Page 74 of The Sunrise Sisterhood

Skye

‘Excellent! A new dinner party booking for a week on Friday.’ Skye pressed ‘send’ on the email reply she’d written to a customer enquiry. ‘No special dietary requirements either.’

‘Straightfoward clients,’ said Liz with a wry smile. ‘Music to my ears.’

Skye closed the laptop, Sha and Liz had been to fetch the van from Thurlestone after she’d returned from yoga and there were no jobs for the time being.

Skye had known how much Liz had been dreading Ele, but unfortunately only the cleaner had been there and had handed the keys back without a glimmer of interest. From there, Liz had gone to the lock-up to put back all their equipment and Skye had raced back home to Clare and Ivy.

The plan was for one of them to be on hand to assist Clare for the next few days. If her arm was going to have any sort of chance of healing, she’d need to rest as much as possible. At the moment, whenever their backs were turned, she seemed intent on self-sabotage by attempting to do ridiculous things by herself.

For now, Clare was sitting perfectly still in an armchair, one eye on Ivy, the other on Liz in the kitchen, who was prepping for tomorrow night’s champagne and canapés event. Clare had managed to pull on a strapless sundress with shirred bodice and, if it wasn’t for her sad expression and the dark circles under her eyes, anyone would think she was ready for a day at the beach. Ivy was on the rug, riveted to something on the TV involving garish-looking puppets, and Liz was listening to a podcast about how to reduce alcohol intake which Clare had found for her.

Both she and Clare had told Liz that they were proud of her positive action to tackle her drinking. But, privately, Skye wondered if Liz was already brushing her drinking off as something she could simply choose not to do. Skye had read somewhere that a habit could take ninety days to break. It was unlikely that she’d be in Salcombe in three months’ time, but they’d got another month together. Hopefully, Liz would have made progress by then at least.

Skye knelt down on the floor beside Ivy and tickled the back of her neck. The little girl giggled and crawled into Skye’s lap, melting her heart as she’d done a hundred times at least over the last couple of weeks. Kids hadn’t been ruled in or out of Skye’s future, but Ivy was making a good case for ‘in’.

‘We could go out for a walk, Clare,’ she suggested. ‘I could push Ivy in the buggy?’

‘I’d love to.’ Clare’s eyes were closed, but she shook her head. ‘But walking hurts. Everything hurts, I just want to sit still and not move. And what if someone knocked into me?’

‘Sure, good point.’ Ivy stood on Skye’s thigh, which was actually quite painful for a small person’s foot, and smacked an open-mouthed kiss on her cheek. Skye forgave her for the pain instantly. ‘I could take her out, get some fresh air?’

‘You could take her to the p-a-r-k,’ said Liz, not saying the magic word in front of Ivy in case it got her hopes up. ‘You could watch from the balcony, Clare.’

There was a children’s play area not far from Clemency House which Clare and Ivy had taken to visiting most days. Skye had gone with them once or twice and knew what to do and what Ivy liked best.

‘She can be a bit funny about swings.’ Clare wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe another day.’

Liz and Skye exchanged a look of mild exasperation.

Liz wiped her hands on a towel and sat on the chair beside Clare. ‘You’re going to be incapacitated for a while, love, and Ivy is still going to need to get out and about. Please let us help.’

‘I know all of that.’ Clare turned her head away and brushed at her eyes. ‘I just … I’m so tired and sad and I can’t stop crying. Everything has gone wrong. I wish Mum was here.’

‘So do I, darling.’ Liz touched Clare’s leg gently.

Skye didn’t think she’d ever thought that about her own mother. Frankie wasn’t the maternal type and hadn’t gone much beyond supplying the practical basics. And, once Skye had hit eighteen, Frankie had pretty much checked out of doing even that. Seeing the grief on Clare’s face, Skye felt a pang of longing for the mother she’d never had.

‘I know this doesn’t help right now,’ Skye said, ‘but I was always envious of your relationship with Jen. You were so close; there was such a tight bond between you.’

‘There was no one else.’ Clare shrugged one shoulder. ‘We only had each other. You had both your parents.’

‘Hmmm,’ she replied vaguely.

It sometimes felt as if Frankie was more interested in what her ex-husband was up to than her daughter. Since Skye had been back in the UK, her mother had claimed that her schedule was too crazy to commit to a date to meet up. Skye’s offer to go and see her one weekend was met with lukewarm enthusiasm. Now, however, with Liz to counsel, a business to save and an injured sister, it was Skye who was too busy. She had a feeling her mum wouldn’t be too disappointed.

‘And me,’ Liz put in. ‘The two of you had me.’

‘That’s true,’ Clare managed a weak smile. ‘Best godmother in the world.’

It hadn’t always felt that way to Skye. Liz might have been fond of Skye, and they had always got on well when they’d spent any time together, but it had been obvious that she was closer to Clare than her. No surprise given that Jen and Liz were best friends. There’d been times in the past when Skye had wished her parents had chosen someone without a connection to Clare to be her godmother, someone who’d have felt like ‘hers’, but Liz had come up trumps by offering her a job when she needed it, for which she’d be forever grateful. Besides, there was no point looking backwards.

‘There was never much of a bond between the three of us.’ Skye frowned. ‘Mum and Dad were like a Venn diagram of two circles. The tiny part where they overlapped was me; for the rest of it, they were their own circle. I felt like I was the only thing keeping them together – and not in a good way. I always felt like a disappointment to Dad and an inconvenience to Mum.’

Clare blinked at her. ‘But they doted on you. You got everything you wanted.’

Skye stared at her in disbelief. ‘Like what?’