Best of Friends. Cathy Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ their not-yet-paid-for apartment and tried to work out what their financial position would be if the industry went belly up. Erin had known he was right. But that’s when he started talking wistfully about going home.

      Home for Greg was just outside Wicklow, a bustling large town where his father, who had run a post office, was recently retired. Although he hadn’t been home for four years, his whole family had been to Chicago for the wedding. They’d been politely curious about the absence of any of Erin’s family. But she was used to that.

      ‘My grandmother brought me up and she’s too old to travel,’ was her stock answer. It was also untrue.

      The reason Erin hadn’t been home to Dublin for nine years and the reason none of her family made the journey to Chicago for her wedding had nothing whatsoever to do with her grandmother’s age. Erin had left home and Ireland at the age of eighteen to get away from her family. She had never been back. Now twenty-seven, the guilt she felt at that abrupt departure had grown into a solid block of pain. When she’d cut the ties to her family, Erin couldn’t have foreseen she’d feel so strangely adrift in the world. But it was impossible to explain that to the honest and genuine Kennedy family, although Greg knew. For his parents, roots and family were important. People who didn’t appreciate family had to have something wrong with them.

      Erin adored their son and wanted them to feel that he’d made a good choice in marrying her. She couldn’t tell them the truth. ‘Gran would love to be here but the trip would have been too much for her,’ she said, feeling terrible for the lie.

      ‘I suppose you’ll fly home later this year, then,’ said Mrs Kennedy hopefully, thinking that if the newlyweds visited Dublin, well, they’d certainly spend a couple of nights in Wicklow too.

      ‘We’ll see,’ said Erin politely, privately thinking that there was as much chance of her being picked to play for the New York Yankees as there was of her flying home to the bosom of her family. They wouldn’t want to see her now. Why would they? Yes, she’d been so hurt by them, but to run off and stay away – apart from those first few phone calls soon afterwards to let them know she was still alive – what family could forgive that, even a messed-up one like hers? And clearly they hadn’t forgiven her. When she and Greg got engaged, the longing for home had become intense and she’d written several letters to her family. Nobody had replied.

      Four years after the wedding, Erin and Greg’s circumstances had changed.

      The day after their heart-to-heart about their finances, Greg heard from a head-hunter friend about a job heading the Irish division of a multinational telecoms company. They particularly wanted someone with his international experience. It seemed like a good omen.

      The relocation fee would take care of their debts until they managed to sell the apartment, and their friend, the head-hunter, assured Erin that a human resources manager of her calibre would have no problem getting a job. Even better, the Cuchulainn Telecoms people, Greg’s new bosses, promised to rent a beautiful home for the couple for the first six months.

      The job sounded like the sort of challenge Greg loved, and he’d been told great things about his management team and particularly his recently promoted second-in-command, a guy named Steve Richardson. The final plus was the location: a heritage town outside the city of Cork that looked incredible when Greg and Erin checked it out on the Web. Neither of them had ever visited Dunmore when they’d lived in Ireland, but they’d certainly heard of it.

      Greg told the company they’d have to think about it.

      ‘It’s a big move, honey,’ he said to Erin. ‘I don’t want to force you to move back to Ireland because of me.’

      ‘Oh yeah, and who said I was going to move back with you?’ she teased. ‘I might stay here and be frivolous with our money while you work your butt off in Cork.’

      ‘Money? We have money?’ he said, nuzzling her earlobe.

      ‘The jar of quarters in the kitchen is getting awfully heavy. There’s at least forty dollars in there,’ began Erin.

      ‘Forty dollars! You hussy. You could go wild with that, splurging on wine, men and song. I can’t leave you here without me. You have to come. I’ll pine without you.’

      Erin looked at him affectionately. Whatever was wrong with the rest of her life, she’d struck it lucky when she’d met Greg. Other guys might bleat on about being the bigger earner and about how she had to go where his job took them, like women following soldiers following the drum. But even though Greg earned more than Erin, it had never made any difference, either to how they spent their money or to the balance of power in their relationship. If Erin insisted on staying in the States and the only job Greg could get was putting out the trash for McDonald’s, then Greg would become the best trash man in the country – he loved her that much.

      That love, and the sense that he would always be fiercely loyal to her, were the traits that had made her finally stop running. When she met Greg Kennedy, Erin realised that you could experience the sensation of coming home with a person too, and for her, wherever Greg was, was her home. It helped, of course, that he was utterly gorgeous. Erin was a tall woman but Greg could pick her up as if she were no heavier than a child. When he’d carried her over the threshold of the apartment on their return from honeymoon, she’d felt like a heroine in a fairy tale.

      Erin made the decision. Nobody could ever accuse her of not being up for a new challenge. ‘What the hell?’ she said. ‘That forty bucks might go further in Cork than it will here. And you’ve been talking about going home since I met you. Let’s go for it.’

      

      By the time Greg’s new career move was sorted out, the job losses had started at their old company. Erin sold their car, which would, she said wryly, keep her in pantihose until she got a new job. They packed up the apartment, had lots of leaving dinners with friends, sorted out change of address cards and bank accounts. They were both wildly busy and neither of them had time to feel morose over leaving the city they’d called home for so long.

      Then, a week ago, something odd had happened. Erin had been standing in Stuker’s Dry-Cleaners waiting in line to get a pile of suits back. Her purse slung over one shoulder, she was ticking off items in her red Things To Do notebook when the enormity of it all hit her and she felt her lungs compress, as if all the air had been squeezed out of them. She’d stumbled and almost fallen as her legs gave way beneath her.

      ‘Sit, missy, sit,’ said the sweet Korean lady who ran Stuker’s. She eased Erin into a plastic chair, which, even in Erin’s dazed state, seemed weird, because Erin was five feet eight and the Korean lady was barely up to her shoulders.

      ‘You pregnant?’

      Erin laughed in genuine amusement. Thankfully, there was zero chance of that. Before their marriage, Erin had been utterly straight with Greg and told him that she wasn’t sure she’d want children after what her mother had done to her. It wasn’t that she didn’t like kids, but she wasn’t certain she was mother material. And he’d said he understood. Another reason to love him, she knew, because she was sure it was hard for him to accept her decision.

      Now she shook her head at the kind Korean lady. ‘Not a chance. I’m just dizzy,’ she said. ‘Low blood sugar.’

      The rest of the line, familiar with medical problems from lactose intolerance up, went back to waiting. Rendered almost invisible because she was slumped in a plastic chair like a well-heeled dope-head, Erin let the panic flow away from her body until she was able to examine the problem from a distance.

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