Best of Friends. Cathy Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ you could have for ever,’ Mum said. ‘Money is soon forgotten, Erin.’

      ‘I know, Mum,’ Erin hugged her mother, ‘but I want to build up memories I can have for ever, and if everyone gives me cash, I can. There are so many places I want to see – the Far East, Australia, America…’ There was a far-off look in her amber eyes and her mother sighed because she knew that wanderlust was in Erin’s blood, just as it had been in Shannon’s.

      The family had held a small party in an upstairs room of a local pub and it had been a huge success. Toasts had been made, many pints had been consumed and Erin had drunk her first legal vodka and tonic.

      She did get cash for her birthday – not enough for a round-the-world ticket, but enough to book a trip abroad. She didn’t know where she wanted to go, just somewhere. She’d never been abroad and the family visit to a caravan park every other year had been fun but not what you’d call exotic. No, abroad, with all its exciting connotations, was what she wanted. Australia was too far and would cost a fortune, but India…Erin was fascinated by India and could just see herself there, backpacking and sleeping in shabby hostels, being one of the people. And she wouldn’t get sick, no way. She had the constitution of an ox, as Mum used to say.

      There was lots to plan for her trip, but the first thing was to get a passport. She’d collected a form, but the paperwork was interminable. She had to get photos signed by the police and an official copy of her birth certificate – not a photocopy, but a real one. She’d asked Mum for that and there she ran into a problem. Mum, who kept all the family documents in a shabby accordion file in her and Dad’s room, said she’d look and then came back and said she couldn’t find it.

      Undaunted, Erin sent off for it.

      A couple of weeks after her party, the certificate arrived. Erin shuffled downstairs in her Snoopy T-shirt and knickers and picked the post off the hall carpet. She had the house to herself, as Dad and Kerry were at work and Mum had gone shopping, popping in to Erin’s room on the way to remind her that she couldn’t lie in bed like a big slug all day.

      In the kitchen, Erin slopped cornflakes into a bowl and looked at the post. None of it was ever for her but today was an exception. ‘Ms Erin Flynn’ was typed at the top of an official-looking envelope. She ripped it open and for a minute thought they’d sent the wrong certificate. The name was hers all right but the rest of it made no sense. Under ‘Mother’ was written ‘Shannon Flynn’, and that couldn’t be right, and under ‘Father’ was the word ‘Unknown’. The date was fine and everything, but the civil service people had clearly mixed it up. Absently, Erin ate some more cornflakes, still staring at this confusing bit of paper. And then the truth clicked in her head, like those magic eye puzzles she’d always found mystifying until one day she learned how to ‘see’ them. The form wasn’t wrong. Shannon, whom she’d always thought was her mysteriously absent sister, was actually her mother. Kerry wasn’t her sister but her aunt, and Mum and Dad weren’t her parents. They were her mother’s parents. Her grandparents. Granny and Granddad not Mum and Dad. It was all such a shock.

      But as she sat there, dumbfounded, she realised that by far the most disturbing part was the fact that Mum had lied to her. Mum was the most trustworthy person in Erin’s world. The first time Erin’s heart had been broken by a boy from her class, Mum had held her close and promised that it would feel better soon. And Erin had believed her, even though her heart was breaking, because her mother had never lied to her. Until now. Her spoon clattered onto the linoleum but Erin didn’t bother to pick it up. No, she’d been lying before now. Mum had been lying to her for all Erin’s life.

      She ran upstairs and found the suitcase on the top of her parents’ big 1930s wardrobe. It was heavy, and dust bunnies danced off the top as she hauled it down. Inside were old clothes, including a huge brown coat she remembered her father wearing for years, and a couple of old shirt boxes, their former bright blue faded with age. The first contained cards and mementoes belonging to Mum. Erin couldn’t bring herself to look through them in case she found her own childish home-made cards, painstakingly painted and glittered in school.

      The second box held a few documents of the sort that were usually kept in the big accordion file. There was the original of the birth certificate Erin had just been sent, much-folded, and a few letters with photos lying in between the pages. Shannon, who’d been so absent in the family album, was the star here. Now Erin could see the resemblance between her and her mother. Both had the same sheet of coppery hair and the same smile, although Shannon’s eyes looked blue like Kerry’s and Mum’s. Erin must have got her eyes from her father, whoever he was. The sense of outrage at not knowing her mother or her father hit her forcibly. How could Mum have never told her the truth about her birth? Did Kerry know too? Erin sat among the photos and letters from her real mother and brooded on lies and deceit. Then she gathered together her papers and her newly acquired cheque book and left the house.

      

      By the late afternoon, when Erin returned, Kerry was home from work and Mum was in the kitchen mashing potatoes for shepherd’s pie.

      ‘Hello, love. Where have you been all day?’ called Mum when she heard Erin’s familiar tread on the stairs.

      Erin didn’t answer. She didn’t trust herself to speak. In her room, she threw down the papers she’d picked up from the au pair agency, along with the plane ticket to Amsterdam. The flight was in three days but Erin didn’t plan on waiting at 78 Carnsfort Terrace until then. She’d pick up her passport at the passport office the following day, a privilege that came from having pleaded an emergency situation and showing the official her plane ticket, and she’d asked her friend Mo, who’d just moved into a cramped flat in Smithfield with two other girls, if she could bunk down with her until it was time to leave the country. Packing wouldn’t take long. All she had to do now was confront her mother and Kerry about why they’d never told her the truth.

      The kitchen smelled familiar: the scent of good food mixed with the comforting tang of the lemon cleaner Mum used diligently. Kerry was sitting at the kitchen table, shoes off and her feet up on a chair as she read the evening paper. Mum had laid the table for dinner and was now relaxing in her chair with a cup of tea, sorting out the receipts in her purse.

      ‘Hello, lazy bones. What did you do today while I was working my fingers to the bone?’ asked Kerry, not raising her eyes from an article about celebrity diets.

      In reply, Erin dropped her passport office receipt onto the table.

      ‘What’s that?’ asked Kerry, scanning the document. ‘You applied for your passport?’

      She didn’t get it, Erin realised. But Mum did. Her mother’s eyes locked with Erin’s and anxiety was written all over her face.

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Erin asked quietly.

      ‘Tell you what?’ demanded Kerry, finally looking up.

      ‘Tell me that Shannon was my mother.’

      ‘Oh.’ Kerry swung her feet to the floor. So she did know, Erin realised, and that realisation made her even angrier. Kerry knew but she, the person it most affected, didn’t.

      ‘I had to send away for my birth certificate.’ Erin was caustic. ‘You said it was lost,’ she said accusingly to her mother. ‘You knew I’d find out, so why couldn’t you tell me the truth?’

      ‘Erin, stop making it such a big deal,’ said Kerry, going to the fridge and peering in to see if there was anything there to stave off the hunger pangs until dinner.

      ‘Stop making it such a big deal?’ said Erin СКАЧАТЬ