Three Little Truths

by Eithne Shortall

  Cormac chewed lightly on his lower lip, mulling it over. ‘Could your ex do us a deal, do you think?’

  Robin looked up at him.

  ‘Currently, I only have the terrestrial channels, but if we’re going to go out, I should probably look into watching more sport . . .’

  She got up from her seat and went over and kissed him for long enough that the young lads at the table beside them started to cheer.

  ‘Get a room!’ they shouted.

  ‘I tried,’ implored Cormac, turning to them. ‘But she tells me she has to go home.’ Robin buried her face in his jumper though she wasn’t really embarrassed. She loved the smell and feel of him.

  He walked her to her bus stop but the next 41 wasn’t for twenty minutes so she said she’d walk home, and he said he’d walk with her, even though it was in entirely the wrong direction. She didn’t put up a fight. She liked interlacing her fingers with his in the cold and the discombobulating feeling that came with walking a route she’d taken thousands of times before with someone new. She pointed out her secondary school and the pub where she had her first summer job. He knew the area a bit and liked the houses.

  They turned on to Forest Avenue and Robin went to say goodnight. She could make it the rest of the way herself. But right in front of them were two people standing about a foot apart.

  ‘Edie?’ called Robin, squinting to see.

  She and Cormac took a couple more steps towards the silhouettes and Edie turned, her face switching so quickly to her trademark doe-eyed enthusiasm that Robin almost missed the distress that had been there before.

  ‘Hello!’ she exclaimed, looking from Robin to Cormac. ‘The hip . . . Cormac! The guy from the bar. You probably don’t remember me. I was the one Robin requested a song for the night you guys met!’

  ‘Oh right, yes. Edie. I remember the name.’ Cormac raised a hand to wave to the taller man Edie was with, but the man – Daniel, presumably – was still frowning at his wife. They had interrupted a row. Cormac did that awkward thing of turning a snubbed wave into a head scratch. Robin grinned. She wanted to reach out for the spurned hand. ‘How, ah, how did you find singing “Gangsta’s Paradise”?’

  ‘I didn’t. We left before they called it. Robin, this is Daniel, my husband. And Daniel this is Robin, Carmel and Mick Dwyer’s daughter.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Robin.

  ‘Hello.’

  Robin sympathised with Daniel. She also found it hard to plaster on a smile when annoyed. Edie, however, was clearly a master. ‘How was the theatre?’ she enthused, eyes widening as she looked from Robin to Cormac. ‘Robin said you were going. What a civilised way to spend an evening.’

  ‘I’m going on, Edie,’ said Daniel, and he lumbered off before his wife could respond.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Robin when he’d left. ‘I was calling you before I realised . . .’

  ‘Oh my God, no,’ gushed Edie. ‘It’s fine. We were just . . . Nothing.’ She smiled brightly, her eyes glinting against the streetlights. Had she been crying? ‘Just a stupid squabble. So really, how was the theatre?’

  Cormac talked earnestly about the play and Edie nodded enthusiastically but Robin could see her zoning out when he started describing the ‘soundscape’.

  ‘That sounds wonderful!’ she said. ‘Okay, well, I’ll leave you lovebirds to it.’ She kissed them both on the cheek, which took Cormac by surprise, and headed off after her husband.

  ‘She’s . . .’

  ‘Enthusiastic?’

  ‘Yeah. Nice, though.’

  ‘Very nice,’ Robin agreed. ‘She’s a good person.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Cormac, shifting slightly. ‘I could tell.’

  They both looked at each other, Cormac stuffing his hands into his pockets as he shuffled silently on the footpath.

  ‘Did you know it was Valentine’s Day when we went on our first date?’

  ‘No.’ He looked momentarily panicked, as he worked his way back through the dates. ‘You’re right, it was. God, sorry. I should have given you a card or something.’

  ‘No,’ Robin insisted, almost laughing. ‘I hate Valentine’s Day. It’s stupid. I just wanted to admit that I noticed and, even though I think it’s stupid, I took it as a good sign because I like you.’ She took a deep breath. There. Now. How hard was that?

  He looked at her in that unembarrassed, awe-filled way, like he’d just discovered some other part of her face and he liked it a lot.

  She would like, very much, to see herself through his eyes.

  ‘What?’ She grinned, knowing the answer could only be good.

  ‘I like spending time with you.’

  ‘Even though I’m a two-bit criminal.’

  He tilted his head slightly. ‘That just made you sexier.’

  ‘Next time, I have something else to tell you.’

  ‘Something bad?’

  ‘No. Just something I should have told you.’

  Cormac thought about this. ‘Well, me too, so.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Not bad,’ he clarified, ‘but if we’re laying our cards on the table, there’s something I should tell you too. A secret for a secret. We’ll swap.’ He lowered his head and kissed her softly. She was getting used to that mouth. ‘Bye.’

  Robin thrust her own hands into her pockets and swung her jacket open and shut as she bounced along Forest Avenue, past Elm and Oak Road and turned on to Pine. She licked her lips gently. It had been forever since she’d done enough kissing for them to be so puffed up. It was a pity kissing took a back seat as you got older. When you were a teenager there was months of the stuff. There was a lot to be said for chasteness, Robin decided. Well, a bit of it anyway.

  The gate to her parents’ garden was open and she turned in, swinging herself slightly on the hinge. She was about to pull the key from her bag when she heard a familiar voice behind her.

  ‘Hey, babe. Where’ve you been?’

  TWENTY

  Martha hurried from Edie’s house across to her own as a breeze whipped around her ankles. Maybe it was the alcohol, but Pine Road looked particularly charming this evening, the windows all aglow behind heavy curtains. Popping into neighbours in Abbyvale had required a ten-minute walk and a high-vis jacket. Here, she was barely outside long enough to need this wool coat.

  She pushed open her gate and bustled along the cracked garden tiles. Only when she was met with the resistance of their warped door did she remember that her new home wasn’t all positives. When the door finally gave way to reveal Robert standing at the other end of the hall, blind hopefulness across his face, her good mood evaporated entirely.

  ‘You said you’d get that fixed.’ She closed it firmly behind her and skirted past Robert into the kitchen where she switched on the kettle. In the bright lights and responsibility of her own home, the effect of the alcohol doubled. ‘Where are the girls?’

  ‘Orla’s doing her homework in the office, and Sinead’s upstairs.’ Robert returned to the stove where he had three pots on the boil and a dozen dirtied bowls sitting on the worktop. ‘They ordered pizza. So . . .’ Robert rotated a cookery book, lying open on the counter, so Martha could see it. ‘I thought I’d make us dinner.’

  Martha made dinner every night, as Robert knew well. She did the shopping in advance based on a weekly meal plan. She had the makings of tonight’s dinner, for all four of them, in the fridge, and now it would go to waste. And while Robert would make a grand gesture of cooking, he wouldn’t do the mundane, and far more appreciated, task of washing up. That would be left to Martha. When she cooked, she cleaned as she went and used about a third of the number of implements Robert did – so the workload was never divided evenly; the bulk always fell on her side. She filled a glass of water and took her time downing it. ‘What’s Sinead doing?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Robert, mildly wounded as he turned the ignored recipe back around. ‘She’s not starting a campaign to overthrow the establishment. I checked. She’s reading.’ />
  Marx? Martha thought to say, as she would have once, knowing it would make them both laugh. Now the idea of seeing him smile turned her stomach. So instead she said: ‘You didn’t give her back her phone, did you?’

  ‘No,’ said Robert, in that irritating, drawn-out way that let Martha know he was being excessively patient. ‘We told her two weeks. I do know how to see a punishment through.’

  He tasted a sauce from one of the pots and when he spoke again it was more light-hearted. ‘A woman called,’ he said, raising the statement at the end as if inviting questions. But she didn’t ask any. She just took a mug from the draining board and reached for a teabag.

  ‘She wanted to see our dog. She was on the hunt for a vicious hound that maimed her daughter or something, and for the animal’s male owner; she thought poor Oscar and me might be to blame. Sinead was out walking him when she called but I assured her it was not the same dog. Look.’ Robert grabbed a flyer from the counter and held it out for Martha. ‘She even had these made.’

  ‘I saw it,’ said Martha, keeping her gaze on her mug. ‘She called to Edie’s too and handed them out. I suppose if your daughter was harmed you would be looking for justice.’

  Deflated, frustrated, Robert put the sheet back on the counter.

  For about thirty seconds neither of them spoke and Martha wondered what he would do, what he would say, if she just screamed. He’d never heard her scream. He’d rarely seen her cry, until last year.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  Martha shrugged, even though Robert’s back was turned to her as he concentrated on the cooking. He looked over his shoulder.

  ‘Well?’

  She shrugged again.

  ‘Right,’ he sniped, turning back.

  After another twenty seconds, he spoke up. ‘You know, if you—’

  ‘Da-ad!’

  Orla’s voice travelled from the office through to the kitchen. Robert put down the wooden spoon. ‘What?’ he shouted back and Martha felt a flash of rage at how he, the adult, couldn’t just go into the next room and speak to her. It didn’t matter, though, because next thing Orla appeared at the kitchen door. ‘The printer isn’t working! It keeps flashing and saying “job queued”. I did all my science homework and now I can’t print it out!’

  ‘Did you check that there’s paper in it?’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Orla, pushing her hair out of her face and adjusting her glasses. ‘I have a very high IQ, you know.’

  Robert looked at Martha and it took everything she had not to smile. ‘Do you really need the printer?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes! I’ve made this whole presentation on atoms and I need to print it out.’

  ‘It’ll just be a backlog. I’ll fix it when I’m finished here. Okay?’

  ‘But I have to go to bed soooon,’ Orla whinged.

  The printer was always getting jammed. It was another thing Robert had said he would fix but hadn’t. ‘Your father will get it going again and then he’ll leave the presentation outside your door. It’ll be there in the morning. All right?’

  Orla gave an exasperated sigh.

  ‘All right, Orla?’ Martha pushed.

  ‘Fi-ne.’

  ‘You know why you should never trust atoms?’ asked Robert, relieved not to have to leave his precious once-in-a-blue-moon gastronomic masterpiece.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they make up everything.’

  Orla scrunched up her face. ‘Why do you even try to be funny? You’re old. It’s embarrassing.’

  Then she left the room and Martha heard her heading upstairs.

  They ate dinner in relative silence. Robert started out telling her anecdotes from his day and Martha made noncommittal sounds until he, thank God, gave up. After dinner, they told Orla to go to bed and switched between the channels before settling on some movie starring Richard Gere. Well, Martha did. Robert was mainly on his phone.

  ‘Who sends a work email at ten p.m. on a Friday night?’ he said, shaking his head at his mobile.

  ‘Who checks their work email at ten p.m. on a Friday night?’

  Martha felt Robert looking at her but she didn’t take her eyes off the TV.

  Sinead came downstairs to say goodnight around 11 p.m., allowing her parents to kiss her on the cheek. She had soccer practice in the morning. She seemed happy enough, didn’t she? All things considered and determination to take down her school aside.

  Martha did worry she’d noticed the rift between her and Robert. It really couldn’t go on like this much longer.

  ‘Are you going to fix the printer for Orla, or . . .?’ Martha said when Sinead was gone and Richard Gere had moved on to his second love interest of the film.

  Robert groaned as he pushed himself up from the sofa.

  Martha was glad she’d phoned the police. They’d had nothing new to impart but she could tell her phone call had caught them off guard. It might be enough for them to take another look at the thing. She felt she’d done something for her daughters, at least.

  Robert started banging around next door and Martha turned up the volume. Gere’s new girl was looking at him like he was an ice cream on a hot day and Martha felt a sudden flash of envy, not for Richard Gere, she’d always found him a bit slimy, but for that lustful emotion.

  ‘Fuck!’

  The ads came on and Martha went in to tell her husband to be quiet. She opened the door to find him down on his hunkers under the desk. The only visible part of him was the arse of his suit trousers and the very slightest builder’s crack.

  ‘You’ll wake the girls.’

  ‘I banged my head,’ came his muffled response. ‘There’s a couple of . . . pages . . . stuck!’ The buzz of the printer started up. ‘There! Now, it should . . .’ Robert wriggled back out from under the table and rubbed at his head. ‘A backlog,’ he said, peering down at the page coming out of the printer. ‘From whoever was too impatient to wait. Sinead, probably.’ He picked up the first couple of sheets. ‘No atoms project yet, maybe—’ He frowned down at the pages.

  ‘Just leave it to print. Orla can get her sheets in the morning.’

  But Robert stayed where he was. He held out the pages towards her, still staring at them. Martha, irritated by how slowly he worked, grabbed them.

  ‘Is that the list?’ he asked. ‘From the school?’

  She looked at it. Then she shook the page and looked again, as if it was a Magic Eight ball and she could just give it another go if she didn’t like the first fate she’d been designated.

  It was the exact photo Trish Walsh, the principal, had shown her the day Martha called to her house. It was the exact photo that had been printed out and posted on classroom doors all over the school.

  ‘Why was Sinead printing that out?’

  Martha didn’t answer him.

  ‘Martha?’

  ‘Where’s Sinead’s phone?’

  ‘Where . . .? I don’t know. You’re the one who took it off her.’

  A panic rose in her. She stormed into the kitchen and rooted around in the larder press behind the various canned goods until her hand tightened around her daughter’s confiscated Samsung. She powered it on and entered her password – she had the same password on all the family phones.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ asked Robert, before finally spotting his self-combusting soufflés. ‘Oh, bollocks! I forgot all about dessert!’

  Robert did his best to rescue the elaborate sponge and Martha scrolled through her daughter’s phone until she found the gallery. Selfies, photos of Pine Road in the early morning, on her way to school presumably . . .

  Then, there it was.

  Or there they were, to be precise. Two photos of the list on the bathroom stall wall. The exact same as the image on the sheet she was holding in her other hand.

  ‘What?’ Robert had turned off the oven and was mopping at sponge that had spilled down on to the floor of the cooker. He was only making it worse. He looked at his wife as he wiped, flicking half the
stuff out on to the floor and making hissing sounds every time his hand came close to touching the hot surface. ‘What? What is it?’

  Martha leaned against the larder cupboard and let her arms fall to her sides. She spoke quietly. ‘Sinead took the photo of the list.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sinead took the photo of the list and then she stuck it all over the school.’

  Robert guffawed. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Yes, it does.’ Martha was surprised at how easy it was to accept. ‘I should have known.’

  ‘Why would she want to publicise a rape list . . .’ Robert dropped his voice. It was the same tone he used when he talked about sanitary towels or tampons. It was very irritating. ‘. . . that had her name on it? Why would she want people to see that? There’s no way. No, no way.’ Robert came over and reached for Sinead’s phone. ‘Let me see.’ He took another step. ‘Show me what you mean.’

  Martha clutched the phone to her chest. She looked at Robert and felt the fury raging within her. ‘It’s a call for attention,’ she said. ‘For justice.’

  Robert looked from Martha to the printout that had now fallen to the floor and back to his wife. ‘Will you please,’ he said, reverting to his excessive-patience voice, ‘for just two minutes, stop looking at me like you’re willing me to burst into flames and tell me what you’re talking about. Our daughter did not take a photograph of a rape list with her name on it and plaster it all over her brand-new school where she has yet to make any friends. You’re acting crazy.’

  ‘You don’t get it,’ Martha snapped. ‘You’re so entirely self-involved that you can’t even begin to try to understand how anyone else in this family might react to a situation. Sinead made the list public knowledge because she wanted something done about it. She wants men who do bad things to be punished. She wants the world to show her that she doesn’t always have to be a victim.’

  Robert contorted his lips into an expression that was dangerously close to a smirk. ‘You sound hysterical.’