Always You (15 page)

Tony said something to Becky and she joined in the conversation with their aunt while Sarah stood on the periphery wishing she could shut her eyes and disappear. Better still, go back in time and change the thing that had led her to this dreadful pass.

Ian came back and Sarah smiled, wide with relief, never before so happy to see him.

Becky introduced the two men. ‘Tony went to Coleraine too, Ian, round about the same time as you.’ They spent a few moments debating if they’d bumped into each other at uni, concluding finally that though they recognised each other they had never actually spoken.

‘And Sarah too,’ said Becky brightly. ‘Didn’t you bump into each other?’

‘No,’ said Sarah hastily, shaking her head to refute any connection, while Tony stood still as a statue.

Ian turned to Sarah and held up a sparkling clean fork. ‘I see you’ve finished eating,’ he said, staring at her empty hands.

She clutched her stomach. ‘Sorry, I don’t feel hungry anymore.’

His pale eyebrows came together. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I feel a little unwell, that’s all. A little nauseous. I think I might need to lie down for a bit.’

‘I thought you looked a little peaky,’ said Aunt Vi. ‘I hope it’s not that terrible flu bug that’s doing the rounds just now. Mrs Riley’s been laid low for nearly a week. All she can keep down is my chicken soup. You’d better go home and we’ll drop the kids off after the party.’

‘Tony and me can run you home,’ said Becky. ‘And I can stay with you if you like.’

‘No!’ snapped Sarah and stretched her lips into a smile. ‘Don’t spoil your afternoon because of me. There’s loads of people here dying to meet Tony.’ In her desperation she turned to Ian. ‘Would you mind awfully giving me a lift?’

He didn’t need asking twice. Tossing the fork onto the table with a clatter, he yanked car keys out of his jacket pocket and grabbed her elbow. ‘Come on then, let’s get you out of here,’ he said, giving her elbow a gentle squeeze.

And for the first time in over a decade she was actually glad to be leaving a party with him.

Sarah was at the wheel of the car, with Aunt Vi beside her in the passenger seat and the kids engrossed with their consoles in the back.

Outside, the sky was blue and the April sunshine bright. But Sarah’s head was too full of last Saturday’s awful events to pay either much attention.

Life was complicated enough with trying to sort out how she felt about Cahal, while deflecting Ian’s misguided attempts at a reconciliation. Tony popping up, threatening her relationship with Becky, was the last straw. All tied up in knots inside, she wondered if she was that different really from Aunt Vi, who lived in a perpetual state of worry.

She glanced at her aunt, who wasn’t looking at the cloudless sky either, but staring grimly at the road ahead. Her left hand hovered uncertainly in front of the dashboard, poised to brace herself in the event of a sudden stop or worse.

In her last year living at home, Sarah had found Vi’s presence suffocating, but over the years she had become more understanding. She’d read an article about people with the same phobia in a Sunday supplement once. It even had a name – Generalised Anxiety Disorder – and opened up sufferers to all sorts of worry, from the weather to being mugged on the walk home from church. Even though she knew it would make no difference, Sarah said kindly, ‘It’s okay, Aunt Vi. I’m a very careful driver. Try and relax.’

‘It not you I’m worried about,’ she said darkly. ‘It’s the other lunatics on the road.’

Sarah slowed down a little. ‘Did you hear that Isabelle’s party raised over three hundred pounds for the mission?’

‘Really? That was a good idea, having a collection instead of presents. Let’s face it, at our age we don’t need anything.’

A car pulled out in front, Sarah applied the brakes and Aunt Vi made a sudden lunge for the grab handle on the door.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ said Sarah.

Aunt Vi pursed her lips. ‘I’m glad we got to meet Becky’s man at last. And I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Apart from the fact that he needed a good haircut, I thought Tony was really quite –’ She broke off abruptly and cried out, ‘You need to slow down here at these lights. They change very suddenly.’

Sarah pretended to focus on changing down the gears though she was really concentrating on changing the subject. She glanced in the rear view mirror. ‘Kids, how many of those sweets have you had?’

‘Five,’ said Lewis.

‘I wasn’t counting,’ said Molly.

‘He’s not what you would call handsome,’ went on Aunt Vi. ‘His nose is too big for one thing. But he is attractive in a way, I suppose.’

What her aunt was trying to say was that Anthony had sex appeal. Sarah blushed furiously and slipped the car into neutral. ‘Five sweets is enough for now. You’ve only just had breakfast,’ she snapped, gripping the steering wheel with both hands even though the car was barely moving. ‘You’ll end up losing your teeth. Save the rest for later.’

‘Still, he’s an intelligent man,’ went on her aunt, picking a speck of fluff off her navy trousers. ‘And he’s a good catch for Becky. I mean, I don’t know what lecturers are paid, but he has a very respectable job. He might even be a professor one day,’ she added with a slow, approving nod of her head. ‘Imagine that?’

Sarah came to a halt at the lights and took a deep breath, biting back the observation that Anthony was a Catholic. Her aunt would’ve divined this within minutes of meeting Tony, if not before through pointed questioning of Becky beforehand. And yet it had not been mentioned once, though it had been one of the main objections to Cahal. She resolved not to be bitter and reminded herself that Northern Ireland had changed a great deal since 1992. Even her aunt and father, it seemed, had moved with the times.

‘Imagine having an academic in the family?’ said Aunt Vi and Sarah cringed. She hadn’t actually considered the possibility of a marriage between Becky and Tony. The thought made her come out in a cold sweat.

‘Why do we have to pick up other people’s rubbish?’ demanded Molly from the back seat, and for once Sarah was grateful for her prickly intervention. ‘None of my friends have to do it.’

Sarah turned onto the aptly-named Coast Road that hugged the East Antrim shoreline all the way north to the pretty glen village of Cushendall. She let Aunt Vi, who was chair of the Ballyfergus in Bloom committee, do the talking.

‘Ballyfergus in Bloom is all about community involvement, getting everyone out supporting their local town and making it look the best it can. It’s only once a month and sure you love it!’

‘I used to,’ said Molly disparagingly, ‘when I was Lewis’ age.’

‘You’re never too old to make a contribution, Molly,’ said Aunt Vi briskly, choosing to ignore Molly’s sarcasm. ‘And it’s a lovely morning. How can a blue sky like that not cheer you? And, oh, look at the sea.’

Sarah, who’d been too preoccupied with worrying about Tony to notice her surroundings, looked east. The Irish Sea, sunlight sparkling off the water like shards of blue glass, came into view. She smelt the sea as soon as she stepped out of the car – salt and fish and rotting seaweed on the shore – and smiled in spite of the knots in her stomach.

Molly got out of the car, grumbling, with the ear phones still in her ears, a metallic red iPod tucked into the pocket of her skinny pink jeans. Lewis stood with his arms outstretched, his hair blowing in the gentle sea breeze, and cried out, ‘It smells like holiday!’

Everyone laughed, even Molly, then set about pulling litter pickers, black bin bags and gloves out of the boot. This was one of the rare occasions when Aunt Vi wore trousers. She looked like a spinning top – skinny top and bottom, round in the middle.

‘You’d better put this on so you’re clearly visible,’ Aunt Vi said, handing Sarah a grubby fluorescent jacket. ‘You do that side of the road and I’ll stay over here on the pavement with the children, where I can keep an eye on them.’

Sarah took the jacket, held it gingerly at arms’ length and pulled a face. ‘Well, I don’t suppose this can possibly make me look any worse,’ she said, looking down at old jeans two sizes too big held up with a frayed belt and dirty grey trainers with mismatched laces.

Aunt Vi zipped up her jacket, handed Lewis a litter picker and eyed Sarah sternly. ‘It’s not a beauty contest.’

Molly rolled her eyes at Sarah and it was all she could do not to burst out laughing.

‘Bet I can fill my bag first,’ said Lewis, snapping the jaws of the litter picker in Molly’s face.

‘Will you stop that! It’s disgusting. It could have poo on it for all you know. Mum, make Lewis stop.’

Sarah sighed. ‘Lewis, put it down.’

‘Right, you two. Come with me,’ commanded Aunt Vi, grabbing Lewis’ hand firmly in her own, even though he was past the age when such caution was strictly necessary. Sarah stood for a few moments watching them go, the sound of Molly’s continued protestations carrying on the breeze. She was glad to be alone at the side of the road with only the rubbish and the passing cars for company.

Using the litter picker, she pulled a brown beer bottle out of the grass verge by the neck, and dropped it into the bin bag. Then she inched along netting drinks cans, cigarette packets, broken glass and sweet wrappers in the rubber teeth of the grabber. The work was methodical, rewarding even, and just the balm her troubled mind craved as she pondered the excruciating events of the day before. She was grateful to Ian for getting her out of the party, though she’d rather it had been someone else. He’d driven her straight home but insisted on coming into the house where he made tea for them both, parked himself at her kitchen table and kept going on about how happy they had once been. It had taken all her powers of persuasion to get him, eventually, to leave. After he’d gone, she’d collapsed on the bed upstairs and sobbed into her pillow until it was stained with mascara and she had no tears left.

With hindsight she had made a grave mistake. She should never have pretended that she didn’t know Tony. It would’ve been much better to have acknowledged him as Cahal’s friend at the outset. Because a lie that was close to the truth was a lot more sustainable than one that was complete and outright fiction. And now it was too late. There was no going back.

Sarah picked up a squashed orange juice carton, the white straw still sticking out the top of the carton, and added it to her increasingly heavy load. Then she stood stock still and stared at the blue ocean.

A sole yacht in full sail, its red spinnaker billowing from the prow like a silk balloon, cruised north. She wished she was out there too, sailing away from this intractable problem.

She could talk to Tony. She could ask him to swear that he would never tell. She thought him a decent guy – there was every chance that he would comply. But what then? Would he keep the promise? Even if he intended to, there was always the chance that the truth might slip out in some unguarded moment.

She could never be certain. It would forever tarnish her relationship with her sister and if they married, Tony’s presence would be a constant reminder of a chapter in her life she’d rather forget. And if Becky ever found out, it would break her heart.

For when she looked at Tony, Sarah had seen in her sister’s eyes, a reflection of herself as she had once been with Cahal. Back then she had believed that love was invincible, something that could stretch and bend like elastic in the face of opposition and yet not yield.

But she was wiser now and she knew that love was none of these things. It was as fragile as the fragment of bright blue thrush’s eggshell, speckled with spots of black, she’d found on the drive that morning.

Sadness bubbled up inside her but she fought it back with the determination that had seen her through a divorce and eight long, lonely years of single-parenting. She took a deep breath, gritted her teeth and yanked a pink sweet wrapper out of a tangle of grass with the litter picker. But before she had time to drop it in the bin bag a car pulled up alongside, engine growling, and forced her onto the verge.

She frowned crossly, peered through the passenger seat window and froze. Cahal was in the driving seat grinning at her, his brown arms bared, a red T-shirt tight across his biceps and chest. Folds of red fabric rippled across his flat stomach, and below that, mid-blue jeans hugged lean hips and thighs. She had not seen him in a pair of jeans in twenty years. He’d kept himself in good shape and dressed like this, he looked so much more like her Cahal. She swallowed and backed away from the car.

He pressed a button on the dashboard and the window rolled down with a quiet hum. Leaning across the passenger seat, he looked up at her face, his tanned brow all wrinkled, and grinned. ‘It is you, Sarah!’

She smiled faintly as her heart sank into her grubby trainers. ‘Hi there, Cahal.’

Why, of all the places and all the times she might have bumped into him in Ballyfergus, did it have to be here and now? A strand of greasy blonde hair blew across her face. She tried to ignore it.

He stared at the sweetie wrapper – still suspended in the teeth of the grabber. The corners of his mouth twitched and his eyes sparkled mischievously. Was he laughing at her? And what was so mesmerising about a bit of rubbish? She lifted her chin defiantly and followed his gaze. And when she saw what she had picked up, she gulped.

It wasn’t a sweetie wrapper she had picked up by the corner. It was a pink foil condom wrapper, glinting bright in the sunlight, with the blue legend ‘Durex’ emblazoned across it.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ he said.

She blushed furiously, dropped the offending item into the bin bag and stood to attention, with the grabber pointing at the ground like a sword. And then, unable to stop herself from sounding just like her aunt, she said, ‘You’d be surprised what people chuck out of car windows.’

He placed a flat hand on his non-existent belly and chuckled heartily while she scowled at him. ‘Sarah,’ he said, when he could stop laughing, ‘what in God’s name are you doing?’

‘What does it look like?’ she said crossly. ‘I’m litter-picking. We do it on the second Saturday of every month.’ She glanced up. Her aunt and the children were fifty yards away plucking rubbish out of the fence, like raspberries off a cane. A car sped past into town on the other side of the road, immediately followed by another going in the opposite direction.

‘But why?’

By the time she’d finished explaining Ballyfergus in Bloom the smirk had gone from his face and he was looking at her earnestly. ‘Good for you,’ he said, his face as straight as a poker.

She frowned doubtfully – she’d seen him keep a perfectly straight face before and still poke gentle fun at people, a talent that used to send her into hysterics. She had to look away and suppress the smile that sprang to her lips. She couldn’t really blame him – she must look ridiculous. ‘So, are you down visiting family today?’

‘Nope. I’ve just taken a lease on a bungalow in Grace Avenue.’

‘Oh.’ She hesitated, on one hand surprised by the interest this news induced in her. On the other, a little wrong-footed that he was intruding on her patch. She looked at the double yellow lines under her feet. ‘I thought you said the consultants are all staying in Belfast.’

‘They are. But I’m not.’ He stared at her and she felt her cheeks redden once more.

He had every right to stay where he wanted. It was nothing to her. And this was where his parents still lived after all. ‘It’ll be nice to spend some time with your family.’

He inclined his head to one side and lifted one shoulder slightly, a gesture of indifference. ‘My relationship with my family hasn’t changed, Sarah. And I haven’t been good at staying in touch with my old friends, though most of them are still living on the Drumalis estate.’ He stared straight ahead at the road, and his Adam’s apple moved in his throat. ‘Or else serving time.’

Sarah tried not to look shocked. She remembered things he had told her long ago about the lives of the people on the estate – generations of families who had never worked, rampant drugs and teenage pregnancies, domestic violence and a moral code based on clan loyalty and a universal hatred of the law. She’d found his accounts of this dangerous world faintly thrilling then. Now it just seemed desperately sad. How had he made something out of a life that had started with so little promise – and without the advantages she’d taken for granted? She admired him for it.