The Girl I Used to Know

by Faith Hogan

  In the hall, the kids had left their coats across the newel post. Amanda was starving and still she couldn’t think of a single thing that wouldn’t make her sick. According to the app on her phone, she’d covered almost eight thousand steps. Usually, at this hour, she’d open a bottle of red and keep herself topped up while she prepared dinner. Tonight, she threw some salad in a bowl. Took out a lasagne she’d prepared and frozen a week earlier and popped it in the oven. There was smoked salmon and a selection of cheeses. She piled them all on a board and filled a jug of water. Then she called the kids down for dinner.

  ‘What the… Lasagne?’ Casper said when he looked at his plate. ‘Reheated…’ he shook his head and, for a moment, Amanda thought he would push the plate away. Time was he loved her home-cooked lasagne, but these days it seemed nothing was good enough. Her children were used to freshly cooked and it seemed that everything was worthy of complaint to Casper, well, everything his mother did at any rate.

  ‘Casper, if you don’t like it, you can simply lump it,’ Amanda said, feeling her temper flaring. ‘It’s home-cooked and it’s healthy, up to you.’ She kept her eyes on him, a silent ultimatum passing between them.

  ‘Huh, well, Dad would have something to say about it,’ he huffed, but picked up his knife and fork all the same. ‘Aren’t you having some?’ He looked disdainfully at her plate.

  ‘She’s on a new diet,’ Robyn said as she chewed her salad slowly.

  ‘Seriously?’ Casper said. He sneered at the jug of iced water, but it felt as though his attitude had ebbed. Amanda watched him, he really was the product of all around him. There was no doubting that there was a lot of Richard in him, but she had to take some of the blame for his sulkiness. She had pandered to his every whim over the years and, looking at him now, she knew it was time to stop. She took a deep breath, sat up a little straighter in her chair and forked some green salad thoughtfully onto her plate.

  Eating salad and ignoring the lasagne was easier than she’d expected. She loaded her plate with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber, and draped a little of the salmon across the top. Amanda had a feeling that whatever was on her plate would have tasted the same anyway – it seemed as if Richard had taken not just her spirit but her carb cravings too.

  ‘When’s Dad home?’ Casper asked, as though Richard would have any interest in the power struggle at play across the kitchen table.

  ‘I’m not sure. Ring him, if you want.’ Amanda chewed her food without making eye contact and then she began to wonder. When had Casper become the new Richard in her mind? When had he morphed into a voice that constantly criticised and made her feel that whatever she did it would never be quite good enough? And then another question occurred to her: when had Richard stopped coming home for dinner? It had never been a thing. Not a real thing she’d noticed. Had it happened after the takeover? Or his last promotion? Amanda couldn’t remember, but now she thought about it, it had been a long time since they all sat down to dinner together on a weekday. ‘Yes. You should do that. Ring him. See what time he’s due back,’ she said.

  Suddenly her lacklustre interest in her salad subsided and she sat back in her chair watching her two children. God, but she loved them so much. They had been delightful toddlers. Robyn had been such a sunny child, Casper serious but possessing a dry wit, he’d been too young to fully realise. Looking at them now, she wondered where those children had gone. These days she was lucky if they spoke two words to her, apart from when they wanted something of course. Mostly, she was lucky if Casper answered her with anything more than a grunt. Robyn was still sweet, if a little odd. She seemed to spend all her time hanging about the garden these days. Was that normal? Was it how other families lived around Dublin? Sharing houses with each other, but the only sound between them the blaring music or that strange silent world stifled by expensive Bluetooth earbuds. It seemed to Amanda that her family spent their time avoiding each other. Even car journeys now were an opportunity to make her feel as though she was somehow taking up their precious time. Invading the lives that not so long ago she’d been so totally central to. It struck her too, as she watched them flick fingers across screens while they chewed their food distractedly, that she didn’t really know them anymore. Her own children and it felt as though they were living in completely different worlds.

  ‘Anyone fancy coming to the cinema tonight?’ she said more brightly than she felt. The cinema had always been a popular destination.

  ‘Seriously, Mum?’ Casper didn’t take his eyes from the screen in front of him, but she had a feeling that if he looked at her it would be with the blankness of a stranger. Robyn just sighed and smiled as though she knew her mother was making an effort, but really she was a little sad. Sometimes, Amanda felt she had turned into a ‘Line-dancing Linda’, without the sparkly shoes or the adoring husband. So, she sat there, willing herself not to cry, because she had a feeling if she let one tear drop now, she might never be able to stop.

  Chapter 15

  Forty-eight years earlier…

  ‘You look lovely,’ Tess said when she saw Nancy emerge from her room. She wore a lovely red housecoat, but there was never any contest between the sisters. Tess had always been the beauty compared to Nancy’s pared-down prettiness. They were alike, really, both tall, both narrow-framed, both with blues eyes and brown hair, but that didn’t do them justice, because everything about Tess was so much more. Her eyes were cobalt blue, compared to Nancy’s navy. Her hair was chestnut compared to Nancy’s mousy colour. And Tess’s smile was wide and bright, whereas Nancy hardly ever smiled at all. ‘You really don’t have to tag along every week though.’

  ‘Well, we can’t leave Douglas sitting on his own now, can we?’ Nancy said and Tess wondered at the way her sister and Douglas Buckley sat each week to keep an eye out for her in a darkened corner where they still managed to look out of place. Nancy and Douglas together were, for all the world, like an old married couple, like her parents, really, sitting nursing drinks they had little interest in. But afterwards, alone within the darkness of the porch and in Douglas’s arms, she felt he was nothing like her father.

  The Sunset Club was a regular date. Now, Tess had a full set worked up and she and the band were taking on the occasional wedding ceremony too. She was making a nice little wage and the first thing she’d done was bring Nancy shopping. Tess thought they’d been transformed from their woollen tweediness to city girls. Tess had even bought some make-up and instead of cutting off her long hair, she’d set up a regular appointment to have it ‘done’ before the Sunset gigs. The most she’d persuaded Nancy into was jade bell-bottoms with a frilly blouse that cascaded down in ruffles around her neck. Her hair remained long and unbiddable – there was no talking her into anything trendier.

  Soon, Tess’s life took on a frenetic pace, she was happier than she ever imagined she could be. Moving between the college and the club, her world filled with new and exciting people. She sparkled her way through life and having Douglas in her arms and Nancy in the background was the foundation to her whirlwind existence. Far from losing its glitz, Tess loved the Sunset Club more than ever. She could see its seediness – she wasn’t blind, but it wasn’t about the place, it was about the feeling. The feeling when she got up on that stage and knew that every single eye was on her. It was about a new kind of power that Tess never realised she had before. Douglas drank her every movement in with his eyes and fought himself to keep them from consummating their relationship on the doorstep when they arrived back from the club. She might have done it, right there, in the open air, but for his reserve. There was something wanton about it, something euphoric about them together after she’d just come out of the limelight.

  He was adamant. He would wait until it was right, she thought perhaps, he meant his wedding night. His sense of propriety, or maybe his fear of making her pregnant, worked to hold them both back and the longer it went on, the more promise reared in the ardent space between them.

  The nights here
in the club were when she knew she shone. While he sat with Nancy, in the dark, Tess could feel his eyes upon her. If she was truthful, she sang for Douglas – not for anyone else in that smoky little bar. He had taken on the mantle of protector – walking both herself and Nancy to the club and home again. Tess heard the rumours – these streets, the derelict tenements, crawled with underdogs – Ireland was at war – but it was not the Ireland of people like Tess or Nancy or Douglas. Dublin was just a few hours’ drive away from the troubles in the North and, all too often, they had a habit of leaking into the city, albeit in a furtive, hidden manner. The Sunset club was home to too many northern accents not to realise the danger. Tess loved Douglas Buckley even more for that. Sometimes, she caught a glimpse of him through the darkened crowd, his eyes, or just the hint of a smile, and then she smiled in his direction, certain that their connection deepened with each passing moment.

  And now the end of term dance was coming up. Tess knew it was her chance to firm things up between them. Tess and Douglas Buckley would be the most striking couple there.

  ‘It’s a grand ball,’ he confirmed.

  ‘I’m so looking forward to it,’ she breathed as they walked home one night, and she was, although she was filled with dread at the looming exams. Douglas was linking both sisters. Nancy her usual quiet self, had no real plans to finish up the term.

  Tess set about planning her gown, her hair and the way her new self-assurance would allow her to swagger in with more poise than any other girl in Dublin. She deserved Douglas – she had worked herself up to earn him, become worldly and shed the awkwardness of her rearing. Ballycove seemed as if it might be a lifetime away. Sometimes she thought of life there and it bothered her, not so much that Nancy missed it, but rather she feared it was the sort of place Douglas might adore.

  She would ask him in college in a few days’ time. It was silly to get so worked up about him asking her to be his date, perhaps he just assumed it would be so.

  As it turned out, she didn’t get a chance. The next few days were taken up with exams for the senior students. Douglas seemed to spend all his time in the library and when he wasn’t there, he was not in the mood to talk about balls or gowns or even dates for that matter. So the arrangements settled on the unsaid words between them.

  The following Wednesday she arrived back to the flat later than usual and stopped short to find him sitting on the grubby chocolate settee with Nancy.

  ‘Oh,’ she said and then remembered to pinch her lips back from the circle. ‘I haven’t seen you all week.’ She cleared her throat; wound the long scarf away from her neck before hanging it on the hook that took their coats and hats and bags. There were just three hooks on the door, one of them held Douglas’s coat and she saw it was dry. It had been raining all afternoon, but she left the knowledge to settle upon her. Perhaps he got a lift – or… then she noticed Nancy. ‘Are you all right, Nancy, what’s happened?’ Her sister’s ivory complexion had faded to an insubstantial grey. Her skin was a silky drape across cheekbones that seemed to sharpen overnight.

  ‘They sent me home, early. I didn’t feel well and they told me I needed to call someone so…’ she looked up at Douglas, smiled the sort of serene smile that once they had both shared. ‘He collected me in a taxi and brought me here. I’m fine now, really.’ Her eyes sold out the vulnerability that she was trying hard to mask in her voice. ‘I didn’t want to bother you when you were doing your recital today.’

  ‘Really, I don’t mind staying here for as long as you’re feeling under the weather.’ His voice strained a mixture of affection and concern.

  ‘It’s probably just a bug, or something equally dull, you don’t want to get it either.’

  ‘It’ll take more than germs to put me down,’ he joked.

  ‘No, really, you should go now,’ Nancy said, catching something in Tess’s eyes.

  Tess walked him to the door. ‘No Sunset club this week,’ she said as they looked out into the darkness, ‘but at least we have the ball to look forward to.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the ball,’ he said absently. ‘Are you going?’

  ‘I…’ she looked at him now and he seemed to be completely unaware of her plans for them both. ‘I assumed we’d be going together, Douglas.’

  ‘Oh, did you? Well, I didn’t really think about it, not really my thing, you know, but if you want…’ he said, smiling affably at her. ‘Of course, we can go together. I’ll pick you up here, yes? Will Nancy be coming along? She really doesn’t look well at all,’ he said now, looking back over Tess’s shoulder.

  ‘No. I shouldn’t think so, it’ll be just the two of us this time.’ Tess leant forward and breathed into his ear, but somehow, without the caged-up energy of the Sunset Club inside her, it seemed as though there was some ingredient missing between them. ‘Just us,’ she said again, as he suddenly pulled away from her.

  ‘Well, I’ll pick you up about seven, here? We can walk to the college if the weather is fine.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Tess said as she watched him heading off into the evening dampness. ‘Perfect,’ and of course it was, because Douglas was the love of her life and, some day, when they were married and, who knew, maybe living in Aunt Beatrice’s little cottage if that’s what Douglas truly wanted, life would be absolutely perfect for them both. Tess shook off whatever daft notions had welled up inside her only minutes ago. She could be such a silly fool sometimes.

  Chapter 16

  January 10 – Saturday

  The rap on her front door startled Tess. It seemed in the last week it had been increasingly busy, between the glass fitters and the cat, it felt like she was suddenly popular compared to normal. Usually, no one ever called to visit. It took a moment to pick out its significance, once the sound itched her attention away from the cat in the small bed she’d made before her gentle fire.

  Tess jumped up, then stood for a moment – perhaps she’d heard wrong. This old place was full of creaks and unexpected bangs, pipes and brickwork moaning and yawning for no particular reason. She’d gotten used to all of them over the years, even the new ones that arrived after upstairs had been ripped apart only to be put back together again.

  No, this was definitely her door. She caught sight of herself in an old picture of the sacred heart – its light long extinguished. She might have moved it years ago, but she hardly noticed it anymore. These days she only used it as a nebulous mirror. It was good enough to check out all she wanted, but not so clear, that she ever had to look her reflection in the eye. She tried to smooth down brittle hair that stood on end too long to pay attention at this point, so she made her way to the door, a globule of irritated anticipation rising in her as she walked.

  ‘Mrs Cuffe.’ It was Robyn, her face even more anxious than normal. ‘The most terrible thing, I can’t find the O’Hara’s cat anywhere.’ She was close to tears, breathless and the tremble in her lower lip warned Tess that if she didn’t get to see the cat she might crash into a meltdown right there on the doorstep. ‘I’ve been searching for her since before breakfast, so really, she could be gone since last night. I can’t think where she would go, but you know, she’s worth a lot of money, if someone were to take her, well, I think I’d just die. I mean, I’ve looked everywhere.’ She ran a hand behind her distractedly. It was four o’clock now, had she even stopped to eat anything? She seemed even more birdlike here today, cold and thin, her sparrow features pinched with fear and despair.

  ‘You may as well come in. The cat is here.’ Tess stood aside to let the girl squeeze past the narrow dim passage. ‘He woke me, early this morning, and he seems to have taken up residence, for now at least.’

  ‘Oh, thank goodness.’ She rushed to the cat and fell upon him, the cat for his part remained stoic in his reserve. The questions tumbled out, some small relief just tangible in the air. Apparently, for Robyn, the least obvious scenario had been the cat, in all probability snoozing the day away in someone else’s kitchen.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Tess
tutted. ‘He’s been here all day. I tried to let him out but he just came back in again at the first opportunity. He’s probably been missing having a bed to call his own,’ she said but suspected the girl didn’t hear a word because she was still on the threadbare rug before the hearth and launching into the kind of babble others reserve for babies.

  ‘Can I pick her up?’ the girl asked after inspecting what she could of him.

  ‘Probably best not to, he seems to be quite content,’ Tess said, although he’d moved about the flat a little while ago, he seemed very happy to sit by the fire mostly.

  ‘Oh.’ She fell back on her knees, looking up at Tess now. ‘What will we do with her?’ Her face held that perplexity that Tess knew had long since been rubbed from her own, even if it wasn’t wiped from her mind.

  ‘Well, first off young lady, he can stay here.’ Tess lowered herself into the most comfortable chair she owned, a scratched Queen Anne that had been here when she moved in and would no doubt be here after she left. ‘And the next thing we’re going to do is give the poor cat a proper name. She’s a He.’ Tess pursed her lips, it was all very well this gender equality, but the cat never asked to be part of this new trendy movement that half the country was caught up in. The cat was just a cat. ‘So, I’ve decided that we’ll call him Matt,’ she said flatly, it wasn’t her place to be teaching this youngster about the birds and the bees.

  ‘Oh.’ She had the grace to blush. ‘Oh, I never realised. Matt?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a good name, solid, and I think it suits him. There are three other gospels, I could think of, but I think it’s the best of the lot, don’t you?’ Anyway, the cat seemed happy enough with it, not that Tess would mention that to anyone.