With All My Love Page 14

  ‘Come on, my little sex kitten.’ Jeff reached for her. ‘Let’s make this a night to remember.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘Oh, Lizzie, it’s a disaster. I’ve made such a mess of things.’ Valerie cradled the phone under her ear, wishing that she could be with her best friend. They had been through so much together over the years – shared the good times and the bad – and it was to Lizzie Valerie still always went for sound advice.

  ‘Calm down, Valerie,’ Lizzie soothed. ‘Everything will be OK.’

  ‘It won’t, Lizzie! Briony’s so mad at me she says she’s booking a flight home. She never wants to see me again and she’s going to stop me from seeing Katie,’ Valerie explained agitatedly.

  ‘She won’t do that, Val. I know she won’t,’ Lizzie replied sombrely. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘I don’t know. She stormed out of here about an hour ago and she’s not back yet. Will you talk to her, Lizzie? Will you tell her I had good reasons for what I did? She’ll listen to you. She’s always listened to you.’

  ‘That’s what godmothers are for,’ Lizzie said wryly. ‘How did she find out that things weren’t what they seemed?’

  ‘She found a letter from Tessa,’ Valerie sighed. ‘I should have told Mam to burn the bloody thing years ago.’

  ‘What a strange day for it to happen,’ Lizzie remarked.

  ‘I know. It’s hard to believe that she’d find a letter from Jeff’s mother after all these years, on his anniversary.’

  ‘Maybe he planned it to happen. There’s no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason. You know I believe that, Valerie,’ Lizzie said gently.

  ‘Ah, Lizzie, don’t give me any of your spiritual mumbo jumbo stuff, not now, I’m too upset,’ Valerie said irritably. Much as she loved her friend, she did not want to hear that ‘perhaps we choose our life events to help us grow spiritually’ sort of rubbish. When, years ago, Lizzie had had two miscarriages in a row, soon after she and Dara had first married, she had been distraught and had gone to see a spiritual healer. It had set her on a whole new path and she thought about things very differently now, believing that there was always a reason for everything. It was very interesting to listen to her talking about it sometimes, but not now, not today of all days.

  ‘Sometimes when you think that what’s happening is the worst thing that can possibly happen, you look back and see that actually it was one of the best,’ Lizzie was saying. ‘If I hadn’t had my miscarriages I would never have opened up my mind to all that I know today. That was my babies’ gift to me. This could be Jeff’s gift to you and Briony.’

  ‘How can you possibly think that Briony finding out that I’d lied about her grandmother rejecting her is a good thing? You’re for the birds, Lizzie?’ Valerie said crossly. ‘And if that’s the best you can do I’ve wasted my time ringing you.’

  ‘It might lead to a reconciliation,’ Lizzie said, unperturbed.

  ‘That is never going to happen. Never!’ Valerie added emphatically. ‘You should know that better than anybody.’

  ‘Well, whatever you think, everything does happen for a reason, Valerie,’ Lizzie said calmly. ‘Now I’d better go upstairs and see what’s happening and why in my back bedroom. Michelangelo is painting the ceiling and I swear the Sistine Chapel has nothing on it. I hear a litany of curses which leads me to think something’s gone awry.’

  ‘Give my love to Dara,’ Valerie grinned. ‘When are the two of you going to come out?’

  ‘We’re saving our coppers,’ Lizzie said drily. ‘There’s a recession on and our children are bleeding us dry!’

  ‘Just book a flight, that’s all you need. We can live very cheaply out here.’

  ‘Um, leaving a fourteen-year-old with an attitude problem in the house on her own, currently thinking we are the meanest parents because we won’t allow her go to a mixed sleepover? I don’t think so,’ Lizzie replied.

  ‘And how is my godchild?’ Valerie smiled.

  ‘Lucky to be alive, I’d say. Yesterday she was asking me something and she actually said, “in your day”. God, I felt like an ancient. I’m still young, hip and cool, aren’t I, Valerie?’

  ‘No one hipper or cooler on the planet,’ Valerie grinned, glad she’d rung her friend just to hear her voice.

  ‘I better go, Val. I don’t know what Dara’s done but he’s roaring at me. It could possibly be more of a Jackson Pollock episode than a Michelangelo moment,’ Lizzie groaned. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have a chat with Briony.’

  ‘Thanks, Lizzie, you’re a pal.’ Valerie felt somewhat calmer as she hung up. Briony was very close to her ‘Auntie Lizzie’ and had always listened to her in the past. She might look at things differently when she’d had a word with her.

  She wandered out to the terrace. The breeze had changed direction and she could hear the sea breaking against the shore. It was a sound that evoked a memory of sitting with Jeff in the moonlight on top of the bank at the end of his garden when she was pregnant with Briony. He had his arm around her shoulders and she was leaning in against him and he was telling her not to worry, that everything would be fine.

  ‘Ahh, Jeff, why? Why did you leave me? And why is all this happening now?’ she asked angrily. ‘You better do something to sort out this mess, mister. You were as much a part of it as I was.’

  She stared up at the sky. Could he hear her? Was his spirit up there somewhere or was it all a fairy tale, this eternal life stuff? And yet there were times, she couldn’t deny it, when she’d felt his presence around her strongly, especially when Briony was young and very sick with chickenpox and running a dangerously high temperature, and she had felt isolated, alone, scared and helpless. Was Lizzie right? Could it possibly be true, that this was a good thing to be happening and that Jeff was very close to them? Valerie pondered. Lizzie had such belief that her grandmother and Jeff and all who had ‘passed’, as she called it, were around them. Even her babies were very close to her, she told Valerie.

  Lizzie had gone through such dreadful torment when she’d lost the two babies, each late in pregnancy. She’d been so devastated she’d started drinking heavily and Dara had been at his wits’ end. After losing the second baby she’d come to stay with Valerie. Watching her best friend distraught and drunk every night had been scary. Valerie knew Lizzie was on a slippery slope.

  One night, when Briony was in bed and Lizzie was preparing to open a bottle of red, Valerie had taken it from her. ‘We’re not doing that tonight.’

  ‘What?’ Her friend looked at her, astonished.

  ‘We’re not drinking tonight, or tomorrow night or any other night you’re here with me. I’m not going to stand by and watch you turn into a lush, Lizzie.’

  ‘I’m not turning into a lush! I just need something to take away the pain for a while. You don’t understand what it’s like. It’s unspeakable, unbearable. You’ve never lost a child. You have Briony,’ Lizzie said furiously.

  ‘I lost Jeff. I do understand pain,’ Valerie retorted. ‘How mean are you, Lizzie, acting like this and having Dara up the walls with worry? He’s grieving too, you know. He’s lost his children too, and have you ever considered him in all of this when you run to the bottle and drink yourself into a stupor? You have a wonderful husband and you’re treating him like dirt. I never thought you’d be so selfish.’

  ‘You’re a bitch, Valerie! How dare you say things like that to me? I might run to the bottle but I would never take my child away from its grandparents – if I ever had a child that lived, that is.’ She burst into tears, grabbed her bag and left the house, incandescent. It was their worst row ever. She’d booked into a hotel, although Valerie hadn’t known that, and Valerie was sick with anxiety, imagining all sorts of terrible scenarios involving a drunken Lizzie.

  Lizzie had phoned the following day and asked if she could come back. They’d fallen into each other’s arms crying and had stayed up talking until the early hours, drinking only tea. But it had been a turni
ng-point for Lizzie, and when she had gone back to London she had set about seeking help. Having been brought to her knees she’d found solace in spiritual knowledge, which had sustained her ever since. She’d eventually had two more children, a boy and a girl, and had gone on to study and specialize in counselling for women who had lost children through miscarriage and childbirth. If she hadn’t lost her precious babies she’d never have gone down that road.

  Valerie admitted that when Lizzie gave her advice it came from hard-won knowledge and experience. Her best friend really wasn’t an airy-fairy sort of person at all. Lizzie was one of the most practical and down-to-earth people that she knew, not one to suffer fools gladly and never had been. And if her friend had something to say she came straight out with it. But yet there was a side to her that coloured every aspect of her life and that was as natural to her now as breathing. She truly believed that death was just another path, and it most certainly wasn’t the end of existence.

  Valerie made a mug of tea, then went back out to the terrace and sat gazing out to sea. Sometimes, she had felt that Jeff was around her, especially that first year in Dublin when she had struggled with her grief. She wished she could believe like Lizzie did. Lizzie’s beliefs took the sting out of death.

  What would Jeff think of the mess she was in now? A mess of her own making. That was the hardest thing to accept, Valerie thought gloomily. What a change a few minutes could make in a person’s life. It had taken Briony only a few moments to read that letter and now all was changed utterly. This morning she’d been so happy at the prospect of spending the day with Katie and Briony and now her daughter was furious with her. Why had she kept that damn letter? she berated herself again. Why hadn’t she severed the link completely? Now it was too late. Whether she liked it or not, Tessa Egan was back in her life, and causing havoc as usual, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘Why are you on such bad form, Jeff? Is anything wrong? Forget about the exam results. If you’ve done badly you can repeat.’ Tessa studied her son critically as he pushed a half-eaten chop around his plate.

  ‘I’m not on bad form,’ he growled. ‘I’m just tired. It was a long day.’

  ‘Are you going up to Dublin? You can have a lend of the car if you want it,’ she offered brightly.

  ‘Nah, I’m not going up tonight. I think I’ll just go for a run and hit the sack.’ He sighed, a sigh that came from his toes, only reinforcing her gut instinct that something was bothering her youngest child.

  He pushed away his plate and stood up. ‘Thanks for dinner.’

  ‘Leave it, I’ll wash it up,’ Tessa said irritably. It annoyed her when Jeff was uncommunicative and surly. He was normally such a cheerful, chatty lad. Even puberty hadn’t dented his sunny nature like it had some of her friends’ sons, turning them into sullen little grumps. It annoyed her even more that something was going on in his life that was upsetting him and he wasn’t telling her about it. Tessa liked to know what was going on with her children. Lisa and Steven, her two eldest, had recently flown the nest, but she still had Jeff and she wanted to keep him for as long as she could.

  Why wasn’t he going up to Dublin to see Valerie? Had they had a fight? Was she being demanding? Putting pressure on him for spending too much time training? Maybe that was it, Tessa decided as she cleared away the detritus of the meal. She stood at the sink, her hands in hot soapy water, staring out at the panorama that unfolded outside her big kitchen window. The big sweep of blue speckled sky. Drifts of feathery clouds scudding gaily overhead. The sea a shimmering palette of blues, greens and navys, depending on where the sun was shining through. Golden wheat fields on The Headland ripe for cutting, the non-stop droning of tractors and farm machinery as they gathered up the harvest, working until long past midnight to make the most of the fine weather. The trawlers in the bay at rest for a few hours before their next foray to harvest the bounty of the sea. This tapestry of the life of her village, her home, usually brought a sense of comfort and gratitude to Tessa, but today she hardly noticed it. She was too agitated. She just had a feeling all was not right.

  If Jeff did break up with that young Harris one it wouldn’t be a tragedy. He’d get over it and be far better off not being restricted and tied down at his age. He was spending a lot of time in Dublin and had even decided against going on an InterRail holiday with some of his mates, which she knew he’d been looking forward to. When she’d pressed him on it he’d just said he’d prefer to save the money. He’d be back in college in September and he might try and move into a flat rather than stay in his digs, he’d said. ‘Everyone needs a holiday and you’ve worked hard; go off with the lads and enjoy yourself,’ she constantly urged but to no avail. If she found out that Valerie had put him off going Tessa would have something to say to the little madam, she thought, clattering saucepans into the press, cursing when they wouldn’t fit neatly in because Lorcan or Jeff had put the frying pan in the wrong place despite her telling them on numerous occasions that it went on the bottom shelf and not the top. She rearranged them the way they should be arranged and slammed the cupboard door shut.

  She was getting into one of her irritable moods when anything and everything annoyed her. She should go for a walk to try and clear her head, but then Lorcan would come home to an empty house and he’d had a very long and tiring day at sea, and she’d feel mean. Once again her life revolved around the men in it. Tessa scowled, feeling quite sorry for herself for no real reason that she could think of except that she had menopausal PMT, which far outweighed ordinary PMT and anything that men would ever suffer from. She’d felt she was getting a period for the past two weeks, even had the headache, spots and dull back and stomach ache to prove it, and so far no sign. This was not a good week for Jeff to be having a crisis.

  ‘Cop on to yourself,’ she chided aloud, knowing that she was being irrational. In fairness to her family they were pretty stable and sound. She was the one who was verging on being unreasonable lately. It wasn’t fair to be taking out her moods on her family just because she wasn’t happy to be galloping into middle age and all the horrors it entailed. ‘Oh stop it,’ she groaned. She was fit and healthy. She had a great husband, lovely children and a part-time job, she was bloody lucky, Tessa lectured herself, massaging her temples.

  The sun was beginning to set so she walked into their airy west-facing sitting room and put an Acker Bilk cassette into the tape deck, letting the pure, crystal-clear notes of ‘Stranger on the Shore’ float over her as she stretched out on the sofa and watched the setting sun tint the sky and sea. No matter how many times she watched the sun set Tessa never failed to delight in its beauty. And tonight was no different. Soothed by the music and the spectacular vista unfolding in front of her, her agitation lessened and she was asleep when Lorcan woke her by dropping a blanket over her.

  ‘Sleeping beauty.’ He smiled down at her as she woke with a start.

  ‘You’re very late,’ she remonstrated. It was almost dark outside.

  ‘Denis and I stayed down at the boat shed repairing one of the nets. It got badly holed and it needed to be done.’ He yawned.

  ‘Go on,’ she teased, getting up from the sofa, ‘you have another woman.’

  ‘Indeed I do, how did you guess?’ Lorcan’s blue eyes crinkled in amusement as his wife kissed him.

  ‘You’ve been spending a lot of time in that boat shed.’ She linked her arm in his as they walked out to the kitchen.

  ‘It’s the fishnets. They drive me wild. Very sexy, especially when the seams are straight!’ He smiled down at her and she cuddled in against him, loving their easy banter. How lucky was she to look forward still to Lorcan coming in from work, to fancy her husband still after all these years.

  ‘I’ll give you fishnets . . . Sit down and I’ll heat up your dinner. It’s too late at night to be eating,’ she scolded. They still had a lot of fun in their marriage, she thought gratefully as she busied herself at the cooker.
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  ‘Did Jeff say anything to you about what’s bothering him? He’s in terrible bad form these last few days,’ she asked her husband when they sat together on the small kitchen sofa, drinking tea, after he’d finished his meal.

  ‘He’s a bit quiet, all right, not his usual exuberant self, but he didn’t say anything to me, Tess.’ Lorcan shrugged. ‘Everyone’s entitled to an off day or two.’

  ‘But it’s not like him,’ Tessa persisted. ‘Not like him at all.’

  ‘He’ll tell us soon enough if something’s wrong.’ Lorcan wolfed down a slice of home-made cherry and walnut cake, his favourite.

  ‘I bet it’s that Valerie one,’ Tessa grumbled.

  ‘Ah, leave her be, Tessa. You never have a good word to say for the girl,’ Lorcan remonstrated.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Tessa retorted, stung at his criticism, knowing he had a point.

  ‘Look, he’s happy with her and that’s all that counts.’

  ‘He’s not happy lately,’ she snapped.

  ‘Give it a break, Tess. He can’t always be on good form, now, can he? You should know that,’ he added.

  ‘What are you saying? That I’m on bad form?’ She sat up ramrod straight and glared at him.

  ‘There you go, flying off the handle for no reason. I rest my case,’ he said drily, picking up the paper.

  ‘It’s called the menopause and you’d better get used to it,’ she retorted.

  ‘No wonder I’d prefer to be in the boat shed,’ he remarked from behind the paper.

  ‘Lorcan Egan!’ she raged, pulling the paper down to see him grinning at her.

  ‘God, you were always easy to wind up.’ He started laughing.

  ‘Bastard!’ She was furious with herself for laughing, but she could never fight with Lorcan. He always ended up making her laugh.

  ‘There, there, there, pet, you’ll be all right,’ Lorcan teased, laying the paper down and putting his arm around her. ‘Don’t be worrying about Jeff, he’s well able to take care of himself. He’s not a child, Tessa, you have to remember that.’