Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming. Cathy Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ choir sang at eleven Mass, with Mr Fitzpatrick strangling hymns on a rheumatic organ, with the congregation wincing and Father Sean smiling bravely, willing people not to laugh openly.

      Dear Father Sean. He had a great sense of humour which he had to subdue because not everyone wanted a priest who cracked jokes. Anneliese felt sorry for him, having to toe some invisible line.

      Eleven was the family Mass too, where toddlers knelt on pews and twinkled bored eyes at the people behind them. Adorable but distracting.

      At nine on a Sunday morning, the church was only a quarter full and it suited Anneliese perfectly. She loved the peace of it all. Time to think but not so much time that her mind skittered off into dark areas. No, she didn’t like that. Luckily, it never happened at Mass. Something to do with the ritual of standing and kneeling, murmuring responses to prayers that were engrained in her soul because she’d been murmuring them for so many years.

      Anneliese’s religion was a meditative, safe place for her to rest rather than an intense, doctrinaire version.

      Then the migraine came helter skelter into her head without warning; not the full blast that required lying down, but certainly a blistering ache that made her eyes narrow with pain.

      There was no point waiting: she had to go home and lie down. She could phone Lily and apologise later. Her aunt, well aunt-in-law strictly speaking, because she was actually Edward’s aunt, wouldn’t mind. Lily had many glorious qualities – she was funny, warm, had a marvellous sense of humour – but one of her absolute virtues was the fact that she never sulked or took offence at anything.

      ‘Take care of yourself, Anneliese, and drop round when you’re better,’ was all she’d say.

      Anneliese knew so many people who cherished perceived injuries and looked for them in everything. It was comforting that Lily wasn’t such a person.

      Anneliese drove home slowly, feeling the car judder with the wind, and hurried into the house, thinking only of the blessed relief of getting into her bed, only half registering that the car parked outside belonged to her friend, Nell. Edward would have to talk to her. Nell wouldn’t mind: she and Edward were great pals and Nell knew that when a migraine hit, Anneliese could only think of lying down.

      And then she stepped into the kitchen to see Edward and Nell sitting together at the table, his dark head bent towards her fair one and their hands clasped.

      There was no soft music or gentle lights, no state of undress. But the intimacy of their togetherness cut into Anneliese like a knife sliding into the underbelly of a chicken fillet.

      ‘Anneliese!’ gasped Nell, seeing her.

      They moved apart sharply, quickly. In another universe, Anneliese might have joked about what the speedy movement might do to Edward’s sciatica or Nell’s dodgy neck. But she knew, with absolute certainty, that there was nothing innocent about their closeness. The migraine pummelled louder in her head, fighting with the sense of nausea that rose instantaneously.

      ‘We were just…’ began Nell awkwardly, and then stopped as if she had no idea what to say next.

      Nell was never short of words. In contrast to Anneliese, who preferred silence often, Nell had a word for everyone and a comment for anything.

      Like the rain: ‘It’d be a great little country if only we could get someone to put an umbrella over it.’

      People loved that.

      Or thoughts on money: ‘Spend it now: there are no pockets in a shroud.’

      Now, Nell had nothing to say.

      ‘Anneliese, you don’t want to get the wrong idea,’ began Edward, his face a mask of anxiety as he moved towards Anneliese and tried to take her hands in his. His hair was wet from the shower. It was only twenty-five minutes since she’d left the house. He must have leapt out of bed as soon as she’d gone.

      ‘Explain the wrong idea to me, so I can understand the difference between it and the right one,’ Anneliese said, gently detaching her hands. Her head still felt cloudy but the powerful instinctive message in her brain told her not to let her husband touch her.

      ‘Lord, Anneliese, please don’t think we’d ever do anything to hurt you,’ began Nell.

      She looked anxiously at Edward, pleading with him to sort it out.

      You could tell what people thought by their eyes more easily than by anything else, Anneliese knew.

      Over the years, she and Edward had exchanged many telling looks. And she and Nell had exchanged them too – they’d been friends for nearly twenty years, a lifetime.

      Only she’d never been aware of these two important people in her life looking at each other in this way. Until now.

      Anneliese felt as if she was watching the last reel of a movie where all the plot loopholes are tied up.

      Nell and Edward were the ones sharing the telling looks now because they were the couple in this scene: not Anneliese and Edward, but Nell and Edward.

      ‘Please, Anneliese, sit down.’

      Edward was still beside her, his expression anxious and his hands out in supplication.

      ‘I wish we didn’t have to do this but I suppose we have to. Now or never, right?’ he said, looking defeated but determined, determined to have this awful conversation.

      And that was when Anneliese knew absolutely that Edward was leaving her for Nell.

      Edward hated confrontation of any kind. He’d been useless on those occasions when Beth was in floods of tears, distraught over something or other.

      His facing a conversation that could easily end in shouting told her all she needed to know.

      ‘You’re going, aren’t you? You’re going with Nell.’

      Edward nodded mutely and held his hands out imploringly, as if to say, What else can I do?

      Anneliese sat down then and placed her hands on the table. ‘I came home early because I’ve got a migraine,’ she said to no one in particular.

      ‘Shall I fetch your pills?’ Edward said.

      She nodded.

      He rushed from the room, eager to be gone.

      ‘Tea might help,’ Nell added and turned to open cupboards, finding cups and teabags easily. She’d spent so many hours here, sharing tea and life with Anneliese, that she knew where everything was as well as Edward and Anneliese did.

      ‘Tea wouldn’t help, actually,’ Anneliese said harshly. ‘Nothing is going to help.’

      Defeated, Nell sat down at the far end of the table opposite Anneliese.

      Her hair was different, Anneliese realised. Normally, Nell’s dark blonde curly hair was windswept even when there wasn’t wind. She rarely wore much in the way of make-up and for a woman of her age – Anneliese’s exact age, actually, fifty-six – she had remarkably clear, unlined skin with just a few freckles and the inevitable little creases that СКАЧАТЬ