Semi-Sweet

by Roisin Meaney

  “Do you never get a break?” Feeling his way toward an opportunity, waiting for his moment.

  “Funny you should ask. I’ve just taken someone on who does a couple of hours three mornings a week. It’s heaven.”

  He passed her a five-euro note—now or never. “And what about evenings?” he asked. “Do you ever get a free one of those?”

  Hannah looked at him. Her half smile didn’t disappear, but something changed in her face all the same. She blinked once, her mouth opening slightly. She seemed to be trying to come up with a response, but none came.

  “I thought,” he went on—because he had to go on, one of them had to say something—“you might like to meet up for a drink, or…whatever, really.”

  She was going to turn him down. He was sure, all at once, that she wasn’t going to say yes.

  Decidedly uncomfortable now, she held his money, her eyes slipping from his face to the cash drawer. “Actually—”

  Yes, she was turning him down. He wished himself anywhere but where he was.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said all in a rush, “but I’ve…recently broken up with someone.” Her face going pink again. “It was a long-term relationship, and it happened suddenly—the breakup, I mean, and I don’t think—”

  Her embarrassment dismayed him. “That’s fine,” he cut in quickly, smiling to show he didn’t mind in the least. “You don’t have to explain. It was just a thought. No harm done.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, rummaging for his change. “If the timing were different or—”

  “Really, it’s fine. You’ve done nothing to be sorry for.” He took the money and pocketed it. “You need time to yourself—I understand perfectly.” He turned to go, his knee banging against the counter in his haste.

  “Thank you,” she said, “for…being so nice about it.” She smiled faintly. “If it weren’t such a cliché, I’d say it’s not you, it’s me.”

  “No problem. Be seeing you.”

  But of course he wouldn’t be seeing her again. The four steps to the door seemed to take forever.

  When she got the answering machine for the third time, Fiona knew that her daughter was avoiding her.

  “You’ve reached Indulgence,” Leah said in her salon voice. “Sorry we can’t come to the phone at this time, but if you leave your name and number, we’ll return your call at our earliest convenience.”

  Fiona waited for the beep, and then said, “Leah, it’s me. Please get in touch.” She paused. “There’s no need for us to fall out. I didn’t mean to upset you. Give me a ring when you get this message.”

  She hung up and walked to the window, looking out at the long, narrow back lawn that her neighbor’s fourteen-year-old son mowed every fortnight in the summer, in return for twenty euro. Fiona remembered when a youngster would have cut a neighbor’s grass for nothing, but that time was long gone.

  She leaned against the windowsill and thought of how her plans for Leah were all going terribly wrong, and she wondered bitterly about the unfairness of it.

  Look at the salon she’d financed when Leah didn’t have two cents to rub together, fresh out of beauty school and no notion what to do next. Hadn’t Fiona sorted her out? Hadn’t Leah been happy to take her mother’s money? How many mothers would have done as much and asked nothing in return?

  Look at the men she’d had in mind for Leah, sons of friends with qualifications and good jobs and excellent prospects. The lengths she’d gone to introduce Leah to them, the efforts she’d made. The few dates that had come out of such meetings, the hopes Fiona always had, and then, a week or a month later, Leah’s saying it hadn’t worked out. But someone would have turned up eventually, Fiona was certain.

  And now look at her daughter. Pregnant and unmarried, living with a man who’d been happy to string her along for months, who might never have left his cozy setup with another woman if Leah hadn’t been careless enough to get caught.

  A man who’d made small talk with Fiona whenever they’d met socially, all the time running around with her daughter on the quiet. Who looked at Fiona defiantly now, not a scrap of shame for having behaved despicably. Proud, probably, of his bastard on the way.

  And Leah avoiding her. Screening her phone calls because Fiona showed concern, because she said what she was thinking instead of smiling and pretending she was pleased with how things had worked out.

  The salon would inevitably suffer with the disruption, Leah’s whole future suddenly uncertain, because who knew how long this man would stay with her, how long before his attention was caught by another pretty blonde? How was Fiona to remain silent? What mother could?

  History was repeating itself in a horribly ironic way, with her own daughter playing the part of the other woman. Leah was inflicting the hurt now that had been visited on Fiona thirty years earlier, the bitterness and shock of it every bit as vivid today as they had been then.

  I’m sorry, he’d said as Fiona had stood dumbfounded, the tea towel still in her hand. I didn’t mean it to happen, it just did. Leah babbling in her baby talk, sitting on the kitchen floor, banging a wooden spoon on the tiles. I’m so sorry.

  Fiona’s heart thudding in her chest, a prickle of cold sweat on her forehead. Bending to pick up her daughter, needing something to hold on to.

  How long? All she could manage to say, with her throat closing up and her abdomen clenched so tightly she could hardly breathe. How long? Her legs had begun suddenly to tremble, forcing her to put Leah down again in case they both crashed to the floor.

  And the desolation after he’d gone, the chasm he’d left behind. The torture of having to face him when he came by to see Leah. The protective shell forming around her, so that after a while it became—not easy, never easy, but not quite so impossible to smile and pretend that he hadn’t destroyed her heart.

  And worst of all, on hearing of his aneurysm less than a year later, the fresh grief, the hurt on hurt that had almost caused a complete breakdown. No satisfaction, no sense of justice being done, none of that.

  She’d stayed away from his funeral, not trusting herself to come face-to-face with the woman who’d caused it all. It had taken her five years to visit his grave, to stand in front of his headstone and read his name in the granite and realize that she felt nothing anymore, nothing at all.

  She sighed impatiently, not seeing the long strip of lawn beyond the window, the neat shrubs running up either side. Wasn’t she entitled to be angry now? Wouldn’t any woman be angry in her position, with her history?

  She turned from the window and went to run a bath—and to pour a large gin and bitter lemon to accompany it.

  “Something happened today,” Hannah said.

  “What?”

  Adam was poaching eggs to sit on top of their smoked haddock. Smoked fish had never done much for Hannah—and she certainly wouldn’t have chosen an egg as an accompaniment—but she was starving and not about to quibble when it was being served up to her.

  “Someone asked me out,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “I think I might have told you about him. He’s a carpenter. He asked if I’d put his leaflets on the counter a few weeks ago.”

  “The one Geraldine tried to set you up with—I remember.” Adam cracked the second egg and dropped it carefully into the swirling water.

  “He’s been in a few times since,” Hannah went on. “I didn’t mention it because, well…”

  “And now he’s asked you out.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you said?”

  “No.”

  “Blast—why do they always break up? I’ll have that one.” Adam lowered the heat under the saucepan. “So you turned him down.”

  “I did.” Hannah set the table with cutlery and glasses. “The problem is…I’m wondering now if I did the right thing.”

  Adam lifted out the eggs and laid them on the fish. He brought the plates to the table. “What’s he like?”

  “Nice.” She poured
water into their glasses. “He seems nice,” she said, “what little I know of him.” She picked up her fork. “Thanks—this looks interesting.”

  “But you’re not sure that you’re ready.”

  “Yes—I mean no. I’m not sure.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. If he’s keen, he’ll be in again.”

  “Maybe…if I haven’t scared him off.”

  Adam grinned. “Ah, men aren’t that easily scared. Nobody would ever get together if they were.”

  Hannah cut a corner off her fish. “When he asked me out, I sort of…froze. I wasn’t expecting it—at least I didn’t think he’d ask so soon—and my instinct was to say no without really thinking about it.”

  “Right.”

  “I know I have to move on. I do realize I can’t lock myself away…” She sighed. “Oh, let’s change the subject, it’s too depressing. What about you? You haven’t been on a date in ages.”

  He looked skeptically at her over his fish. “You think my love life’s less depressing than yours?”

  “Good point. Well, what about Nora, then? Has she put her eye on anyone?”

  “Not that she’s told me.” Adam paused. “Actually, speaking of Nora, there’s something I’d better tell you, before you hear it from someone else.”

  Hannah looked at him quizzically. “Sounds very mysterious.”

  “Ah, it’s nothing really—it’s just that she’s got a job.”

  “Has she? That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes…The thing is, it’s with the paper.”

  Hannah stared. “Nora got a job with the paper? Doing what?”

  He poked at his fish, separating the pale orange flesh into sections. “She’s going to be Patrick’s PA, of all things. She starts on Monday.”

  “Oh.” Hannah digested the information. “That’s weird.” She cut a piece of egg white. “Not that it makes any…It is a bit weird though, isn’t it?”

  “It’s nothing,” Adam said. “She probably won’t last longer than a week. Anyway, what do you care? I just didn’t want you hearing it by chance, that’s all.”

  Hannah wondered what had happened to Patrick’s last PA, super-efficient Andrea with her peanut allergy and her English husband and her son in the army. Andrea who never forgot a meeting or missed an appointment, Andrea who set up golf tournaments and organized business lunches—and who had reminded Patrick, probably, when Hannah’s birthday was approaching.

  And now Andrea was gone, for whatever reason, and Patrick had taken on Nora O’Connor, who’d presumably remind him when Leah Bradshaw’s birthday was drawing near. Nora would organize his schedule and arrange his day and book his flights when he traveled. Nora would be spending a lot of every day in his company.

  “She knows who he is, right?” she asked Adam.

  “Yeah, turns out she’s friendly with Leah—apparently they used to hang around together at school, but I don’t remember her.”

  “Of course, they’d have been in the same class…So Leah must have got her the job.”

  “Yeah, maybe…I’m not sure.” Adam looked uncomfortable. “Han, you know what Nora’s like. It probably never crossed her mind that it might be a bit…awkward.”

  Like hell it didn’t. Hannah smiled across the table at him. “She’s right, why should it be awkward? It’s all in the past now. It really doesn’t bother me.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be doing this dinner again,” Adam said, regarding their plates. “It hasn’t exactly been a roaring success.”

  “You know what I like?” she said. “Your chicken-and-sweet-corn soup. Let’s have that tomorrow night, with those nice seeded rolls that you got last time.”

  She would put it out of her mind. It didn’t matter in the least.

  Maybe Alice was the only one who noticed. It wasn’t as if he were falling around the place, and he hadn’t thrown up or disgraced himself in any obvious way. He was slurring his words a bit, certainly, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like someone who’d had a few too many, and he was louder than usual, monopolizing the conversation, like he always did after too much alcohol.

  But maybe it was more obvious to her; maybe it didn’t really bother anyone else. And so what anyway, if he’d overdone it a bit? They were out for the night, weren’t they? They were helping a good cause, and it wasn’t doing anyone any harm. And there were plenty of others who’d had more than a few; you only had to look around to see that.

  It was useless—her excuses failed to reassure her. The knot in her stomach wouldn’t budge. Her armpits felt horribly damp, her hands kept making fists. She wanted to go home; she wanted them both home and out of sight, before everyone started talking about Tom Joyce, who was making a bit of a fool of himself at the charity dinner-dance.

  The band switched to a slow waltz, and Stephen extended a hand to her. “Come on,” he said, pulling her up. He wasn’t 100 percent sober either, she told herself—he didn’t volunteer to dance when he was—but he was still well able to hold his own, and Geraldine didn’t seem in the least concerned about him.

  Alice tried to will her tension away as she let Stephen lead her around the stifling, perfumed room. “Isn’t it hot?” she said, but he wasn’t listening, his head tilted toward a neighboring couple, the man saying something that made him smile.

  I’m worried about Tom’s drinking, she wanted to say to him. Maybe you could have a word. But of course she kept quiet. Tom would hit the roof—and it wouldn’t be fair to Stephen, who was more a work colleague and a casual friend than someone you could expect to get involved in something like that.

  There was nobody she could talk to. Not Tom’s family, such as they were: a priest brother in Colombia, a pair of sisters—one married, one separated, both living in England—a ninety-two-year-old uncle in a nursing home at the other side of the country whom they visited a handful of times a year.

  Alice wasn’t close to either of her own siblings, not in that way. And of course she wouldn’t dream of mentioning anything to Ellen—what could their daughter do so far away, except worry about her father?

  At half past twelve, Alice told Geraldine she had a headache, and Geraldine immediately said, “I’ll get Reception to call us a taxi,” so Alice suspected that she’d been wanting to go home too. The taxi arrived remarkably quickly—they were still gathering coats and bags when the porter came and found them.

  Tom stumbled getting into the back, and Stephen put a hand on his arm and said, “Easy there, fellow,” and Alice’s face burned in the darkness. She sat between Tom and Stephen, and before they were through the gates of the hotel, Tom’s head had drooped toward her shoulder. She prayed he wouldn’t snore.

  Geraldine turned in her seat. “The dinner was nice, I must say.”

  “My beef was tough,” Stephen said.

  “How long till we have to get up for work?” Alice asked, so neither of them would look for Tom’s opinion of the beef.

  They both groaned, and Geraldine said, “Oh, don’t think about that.”

  Tom’s mood would be black in the morning. Alice dreaded the drive in to work. He usually dropped her, since Glass Slipper was on the way to the dental clinic, and it made more sense than to take the two cars. She made her own way home, relishing the half-hour walk after her day in the shop, unless the weather was very bad, in which case she took a lift from Geraldine.

  “That’s nice music,” Geraldine was saying to the driver.

  “It’s Herbie Hancock,” he told her. “One of my favorites.”

  “Do you play yourself?”

  “I do, a bit.”

  Tom’s head was heavy on Alice’s shoulder. She shifted slightly, and Stephen immediately moved to allow her more room. “I’m fine,” she said quickly. Here was the roundabout. Up the hill and two more left turns and they were home.

  She dug her elbow into Tom’s side when the car stopped, and he snuffled awake. “Money for the taxi,” she hissed—she had only a fifty-euro note in her wallet—but G
eraldine said, “Alice, forget it—we’ll sort it out tomorrow.” Stephen walked around the car and opened the back door and shepherded Tom out onto the path.

  “Maybe he needn’t bother coming in tomorrow,” he murmured to Alice as she climbed out. “Let him sleep in. We can manage.”

  “We’ll see,” she answered. “Thanks very much.”

  If Tom missed a day’s work because of drink, they’d be talking about it at the clinic. She dug into her bag to fish out the door key, and grabbed Tom’s arm as he lurched toward her.

  “Will I go to the door with you?” Stephen asked.

  “No, we’re fine. You head off.”

  Tom leaned heavily against her while she walked as quickly as she could up the driveway, which had never seemed so long. The taxi sat there, idling, long after Stephen had gotten back inside. She willed them to go, to stop watching Alice Joyce supporting her drunk husband.

  Lying alone in bed later—she hadn’t been able to get Tom past the living-room couch, so she’d pulled off his shoes and lifted up his legs and left him there—she imagined the conversation in the taxi after they’d been dropped. About how Tom had been knocking it back, about poor Alice having to put up with that. Maybe a remark about a dentist needing a clear head and a steady hand.

  Or certainly they’d be thinking it, even if it were left unsaid.

  She’d wake him in the morning. She’d do her best to get him up. If he was grumpy she’d put up with it. She turned onto her side and read 1:14 on the clock. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

  Leah couldn’t sleep. If it wasn’t the constant urge to pee, it was the horrible acidic lurch of heartburn that had her lying awake next to Patrick at almost three in the morning.

  And if it was neither of those, it was Nora O’Connor. Oh, it was stupid to think Patrick was going to be seduced by the first attractive woman who looked at him, or flirted with him. It was stupid and insecure, and she despised herself for thinking it.

  She was pregnant with his child; he’d left his long-term partner to be with her. She was pretty and confident and independent. He loved her, and she satisfied him in bed, she was sure of it. What possible reason would he have for straying?