pointed out miserably.
And still no need to set up any type of marquee in Delaney Gardens for Coco.
Was there something wrong with her? Was nobody in her family telling her the truth because they loved her? Would therapy help? No, cross that off the list, Coco thought gloomily. She couldn’t afford therapy. The electricity bill from the shop alone made her wince every two months. Who knew what professional therapists charged for their services?
No, perhaps she was simply one of those women who were destined to be alone.
Three
That afternoon, Pearl Keneally stood in her red and white themed kitchen with Ritchie Valens singing in the background and toyed with the idea of putting the salted peanuts out in her small, hot-pink and blue dishes from Ios, but then thought better of it.
Liam’s blood pressure was high enough: he didn’t need the salt. Plus Gloria was back in diet club for a winter wedding and would stab Pearl if she saw needless temptation. Pearl snagged a handful of peanuts for herself, then put them in the back of the treat cupboard. Daisy, an oyster pug who needed to be on a diet herself, sat at Pearl’s feet, smiling and watching with delight. For Daisy, her mistress’s weekly events meant treats.
Snacks and drinks was what they’d agreed when they set up the Thursday night club all those years ago. The group, who all lived in Delaney Gardens, had between them seen children grow up, grandchildren grow up, had experienced death, illness: you name it, they’d seen it. And still they came together once a week, rain, hail or shine. The rules hadn’t changed: no proper dinners or cheese squashed into shapes on crackers, or it would soon become a huge effort when all they wanted were a few card games and the company.
Now that over forty years had passed, people’s varying ill health meant the snacks had to be wildly healthy, not dangerous for anyone on anti-stroke medication and suitable for Annette, who was diabetic. Pearl found the low-cal, low-salt, low-taste nibbles and put them out with some trail mix, along with diabetic chocolate near the seat where Annette usually sat.
Some members of the club were gone to wherever it was people went. There were six of them now instead of the initial nine: Loretta and Dai were dead, Louis in the mysterious and painful land of dementia.
Annette’s husband, Dai, had had a heart attack when he was sixty and, years later, Annette insisted that she’d never have survived without her Thursday nights.
‘I couldn’t fall in love with anyone else,’ she said. ‘Dai was the love of my life. Thursday nights saved me. I had somewhere to go.’
Gloria’s husband, Louis, was in a nursing home with advanced dementia. He no longer recognised Gloria or any of his family, and sat whispering fearfully about ‘going home’, by which he meant his birth home.
Gloria had stayed away from the Thursday night club for a year when Louis had first gone into the nursing home.
‘The guilt kills me,’ she’d told Pearl the night Pearl had gone over to Gloria’s to beg her to come back to the poker club. ‘ I should be taking care of him, not someone else, someone who doesn’t know what he likes!’
‘And what would you do if he got run over by a car when he escaped from the house again, looking for the way back to his mother’s house, Gloria? You’d feel twice as guilty then,’ Pearl had said, knowing she had to be cruel to be kind. ‘What Louis needs now is something you can’t physically give him. He needs people who are rested and expert, people who aren’t so worn out with emotion that they want to cry when he won’t eat and sob with exhaustion as they try to change his clothes. You can’t do that, Gloria.’
‘I know.’ Gloria sat with her face in her hands. ‘But I feel guilty.’
‘You will if you sit at home and brood. You need a few hours every week where you forget it all, where you can laugh and know nobody’s judging you and that we love you.
And still no need to set up any type of marquee in Delaney Gardens for Coco.
Was there something wrong with her? Was nobody in her family telling her the truth because they loved her? Would therapy help? No, cross that off the list, Coco thought gloomily. She couldn’t afford therapy. The electricity bill from the shop alone made her wince every two months. Who knew what professional therapists charged for their services?
No, perhaps she was simply one of those women who were destined to be alone.
Three
That afternoon, Pearl Keneally stood in her red and white themed kitchen with Ritchie Valens singing in the background and toyed with the idea of putting the salted peanuts out in her small, hot-pink and blue dishes from Ios, but then thought better of it.
Liam’s blood pressure was high enough: he didn’t need the salt. Plus Gloria was back in diet club for a winter wedding and would stab Pearl if she saw needless temptation. Pearl snagged a handful of peanuts for herself, then put them in the back of the treat cupboard. Daisy, an oyster pug who needed to be on a diet herself, sat at Pearl’s feet, smiling and watching with delight. For Daisy, her mistress’s weekly events meant treats.
Snacks and drinks was what they’d agreed when they set up the Thursday night club all those years ago. The group, who all lived in Delaney Gardens, had between them seen children grow up, grandchildren grow up, had experienced death, illness: you name it, they’d seen it. And still they came together once a week, rain, hail or shine. The rules hadn’t changed: no proper dinners or cheese squashed into shapes on crackers, or it would soon become a huge effort when all they wanted were a few card games and the company.
Now that over forty years had passed, people’s varying ill health meant the snacks had to be wildly healthy, not dangerous for anyone on anti-stroke medication and suitable for Annette, who was diabetic. Pearl found the low-cal, low-salt, low-taste nibbles and put them out with some trail mix, along with diabetic chocolate near the seat where Annette usually sat.
Some members of the club were gone to wherever it was people went. There were six of them now instead of the initial nine: Loretta and Dai were dead, Louis in the mysterious and painful land of dementia.
Annette’s husband, Dai, had had a heart attack when he was sixty and, years later, Annette insisted that she’d never have survived without her Thursday nights.
‘I couldn’t fall in love with anyone else,’ she said. ‘Dai was the love of my life. Thursday nights saved me. I had somewhere to go.’
Gloria’s husband, Louis, was in a nursing home with advanced dementia. He no longer recognised Gloria or any of his family, and sat whispering fearfully about ‘going home’, by which he meant his birth home.
Gloria had stayed away from the Thursday night club for a year when Louis had first gone into the nursing home.
‘The guilt kills me,’ she’d told Pearl the night Pearl had gone over to Gloria’s to beg her to come back to the poker club. ‘ I should be taking care of him, not someone else, someone who doesn’t know what he likes!’
‘And what would you do if he got run over by a car when he escaped from the house again, looking for the way back to his mother’s house, Gloria? You’d feel twice as guilty then,’ Pearl had said, knowing she had to be cruel to be kind. ‘What Louis needs now is something you can’t physically give him. He needs people who are rested and expert, people who aren’t so worn out with emotion that they want to cry when he won’t eat and sob with exhaustion as they try to change his clothes. You can’t do that, Gloria.’
‘I know.’ Gloria sat with her face in her hands. ‘But I feel guilty.’
‘You will if you sit at home and brood. You need a few hours every week where you forget it all, where you can laugh and know nobody’s judging you and that we love you.
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