When the Time Comes (ARC)

by Adele O'Neill

  Louise took his hand to her tummy. ‘She’s saying hello…’ She paused, noticing Kelly’s eyes widen in excitement. The small flutters she had been feeling last month had developed into more pronounced kicks and very definite wiggles and even though it was still undetectable from the outside, every time it happened and Kelly was close by, she tried to include him in the event by placing his large hand across the arc of her stomach and narrating what was happening behind it. ‘She must have heard your voice.’

  ‘Or he,’ he added for good measure.

  ‘Or he,’ she repeated.

  ‘So, not wind this time then.’ He smirked, reminding her about the confusion the first time the flutters occurred. She didn’t answer but smiled at the joke. They stood in silence, their hands interlocked over her stomach as Kelly counted the weeks left until there was a chance that he might feel the kicks for himself. According to his extensive online research, there was probably only three to four weeks to go. ‘Can’t wait,’ he said. ‘I know it sounds naff, I really do, but I seriously don’t think I’ve ever felt as overwhelmed with responsibility as I do now, but in a good way, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I think, I do,’ she answered.

  ‘And I just feel so helpless, ‘cause there’s nothing I can do to protect either of you, you know. I seem to be redundant in more ways than one.’

  ‘Kelly, I promise you that I won’t ever do anything to compromise me or the baby in work, you have to trust me on that.’ Louise tried her best to reassure him in advance of what she was about to say. ‘And anyway, you know these investigations are more station-based so the most harm I can come to is from a paper cut.’

  ‘Well, if any of those papers even so much as bump off you, you tell me, okay?’ It wasn’t just the physical strain he was worried about, he was worried about her stress levels too, thanks to an overly cautious obstetric consultant who had vehemently advised Louise against any involvement whatsoever in anything stressful to do with her job in front of Kelly, much to Louise’s annoyance.

  ‘I will.’ She knew he was just being protective of them both. Ever since he had learned of her pregnancy, he had been wound up with a mixture of delight and anxiety.

  ‘And if that prick of an inspector even once refers to your condition again—’ it was an ongoing conversation between them and Kelly knew how she hated it when the Inspector intimated that her being pregnant was an occupational nuisance to the station ‘—tell him to go fuck himself.’ He looked at her cheekily then. ‘Even though you are…’ He paused for effect. With him being twenty years her senior, he had taken a lot of slagging off over the two years they had been together – the term geriatric boyfriend had even been thrown his way – but when the consultant referred to Louise’s pregnancy as a geriatric pregnancy because she was thirty-seven years of age, he couldn’t help but see the comedic side of it and took every opportunity to tease her about it. ‘What was it the doctor said again?’

  ‘Kelly, I swear.’ She slapped him across the shoulder but couldn’t help smiling. She knew exactly what he was playing at.

  ‘I have it now,’ he stepped back bracing himself for another slap. ‘Geriatric mother.’

  ‘Oh, they made your day, that day, didn’t they?’ Carefully she stepped across the dust sheets towards the kitchen, trying not to grin. It wasn’t often, given their age difference, that she was the target of ageist jokes. Kelly followed three steps behind.

  ‘I swear to God, Tony.’ She shook her head, allowing him the small funny victory and took the kettle to the sink to fill.

  ‘Well now I know I’m really in trouble if you’re calling me by my first name.’ Seamlessly, he moved around her placing teabags in the pot and pulling two cups from the cupboard.

  ‘Mr Tony Kelly then, would you prefer that?’ she asked.

  ‘Speaking of names…’ They had done the usual new parent ritual of buying every baby name book that had been on the shelves. They had even made a conscious decision to not have something that was in vogue so that the child wouldn’t be one of six others with the same name when he or she went to school, but it was the double-barrelled baby Kennedy-Kelly that was causing Kelly the most concern.

  ‘Yes?’ Louise knew what he was going to say.

  ‘Look, I get it, I do.’ When he had proposed to her last year, the thought that Louise might take his name hadn’t even entered his head, so his concerns weren’t borne out of ego or anything like that. ‘I just hate the idea of a double-barrelled name, it’s nearly as bad as inflicting the child with a name like Apple or Banana or something.’

  ‘Or if it’s twins,’ Louise giggled which made Kelly grin from ear to ear in anticipation of what she was about to say, ‘how about Pear?’

  ‘Seriously woman…’ He shook his head. ‘You might be a pain in the arse, but you’re funny, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘You will get used to it, love,’

  ‘What, you being funny or the name?’

  ‘The name,’ she answered, ‘and we could just keep the one name if you want,’ she teased, the inference being that it would just be hers.

  ‘No, I think baby Kennedy-Kelly is just fine,’ he answered. Detective Sergeant Louise Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with and even though he wouldn’t admit it, she was usually always right. She had always been the same way, even before they had got together two years ago in Kilkenny. In fact, one of the things that had drawn them together had been their mutual dislike for many of the same things, including Inspector McCarthy, their boss when they were both detectives there.

  ‘Now, get back to work,’ she said.

  ‘So much for retirement, even McCarthy gave us a lunch break.’

  ‘I just want it to be done, that’s all.’ Her eyes flickered to the ceiling above them and her imagination roamed across the boxes that stood stacked in twos on the spare room carpeted floor.

  ‘I suppose,’ Kelly answered.

  ‘And it’ll mean you can get down to Annie tomorrow,’ she added. She wasn’t sure that he’d go once he found out about Liam Buckley and the investigation.

  ‘Yeah, she’ll be waiting for me.’

  ‘Right then, I’m going upstairs to get started.’ She tapped her brown leather bag that she had placed sitting on the chair when she came in.

  ‘Jesus.’ Kelly grinned suggestively. ‘There was a time that that sentence would have a very different meaning—and a much happier ending.’ He laughed heartily then as Louise made a swipe for him but missed and made her way upstairs.

  ‘A sign of things to come.’ Louise laughed from the upper landing, rubbing the baby inside her stomach.

  ‘Or more like a sign of things not to come,’ Kelly said.

  3.

  Normally the roads on a Bank Holiday Monday would be empty, especially at eight in the morning, but with the weather having taken a turn in the hour and a half that he was in the Garda station and the planned roadworks up ahead, Liam was sitting in his car on the coast road between Blackrock Garda Station and Oakley Drive behind a ribbon of red brake lights that snaked in front of him. Although, after the intensity of Louise’s relentlessly tough questioning, he was grateful for the time alone to decompress, get his head in gear before he got back to the kids.

  Something Louise had said before he left the station had been playing over and over in his head though. ‘Is this a case, Liam, of you playing the fool, to fool the fool that thinks they’re fooling you?’ There hadn’t been even the barest hint of emotion on her face when she had said it. Did she really think he was trying to pull a double bluff? It had distracted him so much so that when the warm drizzle of the summer’s morning had fallen on his windscreen and the automatic wipers squeaked across the glass, he jumped. Who could have framed him, if that was the case? The only other people in Jenny’s life were her children and her best friend, none of them would have had a motive to see her dead.

  Louise Kennedy had always been sharp, had always been the
one to see something from a perspective that no one else had thought of. She had always had a suspicious mind. He inhaled, ran his fingers through his hair, exhaled his exasperation and, now that he was stopped at the makeshift traffic lights, dipped his hand into his jeans pocket to fish out his phone to sift through the numerous missed calls that had vibrated against his leg while he was in the interview room. He scrolled through them, prioritised whose calls he would return first and re-dialled the first number. When the call connected to the hands-free system, he placed the phone on the passenger seat beside him.

  ‘Alex.’ He was almost breathless waiting for her to answer, a mixture of anticipation and adrenaline making his breathing shallow. He hadn’t spoken to her since the first frantic call he had made to her on his way to the hospital the evening before and in the absence of an opportunity to call her after that he had texted her instead explaining that he was with Abbie and Josh in the room where Jenny had been laid out and didn’t want to leave them on her own to make the call, nor did he want to make it while he was still in the room – that would have been disrespectful. He winced a little as he recalled how long ago that had been. Nine hours was a long time for anyone to wait, especially in the circumstances.

  *

  ‘Liam.’ Alex’s voice was cold and controlled when she answered. She might have ignored the call out of spite had she not been so worried and curious as to what had gone on. She pressed her feet against the arm of the sofa she had been lying on all night and shifted upright against the cushions, kicking the blanket away that she had pulled over her legs a couple of hours earlier. She could have gone to bed, she supposed, but she hadn’t. Instead, she had remained dressed, albeit in her gym leggings and a fleece with her runners at the ready and waited on standby for Liam to call, not knowing what to expect or when she would be needed, if at all.

  ‘Alex, I meant to call earlier, I’m so sorry I didn’t, I just didn’t get the chance before now.’

  ‘You didn’t get the chance?’ she repeated, this time pushing herself from the sofa to stand, her legs had become cramped and she needed to stretch. Besides, she was too agitated to sit still any longer. Should she have been there to show her support?

  Constantly being excluded from Buckley family life was one of the things that annoyed her most. It wasn’t as though Liam had been ashamed of her or their relationship but there had been a hangover of guilt that affected both of them and even though Liam had been at pains to reassure her that the break-up of his marriage wasn’t because of her, she still felt that some of the onus was on her. This in turn meant that she never really felt entitled to expect more but she did wish that Liam included her more and it annoyed her when he didn’t. ‘Seriously, Liam…’ she said sharply. She hated how she was feeling. It was ridiculous that even the death of Liam’s ex-wife made her feel jealous and excluded and she felt guilty for it. ‘Jesus Christ, Liam, you could have rung. I mean seriously, who does that?’ She inhaled, trying to keep her anger at bay. ‘I mean, how is Abbie… Josh?’ Her voice was high-pitched, almost frantic when she asked. ‘Did they ask why I wasn’t there?’

  ‘I told them that you were waiting for me to call you, they understood why you weren’t there,’ Liam answered.

  ‘They did…’ Well, at least someone understood, Alex thought. She lowered herself onto the bench by the balcony door. ‘It just feels odd not being with you, not being able to give Abbie a hug,’ she said softly. In the two years that she and Liam had been together Abbie and Alex had become close; her relationship with Josh was a little more complicated. Mostly because Josh blamed his dad for everything that had gone wrong and therefore by extension Alex was to blame as well. Josh’s conversations with her, on the rare occasions that they occurred, were awkward monosyllabic affairs that neither of them looked forward to and were always underpinned with an accusatory vibe. Clearly, Josh thought Alex had done something wrong and he was never going to forgive her for it. It was no wonder that Josh didn’t come to the apartment as frequently as Abbie, but both Alex and Liam were hopeful that in time it would change, that someday Josh would finally accept that she and his dad were together.

  ‘I know, but you will, you’ll get to see her soon, for now she just has a lot of crying to do and she just needs to be with… Josh.’ Alex could hear the hesitation in his sentence before he finished it. Did he substitute ‘Josh’ for ‘family’ or was she being paranoid? Should she resign herself to being on the outside for the rest of her life?

  ‘So, what’s going on Liam, why did you go to the Garda station?’

  ‘Louise did ring you then?’ he asked, confirming what he already suspected.

  ‘Of course she did, Liam. That’s what you’re supposed to do for the people you love, you tell them when something serious is happening, you don’t leave them out in the cold without a clue about what’s going on.’ She knew it sounded sharp but she couldn’t help herself, she wanted him to feel the sting. Liam fell silent on the other end of the phone. ‘I’ve been going crazy here waiting to hear from you… At least my sister had the thought in her to tell me where you were.’ She filled her cheeks with air and exhaled, then flung open the balcony door. A wisp of morning air whooshed in around her, prickling her skin. It was the same prickle of panic that she had felt the first time she had ever stood there, two years ago.

  Alex hadn’t been in the habit of going home with random strangers but she hadn’t been averse to it either so when Liam Buckley, the man she had seen numerous times on the same stool at the bar in O’ Donoghues, started to chat her up, she was intrigued as well as flattered. She had noticed him a few times before, always in the same position leaning over his newspaper, sipping at a glass of Jack Daniels and coke while he scoured every page. He was tall and handsome with a thick mop of black hair and a smattering of stubble across his strong jaw. He had seemed a bit uncertain to begin with, bungling his words, catching her eye and then looking away nervously, but as the night wore on and his alcohol uptake increased his confidence grew. It wasn’t long after her gig had ended that she was sitting in a taxi with him, having agreed to go to his apartment. Of course, she had done the usual safety checks like ringing her sister to tell her where she was going and who she was going with, but it wasn’t until the next morning that she had learned that the apartment that she was standing in, wearing his oversized shirt, wasn’t in fact where he lived, and that he still officially lived at home with his wife and two children. Her instinct had been to get dressed as fast as she could and never look back but there had been something about the way he had apologised to her for misleading her and pleaded with her to stay that had made her want to hear what he had to say. The apartment, which happened to be an investment property that he and his wife owned, had been recently vacated and when things were exceptionally tense at home, that was where he stayed. She could remember standing on the balcony that morning asking herself the same question – was she being a complete fool?

  ‘I’m just all over the place, Alex.’ His voice trailed off as the emotion he had been trying to bury made his voice wobble and threatened to explode out of him in sobs. ‘I don’t know where to start.’ She could hear him sniffle at the other end of the line. ‘Abbie needed me and I didn’t want to leave her on her own…’

  ‘Did Abbie go to the Garda station with you?’ She bristled. She already knew the answer from the information Louise had given her, she just wanted to make her point.

  ‘No, she went home with Josh… Sarah Barry drove them both home for me. I was going to ring you then but then I thought that you’d be asleep, so I didn’t.’ He puffed out a lungful of air. ‘I thought it was better to leave you asleep.’ She rubbed her face and shook her head as she listened to his excuse.

  ‘Asleep?’ she sniffed. The mere suggestion of it was insulting. She had paced back and forth all night until she finally stretched out on the sofa around 4 a.m. She might have dozed for a second but that was the extent of any sleep that she had had. Besides
, even if she had have fallen asleep, she had her phone beside her all the time, even when she had gone to the toilet. He could have, if he had wanted to, phoned her at any time and she would have answered.

  ‘I suppose not.’ He said.

  ‘More like you didn’t want to talk to me. For fuck’s sake Liam, Louise rang me, why couldn’t you?’ From what Louise had told her there were a lot of things that she needed to know.

  ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to you, Alex.’

  ‘Well, for a start Liam, what the hell were you doing in the house with Jenny on your own?’ She paused.

  ‘I don’t know, the kids had gone out… why?’

  ‘Why?’ She waited intently, repeating his question. This was the one piece of information that Louise had told her that had interested her most – not the fact that Jenny was dead, not the fact that he hadn’t told her what was going on, but that he had lied to her or at least been dishonest by omission. The volume of her voice increased a couple of notches. ‘Because you moved out of here to be with the kids… to be with the kids, Liam, they weren’t even in the fucking house!’ Questions were queuing up inside her head and she sank back onto the sofa fighting the urge to fire them at him.

  ‘It just happened that way, Alex, it wasn’t as though I had planned it.’ His voice sounded strained and cracked under the intensity of having to answer for himself all over again. ‘Look, I know… I should have rung, I’m sorry, I just wasn’t thinking straight, sorry. Really I am love, I’m so sorry,’

  ‘Look we can talk about it when you get home.’ She resigned herself to waiting to see him face to face before she asked him any more questions. Her voice was softer, the angst of earlier somewhat dissipated by his apologies and the comfort of knowing that he was finally on his way home. Even though she would never have admitted it out loud, she was relieved that Liam’s ex-wife was in fact dead. Her relationship with Liam and by extension his children, had been overshadowed by Jenny and her illness the entire time she had known him. The dynamic had always been strange, one that there was no precedent for. At least now, one way or another, when everything settled down their lives would move forward. She knew it was ridiculous to feel jealous, but she couldn’t help it. Maybe if she had ever met Jennifer Buckley, she would have felt different, but the opportunity had never been there.