Page 42 of Eden's Comfort Kitchen
‘For you, yes. Mum’s church group are still dealing with the fallout from that grotty little backroom deal.’
‘I didn’t make the deal!’
‘No, but you had a pretty big hand in setting it up so you could get your employee of the month sticker, didn’t you? Get a nice fat bonus you didn’t tell us about? A promise of promotion for passing on the information – information that was for family discussion only and you were asked not to pass on.’
‘The church couldn’t afford to keep it on – everyone knew that.’
‘Your bosses didn’t, until you told them. They swooped in and got the place cut price because they knew the church couldn’t afford to do anything else, and now there’s nowhere for community events around here, and that’s thanks to you.’
‘You have no clue what you’re talking about. They’d have bought it anyway – they’d been looking at that plot for ages; it’s in a great location for those apartments.’
‘Yes, but they might have given enough money to pay for a new place somewhere else. As it was they paid peanuts.’
Eden sighed with impatience as she reached for the salt. ‘I don’t know why you keep going on about it; it doesn’t make any difference to you.’
‘It makes a difference to Mum! Or have you forgotten the charity coffee mornings and bake sales that she’s been doing there all these years?’
‘Caitlin, please…Don’t drag me into this. I never said—’ Eden’s mum started to protest, but Caitlin held up a hand to stop her.
‘Why do you always do this, Mum? Why do you defend her when you know she’s done wrong?’
‘She was only doing her job.’
‘It was more than her job! She could have kept her mouth shut and she’d still have been doing her job! She didn’t have to blab to her bosses about the church’s finances!’
‘Most churches are in the same position,’ Eden’s mum said wearily, rubbing her temples. ‘They’d have worked it out.’
‘Stop it!’ Caitlin demanded. ‘Stop pretending it doesn’t matter! You’re upset – we all know it – say so! Tell your favourite child you’re upset! I’m sick of being the messenger!’
‘Nobody asked you to be anyone’s messenger,’ Eden’s dad cut in. ‘And we don’t have favourites.’
‘You’re just as bad!’ Caitlin replied, her voice rising. ‘Eden did a shitty thing, but neither of you will say so. It’s so obvious she’s your favourite – I wouldn’t have got away with a thing like that. I would never have done a thing like that, but to listen to you now, you still think I’m the one in the wrong for bringing it up? What’s the matter with this family?’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Eden slammed down her cutlery.
‘You – that’s what!’
‘Girls!’ Eden’s dad stood up, arms outstretched like a referee in a boxing ring. ‘Do we have to do this at the dinner table?’
‘Where would you suggest we do it?’ Caitlin asked him coldly.
‘Perhaps nowhere?’ Eden’s mum cut in. Eden frowned, but then her rising irritation was stopped in its tracks. If she hadn’t been so lost in the heat of the argument, she might have takenthe signs more seriously. Her mum suddenly looked pale – grey almost. ‘I’d really rather we didn’t do it at all.’
‘Then tell Caitlin that!’ Eden fired back because she couldn’t leave it. She and Caitlin had always been as bad as each other in that respect – they both had to have the last word. Whenever Eden would reflect on it in the months after this final family dinner, she would see that she and Caitlin were more alike than she’d ever been happy to admit. One would launch an attack, the other would dig their heels in and neither would ever say they were wrong even when they could plainly see it.
‘She takes and takes,’ Caitlin said, rounding on her mum and dad. ‘She never stops, and you never do anything. Sheborrowssome money’ – Caitlin crooked her fingers into speech marks – ‘and doesn’t give it back. She takes your things. She promises to do stuff and then forgets and thinks that’s OK. And maybe I do overreact to some of that stuff, but it’s because it never ends and nobody ever says anything. But I can’t let this one go. The community centre – that was a massive deal for you, Mum. Those coffee mornings and those bake sales and the Christmas dinners for the old people and all that other stuff – that was a huge part of your life, and it’s gone, and all you can say is you’d rather not talk about it? It’s gone because Eden did another selfish thing, and you’re just going to ignore that? The buck has to stop eventually!’
‘There’ll be other charities—’ Mum began, but Caitlin cut her off.
‘They were your friends! They’d been your friends for years!’
‘She can still see them!’ Eden protested. ‘They can just go to the pub or something like everyone does!’
Caitlin whipped round. ‘You don’t get it, do you? Maybe because you don’t have friends, only shallow colleagues and acquaintances who like you because you wear the right clothesand go to the right restaurants, but they don’t know a thing about you. You have no idea what real friends are. You’ll never understand what it is to have passion for a cause, to work with people you like to help others and not yourself. Everyone at that group loved what they did; they’d spent years doing it, looked forward to the meetings – like some had literally nothing else in their lives – and you took that from them!’
‘I didn’t!’ Eden’s eyes filled with tears, but they weren’t hurt or sadness or even rage. They were indignant and they were frustrated because she was losing this moral argument and she didn’t want to admit it. Yes, she’d repeated something they’d discussed at dinner one day about the church being broke and desperate for money and how they might have to sell some of their land, and yes, she’d been asked at the time not to tell anyone, and perhaps she’d done that hoping for some kind of gold star from her bosses. But she hadn’t meant this to happen. Could she have foreseen it? Perhaps, she had to admit, but admitting it only added guilt to the mix. Of course she’d seen it coming because how else was it going to end? The company she worked for were known for swooping in and grabbing land and for making huge profits on it. There was no other way it was going to end.
Her mum got up from the table. Going over the scene again and again after the event, Eden would hate herself for not taking more notice. For not seeing how pale her mum had become, how vague, how laboured her movements were. None of them noticed, but that didn’t make it any better.
