He reached for his wallet. He had to get away from this terrible place, the site of his shame. For the second time in five minutes he said, “I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I’m not for hire, I’m actually asleep with my eyes open, I shouldn’t be on the road, I’m a danger . . .” Then she looked at him carefully. “What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
“There is. Your tie is crooked and your hair is a mess.”
“I don’t need your sympathy.”
“You’re not getting my sympathy. Put your fat wad away. I’ll drive you metered rate if you tell me what’s going on. I’m always uplifted by the misery of others. Where to?”
“Wellington Road.”
She tightened her mouth and put the car into gear. “That was a good spot, the best I’ll ever get, and it’ll be gone when I get back. This’d better be good. Is it to do with the sexy schoolteacher?”
“Who?”
“The woman with the knockers and the shoes? Your girlfriend? Gdansk!”
“Do you mean Katie? How do you know her?”
“I live in the same house. The flat below hers.”
“You do? Number sixty-six? Small world. But she’s not a schoolteacher.”
“Governess, then? So she’s dumped you, yes? Why?”
“Because I work too much.”
“Why? Short of money? Saving up for when your mother turns into a nutbar and you’ve to stick her in a home?”
“No.”
“Demanding boss?”
“I work for myself, essentially.”
“So, essentially, you work too much because you like it?”
“. . . No, not like . . .”
“Because you need to keep proving yourself?”
“I guess. That’s what my girlfriends keep telling me anyway. How did you know?”
She waved her arm, airily. “I’m always driving the likes of you. Emotionally crippled overachievers. Gdansk.”
“But I’m going to change.”
“If I had a euro for every time I heard that I’d probably live in Wellington Road, next door to you.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘Gdansk’?”
“I like to say ‘Gdansk’.”
A prolonged silence followed.
Eventually, Conall asked, “Why?”
“The beginning is cheery, it sounds like ‘G’day’ but the end has the ‘sssskkkk’ sound. I love the ‘sssskkkk’ noise. It’s like the beginning of ‘skedaddle’. You can say it to get rid of people. Like this.” She turned her attention away from the road and hissed at him with venom, “Ssssskkkk!”
Conall recoiled.
“Now, do you see?” she said. “It’s a great word. Gdansk! If you want to use it in your own life, work away. It’s my free gift to you.”
Conall was looking at her with sudden interest. What a funny, acerbic little creature she was . . .
“You’d probably charge people for the use of it,” she said. “I suppose that’s why people like me are living in Dublin 8 and people like you are living in Wellington Road.”
... and now that he looked at her properly, he saw how very pretty she was, those flashing eyes, that sexy mouth, the mass of dark curls . . .
“Then again,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m not an emotionally crippled overachiever and you are.”
... and out of nowhere, he was remembering the advice Katie had given him . . . and Katie’s advice was always on the money.
Slowly, he asked, “What age are you?”
“Not that it’s any of your business . . .”
“Not that it’s any of my business . . .” He was liking her more and more.
“Twenty-six.”
Day 40 . . .
Suddenly, Maeve was awake. She didn’t know what time it was but, from the color of the morning light, it was early, so early that the alarm clock hadn’t started its gentle chiming. What had disturbed her? Whatever it was, it hadn’t woken Matt. He was snuffling in slumber, snuggled up behind her, his front against her back. And then she felt it. His erection. Firm and springy, even through the layers of clothes they were both wearing. Insistent against her lower spine and bigger than she remembered. She had to get out of the bed.
Quickly but silently, she slid from under the covers and made her way into the hall and began to breathe again—but when she saw the piece of white paper lying on the floor beside the front door, the fear came flooding back. It so obviously wasn’t a flyer from someone offering to clean their gutters. All mail from the outside world was left on a table in the communal hall so this must have been hand-delivered from inside the building. She was afraid to pick it up. Then again, she was afraid of everything.
Dear Maeve and Mark,
I’m beginning to think you’re ignoring me! Maybe you didn’t get my other notes.
What other notes?
For the third time, I’d like to invite you along to the set of Your Own Private Eden. (Will be on Channel 8 soon.)
A plethora of phone numbers followed.
Give me a shout. Let me know when it suits you to come.
All the best,
Fionn
Fionn. From the instant she’d clapped eyes on the note, lying so innocently on the mat, she’d known it was from him. And what about the other notes he mentioned? Matt must have done something with them. Well, she’d do something with this one. She folded it in half, then in quarters, then in eighths, then in sixteenths, and would have kept folding forever except that it got too fat and refused to bend itself any smaller. Then she tiptoed into the living room and secreted it in her change purse, in her wallet, in the inside pocket of her satchel. She’d shred it when she got into the office.
Thoughts of Fionn followed her all day, like a shadow. He came with her to work and stood beside her as she destroyed his note, and he walked next to her when she did her act of kindness by going to the pub and retrieving the phone that her colleague had forgotten, and there wasn’t a moment all day long that she wasn’t aware of him.
When she let herself into the flat, she hoped she could leave him outside in the hallway but he slid in with her. He accompanied her to the kitchen to discuss dinner with Matt, and it was only when she was stretched out on the sofa in the living room, idly flicking through the paper, working her way to the television pages, that he gave her some peace.
But, suddenly, there he was! Fionn. In the paper. A color photograph smiling out at her. Goosebumps shrank her arms and cold tingles danced around the back of her neck. It’s not real. My head must have made this happen.
She touched the paper with her fingertips and the picture didn’t disappear. There was great detail; you could clearly see the individual strands of his golden hair and the fair-colored stubble on his jutting jaw line. At least, she thought she could see it. She would have given anything for someone to confirm that she wasn’t imagining this, that she wasn’t getting worse and going entirely mad, but the only person in the flat was Matt, and obviously he was the last person she could ask. The words near the photo jumped around like a flea circus, so it was impossible to discover why this man would have leaped from her head to the page in front of her. Eventually, the little black shapes organized themselves in neat lines and told her that Fionn would be presenting an upcoming gardening show—it must be the one he’d mentioned in his note.
She began to breathe more easily. This was normal. Coincidental but normal. People got their pictures in the paper when they were going to be on telly. And there were facts in there that she hadn’t known, like Fionn being from Monaghan and that the show was going to run for six weeks. No, she hadn’t imagined this.
But to see his photo, when she’d been thinking of him all day . . .
She braced herself to do the one thing she hadn’t done yet: to look into his eyes. He gazed back at her . . . and slowly he winked. She threw the paper away from her in a sharp rustle and shoved her hands between her thighs to stop them shaking.
D
ay 39
“What film have you got us?” Lydia’s mum asked.
“Pirates of the Caribbean.” Lydia was up to her elbows in sudsy water and her red face was wreathed in steam. Her hair would be destroyed. She’d look like Sideshow Bob.
“I’ve seen that before. A musical.”
Lydia paused from her energetic scrubbing. “I think you must be thinking of something else, Mum, it’s not a musical. It’s got Johnny Depp in it.”
“Johnny Depp. Oh yes, he’s lovely. Tormented. I do like a tormented man.”
Lydia agreed grimly. She had a couple of men in mind and, as far as she was concerned, the more tormented the better. Suddenly, she realized that this particular pot was done for; no amount of effort was going to shift the burned-in food. It had been heated and reheated so many times that the old food was actually welded to the aluminum and had become part of it. She hauled it out by the handle, shook off the worst of the bubbles and made for the garbage.
“Lydia, what are you doing with that pot?”
“Throwing it out, Mum. It’s done for.”
“That’s a good pot.”
“It’s burned to fuck.”
“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“Haha.” Lydia lunged, her tongue extended, and her mum beat her back.
“Get away, you filthy creature.”
Lydia picked up another saucepan and clattered it into the sink. She’d been scouring till her shoulders hurt for the past twenty minutes and the mountain of food-soiled cookware hadn’t seemed to diminish at all. It was like the Mad Hatter’s tea party—as soon as one pot or plate or cup was used, her mum simply moved on to the next clean one, washing nothing, and when she’d worked her way through everything, she began using and reusing at random.
“How will I cook a dinner if you keep throwing my saucepans out?” For a moment Lydia considered chucking them all into the bin. No pots meant no cooking meant no smelly, stinky pile awaiting her every time she arrived from Dublin. It also lessened the risk that the curtains might go on fire again.
. . . But it would unsettle Mum too much if all her pots suddenly disappeared. And Lydia was still determined that she could force Murdy and Ronnie, the lazy bastards, to do their share.
“We’ll get a takeout tonight, Mum. Chinese, you like Chinese.”
“Do I? And then will we go out dancing?”
“We’ve got a DVD. Remember? We’re watching a movie.”
“What movie?”
“You know what movie.” Please know.
“How would I know?”
“Pirates of the Caribbean.”
“Oh that old yoke.” Her mum sounded disappointed. “I don’t like musicals.”
Lydia swallowed. “It’s not a musical, you’re thinking of something else. This is good, it’s got Johnny Depp.”
“Johnny Depp! I like him. Soulful. I feel he couldn’t be happy if you put a gun to his head, do you know what I mean?”
“I do, Mum.”
“When will you be finished with the washing-up?”
Lydia surveyed the horror of the kitchen, the precarious-looking heaps of plates and pans and half-eaten food. “I’ll be a while yet.”
“I’m hungry,” Ellen declared.
“Okay, I’ll order the takeout soon.”
“Are we getting takeout? Goody!”
“I’ll just put on a machine-load of laundry first.”
In the bathroom, going through the linen basket, Lydia was surprised to find some male underwear. On closer examination she deduced they must be Ronnie’s. The stunning . . . the outrageous . . . cheek! No girl should ever have to eyeball her brother’s worn jocks! It was fundamentally wrong. She flung them back into the basket as if they were radioactive (and with Ronnie’s lifestyle, you never knew).
Carefully, she made her way back down the narrow stairs, an armload of laundry almost obscuring her vision. She kicked opened the kitchen door and Ellen was sitting in the chair exactly as she’d left her. She glared at Lydia. “This is no life for the pair of us. Sitting in on a Saturday night.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
Her mum jumped to her feet in a girlish fashion. “We should do something.” She twirled around, her arms outstretched. “Don’t you feel it, Sally? Oh Sally, life is out there, hot and hungry and vibrant. We’re letting it slip away from us!”
Lydia spent a lot of time on websites, inputting her mum’s symptoms—confusion, forgetfulness, abrupt abandonment of all housekeeping duties—and looking for a disease that would fit. But these symptoms, like Mum was channeling some shitey black and white film, what diagnosis could be made of them?
“Sally, do my hair.”
Should she? Helpless and frustrated, Lydia didn’t know if it was best to humor her or guide her back to reality. No one would tell her. No one would even admit that Mum had become a bit of a madzer.
“Put it up for me on top of my head.”
Ellen’s hair was short and had been for as long as Lydia could remember, so that made the decision.
“Mum, you know I’m not Sally, don’t you?”
Ellen studied her cautiously. “You’re . . . Lydia?”
“But you keep calling me Sally.”
“Sorry, love, it’s just you look so like her.”
“Ah Mum!” She couldn’t stem the rush of tearful exasperation.
“That’s no excuse. I mean, Ronnie looks exactly like Satan but you don’t call him Lucifer.”
“Maybe not out loud,” Ellen admitted, a sudden twinkle in her eye. “But in my head I do. Beelzebub.”
“You don’t!” It made Lydia laugh. “Beelzebub.”
“I’m not saying he is Beelzebub, just that—”
“—he looks like him, yeah, I believe you.” Lydia flicked her with a tea towel.
“Oh Lydia, your own brother! He doted on you, used to call you his little doll. You were just this tiny wee thing, but you had him wrapped around your finger. He’d have done anything for you.”
Yeah, well, that was a long time ago. He’d do nothing for her now.
“Eat up,” Mum urged.
“Yeah, okay.” With a marked lack of enthusiasm Lydia shoved another forkful of fried rice into her mouth.
“It’s delicious!” Mum exclaimed.
It wasn’t. It wasn’t revolting either, just all a bit bland. But when the double-chocolate ice cream also tasted a bit nothingy, Lydia acknowledged what she’d already known: it wasn’t the food, it was her. The flavor was gone from her life.
Without Gilbert, there was nothing to look forward to. This paper cut was taking too long to get better. Idly, she picked up her phone.
“Who are you ringing?” Mum asked sharply.
“No one.”
“Watch Johnny Depp.”
She was just checking to see if Gilbert had left a message—even though she knew he hadn’t. Just like she wouldn’t. She had two more days before Poppy’s stipulated Week of Grieving was up. Then that would be it: no more thinking about him—
“Oh Mum!” Chocolate ice cream was smeared all over Mum’s chin, dripping on to her skirt. Lydia reached for a tea towel. “Here, let me wipe your face.”
Her mum twisted away, slapping her hands at Lydia’s. “Stop treating me like a child. And why did you come to see me if you’re not going to watch the film with me?”
“I am!”
“You’re not. You’re thinking about other things.”
You see. There were times when Mum made some sort of sense, and in those moments Lydia told herself that maybe there was nothing wrong with her at all.
She ousted Gilbert from her head then stretched out her legs and put them in Mum’s lap, and gave Johnny Depp her full attention for the next two hours. Even Mum stayed agog until the credits began to roll.
“Did you like that, Mum?”
But Ellen fixed her mouth into a sullen line.
“What’s wrong, Mum?”
She wouldn’t even look at L
ydia.
“Mum? What’s up?”
“You said we were having takeout. When are we getting it?”
Day 39 . . .
Doll houses and mini-stables and tiny glittery sewing machines—so much pink. Katie was looking for a gift for MaryRose’s little girl, Vivienne. MaryRose had been very good to her this past Conall-free week and she wanted to show her appreciation but MaryRose went weird if you gave her something for herself. She actually seemed confused, as if she’d forgotten she was still a person and not just an adjunct of Vivienne, so all gifts had to be funneled toward the child. Katie dawdled beside the shelves, sightlessly picking things up and putting them down again.
Curses on Conall Hathaway!
She’d been grand last week. Well, not grand, obviously. Drinking too much and unable to be on her own and very bad company and full of fear about lesbian holiday companions. But she’d been protected by an unshakable conviction that if she kept putting one foot in front of the other, marching forward through the grief, one day it wouldn’t hurt so much.
She had lived through an entire week, including working days and the weekend and those empty little pockets of time and loss that loom at you when you least expect it, and she’d been okay. In fact, and she blushed to admit it, but last week she’d actually been a little smug. Watching approvingly from the outside, as she lived her life having made the tough choice, but the right choice. She had even been—God, she was mortified—proud of the centered, grown-up person she’d become. (And closed her eyes to the bottle-of-wine-a-night scenarios because they took the gloss off things a little.)
But now it had all gone messy. When Conall had tumbled through her door yesterday it was like he’d taken a big stick to a settled pool and stirred it furiously, churning up all the mud that had settled at the bottom.
She hadn’t been able to go back to sleep after he’d lurched off in a drunken huff, and last week’s steely certainty had steadily eroded as the day had gone on. Maybe I was too judgmental, maybe I shouldn’t have insisted on the ring—