At a Time Like This by Catherine Dunne

Author:Catherine Dunne [Dunne, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780330539616
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

7. Claire

It has just come to me that next December, I’ll be the same age as my mother was when she abandoned us. I’ll be forty-four years old. Another birthday on the horizon and that makes me wonder how many more I’ll have. The thought depresses me. I don’t like thinking that I have a sell-by date ticking away somewhere inside me like yet another biological time bomb that’s waiting to explode.

It’s strange, the way the four of us hardly ever talk about getting older. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve ever talked about the things that are important, particularly over the last few years. Well, Maggie and I have, of course. I trust her. But Georgie’s grown too cynical of late and Nora – well, Nora’s life is very different from mine. She means well, but she has become a little too smug for any of my confidences.

I’ll never forget her compassion towards me. Maggie, that is. There are still days, all these years later, when I burn with shame over how I hurt her. I can plead all the reasons I like, make all the excuses I like, but what I did was still wrong. For once, I’m with Nora. And now my forty-fourth birthday is the final marker, I think. No more chances. That chapter of my life will finally be closed.

Ray, of course, will be forty-five on the same day. That’s how everything started between us on that night. He insisted that he wanted us to celebrate our shared birthday together. I hate December and have hated it in triplicate ever since I was twelve years of age. For being the month I was born, for being the month of Christmas, for being the month my mother abandoned us. And, later on, for being the month when John Lennon died, but that’s a given.

I had just been to the magazine’s annual Christmas party in the Conrad Hotel. It had been one of those awful nights of forced jollity when everyone had to turn up wearing their shiniest new outfit and their widest smile. I was not in the mood, particularly on that evening. But being the editor brought some social responsibilities with it, and the Christmas endurance test happened to be one of them. I did my duty, stayed till ten o’clock and then slipped away. By then, the party was beginning to get a bit raucous. It was time to go home and I hoped that nobody had noticed me leave. I made my way down the stairs. I’ve always avoided the lift on these occasions because I hate being forced to share a cramped space with someone who might be a little too full of Christmas spirit.

‘Claire!’

I heard a man’s voice, familiar, but out of context. I half-turned, expecting to see some journalist or other running after me and insisting that I come back and rejoin the party. Or worse, someone from the office with a complaint and enough alcohol on board to have the courage to voice it.

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