‘Listen, are you okay, baby?’
‘What do you mean?’ Had he noticed how weird I was becoming?
‘I mean, your flat? You love that place. Losing it … we should talk about it.’
‘Sure. Soon,’ I said quickly. Under no circumstances did I want a conversation which bumped up against the possibility of me moving in with Artie. I didn’t want us to even think it. There was too much change going on, too much shifting and strangeness, and I wanted to hang on to what was good, not run the risk of breaking it. ‘Would you believe I’m on a job!’ I said brightly.
I knew he wouldn’t want to go with the subject change, but he’d feel churlish if he didn’t celebrate me getting some work; he’d seen how bad things had been for me. ‘So you said,’ he said. ‘That’s great. What happened?’
‘Got a call last night. After I’d left yours.’ Well, in a way, that’s how it had come about. ‘A missing person case. In fact I’ve a lot to get on with. I’d better go. Talk to you later … um, best regards.’
‘Fondest regards.’ He gave a little laugh and hung up.
I stared at my phone, musing on how unpredictable life was: Artie Devlin was my boyfriend. Had been – as Bella had pointed out last night – for almost six months.
How odd that our paths had crossed again. After he’d sent the scalpel back to me and I’d had the brief moment when I’d decided to make him mine, I’d met Jay Parker at that party neither of us should have been at and I’d been so knocked sideways that I totally forgot about Artie. Even after the break-up with Jay, a year ago, I still didn’t think about him.
Then, a couple of weeks before last Christmas, there was a fête in my local parish hall.
Now, I adored fêtes, adored them. People were often amazed that someone as sour as me would enjoy such an amateurish array – the rough-hewn cakes and the hand-knitted scratchy mittens, which on closer inspection turn out to fit only the left hand – but the more crap the fêtes were, the more charming I found them. What made them extra alluring was that, skint as I was, everything cost so little that I could afford to buy anything in the place. It made me feel rich and swaggery, like a Russian oligarch.
Outside the hall, in the church car park, Christmas trees were doing a roaring trade, being wrapped in chicken wire and hoisted into hatchbacks by the few able-bodied men on the parish committee.
Inside the hall the mood felt moderately festive. Christmas music was playing and I drifted about from stall to stall. I purchased a small home-made chocolate cake then I stopped off to inspect the tombola prizes. By Christ, they were risible: a bottle of barley water, a roll of Sellotape, twenty Marlboro Lights. But – all in a good cause, all in a good cause – I bought a line of tickets.
At the jam and chutney stand I questioned the woman closely on the difference between jam and chutney, but when she couldn’t give me a satisfactory answer I moved on, to her evident relief, without having made a purchase.
The woman in charge of the knitting stall was actually knitting. ‘A balaclava for my grand-niece,’ she said, clicking away with smug speedy pride. Is it just me or is the sound of two knitting needles clacking against each other one of the most sinister noises ever? And the strange objects that issue from the needles, would anyone ever actually wear them? Fear of this woman made me pretend to inspect her array of itchy-looking wares, but I swear I could feel hives popping up on my skin.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, genuinely baffled by something that looked like a hairy surgical collar.
‘That’s a snood,’ she said angrily. ‘A lovely hand-knitted snood. Try it on, it’ll keep your neck nice and cosy.’
It was imperative that I get away, and quickly. ‘I think you just dropped a stitch on your grand-niece’s balaclava,’ I said, and in the ensuing panic I moved on to the next table, the book stall, which was piled with yellowing paperbacks. ‘Five for a euro,’ the stall-holder barked at me. ‘Twelve for two euro.’
‘I’m not much of a reader,’ I said.
‘Neither am I,’ she said. ‘But you could use them to light the fire. Twenty for three euro. We’re looking at a hard winter. Fifty for five euro. You can take the whole table for a tenner.’
Then, having forced myself to save the best till last, I went to my favourite stall: the bric-a-brac. Or bric-a-crap, as it really should be called.
Traditionally it’s a stall strewn with absolute tat – broken old ornaments, cracked plates, a pestle without a mortar, a single roller skate. The woman on the parish committee who ends up running this stall has obviously committed some appalling faux pas during the year. It’s a real humiliation to be rostered to oversee this load of old cack.
Not only is it impossible to take any pride in your goods, but it’s a lonely sort of a spot, a veritable Siberia. Most fête customers give this stall a good swerve. The germs, you see, the morbid fear of germs. Which brings me to another item on my Shovel List: people who shudder dramatically and say, ‘EEEWWWWW,’ at the thought that another human being might have touched something. It’s an affectation imported fairly recently from the US, a very, very irritating one. I wasn’t really sure what people were trying to prove with it. That they have a higher standard of cleanliness than you? That you are dirtier than them? The fact is that the human race has survived for a very long time (way too long, in my opinion; they can bring on the Rapture anytime they like) without cave-dwelling hunter gatherers and their descendants carrying a little squeezy tube of pomegranate-scented hand sanitizer tucked into their loincloths.
I rummaged around through the bric-a-crap and had a short moment of excitement when I saw a set of salt and pepper dispensers shaped like camels that might be a possibility. Until I lifted them up and saw just how hideous they were. Hastily I replaced them.
Hope flared, then died in the eyes of the twinsetted lady behind the table.
Amidst the sea of junk I suddenly saw something that mightn’t be total rubbish! It was a silver-backed hairbrush and matching hand-mirror. There was something slightly sad and spooky about them, as if they’d belonged to an eighteenth-century child who’d died of the ague (perhaps a tube of pomegranate-scented hand sanitizer would have saved the nipper), and they would go perfectly in my slightly sad and spooky bedroom.
I lunged towards them – they were already mine – but to my great astonishment someone else got there first. Someone with a small hand and bubblegum-pink nails.
She was a little girl, well, not that little, she was about nine. She grasped the brush and mirror and held them to her pink-clad chest.
‘But I wanted them,’ I said, too surprised not to. I know that in this strange modern world we live in, children are king. Anything they want, they must get. We’re not supposed to deny them anything. We mustn’t even admit to wants or needs of our own in their presence. (Is it an actual law yet? If it’s not it will be soon. You watch.)
‘She got them fair and square,’ the stall-holder piped up. This was probably the most action she’d seen all morning.
Was there any point, me mentioning that I didn’t believe in fair and square? I was prepared to wrestle for them.
‘Oh.’ The little girl looked me in the eye. She seemed to like what she saw. ‘Please, you have them.’ She thrust the brush and mirror at me and – yes! – I took them.
‘No!’ The stall-holder lady said. She’d clearly taken agin me for raising then dashing her hopes with the camel salt and pepper shakers. ‘Little girl, you got them first. I saw it. You!’ She pointed an accusing finger at me. ‘Give the little girl back her goods.’
‘They’re not my goods,’ the little girl said. ‘I don’t know if I can afford to buy them.’
Believe me, love, I was thinking, you can definitely afford to buy them. Twinset behind the counter would be willing to sell to her at any price, no matter how low, just so that I wouldn’t get them.
The little girl had produced a small pink purse. ‘I’m buying Christmas presents for my family. I have five euro to spen
d on each of them.’
‘Isn’t that just perfect!’ the twinset lady said. ‘Five euro is exactly what the set costs!’
‘And what is their provenance?’ the little girl asked, like we were in Sotheby’s.
‘Provenance?’ Twinset asked. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘A cardboard box. Along with all this other junk.’ Twinset cast a bitter hand over her pitiful wares. ‘How would I know? I wanted to be on the knitting stall.’
I wondered what she’d done to deserve this fate. Given insufficient praise to the president of the committee’s Victoria sandwich? Cake Wars are a peculiarly savage form of engagement. Criticizing a person’s cake is nearly as bad as saying that their baby looks like a serial killer. You cannot imagine the forces of darkness that you will unleash.
The little girl gazed at me with limpid eyes. ‘Will you give this brush and mirror a good home?’
‘Yes.’
‘I trust you. I can tell you have a good heart.’
‘Well … thanks very much. So do you, obviously.’
‘Bella Devlin.’ She extended a small polite hand to me and I put my goodies down so I could shake it.
‘Helen Walsh.’
I paid the stall-holder her fiver and she rewarded me with a puckered lemony face.
‘It’s the right thing that you got them,’ Bella said. ‘I was thinking of giving them to my brother but I see now that I was wrong. Oh!’ She saw someone over my shoulder and her face lit up. ‘Here’s my dad. He’s been buying our Christmas tree.’
I turned round and there he was. Artie Devlin, the ridey police man. Scalpel Man.
‘Dad!’ Bella was bursting to share her good news. ‘This is my new friend, Helen Walsh.’
Oh my God. I stared up at Artie. He stared down at me. ‘We’ve met,’ we both said.
‘Really? How?’ Bella was amazed.
‘Via work,’ I said.
‘So how old are you?’ Bella seemed to think that she and I were roughly the same age.
‘Thirty-three.’
‘Oh, are you? I thought you were about fourteen. Or maybe fifteen. I didn’t realize …’ She went off into a little place in her head and when she re-emerged she had adjusted to the new normal. ‘You’re thirty-three. And he’s –’ she nodded at Artie – ‘forty-one. So that’s fine, you’re in the same age bracket. Are you married, Helen? Do you have a husband and babies and all those things?’
‘No.’
More calibrations seemed to take place in Bella’s head, then her face cleared and she said cheerily, ‘How about we go to your house and see if your new brush and mirror set fit in?’
‘Hold it, Bella,’ Artie said quickly, trying to hustle her away. ‘Leave Helen alone –’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to my house, even though it’s fair to warn you it’s only a flat.’
‘When?’ Artie seemed startled. ‘What? Now?’
‘Yes, come on over for a seasonal glass of Diet Coke.’ I was officially throwing caution to the wind. ‘I can even offer you some cake.’
Bella insisted on coming in my car. She said she couldn’t fit in with Artie because the Christmas tree was taking up too much room.
‘But that was a ruse,’ she said, as soon as we’d driven off. ‘I wanted to talk to you about him. He works too hard. And he doesn’t have a girlfriend. He worries about us, the kids. In case we form an emotional attachment to one of his girlfriends and then they break up. So he hasn’t had any girlfriends. But he’s really nice; he’d make a good boyfriend, if you were interested. And I can tell that you and I would have a lot in common also.’
‘Well … er …’ Christ, what could I say? I’d only popped out for some bric-a-crap and seemed to be coming home with an entire new family.
‘The break-up with Mum was very amicable, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Bella went on. ‘She has a boyfriend and he’s cool. We all hang out together, all the time. It’s totally fine.’
‘Is it?’
‘Well.’ Bella sighed, sounding quite grown-up. ‘It’s not ideal but we must make the best of things.’
Bella was mad about my flat. She ran from room to room – which didn’t take long – and declared, ‘It’s like someone has died in here, but in a good way! It’s Halloween all year round! But I’m not saying you’re a goth. It’s much subtler than that. Mum would be very interested in your design, wouldn’t she, Dad?’ To me, she said, ‘Mum’s in interiors. Now let’s brush your hair with your new brush. Can you believe how much it so belongs in this flat? It was meant to be.’
She sat me at my dressing-table mirror and brushed my hair and the whole thing was a little strange, if I thought about it, so I didn’t.
Wordlessly, Artie lounged against the bedroom wall, watching my reflection with his blue, blue eyes. I have never, before or since, wanted a man so badly.
The agony went on for a long time, Bella stroking my hair and Artie and I locking eyes in the mirror, silently combusting with longing.
Suddenly, Bella exclaimed, ‘What time is it?’ She whipped her little pink phone out of her little pink bag and said, ‘Dad, you’ve to drop me over to Mum’s! It’s her Christmas cocktail party and I’m serving the home-made époisse tuiles! So let’s all swap numbers. Helen, you tell us yours. Now we’ll text you ours.’
While Artie fiddled with his mobile, she took hold of my arm and said, in an undertone, ‘Mum has all of us kids for the rest of the weekend. He’s free as a bird. Free. As. A. Bird,’ she hissed. Then in a louder voice, ‘Goodbye, Helen, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. I know we’ll meet again.’
Awkwardly, Artie said to me, ‘It takes around twenty minutes to get over to her Mum’s.’
Which meant he’d be back in about forty minutes.
He managed it in thirty-one.
‘Bella said I was to come back,’ he said as I opened the door, letting the cold winter’s day in with him. ‘I must admit it’s a novel feeling to be pimped by my nine-year-old daughter.’
‘Let me take your coat,’ I said. ‘I’m planning for you to stay for a while.’
We both neighed with panicky laughter and I realized he was nervous, as nervous as I was.
He shrugged off his coat, a dark heavy thing, and I helped him out of it. It was the first time I’d touched him.
‘I have a coat stand,’ I said with some pride. ‘A circular one.’ A coat stand struck me as a very civilized thing to own. I’d bought it from a dead man in Glasthule – well, from his family, in an executors’ sale.
But the weight of Artie’s coat made the stand fall over. We stood and watched it as it simply toppled over, on to the floor. ‘How about we refuse to think of this as an omen?’ Artie said.
‘Okay.’
‘Just sling the coat on the couch there,’ he said. ‘It’ll be grand.’
‘What do you think of my flat?’ I asked. ‘I’m not just making conversation,’ I added. ‘Cripplingly awkward though this situation is.’
Because if he didn’t like my home, things weren’t going to work out with us.
Artie walked from the living room to the kitchen to the bedroom, silently taking note of all the different touches, and eventually he said, ‘It wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste.’
He flicked a quick look at me.
‘But then,’ he added, with a gleam in his eyes that sent a shot of sensation right to my nethers, ‘neither are you.’
Correct answer.
Right, that was enough flirting, foreplay, whatever you want to call it. I couldn’t endure any more waiting.
‘I’m worried about my bed,’ I said.
‘Oh?’ He quirked an eyebrow. Another shot of sensation to my nethers.
‘It’s quite small,’ I said. ‘What if you don’t fit?’
‘Oh …’
‘Only one way to find out,’ I said. ‘Clothes, off.’
Already he was peeling his shirt off. r />
Christ, he was gorgeous. Big and fit and sexy. I stretched him out on my bed and lowered myself on to him but within seconds his hips were arching upwards and his face was contorted. Too quick.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, pulling me down to him and hiding his face in my neck. ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It’s been a while for me too.’
But soon, we did it again, properly this time. We were left panting and exhausted, and lay in silence as the winter sky, heavy with unfallen snow, got dark outside.
Eventually I said, ‘Go on.’
‘What?’
‘This is the bit where you say, “So what happens now?”’
‘So what happens now?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not having this conversation. I don’t know what happens now. I’m not a fortune teller. None of us knows. I know your situation isn’t ideal. I know you have your kids to think about. I know we can’t insure against disaster. If we thought about all the things that could ever go wrong in a life, we’d never leave the house. We’d refuse to come out of our mother’s womb.’
‘You’re very wise.’ He paused. ‘Or very something.’
‘I don’t know what I am. But I fancy you. And your daughter likes me. And we’ve got to live our lives, risky and all as that is.’
‘The well-being of my kids is very important to me.’
‘I know.’
‘And my ex-wife is a … formidable woman.’
‘I’m fairly fecking formidable myself when I’m in the humour.’
‘I wouldn’t want to put you in any … uncomfortable situations.’
‘Please!’ I was disgusted. ‘You underestimate me. Greatly.’
So that was the wife dealt with, and the nine-year-old daughter was a rock-solid ally. The thirteen-year-old son was bound to fancy me; so the only tricky one might be the fifteen-year-old daughter, Iona. Grand, it would all be grand.
21
Somehow I still seemed to be lying on the flat of my back on Wayne’s living-room floor. I forced myself to get to my feet and I went upstairs to Wayne’s office. I was going to take another, more detailed, look at his money – any unusual outgoings, but also, more importantly, any unusual income. I admit I wasn’t approaching this case systematically, but I was following my gut. If I was interested in it, it was, by definition, interesting, right?