Scarlett turned and looked directly at Ava. ‘Reel it back, babe. I’m only thinking of you. There’s more to life than visiting a retirement home every night and working in a florist’s shop. Didn’t you have dreams? Ambitions?’
‘Some of us are just happy to be. There doesn’t have to be another life waiting out there. Why can’t you see I’m not like you and everything you hated about Maggie you may as well hate about me, because I have more in common with her than I will ever have with you.’ Ava stopped. She was breathless, spent. Why was she bothering? Scarlett wouldn’t understand the bond she had with Maggie. There was no point in trying to explain her life to her.
They drove on in silence. The sharp, cold air around them a reminder of the sea of pain between them.
38
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Scarlett that night, ‘It does look like I’ve lived my life to please myself, and to an extent that’s true.’ They were sitting in the living room with the television on low even though neither of them had any interest in the latest search-for-a-star competition.
‘It doesn’t matter to me. What’s happened has happened. We all make choices, some good some bad. It’s not for me to judge you. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have changed my life for anything,’ Ava replied, glad to have a chance to clear the air.
They had been avoiding this conversation for weeks.
‘Yeah, I can see that. Maggie probably did a better job than I ever could have.’
Scarlett paused for a second as if to consider what she said next.
Ava waited not wanting to pander to her need for reassurance. She didn’t deserve to have her scant conscience considered.
‘Things were different then. Living during the Troubles was like having a life suspended. There was fear in everything we did, yet we didn’t know it. It wasn’t until I had moved to England that I realised what we had put up with. The constant incendiary atmosphere, knowing at any time there could be a bomb or a shooting. Your granddad worked for the Water Board and being one of the very few Catholics made him a target. I used to worry myself sick that something would happen to him. Then as I hit my teenage years it was easier to pull away from him and resent his choices rather than worry for him. I used to want to shake him and say why do you put up with it? He would be tormented by the other Protestant workers, had to watch them get better jobs, bigger pay packets and there was nothing he could do about it. Speak up and you risked getting a bullet. But I was too young and naive to accept that fate, which he so stoically resigned himself to.
‘For me, the choice was simple, I had to get out. I couldn’t bare the constant burr of the helicopters overhead, watching everyone, looking for trouble. It felt like they wished it upon us. The British soldiers in the streets, squatting down with their guns aimed at you as you walked by, the RUC Land Rovers patrolling the streets, the searches every time you walked into a shop in town. It was a different way of living than now. I felt strangled by it and needed to escape. Except, I found that everywhere has its restrictions. They often just come in different guises.’
Ava let her talk. Listening to Scarlett’s version of how her life had been — it was like reading the other side of Maggie’s letter. Neither mother nor daughter understood or appreciated each other, and Ava was the conduit between them, reading between the lines.
Ava still found it hard to believe that after all this time Scarlett was here with her. She cast a glance at her, drinking in her profile. She was still an attractive woman. Her skin was the colour of Bailey’s Irish cream, smooth and creamy. Her nose, different from Ava’s own, was short and turned upwards making her look slightly mischievous and impish. Her hair was shoulder length and the colour of truffles, with a kinky, curly texture which never seemed to stay the same two days in a row, and her mouth was full and sensuous.
It was strange to feel such an intense bond with a virtual stranger. Just because she knew they were biologically connected, that she was born of this woman, she had felt an instant kinship. Ava tried to imagine if she could have picked her out of a crowd, but the truth was she probably couldn’t have. Nevertheless, knowing that she was her mother was enough to melt any reserves clean away. In all honesty, she had to admit that she wanted to form a relationship with her and so she tried as best she could to accommodate her at every turn.
When Scarlett looked for forgiveness, Ava gave it unconditionally. She told her she could understand her predicament, the call of her music career and the shackles of caring for a newborn baby were not compatible. Ava had made it easy for Scarlett to fit right on into her life. But really, when she lay alone in bed at night, she quaked with disappointment and anger. How could she have walked out on her so completely? Letters, gifts and visits she could count on one hand up until she turned seven were not the stuff of good parenting by any stretch of the imagination.
‘So, I was really meant to be called Ruby?’ Ava asked later that night as they shared a glass of wine and ate some spicy chicken with rice and a green salad that Scarlett had prepared earlier that day.
Scarlett smiled as she set her wine glass down on the table. ‘Yep, actually to begin with I wanted to call you Ruby Tuesday, since you were born on a Tuesday and then when I got to know you a little better I discovered you were such a solemn little being, all serious and worried looking that I though Ruby Blue would suit you. But knowing I would have to show my face back home eventually and have the show down with my mother and father, I opted for Ruby Ava with Ava being my grandmother’s name.’
Ava laughed. God, to think she could have been Ruby Blue, what a moniker.
‘It’s strange that since you have come back and I’ve learnt so much about you and in turn myself, I sort of feel more like Ruby than Ava.’
‘Go with it. Embrace who you are and who you want to be.’
Ava laughed. ‘You’re starting to sound all Oprah again. Remember you are in Belfast now, not California,’ she chided.
Ava knew that at times Scarlett could scarcely believe that she was home. ‘I just mean that we don’t have to stay in the same role all our lives. Change can come along or we can instigate it ourselves. Don’t limit yourself.’
Ava helped herself to more chicken. ‘You know, maybe I do need to be more open to possibilities.’
‘I’d say that would be a perfect toast.’ Scarlett raised her glass. ‘To possibilities.’
‘To possibilities,’ Ava echoed, smiling at her mother thinking of the chance she was ready to take to get Finlay back.
39
Ava was woken by Lulu pawing at her arm and meowing. The cat wanted to be let out, to explore the gardens. Fragments of dreams drifted through Ava’s mind as she pulled back the duvet. She had been dreaming of Joseph and Finlay. They had been competing to win her a giant squid stuffed toy at a fairground. Each jostling the other out of the way to throw wooden hoops around rotating skittles. The cat had woken her before she had discovered the winner.
Ava walked down the stairs, the cat at her heels, thinking about Finn. She was prepared to put the work into their relationship. Now that she had nearly won him back, things would have to be different. She wouldn’t take him for granted. She let Lulu out and filled the kettle, before popping some bread into the toaster. Breakfast in the garden would be lovely, she decided. But first she texted Finlay to remind him to meet her at one o’clock at French Village on Botanic Avenue. After lunch and she would bring him back to Mount Pleasant Square, to show him around, and then hopefully they would pick up where they’d left off.
Just then her phone pinged. She glanced down expecting it to be Finn’s reply and saw it was Joseph.
Hey, Ava. Fed up with you refusing to fly out to me. I’ve booked a ticket. Coming home. I miss you. I miss your voice, your stupid jokes and even the way you cheat at Scrabble. For the record, millimeum is not a word.
Will see you soon. Joseph. X
She read the text again, and in that instant, something jolted within her. A knowing, so
deep and powerful, that it frightened her. Joseph. Her friend, her constant in life, when all else seemed to be in disarray. She had scarcely allowed herself to ever think of him as anything other than her friend, but she knew she thought of him often, if not every single day. There were weeks when they texted constantly, then times when it wasn’t so frequent. But that contact, that need to hear from him, was always there. She thought back over their last messages to each other. It was there, like a whisper or a promise unspoken, but actual and real. A suggestion of something else.
The previous year had seen her change and grow. Maggie’s decline, the inheritance, meeting Scarlett – it had all changed something inside Ava. Her relationship with Ben had awakened a longing she hadn’t known before. But as fun as it was, she knew Ben wasn’t right. Then Finn, and the thought of him with Rose, was enough to convince her that she wanted him back. She thought of all her messages to Joseph; the jokes that only they shared, the shorthand way they could read each other’s mood though thousands of miles apart. How he had been supportive of her need to care for Maggie, how he understood their bond, how he had witnessed their closeness over the years. In all the time she had known him, he had never made a move on her, but then she had been with Finlay.
Now she was single, and Joseph was coming home.
Ava stood with the phone still in her hand and replied.
Mount Pleasant Square is almost habitable. Your room awaits. x
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Acknowledgments
This book is dedicated to all the wonderful women in my life: my mum Jeannie, my grannies Kitty and Violet, my aunt Marilyn, my sisters Lyndsey and Kim, my cousin Jennifer, sisters-in-law Patricia, Janeen, Anne and Anita, and my daughters Kate and Sarah.
Thanks also goes to my friends: Deborah, Zoe, Tracey, Joanne, Andrea, Joan, Katie, Roma, Janette, and Donna, and all the wonderful writer friends who have supported me along the way, especially Women Aloud NI and Kelly Creighton.
Thanks also to writers Claire Allan and Fionnuala Cassidy for the encouragement and support. You girls are stars! I am grateful to the wonderful Pat Hamilton and Neil Ranasinghe
for picking up typos.
Special praise to the amazing Bombshell team: Betsy, Fred, Alexina, Sumaria, Sarah and Morgen and the network of fantastic bloggers and reviewers.
Thanks to Liam and never forgetting Owen.
A Posy of Promises_a heartwarming story about life and love Page 18
