by Faith Hogan
I will help Robyn to take care of that mangy old cat – if only to annoy her parents all the more.
Chapter 6
Twenty-five years earlier…
Richard King had a girlfriend. This week she was tall and blonde and the kind of girl who didn’t want any other woman near. Amanda had worked that much out, as much from the way the girl put her arm proprietorially around him when they sat drinking their coffees, never mind how she gave dirty looks to every other woman who came within twenty paces of him. Amanda didn’t know the girl’s name, but she knew very well who Richard was, and when she caught him watching her, she guessed perhaps he’d noticed her too.
‘So, this is what you do, is it?’ he asked her one day when he slipped in on his own. It was after work, his tie was slightly askew, his jacket hooked about his thumb.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Amanda glanced over her shoulder. Her bateau top gave just enough of a glimpse of white unblemished soft skin, it made her curiously aware of herself. Her soft copper curls skimmed her collarbone and she knew she resembled Molly Ringwald at best, but that was not why Richard was interested in her, she figured.
‘I mean, here, you’re going to work in a bar all your life?’
‘Does it matter?’ She was playing with him, even though she had a feeling she was way out of her depth. She knew she was a challenge to him. Apparently, he’d dated every other girl in the bar, apart from her. They just seemed to fall for him, perhaps it was his Porsche that won them over. ‘Beer?’ she asked, bending towards the bottles of Mexican beer that he always ordered.
‘No, not this time, I didn’t come here for beer. What time do you finish up?’ he asked, moving along the counter so there was only the shining black granite between them now. ‘We could have a beer together…’
‘Oh, I don’t think so…’ she’d heard all about Richard King. He wasn’t the kind of bloke who settled for a kiss and cuddle. He expected girls to go the whole way and Amanda just wasn’t that kind of girl.
‘We could have it here, right here. No strings. Or coffee?’
‘I’m really not that interesting and I don’t think I’m your type. Don’t you have a girlfriend already?’
‘Darlene? Oh, she’s a nice enough girl, but we’re just having fun.’ He said smoothly and she was tempted to tell him that she was sure Darlene thought it was a lot more than that. ‘I’m not taking no for an answer,’ he smiled at her. ‘You can buy me a coffee, if that makes you feel better. I just want to talk to you.’ Amanda almost buckled, perhaps it wasn’t just the Porsche that won the other girls over.
‘Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to take no this time.’
‘What time do you finish?’ he persisted.
‘When I do,’ she smiled at him, enjoying his attention, ‘I’ll be going home and getting into bed alone.’
‘Ah,’ he said mock wounded, he placed his hand against his improbably breaking heart. ‘Now you’ve really hurt me.’
‘Don’t take it personally. I’m just too busy with college at the moment to see anyone.’
‘It wouldn’t have to be a thing, with me…’ his eyes crinkled and she was sure he’d had plenty of no-things all about the city before her.
‘Well, here’s the thing, Richard, it would have to be a thing for me.’ She winked at him and then turned and left him standing there.
A week later he turned up sans scary girlfriend once again. And again, she sent him on his way, rejected. Soon, it became their thing. He showed up, begged to take her out and she flatly refused. Then, one afternoon, Amanda got word that her painting would be the centrepiece of the end of term show and she was just beside herself with joy. Richard turned up as usual, probably expecting rejection.
‘Okay, I get a break in about ten minutes. I’ll get us two coffees; we can have them at the bar.’ She smiled at him, where was the harm in a coffee? It was all the nicer because he’d just stood there with his mouth open, probably in shock.
Amanda got a half-hour break. Usually, she walked around the corner to the National Gallery. She could sit there all day; half an hour gave her just about twenty minutes before one of her favourites. This week, she was working her way through the Ann Madden exhibition, Amanda could lose herself for hours before one of those charismatic works.
It surprised her that the coffee with Richard seemed to fly by even faster than one of her jaunts to the National Gallery. Afterwards, she couldn’t think what he talked about, but she had told him more about herself than she intended.
‘So, you’re an arty-farty?’ he said, draining his coffee. ‘I’m impressed,’ he took her hands, she scrubbed them clean each night before coming on shift. ‘I bet you’re really good,’ he said smoothly and she reddened because she had a feeling that somewhere in there was an innuendo that had nothing to do with using charcoal or acrylics.
‘I’m okay, I suppose.’ Amanda figured she was middle of the class, but it didn’t matter, she just loved art, always had. Everything about it just made her feel right. She loved bright colours, loved seeing the page transform and she adored the idea that something, hardly a germ of a notion, could come to life in a way that would never be forgotten.
‘So, when you graduate – will you draw or…’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean, to make a living at it, you have to be really good, don’t you?’
‘I suppose that or just know the right people. You wouldn’t believe the crap rich people buy. Don’t you think, it’s all about sales anyway? I mean, how do you know if something is good – it’s only when some poor idiot parts with a couple of hard-earned notes for it that it gets a value.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that…’ Amanda wasn’t sure if he was kidding her, so she decided, best not to rise to the bait. ‘Anyway, if I did become an artist, you could buy them…’ she smiled at him coquettishly, forgetting herself, just for a moment.
‘Oh, Amanda, I think I’d buy every one of them, if I thought it’d make you happy.’ He looked down at the table now, studied his hands for a moment, but she figured it was part of his act. It was how he drew girls in, she’d seen him do it a thousand times before. It was very subtle, but it was enough to make her realise that her break was over.
‘Anyway, I must be getting back to work. They don’t pay me for entertaining the customers, not even the regulars, I’m afraid.’
‘Pity. Which college are you in, you never said,’ he inclined his head, interested maybe as much to gauge how good she was.
‘Oh, I’m in the National College of Art and Design,’ she said, it still gave her a thrill to say that.
‘The NCAD,’ he made a little wolf-whistle, ‘well, I’ll be looking out for your end of year show.’ Across the bar, his current girlfriend or at least this week’s girl, had arrived, he put his hand up in the air, as though alerting a taxi to his whereabouts. ‘Phoebe, have you met Amanda?’ he said, his fingers resting on his lips for just one appraising moment. It was a trademark move for when he was about to tell a lie. ‘She’s sorting out some artwork for the apartment, you know, I must have mentioned her.’ The fib tripped off his tongue so easily, but Amanda didn’t care, she was much too busy at this stage trying to remember not to fall in love with him to register his only giveaway habit when he was economical with the truth.
Chapter 7
January 1 – Thursday
Amanda King was at her wit’s end. It was the first day of the New Year and none of her family was talking to her. It seemed that each of them blamed her for something and now she couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong.
It was as she was clearing up after lunch – a silent affair, with only the sound of cutlery, chewing and the incessant ping of messages on her daughter’s phone – that she realised she’d eaten the whole Christmas cake on her own – how had she managed to do that? It was only six days since she’d cut the first generous slice – how could she have eaten the whole thing in under a week, for goodness sake it must have weighed at least fou
r pounds. Amanda could feel herself sink into the kind of dark depression that only comes with a major sugar withdrawal. None of the other wives would have this guilt today, she was sure of that. For one thing, they wouldn’t have celebrated with much more than a lettuce leaf and a stiff drink, or at least that’s all that they’d have allowed to stay down. For another, as far as she could see, Nicola, Clarissa and Megan simply didn’t ‘do’ guilt. Why was that? Surely the nuns had fair aim at all of them, how come Amanda was carrying the guilt for everyone. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have their secrets, after all.
God, but that was depressing. Other women her age were having torrid affairs with younger men or building up their offshore bank accounts, or hiding drinking habits that were out of control. Typical, Amanda King’s dirty secret was she needed to eat less cake and make new friends!
As far as her figure went, the trick was, she told herself, to eat plenty this week. She might even eat enough to put her off food for life. God, wouldn’t that be marvellous. To be reaching for the herbal teabags in a moment of crisis, instead of frothing up a storm of high-calorie caffeine and pairing it with doughnuts or chocolate cake. Sure, everyone knew, diets that began on the first of January always failed. No, she would start when everyone else was falling off the bandwagon, well, that’s what she’d decided as she sat in her empty kitchen at four o’clock in the morning, polishing off the Christmas cake. There, you see, extenuating circumstances – she’d been worried, depressed… lonely?
Lonely, it was a word that she didn’t want to think about too much. Life was moving forward, it was natural for the kids to draw away from her at this stage. Every other mother over time eternal had probably had to stare down the notion of being the most uncool person in the universe, as far as her kids were concerned. Nicola thought all teenagers should be sent away to boarding school. Nicola’s kids were packed off as soon as there was the danger of a negligent hormone ripening to make her perfect life appear untidy. Amanda couldn’t remember being anything like Casper when she was a teenager. Sometimes, when he looked at her, she wondered if maybe his disdain had turned to hatred. She’d looked it up, googled it so often it came up as a default search on her phone these days, even higher in the search engine ranking than Net-a-Porter and Habitat. Mothers across the world were experiencing exactly the same thing; it was normal, apparently. So why did sharing a house with them all feel like the hollowest place in the world? More and more, it seemed to Amanda that her raison d’être was being withdrawn; her primary role snatched stealthily while she tried to grip it even harder. She could fall back on being the perfect wife to try to fill the void, but Richard seemed to be more withdrawn than ever; working late nights and having business meetings over the weekend – there was no escaping it, she felt miserable and empty.
Today, even Richard wasn’t talking to her. He arrived back from the party in a complete huff; he had hardly said two words to her since.
‘How was it?’ she asked when they found themselves alone in the living room that evening. ‘The party, after I left, did you get to schmooze who you needed to?’ She was trying to be funny, but the truth was, all the directors looked the same to her. They were all young, with glowing tanned skin and they looked as though they’d been exfoliated to within an inch of their lives. At the party, they were all in tuxedos, so Amanda found it hard to tell them apart after a while.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ He didn’t even look at her, but she had a feeling she’d hit a nerve.
‘Nothing, I was just asking.’ She guessed that Richard had not made the big impression he hoped to on the night.
‘Well, if you were that interested, perhaps you should have stayed around to find out,’ he said, lifting the iPad he was studying closer to his face. She passed across his reading glasses, which he took without any comment. He was still handsome, in a neat, squidgy way that suited his age. He looked after himself, used male grooming products so his hair was always slick, his clothes were always perfect; Amanda knew he was still attractive. His eyes were clear and piercing; he hadn’t fallen down the rabbit hole of booze or worse like so many of his colleagues who couldn’t handle the stress of their careers.
‘I had to leave, you know that.’ There was no point going over it again. Richard wouldn’t have minded if she’d stayed at home, probably. It was Amanda’s idea to tag along, well, it’d look very strange if she didn’t and Nicola Lennox had a nose for anything that seemed even a little bit peculiar. If Amanda hadn’t gone to the New Year’s party they’d have assumed it was because she couldn’t find a dress to fit, or worse, that there was some kind of trouble between herself and Richard. ‘Anyway, I hoped that you’d enjoy it. I really didn’t want to spoil your night, if I could have sorted things out here and taken a taxi back I would have…’ It wasn’t strictly true. She’d come home because she couldn’t stick it any longer. As it turned out, she was very glad she did. But, by the time the kids were in bed, Amanda felt as if the night had sucked the life from her. All she was fit for was her pyjamas, Christmas cake and a very large glass of liquor – well, it was still the season to be merry. She hated having fights, she especially hated that they always led to this cold war. That was probably the worst, for her, living in this atmosphere of rigid silence.
‘Whatever,’ Richard said and, for a moment, Amanda thought he sounded like a spoiled child. She dropped her magazine and headed for the fridge.
It was all very well for Richard, perhaps it was a man thing, but the kids, the house, absolutely nothing seemed to faze him these days. It was probably why he was so good at his job, she often thought. Richard worked very hard indeed, but you had to, as he kept telling her. Since Brexit, the Irish banking sector was under even more pressure than ever before. Everyone knew the financial services centre in Dublin was a hub of banking commerce and in the last few years it had become a portal between Europe and the rest of the world. So, while Amanda worried about cake, her husband doled out money to keep whole economies alive, drive planes around the world and establish power plants in regions she’d never heard of. Of course, with that came opportunities to make even more money, it was all about the bonuses and their divvying out was performance-related. Richard worked to get the best accounts and make the most profitable deals. His work, as he kept telling her, was not just nine to five, and so their whole lives had become trussed up in this thing he called success. Funny, but Amanda sometimes wondered if it was all worth it; as far as she was concerned, they had enough to live comfortably for the rest of their days. Of course, she’d never say that to Richard, or the girls, but it niggled at her, sometimes, it made her feel like she was completely out of kilter with everyone around her. She suspected it added to her sense of loneliness.
*
The following day, Richard was back at work and Amanda was getting his suits ready for the dry-cleaners. She always checked his pockets. He had a habit of leaving notes in them. Sometimes it was just fivers, but often enough there’d be a fifty hiding in the inside pocket, where he’d gone to buy lunch or dinner and thought better of it and put it on the gold card. They might be loaded, but Amanda could remember when fifty euros meant something to her. Fifty euros would put books in a child’s school bag in September. There were people who had to save hard for that luxury. She laid the lot on their bed and decided she may as well get his tuxedo done too. It could be months before he took it out again, but it would need freshening before he wore it for a second time.
No fifties here, she thought as she checked the pockets automatically. Then something scratched her finger, a silver foil. She pulled it out, aiming for the wastepaper basket, but suddenly froze, stared at the packet in the palm of her hand; it was a condom. She felt the blood drain from her head, as though it was rushing out of her feet. She began to sway, catching her breath. In the room next door, the thump of bass music played on as though everything in the world was as it should be. Casper was studying for his exams; or supposed to be. For a ridiculous moment, Am
anda wanted to scream. She wanted to wail at the unfairness of having her tubes tied when she really hadn’t thought it fully through. She wanted to kick Richard in his bony, arrogant, vain backside.
All those years ago he’d been a player, but that had stopped the day they said ‘I do’. Hadn’t it? This condom was not for them and so her mind raced with the terrible likelihoods. ‘For God’s sake, Casper, turn off that noise, it’s doing my bloody head in.’ Of course, she didn’t say a word. Instead, she dropped onto her lovely French empire bed and examined the foil wrapper in her hand, working hard to even out her ragged breath.
It was raspberry flavour, she stifled what she knew was a frantic laugh. The thoughts of Richard – her Richard – he didn’t even like raspberries. He was a strictly apple and orange sort of bloke; none of these girly fruits for her husband. Why in God’s name had he chosen raspberry? And what on earth was her Richard doing with a condom in his pocket?
*
It rattled around in her head for hours. A raspberry-flavoured condom. It paced with her. It thrummed out a beat of its own. Soon it sounded like one of those annoying songs that won the Eurovision years ago, and somehow pops into your head and there is no way of getting it out again. A raspberry-flavoured condom. There it was again.
In the end, she took Richard’s suits to the dry-cleaners, decided to leave the tuxedo back on the hanger and placed the offending silver packet exactly where she found it. Perhaps it had been some kind of prank. Yes, that would be it. It hadn’t been used, so, really, it meant nothing. It was just a silly mistake. Some of the wags at the office playing a practical joke, she reassured herself with the sensible voice she once used when her children were young enough to take notice of her advice. Deep down, far down in her psyche, another voice whispered, but it was too low for her to pay it any heed. That voice echoed what had lurked within her for a very long time. He’s being unfaithful to you and no matter how you try to cover things over, you know, he’s being unfaithful to you.
