by Lucy King
But as Mercy stood waiting for the drinks she’d ordered at Sully’s, the Brooklyn pub that had been in Faith’s family for three generations ever since they’d emigrated to America from Ireland in the nineteen fifties, she could feel the tension in her muscles and the nagging at her conscience melting away like butter off a hot knife.
There was something so warm and welcoming and cozy about the place. It wasn’t overly grand or anything, but it was homey and comforting and, well, loved, she supposed.
Pictures that had been collected over the years by Faith’s parents and grandparents hung haphazardly on the wood-lined walls. Lights turned down low cast flattering shadows over the old oak booths, cocooning them in privacy. Over the huge stone fireplace that was surrounded with tiles painted with shamrocks hung a portrait of JFK. Now the grate within lay unlit, but October through April a fire blazed every minute the pub was open.
On weekends Sully’s was packed, buzzing with conversation and laughter as the Guinness flowed, and more often than not jumping with live music, sometimes even supplied by the band that was made up of two of Faith’s four brothers.
Tonight, though, a Thursday, it was quiet. A handful of regulars propped up the wooden bar that ran the length of the far end of the room and surely had plenty of stories to tell, and maybe half a dozen of the booths were occupied.
With the drinks now served, Mercy thanked Megan, the barmaid, picked up the tray and headed for one of those booths, the one that contained her three best friends.
“Here we go, girls,” she said, smiling broadly because the novelty of having everyone in one place after ten years of being scattered across the globe would never wear off and setting the tray carefully down on the table. “Round one. Virgin mojito for you, Zel,” she said, handing a high-ball glass stuffed with mint and slices of lime to Zelda, “and Guinness for the rest of us.”
She distributed the pints to Dawn and Faith, kept a half for herself, then slid along the red leather cushion of the bench into the space beside Dawn. “Salud,” she said, as they all raised their glasses and clinked them. “Have I ever told you how lovely it is to see you guys again?”
“Only every time we meet up,” said Zel with a smile and her accent that was so like Seb’s, not that Mercy was supposed to be thinking about him, the stupid, infuriating boludo.
“Well, I missed you. Ten years…” Mercy shook her head and wiped Seb from her thoughts. She’d kept up sporadically with her friends over that period but it hadn’t been easy and it hadn’t been the same. “Too damn long.”
“We’re making up for it now,” said Faith.
“We certainly are,” said Dawn, lifting her drink and downing a good portion of it.
“Bad day?” asked Mercy, when Dawn sighed in appreciation and put her glass back down.
“Not particularly. Just long.”
Dawn, beautiful Dawn, who’d turned from a gangly duckling into such a swan, owned a medical research company and had a boyfriend – one of Faith’s gorgeous brothers – who’d recently moved in. “Finn keeping you busy?”
Dawn grinned. “That too.”
Mercy took a sip of her beer and turned to Zelda. “And how’s Ty?”
Zel smiled a wicked smile, as well she might seeing as how she and Ty had dramatically got back together the night of the slumber party and were now an item. “Oh, he’s just fine.”
“Not stashed away in the basement tonight preparing for a spot of canoodling?” As had been the case the last time they’d all met up, naughty, naughty Zel.
“Oooh, canoodle,” said Zel admiringly. “Good word.”
“Thanks,” said Mercy with a tiny bow. “It’s my New Word of the Day.”
Faith raised her eyebrows. “You still do that?”
“Of course.”
“What was yesterday’s?”
“Shebang.”
“Day before that?” asked Faith, looking impressed.
“Piddle.”
“Nice,” said Zel. “Well, as far as I’m aware, Ty is nowhere near the basement, but hopefully warming our bed on the barge instead.”
The happiness radiating from both her and Dawn was palpable, and Mercy couldn’t help but feel a stab of envy, which she quickly suppressed because it really wasn’t warranted. “If I didn’t have so much on my plate at the moment I’d be so envious of you two.”
“I am envious of them,” said Faith, pushing her long dark unruly hair off her face with a sigh, “even if the men they’re loved up with are my brothers, which, you know, I try not to think about too much.”
Dawn smiled the smile of a very happy woman. “So who has news?”
“Not me,” said Faith a bit morosely. “Same old, same old, here.”
“One of our wines has just won an award,” said Mercy. “Best white under twenty-five dollars. The presentation dinner is here in New York at the beginning of December.”
“Wow, that’s great,” said Dawn. “Congratulations.”
Mercy grinned. “Thanks. It’s a Torrontés. Crisp and fruity. Quite light. Think lychees, grapefruit and peaches.”
“I’m thinking breakfast,” said Zel, raising her glass in a toast. “But congratulations.”
“And from me too. That’s fantastic,” said Faith with a smile. “Although Pop would say that iron, hops and horse blanket are the only tasting notes worth knowing,” she added, referring to her father, JP, who owned the pub although he largely left the day-to-day running of it to her.
“Is JP not around this evening?” asked Dawn.
Faith shook her head. “Not tonight.”
“That’s a shame,” said Mercy. “He’s such a charmer.” And totally unlike her own father, who, although he’d unbent slightly over the years so that they no longer locked horns quite so often, was hardly all smiley and twinkly-eyed like JP.
“He’d be here if he could,” said Faith with a smile. “He has a very soft spot for you, Mercy.”
“The feeling is entirely mutual. Please give him my love.”
“I will.”
“How’s he doing?” asked Zel.
Faith shrugged, her smile fading. “He’s doing OK. He has good days and bad days. Increasingly more of the latter. If only he’d have the surgery…” She gave herself a quick shake and fixed another bright smile to her face. “Anyway, let’s talk about something else.”
“How about my news?” said Zelda casually, lifting her drink and taking a long suck on her straw.
All eyes swivelled in her direction, dropping to her abdomen and she nearly choked on her mojito. “No, not that,” she spluttered. “God, you guys. That would be pretty quick, even for me. No. Seb called. He wants a reconciliation.”
Silence fell. Jaws dropped. Mercy nearly slid off the bench. “A reconciliation?” she said, once she’d recovered the power of speech.
“Apparently.”
“How?” she said, a bit dazed. “What? I mean, why?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” said Zelda, looking pensive as she twiddled her straw. “He called me a couple of days ago. He said he wanted to talk.”
Seb, the man who resolutely didn’t do talking, wanted to talk? What on earth was going on? Mercy blinked. “Is he ill?”
Zel shook her head. “He didn’t seem to be when I saw him.”
And, wham, there was another shock to her system. “You saw him?”
“Of course,” said Zel. “I’ve spent half my life trying to get him to talk. He says he wants to talk? I’m not going to pass up the chance.”
“When?” said Mercy.
“Yesterday. I went round to the house.”
“What did he say?”
Zelda frowned into the middle distance as if trying to remember. “He didn’t say all that much, actually. There was lots of hair tugging. Lots of teeth gritting. Lots of jaw tightening. But once he’d got over his discomfort he muttered some stuff about responsibilities and guilt – in relation to the two of us – and then said he’d like to try and work it t
hrough.” She shrugged. “At least I think that was the gist of it. He wasn’t the most coherent I’ve heard him, to be honest.”
Mercy sat back, reeling. “My God,” she said because that was all her stupefied brain could manage.
Zel nodded. “I know. I was pretty astonished too.”
“Do you think he means it?” asked Dawn.
“He seemed to. And why would he say it if he doesn’t?”
“He wouldn’t,” said Mercy.
“No.” Zel paused. Frowned. “He blames himself for the accident. That’s sad. I never fully understood that, probably because he wouldn’t ever talk about it. But it explains a lot.”
It did. And Mercy had known, although she’d never said anything. Initially, in the days following her and Seb’s one night stand, she hadn’t wanted to rock Zel’s recovery. Then she hadn’t wanted to have to explain the circumstances in which she’d guessed. But perhaps she should have done, she thought as another wave of guilt washed over her. Perhaps she would have saved Zel a whole lot of heartache.
“So how do you feel?” asked Faith.
“Honestly?” said Zelda. “A bit wary. I don’t want to get too excited in case he changes his mind but I can’t seem to help it. It’s what I’ve wanted for so long. You all know that. And now it’s finally within my reach.”
“Did he say why he’d had a change of heart?” Mercy asked.
Zelda shook her head. “No.”
Dawn picked up her drink. “Maybe what you said to him the night of Zel’s party did make an impression, Mercy, despite what you thought.”
“Maybe,” she said doubtfully, trying to keep a lid on the hope that was welling up inside her at the thought that perhaps she hadn’t failed after all. That perhaps she had actually managed to fix things. “But it could have been anything. An epiphany. A blow to the head. Anything.”
“Pretty coincidental timing, though, you must admit,” said Dawn.
“I guess,” said Mercy.
“I think it was because of you,” said Zelda. “Because what I said to him that evening certainly didn’t seem to make an impression. But even if it wasn’t, thank you anyway for sticking up for me and being so loyal.”
“You’re welcome.”
“There was one thing I was curious about, though…”
For some reason Mercy felt a flicker of apprehension. “What?”
“Seb said that he came to see me just after I went into rehab to see how I was doing. Apparently I told him he was too late and to fuck off.” Zelda frowned and bit her lip. “I don’t remember it. I was in a bit of a state at the time. But it sounds plausible.”
“Could he be making it up?” asked Dawn.
Zelda shook her head. “He knew too much about the center. Details. He was there. The thing is,” she said, looking a bit bemused, “how did he know where I was? I mean, that information never appeared in the press.”
Ah.
Mercy felt her heart lurch and her cheeks heat and looked down at her drink because the conversation was now heading into dangerous territory and maybe if she didn’t draw attention to herself everyone might just skip over it.
“Did you ask him?” asked Faith.
Zelda nodded. “He was vague. Said he’d been told.”
“Who by?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Maybe he had his finger on the pulse more than any of us realized,” said Dawn.
“I don’t think so. It sounded like a visit on impulse, which is unlike Seb.”
Silence fell then for a few heavy, awkward moments, and Mercy was just considering a timely trip to the bathroom when Zelda suddenly turned her gaze on her.
“You’re the only one who knew where I went, Mercy,” she said, fixing those piercing blue eyes that had looked out of many a billboard on her. “You found it. You researched it. You helped me get there.”
Mercy’s mouth went dry and to her appall she could feel the burn in her cheeks spread across her whole face. “Dawn knew,” she pointed out, just about resisting the urge to press her cold glass against her forehead. “I told her.”
“Only quite a while after,” said Dawn.
“Oh, yes,” she muttered. “That’s right.”
“Why have you gone red?” asked Faith, peering at her way too closely for her liking.
“I haven’t gone red,” said Mercy, doing a Seb and going for denial because actually maybe there was something to be said for it.
“Yes, you have,” said Faith. “You’re as red as a beet.”
Mercy blinked as if uncomprehending. “Beet?” she said slowly. “What is this ‘beet’?”
“Nice try, Mercs. Problem is, your vocabulary is better than mine, Miss Piddle Canoodle Shebang.”
“I think you’re hiding something,” said the annoyingly perceptive Dawn.
“You’re wrong,” said Mercy firmly, wishing like hell she was a better liar.
“No, she isn’t,” said Zelda slowly, her eyes widening with dawning realization. “You spoke to Seb, didn’t you?”
Mercy swallowed, her heart thumping. “You know I did.”
“No, before the night of my slumber party, I mean.”
Dropping her hand Mercy squirmed on the banquette and opened her mouth to deny it again, but she knew her friends, knew they weren’t going to let it go, and anyway, maybe it was time she came clean and faced the consequences. “OK, fine,” she said with a little huff. “Yes. I did.”
“When?”
“Five years ago. You’d just gone into rehab. I know we’d agreed to keep it a secret but I thought he ought to know how bad things had gotten. I wanted to make him see.”
“Why the flaming cheeks then?” asked Faith. “What is there to be embarrassed about? Seems like a pretty decent thing to do to me.”
“And why have you never mentioned it before now?” added Zelda.
Mercy felt a bead of sweat trickle between her breasts and wished someone would switch on the damn air conditioning. “Well…I…you know…” she said, sounding so pathetically unconvincing she wanted to kick herself. “I didn’t think he’d listened to me…I thought I’d failed…”
“There’s something else, though, isn’t there?” said Dawn.
“No,” said Mercy, widening her eyes in a stab at innocence. “Why? What else would there be?”
“I’m not sure,” said Dawn.
“Must have been a pretty short conversation,” said Zelda. “The name of the clinic was pretty much all Seb knew. He didn’t know about anything else I’d been up to. Not in great detail anyway. And he didn’t know about you pulling me out of that squat in the Pigalle. He didn’t know much actually.”
“No. Well. You’re right,” said Mercy, panic fluttering inside her. “It was a short conversation. Very short. He was busy, I was busy, you know how it is… And I was in New York on business anyway. Not a lot of effort had to be made.”
“Hmm. Well. I don’t know about the rest of you,” said Dawn dryly, “but I’m sensing evasion.”
“So am I,” said Zel. “Any idea why?”
“Nope,” said Dawn. “But let’s just keep going until we find out.”
“I like that plan,” said Faith.
And beneath the penetrating gazes of her three friends, who, she knew, wouldn’t relent until they’d gotten to the truth, Mercy finally gave in. “OK, fine,” she said in exasperation. “You win. I give up. The reason our conversation was so short was because we got sidetracked by sex.”
At that bombshell there was a stunned silence and Mercy instantly wished she’d put it a bit more delicately. Or not at all.
“Sex?” said Faith, the first to recover.
“You and Seb?” said Dawn.
“It’s not what it sounds like,” said Mercy, backtracking, although really, what was the point?
Dawn gave her a look. “How can it not be what it sounds like?”
“Seb distracted me,” said Mercy, feeling a bit sick as she turned to Zelda, willing her n
ot to hate her for what she’d done. “He seduced me. Deliberately, I now know. I went to talk to him because I couldn’t believe what you said about him not being interested in what you got up to. I thought that it was just because you’d been out of touch and he didn’t know. I thought that if he knew you’d gone into rehab, that you were sorting yourself out he’d help. But he shut the discussion down before it even started.”
“With the sex?” said Faith.
“Yes.”
“Bastard,” said Dawn.
“No,” said Mercy, swivelling round and shaking her head. “Well, yes, maybe. I mean, he started it. But I wasn’t exactly an unwilling participant.” Far from it. She’d been very willing indeed. Mortifyingly so.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” said Zelda, no longer looking quite as stunned as she was a minute ago.
“It was hardly my finest moment, Zel. I’d gone to talk about you and ended up in bed with him. I felt terribly guilty. I was disgusted by my behavior, and then appalled at his when I realized some time later that it must have been nothing more than a diversionary tactic. I just wanted to forget about it. Besides, I couldn’t tell you at the time. You had enough to be dealing with. And then later I thought that maybe you’d be horrified if you knew, betrayed most likely, and I didn’t want to lose you.”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“You wouldn’t have. Really.”
“There’s something else,” said Mercy, feeling even more sick. “Seb had a nightmare about the accident the night we spent together. It made me wonder whether he blamed himself and think that maybe he did. I should have told you. I’m sorry I didn’t.”
Zel frowned for a moment as she absorbed this, then her face cleared. “In all honesty, I doubt I’d have believed it,” she said. “I wasn’t exactly in a good place. But whatever you did or didn’t do, Mercy, you wouldn’t have lost me and I wouldn’t have felt betrayed.” She paused. Studied her drink for a moment then looked back up, a faint smile curving her lips. “In fact I think I’m kind of tickled.”
Mercy stared at her. “Tickled?”
Zelda nodded. “You rattled him, which proves he’s not entirely made of stone. He’s at least partly human. And you got through to him. He listened to you. Twice, now. And he must have cared about me a bit to come and see me in rehab.” Her expression turned thoughtful. “And perhaps it’s a good thing I didn’t know about your one night stand. If I’d known about the shabby way he treated you I might have given up on him once and for all and that would have been a shame.”
