, she bought two bunches and was rushing down Main Street to her car, face framed with the fat bouquets, when Mrs. Hegarty, one of the surgery’s most constant visitors, appeared from the post office. “Oh, Lizzie, what beautiful flowers,” cooed the old lady. “Aren’t they?” said Lizzie, admiring them. They didn’t smell, not like her own roses, but those wouldn’t be out for ages and there was something so nice about coming home to that flush of rosy colour. “From someone special, I hope?” continued Mrs. Hegarty. Lizzie grinned. “You could say that,” she joked, but before she could point out that the someone special was herself, Mrs. Hegarty had taken a wild leap to the wrong conclusion. Her tiny wrinkled face, round as a crab
eight G reg and Erin Kennedy were not the sort of people to let life pass them by—not when they could go out and grab it firmly with both hands. When Greg’s mum developed really bad flu and the planned Kennedy family reunion scheduled for Dunmore had to be put off for a few weeks, Greg and Erin decided to take advantage of the day’s holiday Greg had taken. They quickly booked a small hotel in Glengarriff, packed their walking gear in the suitcase along with some glad rags, and set off for a weekend of sightseeing and climbing mountains. It was two years since they’d last done any climbing. Greg pointed out that a week’s hiking along the Appalachian Trail didn’t count. “That wasn’t a trek, that was an amble through the woods!” he said. The long weekend in the Rockies was their last serious trek, in his opinion. Erin remembered the ache in her muscles after the trip to the Rockies and she hadn’t expected the same level of sheer exhaustion in the beautiful Kerry mountains. But, somehow, s
nine H ome was a decidedly miserable place for the Barton family. By the end of the first week in April, with the Easter holidays in sight, Abby decided she must put the arguments of the past weeks behind her and do her best to raise everyone’s spirits. Unfortunately, the emotional barometer in Lyonnais still sat firmly at “mostly cloudy÷storms expected.” Jess was monosyllabic, despite Abby’s attempts to start mother-daughter chats. “I know you’re stressed about school, Jess, love,” Abby said carefully, afraid she’d say the wrong thing, “but the exams will pass. Your dad and I don’t want you to feel under any huge pressure, right? We want you to do well for your sake but we don’t want you to crack up over it.” Jess had looked at her mother with an expression that said “you don’t understand a thing.” Abby hated that expression. At Tom’s school, the headmaster came down with a bad dose of flu, leaving Tom to deal with both the crisis over the physics teacher, who didn’t want to work out
ten O n Saturday afternoon, the day of the Richardsons’ party, Jess was studying the newsagent’s window for cards to see how people advertised themselves as babysitters when she noticed the tall woman with the black and brown puppy in her arms. The woman’s weathered face was thin and might have been stern but for the fact that she was laughing as the puppy did his best to lick her face energetically. “He’s lovely,” said Jess, the words out of her mouth before she’d thought about it. “He is,” agreed the woman, smiling. “He’s just been in the vet’s having his shots and he’s so thrilled to be out that he’s bouncing for joy. He wet the floor three times when we were there.” “Ooh, poor darling.” Jess was stroking the puppy under his chin and he was responding deliriously, trying to chew and lick her fingers simultaneously. The woman surveyed Jess, taking in the neat sandy hair, the pretty but understated face, and her tall, slim figure. “Would you like to hold him?” “Yes, please.” Jess snug
eleven D elia pulled the last tray of savoury pastry squares out of the oven and dropped it on the kitchen table. “Finished,” she said. “If I never see another bit of pastry again, I’ll be happy.” Sally, who was sitting on a stool at the table constructing a pyra-mid of profiteroles with architectural precision, smiled. “I know what you mean. The only fatal flaw with parties is the catering.” “Absolutely,” agreed her mother-in-law fervently. “But what I hate most is that moment just before everyone arrives when you’ve got the place beautiful, but you feel shattered and you wish you could cancel so you could spend the evening slumped in front of the box.” Sally glanced up at Delia sharply. That was just how she was feel-ing but she didn’t want her mother-in-law to know. Normally Sally had enough energy for ten parties and Delia would get suspicious if she noticed otherwise. However, Delia’s face bore no awareness of that fact and she was busily using a palette knife to slide her just-co
twelve T he next day, Sunday, Greg got up early and drove into Cork to the bagel shop that sold even better bagels than the ones he and Erin used to buy in Chicago. He also picked up some fresh roast coffee, the Sunday papers and a bunch of heady pink tulips from a small shop on the way out of the city. When he got home, Erin was only just out of bed. She stood at the top of the stairs, touslehaired and heavy-eyed. “Morning, honey,” Greg said, climbing the stairs three at a time to hand her the flowers and kiss her awake. “Oh, thank you,” she said, admiring the tulips. “Thought they might cheer you up,” he said. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll have coffee and bagels ready, OK?” She nodded and shuffled into the bathroom to shower. When she felt utterly scrubbed clean, she switched the shower from hot to cold and let freezing water cascade over her upturned face and body. It had been her favourite trick when she’d been moonlighting years ago and had only gone home to shower and change betw
thirteen I n the couple of days following the party, Abby and Tom made a huge effort to get on with each other in front of Jess. In private, they didn’t discuss what had happened that night, but guilt over having upset their daughter made them at least outwardly polite to each other. However, a smile delivered with “Pass the broccoli, please, Abby” did not a reconciliation make. In her heart, Abby was still furious with Tom for all the hurtful things he’d said to her. She knew that if she made the first move, the frostiness would be over. But this time she wouldn’t apologise—she wasn’t in the wrong. Tom was the one who’d insulted her and accused her of putting her family after her career. She worked so hard for this family, both in the home and outside it, that the notion of her putting them last enraged her. In the face of this relationship breakdown, tricky questions kept slipping unbidden into Abby’s mind. Were affairs always bad for marriage? Or, more accurately, would an affair hu
fourteen T he seven days since she’d slept with Jay had been the longest of Abby’s life. If she’d thought that presenting a television show with the weight of guilt hanging round her neck was hard, then having to fly home to her daughter and husband had been ten times worse. With horrible irony, Tom seemed to have decided in her absence that he and Abby needed to make an effort at their marriage, and when she arrived home on Friday evening she’d been greeted by a big hello hug and a reservation at her favourite local restaurant. “We’ve both been under a lot of stress,” Tom said. “Can we put all that behind us and start again?” Even Jess was in on it. “I told Dad that you would have been working hard in Dublin and that you needed to get out.” Inspiration struck Abby. “Why don’t we all go?” Abby knew she was preoccupied at dinner but Jess made up for her mother’s silences. She’d spent Wednesday evening helping out in the animal refuge and during dinner she chatted happily about the vario
fifteen L izzie brought a bouquet of her own roses to the hospital a couple of days later. She didn’t plan on trying to visit: she only wanted to leave some token to let Sally know she was thinking of her. At the hospital, the reception desk staff told her to take the roses up herself. Lizzie walked up the stairs to Sally’s ward and, at the landing, she bumped into Delia Richardson emerging from the lift. It was Delia’s silvery blonde hair that she recognised, otherwise she would have walked right past without saying a word. Because Steve’s mother had aged in the weeks since Lizzie had seen her. The lively, brighteyed Delia from the party had vanished, and in her place was an old woman with a gaunt, worried face and red eyes. Lizzie reached a hand out. “Delia, hello, it’s Lizzie Shanahan.” Delia’s eyes flickered with recognition. “Hello, Lizzie.” “I wanted to leave these flowers for Sally. I’m not coming in, I didn’t want to intrude, but Sally always admired my roses …” “They’re lovely
sixteen I t was the middle of May. The exams were just over two weeks away and Jess’s life felt like a disaster waiting to happen. “What sicko mind decided that exams should be in June when the weather’s nice and every other sensible person is on their summer holidays?” Steph wanted to know. Miserable and anxious, Jess didn’t have the answer. All she knew was that she still had tons of revision to do and time was running out. She’d had to give up dropping into the animal refuge at weekends, school was a nightmare, home was an even bigger nightmare and she felt stressed out of her head. Different people coped differently with stress, that was for sure. Steph, who was now dating Zach, the guy she’d met at Michelle’s party months ago, distanced herself by spending hours texting her boyfriend on her mobile. She also now smoked the occasional cigarette, although Jess was sure it wasn’t worth the effort involved in trying to hide the smell of smoke from Steph’s mother. “She will kill you if
seventeen T he day that Jess started her exams, Abby got a phone call from Beech about the new series of Declutter. She’d already filmed five shows on her own while the endless auditioning and reauditioning of new presenters went on, and had begun to hope that nobody else suitable would be found for the programme. No such luck. Two other presenters had been picked and Brian was keen for Abby to meet the new team. “Can you come in this afternoon?” he asked, without so much as an “if that’s convenient” tacked on to the request. “Well, this afternoon’s not very easy,” began Abby, thinking of her plans to collect Jess from school after the English exam. “You should try and make it,” Brian said querulously. “It’s your future too, Abby.” Not so much a request as a command, Abby realised grimly. “Fine,” she said crisply. “See you at two thirty.” Once, she realised, Brian would have suggested lunch before an afternoon meeting and she, Flora, Brian, Selina and anybody else they could round up w
eighteen D unmore experienced the hottest June on record. People who’d planned continental holidays began to regret not staying at home because the temperature hit the eighties every day. Proud gardeners watched glumly as their cherished lawns turned dry and scorched under a hosepipe ban, and the local garden centre sold out of parasols. People with children bought paddling pools and sat with their own feet in the cool water, while the electrical shop in the square had a run on electric fans. The Italian family who owned both an ice-cream parlour and a pastel-pink and blue ice-cream van made a fortune, enough to send the whole family to Florida for a month at the end of the summer. Tom Barton, tied up with the school building works, found that he didn’t have much time to look for a place of his own to rent. He viewed a couple of flats and a minuscule town house in Dunmore, but there was nothing he liked within his price range. Abby, who was working hard shooting the remaining seven Dec
nineteen F unerals, Lizzie thought, should be confined to wet, miserable days. It felt so wrong to bury anyone on a wonderful day at the beginning of July when the sun gilded the church spire and beamed down on the black-clad shoulders of sombre people hurrying through the church door. Burying vibrant, life-loving Sally Richardson on the sort of day she’d have loved seemed doubly wrong. Lizzie slid into a seat alongside Erin and Greg, and nodded hello. Then, she glanced up the aisle and her eyes hit upon the solid, grim shape of the coffin. It was hard to imagine that Sally lay cold inside. Like most people of her generation, Lizzie had been to many funerals and was familiar with the routines of death, but the sight of a coffin still had the power to shock her. A once-living person was lying there and would soon be in the ground, covered with earth, locked away in the cold. She would not want that for herself, she decided, then felt a wave of guilt at such a selfish thought at Sally’s
twenty I n the week after the biggest funeral Dunmore had seen for a long while, Lizzie felt as if she had the flu. Her head was heavy and her eyes watered at the slightest provocation. “I know, take two aspirin and see me in the morning,” she said drily to Dr. Morgan when she reported her symptoms. “Actually, I was going to tell you to take some time off or go on holiday,” Clare Morgan replied. “I know Sally was a special friend of yours but you won’t do her or that poor husband of hers any good by getting sick yourself.” “I’m too broke to go on holiday,” Lizzie said miserably, then felt even more miserable to be moaning about it. She might be broke but she was still alive. And she hadn’t lost the person she’d loved most in the whole world, like poor Steve. She’d seen Steve in the supermarket the day before, wandering round like he was sleepwalking, but when she caught up with him, he hadn’t wanted to talk. “Sorry, Lizzie,” he said, his eyes glittering with unshed tears. “I’m better o
twenty-one D espite her brave words at the funeral, Sally’s death affected Erin more than she’d thought. She’d felt so pleased with her plan to work in The Beauty Spot that she’d eagerly told Greg all about it, expecting the misery to be assuaged by the sense of doing something in Sally’s memory. But still the loss hit her hard. “I don’t know why I’m so upset. It’s Steve who’s really suffering,” Erin said sadly, the day after the funeral, when she couldn’t seem to stop crying. “You’re upset because an amazing woman has died and you’d want to be as hard as nails not to be affected by it,” Greg said. “Sally was so brave,” Erin said miserably. “I want to give her something back by helping out but all I can do is cry.” “I’m sure she’d love to think of you helping,” Greg said. “But you’re shocked, love. And don’t forget, you’ve got pregnancy hormones added to the mix.” “I know,” sobbed Erin. “I was going to phone Steve and ask him what he thought about my working in the salon with Ruby, but
twenty-two L izzie sat on the edge of Debra’s bed and watched her daughter admiring her wedding dress in the mirror. Despite all the trauma over the colour of the dress and the shape of the tiny buttons down the back, the dress was glorious: fairy princess style in antique white silk, with a full skirt and a nipped-in bodice from which Debra’s lightly tanned shoulders rose magnificently. Her streaked hair was coiled up into artful ringlets and she wore a headdress of white roses as well as a rippling lacy veil. Debra had said she wanted to look like a princess on her wedding day and she did. “It will be all right, Mum, won’t it?” Debra said tremulously, half turning away from the mirror, anxiety on her face for the first time that day. Lizzie dusted aside her misgivings about twenty-three-year-old teenage sweethearts getting married. “Of course it’s going to be all right, love. It’s going to be wonderful. Barry is a special man and adores you. That’s the best start there is for a marri
twenty-three T he third series of Declutter was nearly finished filming by the end of July, and Abby was wildly grateful for the fact. The schedule had been hectic in order to finish the editing by the first broadcast at the end of August. Abby had been away from home all too frequently, with Tom looking after Jess in her absence. Hanging over Abby like a dark cloud was the knowledge that, soon, she and Tom would have to face up to the financial implications of their separation. Lyonnais would have to be sold so that they could each buy a smaller home. Strangely, Abby found that she didn’t care about selling her dream house. It wasn’t as important as she had believed. The family who lived inside was the important part and now that was shattered, the house ceased to matter. Bricks and mortar did not make a home and she’d have been happy back in Gartland Avenue, noisy neighbours included, if she and Tom could have made their marriage work. If the Declutter filming schedule had been exhau
twenty-four L izzie’s “Things to Do Before You’re Thirty” list was getting a bit battered. She kept it in a zipped section of her handbag and took it out occasionally to remind herself that most of the tasks were still firmly on her “to do” list. She had to stop wasting her life, she told herself. So far, she’d gone on holiday on her own (Joe’s in London did count), and she’d done one thing that wasn’t on the list but was still pretty brave—welcoming Sabine to Debra’s wedding had to merit some marks for courage. But that was it. One evening in July, soon after the wedding, she sat in the living room with a glass of wine, unfolded the crumpled paper and looked at the list again. She didn’t fancy getting checked for chlamydia—that would imply that she had a sex life in the first place. Learning about investments and setting up her own stock portfolio would be useless when she only had a tenner left at the end of each week. Surely investment broker people liked a bit more disposable cash
twenty-five T he number for Erin’s old home in the Dublin suburb of Kilbarrett had changed, the recorded voice told her sharply. Blast. She hung up and tried Directory Enquiries, but despite a lengthy conversation, there was no listing for Mary and Pat Flynn in Dublin and there was no way the operator would give her the current number for their old home. Disappointed, Erin hung up. There must be another way. Then, she thought of the Gallagher family, who’d lived next door. Erin had always had their number when she was a child—Mum had insisted upon it. Mrs. Gallagher was a good friend of her mother’s and the logic was simple: “If something happens and you can’t reach me, phone Mrs. Gallagher.” In the tattered old address book that Erin had kept all these years, she found the Gallagher number. Her heart beating loudly, she rang it. Mrs. Gallagher didn’t answer the phone. Instead, Erin got through to a friendly woman who’d lived there since the Gallaghers had sold up. The Flynns were long
twenty-six L izzie knew it was wrong to be deliriously happy about going out to dinner with someone she’d only known a few days, but she couldn’t help it. When Simon had phoned to ask her out on the evening of the day after her parachute jump, she’d been thrilled. “It was a good night, wasn’t it?” he’d said, while Lizzie’s heart did somersaults of excitement at the thought that she hadn’t been imagining it—Simon had fancied her. “Wonderful,” she said, the stresses of the day forgotten. Debra had cheered up thanks to the shopping trip that had involved the purchase of an expensive pair of spindly sandals. When Simon phoned, Debra was upstairs trying them on with everything in her wardrobe, and the radio was blaring loudly, proof that all was well in Debra’s world. “I thought you might like to come out to dinner again, just with me,” Simon added. “Yes,” breathed Lizzie, totally forgetting that modern women were supposed to play hard to get. “I’d love that.” Wednesday was the day picked f
twenty-seven B y the second week of August, it seemed as if everyone in Dunmore was on holiday. Except for the Barton family, of course. Given everything that had been happening over the last few months, Abby couldn’t begin to consider going away. It seemed ridiculous to be thinking of sun, sangria and flip-flops when she and Tom had split up, Jess was barely talking to her and her career looked like it might be over. But eventually the lure of the brochures in the travel agents’ windows was too much. Every time Abby ran past O’Callaghan’s Travel on her way to the supermarket, she noticed special offers detailing trips to the Canaries, amazing fly-drive holidays to the States and long-haul flights to the exotic Far East. Newspapers and magazines were just as bad. She couldn’t pick up a paper or magazine without seeing another “Diet yourself into a bikini” article or one of those “Have you got your travel insurance sorted out?” features describing travel disasters where somebody had spe
twenty-eight F lorida was sweltering. Abby couldn’t imagine how people lived all the time in the overpowering temperature. Heat rose in waves off the sidewalks and rippled in the air at ankle level. Even in her cool linen trousers and sandals, she felt roasting, her feet stuck to the sandals and her armpits glued to the little white cotton T-shirt she wore. Appropriately enough, Jess seemed to have ended the cold war for the moment, and mother and daughter groaned in unison about the heat. “I mean, I can’t believe it’s so hot,” Jess said as they got out of the taxi in front of their hotel in Miami. “How are we ever going to cope?” “Turbo-charged air conditioning, I hope,” said her mother, fanning herself with her hand. “If it comes to the worst, we can just stay inside the whole time.” A movie-star-beautiful blonde girl on roller blades swept past, wearing the tiniest of tiny yellow shorts, long caramel limbs gliding effortlessly. Both mother and daughter turned to look at her go. “May
twenty-nine R ested and relaxed after her holiday, Abby flew home on Sunday to find herself in the eye of a storm. Somehow the news of Abby’s audition with the 727 Network had just reached Roxie’s ears and she was furious. Even worse, Brian was furious too. Roxie had left one and Brian had left three outraged messages on Abby’s an-swering machine that morning, screeching that if Beech hadn’t taken up her idea of the show in the first place, she’d be a nobody today. Abby listened to the rantings of the Beech MD for a few minutes, before pressing the delete button. Let Brian rant and rave, she decided. There was more to life than work. On holiday, she and Jess had managed to regain some of their old closeness and that was far more important than a stupid bloody job. And, she told herself, she hadn’t ranted and raved when Roxie had hired two new presen-ters for the TV show. She’d behaved like a professional at all times and her reward was to listen to Brian screeching like an overgrown sc
thirty J ess hated going to stay with Aunt Caroline and Uncle Phil. However, she couldn’t say anything to Dad: he needed to get away and be with his family, and he’d asked her to come with him. The article about him and Mum splitting up was due to appear in the paper on Sunday and Dad said he didn’t want to be around when it came out. “A weekend away is just what the doctor ordered,” he’d said to Jess, trying to sound cheerful when she knew he wasn’t. “We’ll go to see Caroline and Phil.” He announced it as if going to see his sister and brother-in-law in Kent was a great treat. “That will be fun, won’t it?” Jess didn’t have the heart to tell him that no, it most definitely would not be fun. She wasn’t sure how this visit would help, seeing as Aunt Caroline wasn’t a calming person to be around, but he needed her and she was going to support him. Sometimes Jess wondered what it would be like to have brothers and sisters, people you could go to when you were in trouble and who’d understan
thirty-one F or years, Erin had thought that charity work was the preserve of bored housewives. Now that she was actually involved in fund-raising, she found out that the opposite was true—it was very hard work and took a lot of organisation and commitment. Determined to do her research properly, she’d started by investigating how to set up a charity legally. Then, she’d made contact with the Life Beats Cancer people and they’d been thrilled with her idea. They pointed out that what she was planning was a long-term project and that, in their experience, it could take anything from eighteen months to two years to get the centre running—and that was only if the fund-raising went smoothly. The next thing to do was to discuss the idea with Sally’s family. Abby said that she hadn’t seen much of Steve during the summer because he genuinely didn’t seem to want to talk to people. “Maybe it’s just me,” she added. “He might hate me for splitting up with Tom.” “Nonsense,” said Erin stoutly. “Thin
thirty-two B y the time three weeks had passed since Debra and Barry had split up, Lizzie began to abandon hopes of them ever getting back together again. There had been one or two phone calls between the newlyweds, but they had always ended with shouted recriminations. The situation was at stalemate. It wasn’t that Debra was morose—if anything, she seemed quite happy, enjoying her freedom and clearly loving being fussed over at home by Lizzie. Since Lizzie had promised her daughter that she wasn’t interested in men—meaning Simon—they’d been getting on brilliantly. Gwen, ever the doom merchant, said that was largely because Lizzie had given her daughter free rein with Lizzie’s credit card. Lizzie hadn’t mentioned the scene with Simon to her sister for a long while. It was too humiliating, and she couldn’t have faced it if Gwen had been as disgusted as Debra over Lizzie’s behaviour. She was relieved when she was sympathetic. Simon had phoned the next day but Lizzie, the memory of the ni
thirty-three S eptember arrived in a haze of sunshine and it didn’t make going back to school any easier for Jess Barton. It had rained solidly for the last week of the holidays and now, now that she had to drag on her uniform and schlep back to school to wait for her Junior Cert exam results, the sun was shining at Greek-island-in-August level. Jess could have just about coped with her life, including the fact that her mother was permanently miserable—Dad obviously hadn’t made an effort to speak to Mum after Jess’s pep talk—if it hadn’t been for her mother’s bombshell about the new chat show. It wasn’t that Jess hadn’t known the chat show job was on the cards. The problem was that Mum was now seriously discussing moving from Dunmore to Dublin to fit in with it. “We have to leave Lyonnais anyhow,” Jess overheard her saying on the phone one night. “I think a fresh start in a new city might be the way forward. With my share of the money we get for this place, Jess and I could have a love
thirty-four L izzie was finding that living with Debra was not getting any easier. Since the disastrous meeting of the two families, there didn’t appear to be any hope of a reconciliation between Debra and Barry, and Lizzie was learning the hard way that even mentioning him caused tears. “I just think you ought to meet him, that’s all I’m saying,” she would soothe. “Not that he was right and you were wrong.” “You don’t understand,” sobbed Debra. “He lied to me. He told me he loved me on our wedding day and now it turns out he didn’t even want to be there. I can’t forgive him for that. He betrayed me and he did it publicly. How can we go back now? Tell me that.” Her mother couldn’t answer. The only things that would cheer Debra up were shopping and going out in the evenings. Her mother, though usually tired after work and with the fund-raising she was doing with Erin in memory of Sally, was expected to provide both the entertainment—whether it was going to a pub or a restaurant, or just
thirty-five O n the day of Lizzie’s surprise fiftieth birthday party, Erin began to worry that the whole affair wouldn’t have quite the sparkle that Sally and Steve’s legendary parties used to have. “Ruby keeps getting all misty-eyed telling me about them,” she said to Abby. “That one where you all did the conga and the po-lice were called sounds great. Some people have the knack of giving parties effortlessly. Me, I keep waking up in the middle of the night worrying about it all—should we have just gone for a dinner party instead of a huge bash here? Not that I’m saying a word against the house, Abby: it’s gorgeous, it’s just … I’m anxious …” They were taking a quick break in the kitchen at Lyonnais, where all day Saturday the combined talents of Abby, Tom, Erin, Greg, Jess, Steph, Oliver, Ruby and Gwen had transformed the huge downstairs of the house into a balloon- and fairy-light-filled bower with a giant banner (carefully painted by Steph who was the most artistic among them) proc
afterword Writing this book, I was painfully aware that the character with breast cancer was going to die and hated to think that this would upset anybody who is fighting cancer. As around one in eleven women develop the disease, every one of us knows brave and coura-geous women who are successfully fighting breast cancer. The sever-ity and speed of Sally’s cancer are very rare and represent the worst-case scenario possible. The fact is that the vast majority (75%) of women with metastatic breast cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis and the percentages are getting higher all the time. Life Beats Cancer is my fictional invention, but there are, of course, a huge number of genuine cancer charities that deserve our support. Thanks to Lucy Kelly and Deborah Hutchings of Cancer Re-search U.K. for their advice. Needless to say, all mistakes in the novel are mine.
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