Into the Night Sky

by Caroline Finnerty

  “Was it? God, you’ve a good memory!”

  She nods. “We went back to mine after and we shared a bottle of vodka with no mixer while we waited for everyone else to come home and it just happened.”

  “Eh, I think you’ll find that you insisted that we kiss to see if our relationship was really as platonic as we both thought.”

  She laughs “Well, the girls said I had to test it – and guess what, it was.”

  “I was a little bit offended actually –”

  “Why?”

  “Because you didn’t fall madly in love with me and my dashing tortoiseshell glasses afterwards.”

  “Me too,” she sighs, “but it was like kissing my brother – it was just all wrong. And the glasses were terrible. They made you look like Roy Orbison.”

  “That wasn’t the look I was going for.”

  “At least we established there and then that we’re better off as friends and there was definitely no chemistry between us.”

  “You had just started seeing that guy, the rugby jock – what was his name again?”

  “Henno?”

  “That’s it – I’ll never forget it when he introduced himself to me with a handshake that would break rocks. He hated me.”

  “He did actually but he was a loser.”

  The waitress comes over and clears off their plates.

  “So how’s the shop going? Any more trouble from those youngsters?” she asks.

  “Oh, they’re still there hanging around.”

  “Well, I hope they haven’t broken any more windows since!”

  “No, thank God. Look, thanks again for that loan . . . ” He is blushing. “I’ll get you back as soon as I can – I had the landlord on so I had to pay up the rent.”

  “Honestly, Conor, there’s no rush – whenever you can afford it.”

  “What happens if I can never afford it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m worried about the business – I don’t know from month to month if I’m going to be able to keep my head above water and I hate it.”

  “You’ll get there. Every business is finding it tough right now. It’s the recession, everyone’s in the same boat.”

  “Anyway, enough about that – I don’t want to get depressed. How’ve you been? Are things getting any better for you?”

  “I’m doing okay, I’m just trying to get on with things as best I can. Celeste is being a nightmare – she hates me.”

  “She’s only eight.”

  “That’s what worries me! If she’s like this now, what will she be like when she’s a teenager?”

  “Well, why do you think she’s like that?”

  “I have a lot of options to choose from – option A: I think she’s giving me a guilt trip because I wasn’t really there for the first eight years of her life. Andrea reckons it’s option B: that she misses Mrs Frawley. Or maybe it’s option C: because some of the girls in her class have been warned to stay away from her because of me.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She told me – the other mothers have warned their daughters not to play with her.”

  “They can’t do that – they’re only children. Poor Celeste. That’s not on – that’s a form of bullying.”

  “I know, you’re right.” She sighs. “When is it going to end, Conor?”

  “What?”

  “The dirty looks from people who don’t even know me, everywhere I go?”

  “Really?”

  She nods. “The mothers at the school gate and at the mother and baby group. I was in a coffee shop with the girls the other day when a woman came over and said I was a horrible person and that I deserved everything I got.”

  “She did not!” He is shocked.

  Ella nods.

  “Did the girls hear her?”

  “Yes – they were right there. They didn’t know what was going on. Whatever about attacking me, when it comes to my children it’s a different matter.”

  “I didn’t know it was that bad, Ella.”

  She sighs. “Look, I just have to get over it. I got myself into this mess, eh? I’m sorry for being so self-absorbed when I know things are hard for you as well – what I’m going through doesn’t hold a candle to what you’ve been through.”

  “Have you tried looking for other work?”

  She shakes her head. “I rang Malcolm at the station to see if there was any chance of going back but no one wants to know me in there any more.” She sighs heavily. “So I’m trying to look on the positives – it’s a chance to make up for the time I’ve missed with the girls, y’know?”

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “It is, but it’s hard, Conor – I’m finding the adjustment very hard.” She feels her voice waver and she tells herself not to cry.

  “You’ll be okay. I know you, Ella, you’re tough. Who was it that said ‘If you aren’t in over your head, then how do you know how tall you are?’”

  “TS Eliot.”

  “You should have been on the quiz team. I still don’t know why you weren’t picked.”

  “Because they brought Hilda Morrison in at the last minute – I was shafted, remember? God, I seem to have a history of this sort of stuff.”

  “Yeah, I remember. I still don’t understand it though – you beat her in the try-outs.”

  She looks down at the floor and focuses on a crack in the honey-wood floorboards where a two-cent coin is wedged on its side. “It was years ago, Conor.”

  “And Eric Keogh was mad about you too. Surely having the Team Captain on side was a sure way of getting on?”

  Stop it, stop it right now.

  “Maybe he was pissed off because you wouldn’t shag him?” he continues.

  “Stop it, Conor – that’s enough!” Her tone is uncharacteristically sharp.

  “Hey, sorry, I’m only joking!” He puts his two hands up in the air. He is taken aback by her extreme reaction. “Ella, I’m sorry –”

  “Yeah, it’s fine.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you –”

  “I said it’s fine. I need to head on home anyway. We’re meeting Dad for dinner later.”

  “Ella, please –”

  But the cloud has descended down around her and the chink into the Ella that he knows has closed shut again.

  “Can you just leave it? It’s fine, honestly.”

  “Right . . . well, I’d better head on anyway – it’s almost time to open up.”

  Chapter 25

  When Conor wakes the next morning, the first thing that hits him when he opens his eyes is Ella’s anger with him the day before. He gets out of bed, picks up the phone and dials her number but it rings out. It goes straight to voicemail. He hears her singsongy voice:

  “Hi, it’s Ella – please leave a message.”

  It’s been so long since her voice has sounded like this. Upbeat and fun.

  “Ella . . . it’s me . . . look, I’m sorry about yesterday . . . I didn’t mean to upset you . . . maybe give me a call when you get this, yeah?”

  He hangs up and runs his hands down over his face. The last thing he wants to do is fight with her, the only person he really has left in his life.

  Later on, he is working on his display when he sees Jack outside the glass. The boy comes into the store and steps up onto the window display platform with him.

  “This is cool!”

  A woman with yellow-blonde hair and a pinched face walks by and stares at them both. Jack waves eagerly at her and she half-heartedly waves back, her arm not quite reaching its full potential.

  “Feels like we’re in a zoo, doesn’t it?” Conor says.

  Jack starts pretending to be a monkey. He dances up and down the platform with his arms curled under. Then stands dead still, obviously pretending to be a mannequin.

  “You were in school today?” Conor asks, gesturing to the grey school uniform he is wearing.

  “Yeah, but Ma forgot to pick me up s
o I came here. She usually waits for me at the gate and we walk home then.”

  “What? You mean your mother left you waiting outside the school?”

  Jack’s face grows serious. “She might have been asleep or something though.”

  “Maybe you should go home to your own house in case she’s looking for you now? Maybe something happened to make her late?”

  “I waited for aaaaaaggggggges. Everyone was gone home, even the teachers. Mrs Flood – she’s the one with the massive nose and Seán Higgins calls her Concorde because her nose is so pointy – well, she’s the principal and she told me to go on home, that my ma was probably just running late and I’d meet her along on the way –” he pauses to push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, “but I didn’t see her, so then I came in here because I want to know what happens next with Hattie and Tom.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure . . . maybe you should go home, Jack.”

  Jack’s face is crestfallen; his brown eyes look impossibly sad. “Please, can I just read one more chapter?”

  “Ah Jack, I don’t want your dad getting on to me again.”

  “Don’t worry – he’s probably in the pub.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because that’s what Ma always says – ‘If you’re looking for Da, you’re guaranteed to find him in the pub’. Ma always says ‘If work was in bed, Da would sleep on the floor’. I’m not sure what it means but she says it means that Da is lazy but one time when Mrs Morton bought too many things in the shop, Da helped her to carry them all home and her bags were really heavy so he’s not that lazy. I think she really likes cakes a lot because she had three different cakes and a Swiss Roll too in her bag.”

  “Okay . . . well, maybe you can just read one chapter but then you have to go home, all right?”

  Jack runs over and sits in his usual spot, his back sloped against the shelves.

  “Do you want a chair?” Conor asks, wondering at the same time if he is mad offering to make the child more comfortable – he’ll never get rid of him then.

  “Nah, I like it like this.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want a Giant Jawbreaker?” He fishes a bag full of neon-orange sweets out of the pocket of his trousers.

  “No, thanks, Jack, I’ll pass. Careful your teeth don’t fall out with those yokes.”

  Jack pokes his head up out of the book a while later. “What’s this word?”

  “Spell it out to me.”

  “Q-U-A-R-A-N-T-I-N-E?”

  “Huh?” Conor loses track of the letters as Jack calls them out. “Let me see.” He comes over and peers over Jack’s shoulder to where his finger is underlining the word on the page. “Oh, that’s quarantine.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s when someone is sick and they have to stay away from other people so that they don’t catch it.”

  “Oh.” He grows silent for a minute. “Should Ma be in quarantine?”

  “Why – is she sick?”

  “Yeah, she was getting sick this morning before I went to school and then she said that she felt terrible and would I mind if she didn’t walk me to school this morning.”

  “Oh, I see – well, it depends on what is wrong with her then. Some illnesses are contagious but not too serious like when you have a cold so you wouldn’t need to be quarantined then.”

  “I’m not sure what’s wrong with Ma.” He looks sad. “She’s been sick lots of times this week.”

  “Well, I’m sure she’ll be right as rain again soon, huh?”

  “Yeah . . . I hope so. I don’t like it at all when she’s sick.”

  “You’re a good kid, Jack, do you know that?”

  “Why?”

  “You just are.”

  Rachel is in the canteen getting a coffee and while it is being made she quickly scans the front page of the newspaper that is beside the till. Her eyes immediately pick out his name amongst the thousands of other words on the page. She reaches out, picks it up and holds it out straight between her two hands. The headline reads ‘Marcus Traynor to Acquire Francine Label’. Francine’s is a French clothing group, which Marcus had been looking to buy for a long time.

  “That’ll be two eighty, love – did you want sugar with that?”

  “What?” She looks up to where the woman is holding up two sachets of sugar, waiting for her to make her mind up. “Oh sorry . . . no, thanks.”

  She goes into the bathroom and locks herself into a cubicle, sits on the closed lid and cries it all out. She is happy for him but she wishes she could be with him to celebrate – this is a big deal for the company that he founded. It is his first foray into Europe. Little triggers like this send her backwards again. She stops when she hears someone come in to use the toilet beside her. She waits until they leave the cubicle, wash their hands, use the hand dryer, before the footsteps make their way back out again. She takes a bundle of cardboard-like 2-ply toilet paper and uses it to blow her nose and then comes out and looks at herself in the mirror. Her face is red and sticky from tears and her mascara is smudged underneath her eyes. She gets some more tissue from the holder and tries to fix her make-up as best she can. She tidies her hair and then, taking a deep breath, goes back to her desk.

  The only good thing from today is that miraculously she thinks she might have a foster family for the five children. She is to meet them at five o’clock so she needs to get herself together before then.

  It is after eight when she is driving down the back of her housing estate to where the developers decided to hide all the cheap box-design, flat-roofed duplexes. She picked up a takeaway on her way because there is nothing that reinforces her status of being alone in this world more than cooking for one. She gets out of the car and climbs up the steps to the duplex, passing an intimidating gang of hooded teenagers. She feels their eyes follow her as she walks. She quickens her steps until she reaches her door. Putting the key in the lock, she opens it, closes it behind her and shuts out the world.

  She is exhausted. She takes down the bottle half full of wine from the press and twists and pulls the cork that she had squeezed back into the top of the bottle the night before. It releases with a pop and she lets the full-bodied Rioja fill up her glass. Even the sound of the wine filling her glass is soothing. Usually Wednesday is her no-wine day. Herself and Shirley used to have a joke where they figured that because they didn’t drink on Wednesdays, they weren’t alcoholics – Monday was okay because Monday was Monday, Tuesday you had to finish off Monday’s bottle or it would go off. Then no wine on Wednesday. Thursday was okay because it was nearly the weekend and then Friday, Saturday and Sunday were the weekend. That was a long time ago now, long before Shirley moved in with Hugh and got settled, but Rachel feels that her life hasn’t moved on from that stage.

  She curls her legs up underneath her and eats her tofu dish straight from its plastic container because she can’t be bothered to get a plate.

  Chapter 26

  As Ella waits inside her jeep, her stomach is somersaulting. She can see them all gathered around the gates. She feels sick. The dread gets worse every day. While the rest of them stand around talking, she now waits until the children start appearing at the schoolyard before she gets out.

  The bell sounds and soon the yard is filled with children running towards their parents. She swallows hard, turns off the engine and climbs down. She goes around the back and takes Maisie out of her seat and carries her on her hip. They turn to look at her but turn away quickly again in case they make eye contact with her. She’s not sure if it’s in her imagination but the conversations seem to stop whenever she gets close to them. They all have their backs to her. Maisie starts to stretch in her arms and get angsty.

  Finally she sees Dot, with the two bobbles on her red knitted hat bobbing up and down as she runs.

  “Mummy!” She wraps her two arms around her mother’s legs and Ella bends as much as she can with Maisie in her arms to put her free arm around her.
She sees some of Celeste’s classmates showing their artwork to their parents. The yard starts to empty as children make their way back to their cars with their parents. She looks up again to see if Celeste is coming but there is no sign of her. Eventually she sees her coming through the door – she is the last to leave the building and takes her time crossing the now almost empty schoolyard. Ella knows instantly that something is wrong.

  “Hi, love,” she says when Celeste reaches the gate.

  Silence.

  “What is it? What’s wrong with you?” she asks.

  They walk back to the jeep where Dot chats happily about what princess clothes she should change into when she gets home. “Should I wear my blue sparkly necklace or the ladybird one?”