The People Next Door

by Roisin Meaney

  Kathryn couldn’t remember what it felt like not to be exhausted. Each muscle in her body ached for sleep, her eyes were permanently sore from lack of it. Mealtimes had become an almost-forgotten luxury; food was bolted, usually standing up, when either she or Justin got a chance.

  If it wasn’t for Marzena coming in twice a week to clean, the house would have been as neglected as the garden, with weeds springing up willy-nilly in Kathryn’s once carefully tended beds, and the grass almost long enough to conceal Picasso when he wandered over.

  ‘This baby’s a tornado,’ Kathryn told Yvonne. ‘The house is in shock.’

  Yvonne patted Emily’s back and the baby immediately produced a large belch. ‘Good girl, that’s what we like to hear. Now, give your mother a bit of a break so she can talk to her friend.’ But Emily began to whimper and squirm in Yvonne’s arms.

  Kathryn opened her shirt again. ‘Here. We’ll have no peace till she’s full, believe me.’ Emily settled to her right nipple and sucked determinedly.

  Yvonne smiled. ‘You look totally done in, but in a good way.’

  Kathryn yawned. ‘I am. Totally done in. But in the best possible way.’ She stroked the top of Emily’s head. ‘I had no idea it was possible to love someone so much.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Not to care about any of the things you’d cared about before, you know?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘About keeping the house clean, or getting the washing done, or cooking proper meals. None of it matters.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m so lucky.’ Kathryn gazed at her daughter. ‘What did I do to deserve her?’

  ‘What do you mean, what did you do? Wasn’t she long overdue? You should be asking what kept her.’

  Kathryn smiled. ‘I suppose so. Isn’t it funny that there are two babies next door to each other all of a sudden, after years of just grown-ups in the three houses?’

  ‘You’ll be arranging play dates in a couple of years.’

  ‘I wonder if it was the baby who brought them back together.’

  ‘Who knows? I met Dan the other day, and I must say he does look happy.’

  Emily came off Kathryn’s nipple, still making loud sucking noises. Kathryn propped her against her shoulder and rubbed her back. ‘Imagine if they got married.’

  ‘Dan and Ali? They are married.’

  ‘No, I mean Emily and Colm. He is the boy next door, after all.’

  Pause. And some people just can’t resist the boy next door, can they?’

  Another pause. ‘I love how you still blush when we talk about him.’

  ‘Shut up – I never blush.’ Yvonne put the backs of her hands to her cheeks.

  Kathryn laughed. ‘Tell you what – why don’t you have a baby next year and we can open the Miller’s Avenue crèche?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. By the way, did I tell you that Clara has someone new?’

  ‘Has she?’ Emily belched again. ‘That’s good news. You never found out who the last one was, did you?’

  ‘No, and I don’t suppose I ever will. Not that it matters now. I hope this one doesn’t let her down.’

  ‘Hopefully.’ Kathryn laid the half-asleep Emily carefully in the carry cot on the table. ‘OK, we should be good for another cup.’

  Yvonne plugged in the kettle. ‘So … how’s Justin?’

  ‘Great. Looking forward to the change.’

  The sale of Grainne’s house had closed a month ago. The surprisingly high sum had been split three ways between William, Justin and Ann. Justin immediately handed in his notice at work and was finishing up in three days’ time, just before he, Kathryn and Emily travelled to Spain for a fortnight with Ann and Suze.

  And when they got back, he was going to start the online teaching course, and in September Kathryn was going back to work and Marzena would take care of Emily five mornings a week while Justin studied.

  In the afternoons, he’d said to Kathryn the other night, he and Dan could take it in turns to look after both babies.

  ‘We’ll be two stay-at-home dads – we need to help each other out. Maybe we could do every second week or something.’

  She’d laughed at him, saying they could hardly cope with Emily on her own – how would he manage Colm too? But maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. Maybe he and Dan would work something out.

  The idea was appealing. The Miller’s Avenue crèche.

  In the meantime, they were off to Spain. Ann and Suze would look after Emily, and Kathryn and Justin would sleep. Kathryn hadn’t told Ann that there was a fairly strong chance they’d sleep for the entire two weeks, that she would only wake up for long enough to feed Emily.

  As she squeezed her sleeveless tops into a corner of the suitcase, she heard a wail from the cot in the next bedroom. She closed the case and opened her shirt.

  CLARA

  ‘So what time are you expecting lover-boy?’

  ‘Any minute now.’ Clara slipped the wide silver bangle – a moving-out present from her mother – onto her wrist. ‘And I wish you wouldn’t call him that.’

  Sometimes Siofra got on her nerves a bit. Clara knew you had to put up with that when you shared with someone. And, to be fair, Siofra had her good points. She was fanatical about cleaning the bathroom, she made a great lasagne and she never objected to Clara borrowing from her impressive collection of handbags.

  ‘Will you bring him to Matty’s after the pictures?’ Siofra dipped her brush into the white varnish and stroked it carefully along her nail tips.

  Clara considered. ‘Maybe.’

  No need to keep him hidden. No reason to hide him from anyone. He didn’t have a wife or a child – nobody to pull him away from her.

  They’d bumped into each other in the health food shop. Clara had been leaning over the cereal bins, scooping muesli into a plastic bag, and he’d said, ‘Well, hello, stranger.’

  She’d looked up and smiled. ‘Hi, how’s it going?’

  She hadn’t seen him since the last night of the cookery classes, when they’d all gone to the pub. Months ago now.

  ‘No complaints. And you? How’ve you been?’

  ‘Fine. Still cooking anyway.’

  He grinned. ‘Glad to hear it. How’s young Dan?’

  The wrench of pain whenever Clara thought of him shot through her again. She shook her head, turned back to the muesli. ‘Dunno. I haven’t seen him in a while. We split up.’ Still hard to say, still needed to be tossed out quickly or it would get stuck.

  ‘Sorry.’ He wore a crumpled checked shirt and black jeans. His hair was longer and he needed a shave. ‘Me and my big mouth.’ He was interestingly scruffy.

  Not that Clara was interested.

  She knotted the top of her bag. ‘It’s OK, don’t worry about it. Happened quite a while ago.’ Then she began to turn away. ‘Well, nice to—’

  And he said quickly, ‘Hey, d’you fancy a coffee?’

  She hesitated. No, she wanted to say. No coffee. No anything. But it was only Douglas, who’d made them laugh with his stories of the cruise ships, who’d pretended to be cross when their cakes hadn’t risen. And it was only a cup of coffee.

  And, whether she liked it or not, life went on.

  ‘OK, that’d be nice.’

  She had a latte, and he had a black regular, and he told her about the student in his last group who’d misread the quantities in a recipe and ended up with ‘gingerbread you could break rocks on’, and the man who’d knocked a cheesecake off the table – ‘guess which side it landed on’ – and the Vegemite he craved when he wasn’t in Australia. ‘Listen, you can laugh, but it’s an addiction, I swear.’

  And she told him about living with Siofra: ‘It’s a challenge sometimes. I suppose I’ve been spoiled, having all the home comforts until now,’ and about her mother acting as godmother for the first time in her life. ‘It’s her friend’s baby, she cried all through the christening – my mother, I mean, not the baby.’

  And afte
rwards, when Douglas asked if she’d like to go out sometime, Clara gave him her phone number.

  That hadn’t been in the plan. The plan had been never again. After Dan, after the night he’d sat beside her in the car and stammered that he was sorry, that he hated what he had to do—

  She’d made a complete fool of herself. She cringed when she thought of it now. Not understanding him at first, not able to take in what he was saying – and then her dawning horror, and pleading with him, begging him not to leave her, bawling her eyes out. God, she’d really laid it on thick.

  ‘I trusted you. You said you’d look after me—’ Gasping it out, her breath coming in painful, sobbing bursts. ‘How can you just sit there and – I can’t believe – no, no, you can’t—’ Thumping in despair against the dashboard, digging her nails into her palms to make the other pain go away. ‘No, no, please—’

  And she’d still been aching for Dan, still scraped raw from his rejection, when her mother had told her she wasn’t going to marry Greg after all.

  ‘What?’ They were sitting in the kitchen, it was Clara’s first visit home since she’d moved out. She’d walked past Dan’s house, praying that she wouldn’t meet him – or worse, his wife – and praying, at the same time, that he’d suddenly appear and beg her to take him back. ‘The wedding’s off?’

  Yvonne didn’t seem upset. She didn’t look like Clara felt, as if her heart had been ripped out of her, as if Dan had torn her in two.

  Yvonne picked up the teapot and refilled their cups. ‘Well, it was a mistake really. It would never have worked out – we’re better as friends.’

  ‘So … it was a mutual decision, then?’

  ‘Hmm … not exactly.’ Yvonne poured milk into her cup. ‘To be honest, it was mine, really. But Greg took it well.’ She smiled. ‘It’s for the best.’ Then she put a hand over Clara’s and said, ‘But how are you?’

  And there was a time when Clara would have looked steadily back at her mother and said, ‘I’m fine.’ But those days were gone. She said, ‘I’m heartbroken. But I’m surviving.’ Because what else was there to do?

  And a few Saturdays later, Yvonne told her the real reason she wasn’t marrying Greg. Kieran seemed perfectly pleasant, and the two of them certainly looked happy together.

  Kieran had lived in Dan’s house while Clara and Dan had been lovers, and now her mother loved Kieran. There was a kind of horrible symmetry to that – or was it irony? Maybe a bit of both.

  Clara wondered if her mother and Kieran would last. Maybe they’d be the lucky ones.

  Douglas rang within a week and they arranged to go to the cinema. After the film they went for a drink, and he told her that the Irish girl he’d fallen for, who’d been the reason for him coming to Ireland, hadn’t worked out.

  ‘She was too high-maintenance for me,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t keep her in the style she was accustomed to – isn’t that the phrase?’

  Clare smiled. ‘I think so. But I’m afraid most women are pretty high-maintenance – at least, most of the ones I know.

  Douglas considered. ‘Maybe I need to get a second job, then.’

  He wore a moss green T-shirt that matched his eyes and he’d got his hair cut and he’d shaved. And he had lovely teeth. Really he wasn’t unattractive.

  At the entrance to the apartments, she turned to him. ‘Thanks, I enjoyed it.’

  ‘Good.’ He looked down into her face. ‘Me too.’ He was a good eight inches taller than her.

  And because he was Douglas, Claire put her hand behind his neck and drew him down and touched his cheek lightly with her lips. ‘Goodnight then.’

  They’d seen each other three times since, two meals and another visit to the cinema. He still hadn’t been invited beyond the doorstep. He still hadn’t attempted to kiss her mouth.

  But when he did, Clara might be inclined to respond.

  The doorbell rang. She took her jacket from the back of the chair. ‘Right, see you later.’

  Siofra didn’t look up. ‘Have fun.’

  Fun. Yes, that was something to aim for. Clara crossed the room and opened the door and smiled at Douglas.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks to Ann Menzies, Liz Skehan and Dan O’Gorman for their help and advice, to Faith O’Grady for her support and encouragement, to Ciara Doorley for knocking me into shape whenever it was needed, and to all at Hachette Books Ireland for everything they’ve done to get this book on the shelves.

  Thanks to my parents Rose and Micheál for their continued faith in me, to my sister Treasa for single-handedly boosting my sales, to my brothers Tomás and Aonghus for turning up and clapping loudly at the launches, and to my other brothers Colm and Ciarán for their long-distance well-wishes – and a special thank you to my Uncle Mike for taking me out to dinner when I made the bestseller list.