Free Star Sullivan by Maeve Binchy

she asked.
    ‘Nope,’ he said.
    ‘It’s meant to fill your soul,’ she said.
    ‘Good,’ he said, not even looking up.
    ‘You said you liked me, once,’ she said.
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘So what went wrong, how did I lose you?
Tell
me, Laddy. Even if I can’t get you back, I may get somebody one day, and not annoy them and drive them mad as I did with you.’
    ‘You didn’t have me to lose, stop talking crap,’ he said.
    ‘Tell me what I did wrong, then I’ll leave you alone,’ she begged.
    For the first time he looked up. He was so handsome, she wanted to cry. ‘Promise?’ he said.
    ‘Promise,’ said Star Sullivan.
    ‘Right. Where do I start? We came here to live, my dad and I. My mam had done a runner, things weren’t great. Biddy was exactly what we said, a friend. She had been in some trouble and needed somewhere to stay, so she came to us. My dad fancied her, of course, but she was much too young for him and she never slept with him. She was great fun to have around the place, she kept us on our toes a bit . . . Lookwhat a mess the place is, now that she’s gone. Anyway she and I were mates too, not lovers, not at all. Not ever. My dad was very upset when she said she was moving on. I had just got him persuaded that it was all for the best when you started shouting the odds and saying that I was having an affair with her. Now he’ll never be sure.’
    ‘But I didn’t mean –’ Star began.
    ‘You never mean anything, Star. That’s your problem.’ He was very cold. ‘You didn’t mean it when you asked me to help your brother, Michael. Now I’m under heavy police suspicion myself, even though I’ve never done anything more than buy a dodgy video or DVD.’
    ‘But I thought –’
    ‘Sure you thought. You thought I might cure your father’s gambling. A nice man, Shay, I always got on well with him, and now because of you we’ve ended up bad friends.’
    ‘I didn’t know . . .’
    ‘No, you never knew . . . You didn’t know that your mother looks at me as if I were the devil out of hell, because she thinks I seduced you when you were a child and then abandoned you –’
    ‘She does
not
think that!’
    ‘Of course she does, and why not, you told the world you slept with me.’
    ‘To save your skin.’
    ‘Like hell. I was doing nothing, just sweeping up after your brother and his crim friends.’
    ‘But –’
    ‘And you go on telling me how much you want to listen to me and you never listened to one thing I said.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Like you should tell your mother about Lilly hiding food, then she would have been helped much sooner. Like telling Michael you would shop him, then he wouldn’t be on the run in Eastern Europe at this very moment.’
    Star looked at him with a white face.
    ‘And then you told that poor gobshite Kenny the Fish that I’d beaten you up and he came after me and I had to hit him. So where’s the friendship in any of this, Star?’
    ‘I didn’t tell him you hit me.’
    ‘Well, you sure didn’t tell him quickly enough that I hadn’t.’
    ‘I’m so sorry.’
    ‘I’m sure you are.
Now
will you go home, and remember you promised to leave me alone. You know that you promised you would.’
    ‘All right.’
    Star got up and left. She paused at the door to look back at him but he was reading the paper again.
    ‘I brought you a cup of tea, Star,’ her mother said.
    ‘Thanks, Mam.’
    ‘You look very sad, pet, very sad, is your head hurting?’
    ‘No, not at all.’
    ‘Star, what is it?’
    ‘It’s too much to tell, Mam, I’ve made such a mess of everything.’
    ‘Ah, we all make a mess of most things,’ Molly said soothingly.
    ‘We don’t, Mam.’
    ‘We
do
actually, Star. We just shuffle along. No one gets it all right, the wise person knows that.’
    ‘I don’t want to get it all that right, I just want people to be happy. Is that a crime?’
    ‘No, love, of course not, but it’s just that itwon’t happen. It doesn’t happen. We