The Women Who Ran Away: Will their secrets follow them?

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  I looked after the company accounts for him too. I remembered enough of the accounting technician’s course to be able to keep a set of books, and I’m quick with numbers. On and off, I helped Dad out whenever he needed, so it was logical that I’d drive for him while he was sick. I wanted him to believe that I was temporarily holding the fort; just keeping the driver’s seat warm before he got back behind the wheel. We both knew it wouldn’t turn out that way, but pretending helped both of us to cope.

  He left me the car. When I went in to see him about ten days before he died, he told me that was his plan. I could keep running the business or not, he said, but the car would be worth a few bob anyway. I shushed him, telling him that it was the last thing on my mind at that moment. Which it was.

  I didn’t have plans to keep the business going after he died. But I didn’t consider selling the car either. Truthfully, I hadn’t given any of it much thought. And then I walked in on Dave and Julie, and everything changed.

  When my inadvertent gasp alerted him to my presence at the bedroom door, Dave’s eyes widened with horror and he pushed Julie to one side so quickly she almost toppled off the bed.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded. ‘You’re supposed to be at your mother’s.’

  I couldn’t speak as I watched Julie grab a light blue sundress that lay crumpled on the floor and slip it over her head. She’d been wearing a black dress at the funeral. A little short, maybe. But sombre. And appropriate. Of course the blue sundress was appropriate for a sneaky date with my husband. Even if it had ended up on the floor

  ‘Obviously I wouldn’t . . . we wouldn’t . . .’ Dave kept his eyes fixed on me. ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ I found my voice, although it trembled. ‘It’s exactly what I think.’

  Julie grabbed her leather bag (and her knickers), shoved her feet into a pair of jewelled flip-flops, then hurried out of the room without saying a word. I caught a waft of her perfume over Dave’s familiar musky scent as I stood to one side to let her leave. Then I heard the bang of the front door and I was alone with my cheating, betraying husband.

  ‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean this to happen.’

  ‘Which?’ I asked. ‘You didn’t mean to shag someone else in our home, or you didn’t mean me to find you at it in our bed?’

  Now that I think about it, maybe I was resilient after all. Or sounded it, at any rate, because I certainly didn’t feel it. It was an effort not to burst into tears. But I didn’t.

  ‘Oh, come on, Roxy love. You don’t have to make it out to be some big drama.’ Dave’s voice was cajoling. As if I was being unreasonable. As if it wasn’t the biggest drama of my life to find him naked in bed with the next-door neighbour.

  ‘What the hell are you on about?’ I demanded. ‘You were bonking Julie Halpin and I caught you. If that’s not drama, I don’t know what is. You cheated on me with the woman next door. For crying out loud, you . . . you . . .’ I covered my face with my hands. But I still didn’t cry. It was as though I’d used up all my tears for my dad.

  ‘It just happened,’ Dave said. ‘I’m really sorry, you know I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world. After I got back last night, Julie called around to see how you were. But of course you were still at your mum’s and it’s been nearly a week since you were home and—’

  ‘Five days!’ I choked. ‘It’s only been five days and you’ve moved someone else in already.’

  ‘It’s not like that at all,’ he protested. ‘I’ve been busy running backwards and forwards to the hospital and the funeral home and the church and all that sort of stuff, don’t forget. It’s been a difficult time for me too. When Julie knocked at the door, she could see I was upset and she insisted on making me a cup of tea. Then we got talking and—’

  ‘There are loads of men I talk to but I don’t end up bringing them home and sleeping with them!’ I’d suddenly found my inner rage and it felt good.

  ‘But it was an emotional day, wasn’t it?’ said Dave. ‘And I was thinking of life and death and stuff and I wanted to share it with you but you weren’t here.’

  ‘You’re blaming me?’ I stared at him. ‘You slept with Julie Halpin and you’re blaming me?’

  ‘No. You needed to be with your mum. But I needed someone too. These last few weeks have been tough.’

  ‘You are bloody well blaming me.’ I felt the throb of a headache start at the back of my skull. ‘You’re saying that I wasn’t here and you needed to sleep with someone so you took the first available woman. Not that Julie’s without blame herself,’ I added. ‘She stood outside the church and told me she was sorry for my loss. Then a few hours later she’s riding my husband.’

  ‘I know it looks bad,’ admitted Dave. ‘I know I messed up. But don’t get it out of proportion. It was a one-off thing because of the circumstances, that’s all.’

  ‘So everything’s fine now, is it?’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘You’ve slept with Julie and we go back to being good neighbours and you pop next door on Saturdays to watch football with Robbie – where was he last night, by the way?’

  ‘Out for a few pints, I suppose,’ replied Dave.

  I didn’t remember seeing Julie’s brother at the funeral but he must have been there. The church had been packed. Dad was a very popular man.

  ‘How long?’ I asked.

  ‘How long what?’

  ‘Have you had the hots for each other?’

  ‘She’s a good-looking woman,’ he said. ‘But I’ve never even noticed her before.’

  ‘I’m going downstairs.’ I ignored the contradiction in his statement. ‘I need a cup of tea. Don’t even think about coming into the kitchen.’

  ‘I have to get to work anyhow,’ said Dave. ‘I’ll be late.’

  I didn’t say anything else. I walked down the stairs holding tightly to the handrail so I didn’t fall. Then I opened the back door and went into the garden. I was still there when I heard Dave’s van pull out of the drive.

  As the Mercedes moves down the road, I switch on the radio, which is already tuned to my favourite easy-listening station. I prefer calming music when I’m driving around town; the early-morning shows with their relentlessly cheerful hosts are far too jolly. They remind me of Mica and Tom on a sugar rush.

  I leave the housing estate and turn onto the main road. It’s too early for a commuter build-up, so the drive will be relaxed even though the rain will mean more cars on the road later. I don’t need the satnav to find my first client’s house, because I’ve driven her before. She’s Thea Ryan, the award-winning actress, and she and her husband are going to London this morning for a round of chat shows to promote her new TV series. Desmond Ryan is a playwright, and according to Ms Ryan (I can’t call her Thea to her face, even though she’s asked me to), the series is based around an incident that took place in a remote farmhouse during the Spanish Civil War. It sounds interesting and I’m looking forward to watching it.

  Thea, who’s in her seventies, was one of Dad’s first clients. The production company that had made a short series narrated by her the previous year had always used Dad as a driver, and afterwards she began to book him rather than take taxis when she needed to be driven places. Although her business was irregular, Dad had liked her. He said she was ‘a tough old bird’, which I told him was surely a sexist way of referring to someone who was a national treasure. Dad rolled his eyes and told me to get off my feminist high horse. We both laughed then. I’m not a feminist. I’m not an ‘ist’ of any kind. I’m simply trying to do my best.

  The Ryan house is on the south side of the river, which means having to cross the city, but that isn’t a problem at this time of the morning. And hopefully I’ll have Thea and Desmond at the airport long before it becomes an issue. I never drive through Dublin in rush hour if I can avoid it. Stop-start driving is far too stressy. But I enjoy driving through the centre when it’s almost deserted. I’m a city girl and always ha
ve been. I like streets and houses and shops and buildings of every shape and size. I like knowing that there are people all around me. I like the buzz. The promise that anything can happen.

  I arrive outside the old red-brick house in the chichi suburb of Rathgar twenty-five minutes after setting out. Usually I text clients to say I’m waiting outside, but almost as soon as I pull up at the kerb, the brightly painted front door opens and I see both Thea and her husband framed in the light of the hallway.

  I get out of the car and take an umbrella from the boot. It has a vivid pattern of tropical palms and flamingos and is a vibrant splash of colour in the grey morning.

  ‘What are you doing!’ cries Thea as I make my way up the tiled pathway. ‘We’re on our way. There’s no need for you to get wet.’

  ‘Or you,’ I say, holding the umbrella over her. ‘By the way, this is your umbrella. You left it behind the last time. I did ask you if you had everything,’ I add. ‘I didn’t see it when I looked because it was under the seat.’

  ‘Oh, I’m hopeless with brollies,’ says Thea cheerfully. ‘I leave them everywhere! Desmond has his today.’

  Desmond, a tall, patrician man with an amazingly full head of almost white hair, holds up a black telescopic model in a faux-leather case.

  ‘Honestly,’ I say. ‘Let me get you both to the car. You might need that umbrella for London and it would be better to keep it dry.’

  They concede the point, although Desmond remarks that he should be escorting me, not the other way around.

  ‘Roxy is a modern woman with a career of her own,’ says Thea as they settle into their seats. ‘She doesn’t need men fussing over her.’

  I can’t help smiling when she says this, although the reality is, I don’t have a career of my own. Driving the Mercedes is therapy, not a career choice. And I’ve no idea how long I’ll keep doing it.

  ‘ID, mobiles, credit cards?’ It’s a question I always ask on the way to the airport. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who forget at least one of those items.

  Desmond assures me that they’ve got everything and then Thea asks me about Mum. I reply that she’s doing well, which, thinking about the shadows under her eyes this morning, I hope is true.

  Some clients like to talk and some prefer to travel in silence. Thea is a talker, although from time to time she studies a script in the car. On those occasions she tells me not to feel insulted about being ignored. I would never feel insulted by Thea Ryan, who was very kind when I first drove her after Dad’s diagnosis. She asked lots of questions about his treatment and the prognosis. They could have been intrusive, but coming from Thea, they weren’t. And because everyone else was sort of tiptoeing around his illness, it was refreshing, if a little daunting to have to talk about it. She sent the most enormous wreath to the funeral. Mum was very touched.

  ‘I’m sure it’s still raw for your mum,’ she says now. ‘It takes time to grieve and these days we don’t allow enough space for it. We like to sweep it all under the carpet and pretend we’re perfectly fine the next week. But we’re not. The problem with today’s world is that we don’t allow ourselves time to recover from anything. It’s crazy.’

  I can’t help agreeing with her. Sometimes it seems impossible to believe Dad has gone forever. I’ll walk into the house and expect to hear his cheery ‘hello, honey’ and see his jacket hung over the kitchen chair as it always was. The realisation that I won’t is like a knife cutting through my heart.

  Thea then asks after me and I tell her I’m fine, which is obviously a lie because I’m not. She doesn’t say any more, however, instead asking Desmond about their agenda for the day. It’s all interviews and publicity for the new series. Desmond wrote it and Thea is starring in it, and I gather it’s the first time they’ve worked together in years. It sounds glamorous and exciting and it’s nice to have a bit of that in the car. Most of my clients are businessmen in suits, which isn’t one bit glamorous or exciting.

  ‘Excellent timing,’ says Thea as I stop at the drop-off point. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m collecting you next Monday evening, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Desmond nods at me.

  ‘Best of luck in London.’ I retrieve the cases from the boot and hold the umbrella over my two clients. ‘I’ll be watching you on the chat shows.’

  The national treasure gives me a quick peck on the cheek, which isn’t usually part of my farewell to clients, but with Thea Ryan it seems entirely appropriate.

  ‘You’re a dear,’ she says. ‘We’ll see you back here on Monday. Hang on to my umbrella till then.’

  ‘I will,’ I assure her. ‘One last check that you have everything.’

  Both of them assure me that they’re good to go, and I wait beside the Merc until they’ve successfully negotiated their way into the terminal building. Then I get back into the driver’s seat and start the engine again.

  I’ve managed my bookings so that my next client is a pickup from the airport, but because Thea and Desmond are leaving from Terminal 2 and the nutritionist and celebrity cook Gina Hayes is arriving at Terminal 1, I have to circle around to park nearby. Gina’s flight is due to touch down in about an hour, and although Mum’s house is only ten kilometres away, the traffic will certainly be building up now, which makes it smarter to park and have a coffee at the airport rather than go home, even if it means I won’t see Tom and Mica until later. I don’t like not being there for them first thing, but it can’t be helped.

  I walk into the terminal and make straight for the coffee shop near the arrival gates. I’m desperately in need of caffeine and sugar – let’s be honest, despite whatever health benefits it’s supposed to have, hot water and lemon is an utterly useless way of starting the day. I’m pretty sure I once read that an enormous fry-up is good for you first thing in the morning, something that really appeals to me. I find it hard to believe, though, because the food I like is usually on the banned list. I’d love a sausage and rasher right now. Instead, I order a cappuccino and a muffin, which is probably worse. All the same, the aroma of the coffee is almost enough to revive me. Once I’ve taken a gulp of the cappuccino and a bite of the muffin, I open my iPad and begin to scroll through my Facebook timeline.

  I stop at the picture of Dave and the kids that I posted a few months ago. They’re all dressed in football gear, the strip of the local club the children play for. Both their teams had won a tournament in their age groups and they’re posing with their trophies. Tom is standing in front of Dave, one foot on a football, his replica cup in his hand. Mica is beside him, holding hers aloft. Someone who’s clearly not in the know about our marital situation has commented on it, which has driven it up my feed, and I feel a real pain in my heart when I recall how happy we were that day. I wonder if there’s a chance we can ever be happy again. Having said that, Dave and I are still Facebook friends. Possibly that’s more important than still being married to each other – which we still are on Facebook too. Neither of us has changed our status to ‘it’s complicated’. But it is complicated, even if Dave doesn’t think so. In his view he made a mistake and he’s sorry for it. He knows that being caught in the middle of his mistake was the killer blow. But he thinks I should forgive him. For his sake. For mine. And for the children.

  Forgive and forget. Or walk away. The pendulum keeps swinging between the two. One of these days it’ll have to stop. I still don’t know where.

  Dave called around to Mum’s as soon as he finished work that day so that he could apologise properly to me, as he put it. I didn’t want to see him, but Mum told me it would be wrong not to. She hustled Tom and Mica out of the living room, telling them that she wanted to get some McDonald’s to take away. As Mickey D’s is very much an occasional treat in our house, they were both thrilled by this. But I felt terrible that a day after burying her husband, my mother had to put my needs ahead of her own.

  I said this to Dave.

  ‘Mothers always do that,’ he told me. ‘Yours is no differe
nt.’

  ‘Well, now that you’ve driven her out of her home, you’d better say whatever it is you want to say.’

  ‘There’s no need to be like this,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you I’m sorry and I am, Roxy. I really am. I know it was wrong. And I swear to you, I’ve never, ever been unfaithful to you before. Being with Julie was . . .’ He paused. ‘Meaningless.’

  ‘It isn’t meaningless to me.’

  ‘I get that,’ said Dave. ‘I do. I was a dick. I’m sorry.’

  He looked sorry. He sounded sorry. I believed him about that.

  ‘I’m angry and disgusted,’ I told him. ‘That you could even think about it.’

  ‘I was drunk.’

  ‘And that excuses it?’

  ‘No. But it explains it. I wouldn’t have bothered with her otherwise.’

  I felt a sudden pang for Julie, whose own marriage had broken down after a couple of years because her husband had cheated on her with a colleague. And then I clamped down on any sympathy I might have had for her, because she should have known what it was like.

  ‘Come home,’ said Dave. ‘I miss you and I miss the kids. I wouldn’t have gone near Julie if I hadn’t been missing you.’

  I listened to his male logic without saying a word. On the one hand, I could feel myself wavering. Understanding, even. But on the other, five days on my own wouldn’t have made me jump into bed with another man. And if Dave’s explanations were to be believed, Julie had spent the whole night in our house. They’d undoubtedly been at it before I’d come home. So they’d done it more than once. I don’t know if I would’ve forgiven once more quickly. But twice. Or maybe more. That wasn’t a moment. That was premeditated.

  The pendulum had swung towards walking away.

  ‘I can’t come home,’ I said. ‘I’m too angry.’