Better Together (48 page)

‘Sheridan?’ Joe’s voice was full of concern.

She felt sick. In remembering Paudie, Elva and Sean, she was also remembering her promise to Alo Brady. She’d said she’d help him because she hadn’t believed that Joe could
feel for her what she felt for him. But that was before. It was different now.

‘It’s a misunderstanding, Nina,’ she said. ‘I promise you.’

‘I haven’t misunderstood anything,’ said Nina. ‘At least, not today. What I did misunderstand was everything to do with you from the first time I saw you until now. I thought you were a decent, honest person. I felt sorry for you. I was so, so wrong.’

‘Nina, please . . .’ Sheridan knew that she was shaking. She didn’t want Nina to blurt out anything about the envelope. Joe would be horrified to think she’d seen the contents, if, of course, he even knew they existed.

‘What did she tell you?’ Nina asked him now. ‘That she was a poor redundant journalist? That she was forced to come here for a job? Did she blame your father for that?’

Joe looked from Nina to Sheridan in puzzlement. He could see real anger on Nina’s face. And absolute terror on Sheridan’s. Why, he asked himself, did she look so scared? What had she done?

‘That’s the truth,’ Sheridan said. ‘I lost my job. I was out of work for weeks. The
Central News
was the only job I could get.’

‘Or that you wanted to get,’ said Nina. ‘So that you could poke around. How do we know that you didn’t plan everything? That you’re not employed by another paper to snoop? That you’re not trying to get the inside track on me and Sean and everything to do with us? I should have guessed when you came here looking for a place to stay. No one tries to rent out rooms in a guesthouse for months on end.’

‘You’ve got it all wrong!’ cried Sheridan. ‘I knew nothing about you or your guesthouse until DJ suggested it.’

‘I’ve no idea what anyone is talking about here,’ said Joe.

‘Don’t you?’ asked Nina.

‘Absolutely not.’

Nina sat down abruptly. She’d come to challenge Sheridan, not to reveal secrets to Joe O’Malley. She didn’t know what Joe already knew about his mother and father’s relationship, or Elva’s relationship with Sean. She didn’t know what Paudie had told him. If anything.

‘Nina thinks I took something belonging to her.’ Sheridan’s voice was shaking.

‘Did you?’ Joe sounded both astonished and appalled.

‘Yes,’ said Sheridan. ‘But it was a mistake. I didn’t mean to. I got flustered and—’

‘Flustered? I don’t think you were flustered at all!’ cried Nina. ‘I think you planned it.’

‘I didn’t. How could I have? I’d no idea you’d ask me to look at photos.’

‘What photos?’ asked Joe.

Nina and Sheridan stared at each other, neither entirely sure what to do next. Eventually Sheridan got up and retrieved the paintings, the note and the ring from the drawer she’d put them in before she’d left the studio to meet Joe.

He watched her curiously. Then his eyes widened as he recognised the paintings and he gasped when he saw the ring.

‘How the hell . . .?’ He looked at Nina, who put the ring and the paintings on the table in front of him. ‘You had these? She took them from
you
?’

‘Yes,’ said Sheridan.

‘That’s my mother’s ring,’ he said in absolute bewilderment. ‘I recognise it. And these paintings, of course. I remember her working on them.’

Nina’s grip tightened on the note, which she still held. ‘You watched her paint them?’

‘Not all of them.’ He was looking at the ones of the heart with the dagger through it. ‘Not these. Not the ones of the man, either. But the landscapes, yes.’

Nina took a deep breath and then released it.

‘Why do you have them?’ asked Joe. ‘And my mother’s ring?’ Then he turned to Sheridan. ‘How could you possibly have taken them by mistake?’

‘I was helping Nina look through photos for the festival exhibition,’ explained Sheridan. ‘I came across these when she was out of the room. I realised that I shouldn’t have seen them. I thought I heard Nina coming back and I . . . I panicked.’

‘Why should you panic?’

‘Because I didn’t want to have to talk to her about them. I knew . . . there was something . . . and the note . . .’ Her glance shifted to the sheet of pink writing paper in Nina’s hand.

‘What note?’

‘Maybe Nina should tell you,’ she said helplessly.

‘It’s . . . Oh, Joe, I don’t know what you know already.’ Nina’s voice trembled.

‘Know about what? My mother? Her painting?’

‘In a way, yes.’

‘I don’t know why you have my mother’s ring,’ said Joe. ‘So an answer to that would be a good start. Perhaps I should read the note.’

‘Maybe it would be better if I tell you first,’ said Nina.

‘I’m listening.’ This time Joe sounded grim. He pulled a chair from the table and sat down. ‘So go on, tell me.’

Even though it was late, Sean Fallon was awake and sitting in front of the TV in his rented apartment. He’d been watching recorded episodes of
Chandler’s Park
, but now he switched off the set and poured a measure of whiskey into the glass beside him. Sean wasn’t a big whiskey drinker, but he found that a glass before bed relaxed him these days and helped him to sleep.

He hadn’t been sleeping well lately. His mind had been buzzing with concern over his future role in
Chandler’s Park
(he had the horrible feeling that his character would stay in the coma for months), but also with excitement over the new project, which was fun but now nearly completed. If he didn’t have anything to do in Dublin, there was no reason for him to remain. His relationship with Lulu Adams was over. But Nina was being very stubborn about the chances of his return to Ardbawn.

He didn’t blame her. She was entitled to be mad as hell with him. And, in retrospect, sending her the solicitor’s letter had been stupid. It had understandably antagonised her when he should have been appeasing her. But then he didn’t always get it right with Nina. He’d imagined, back when
he’d first asked her to go out with him, that it would be a short-lived thing. He hadn’t planned to marry her. The truth was that if he hadn’t been encouraged by his father, he probably never would have asked her. Yet their lives together had been more stable and more fulfilling than he’d ever expected. It would have always been that way if it hadn’t been for Elva Slater.

He’d first noticed Elva in his teens. She was by far the most beautiful girl in Ardbawn. Tall and slender, with long flaxen hair and the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, she was two years older than him, and despite the fact that he’d already chalked up quite a few conquests of his own, he considered her almost beyond his reach. But then, late one summer’s evening, he’d met her walking along the road from the old creamery to the town. She was wearing a white cotton dress printed with blue and yellow flowers. Her hair hung loosely down her back, and to Sean she was like a fairy princess appearing though the dusk. A fairy princess who was limping because, as she told him, she’d tripped over a stone in the road and turned her ankle and it was absolute agony.

He’d supported her back to the town and to the house where she lived with her elderly parents, and then, seizing the moment, he asked her if she’d like to meet him again. She’d smiled and said yes, and the next thing he knew, he, Sean Fallon, was her official boyfriend.

Their relationship was deep and intense and lasted for nearly a year. But the problem was that much as Sean loved going out with the most beautiful girl in town, he found her unending neediness wearing. He hadn’t realised that someone as lovely and as apparently confident as Elva would be needy. But she was. She constantly asked him if he loved her,
constantly worried that she wasn’t beautiful enough, constantly fretted about the littlest of things. Eventually Sean told her that he couldn’t take it any more. He was tired of being the one who seemed to give all the time and received nothing in return. The undoubted pleasure he got from her was more than offset by the irritation he felt at always having to tell her how much he loved her. He longed for the days when he’d gone out with someone and it was just a bit of fun. So he broke it off with her and applied himself to seeking out less demanding female company, which he found perfectly easy to do.

At first Elva didn’t seem to care. But then she started sending him notes, on pink scented notepaper, telling him that she still loved him. She said that she understood why a boy as immature as him might find it difficult to go out with an older woman. She realised that he’d been under stress. She forgave him for dumping her. He didn’t reply to the notes, and when they stopped, he thought that she’d finally come to her senses. Then he heard that she wasn’t eating. That didn’t bother him too much – Elva talked a lot about how she needed to diet to keep her elegantly slender figure. So he ignored that too. What he couldn’t ignore, though, was the day she was fished out of the Bawnee River and rushed to Kilkenny hospital. The official line was that she’d fainted at the riverside, but almost immediately rumours began to circulate that she’d thrown herself in because she was broken hearted at the end of their relationship. He thought about going to see her but dismissed it as a bad idea. Better to just let her get over it all, he thought. Better to stay away. His father, who was the Slaters’ family doctor, told him that she was a type-A personality. Highly strung.
Difficult to live with. Not a good long-term prospect, no matter how beautiful she was.

Sean agreed. He was both relieved and surprised when he heard, a few months later, that Elva was engaged to Paudie O’Malley. Sean had never had much to do with the man, who was eight years older than him, and who he regarded as vintage Ardbawn – home loving and uninspiring. But the O’Malleys had a lot of land in the area and Paudie’s parents had never been short of money. Elva liked the good things in life. Perhaps, Sean thought, she believed that Paudie could give them to her. And perhaps he was the sort of man who was so overawed by having snared such a beautiful woman that he wouldn’t mind having to tell her how happy he was every second of every day. Elva marrying Paudie certainly lifted the vague sense of responsibility that Sean had constantly felt towards her, and he went off in search of his new life in Dublin and new girlfriends with renewed vigour.

She was married by the time he came back to Ardbawn again, and he was astonished to hear that she was pregnant. He was even more astonished when she had more children in quick succession. Elva had always seemed to him far too self-centred to be the sort of person who’d rush into motherhood. He counted himself lucky that he’d split up with her when he had, because the idea of being trapped into a marriage resulting in a brood of children made him shiver.

The day that he first spoke to her following their break-up and her subsequent marriage and family, they met by chance in St Stephen’s Green. He was living in Dublin by then and the Green was one of his favourite places to relax. He was sitting on the grass enjoying some late summer sun when she walked by. He recognised her straight away, even though
her long hair was shorter now and she was wearing a skirt and jacket instead of a wispy cotton dress. She was still enchantingly beautiful. When she turned and saw him, her blue eyes widened in surprise. For a moment he thought she would continue walking without acknowledging him, but then she came over and sat down on the dry grass beside him.

‘How is it I never see you in Ardbawn any more but here I am on a rare trip to Dublin and one of the first people I see is you?’ she asked.

‘I’m hardly ever
in
Ardbawn,’ he said, and went on to tell her about his acting career, making it sound like he was perpetually in demand for parts.

‘I’d love to be doing that,’ said Elva.

‘Acting?’ He looked surprised. ‘I never thought it interested you.’

‘Not acting. Just something that I loved.’

‘Don’t you love being Mrs Paudie O’Malley?’ asked Sean. ‘I hear the farm’s doing well and that Paudie is developing outside business interests. And you’re a mother, of course.’

‘Can you believe it?’ she said, in a tone that clearly showed she didn’t believe it herself. ‘I’m not even thirty and I have three kids already.’ She looked at him from beneath her surprisingly dark lashes. ‘You and I were lucky not to get caught out, Sean. I seem to be the most fertile woman on the planet. The man only has to turn back the bedcovers and I get pregnant.’

‘Ellie!’ Sean wasn’t comfortable with the conversation.

She laughed. ‘Oh, chill out. It’s a fact, though. Maybe it’s him. Maybe he just has strong swimmers.’

‘Elva!’

‘You lose a sense of something when you get married and have kids,’ said Elva. ‘You don’t care what you say quite so much. You don’t get so embarrassed either. That’s because the kids will always do things to embarrass you first.’

‘I’m sure they’re great children,’ said Sean.

‘JJ’s bright as a button. Sinead’s lovely. Peter, the youngest, is mad as a hatter.’

‘They’re lucky to have you for a mother,’ said Sean.

‘You think?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘They have the sexiest mother in Ardbawn.’

It was as though the earth tilted with his words. She looked at him enquiringly. And he remembered why he’d once thought he was in love with her.

It was a moment of madness, Sean often thought afterwards, his asking her if she was in a rush back to Ardbawn and her reply that she wasn’t, and his suggestion that she might like to see his flat and her amused ‘Why not?’

And then they were together in his bed and he was running his fingers along her silky-smooth body, thinking that childbirth hadn’t changed it at all. Afterwards, as they lay side by side, she told him that it had been wonderful but that she was a married woman and couldn’t see him again. He thought perhaps it was a kind of revenge – dumping him as he’d dumped her. But he was relieved, too. Great though the sex had been, he knew that it was also a mistake. He didn’t want to get entangled with Elva again. He couldn’t afford the grief it might bring.

The next time he met her, he was married himself. Their meeting was in Ardbawn, at a hurling match. Paudie, whose businesses were doing well, was now a sponsor of the local
club and he went to lots of matches. The team had been doing well that year, and everyone had turned up to the game, which was against local rivals. Sean and Nina had bumped into Paudie and Elva after it had ended in a victory for the Ardbawn team. Paudie was polite and courteous, while Elva greeted Nina with a certain reserved diffidence. Afterwards, Nina said that while Paudie was always a real gentleman, she couldn’t really take to Elva. She’d asked Sean what she’d been like when they’d gone out together, and he’d replied cheerily that he’d had a lucky escape. Because no way would his life with Elva have been half as good as it was with her. Nina laughed. And right then, Sean knew that she was and always would be more important to him than Elva Slater.