Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [103]
Moira was beginning to realize why people actually paid seven euros for a plate of pasta. They were paying for a bright, checked tablecloth, a warm welcome and the feeling of ease and relaxation. She could have put together a cannelloni dish, but it wouldn’t be the same as this if eaten in her small, empty flat. It would not be the food of angels.
She relaxed for the first time in a long time and raised her glass. “Here’s to us,” she said. “We may have had a bad start, but, boy, we’re survivors!”
“Here’s to surviving,” Lisa said. “Can I begin?”
“Let’s order his cannelloni first and then you can begin,” Moira agreed.
She was a good listener. Lisa had to hand her that. Moira listened well and remembered what you said and went back and asked relevant questions, like how old was Lisa when she realized that her parents disliked each other, and irrelevant questions, like did they ever take the girls to the seaside? She was sympathetic when she needed to be, shocked at the right times, curious about why Lisa’s mother stayed in such a loveless home. She asked about Lisa’s friends and seemed to understand exactly why she never had any.
How could anyone bring a friend home to a house like that?
And Lisa told her about working as a graphic designer for Kevin and how she met Anton and everything had changed. She had left the safe harbor of Kevin’s office and set up on her own. No, she didn’t really have any other clients, but Anton had needed her to give him that boost and he always said he would be lost without her. Even this time in London, this very morning, he had begged her not to leave, not to abandon him to April.
“Oh, April,” Moira said, breezily, recalling her lunch with Clara at Anton’s. “A very vapid sort of person.”
“Vapid!” Lisa seized on the word with delight. “That’s exactly what she is! Vapid!” She said it again with pleasure.
Moira gently moved the conversation away, towards Noel, in fact. “And wasn’t it great that you found somewhere to stay so easily?” she hinted.
“Oh, yes, if it hadn’t been for Noel, I don’t know what I would have done that night, the night when I realized my father, my own father, in our own house …” She paused, upset at the memory.
“But Noel welcomed you?” Moira continued.
“Well, I suppose ‘welcomed’ might be putting it a bit strongly … but he gave me a place to stay, which, considering he hardly knew me, was very generous of him, and then we worked out with Emily that it might be best if I could stay; it would share the whole business of looking after Frankie and I could have a place to stay for free.”
“Free? You mean Noel has to pay for you as well as all his other expenses?” Moira’s eyes were beginning to glint. More and more information was coming her way without her even having to ask for it.
Lisa seemed to recognize that she had spoken too freely. “Well, not exactly free. I mean, we each contribute to the food. We have our own phones and we share the work with the baby.” Lisa didn’t say she was overdrawn on her bank account.
“But he could have let that room to a real tenant for real money.”
“I doubt it,” Lisa said, with spirit. “You wouldn’t get anyone paying real money to live in a house with a baby. Believe me, Moira, it’s like ‘Macbeth shall sleep no more.’ It can be total bedlam at three a.m. with the two of us trying to soothe her down.”
Moira just nodded sympathetically. She was getting more and more ammunition by the second.
But, oddly, it did not delight her as much as she had once thought it would. In a twisted way, she would prefer if these two awkward, lonely people—Lisa and Noel—should find happiness to beat their demons through this child. If it were Hollywood, they would also find great happiness in each other.
Lisa knew nothing of her thoughts.
“Now you,” she said to Moira. “Tell me what was so terrible.”
So Moira began. Every detail from the early days when she came home from school and there was nothing to eat, to her