‘If it’s disturbing you so much, maybe you’d find it easier to camp in your back garden for the next few days.’
You look at me like I’m the biggest, craziest bitch and then you walk away.
There are many things that I could have said. Many many ways I could have conveyed my disappointment in the way you discussed Down syndrome. A letter. An invitation to coffee, perhaps. An adult conversation. Instead I said that, on our first meeting. I am immediately sorry, not because I may have hurt you, but because I think I may have wasted an opportunity to actually do something important in the right way. And then it occurs to me for the first time that you probably don’t even remember that particular show. You have done so many, they probably mean nothing to you. I’m just an obnoxious neighbour who didn’t tell you about her building works.
I watch you cross the road to your house. Eddie is still ignoring the world and digging up the ground, the sound of it drumming in my head. You walk up and down the front and back of your house, staring in the windows, trying to figure out how to get in. You stagger a little, still drunk. Then you go to the table and I think you’re going to sit down but instead you pick up a garden chair and carry it to the front door. You swing it back with all your might and then slam it once, twice, three times against the window beside your front door, smashing the glass. None of this can be heard over the sound of the drill. You turn your body sideways, your stocky build making it difficult for you to slide in through the narrow space you’ve created, but eventually you gain entry to your house.
Despite the fact I have witnessed you do this, you once again have made me feel like the irrational one.
7
Eddie works solidly for two hours, then disappears for three hours. During this time the machine is sitting in my front garden, which now resembles the scene of an earthquake. He has wreaked mayhem and I hate looking at it, but I can’t help it because I am watching out the window, not for you – I know you won’t surface for hours – but for Eddie who wandered off down the road still wearing his hard hat and never came back. I call Johnny, who doesn’t answer and his phone has no messaging service. This is not a good sign. He was recommended to me by the landscaper I’ve hired for my garden, which is also not a good sign.
My mobile rings and it’s a private number so I don’t answer. My aunt Jennifer has told me, drunkenly on Christmas Day, that my cousin Kevin is coming home in the New Year and wants to get in touch. This is the New Year and I have been fielding my calls like the CIA. Kevin left Ireland when he was twenty-two, at first travelling the world, and then eventually settling in Australia, though I don’t think Kevin ever settled. He went off to find himself after a flurry of family drama and never came back, not even for Christmas, birthdays or my mum’s funeral. This is the same Kevin who told me I’d die when I was five – and who told me he was in love with me when I was seventeen.
My aunt was away with my mum for the weekend on one of their retreats to help Mum and, as I always did then, I was sleeping over in their house. My uncle Billy was watching TV and Kevin and I were sitting in the back garden on the swing set, spilling our hearts out to one another. I was telling him about Mum being sick, and he was listening. He was doing a really good job of listening. And then he told me his secret: that he’d just discovered he was adopted. He said he felt betrayed, after all this time, but it suddenly made sense to him, all the feelings he’d been having. About me. He was in love with me. Next thing I knew, he was on me, hands everywhere, hot breath and slippery tongue in my mouth. Whenever I thought about him after that I’d wash my mouth out for as long as I could. He may not have been my cousin in blood, but he was my cousin. We’d played Lord of the Flies in the trees at the back of his garden, we’d tied his brother Michael up and roasted him on the spit, we’d played dress-up and put on shows standing on windowsills. We’d done family things together. Every memory of him I had was tied up in him being my cousin. I felt disgusted by him.
We didn’t speak after that. I never told my aunt, but I knew that she knew. I assumed my mum had told her, but she never discussed it with me. After that first year she went from being nervously apologetic about what had happened to being irritated by me. I think she felt that my forgiving him would be the one thing that would bring him back to her. He hadn’t left the country at that stage, but Kevin had never wanted to be a part of anything or anyone, not least his family, he’d always been troubled, he’d always been unsure of himself and everyone around him. I’d had enough to deal with at that time; his issues were too much for me. Maybe that’s cruel, but at seventeen there was no understanding of his problems; he was my gross adopted cousin with problems who’d kissed me, and I wanted him the hell away from me. But now he is back and one of these days I will have to face him. I don’t have an issue with him any more, I no longer have the need to wash my mouth out when I think of him. Nevertheless, even though I have nothing of importance to do, I can think of better ways to spend my days than engaging in an awkward conversation with a cousin who tried to French kiss me on a garden swing sixteen years ago.
It is while I’m watching out the window and waiting for Eddie to return that the house phone rings. Nobody has the number apart from Dad and Heather, and it is usually only Heather who calls, so I answer it.
‘Could I speak with Jasmine Butler, please?’
I pause, trying to place the voice. I don’t think it’s Kevin. I’m imagining he would have an Australian accent now, but maybe not. Either way, I don’t think it’s him. Aunt Jennifer would have to be incredibly cruel to give him the number. There’s an accent that I can’t quite place hiding behind a Dublin accent, somewhere outside of Dublin but inside Ireland. A gentle country lilt.
‘Who is speaking?’
‘Am I speaking to Jasmine Butler?’ he asks.
I smile and try to hide my amusement. ‘Could you tell me who’s speaking, please? I’m Ms Butler’s housekeeper.’
‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ he says, perfectly happy and charming. ‘And what is your name?’
Who is this? He called me and now he is trying to take control, but not in a rude way, he is utterly polite and has a lovely tone. I can’t place the accent. Not Dublin. Not Northern. Not Southern either. Midlands? No. Charming, though. Probably a salesman. And now I have to think of a name and get him off the phone. I look at the hall table beside me and see the pen beside the charging base for the phone.
‘Pen,’ I say, and try not to laugh. ‘Pen-ny. Penelope, but people call me Penny.’
‘And sometimes Pen?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’ I smile.
‘Can I get your surname?’
‘Is this for a survey or something?’
‘Oh no, just in case I call you again and Ms Butler isn’t home. On the off chance that that happens.’
I laugh again at his sarcasm. ‘Ah.’ I look down at the table and see the notepad beside the pen. I roll my eyes. ‘Pad.’ I cough to conceal my laugh. ‘Paddington.’
‘Okay, Penelope Paddington,’ he repeats, and I’m sure he knows. If he has any sense, he knows. ‘Do you know when Ms Butler will be home?’
‘I couldn’t say.’ I sit down on the arm of the couch, still looking outside, and I see Dr Jameson at the front door of your house. ‘She comes and goes. With work.’ Dr Jameson is looking in through the broken glass. ‘What’s this about?’
‘It’s a private matter,’ he says politely, warmly. ‘I’d prefer to discuss it with her herself.’
‘Does she know you?’ I ask.
‘Not yet,’ he says, ‘But maybe you could tell her I called.’
‘Of course.’ I pick up the pen and paper to take his details.
‘I’ll try her on her mobile,’ he says.
‘You have her mobile?’
‘And her work number, but I called the office and she’s unavailable.’
That stops me. Somebody who knows me well enough to have all three numbers yet has no idea that I was fired. I am flummoxed.
&n
bsp; ‘Thanks, Penelope, you’ve been a great help. Have a good day.’ He hangs up and I’m left listening to the dial tone, confused.
‘Jasmine,’ I call to myself in a sing-song tone. ‘An absolute weirdo just called looking for you.’
Dr Jameson is walking across the road to me.
‘Hello, Dr Jameson,’ I greet him, seeing the white envelope in his hand and wondering what on earth the street is planning now and how much I need to contribute.
‘Hello, Jasmine.’
He is dressed perfectly as usual in a shirt and V-neck sweater, trousers with the perfect crease down the middle, polished shoes. He is smaller than me, and at five foot eight I feel like an exotic, unnatural creature beside him. My hair is bright red, fire-engine red, or booster scarlet power as L’Oréal calls it. Naturally I’m brown-haired, but neither me nor the rest of the world has seen that since I was fifteen, the only traces of it now are my eyebrows, as my scalp is increasingly sprouting grey hairs rather than brown. The red, I’m told, makes my eye colour stand out even more than usual; they’re a shade of turquoise that I’m used to most people commenting on. My eyes and my hair are the first things anybody ever sees of me. Whether I’m at work or at a party, I always, absolutely always go out with my ultra-jet-black eyeliner. I’m all eyes and hair. And boobs. They too are rather large, but I do nothing unnatural to accentuate them, they stick out and up all by themselves, clever things.
‘I’m sorry about the noise this morning,’ I say, genuinely meaning it. ‘I should have warned you in advance.’
‘Not at all …’ He waves his hand dismissively, as though in a rush to say something else. ‘I was across the way, looking for our friend, but it seems he’s otherwise detained,’ he says, as if our friend – meaning you – is out in the back garden making animal balloons for a group of kids and not passed out on the bathroom floor in a pool of his own vomit. Just guessing.
‘Amy gave this to me for Mr Marshall – we can call him Matt, can’t we?’ The way he looks at me conspiratorially makes me think that he knows I’ve been watching, a lot. But he can’t know that, unless he’s watching me, and I know that’s not true because I watch him.
‘Who’s Amy?’
‘Matt’s wife.’
‘Ah. Yes. Of course.’ Like I’d known but had forgotten. I had not known.
‘I think it’s rather urgent that he receives this’ – he waves the white envelope – ‘but he’s not responding. I would leave it in the, er … open window, but I couldn’t be sure that he’d get it. Besides there’s a copy which I’d like to give to you.’ He holds out an envelope to me.
‘A copy of what?’
‘The house key. Amy cut two extra keys for the neighbours – she thought it might come in handy,’ he says, in a surprised way, when we both know it is the most obvious and sensible thing we’ve ever heard. ‘I don’t think she’s there, or that she’ll be there for a while,’ he says, his eyes piercing into mine.
Ah. Understood.
I move my hands away from the key and envelope that he’s thrusting at me.
‘I think it’s best if you keep these, Dr Jameson. I’m not the right person to mind them.’
‘Why so?’
‘You know my life, I’m coming and going all the time. I’m so busy. Work and … you know, things. I think it would be better to leave them with somebody who is here more.’
‘Ah. I was under the impression that you … well, that you are home more often these days.’
Stung. ‘Well, yes, but I still think it’s better that you keep them.’ I am standing my ground.
‘I have a key already, but I’m going away for a fortnight. My nephew has asked me to go on holiday with his family. This is the first time,’ his face lights up. ‘Rather polite of them, though I’m sure he had to be convinced of it by Stella. Lovely lady. And I do appreciate it. Spain,’ he says, eyes twinkling. ‘Anyway …’ his face darkens, ‘I’ll have to find a home for these.’ He looks extremely bothered by this.
As guilty as it makes me feel, I can’t do this. I can’t take somebody’s key into my home. A perfect stranger. It’s weird. I don’t want to be involved. I want to keep to myself. I know I watch you, but … I can’t do this. I won’t be moved, despite his worried, befuddled face. If I had a job, I wouldn’t be in this suburban mess right now, having to care about other people’s issues that they ought to be keeping to themselves.
‘Maybe you could give them to Mr and Mrs Malone.’ I have no idea of their names. I’ve lived next door to them for four years and I still don’t know, even though they send me a Christmas card every year with both their names on.
‘Well, that’s an idea,’ he says uncertainly, and I know why he is uncertain. He doesn’t want to bring them trouble. When you are locked out of your house in your angry drunken state it should not fall upon Mr and Mr Malone, who are in their seventies, to deal with your problems. The same can be said of the Murphys and the Lennons. He’s right, I know this, but I just can’t. ‘Are you sure you won’t?’ he asks one more time.
‘Positive,’ I say firmly, shaking my head. I will not get drawn into this.
‘I understand.’ He nods, lips pursed, and takes the envelope back into his two hands. He fixes me with a look and I know that he has witnessed the same nightly scene that I have. ‘I do understand.’
He bids me farewell and I have to break into a run to prevent him stepping into the road as an ambulance comes racing along at full speed. We both automatically look across to your house, thinking something must have happened, but the ambulance stops outside the Malones’ house and the paramedics rush to the door.
‘Oh, goodness,’ he says. I have never known anyone to say as many crikeys, fiddlesticks, goodnesses, goshes, and okey-dokeys as Dr Jameson.
Standing beside him, I watch as Mrs Malone is carried out on a stretcher, an oxygen mask over her face, and loaded into the back of the ambulance. A grey-faced Mr Malone follows behind them. He looks shell-shocked. It breaks my heart right there and then. I hope it wasn’t my fault. I hope it wasn’t the drill in my garden that gave her a heart attack as it had almost given you one.
‘Vincent,’ he says, seeing Dr Jameson. ‘Marjorie.’ I assume this is his wife and feel terrible for never knowing her name. Poor Marjorie. I hope that she is okay.
‘I’ll take care of her, Jimmy,’ Dr Jameson says. ‘Twice a day? Food in the cupboard?’
‘Yes,’ Mr Malone says breathlessly as he is helped into the back of the ambulance.
No. Not the wife.
The doors close and the ambulance speeds off, leaving the street as empty as it was, as if nothing has happened at all, the siren quietening as it drives further away.
‘Dear, dear,’ my neighbour says, seeming shaken too. ‘Goodness gracious.’
‘Are you okay, Dr Jameson?’
‘Vincent, please – I haven’t practised for ten years now,’ he says absent-mindedly. ‘I’d better go feed the cat. Who will feed it while I’m gone? Perhaps I shouldn’t go. First this’ – he looks at the envelope and key in his hand – ‘now the Malones. Yes, perhaps I’m needed here.’
I feel nothing but guilt and dread, and a slight grudge that the universe has conspired against me. It would be rude of me to suggest another neighbour at this point, though it is what I want to do. Two no’s in one day would not make me look good.
‘I’ll feed the cat while you’re away,’ I say. ‘As long as you show me where everything is.’
‘Rightso.’ He nods, still shaken.
‘How do we get in?’ I look at their empty house, perfect with its garden gnomes, its little signs for leprechauns crossing, and fairy doors stuck on to a tree for their grandchildren, slab stones leading all around the garden to explore behind trees and under weeping willows. The blinds are from the eighties, beiges and salmon pinks, all scrunched up like puffballs at the top of the windows, chintzy china on the windowsills and a table near the window filled with photographs. It is like a dollho
use stuck in a time warp, lovingly decorated and cared for.
‘I have their key,’ he says.
Of course he does. It seems everybody has everybody’s keys on this street apart from mine. He looks down at the envelope in his hands, your single key inside it, as though it’s the first time he’s seen it. I notice his hands are shaking.
‘Vincent, I’ll take that,’ I say gently, placing a hand over his as I take it from him.
And so that is how I end up with the letter from your wife to you and a spare key to your house.
Just so you know, I never wanted them from the start.
8
Eddie returns and does another two hours’ work. I know this because I am in the middle of forking cat food into Marjorie’s bowl when she leaps out of her skin with fright at the sound of the drill and she disappears. I think about searching for her but I don’t want to wander around the rooms and intrude, and she’s a cat, she’ll be fine. Eddie is hard at work when Johnny returns to inspect the job and it’s as if he never left at all. He listens to my complaint about Eddie without blinking, or without commenting, inspects the work, declares that they’re on schedule and they leave in a battered red van half an hour early because they have another job. They don’t go far, they reverse directly into your driveway and hop out. I’m aware that I’ve turned into a curtain twitcher but I can’t help it, I’m intrigued. Johnny measures the broken window panel beside the front door, then they take a wooden board from the back of the van, and I can’t see them but I can hear them sawing from behind the open doors. It’s only five thirty and it’s pitch-black outside. They are working in relative darkness, lit only by the porch light, and there is a faint glow coming from the back of the house, the kitchen. You must be awake now.
They spend ten minutes securing the wooden board to your window, then they hop into the red van and drive off. My garden is nowhere close to being complete.
I have your letter in my hand. Dr Jameson has made me promise that I will hand it to you directly. He and I must know that you’ve received it so he can tell Amy. I’ve left the key to your house on my kitchen counter, it looks alien there but I can’t think of where to put it. The key seems to stick out, almost throbbing on the table; wherever I sit or stand my eye is drawn to it. It feels wrong, having something of yours in my home. I look down and turn over the letter. I guess your wife, Amy, has left you, finally, and has entrusted her neighbours to make certain her words, her reasoning – I’m sure she would have taken a long time, painstakingly labouring over the letter – will reach you. I feel that I owe it to her to see that you get this letter. I should enjoy giving it to you, but I don’t and I’m glad about that. I’m not numb to human emotions the way you are.