The next floor down is where Lydia and Oleksander live. And the flat below that one houses a married couple, Andrei and Rosie. Mad-looking place. There’s all this gloomy, heavy furniture but it looks like it’s being edged out by a flood tide of bright, spriggy, yellow neatness.
The woman of the house, Rosie, is small, prim and pretty—immensely powerful. She’s responsible for all the yellowness and she has plans for much more of it. She even made the yellow kitchen curtains herself. And Andrei? To be quite honest, I couldn’t tell you the first thing about him because he has surrendered himself body and soul to this domestic dynamo.
In a basket in a corner, a great big donkey-like dog crouches, a leftover from the previous, dark-wood occupation and when Rosie is done with her decorating, he is all that will survive. Like Andrei, the dog adores Rosie. Adores her.
Andrei and Rosie are about to leave for the party and I follow them downstairs.
Just before Rosie knocks on Matt and Maeve’s door, she taps her watch and says to Andrei, “An hour and fifteen minutes, we leave here at five past nine, not a second later. You can have two beers. Any more and there will be trouble.”
Andrei nods. He’s very happy. He likes to know what’s what. Then Rosie smoothes her already smooth cotton shirtwaister—a great woman for the ironing—and summons up a sweet smile before rapping on the door.
And what I’m thinking is: no, not her. She’s way too joyless. Andrei might be in the running if I could extricate him from Miss Prissy-knickers but I don’t give much for my chances.
Maeve opens the door and Rosie hands over a little gingham-wrapped basket of home-made muffins and then they’re in. Andrei’s heartbeat steps up. He’s on the alert, twisting his neck like a periscope, looking for Lydia—and then he sees her, poking her finger contemptuously through the sausage rolls. She must feel his eyes on her because she looks up sharply. Their gazes lock. Andrei is exhausted in so much panic that he thinks he might have a heart attack. As far as he’s concerned, that lunacy with Lydia was the worst mistake he’s ever made and he lives in terror of Rosie finding out. Automatically, he accepts a beer from Matt—one of his allotted two—and his panic starts to abate. And when all his fear has subsided, nothing else remains. As for Lydia, her eyes slide right over Andrei, like he’s not even there.
Not them, so.
And now it transpires that it’s two gay lads who are moving into Matt and Maeve’s! They’re at the party, meeting their new neighbors. A likable pair, all smiles and banter and fashionable clobber, but neither of them is much use to me for conceiving a child with Conall.
Which means . . . there’s no spare woman in this house for Conall.
What the hell. Make lemonade. It’ll have to be Katie and Fionn.
Back up on the top floor there’s no denying the bond between them. They’re very close.
But something is off . . . They’re close, but they’re not together. They were together for a short time, but Fionn slept with someone called Alina the night Jemima, his foster-mother, died; and Katie found she didn’t give a damn, so then the whole thing was wrecked. But they’ve stayed very fond of each other, all credit to them. You more often hear about the legs being cut off good suits, so it’s nice to hear about a happy sundering for a change.
Fionn was knocked sideways by the death of his foster-mother. I suppose there’d be something wrong if he wasn’t. He’s saddled with a ton of guilt because he wasn’t there for her, and Katie’s been good to him.
Which means—all becomes clear—which means that Katie is available! Free to be with Conall! Katie’s standing up. Because Fionn’s leaving. He doesn’t live here. He did for a spell, while he filmed a television show but it was never shown, and now he’s gone back home, to some faraway rocky rural place called Pokey. He was only in Dublin today to pick up bits and pieces that used to belong to his foster-mother.
“Are you sure you won’t pop in with me?” Katie asks, making for the door.
Fionn shakes his head. “Maeve doesn’t like me.”
Katie was trying to sympathize while simultaneously keeping them moving forward. “Don’t be a baby.”
Fionn stops in his tracks and gives a thousand-yard stare. “I’m not really a party person.”
That makes Katie laugh good and hard.
“Okay,” Fionn admits. “I was for a short while. But that wasn’t who I really am. I’m a loner by nature.”
“I know.” Katie is patting him the way you would a small child. “Come on, out.”
She locks her door and they go down a flight of stairs, and as they start going down the next one, Rosie and Andrei’s dog tenses in his basket, then races out to his hall, barking and throwing himself with violence at the door. “Let me at him,” he roars. “Let me at the yellow-haired prick. I’ll have the shagging leg off him.”
In response, Fionn gives the door a good hard kick and the lock rattles. “Fuck you too, you fucking psycho,” he shouts. “You should be in a fucking straitjacket.”
No love lost.
“He’s a headcase,” Fionn says to Katie.
“So you say, but it’s Andrei’s door now; you shouldn’t really be kicking it.”
“Can you believe Jemima actually left the flat to him? In her will?”
“I’m sure she had her reasons. What use is it to you? You hate Dublin.”
Katie’s anxious. Katie wants to keep things in motion because she wants to get to the party before—
Conall’s leaving! Down on the ground floor he’s said his goodbyes to Matt and Maeve, he’s coming out of their door and now he’s in the communal hall, and Fionn and Katie are still standing outside Andrei’s flat, chin-wagging away about Jemima’s will like they have all the time in the world. Like I have all the time in the world. Which I haven’t.
“It was just a surprise, is all I’m saying,” Fionn said.
“You can hardly complain. She left you all her money.”
Come on. Come fecking ON! Downstairs, downstairs!
“And sure, what interest have I in property?” Fionn said.
“None at all. You’re a man of the land.”
“Speaking of which—” Fionn starts foostering in the pocket of his manky old jacket—“I’ve probably got something for you.”
Oh sweet suffering Jesus! Would you COME ON! One flight of stairs, that’s all you have to do. Come down, come down! Fourteen steps. It’s not going to kill you.
But Conall’s opened the front door.
“Katie?”
Down in the hall, Conall’s spotted Katie on the landing above him.
“Conall!” Katie’s face blazes whiteness. She hasn’t seen Conall since Jemima’s funeral.
Followed by Fionn, who sticks close to her, she comes down the stairs. Walking slowly and oddly, because her legs are shaking.
“Fionn.” Conall nods stiffly.
“Conall.” Fionn nods back, just as stiffly.
No love lost there either. That Fionn, enemies everywhere. Peculiar vibration off him, actually. An unusual mix of self-sufficiency, neediness and root vegetables. Specifically, turnip.
But never mind Fionn. Conall’s emotions have gone haywire. His terrible heartache is pulsing and pounding, each squeeze of his heart, each breath that he takes, more painful than the previous one. He’s wild with relief at the sight of Katie, but seeing her with Fionn is like being wounded in the guts with a spear. Warmth, wound, joy, pain: a right old emotional stew. “Were you at Matt and Maeve’s?” Katie asks him.
I love you. “I was just leaving.”
“Back to work? At eight-thirty on a Saturday night? Some things never change.”
I love you. “Katie, I’m not going to work.” He’s keen to splurge as much information as he can because he doesn’t know how much time he has before Fionn sweeps her away. “That’s all changed. I’ve taken on two partners and I’ll be getting more. Things are different. I haven’t left the country in . . .” he counts in his head, “nearly nine wee
ks.”
“God. What are you doing with your time?”
Thinking about you. Non-stop. “Dunno. Over with Joe and Pat a lot. Bronagh asks about you.”
“So if you’re not going to work, why are you leaving the party?”
Conall opens his mouth, then closes it again. He’s not sure what he should say, especially with Fionn standing at her shoulder, glowering possessively, but he came here today because he couldn’t take the pain of not seeing her, so he might as well do what he set out to do. After all, he’s a fighter, isn’t he? Or is he? He’s no longer sure. “I thought you weren’t coming. I gave up waiting for you.”
Katie screws up her face in a question. “. . . You were waiting for me?” He nods, his eyes dark, all his intensity on her face.
“Why?”
“. . . I wanted to see you.”
This is too much for Fionn, who has been feeling progressively edged out.
“Excuse me interrupting,” Fionn says, with savage sarcasm. “But I have something for Katie.”
“Sorry, Fionn.” Katie looks a little stunned. “What is it?”
“I don’t know yet, do I? I was just about to find out when your man here started shouting up to us.” Fionn rummages around in his pocket and emerges with a dark-green sprig. He bites his lip, he doesn’t seem happy.
“What is it?” Katie asks.
“. . . Ah . . . bridewort. It’s, er, the herb of love. Historically, the most popular strewing herb at weddings.”
“Who’s getting married?” Katie asks.
“You, according to the magic pocket. It must be a mistake. Hold on, I’m sure I can find you something better.” A quick rootle produces another sprig. Fionn stares at it. “Ivy.” He crumples it into nothing.
“But what does it mean?”
“Fidelity. There must be something better in here.” He delves again, deeper this time, and finds a tiny seed. He swallows hard. “Licorice.”
“And?”
“Fidelity and passion to a sexual union. I’ll try another pocket. Ah!” Suddenly, Fionn’s all smiles. “Vervain sinuata. For syphilis.” He hands it to Conall. “Probably meant for you.” Then the smile falls off Fionn’s face. “It’s not vervain, it’s myrtle.”
“Which means?”
Fionn doesn’t want to say. But they’re looking at him. He mutters, “Love and passion, the herb of Venus, the love goddess.” Once again, his hand dives to the depths. “Let me try one more.”
“This one?” Katie looks at the wilted leaf that emerges.
“Elderflower.”
“And?”
“Brings blessing to a married couple.”
Well, there’s a silence, of a type you can’t even start to describe. Conall looks confused and Katie looks perplexed, while Fionn glares from one to the other, then back again.
“I’m going home!” he announces. He steps out into the street, and over his departing shoulder, he throws back, “I hope the two of you will be very happy together.”
“Fionn!” Katie hurries after him.
“Hey, look,” Conall says, embarrassed. “I’ll leave you—”
“No!” Katie places her hand on Conall’s chest and hisses, “No, you stay right there. This won’t take long.”
“Fionn!” Katie catches up with him. “What is it?”
“You always loved him. That gobshite Conall Hathaway.”
What can she say? Yes, she has always loved him. She still loves him. The closeness she and Conall shared the morning that Jemima died felt intensely meaningful, like it was the beginning of a different sort of love, a solid, steady one. But, in the days afterward, Conall didn’t contact her and more days passed and then they were into weeks, and around the two-month mark, she made herself admit that she must have imagined the intimate trust they’d shared. The pain was atomic, quite a surprise really. She thought she knew all the different kinds of heart-break but this was a new one, a crushing sadness, an appalling knowledge of lost chances, of the life she and Conall could have had together if both of them had been just a little bit different, if he’d been less work-obsessed, if she’d been more willing to compromise.
She could have contacted him, a breezy text, a casual email—he was no longer with Lydia, no one could miss Lydia’s antics with Oleksander—but she didn’t, because . . .? Because she wasn’t starting that old thing again, begging for scraps of his time.
And then he turns up in her hallway, saying he only came to the party so he can see her. She was barely able to walk down the stairs, the way he was watching her. What was going on . . .?
Fionn is still waiting for an answer. Quickly she says, “I loved you too, Fionn.”
“I was just a bit of fun to you.”
“Nothing wrong with fun. And we’ll always be friends.”
“Yeah.” He looks a little contrite. “Sorry. Look, go back in to him. You’re meant to be together.”
“Ah, come on, Fionn—”
“No, you come on, Katie! Look at what my magic pockets were saying. Fidelity, love, union. The magic pocket never lies.”
The magic pocket is far more of a hit-and-miss phenomenon, in Katie’s opinion, but it is sort of weird that everything Fionn produced had to do with love.
“They mightn’t have broadcast Your Own Private Eden, but there’s no denying I’ve still got that old razzle-dazzle.” Considerably cheered up by his own brilliance, Fionn strikes out in the direction of the Luas. “I’ll ring you,” he calls back to her.
“Grand.” She watches him go, then she steps back into her hall.
Conall is sitting obediently on the stairs, just as she left him. There’s something wrong, a certain bareness to the picture. She finally identifies it. “Your BlackBerry?” she says. “Where is it?”
“Oh . . .” He pats his jeans pockets. “Here. Do you need it?”
“No. It’s just that I think this is the first time I’ve seen you doing nothing. Just sitting staring into space.”
“I’m telling you, Katie, I’m different.”
“So what goes on in your head now that you’re not thinking of work all the time? Like what were you thinking while you’ve been sitting here?”
“I’ve been saying prayers.”
“Prayers?” She knew this was too good to be true. He’d swapped workaholism for religion.
“Praying that you’ll come back to me.”
“Oh!” Well, maybe those sorts of prayers are okay.
“Look.” She is suddenly somber. “What’s going on, Conall? I don’t hear a word from you for four months and now you show up, talking about prayers.”
He puts his face in his hands, breathes deeply, seems to make a decision and sits upright. “All right, here’s how it is. I’ve nothing to lose at this stage. I love you, Katie. I can’t stop thinking about you. I never have, not since I first met you. But that morning, with Jemima, you and I being there when she died, I felt so much love for you, such a . . . an attachment. But you have a boyfriend, so I didn’t know what to do.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Because I’m not me, not any more. I’m different, Katie. All of that stuff happening at the same time, Matt trying to kill himself and Jemima dying and work going weird, it was no longer doing it for me, then when I heard about Maeve getting pregnant . . . I felt, I don’t know, like a miracle had happened, and . . . you know?” He shrugs. “I thought you wouldn’t meet me if I asked you to, but I was hoping to bump into you at the party.”
Katie says nothing. She’s been hoping that she’d bump into him too. She thought Fionn would never leave.
“I haven’t,” she says.
“Haven’t what?”
“A boyfriend.”
“But Fionn?”
“That’s all over. It’s been over since the night of Jemima.”
“You’re not serious.” Conall slumps into himself. “All that time . . . I don’t believe it. I thought I was going to have to fight him for you today.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions, Conall. Does my opinion count for nothing?”
“It counts for everything, as it happens. I’ve a question for you.” Conall gets to his feet and clears his throat as if he’s about to make a speech. “Katie Richmond, I love you with all my heart and I will do my best to make you happy for the rest of your life. Will you marry me?”
“Conall, for God’s sake! Can’t you do anything like a normal person? If you’re that keen, we could go for dinner or something.”
“No. No dinners, no dates. I’m in agony and I need to know. Are you in or are you out?”
“In or out? That’s not a proper proposal.”
“Katie Richmond, love of my life, owner of my heart, will you marry me?”
“. . . Well, I don’t know, now that you’ve given up your job . . . Will we be poor?”
“Not at all. Haven’t you a job? We’ll be grand.” More seriously, he says. “No, we won’t be poor.”
“Have you a ring?”
“Yes, I have a ring.”
“No!”
“What? You think I was going to make the same mistake twice?”
“Show me.”
He produces a little box and flips it open and white light blazes at them. “Diamonds,” Katie remarks.
“Unless you’d prefer emeralds?” Another box appears, containing a deep-green stone in an antique setting.
“You’re not serious.”
“Or sapphires?” And out comes another box.
“Stop, please. Conall, you haven’t changed that much!”
“I just wanted to get it right.”
“God.” Katie presses her hands over her eyes. This is all too much. “Stop asking me things.”
“For how long?”
“A while.”
Five seconds passes. “That’s a while,” Conall says. “So what’s it to be?” “. . . Ah . . . the diamonds.”
“Christ! Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. It’s a yes.”