Gwen leaned forward on her elbows and Emmy noticed that she was beginning to look a little tired. Maybe tonight was too much, too soon, after all she’d been through.
‘But that’s the thing, Rhonda, maybe Ailish doesn’t bear a grudge the way you do,’ Gwen countered. ‘And maybe life is too short not to forgive someone you love when they make a mistake.’
Rhonda didn’t seem impressed by this perspective. ‘Okay, Dalai Lama, pipe down. I preferred you before you got into allthis karmic spiritual stuff. Please go back to being a stroppy cow so we can be friends again.’
Even though her whole world was crumbling around her, that made Emmy laugh. No wonder these three friends had got though everything life had thrown at them – cancer, divorces, heartache, sorrow and Aunt Rhonda’s compulsive shopping habit. They just stuck together and found some kind of humour in even the worst of things. Emmy saw the same spirit on her ward all the time and she was convinced it could be the difference between giving up and fighting on.
Too anxious to watch, her gaze went from there, over to the bar, where Yvie was chatting to her fiancé, Carlo. There was a couple who wouldn’t be having a midlife crisis at fifty. Both of them were equally devoted to each other and Emmy couldn’t suppress the pang of pain that pinged her heart. She’d thought the same about herself and Cormac. Thought they were forever. That she knew him inside and out. Yet she’d been wrong.
Despite vowing that she wouldn’t, she picked her phone back up and flicked to the location app again.
Cormac Sweeney’s location is unavailable.
She wanted to drop her phone into Aunt Rhonda’s Slippery Nipple.
Instead, she made idle chit-chat with her aunts until they saw her mum coming back towards them. They all smiled at her as she approached, but under their breath, and trying not to move their lips, there was a whole conversation going on.
‘Brace, brace, brace…’ That came from Rhonda.
‘No matter what’s happened, be nice. I repeat: Be. Fricking. Nice.’ That was Gwen.
Her mum slid back into the booth, clearly a bit shaken but trying her best to act calm and unfussed.
‘Well?’ Rhonda asked, cracking first, then making a circle motion with her index finger as it pointed to her own face. ‘And I just want to point out that this is my non-judgemental face. They made me put my furious, murderous one in my bag.’
Her mum replied, ‘Nothing really,’ with a casual shrug, but she was kidding no one. Although, maybe it was for the benefit of her dad, who had replaced Sonya and was now sitting with Gran, but staring over this way.
Emmy shook her head. She officially had the most dysfunctional family in this restaurant tonight.
Her mum was the second one in sixty seconds to crack. ‘Okay!’ she exclaimed, but in hushed tones. ‘He basically said he’s left Donna because he’s known almost since the start that it was a big mistake, and he’s really sorry for being an idiot and wants me back because he still loves me and would I please,please, give him another chance.’ All that was uttered without stopping for breath.
‘I knew it,’ Aunt Rhonda said, clearly disgusted.
Everyone else took a beat, before Aunt Gwen asked, ‘And what did you say to that? How do you feel?’
Her mum shrugged helplessly. ‘I said I need to think about it because I don’t know. It’s all such a shock.’
Emmy felt her face begin to heat up, and just like every single time in her life when she’d got caught out in something, her mum sensed it.
‘You knew all this already, Em?’
Crack number three coming up.
‘I did,’ she admitted wearily. ‘He showed up at my door first thing this morning, borderline deranged, telling me how he’d been a fool and that he wanted you back. But I didn’t want to tell you because I wasn’t sure if he was going to speak to you or not and I was wary. There would have been nothing worse than sharing all this with you, only for him to change his mind and goback to Donna by dinner time. And, to be honest, I didn’t want to get involved. I’m meant to be the kid… Okay, so I’m twenty-nine, but you know what I mean. I don’t want to be in the middle of my parents’ marriage.’
She squinted with one eye to see how her mum had taken that news, but, of course, Ailish was nothing but love and understanding. Her dad was a total arse for letting her go – a fact that had been pretty well established but was nonetheless true.
‘I’m sorry you were put in that position, darling. He should have known better.’
‘Story of his life,’ Rhonda muttered, slipping off her temporary visit to the diplomatic high ground.
Undistracted, her mum remained focused on Emmy. ‘Does that mean you don’t have an opinion on this? I’d love to know what you think. I know you don’t want to be involved, but it affects you too. Do you think I should try again?’
Emmy managed to buy some time to think, because at that point, the music suddenly stopped and over at the bar, Carlo had come out from behind the marble counter, climbed up onto a chair and was calling for attention. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it’s ten minutes until midnight, so if any of you lovely people don’t have a drink to toast the bells, please grab one from the nice lady…’
He pointed to his former sister-in-law, Nicky, who was holding a tray of about twenty short glasses – Emmy guessed whisky – above her head, and who shouted back, ‘Gorgeous! You were supposed to say, GORGEOUS LADY!’
Everyone in the restaurant cheered at that and Nicky took an elaborate bow, almost spilling the drinks, but righting the tray just in time. The music started up again and the party resumed, and for just a second Emmy experienced the same feelings she’d had every year of her younger life, when she’d been brought hereby her parents and grandparents, and they’d had the happiest, most treasured of times.
