Better Together

by Sheila O'Flanagan, Sheila O''Flanagan

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

BETTER TOGETHER is a fabulously addictive novel from No. 1 bestselling author Sheila O'Flanagan - if you enjoy the novels of Freya North and Marian Keyes, don't miss it!

When journalist Sheridan Gray loses her job, her boyfriend and her flat in one altogether bad week, she knows she must pick herself up and make a new start. But can she adjust to small-town living and local reporting?

Nina Fallon's life is shattered when the romantic exploits of her actor husband become national news. Now she's avoiding friends as she runs Ardbawn's guesthouse on her own.

When Sheridan moves into Ardbawn, she realises Nina holds the key to a story that will make her name as a reporter again. But as she gets closer to the truth, Sheridan risks jeopardising not only a budding friendship, but also her relationship with a certain handsome man in the town.

Will Sheridan go with her heart or her head?

Release date: July 5, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 347

Sample

Sheridan was so engrossed in the newspaper report she was writing that she dismissed the notification about a new email in her inbox without even thinking. Her fingers continued to fly over the keyboard as she described the carnival atmosphere in Dublin the previous night, where an unprecedented crowd had turned up to watch the Brazil women’s national soccer team play a friendly match in the city. It had been a fun evening, full of colour and good humour, helped by the unexpectedly balmy weather which, as Sheridan now wrote, the Brazilian women had brought with them – along with their footballing skills, cheerful personalities and undoubted good looks. A large portion of the sizeable crowd had been teenage boys following the footballers’ every move, and every time the glamorous striker got the ball, the stadium had been illuminated by thousands of flashlights as they took yet another photo of her. After the match the ladies had posed for more photos on the pitch, much to the delight of the supporters.

From Sheridan’s point of view it had been a lovely assignment, in sharp contrast to the times when she was sent to the back of beyond to watch dour men’s matches in torrential rain. She wanted the readers of the City Scope – Dublin’s biggest newspaper – to absorb the atmosphere too and, she admitted to herself, she wanted to present women excelling in what was generally seen as a men’s sport in the most positive light she could.

So she was taking special care about the piece, making sure she got the balance exactly right. It wasn’t until Martyn Powell, the sports editor, pushed a pile of papers out of the way and sat on the edge of her desk that she glanced up from the screen in front of her.

‘Looks like D-Day.’ Martyn’s naturally long face was even gloomier than usual, his drooping moustache adding to his hangdog expression. ‘It’s from the top.’

Sheridan felt her heart beat faster as she opened the email, which was headed ‘The Future of the City Scope’, and scanned its contents.

Rumours about the paper where she’d worked for the past five years had been circulating for weeks. The staff had listened to every one of them and come up with some ideas of their own too, but nobody really knew what the fate of the thirty-year-old newspaper would be. Changes would have to be made, they all acknowledged that. The newspaper industry was in a precarious state and the City Scope had been haemorrhaging money over the past year. Everyone knew that something had to give sooner or later. The reporters had been gossiping for weeks. Now it looked like the time had come.

‘What d’you think?’ asked Martyn.

‘I haven’t a clue.’ Sheridan pulled her flame-red curls back from her face and secured them with a lurid green bobble, which she took from her desk drawer. ‘I suppose they can try some more cutbacks.’

The paper had introduced a raft of cost-cutting initiatives a few months earlier, most of which had irritated the journalists without delivering the required savings.

‘I hope it’s only cutbacks,’ said Martyn. ‘And not anything worse.’

‘Well yes. So do I.’ Sheridan tightened the bobble. ‘But we’re an institution, Marty, they have to come up with something.’

‘Huh. So far all they’ve come up with is reducing expenses. Ours, not theirs, of course.’

Sheridan grinned. Martyn was a man who liked to take full advantage of his expense account.

‘How’s the piece going?’ Martyn nodded at the open document on her computer screen.

‘Nearly finished.’ She glanced at it herself. ‘It was good fun and nice to see the ladies on the pitch for a change.’

‘There were some real crackers there all right.’ Martyn had been looking at the photos earlier.

‘Skilful athletes,’ Sheridan reminded him, and he nodded even though she knew he only paid lip service to women’s sporting abilities. ‘And not a diva among them.’

‘I wonder will we all still be here to report on the European Cup qualifiers?’ asked Martyn, who enjoyed talking football with the paper’s only female sports reporter.

‘I hope so.’ Sheridan looked worried. ‘Ireland has a great chance this time. I want to get the Scope totally behind the team.’

‘You’re supposed to be impartial.’

‘Get lost, Powell.’ She roared with laughter. ‘When was the City Scope ever impartial about football?’

Martyn’s smile still wasn’t enough to rid him of his gloomy expression, but the conversation had temporarily taken their minds off the contents of the email. Which had said that there would be a meeting of all staff in the boardroom at noon. Everyone was expected to attend.

The boardroom of the City Scope wasn’t really big enough to accommodate all of the newspaper’s staff, so they stood shoulder to shoulder in the limited space as they waited for the arrival of the management team. There was a buzz of chatter as people speculated on the news that Ernie Johnson, the managing director, might bring. But Sheridan wasn’t talking. She was considering all the possible outcomes and not liking any of them.

The worst, of course, was that the newspaper might close down. But that was utterly unthinkable. The City Scope, with its extensive sports coverage, had been in existence all of her life. Even before she’d joined the paper, reading it had been a major part of her week. When she’d finally landed a job there, she hadn’t quite been able to believe it. And it had turned out to be the best job in the world. Even though she’d originally studied journalism to get away from sport. Even though she’d wanted to carve a very different career for herself.

Sheridan Gray had grown up in a sports-mad family. Sitting down in front of Match of the Day, Sportsnight and Grandstand was practically mandatory in the Gray household (as had been the daily purchase of the City Scope, widely regarded as the paper with the most authoritative sports section in the country). Sheridan’s father and her two older brothers played both soccer and Gaelic football, and her mum was a PE teacher. But Sheridan wasn’t obsessed in the same way as her parents and her brothers, and (being perfectly honest about it, although she wouldn’t dream of saying so out loud) she disliked competing against other people. This was in contrast to everyone else in the family, who didn’t believe that it was the taking part and not the winning that counted; as far as they were concerned, winning was the most important thing of all.

Sheridan didn’t know why the competitive gene that ran so strongly through her parents and her brothers had passed her by, but the truth was that her favourite sporting activity was simply running by herself, not trying to beat anyone, not even the clock. She enjoyed jogging, which she found relaxing, and she needed relaxation because the Gray household, caught up as it always was with matches that the others were involved in, was rarely a relaxing place to be.

For most of her childhood it had been a given that she would spend weekends with her mother, Alice, on the sidelines of a pitch, wrapped up in a quilted anorak, warm gloves and knitted hat against the biting cold, while shouting encouragement at the men in her family. Afterwards there would be endless, sometimes heated, discussions about the match. The coach’s selections were analysed, as was the team’s performance, the opposition’s tactics and even the level of support that both teams received. Sheridan would listen to the conversation without taking part. As far as she was concerned she’d done her bit by screaming until her throat was sore.

Matt and Con, her brothers, were picked to play for the Dublin Gaelic football team when they were old enough, which was the pinnacle of success as far as everyone in the family was concerned. They threw a huge party the day the announcement was made and Alice (not normally known for her baking skills) produced an enormous rectangular cake, which she’d decorated to look like a football pitch. Plastic figures wearing green shirts were placed in each goal mouth to represent Matt and Con, while a referee in the middle took the place of their father, Pat.

It was unfortunate, Sheridan thought, that her brothers’ time with the Dublin team had also coincided with a slump in its fortunes, otherwise there would have been even bigger and better parties to celebrate more success. However, the Gray boys, as they were known, were always given high praise by the media for their unstinting efforts on behalf of their county, and indeed for their local club too, which regularly won the league, more often than not due to a spectacular shot from one or other of the boys.

It was when these reports (always from the City Scope) were being solemnly read out that Sheridan felt both proud of and yet disconnected from the rest of her family. She couldn’t understand why being beaten totally devastated Matt and Con, and left them stomping around the house, slamming doors and impossible to talk to. Both Alice and Pat seemed to think that this was perfectly normal behaviour, but Sheridan asked herself why on earth they didn’t just get over it. She was used to hearing people say ‘it’s only a game’, but as far as the Grays were concerned, it seemed to be so much more than that.

As she grew older, she became impatient with their obsessions. She wished that she lived in a house where she didn’t fall over football boots as soon as she walked in the door, and wasn’t greeted by a forest of drying sports shirts in the kitchen every day. She longed to have discussions on hair and make-up from time to time (something she knew woefully little about) instead of listening to constant arguments about disallowed penalties and professional fouls. But there was nobody to have these discussions with. Alice wasn’t the sort of person who devoted much time to hair and beauty. She was a tall, trim woman who kept her greying hair short and whose main beauty product was an industrial-sized jar of Pond’s moisturiser which she kept on the bathroom shelf, between the cans of Lynx and tubs of Brylcreem. And the truth was that Sheridan couldn’t categorise herself as the kind of girl who knew a lot about beauty either. Despite her weekly jogs, she didn’t have the lean, wiry build of a runner. She was as sturdy as her brothers, broad shouldered and statuesque rather than thin and elegant, and infinitely more comfortable in jeans and jumpers than dresses and high heels. From time to time she went on a blitz of fashion shopping with some of her friends, but more often than not the micro miniskirts or tight boots that had seemed like a good idea at the time ended up unworn in the back of her wardrobe, a testament to the fact that her thighs were the body feature she disliked the most.

Her relationship with the opposite sex was, in many ways, as comfortable as the clothes she preferred to wear. Unlike many of her female friends, she didn’t get tongue-tied in the presence of a boy she’d never met before, because she was accustomed to a constant stream of beefy soccer and GAA players traipsing in and out of the house, and she was perfectly at ease talking to any of them – especially as their conversation was generally about their matches, and she’d been to most of them. She knew that men weren’t mysterious creatures who would magically change your life. She knew that they could get anxious and worried just like girls – although, in fairness, usually about different things. Matt and Con were rarely anxious about their dates; they were more concerned about their matches. Nevertheless, when Con was stressing about where to bring the lovely Bevanne Dickinson the first time they were going out together, Sheridan was the one to suggest that taking her to see Jerry Maguire in the warmth of the cinema would probably be better fun for her than standing on the terraces in the rain watching a League of Ireland match; and when Matt was at a loss to know what to get for his girlfriend’s eighteenth birthday, she told him firmly that Melissa would prefer a dainty watch to the bulky thing with multiple functions and two different timers he was considering. The boys were always surprised when she came up with girlie tips but always grateful for what was generally the right advice. In turn, they steered her away from men they regarded as messers and not good enough for her (even though she didn’t always agree with them and didn’t solely judge prospective boyfriends on their footballing prowess).

In the end, most of the guys she eventually dated were people she’d met at one sporting fixture or another. They generally knew her parents and her brothers, and seemed to regard her as more of a friend than a girlfriend. They usually brought her to rugby matches (which she enjoyed) or to dark and gloomy bars (which she didn’t quite as much – she preferred the trend for bright, modern gastro-pubs that was beginning to hit the country). Most of them, at some point or another, would tell her that it was great to go out with someone like her, a decent sort who liked a laugh, could talk soccer, rugby and GAA and could get ready for a date in less than ten minutes.

Sheridan wasn’t insulted by being regarded as a decent sort rather than a sex symbol. After all, she didn’t think her body could ever be regarded as sexy, and her interest in make-up and clothes was fairly minimal. She didn’t mind a dash of lip gloss before she went out, but the idea of spending absolutely hours in front of the mirror, like some of the girls she knew, bored her beyond belief. Besides, she couldn’t help thinking that it was far better to be someone that men felt comfortable talking to, and who got on with them all (even if most of her relationships petered out after a couple of months), rather than one of the group of air-headed, giggling women who seemed to regard them as creatures that they would never understand and who were a prize to be won if they only knew how. Sheridan felt that she had a lot to be thankful for in that respect and was glad that the opposite sex wasn’t a mystery to her; in fact there were times she felt that she knew far too much about them and their interests. However, there were also times when she felt a bit of an outsider among her friends because she was never at ease participating in breathless conversations about fanciable guys. She wondered if she’d ever meet someone who would fill her every waking thought, or turn her legs to jelly, or make her think that an evening spent waxing her legs and plucking her eyebrows was worth the pain. Somehow she doubted it.

That feeling of being an outsider extended to her home life too, although the reasons were different. But she couldn’t help feeling distant from the rest of her family whenever she looked at Matt and Con’s trophies, the symbols of their success, which were proudly displayed in the huge walnut cabinet in the corner of the room, and totally dwarfed the only award she’d ever won. This was a plastic medal for the under-10s girls’ five-a-side football tournament (which wasn’t a proper tournament at all but was designed to give the girls the chance to kick the ball around and wear themselves out, while their mothers sat in the clubhouse for a cup of tea and a chat, and for which all of the young participants had received a medal).

She didn’t want to be an airhead but she didn’t always want to be the fallback girl that men dated when they couldn’t get anyone else either. (Matt’s friends in particular used her as a last-minute date whenever they needed someone, knowing that she’d enter into the spirit of whatever the occasion was.) She didn’t need to be a winner but nor did she want to be the perennial loser in her testosterone-filled family home. Most of the time she was comfortable in her own skin, but occasionally it was hard to be the one who simply didn’t match up, no matter how hard she tried.

Matt and Con both went to college after school, choosing to study business while hoping to get jobs that would allow them plenty of time to devote to playing for their football club. Sheridan knew that she didn’t have a business brain and wanted a job that could become a career. Alice suggested that she follow in her footsteps and become a PE teacher (you mightn’t be all that good at competing yourself, she told Sheridan, but you know how it should be done). Sheridan had scotched that idea immediately. She wanted to do something dramatically different from the rest of the family. She needed to break out on her own.

She decided to study journalism on a whim, mainly because one of her teachers complimented her on a report she’d done on the school fashion show. Miss Kavanagh said that it had been a vivid piece of writing that had brought the show to life for anyone who read the piece. Was Sheridan very interested in fashion? she asked.

It was a question that reduced Sheridan to fits of laughter, and Miss Kavanagh, realising that designer dresses were intended for women who looked like a half-decent puff of wind would blow them over rather than well-built girls like Sheridan, looked suitably embarrassed. Sheridan told her not to worry, that she’d enjoyed writing the piece because it was about something so alien to her, which led Miss Kavanagh to sigh with relief; although then Sheridan remarked that nobody would take seriously as a fashion journalist a woman who liked her food and had never been on a crash diet. Miss Kavanagh tried to convince her otherwise but Sheridan knew that she was wasting her time. All the same, she thought, maybe she could become an investigative reporter and one day have her name in big print beneath a story that could be added to the enormous file of cuttings that Alice kept documenting Con and Matt’s successes on the playing field. And maybe then she’d finally feel like a success in her own right too.

By the time she qualified, however, the economy was sluggish and jobs were hard to come by. Instead of going straight on to a busy news desk as she’d hoped, she’d ended up in the classifieds section of a daily newspaper, looking after the personal notices that covered births, marriages and deaths. She didn’t need a college qualification to take down funeral details, but she did always wonder about the person concerned, the life they’d led and the people they’d left behind. She liked the birth notices best, amusing herself by guessing what kind of life the baby would have based on the name chosen by its parents. Samanthas, she decided, would be blonde and beautiful, and marry for money. Kates had to be groomed, businesslike and destined for success. Jackies would be sporty. If Pat and Alice had called her Jackie, then she might have fulfilled whatever sporting dream they had for her.

In fact they’d chosen to name her after Martin Sheridan, a five-time Olympic gold-medallist. Born Bohola, County Mayo, in 1881, Martin had also won three silvers and a bronze representing the USA in the discus, shot putt, high jump and long jump. Pat and Alice had clearly believed that he’d be someone for Sheridan to live up to, but all that had happened was that she’d been teased mercilessly for having two surnames (she’d once suggested that simply tacking on an ‘a’ to his first name would have saved her a lot of grief, but Alice had shaken her head and told her that Sheridans were tougher than Martinas).

When she’d seen the ad for a junior reporter for the City Scope sports desk she almost hadn’t bothered replying. She wanted to do hard news, to report on politics and crime, not football matches. But she was going steadily crazy in classifieds and she thought that getting any reporter’s job would be better than nothing.

It surprised her, when she was offered it, at how pleased she was. It surprised her even more how much she enjoyed it.

She’d never thought that all the times she’d spent cheering on Con and Matt would be good for anything. Or that she’d learned so much from the after-match debates at home. Or that she knew as much as she did about the winners and runners-up in so many different events. It was her encyclopaedic knowledge of All-Ireland football winners that had stunned Martyn Powell when he interviewed her. But it was her analysis of a recent Republic of Ireland soccer match that had convinced him that she was the best person for the job.

‘I never met anyone as knowledgeable as you,’ he’d said. ‘You can even explain the offside rule in a single sentence.’

‘The offside rule is usually overly complicated by men who like to make it mysterious,’ she’d told him cheerfully. ‘As is most stuff about sport.’

‘If you write as clearly as you talk, I think you could have a good future at this paper,’ Martyn remarked.

Sheridan couldn’t help smiling at his words. She’d been told that she was pretty when she smiled (Decco Grainger, three dates and a lot of kissing practice, had been the one to offer the compliment), but Martyn often said that when Sheridan smiled she reminded him of a happy cocker spaniel, with her glossy hair framing her generous face, and her big golden-brown eyes alight with enthusiasm. Sheridan herself wasn’t quite convinced that being likened to a cocker spaniel was a compliment, but she supposed it was better than being compared to a Jack Russell. She’d suckered him at the interview with her smile, Martyn told her, even though she lacked the experience that other candidates had. But there was something about her that made him think he’d found the perfect addition to the team.

And Sheridan definitely was.

At first she was sent to cover local events that nobody else wanted to bother with. She never minded, even when she got lost looking for a small club in the middle of nowhere. She drove her two-year-old VW Beetle all over the country and found herself once again on the sidelines of windswept pitches, although this time, instead of cheering herself hoarse, she was making notes on the game.

Afterwards, though, it was her opinion that counted, her words that people read and sometimes reacted to, by emailing the newspaper and sharing their own views.

‘I always knew you’d find your niche one day,’ Alice told her one evening as she read the piece Sheridan had written about a League of Ireland football match between rival clubs Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne. ‘This is a great report.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You see – all those times we took you to the football were worth it.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sure the goalie was sick when he gave away the penalty.’

‘So were the supporters.’

‘Did you enjoy the match?’

‘Of course. It’s kind of nice to watch and not care who wins.’

Alice looked horrified. ‘You always have to care who wins.’

‘I’d be exhausted if that was the case,’ Sheridan told her. ‘You can’t pick a side every time. People don’t want to know who I want to win, they want to know what the game was like.’

‘Hmm.’ Alice didn’t sound convinced.

‘If you were a Hoops supporter, you wouldn’t want to think I was writing from a Rovers point of view, would you?’

‘No,’ conceded Alice.

‘Anyway, Martyn Powell is very happy with me,’ said Sheridan.

‘Good.’ Alice sounded pleased. Then she took a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Sheridan.

‘Cutting out the report,’ replied Alice. ‘It’s the first one they’ve put your name on.’

‘I know.’ Sheridan hadn’t wanted to make a big deal of having her byline in the paper, but the truth was she was very excited about it. And the fact that her mother was too wrapped her in a warm glow of self-satisfaction.

Over the following years at the paper there had been more and more pieces with her byline. So many that Alice stopped cutting them all out. Sheridan didn’t mind. She’d found her place. And finally she felt like a winner in the family too.

She stopped reminiscing when Ernie Johnson walked into the room. From the look on his face she could see that he didn’t have unqualified good news to share. The rest of the staff could see it too, and a quiet murmur of anxiety rippled through them before he held up his hand for silence.

He spoke about the newspaper’s iconic status over the past thirty years and about the great stories it had broken. Then he went on to remind them that times were tough, that the print media in particular was suffering, that competition was fierce and that they couldn’t go on losing money.

The journalists were expecting the worst. The picture Ernie had painted was so bleak that they couldn’t see how the paper could possibly last another day. But then Ernie smiled.

‘Up to last week it was looking very much like the City Scope would fold,’ he said. ‘But I’m pleased to say that we’ve had a cash injection from an investor who has taken a stake in our business.’

The ripple broke through the journalists again. Of course there had been talk of new investors, but they’d been doubtful that anyone would be interested in the ailing newspaper.

‘That’s the good news,’ said Ernie. ‘The bad news is that costs are still an issue. I’m sorry to say that even with a cash injection there will be some redundancies.’

The ripple had become a buzz now as people turned to each other, each immediately worried about his or her own future, but equally worried about the ability of the newspaper to live up to its ideals with a further decrease in the number of reporters.

‘I’ve already had numerous consultations with our investor,’ said Ernie. ‘We’ll be in touch with you all before the end of the week about the redundancy packages.’

‘So what d’you think of all that?’ asked Talia Brehon as they walked back to their desks. Talia was every inch a fashion editor, with shoulder-length, honey-blond hair, a tall, slender body, impeccably made-up face, and a size zero capsule wardrobe.

Sheridan knew it often surprised people that as well as working together on the City Scope, she and Talia also shared an apartment in Kilmainham, a few kilometres from the newspaper offices. Talia had been looking for someone to share with her at around the same time as Sheridan had needed somewhere to live. Pat had retired and was keeping his promise to Alice to move back to Kerry, where she was originally from. By that stage, all of their children were working and self-sufficient, so they’d decided to sell their house in Dublin. When Sheridan had seen the email Talia sent round the paper looking for a flatmate, she’d replied straight away, although at that time she hadn’t known the fashion editor very well.

They’d met for coffee to talk it over. In her small-ad days, Sheridan would’ve put Talia in the same category as the Samanthas, and she would certainly have been right as far as her glamour was concerned. But although Talia shared her looks with the models she so frequently wrote about, she was also one of the most down-to-earth people Sheridan had ever met. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help thinking that sharing an apartment with someone as feminine as Talia would be the ultimate in life-changing experiences.

It hadn’t entirely been like that, because at home Talia liked sloping around in comfortable tracksuits and trainers rather than designer clothes (although her sports gear of choice was Stella McCartney for Adidas), and the apartment was cool and chic rather than pink and girlie; but she did introduce Sheridan to the joys of concealers and pore minimisers, while Sheridan reciprocated by demonstrating how to change the filter in the washing machine and mend the leaky shower. Both girls enjoyed each other’s company and the flat-share worked out better than either of them had anticipated.

‘I wonder who the investor is?’ mused Sheridan.

‘Paudie O’Malley,’ replied Talia promptly. ‘I’ve just been talking to our esteemed business editor, who has the inside scoop. Apparently Paudie expressed an interest a while back but they rebuffed him. Now he’s in on better terms.’

‘God Almighty.’ Sheridan felt slightly sick. ‘Slash-and-Burn O’Malley’s finally got his claws into us. We’re toast.’

‘He has a hard nose when it comes to business all right,’ acknowledged Talia.

‘He makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus!’ wailed Sheridan. ‘Our first story will have a picture of him cracking the austerity whip.’

Talia laughed. ‘According to Alo, he’s only taken a twenty-five per cent stake. His influence will be limited. And he’s reclusive. I don’t think there’s been a picture of him in the papers for years.’

‘Just ’cos people don’t see him much doesn’t mean he can’t be ruthless.’ Sheridan nibbled anxiously at her thumbnail. ‘What d’you think about our jobs?’

‘Ah, you’ll be fine, the Scope is famed for its sports coverage.’

‘Hmm. I’m not sure that sport is an O’Malley priority. He’s into business and politics, isn’t he?’

‘He’ll still need good sports reporters, and you got that great interview with our latest Italian manager, didn’t you?’

Sheridan grinned. ‘I was lucky. Con was going out with an Italian girl who knew his interpreter at the time.’

‘You make your own luck,’ said Talia.

‘True. Oh well, I’ll just keep my fingers crossed.’

‘Me too,’ Talia told her. ‘Whatever Paudie feels about sport, I’m pretty certain he’s not that interested in fashion.’

‘He won’t be able to resist you,’ Sheridan told her friend. ‘You can twist men around your little finger. C’mon. Let’s go for a drink. We could do with