What Happened to Us?

by Faith Hogan

  It was always the same, they took the battered jeep that Conn had held onto for years and drove out to the Phoenix Park. If they were lucky, they would watch as a herd of deer made their way across their paths. In this weather, it was hard to knock half an hour out of Conn’s favourite bench, but sitting there, watching their icy breaths on the afternoon air, somehow settled Luke. It wasn’t what they spoke of, so much as knowing that they didn’t need to say a word; their companionship was complete already. Luke sensed that his father had hit some kind of divide in his life. Conn Gibson wore hesitancy like a buttoned-up coat, sometimes sunk deep within it and hardly saying a word when they sat here together. At other times, it was as if it stifled him and he was restless, wanting to be gone without any clear destination. There was an undercurrent of decisions to make and, at this moment, he was just treading water, unsure which path to take. Perhaps this unease had some contagious quality, because far from wanting to get back to the real world, Luke was feeling more each day that he too was being faced with a choice, not to go, or where to go, but rather that he might stay. Very often, they just sat contemplating so many things, comfortably and silently.

  ‘Colder today,’ he said gently after they had watched a stag course through the open plain, his hoof marks cutting deep into the untouched snow. Behind him, the herd followed, a mixture of reluctant keeping up and playful sauntering. ‘There’s a nice place to eat, near where I’m staying, if you fancy something warm,’ Luke offered.

  ‘As long as we don’t have to meet your awful Mrs Peril.’ Conn chuckled. Luke’s landlady had a way of enquiring just a little too earnestly after everyone’s affairs.

  ‘No fear.’

  They made their way back to the jeep.

  The Sea Pear was quiet, only just opened for the evening trade. It was Luke’s first time to eat here, and somehow it didn’t seem quite as welcoming without Carrie. Instead, a dusky Colombian showed them to their seats and flirted with them both as though she might make off with their wallets as soon as they turned their backs. Still, the food was good and on their way out the door, his father noticed the pub opposite.

  ‘God, that brings me back,’ he sighed.

  ‘What’s that?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Nothing, just – The Marchant Inn – there was a pub in London of the same name, must be sixty years ago now.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘That’s the problem when you get old, Luke, too many memories not enough time to think of them all and then some of them jump at you like The Marchant Inn, and it’s so long ago they’re almost like they belong to someone else.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Luke said and it struck him then, that there was something about the place, as though it was drawing him. He decided he would ask Carrie about it again the next time he ran into her.

  Four

  ‘You should tell Kevin to stick it, Carrie, seriously, cut your losses and make a run for it,’ Anna was topping up her glass of Chianti.

  ‘Mum said the same and then some,’ Carrie had cried for real when she went to her mother’s house. It had taken as much courage to be able to come clean with everyone that mattered as it had to face the truth herself. ‘Melissa wants me to dig my heels in, take half of everything and start fresh over in Scotland,’ Carrie exhaled noisily; Glasgow seemed like just the new start she needed.

  ‘Would you?’ Anna stopped pouring wine into her glass. ‘Glasgow,’ she tried the word for size on her lips. In Ireland, in deepest November, when falling snow turned to sleet and then to slush on the city streets, anywhere at all seemed like a good idea, even if it turned out to be every bit as wet and cold as Dublin.

  ‘It was just a suggestion,’ Carrie smiled, she’d considered it for all of two minutes. But she knew that would be running away and she wasn’t going to be the one to run away. ‘Why would I? Anna, it dawned on me, why should I be the one to leave? And anyway, by the time I’d have sold the house and got the business sorted, perhaps all the tension would have died down and then I might be really sorry.’

  ‘So, you’re going to soldier on?’ Anna sat opposite her friend, tucked her long legs beneath her on her second-hand couch. Carrie loved Anna’s flat, always had. It was like visiting a friendly aunt – the place had its own identity. It was filled with market and pawnshop finds, always messy. The scent of beeswax and old books and Chanel No. 5 held a comforting medley. It played out against a backdrop of some of their happiest times spent together righting the world with tea and wine and cake. Teddy just seemed to blend into the place, taking up a deep cushion on a ratty ottoman that Anna had promised to dump years earlier. ‘Keep going in there to face Kevin and his dolly bird.’

  ‘I don’t think I have a choice, not really, not yet.’ Carrie had mulled over it for the whole week, she thought about little else, at least thinking about her future kept her mind out of the present. ‘I’d be mad to do anything rash. I’m giving it six months. Then, if I feel I want a change, I can tell Kevin I want out. By then I’ll have a better idea of what I actually want.’ At least, that was what she hoped.

  ‘Can you really go in there and face them every day?’ Anna shook her lovely steely blonde hair. They both knew Anna would have walked away long ago.

  ‘I’m hoping it’ll get easier.’ Carrie smiled and felt again the stab of something rise in her chest. She knew that being here, with Anna, she could easily begin to cry once more.

  ‘Well, you should think about at least taking a holiday? It seems like a long time since you went anywhere and it’s not as if they can’t cope, from the sounds of things. Surely they can take the Christmas party bookings and you can dive into it when you get back?’

  ‘A holiday?’ Carrie hadn’t taken a holiday in so long. Not really. She’d been to Italy for a weekend a few years earlier, but that was for Penny’s wedding. Spending three days and nights with Maureen Mulvey hardly counted as a holiday in anyone’s book.

  ‘Yes, people do, all the time. They just book a flight and disappear; you have a passport, haven’t you? Lots of people just book a hotel and they sit by the pool, getting slowly sloshed while reading a trashy novel. You should, it would do you good.’

  ‘I suppose I could…’ Carrie closed her eyes for a moment, could imagine the sun on her skin, the smell of somewhere exotic. ‘Perhaps, I will.’

  ‘God, I’d love to go on holiday,’ Anna said. Anna was always flitting off somewhere, ‘Not that I’m not grateful.’ She had landed her first part in years. It wasn’t a big part, but it was The Mousetrap and it was in the Olympia Theatre, so that much alone was enough to keep her in Dublin for the next six weeks. ‘You should go on your own. I’ve always met nice… people,’ they both knew she meant men, ‘when I’ve travelled alone.’

  ‘Honestly, Anna, I’m fine without meeting anyone, nice or otherwise.’

  ‘Still, imagine turning up at The Sea Pear with your hot new Latino lover,’ Anna smiled, but Carrie had a feeling that Kevin would hardly notice, not if Valentina was anywhere near.

  *

  Carrie caught a taxi home late that night. The driver was Romanian and as dog crazy as she could have hoped for – Teddy lay on the floor, but it was better than walking. She could have stayed with Anna. Normally, when they had too much to drink, she hopped into the large creaky double bed and fell into a stupor beside her childhood friend. Then, in the morning, Anna made tea for both of them and they nursed their sore heads over whatever Carrie could rustle together from the scant contents of the fridge.

  Carrie wasn’t sure why she needed to get home so urgently. She didn’t think Kevin would be there, locks changed with her bags packed in the garden. It wasn’t anything like that. But, she just needed to be home.

  She went straight to the narrow dresser she kept in the kitchen. It was filled with bills and bank statements and somewhere, at the back of many pieces of paper that spelled out their financial lives together, she found her passport.

  Of course, she could book a holiday. A week in the sun, somewhere she’d never been before
. Somewhere warm, exotic and anonymous. She looked at the passport in her hand, another two years left on it. The possible destinations were endless. This time of year, she could head for Mexico or Dubai or somewhere even more exotic, like St Lucia or Antigua. She stood for a moment, the passport in her hand as visions of all of these places floated about in her mind. Then she looked down at Teddy, his brown glassy eyes staring up at her with a growing adoration and reality set in. She knew – some deep part of her knew – that she couldn’t do it. For one thing, it would be running away and for another, how could she just leave this little fella?

  She opened her eyes, looked around her kitchen. It wasn’t big, it wasn’t an impressive space where Kevin could whip up extravagant meals for them. It was a small galley with a round table that seated four, but rarely did. Mostly it was a place where she ate breakfast – tea and toast with too much butter and jam. It was her kitchen. Here, every item meant something to her, from the cracked pottery vase at the window, to the salvaged tiles beneath her feet. This was her home and, deep within her, she knew she had made one important decision. She was staying put, in this house at least. Even if she wasn’t sure about The Sea Pear or anything else in life, she was sure about that. This little house that smelled of yesterday’s toast and needed a good clear-out, this was her home and she was not leaving it.

  When she fell asleep, it was fast and deep and she woke in the morning with a sense of some calm. Two decisions were made.

  She rang Kevin as soon as she got up. On the mobile, he answered, his voice filled with a deep sleep, she felt he had no right to.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said and Carrie imagined Valentina’s arm snaking across his pale chest as he spoke.

  ‘I’m taking a holiday Kevin. I need to sort things out. I won’t be at the restaurant for the next week, at least.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ Suddenly the sleep had fallen from his voice, torpedoed as much from her call as from its contents. She never took time off and she knew Kevin well enough to know that it would bother him. It would upset him that she was not in the restaurant. It would irritate him that she had somewhere else to be. It would rankle that she had not consulted him; even now it would peeve him. And perhaps it would annoy Valentina too, once the gloss dulled on having the restaurant to herself for a few days.

  ‘I’m entitled to a holiday, I’m taking it to…’ and then Carrie smiled thinking of the next few days and how this conversation would play around in his head. ‘Well, never mind what I’m doing, that’s really no concern of yours now, is it?’ and she hung up the phone.

  Then it dawned on her. What on earth would she do with herself for a whole week?

  She would clear Kevin Mulvey out of her home; that was what she would do. She would clear him out in every way she could.

  At ten o’clock, she rang the bank and made an appointment for the following day. There were practical things that needed to be done and Carrie was nothing if not practical. She looked down at Teddy, ruffled his suede soft ears, ‘And then, we must see how we’re going to manage to sort you out.’ His eyes appealed to her in their own silent way, beseeching her to do the right thing by him. The least she could do now was get Teddy chipped, then she could see about adopting him if no one came looking for him.

  First though, she would visit Jane and her heart felt even lighter, because that was eminently more enjoyable than what had once been her daily penance of dropping into Maureen Mulvey.

  *

  ‘Eet is a surprise,’ Valentina was saying as she dragged him through morning shoppers, crossing O’Connell Bridge at speed. ‘I am so happy, with eet. I hope you will like eet too.’ This was their first to view together. ‘Eet is not cheap, but eet is…’ she waved her lovely tapered hands in the air in a theatrical way and he knew he could not say no to her.

  She was right, it was not cheap. It was astro-bloody-nomical.

  ‘Eet is expensive for a reason. Over there,’ Valentina pointed along the balcony, ‘you see, over there, you are looking into the studio where U2 record their albums and there, you see…’ She was so excited, it would have been adorable if she didn’t expect him to sign a lease that was going to cost as much as buying on the Champs Elysées.

  ‘Okay, Valentina I get it, there’s boy bands, and rockers and lots of wealthy people living here, but I’m just a chef. I’m not in Coldplay or the Rolling Stones, you know.’

  ‘You are keeding,’ she smiled. God how he loved the way she pronounced her i’s making her smile in the middle of sentences when really she was quite perplexed. ‘You own the most successful restaurant in Dublin. These people they would kneel to get a table on a busy night. You told me thees, yourself, you remember.’

  He did remember, of course he remembered. He may have mentioned this more than once, in the beginning, when he was trying to impress her and the tall tales didn’t seem like they could do any harm.

  ‘Okay, so this is what you really want, is it?’ To be fair, it wasn’t huge, there was only one bedroom, but the living room was vast, the agent kept calling it the studio. It was built to impress. The kitchen was tiny and the bathroom was just about big enough to stand in between shower, toilet and sink. It was all about the balcony; the view was impressive. He could imagine them, sitting out there, drinking champagne, perhaps making love… ‘We’ll take it.’ He said the words firmly, what was he resisting for? He could afford it. He was just used to not thinking about these things. Carrie dealt with the mortgage; she dealt with everything. The lease was only for a year, while the owner was out of town, so it wasn’t as if he was tying himself to it forever, and it came furnished. So, in the space of an hour, they had found somewhere to live, together, stylishly and, dear God, he couldn’t help himself, but very expensively.

  ‘You can move in immediately,’ the agent was telling Valentina.

  ‘That ees good, eesn’t it Keveen?’

  She turned to him now, her dark eyes held so much promise and he couldn’t help but think how lucky he was to have this whole new, easy life opening up before him. Still, in the back of his mind, the call from Carrie unsettled him. What was she up to? Carrie never took time off. What would she do with a whole week? It wasn’t like Carrie to be so… secretive. The thought made him feel cold, then he caught Valentina’s eye and smiled at her. What was he thinking of Carrie for? After all, he’d gotten what he wanted, he had the lovely Valentina here before him.

  *

  The next few days ran into each other too quickly, it seemed to Kevin. The restaurant was crazy busy. He and Valentina moved into the new apartment. There wasn’t a spare minute to catch his breath until Wednesday afternoon when he met up with Jim for their weekly catch-up. Jim was halfway through his pint when Kevin arrived.

  ‘Starting early?’ he eyed the half-drunk pint of Guinness.

  ‘Running late?’ Jim countered, they both knew that Kevin hated people being late. He, he would tell people proudly, was never late.

  ‘I didn’t realise there was a clock on me?’ Kevin sat grumpily on the high stool and nodded towards the barman at the far end of the counter. ‘Same,’ he looked to Jim and nodded towards the barman.

  ‘So, how’s paradise?’ Jim asked drily, keeping his eyes on a rugby match playing silently on a screen over the bar.

  ‘Don’t start,’ Kevin needed a pint. He remembered his father coming in late on Friday nights. He had ‘needed a pint’, too. He needed, Kevin realised later, to meet up with a woman who worked at the reception in his garage. Thelma Jones was a plump middle-aged woman. She looked nothing like the vixen Kevin imagined someone having an affair should be. She’d turned up at every family event, cheesecake or lemon drizzle cake in hand. She smiled kindly at his mother, while unbeknownst to all of them she had cheerfully carried on with his father for over two decades. Thelma Jones, he hadn’t thought of her in years. And this, this was nothing like that sordid affair. For one thing, Valentina was nothing like old Thelma, with her cheap mackintosh coats that strained against her ample b
osom and behind.

  ‘So, the word is out, anyway,’ Jim peered at him now, as though inspecting some laboratory experiment.

  ‘What’s that?’ it had to be important to distract Jim from the rugby.

  ‘Sandra said that Carrie told Anna who told everyone. Women, what are they like?’ Jim shook his head, smiling benignly.

  ‘What did Sandra say?’ Kevin had to know, this was the bit he was dreading after all. It was why he put off telling his mother, why he didn’t want to hang about for Penny. It was why, if he was honest with himself, he hadn’t really told anyone, apart from Jim, and really, blokes don’t count for something like this.

  ‘What do you think she said?’ Jim shook his head. He nodded thanks to the barman and straightened his pint carefully on the beer mat before him. There was no beer mat for Kevin and it didn’t look like one would be forthcoming. Did the barman know too? ‘Come on, Kevin, you know the score. Sandra and Anna and Carrie, they’ve been friends for years. It’ll have spread like wildfire.’

  ‘What did she say?’ He repeated.

  ‘What didn’t she say you mean?’

  ‘Carrie?’

  ‘No, Sandra. Don’t be a dope. Carrie wouldn’t say anything bad about you, not really. She’s hurt, according to Sandra. But Anna? Now that’s a horse of a different colour. She has plenty to say, but nothing you wouldn’t be expecting.’

  ‘Like what?’ Part of Kevin didn’t want to know, in fact even now, he felt his collar tighten uncomfortably about his neck. He hated the idea of not being perfect. He hated the idea of what they might be saying about him and how it might be drawn out to look like something it wasn’t.

  ‘Look. Nothing that isn’t the truth as far as they see it, mate. Nothing to worry about. Maybe you won’t be fooling them as much as you have before, but we’re still mates, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes, but what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen through you for years. I’ve always known that you were a selfish bastard. It hasn’t changed our friendship, though, has it?’