‘Then get her a job, Monday,’ you say, that mischievous glint in your eye.
‘That’s the idea, Matt,’ he replies, meeting your gaze.
‘Maybe you should bring her out for dinner. For the job,’ you say, and I know what you’re implying, as does Monday, but he remains cool.
‘If that will work,’ he says, but a little less confidently.
I don’t want you to make him leave by continuing with this. I turn to you to continue my case. ‘And all he had to do was fork out some money for the kids who’ve been working so hard on their perfume. Did he even ask to smell it?’
‘No,’ Kris huffs.
‘Well, that’s just mean,’ I say.
This incenses you even more, which I knew it would, because that was my intention.
‘I’m going over there,’ you say.
‘Good for you,’ I say.
‘What are you going to say?’ Monday asks, face full of a smile, as he crosses one leg over the other, ends of his jeans frayed, and a hole in one thigh revealing bare skin.
‘Just that he should consider being more neighbourly if he’s going to live in a neighbourhood. They’re only seven,’ you say.
‘I think you mind more than they do,’ Monday says.
‘And he won’t get back to Dr J about the Midsummer’s Day barbecue,’ I add. ‘And Dr J only ever means well.’
Monday smiles and frowns at me at the same time, trying to figure me out.
That’s enough to convince you to go over.
I’m thrilled. You’ve left your front door open. While you’re arguing with Corporate Man I can slip inside, find the letter I wrote and destroy it. It is a perfect plan.
‘You – come with me,’ you suddenly say.
‘Me?’
‘Yes. You.’
‘Yeah, Jasmine,’ Monday adds, leaning on the table, chin on his hand, looking at me lazily, mischievously, knowing that he is ruining whatever it is I am planning. He is playing with me, which I wouldn’t mind if it was in another way. I could think of many ways Monday could toy with me, but not like this.
‘You don’t need my help,’ I tell you, ignoring Monday. ‘They’re your kids. You can speak for them without me.’
‘Go on, Jasmine,’ Monday says.
I know that my chance to destroy the letter has slipped away. I throw Monday a look of sincere disgust that makes him laugh, and even though it’s annoying it makes me like him even more because he is prepared to contest me. He will not tiptoe around me, try to please me. He will test me, he will give as good as I give. Monday wants to play.
‘I’ll keep an eye on Dr J’s house.’ He winks at me.
‘What are you going to say?’ I ask nervously, standing at number six’s door.
‘We are going to say exactly what I said we’ll say. About neighbourly behaviour.’
‘Right.’ I swallow. Neither of us are exactly the perfect candidates to be preaching such things.
We can hear him talking on the phone inside. You press the doorbell again, long and hard. It’s not a work call. He’s laughing, sounds casual. It’s not even important. He mentions rugby. Some nicknames. Liggo and Spidey, and the guys. I want to vomit in my mouth. He talks about a match. You’re getting angrier by the minute and I’m not far behind you. I see him peek out the window at us, then continue talking.
‘It’s one of the neighbours again,’ he says, his words drifting out the open window.
You storm off, toward the open window and when it looks like you’re about to climb in, Corporate Man is saved when we hear Monday call out.
‘Hey!’
We look up and see Monday taking off down the road after the woman who has left Dr Jameson’s house.
You and me run after him.
‘Get your hands off me!’ she’s yelling at Monday, who’s ducking and diving to avoid her flying hands and punches.
‘Ouch! Jesus!’ he yells as she catches him a few times. ‘Relax!’ he shouts and she calms down and stops hitting him. She takes a step away from him, eyes him warily, her jaw working overtime like she’s a cow munching on grass.
‘It looks like you’ve got something under your jumper that might belong to my friend,’ Monday says.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I think you do.’ He’s smiling, those hazel-green eyes alight.
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Who’s the daddy? Apple? Dell?’ Monday says and I finally get a chance to see her stomach and bite my lip to try not to laugh. There is a rectangular-shaped lump beneath her jumper.
‘Hold on a minute,’ you suddenly say, under your breath. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t look.’
‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘Because maybe’ – you turn your back on the woman, who looks like she’s considering making a run for it, and you speak from the side of your mouth – ‘maybe she got it from Dr J. Know what I mean?’
‘You think she got a laptop-shaped container of drugs from Dr J?’ I ask, and Monday coughs to hide his laugh as you glare at him.
Dr Jameson appears, cup of tea on a saucer in his hand. ‘Yoo-hooo!’
‘Ah. The drug lord himself,’ Monday says conspiratorially, and I have to laugh.
The woman starts to waddle away quickly. Monday catches her, holds on to her arm while she shouts abuse at him and accuses him of sexually harassing and abusing her. Dr Jameson makes his way over to them, the cup of tea and saucer still in his hand.
‘Mags! I just went to make you a cup of tea. You’re leaving so soon?’
There’s tugging and messing going on between Monday and Mags, and suddenly something crashes down between her legs.
‘I think her waters broke,’ I say, as we all look down and see Dr Jameson’s laptop on the ground.
You, me and Dr Jameson are sitting at the table in your front garden watching Monday fixing the laptop, which has minor damage, and listening to Dr Jameson explaining the advertisement he has placed in the local newspaper. When I hear him explain, it is heartbreaking; he has placed an advert in the paper looking for companionship for Christmas Day.
‘Carol died when she was sixty-one – too young. Too young. We never had children; as you know, I couldn’t get my act together until it was too late. I’ll never forgive myself for that.’ His eyes are watery and his jaw works hard to control the emotion. Monday stops working on the laptop and focuses on him. ‘I’m eighty-one. That’s twenty years without her. Seventeen Christmases on my own. I used to go to my sister, but she passed away, God rest her soul. I didn’t want to go another Christmas Day on my own. I heard of a lad in my golf club who put an ad in the paper for a housekeeper – she and him are practically inseparable now. Not in that way, of course, but at least he has someone. Every day. Now, I don’t want someone every day, not necessarily, but I did think that perhaps for the one day when I can’t tolerate the loneliness, perhaps I could find companionship, somebody else who feels the same way as I do. There must be people who don’t want to be alone on Christmas Day.’
It is unimaginably sad and there is not one of us at the table who has a smart remark to make, or even tries to talk him out of it. The man is lonely, he wants company: let him find it.
I can see that this strikes a chord with you. Of course it does. Your wife has left you, taken your children with her, and if you don’t manage to win her over in some way, you face your first Christmas alone. Perhaps you won’t be physically alone, not like Dr Jameson; someone, a friend, will invite you over, but even amongst the company of friends you will probably feel more lonely than ever. I can see you mulling this over. Perhaps it will be you and Dr Jameson together, sitting at opposite ends of his polished mahogany dining table, making strained conversation, or better yet, with dinner plates on your lap, watching Christmas specials on TV.
Amy’s timing couldn’t be better. She arrives to collect the kids. As usual, she doesn’t get out of the car to talk to you, she remains inside, sunglasses on, looking ahead, waiting for the children
to leap into the car. Fionn is beside her; he doesn’t acknowledge you either. You try to talk to her, she won’t open the door. Your continued knocking and pleading face leads her to lower the window ever so slightly. It is sad to watch. I don’t know what you’re saying to her, but it is not fluid. It is a disjointed attempt at you making conversation. Polite conversation with a woman you love. The kids come running down the driveway excitedly with bags in their hands. They give you a quick hug and as they’re climbing into the car they announce that they caught a heroin addict. Your face looks pained. The window shoots up. Amy speeds off.
I try to coax you into getting the letter so that I can have it in my possession, but it doesn’t work. You are most certainly too raw for that now. I formulate a plan. Operation Lemon Bowl will come to fruition as soon as your lights go out tonight.
24
I watch your house all night. I watch you like a hawk, more than I ever have before, which is saying something. I see you in your sitting room, lights on full as you watch the television. Some Sunday sports event, I can tell by the way you rise in your armchair in anticipation, then collapse back with disappointment. Each time you get up to move around the house I’m afraid you’re going to get the letter, but you don’t, you honour your word and I respect that about you, even though what I have done and what I’m about to do doesn’t command that respect. But you don’t know that.
Though I’m wired from the very idea of what I’m about to do, last night’s late hour and drinking is making it hard for me to keep my eyes open, to be alert. The headache pill makes me even sleepier and the five cups of coffee make me feel wired but an exhausted kind of sick at the same time. Finally, close to midnight, the living-room lights go off and I watch you head upstairs. I’m ready for action, but then the bedroom light goes on, stays on, as does the TV and I know I’m in for another long night. I nod off. At three a.m. I wake up, dressed, and look out to check your house. The lights are all out.
Action time.
The entire street is quiet, everyone is sound asleep, including Corporate Man, especially Corporate Man with his busy, important Monday morning ahead of him. I steal across the road and go straight to your front door with the original, now vodka-and-Coke-stained, letter and your keys from the lemon bowl. I have thought about the possibility of an alarm system, but in the entire eight months of watching you come and go, I have seen no evidence of one and surely a code would have come with the set of keys. I quietly push the key into the lock and it turns easily. I’m in. I take my shoes off and stand in the hallway, my eyes adjusting to the darkness while my heart hammers in my chest. I have not just entered a house willy-nilly, I have a plan, I have had all night to make a plan. And I have a torch.
I begin at the table in the hallway. There are envelopes on the counter, opened and unopened bills, and a postcard from Aunt Nellie who is having a ball in Malta. I check the drawer, no envelope.
I move to the kitchen, which is surprisingly in a tidy state. A few cups and plates in the sink that you’ve left until morning, but nothing offensive. Your fruit bowl has three black bananas and an under-ripe avocado. No letter. I take my time searching through the kitchen drawers. Everyone has a rubbish drawer in the kitchen and I find it: place mats, takeaway menus, batteries, bills, new and old, a TV licence, old birthday cards, pictures by the kids. No letter. There is a whiteboard with nothing on it, probably unused since Amy left the house. No notes, no reminders, shopping lists, no communication needed for a busy household because you are all alone. I suddenly feel for you, living alone in this empty family house that was once so full of life. I think of the man Amy left and I have no sympathy for him, he deserved it, but you, I feel for you. It spurs me on to find the letter.
I move to the TV room. It smells of coffee and vinegar, which matches the takeaway bags I saw you carry home from the car at eight p.m. before I was about to break in the first time. That was a good lesson. It taught me to wait, to be patient. I shine the torch on the shelving unit in the alcove. Books, DVDs – you like crime thrillers. I even see Turner and Hooch. There are framed photos on the shelves, family photos, babies, holidays, fishing trips, beach trips, first days of school. I wonder why Amy hasn’t taken them with her and I see it as a sign that she’s coming back, until my torch falls upon the naked walls adorned with hooks and realise that all this is what she left behind, including you. I am surprised to see a Psychology degree in your name and a framed photo of you in your graduation robes holding the scroll, but then I think of how you look at me sometimes, the way you try to read me as if seeing my soul and how you like to analyse me, everyone, and it makes sense. Your face grins up at me from underneath your graduation cap, as if you’ve just said something rude. You had a cheeky face, even then.
I think I hear a movement upstairs and I freeze, turn the torch off, hold my breath in the still dark silence and listen. The house is silent. I turn the torch back on and continue to root through the pigeonholes of the home-office desk in the corner overlooking the back patio. Old photos, car insurance, vouchers, random keys, no letter. I have been avoiding going upstairs for obvious reasons. It is my last resort, my worst-case scenario, but for a family home it is surprisingly clutter-free, no little piles of paperwork or collected mail. Perhaps upstairs is where I must go. I try to think of where you would keep such a thing. Not in a filing cabinet, that is too clinical, too impersonal. You have been keen to read it, which means you have been keeping it close at hand, somewhere you can regularly check on it, touch it, return to look at it. If it is not in your coat pocket that is hanging on the banister, then I must go upstairs.
It is not in your coat pocket.
I take a deep breath and then think I hear another noise at the back of the house, in the kitchen, and hold my breath, afraid someone will hear me exhale. I’m starting to panic, I need to exhale and my pulse in my ears is so loud it is stopping me from listening out and hearing what’s in the room next to me so I slowly exhale, a long shaky breath. This is ridiculous, I know it is. I should be at home in bed, not sneaking around your house. Watching it all these nights has somehow made me feel entitled; maybe I am a stalker, maybe this is what all stalkers feel, that their actions are entirely normal. But then I think of having to explain to you about writing the letter and I can’t and so I take a determined step on to the stairs. It creaks immediately and I freeze. I backtrack. There must be somewhere downstairs that I can find the letter instead of creeping into your bedroom while you sleep, which is an entirely new level of creepiness. And then I have a thought, an early memory, of something you said about how you’ve given up drink.
‘I have a photo of my father on the fridge. That helps me every time I go to open it to take a drink.’
‘That’s sweet.’
‘It’s not really. He was a raving alcoholic. The photo is there to remind me I don’t want to be like him.’
I redirect the torch down the hallway and move quickly and surely into the kitchen. I think the fridge is my answer. It was filled with drawings and gymnastic certificates but I didn’t check it for the letter. I lift the torch to shine it on the fridge door and I see the envelope, the real envelope with the fake letter and I grin with happiness but then BAM! Something hard whacks me across the side of the head, I feel it mostly in my ear, it slaps my face and I’m knocked to the ground, fall like a sack of potatoes, my legs dead beneath me, screaming in agony to the ground. I hear feet on the stairs and all I can think is that a burglar has attacked me. I have disturbed a burglar and now you are coming downstairs into danger and confusion and I must alert you, but first I must get the letter from the fridge and switch it with the original and that I could do if it were not for the ache I’m feeling in my head and the stickiness on my face.
‘I told you to wait!’ I hear you hiss, and I’m confused. You’re in on this too? The burglary of your own house? I think of insurance fraud and how I have stumbled into dangerous territory, and if you are in on it – which you must be, since you’r
e hissing at your accomplice who clubbed me, who seems to have entered the house from the back kitchen door – then I am in great danger. I should run. But first I should switch the letter on the fridge door. I lift my head up from the floor and I feel everything move beneath me. Though the room is still dark, the moonlight is casting the windowpane’s reflection on the tiled floor. It lights up the fridge and I have a surreal moment where I believe the moon, the universe is on my side, lighting the way for me, guiding me. But I can’t move.
I groan.
‘Who is it?’ you ask.
‘I don’t know, I just hit him.’
‘Let’s turn the lights on.’
‘We should call the police first.’
‘No. We can take care of this ourselves, teach this guy a thing or two.’
‘I do not condone—’
‘Come on, Dr J, what’s the point of a neighbourhood watch if we can’t—’
‘Watch, not tie up and torture.’
‘What did you hit him with? Jesus, a frying pan? I told you to grab a golf club.’
‘He came at me quicker than I planned.’
‘Hold on, he’s trying to get away. He’s sliding …’
The light suddenly goes on. I am at the foot of the fridge, mere inches away from the letter. If I stretch my arm up, which I am doing, I can almost, almost, reach it.
‘Jasmine!’ you exclaim.
‘Oh dear Lord, oh dear Lord,’ Dr Jameson says.
The light is so bright I can’t see a thing and my head, Jesus my head.
‘You hit Jasmine?’
‘Well, I didn’t know it was her, did I?! Good gracious.’
‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ you say and you both try to lift me up and carry me away from the fridge, which makes me groan, and not just from the agony. I can see the letter get further and further away from me as you take me from the kitchen to the couch. I was so close.
‘What is she saying?’ Dr Jameson asks, moving his flopping oversized ear to my mouth.
‘She’s saying something about the fridge,’ you say, placing my head down on a pillow, concern etched all over your face.