Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming. Cathy Kelly
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the amazing silvery blonde hair that made her look like a fey, other-worldly figure. As if she might dance down the street and disappear like a mermaid into the water. Compared to her aunt, Nell was shockingly ordinary. What had Nell got that Uncle Edward wanted? None of it made any sense.
‘Did you tell Lily?’ said Izzie. She knew how close her grandmother was to Anneliese. Maybe that had shocked her grandmother so much it had contributed to her stroke. But Anneliese had clearly followed her train of thought.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I hadn’t. I was too ashamed and embarrassed and all the things you are, when your husband walks out on you for your best friend. Now, I’m sorry I hadn’t told her. That’s what I do every time I see her: sit down, hold her hand and tell her, because she has that warmth, that wisdom. You understand, Izzie: you know you can tell her anything. There can’t be too many nearly ninety-year-old women with her open-mindedness. I know Lily would have had no problem grasping the fact that myself and Edward had split up, and she’d have been there to tell me how to move on with my life. And I didn’t tell her because I was so ashamed, and now I may not ever be able to tell her.’
It was Izzie’s turn to be silent. The shame overwhelmed the guilt now. Guilt was too insubstantial an emotion for what she felt: it was pure shame.
All her life, she’d been against the idea of dating a married man, and yet Joe had got under her radar before she’d had time to put up the barriers, so that by the time she’d realised just how complicated it all was, before her moral compass cranked into action in her head, her heart was trapped.
Loving him was the only option.
Hearing Anneliese’s story was like having a magnifying mirror held up to the biggest blemishes on her face. She could see every giant pore and big spot. Anneliese’s story had magnified Izzie’s under the cruellest light.
Just as Anneliese had done, Joe’s wife might still think her husband loved her. That he was there for her, didn’t want anyone else to share his thoughts and dreams.
The only difference was that Edward had left Anneliese for Nell. He’d had the moral courage to walk away to be with the woman he apparently loved. But Joe hadn’t. There was a nice simple message for her in all of this – Joe hadn’t loved her enough. Whether he’d been lying or not when he said he and Elizabeth were no longer together was immaterial: he hadn’t wanted to be with Izzie when she needed him.
Despite the guilt and shame, she felt as if she might cry.
Anneliese gazed at her niece and felt incredibly guilty for having told her what was happening. It seemed so bloody ridiculous that with darling Lily lying in the hospital, here she was having to reveal the sad details of her own life.
Poor Izzie, no wonder she was shocked, silent and tearful. And if Izzie was shocked, Anneliese didn’t even want to think about what Beth would do when she heard. Oh Lord, Beth. Anneliese knew she’d taken the coward’s way out by not telling Beth yet, but she simply couldn’t face it.
She recalled her mother explaining the mother-child bond when she’d been pregnant with Beth: ‘It’s the greatest love,’ her mother had said. ‘The greatest. I can’t explain it to you, nobody can. In a few months, you’ll have this child who depends on you utterly, and nobody else matters, nobody, even Edward.’
‘Ma, don’t be daft,’ Anneliese had laughed.
‘No, really,’ her mother had insisted. ‘Wait and see.’
And she had seen. Anneliese had never thought of herself as particularly maternal until she’d had her daughter. Up until then, she’d felt she was capable, almost masculine in her ability to turn her hand to just about anything. She’d always loved the physical side of gardening – the digging, planting, hauling things around. She had such great strength and energy. So she thought she was one of those women who might not be terribly maternal. And then Beth had appeared, and it was like being hit hard over the head with one of her gardening spades: bash.
Suddenly she was in love and enthralled with this tiny, squalling, mewling infant who screamed a lot. The first six months of Beth’s life, Anneliese had existed on practically no sleep.
She’d gone half crazy, thinking that she could manage through sheer force of will to push the depression out of her mind. If only such a thing were possible.
Her mother had been right: Beth had become her life. And now she had to tell that sweet, fragile person that her parents were splitting up.
She only hoped that Beth wouldn’t stare at her and say: ‘You must have known!’
Anneliese thought of a politician she’d read about in the papers, who’d told his wife he was gay an hour before he gave a press conference telling the whole world. His wife had stood beside him in front of the cameras and reporters, holding his hand, and somehow, that became the most talked-about part of it all. How could she? She must have known.
The story was no longer about him. It came down to the question: How could she not have known?
Years later, the woman gave her side of the story and made sense of the strange events of that day. She hadn’t known. They were married, they had a child, why should she doubt him?
When he told her, she was stunned, and was still stunned an hour later when they stood together.
‘Anneliese,’ said Izzie, and Anneliese was sure poor Izzie was about to cry. She looked on the verge of it. ‘I thought I wanted this coffee but I don’t, actually. I’m going to get myself some water from the coffee shop. Will I get you something too?’
‘No thanks,’ Anneliese said. She didn’t feel hungry or thirsty these days. She couldn’t feel anything other than the big, black hole inside her.
With Izzie gone, she could go back to torturing herself, thinking about the past. It was a movie reel she couldn’t turn off in her head. She kept going back over their lives together, analysing everything, working out when Edward had been telling the truth and when he hadn’t.
At Christmas, Beth and Marcus had come to stay and the house on Milsean Bay had been full of laughter and joy. Anneliese had loved it. She’d gone overboard with finding the perfect Christmas tree, decorating it, turning the whole house into a Christmassy bower with lots of holly, mistletoe, shiny gold balls and enough Santas to sink a ship. On Christmas Day, she’d had a lunch party for seven: her and Edward, Brendan, Lily, Nell, Marcus and Beth. Nell had brought her famous dark chocolate meringue, which they’d had with raspberries.
So often over the years, when they’d invited Nell to their house for something, Nell would say gratefully: ‘Thank you for having me.’
And she hadn’t said it that Christmas. Anneliese remembered it most clearly because at the time she’d thought, with pleasure, that Nell had finally accepted that they were friends, that she didn’t need to thank them for their kindness every single time. How wrong she’d been.
‘Can I do anything to help?’ Beth had said, coming into the kitchen, looking like a Christmas fairy with her glossy, dark hair curling around her face and wearing a beautiful moss-green silky sweater, over a grey velvet skirt that twirled around her legs.
‘No, darling,’ said Anneliese, looking up from the cooker. She’d changed out of her Christmas outfit after church and had put on a pair of jeans and an old shirt for doing the cooking, which was terribly messy. She would change quickly as soon as dinner was ready. Meanwhile Nell had covered up her finery in a big apron. Nell was looking great, Anneliese thought fondly. Edward and Anneliese had bought her these beautiful handmade earrings shaped like little fuchsia drops and a necklace with a fuchsia drop pendant. Nell wore them with pride.
‘How’s the turkey doing?’ she asked Nell. Nell was the turkey expert.
‘I’d say another twenty minutes, just to be on the safe side,’ Nell said, sounding professional.
‘Right, I’ll open the oven if you manhandle it in,’ Anneliese replied.
Edward