Cillian’s visit to Tobias Hartmann’s nursing home had yielded little. There were barely any personal effects in the small bedroom where he had lived for the past year. Two stiff shirts hanging in the wardrobe, a book of razor blades in the bathroom, a nail file. In a drawer, two tins of shoe polish: brown and black. A shoe horn. On top of his bedside locker, a plastic bottle of prescription pills. A book about ancient Rome. There were no photographs on the walls, no keepsakes or mementos, nothing to suggest a life that had been lived. It could have been anybody’s room. In the end, Cillian had to concede that he had no evidence to connect the old man lying in a coma in hospital with the drawing he had seen in Lenny’s house. The hunch was a dead end. He was glad now that he hadn’t mentioned it to the Super. He would have said that hunches were about as much use to him as his divorce lawyer.
He noticed that Stella had stopped talking. He glanced at her. She was looking at him, smiling.
‘This is nice, isn’t it?’ she said, putting her hand on Cillian’s leg as they inched along the Stillorgan dual carriageway.
‘Being stuck in traffic?’
Stella laughed – hahaha – and in the stuffy confines of the car, the noise was shrill.
‘I just meant it’s nice, you and me, going to your sister’s, spending some time together, like a proper couple, you know?’ Her hand was massaging his thigh now. He picked it up, squeezed it and, after a reasonable amount of time had passed, returned it to her lap.
She still hadn’t specified when she might go home, although the schools reopened next week so she’d have to be back by then.
Wouldn’t she?
‘Are you alright?’ Stella said.
‘Sorry, yeah, I’m fine. Just a bit ... tired, I suppose.’
‘You’ve been working too hard. I’ve hardly seen you.’ There was an undertone of accusation in her voice.
‘I’m sorry but I did tell you, when you arrived, that I had to work.’
‘Och, don’t mind me,’ she said, waving her hand dismissively. ‘I might be a wee bit hormonal. I’m waiting on my visitors. They should have been here by now.’
‘Your visitors?’
‘You know.’ Stella lowered her voice. ‘My period.’
‘You’re not ... late, are you?’ He was always careful.
‘Ah no. Not really. Although in fairness you can usually set your watch by me, I’m that regular.’
‘So you are late?’
‘A few days. Nothing to worry about.’
‘A few?’
‘Five.’
Five. Five days. That was late. Cillian’s grip on the steering wheel tightened so that the bones of his knuckles strained against his skin.
Martha had had a ‘scare’ before. Before he had realised how bad things were. How bad the drinking was. It was one of the only times she had cried. ‘I haven’t been taking folic acid. Our baby could have spina bifida, like Amelia.’
Our baby.
He had held Martha tight, breathed into the soft mesh of her hair and told her it would be alright. Everything would be alright. He thought about a baby with bright green eyes. A girl with red pigtails that flew behind her when she ran.
Our baby.
Martha took the folic acid after that. ‘Just in case,’ she said, and she smiled at him and it was like a question, her smile, and he kissed her mouth and that was like an answer and, for a while, everything seemed possible. Happiness, all that stuff. Until he found out how bad things were and nothing seemed possible anymore.
‘Look,’ said Stella, returning her hand to his leg again. ‘It’s probably nothing. And if it’s something, you know, we’ll deal with that too, won’t we?’ She smiled sweetly at him, leaned in to lay her head on his shoulder. ‘You know, it’s funny, it feels like we’ve been together for years.’
‘Sorry, Stella, I can’t ... I just need to change the gear there.’
She moved back into her seat and he put the radio on and she hummed along to a tune Cillian had never heard before while the car edged along the road, making little headway in the traffic. A muscle leaped against Cillian’s temple. ‘I’ll stop by the chemist on my way home,’ he said when the song ended. ‘Pick up a pregnancy test.’
‘Och, no, don’t bother,’ said Stella, shaking her head. ‘They’re wild expensive, those things. And anyway, as I said, my visitors are probably on their way.’
It was a relief to get to Joan and Tony’s house, which was a charming bungalow on the outskirts of Bray with views of the mountains at the back of the house and snatches of the Irish Sea at the front. Cillian usually loved visiting his sister and her family.
When Joan wasn’t there, he completed DIY jobs which Tony passed off later as his own. ‘I can’t be a nurse who likes ballroom dancing and is bad at DIY,’ Tony said when he’d first enlisted Cillian’s help in this regard. Cillian was pretty sure his sister knew about Tony’s DIY shortcomings. Very little got past her.
Tonight he felt like a visitor in his sister’s house. Which he was. He just hadn’t felt like one before. He supposed it was because of Stella, who was a visitor.
‘Where’s Naoise?’ Cillian asked as Tony led them to the bright, busy kitchen at the back of the house.
‘Don’t even think about waking him up,’ Joan warned him, her face pink from the heat of the rack of lamb she had been seasoning. ‘He was like a Duracell bunny today. I had to take his batteries out.’
‘Oh, what a shame. I was looking forward to meeting him. I adore children.’ Stella’s smile was wide and her hand, which she placed on Cillian’s arm, was clammy.
‘So do I,’ said Joan, hugging Stella whom she had met, twice before, in Donegal. ‘Especially when they’re asleep.’ Stella laughed and laughed.
‘Here, sit down, love,’ said Tony, pulling out a chair when she finally stopped. ‘I’ve made my famous French onion soup for starters.’
Joan stuck a ladle into the soup tureen on the table. ‘Small print: may cause flatulence. You’ll be in the spare room tonight, Tony.’
Cillian smiled. He had seen the way his sister looked at her husband sometimes. Brief, occasional glances but in it he could see their story. He knew there’d be no one in the spare room tonight. He was glad for his sister. She had made sacrifices in her life.
‘So,’ said Tony, tucking an enormous linen napkin into the collar of his T-shirt and digging in. ‘How’s work going, detective?’
‘Very busy,’ said Stella at once. ‘When he came home before six the other night, I thought he was an intruder, hahaha.’
The word – home – landed on Cillian like a cold raindrop that drips down your neck.
‘Are you cold, love?’ asked Stella, pinning his hand to the table with one of hers.
‘No,’ he said, pulling his hand away and reaching for his glass. ‘I’m grand.’
‘You’re a bit pale as well. I hope you’re not coming down with something.’
‘You’re wasting your time there, Stella. That fella would tell you he’s grand even if he was dying. Wouldn’t you, Cillian?’ Joan winked at him over the rim of her wineglass.
Cillian groaned. ‘Please don’t trot that story out,’ he said.
‘Oh, what story?’ said Stella. ‘You have to tell me now.’
Joan always told the story like it was an amusing anecdote. Cillian didn’t remember it like that.
It was the night of his sister’s first college ball. Joan – who had deferred her nursing degree for three years after their mother died – had finally started the course the previous September in Letterkenny.
She’d been looking forward to the ball for weeks.
‘A ball,’ said Stella. ‘How romantic! Who did you go with?’
‘Oh, some scrawny little fella. Kevin someone-or-other.’
Kevin Pendergast: the only boyfriend Cillian ever remembered his sister having, until she met Tony when she was forty-six.
‘That must be Kevin,’ Joan had said that night when the doorbell rang. Cil
lian, thirteen then, remembered the unfamiliar sound of Joan’s high heels against the wooden boards on the staircase, how the sound had echoed all around the house that seemed bigger, now it was just the two of them.
‘I thought he was a bit flushed alright when I was leaving, but of course he insisted he was OK,’ said Joan, shaking her head towards Cillian.
Mrs Campbell always got a mention in the story. The hero of the piece.
‘If it weren’t for Mrs Campbell ...’
‘Who’s Mrs Campbell?’
‘The next-door neighbour. She was very kind to us after Mum died. And thankfully she had a key to the door,’ said Joan. ‘She’d made gingerbread for Cillian but I think that was just her excuse to put her head around the door. Check in on him. She knew I was out that night.’
Mrs Connolly had had to push and push at the kitchen door to get it open. Cillian was slumped against the door, unconscious by then, a dead weight.
‘I got to the hospital at around nine o’clock that night and Cillian came to the next day, at around eight. The first thing he said was, “What’s for breakfast?”’
She left out the bit about Cillian’s heart stopping – at 03.07 – and a doctor from Pakistan – who happened to be in Cillian’s ward on his rounds at the time – performing CPR on him for thirteen minutes – a minute for every year, Joan said – and if he hadn’t been in Cillian’s ward on his rounds at the time, Cillian’s heart would have stopped and not started again.
‘He was mostly grand by the time he came to, thank God. The antibiotics were getting the better of the meningitis by then.’
Joan had cried when Cillian woke up in the hospital. Cried and cried into the fleshy shoulder of a nurse who let her. Who told her to take as long as she needed. When she stopped, she sat in a chair beside Cillian’s bed, took his hot hand between her cold ones. She said, ‘Sorry.’ She whispered it, over and over.
Cillian had misunderstood. ‘Am I going to die?’ he asked.
Joan had shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I won’t let you.’
It wasn’t until a few weeks had passed that Cillian realised.
‘Why did you break up with Kevin?’
‘I ... it’s not really ... I mean ... it’s complicated, Cillian.’
Joan had dropped out of her nursing course then. Sold their parents’ house. Moved them to Donegal town where they had family. A support system, Joan had called it. She completed a carer’s course by distance learning. She took a job in a local creche, worked in the mornings while Cillian was at school. He always remembered her being there, in the house, when he got up in the morning, when he left to go to school or Gaelic practice, when he returned.
Joan was there.
When he was older, he knew why. It wasn’t that complicated after all. Joan had made a promise to their father first. Then their mother. She felt she had breached it that night. The night that Cillian nearly died.
Kevin – who went on to become an orthopaedic surgeon – wrote to her for a while. Joan never wrote back. Cillian supposed it was easier to keep promises like Joan’s without other people around.
Without complications.
Complications were other people.
Later, Stella insisted on seeing the climbing frame that Tony had built for Naoise.
‘From scratch,’ Tony said, as he led Stella out of the dining room towards the playroom.
Joan smiled at Cillian. ‘I think he almost believes it himself,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know you did it. And the bathroom cabinet. And you rehung the kitchen door, didn’t you?’
‘No! I mean, sure, I gave him a dig out but ...’
Joan laughed. ‘Your secret is safe, kiddo. Besides, I think it’s kind of sweet.’
Cillian grinned. ‘He’s a good man, your fella.’
Joan studied him. ‘So. You and Stella. Must be serious – you haven’t brought a woman over here since Martha.’
‘You sort of insisted, as I recall.’
‘It would have been rude not to invite her over when she came all this way to see you,’ said Joan. ‘So is it?’ she added.
‘Is it what?’
‘Serious? With Stella?’
Cillian pushed his fringe out of his eyes. ‘I didn’t think so.’
‘But?’
‘She’s late.’
‘How late?’ Joan always took everything in her stride.
‘Five days.’
Joan sat straighter in her chair. ‘Has she taken a pregnancy test?’
Cillian shook his head. ‘She only just told me in the car on the way over.’
‘And ... what will you do? If she is, I mean?’
Cillian shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘How does Stella feel about it?’
‘She doesn’t seem too put out by the idea.’
‘Maybe she’s right in a way. I mean, look at me. I didn’t plan to settle down. Definitely didn’t plan on having a baby. I thought I was too old by the time I met Tony. But Naoise turned out to be the best thing that happened to us in the end,’ said Joan, smiling now, as she often did when she talked about her family.
‘Yeah, but me and Stella, we’re not ... I mean, you and Tony, you were pretty sure from the start, weren’t you?’
Joan hesitated before she spoke again. ‘Is it because of Martha?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is she the reason you’re reluctant to move on?’
‘No, of course n—’
‘Because Martha moved on, Cillian. She dumped you. Remember?’
He remembered.
‘Is this a fucking intervention?’ Martha had shouted that night. He’d arrived at her apartment unexpectedly with Chinese food. Wanted to surprise her. It was their anniversary, of sorts. Eighteen months. A year and a half. Not that he was going to say it. ‘You soppy cow,’ she’d say if he mentioned it, and then she’d grin at him without ever knowing how beautiful she was. Already, he could taste her.
He took the stairs to her apartment three at a time.
He hadn’t seen the nine o’clock news. Hadn’t seen Martha’s report. The bag of Chinese food was warm against his hands. She would say, ‘Should we eat first? Or get the sex out of the way?’
‘Best to get the sex out of the way.’
Her violin was in three pieces on the hall floor. She loved that violin – it had been her grandfather’s. She had always said no when he asked her to play him a piece of music. ‘You think I’m better than I am,’ she told him one night, nearly a whisper. ‘You’ll be disappointed.’
‘Martha?’ He put the food on the hall table and picked up the pieces of the violin with careful hands. Perhaps it could be put back together? In the kitchen, she was a lot of the way down a bottle of vodka. She wasn’t bothering with tonic or ice or lemon. She wasn’t even bothering with a glass, was drinking it from the neck. In her hand, a remote control pointing at the television. She barely registered his arrival, concentrating instead on the television screen where she was interviewing a politician outside the Dáil. The Minister for Health, Cillian saw.
She asked him a question that Cillian could not make out. Neither could the minister. ‘I can’t understand you,’ the minister said.
‘Perhaps I should say it in Spanish?’ slurred Martha, a sly reference to his latest affair with his live-in nanny from Barcelona.
‘Libel is an expensive business, Martha,’ he said, walking – briskly – away.
‘So is adultery,’ she roared, tripping along in his wake, waving the microphone towards the back of his head before becoming entangled in her own feet – her size sevens – and falling down a set of three concrete steps.
The crack as her head hit the path was sharp.
Martha jabbed at buttons on the remote, played the segment again. She turned up the volume and shouted along with the words, ‘Libel is an expensive business, Martha.’ She laug
hed then, a high, mirthless laugh.
‘Let me take a look at your head,’ said Cillian, putting his hands on either side of her face. There was a lump on her forehead and sore-looking scratches down the side of her face. She laughed again.
‘You’re always trying to fix me, Cillian Larkin.’
‘I think you should put some ice on that bump.’
‘I got fired.’
‘I’ll make you some coffee.’
‘I broke my violin.’
‘It’s a fairly clean break. I reckon it can be salvaged.’
‘You think everything can be salvaged.’
‘You should eat something.’
‘I want more vodka.’
‘I think you’ve had enough.’
That’s what did it. Five words. I think you’ve had enough. That’s what kicked the legs of their relationship out from under them. There were times when Cillian wondered if it had been worth it.
Would he say them again if he could go back?
He supposed he would.
‘Is this a fucking intervention?’ she shouted. ‘Because it’s come at a very inconvenient fucking time. I’m trying to get drunk here.’ This time she splashed the vodka into a glass, drank it in one long, gulping motion, then sat on the couch that was too big for the room and passed out.
Cillian switched off the television, got a blanket from the bedroom. He put her in the recovery position and tucked the blanket around her. He moved her hair back from her face, loosened the top button of her shirt and put a bucket on the floor beside her and a glass of water and two Panadol on the coffee table beside the couch. He slipped off her shoes. Her size sevens. On a note he wrote:
‘I don’t want to intervene. But I do want to help. I love you. We can sort this. Call me when you feel better.’
He waited for a while, worried that she might throw up in her sleep.
Then he left.
Martha didn’t call.
Cillian did. He left messages, emailed her and, finally, rang the buzzer at her apartment. There was no answer. He didn’t use his key.
A week later, he received a large brown bubble-wrapped package in the post. By then, the segment was all over YouTube. Someone had put music to it, turned it into a rap, with a close-up of her face as she tumbled down the steps. Her expression was one of surprise. As if she couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she was falling.
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