Well, I’m relieved to see we do have a bit in common after all. I love long walks too, especially if they come complete with sunshine and coastal views! And no, I don’t play a musical instrument, but I do like the sound of the cello – so mellow and full-bodied. I have to confess, though, that I’m not a big fan of the cinema. I’d much rather see a good play than a film. Unfortunately, Charleton has just the one small theatre, but occasionally it attracts a decent offering. There’s also a new arts centre planned for Belford, less than an hour away. Otherwise, I get my fix any time I go to Galway or Dublin.
It’s interesting that both your sons ended up living in Rathfarnham. You didn’t mention if either of them has children. I’m dreading the day Clara makes me a grandmother – hopefully not for a few years yet!
Well, I’ve rattled on long enough now, so I’d better stop.
All the best,
Deirdre
Siofra –
Hurry up back from France. Matty’s just isn’t the same without you on a Friday night! You must be fluent by now, especially with that sexy builder to help you out – although I presume you’re not too interested in his vocabulary!
Well, Barry’s being a major pain, texting me all the time, begging me to take him back. I just emailed him to say bugger off. I feel like telling him exactly why I dumped him, but it’s still top secret – you’re the only one who knows. We had a chat the other night and I flirted like mad, but he’s playing a bit hard to get. Not that that’ll stop me!
OK, gotta go – Mum just shouted up that dinner is ready. See you on Friday, we’ll hit Matty’s with a bang!!!
Clara xxx
‘I forgot to ask what Kathryn thought of your birthday present.’
Yvonne dried the last plate and hung the tea towel on its hook. ‘She was delighted. She said she’d never had a proper massage.’
Clara peeled off her rubber gloves. ‘Oh, I’d say that good-looking husband of hers obliges every now and again.’
Yvonne smiled. ‘Possibly.’
Clara brushed the crumbs from the table into her hand. ‘He’s years younger than her, isn’t he?’
‘Well, eight or nine. But they’re obviously mad about each other.’
‘You think?’ Clara emptied the crumbs into the bin and got the brush. ‘I can’t understand what he sees in her, to be honest.’
‘What?’ Yvonne frowned. ‘Why not? I think they’re perfectly suited.’
‘Well, he obviously didn’t pick her for her looks – I mean, she’s OK, but nothing to write home about. And she’s probably too old now for kids. I just thought he’d go for someone younger, that’s all.’
Yvonne took off her apron and hung it on a hook by the sink. ‘Well, all I know is that they’re mad about each other – it’s obvious when you see them together.’
There was silence in the kitchen while Clara swept the floor and Yvonne wiped the draining board and squeezed out the cloth. Then Clara said, ‘I meant to tell you, I met Dan coming home, the night of Kathryn’s party. It was early, I was just going out, and he was a bit drunk.’
‘Was he? Poor Dan.’ Yvonne draped the cloth over the edge of the sink. ‘I was sorry he didn’t come to the party – it might have done him good. He probably couldn’t face trying to be sociable.’
‘Looks like his wife is gone for good, doesn’t it? And who’s that man staying with him, with the funny hat?’
‘He’s a tenant. Dan probably needed some help with the mortgage after Ali left.’
‘Was there another man?’ Clara took the dustpan and brush from their hook.
Yvonne looked at her, amused. ‘Why the sudden interest in the neighbours?’
Clara collected what she’d swept and emptied the dustpan into the bin. ‘No reason.’
‘Well, I haven’t a clue why Ali left – you’d have to ask Dan that. And speaking of breakups, what about poor Barry? I’m assuming he’s gone.’
Clara’s face took on the closed look so familiar to Yvonne. She’d strayed into personal territory again. ‘Yes, we’ve broken up, and I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind.’ She lifted the plate of scraps from the worktop and turned to the back door. ‘I’ll give these to Magoo.’
And that was that. Shutters down again. Yvonne checked that the cooker knobs were turned off – a habit she’d picked up years ago after she’d gone to bed one night and left the oven on. Then she glanced around the tidy kitchen, took the newspaper from a chair and brought it into the sitting room.
One day later: 19 July
NUMBER EIGHT
He dialled her number and waited, counting the rings. Three, four—
‘Hi, Dan.’
So his number was still in her phone’s address book. He still existed there. He closed his eyes. ‘Hi.’
A pause, and then she said, ‘I’m glad you rang.’
‘I just wanted to say sorry. There was no call for the stuff I said last night.’
‘That’s OK.’ She spoke quickly. ‘I can understand—’
‘Yeah, well,’ he didn’t want her understanding, ‘I just wanted to say that.’
He hung up quickly. That was all he could handle for now. He pictured her slipping her phone back into her pocket. He wondered if she was in Brendan’s old farmhouse. Maybe she was walking into another room right now and saying, ‘You won’t believe who just phoned.’
He’d often been in that house. Brendan had bought it when Dan was in his mid-teens, and he remembered calling over with his parents shortly afterwards, with the dark blue lamp they’d bought as a housewarming gift.
Brendan had given them tea in blue mugs and thick slices of Battenburg cake, and they’d walked through the house together. He remembered Brendan telling him he was welcome to stay the night anytime he wanted. Winking at him behind his parents’ backs and Dan smiling at him. Man to man.
In the car on the way home, his mother had got cross with his father for saying that Brendan had bought a pig in a poke, that he could smell the damp as soon as they’d walked in.
The last time Dan and Ali had visited Brendan was about two months before Ali walked out, when they’d called around to see Brendan’s two new lambs. They’d eaten wedges of the shop-bought apple tart they’d brought with them and Brendan had joked with Ali about giving him the recipe, and she’d said it was a family secret, that she’d have to kill him if she told him.
And now, looking back, he remembered how quiet Ali had been in the car on the way home. ‘You OK?’ he’d asked her, and she’d said yes, she was just a bit tired, her period was on the way. They’d bought a Chinese takeaway and opened a bottle of wine when they’d got home, but she’d gone to bed with a headache soon after the meal, leaving him to finish the wine on his own.
Funny, the things you remembered.
Brendan hadn’t appeared when Ali was moving out. From the dining room window Dan had watched her loading her bags into the boot of her Golf. He’d seen her struggling through the front door with them, tears running silently down her face, and he’d made no effort to help her.
She’d been pregnant then. About a week, a little over a week pregnant, and neither of them had known.
He went out to the back garden. After a week of broken weather the sun had decided to reappear and Kieran was turning lamb chops on the barbecue. Underneath the wire grid, potatoes wrapped in tinfoil lay among the red coals. There was a jug of water and a glass on the little wrought-iron table. Beneath it, Picasso sat washing himself.
A dog barked. Dan followed the sound over the hedge and found himself looking at Clara O’Mahony lying on her stomach on a cream blanket, almost at the bottom of number seven’s garden. Her little dog snuffled in the grass nearby.
Clara wore yellow and blue bikini bottoms and she’d unfastened the matching top, so her back was bare. Her skin was pale golden and glistened slightly. She was reading, propped up on her elbows, and Dan could see the curve of the breast nearest to him, the nipple just hidden by her arm.
‘You could get the salad – it’s in the fridge – and the dressing.’
Lifting out the bowl of mixed leaves, cubed feta cheese and olives, Dan thought back again to his days of spaghetti out of a tin, sausages wrapped in sliced bread, dried-up poached eggs on toast.
He really must learn to cook, Kieran wouldn’t be here forever. Next time he was in the library, he’d enquire about classes – give him something to do in the evenings. Take his mind off any other distractions in the neighbourhood.
He pulled a can of cider out of the fridge and popped the top and poured the pumpkin-coloured liquid into a pint glass. He found the little bottle of dressing that Kieran had mixed earlier. He took the pair of salad tongs Kieran had found in a charity shop and stuck them under his arm. Then he brought everything out to the patio, doing his best to ignore the view over the hedge.
Her body was perfect. He bet her skin was like velvet. She must have men crawling out of the woodwork to get at her.
Two weeks later: 2 August
NUMBER NINE
Kathryn stirred her coffee. ‘Pity the good weather didn’t last.’
‘Mmm.’ Yvonne picked up a triangle of shortbread. ‘We had a good run of it though.’
It had been raining steadily for three days now, the soft summer rain that Kathryn usually loved, knowing that her flowers were drinking it gratefully. Now, it irritated her.
She reached for some shortbread, then changed her mind. A pound up last week. ‘So tell me about this Joe fellow. What’s the latest? Any sign of him wanting to meet you?’
‘Not yet. It’s only been a few weeks though. Early days.’
‘So what else have you found out about him? Didn’t you say he lives not too far away?’
‘Well, depends what you’d call far. He’s in Ashfield.’
‘Seventy miles. Well, it’s not the other end of Ireland. And what else?’
Yvonne thought. ‘He plays the electric guitar – badly, he says. He has two grown-up sons, both married in Dublin. They have kids, or one has. And he can’t understand why I like country music.’
‘Well, there I have to agree with Joe. Anyone else of interest floating into your inbox?’
‘No – a few others have made contact, but nobody sounded that exciting so I didn’t bother responding.’
Kathryn sipped her coffee. ‘No sign of Clara and Barry getting back together then?’
‘Barry? No, doesn’t look like it.’
And is there anyone else on the scene?’
‘Not that I know of.’ Yvonne paused. Although she seems a bit distracted lately, so maybe she has her eye on someone. No doubt I’ll find out in due course.’
‘Mmm.’ Kathryn turned her head towards the window again. ‘God, will this rain never stop? I feel like I’m getting cabin fever.’
Yvonne looked at her. Are you alright? You seem a bit – tense.’
Kathryn shook her head. ‘Sorry, no, I’m fine. Just the time of the month – and Grainne being her usual painful self. Don’t take any notice.’
After Yvonne had left, Kathryn took the cups to the dishwasher and stood gazing out at the drizzle. She was so tempted to confide in Yvonne – God, she really needed to pour out her fears to someone, to have them laugh and say ‘Don’t be silly, you’re imagining things’ – but for once, Yvonne was the last person she could talk to.
In case it was Clara.
Because by now Kathryn knew there was someone else. The perfume, the flowers – and yesterday the phone call. It was the phone call that had convinced her, the phone call Grainne had told her about.
The two women had been in the sitting room, watching the six o’clock news. Justin had gone to the garage on the corner for petrol for the mower. A mushroom and bacon quiche was cooking in the kitchen.
Grainne had waited until the ad break and then she’d turned to Kathryn. ‘Don’t let on I asked, but is Justin planning a surprise for my birthday?’
Kathryn stared at her. Justin hadn’t mentioned Grainne’s birthday. Wasn’t it still weeks away, the beginning of October? ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Well.’ Grainne darted a look out of the window, ‘when I came in here earlier, he was in the middle of a phone call and he just hung up, really suddenly, and he looked quite guilty, I thought.’
Kathryn’s heart plummeted.
‘So I thought it had to be something secret – and with my birthday the next big occasion …’ Grainne looked eagerly at Kathryn. ‘And if anyone would know, you would.’
For the life of her, Kathryn couldn’t think how to respond. ‘Well, I don’t—’
Then Grainne laughed. ‘Oh, there you go, being loyal to him. I suppose he’s sworn you to secrecy.’
Kathryn nodded, trying desperately to keep her expression neutral. Trying not to let her dismay show.
‘I’ll just have to wait so.’ Grainne settled back into her armchair, a satisfied smile on her face.
Kathryn kept her eyes on the TV screen. The garage was three minutes away – what was taking him so long? He must have been gone at least a quarter of an hour.
Plenty long enough for a phone call, well out of earshot of anyone at home.
She should talk to him of course. Just come out with it, and ask him if there was someone else, if he was having an affair. Even though at this stage the evidence seemed overwhelming, wasn’t there still the tiniest chance that Kathryn had got the wrong end of the stick?
Maybe there was a completely innocent explanation for all this. Maybe Justin would laugh and say, ‘What? Perfume? Oh, that was just—’
Just what? What could it possibly be? What possible reason could your husband have for buying flowers and perfume for someone else and not telling you? And of course that phone call had had nothing to do with Grainne’s birthday – of course he’d have told her if he’d been planning anything for that. So he must have been talking to someone he didn’t want his mother – or his wife – to know about.
She couldn’t bear it, simply wouldn’t be able to cope, if Justin admitted there was someone else, that he loved someone else. So she couldn’t ask him.
What was she to do? She stood at the window and watched the drizzle falling onto her flowers and she felt terribly afraid.
Three weeks later: 23 August
NUMBER EIGHT
Dan took the plastic sheet out of the big brown envelope and held it up to the light. Someone could have told him it was a fish or a dinosaur and he’d have believed them. No matter how he looked at it, it made little sense. But then, all of a sudden, he picked out the curved shape of the body, the minuscule fingers, the roundness of the head – and yes, there it was, the tiny shadow of his son’s penis.
His son. His and Ali’s son. His heart melted. He could feel his whole chest softening, oozing. Ridiculously, his eyes filled with tears and he put up a hand and swiped them away. They’d made a baby together. He breathed in deeply, twice, three times. Gazed again at his freshly made son. My boy.
He thought about a little boy who looked like him. Maybe they’d have the same colour hair, the same eyes. He’d take him fishing, teach him how to cast a line, do all the clichéd things fathers and sons did. He’d read James and the Giant Peach to him, the first book he remembered his own father reading to him at night. He’d buy him his first football. People would know, when they saw them, that they were father and son.
He wondered if Ali appeared pregnant yet. At what stage would it start to show? She was four and a half months gone now, halfway there. Was she craving any unusual food? Did Brendan have to get up at night to make her a sausage and marmalade sandwich? Was she eating properly? Getting enough vitamins or whatever pregnant women were supposed to get?
He studied the sheet again. He took it into the sitting room, where Kieran sat reading the paper. ‘Here, have a look at this.’
Kieran took the sheet and peered at it for a few seconds. Dan waited. Kie
ran raised his head. ‘What is it?’
‘My son.’ Dan had no control over the beam that suddenly spread across his face. ‘That’s the first ultrasound.’
Kieran peered down again. ‘Is that the head?’
Dan crouched beside him. ‘No, there it is. And they’re the arms, see the fingers.’
‘Oh, yeah – and these are the legs here?’
‘Yes, and the knees. And the toes.’
‘When is it due?’
‘Beginning of January.’
‘Have you thought about names yet?’
‘Not really’. Dan had wondered about that, wondered how he and Ali would sort it out. They’d have to choose together, however they managed it.
He’d cast around among the names in his family – his father Sebastian, his grandfathers Seamus and Jack, his uncles Tom, Tony, Gerard … and Brendan.
Nothing leapt out at him. He liked some of the old Irish names – Fiachra, Oisin, Eilbhear. He liked Daniel too, although that might be a bit self-indulgent.
He’d told his parents about the baby. His mother had answered the phone, as she always did. If she was out of the house, Dan’s father ignored it.
‘Hello, love. How are you?’ The same worried note in her voice, the note that had been there ever since her brother had stolen her son’s wife. ‘Everything alright?’
She’d had no contact with Brendan since it had happened. She’d told Dan that Brendan had rung the house a few times and she’d hung up on him. And Ali certainly wouldn’t have phoned. So they wouldn’t know about the baby.
‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’
‘No. Nothing wrong.’ Dan took a deep breath and said, ‘There is some news though.’
She cried when he told her. Passed the phone onto his father, who kept saying, ‘God above, I don’t believe it.’
He remembered taking Ali to meet his parents for the first time, the week before she’d asked him to marry her. She’d brought them a box of expensive Belgian chocolates that Dan knew neither of them would eat. His mother had worn lipstick and the shoes she kept for funerals. His father had put on a tie.
The People Next Door Page 14
