‘You had the flight and everything, I’ll do it.’
Sonya walked slowly to the car and Meg easily matched her speed pulling the suitcases.
‘You seem a little stiff,’ said Meg worriedly, after watching her sister-in-law’s gait for a while.
Sonya had aged.
‘It’s just a lower-back thing. And my hip,’ Sonya admitted with a grimace. ‘I need a new one and I’m not looking forward to that. Nursed too many people with hips and knees and elbows and you name it. No fun. Mind you, hips are better than knees.’
‘Are they?’ said Meg. She’d never thought much about that sort of thing. She was flexible and she worked out, looked after herself. Then again, Sonya had had a lifetime of work as a nurse, so surely she must have worked every part of her body. But nursing was hard on the joints, on the back, or so Indy said.
‘Was it work, do you think?’ she asked now.
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Sonya. ‘But it’s fine, I don’t mind really. Just makes me slow down a bit. I’ve joined a walking club and I can’t walk anymore, not at the moment. I’ll have to give in and have the hip done. But all medical people are bad patients and when I heard this was coming up, I said no way am I missing out on this wedding.’
Meg stopped pulling the cases to put her arm around her sister-in-law.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘that means so much to me. I keep thinking that your mother would be going deranged with rage if she knew we were marrying again. If she’d been alive when we got divorced, she’d probably have thrown a party.’
‘That she would,’ agreed Sonya. ‘But Mother was bitter and twisted at heart.’
‘Sonya!’ said Meg in surprise. Sonya might have moved to be away from her mother but she’d never voiced such a thing out loud. Therapy? Meg wondered.
‘She was,’ Sonya said firmly. ‘I’m glad I’m able to say it out loud now. Nothing ever made her happy. Stu made her happy, actually, but one has to let go of one’s children. Not that I know that from a practical sense, not having had any. But I can see it in other people. Mother wanted Stu for herself for always. The idea that you would come along, take himandbe so glamorous and gorgeous – well, she couldn’t bear it. She never supported you during the years Stu was going crazy.’
‘She was very old then,’ interrupted Meg, who had long since made peace in her own heart with her tricky mother-in-law. ‘What could she have done?’
‘She could have been on your side for once,’ said Sonya.
The comment flew through Meg’s aura of calm and, suddenly, she thought she might cry. She hadn’t thought about the past for a long time. Yes, it flickered into her mind occasionally. But she had done her grieving for the marriage and the pain it had involved a long time ago. This was different, new. Stu was a different man. She was a different woman. They didn’t have a hotel, their children were grown, Stu was sober, didn’t gamble. He had made amends for all the things he had done and they had a chance of happiness. But Sonya had suddenly brought her right back. She shuddered.
‘It was terrible,’ she said, trying to breathe herself into calm again. ‘But things are so different now. I’m different too.’
‘I know,’ said Sonya. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s going to be wonderful and I can’t wait to see the girls and the grandchildren.’
‘Yes,’ said Meg, ‘they are fabulous, fabulous.’
Little Clary came into her head suddenly, little quiet Clary who was so different to her two cousins, Minnie and Daisy. They were like little dancing fairies full of light and energy. Clary was such a quiet, serious child, watchful. Watchful was never good in children. Sometimes people were born that way, she thought. That could be it. Clary could simply be that sort of child.
Rory and Savannah came into her head too. They’d been trickier children than Eden and Indy. But Eden, Rory and Indy coped with everything, whereas Savannah hadn’t.
‘You haven’t seen them for ages, they are fabulous,’ Meg said. ‘They’re happy.’
For a moment, she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. Herself or Sonya. Her daughters were happy, weren’t they?
10
Eden
Nobody, absolutely nobody, who didn’t work in politics, had any idea of the endless emails, phone calls and meetings involved in it all. She’d thought local politics was bad but now, as she fought to get her name on the ticket for her constituency in national politics, she wondered how anyone without a wife ever managed political life.
A wife was what every politician needed. It had worked for Ralph’s father. His mother was a saint, no question about it. Diarmuid Tallisker would not have reached the heights he had without Agnes keeping the home fires burning, doing the admin, soothing the ruffled feathers of constituents, raising the children, keeping the family’s three pharmacies going and making sure her husband’s shirts were ironed.
Diarmuid Tallisker was a famous name in politics. A man who’d been involved in the Peace Process, he was a statesman-like gentleman with a shock of white hair, a lugubrious expression and a reputation as a politician who could bring all sides together. But he’d have been nothing without Ralph’s mother, Agnes, child of another politician and the one who’d held it all together.
Agnes Tallisker had run surgeries when Diarmuid was in Belfast or London: she’d got houses for people who’d needed them, sorted out tricky situations, organised for the local school to have emergency prefabs installed when the roof had leaked.
‘My parents are going to love you,’ had been one of the first things Ralph had said to Eden when they met in college and she was womanning the second-hand clothes stall for a homeless charity.
