If I Never See You Again

by Niamh O'Connor

  Jo noted the high bluish colour on his cheeks, bleeding into the circles under his eyes. ‘What’s causing this?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s usually a sign that the temperature is spiking and the body overproducing white blood cells to fight an infection. You can give him this if you like.’ She thrust a sponge stick that looked like a lollipop into Jo’s hand in a way that said this was a place for families. ‘The mouth gets very dry when it’s open like that all the time.’

  Jo knew she was making a point. She dipped the pink sponge in a plastic cup of water, pressed it against his parched lips and watched how they instinctively twitched. She scanned the equipment that was pulsing average statistics of his heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, temperature and the cardio-vascular pressure on the intravenous line. Then, aware it was only a matter of time before she started thinking about her own personal tragedy, and her father’s death, she said goodbye to the matron and left.

  A few minutes later, she was outside with Sexton in the car park. ‘Can you take over until tomorrow?’ she asked him. ‘Something’s come up I need to deal with.’

  Sexton nodded. ‘’Course. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Find out if Father Reg has a brother,’ she said, remembering what old Mrs Nulty had told her about the man who’d called looking for Rita describing himself as the brother of a priest. ‘We also need to talk to the girls on the street, see if any of them knew anything about Rita and her last client.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ he said, offering her a cigarette.

  She took it, and leaned into the lighter in his cupped hand. ‘Call me tonight if Father Reg starts to speak. I don’t care what hour of the night it is.’

  17

  Jo chainsmoked through Rory’s explanation of Grand Test Auto: San Andreas from the far side of the fully opened front-room window. She stood in the front garden, turning away for every guilty drag as she listened to him. He was sitting in front of the telly, consol in hand.

  She had found him by phoning Becky, who’d suggested she start looking in Dundrum town centre. Sure enough, Rory had been leaning on a railing staring at the water fountains, looking like an ASBO waiting to happen, his trainers open and the waist of his trousers showing half a foot of boxer shorts. He hadn’t even bothered to change out of his school uniform. Jo had coaxed him home with a bribe – 20. She’d put Harry down for a nap, and was trying to humour Rory so that she could build up slowly to the serious conversation she needed to have with him. When he’d finished giving her the lowdown, she stubbed the fag out with her foot, headed into the kitchen, pulled a tub of Häagen-Dazs from the freezer and scooped a few dessertspoonfuls into her mouth before heading back in and plonking down beside him on the couch.

  The virtual screen featured a bouncing car.

  ‘So the gangster’s in there having sex with a prostitute?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Yep.’ Rory was twiddling the controls furiously.

  ‘And to win, you have to rob people, cars and banks to make yourself rich, killing anyone who gets in the way?’

  ‘Yep. See those numbers in the top right-hand corner?’ Rory pointed, as the car stopped bouncing and a hulking Hell’s Angel with a bandana on his head and tattoos all over his neck climbed out.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘They’re keeping track of my health and my wealth. Now, as you can see, the bad news is my money has just taken a nosedive but, on the plus side, my health’s gone shooting up.’

  ‘She robbed you?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Technically, I paid her for services rendered, but it doesn’t matter, because I’m about to rob her back,’ Rory said.

  ‘Jesus,’ Jo muttered, looking away from the screen. ‘And the cops – they’re fair game too?’

  ‘Five stars if you kill one,’ Rory answered.

  Jo took a few deep breaths. ‘Doesn’t it feel . . . creepy?’

  Rory hit pause and turned to face her. ‘No, Mother, it doesn’t make me want to go out and shoot people, if that’s what you’re asking. Drive faster, sure, but kill? No. It’s just a laugh. Anyway, there’s a new one out ages ago now. This one’s ancient already.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jo said slowly.

  ‘And as you haven’t yet figured out how to set the video to pre-record, you are in no position to judge the noughties generation’s toys,’ Rory said, reading her mind. ‘Or Bebo.’

  ‘They can prosecute parents for a child’s truancy, did you know that?’ Jo said casually, after another long pause.

  Rory stayed focused on the screen.

  ‘I get a criminal conviction, that’s the end of my job.’

  Still no answer.

  ‘You do still want to go to college?’ she asked, frowning.

  This time he shrugged.

  ‘I thought law was your first preference.’ Jo could hear the panic in her own voice.

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘I can show you if you want. I can bring you out in a squad car some night and show you why education is everything. I can bring you into one of the prisons and give you a breakdown of the corresponding literacy rates. I can . . .’

  ‘I can read and write, Mother,’ Rory said, his voice rising. ‘I’m not going to end up a smackhead sleeping on the streets because I don’t go to college. Loads of successful people didn’t go to college . . .’

  ‘You don’t want to go to college? Since when?’

  Rory sighed, turned the game off but kept staring at the blank screen. ‘What’s the big deal?’

  Jo stood up and headed back out the front door. Out in the front garden, she lit up another fag and spoke to him more calmly through the open window. ‘I just don’t want to see you waste your potential.’

  ‘If you cared so much, why did you walk out on us?’

  He sounded so young and vulnerable suddenly, Jo felt a pang of guilt. ‘Rory, I didn’t walk out on you!’

  ‘Yes you did.’

  ‘Things weren’t working out with Dad, that’s all. I never wanted you to leave. I want you to live with me full time. You have no idea how much I miss you.’

  ‘Did you really think I could leave Dad on his own? It was bad enough you walking out on him without me rubbing his nose in it. He can’t even work the bloody iron.’

  ‘So I should have stayed with him to do his ironing?’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘Dad’s life has moved on now, Rory. He has Jeanie.’

  ‘Don’t get me started on that cow.’

  ‘Don’t call her that!’ Jo snapped. She leaned in through the window and caught Rory’s eye. ‘Why, what’s she done?’

  ‘She just makes me feel like . . . I’m in the way . . . all the time . . . in my own, or at least in their, house!’

  ‘Cow,’ Jo agreed.

  Rory’s face softened.

  ‘Move back with me.’

  ‘Dad says you’ll just turn me into a glorified “manny”.’

  Jo pursed her lips. ‘No manny of mine would kill cops for fun.’

  Rory laughed. A short half-laugh, but a laugh.

  He sat back in the sofa and flicked the game back on. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘For a bit, see how it goes, yeah?’

  Jo headed back into the room and hugged him. ‘Would you start turning up for school if I get you the latest version of this God-awful game?’ she asked.

  ‘Subtle, Mother. Why not offer me some shiny stars while you’re at it?’ He grinned. ‘’Course, if you were talking about a pair of tickets to Oxygen . . .’

  ‘It’s really important you knuckle down now with the exams coming.’

  ‘On one condition . . .’ Rory cut her off.

  Jo sighed.

  ‘You give up smoking.’

  Jo reached for the box in her pocket, and crunched.

  He was high-fiving her when the landline rang. Jo was still smiling as she headed into the hall to answer.

  It was Dan, explaining that, on his solicitor’s advice, the only way to maintain his stake in their
house was to move back home.

  18

  Sexton sat at the back of Heaven, a lap-dancing club in a Leeson Street basement. His legs were planted wide apart, his expression completely blank, as a chunky, semi-naked dancer combed scarlet fingernails through his sweat-drenched hair and shimmied between his legs. Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’ blared in the background, speaking volumes about the demographic profile of the clientele. In their teens twenty-five years ago, they were now trapped in dead-end nine-to-five jobs and not getting any at home.

  The dancer loosened Sexton’s skinny tie to mid-mast with a pair of streaky, false-tanned hands and jiggled her tasselled boobs inches from his face. Sexton surveyed the tacky room, wondering what Maura would say if she could see him stranded in the middle of this bunch of sad bastards. It would probably be something non-judgemental like, ‘Live and let live.’ She hadn’t had a cynical bone in her body. The first time he’d laid eyes on her, she was busking with a guitar on Grafton Street, her hair in plaits, friendship bracelets and bangles stacked on both wrists. He’d only stopped to watch out of amusement, because she hadn’t a note in her head. Then someone grabbed the cap at her feet, robbing the few miserable quid she’d managed to collect, and Sexton had set off after them. That’s how it had started between them . . .

  The dancer was determined to get Sexton’s attention. She pawed his inside thigh then brushed against his cheek, leaving a graze of thick make-up on his shirt collar. He took another swig from his wine glass and grimaced. The plonk had cost almost 100 – he’d had to pay with his credit card – but it was so piss-poor it could have stripped paint. He wiped the corners of his lips self-consciously with his finger and thumb in case they’d turned blue.

  The dancer coiled a cerise feather boa around his neck, and he grabbed her wrist. ‘I want a word . . .’ he growled, adding with emphasis, ‘Frank.’

  ‘I’m taking my break in fifteen,’ a deep voice snapped, trying to jerk free.

  Sexton spotted one of the bouncers heading over, shoulders braced for the ‘hands off the skirt’ routine. Smashing his glass off the floor, he jumped to his feet, bawling ‘Gardaí’ and demanding to see the proprietor and his licence. The ‘raid’ wouldn’t have seen the light of day in a court of law; he was off duty and well over the limit, but try telling that to the punters emerging from the foam pool and scurrying for their trousers, socks and shoes, running for the exit.

  The music came to an abrupt halt. Frankie gave Sexton a dagger look and minced into the dressing room. Sexton followed him.

  Frankie’s tacky dressing room was the size of a broom cupboard. A large theatrical mirror surrounded by light bulbs made the space even more depressing. Plucking a postcard from San Francisco off the mirror, Sexton read the back idly as Frankie covered up in an oriental, raw-silk dressing gown and whipped off his flowing mane. His short hair was scraped back off his face with a hair net, and flattened down by sweat. Plonking himself on to a stool, he pouted at his reflection and dotted blobs of gloopy cream on his face, then made a swipe for the postcard. But Sexton held his arm up and out of reach.

  ‘Temper, temper,’ he said.

  ‘This is police harassment,’ Frankie said, peeling off false eyelashes.

  ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ Sexton agreed. ‘We have an ombudsman now, you should file a complaint.’

  ‘So your old boys’ club can make my life a complete misery – give over. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know all about Rita Nulty.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  Sexton took hold of Frankie’s chin and forced his neck around. ‘Look me in the eye and say that again,’ he said. ‘Only she was all over the papers yesterday and today. Last time a hooker was murdered, your lot were up in arms, forming a union to protect yourselves, sending out press releases to the papers. So let’s start again, shall we? Rita Nulty. I’d say this place was full of talk tonight about the murdered slag.’

  ‘Lap-dancers are not prostitutes,’ Frankie responded. ‘Prostitutes work in parlours or on the streets. Lap-dancers are artistes.’

  Sexton released him and bent over his shoulder to talk to Frankie through the mirror. ‘Let me put it another way,’ he said, pulling open the dirty dressing gown. ‘I presume these are courtesy of the Social, yeah? Let me guess how you pulled that one off . . . Your shrink wrote and told them all about your suicidal feelings from the time you realized you were trapped in the wrong body at the age of five . . . You’ve got no income because you can’t work because your self-identity is shattered, you’re so desperate to be a real woman. Do you think they’ll keep forking out for your hormones when the Revenue discovers you’ve got all this going on? How long does that treatment take anyway? Years, isn’t it? You had downstairs done yet?’

  Frankie covered his face with his hands and started to shake. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Rita Nulty?’

  ‘She was hooking for the Skids. Anal, dogging, group – anything went with her, long as she got her supply. She did anything they wanted, but she was way out of her depth. She owed them money, couldn’t pay.’

  Frankie looked up at Sexton, his mascara running down his face like black tears. ‘You want to know who Rita Nulty was? A junkie. That’s all. Now fuck off before you get me killed.’

  Spotting the look on his own face in the mirror, Sexton took a step back, feeling a pang of shame. Maura wouldn’t have recognized who he’d turned into.

  He pulled open the dressing-table drawers and rifled through them quickly, stopping when he found a little black contacts book. By now Frankie had covered his face in his hands again and was wailing. Flicking through the pages, Sexton stopped to study a page then tucked it into his inside pocket.

  ‘Nice boobs, by the way. Very natural,’ he said before he left.

  19

  Jo was standing at one end of the hall with one ear cocked, making sure her boys were finally asleep. It was near midnight, but she’d been up and down all evening with Harry, who was unsettled with his teeth, the poor love. And Rory had only conceded defeat of their doubles match on the Xbox after Jo’s victory jig had made him cover his eyes and beg her to stop. The way he’d cringed had made her laugh aloud. It felt really good to have them both with her under the same roof again, where they belonged. She would make up for the hours she’d missed off the job tomorrow. Her boys always came first.

  Satisfied all was quiet, she moved down the hall to the kitchen, rotating her aching shoulders and stretching her arms up over her head. What she needed now was one of Dan’s shoulder rubs, she thought. That said, if he’d laid a finger on her after the things he’d come out with today, she’d probably have swung for him.

  She pulled open one of the Mexican pine presses, noticed the hinge was slipping and realized it was at least ten years since Dan had fitted the units. Where had those years gone? She pulled out a bottle of Powers and a whiskey glass and poured herself a stiff drink. It had taken them the guts of two years to scrimp and save for the traditional, country-style units, she remembered, taking a sip of the whiskey and admiring the room reluctantly. Meals out, holidays, even the odd bloody blow-dry had gone by the wayside during that time, as they’d penny-pinched enough to get a loan from the credit union. They’d never have afforded it at all if they’d had to pay the same again for a carpenter, but Dan was brilliant at DIY. He’d put in the floor as well – though he’d had his doubts about Jo’s choice of tiles: dark-red and bottle-green check, which in the end had worked a treat. And if anyone had seen the way they’d celebrated when they’d salvaged an original Victorian Sally rack from a car-boot sale they’d have presumed them barking. For years afterwards while she was still married, Jo had felt a little surge of pride every time she walked into the room and glimpsed the home they’d made for Rory.

  She studied the drink she was swirling around in the bottom of her glass. Back then, she’d presumed this kitchen would be the heart of a home that would fill with more children over the years. What
had happened? she wondered. Why had there never been a right time for Dan? The old excuse, that he wasn’t getting any younger – he was ten years older than her – hadn’t been a factor when he was still in his thirties. Then it was always the pressure of the latest case. During one of their last heated rows before they split, he’d finally admitted that he resented the prospect of rearing another child when they were just starting to get their lives back. The way Jo saw it, without kids, you had no life. Family meant everything to her. So how did I manage to lose mine then? a voice inside her head asked.

  She knocked back the last of her drink, organized a pen and notebook from a drawer and pulled a high stool up to the breakfast bar. She needed to get working on her defence for having taken that money from Rita Nulty. After staring at the blank sheet of paper for a few seconds, she sighed and twisted the cap off the whiskey bottle again, helping herself to another glass.

  The liquid warmed her insides, and her thoughts moved to the sense of joy she’d felt at the sight of the little blue cross appearing on the pee stick, telling her she was pregnant again, with Harry. A flush spread across her cheeks as she remembered the shock and hurt – and yes, bloody humiliation – of realizing Dan’s reaction was the precise opposite. He’d actually asked her to have a termination! Right there, at the kitchen table. He’d knitted his fingers in hers, looked her in the eye and come straight out with it. He’d said, ‘You don’t have to go through with it. We’ve got a good life. Why ruin it?’

  Jo put the back of her cold hands on her cheeks to stop the heat from the anger spreading, even now, almost two years later. She’d told him it wasn’t going to happen, tried to explain how much she’d longed for the baby, thinking he’d see it her way. But instead he’d dug his heels in, refusing to talk about it, until the long silences between them just wore her down. Eventually, it got so bad she’d asked Dan to leave. She wanted to enjoy what she knew would be her last pregnancy. She’d never meant the separation to be a permanent arrangement; she couldn’t look further than one day to the next without him, that was just how things had turned out.