In a Moment

by Caroline Finnerty

  Jesus, what had got into the woman? Surely she was too old for the menopause?

  2

  Come three o’clock and as the hangovers began to ease, Parker’s entire workforce were already planning where they would head later on that night and at five to five they began to pack up to leave.

  Adam was just heading for the lift when Ronan from Accounts joined him.

  “Are you coming for one?”

  “Nah, I should probably be heading home.” Adam was hesitant. Not that it would make any difference, he thought bitterly to himself. She barely spoke to him anyway.

  “C’mon for one!”

  “I’d better not – maybe next time, yeah?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No worries.”

  They took the lift down.

  “See you Monday, so,” said Ronan.

  “Have a good one!”

  Ronan joined some of the others and Adam stood watching as they walked over to McCormack’s bar, carefree and untroubled. How he wished he could join them – he would rather be going anywhere else but home.

  He took his bike from the shelter and headed for Rathmines. He pedalled slowly and allowed the cool evening air to fill his lungs, feeling his chest rise in fullness before falling again. He felt his thigh muscles work hard as he pedalled up the steep incline before turning left over Harold’s Cross Bridge. His cycle to and from work was the only time of day he had with his thoughts to himself. It was his time when he got to think about everything that had happened and try and make sense of it all. It was still so fresh. He only had to look at himself to see angry reminders criss-crossing his skin. Usually when he cycled he racked his head trying to remember the exact sequence of events but his brain would only allow him to go so far.

  When he reached their house, he pushed open the wrought-iron gate and wheeled his bike up the path. He could see the lights were all off downstairs. He fumbled with his keys in the lock for a few moments before he was finally able to get into his house. Today’s post sat waiting for him on the mat inside the door. He stooped to pick it up. The envelopes told him it was nothing more interesting than bills, junk mail and a bank statement. He placed them unopened on the hall table. He shouted out to see if Emma was home but no voice answered his call. He hardly knew why he did that as he knew she wouldn’t answer anyway. He went into the kitchen and took a cool beer out of the fridge. He pulled off the metal top and gulped it back.

  * * *

  Emma’s head hadn’t been up to much for the rest of the day. She’d tried her best to think of some winning tag lines for the Sofa World campaign but she didn’t have much luck.

  The office began to empty out after four with everyone heading off to various parts of the country for the weekend and by seven she was alone in the open-plan office. She preferred it that way; she could concentrate better without the constant drone of voices. She tried putting some words onto her notepad but nothing was coming. Eventually, after nine, she admitted defeat and knew that stupid tag lines for springy sofas would be swimming around in her head all weekend long.

  In keeping with their low-cost strategy, A1’s offices were located on Rosses Street, in a dingy part of Dublin City, which was long overdue rejuvenation. It was a notorious area for muggers, so she made her way hurriedly down towards the quays. She watched as hordes of teenagers, hen and stag parties, already bladdered, made their way towards the city’s current hot-spots, gearing themselves up for a heavy night of drinking.

  She didn’t want to go home just yet so she decided to keep walking and headed down towards Dawson Street. The narrow paths were crowded with gangs of smokers standing outside so she turned onto a cobble-locked side-street where crowds were sitting along the outdoor terraces under café-bar awnings, protected from the cold evening air by patio heaters. By immersing herself amongst these people, she didn’t feel so alone.

  She wandered aimlessly for a while until she felt her stomach growl and she suddenly realised she was hungry. After skipping lunch, she had forgotten to eat anything for the rest of the day. She looked at her watch and it was nearly eleven o’clock so she hailed a taxi and headed home to Rathmines. She climbed into the back, stated her destination and sank into the leatherette upholstery. She sat listening to the constant buzzing and conversation over and back on the radio between the base station and the different drivers. The driver made halfhearted chit-chat with her – well, he talked and she made occasional sounds of agreement, which seemed to be enough for him to keep rambling on. By the time they turned onto Rathmines Road, she could feel her stomach begin twisting into its familiar knot and, as the car pulled up outside her home, Emma felt her heart lurch. She took her time to locate her money in her wallet before paying him and slamming the door shut.

  At least the lights were off.

  With trepidation and slow steps she walked up the driveway to her home. No matter how hard she tried and how successfully she carried it off at work, once she was on her own doorstep, she couldn’t push the reality of her life out of her head any more.

  3

  Emma put on her heavy wool coat over her work suit and gloves and wrapped her thick-knit scarf twice around her neck. The day was cool and crisp and as she left the office block and walked briskly towards St Stephen’s Green she watched her breath turn white on the air in front of her. Although it was lunchtime, the weak sunlight still hadn’t managed to melt the morning’s frost. She made her way to the bench where she had arranged to meet Zoe.

  Zoe and Emma had been friends since they had met at Irish dancing classes at the age of eight. The two of them would be thrown into class every Saturday morning and Emma (who had zero co-ordination and could never keep up with all the steps) and Zoe (who was too busy being the class clown to learn how to do a reel) became firm friends. They were the weakest link of their class so were usually left to their own devices, playing together at the back of the hall.

  They had attended the same primary school but were in different classes so would only get to meet at break-times in the school-yard. It wasn’t until secondary school that they managed to persuade their teachers to put them into the same class and it was then that their friendship flourished. Where Emma was a serious soul, Zoe was a messer. Anne Fitzpatrick had lit many holy candles and said many novenas over the years in worry about Zoe’s influence on her daughter, but still Emma would get yet another letter home for talking or for sniggering at a note that Zoe had passed to her in class.

  Emma used to have a great circle of friends. They had all met in secondary school, gravitating towards each other because they were neither the popular girls nor the geeks. They had managed to stay close even when they all had gone to universities and colleges scattered all over the country. Throughout their twenties they would meet for dinner once a week and have a great natter over a few bottles of wine about what they were up to in their lives: about who had just got a promotion, who was getting married, who was being tormented by having to watch their ex getting loved up by his new girlfriend. They would spend hours chatting until they were the last ones left in the restaurant. But that had all gone by the wayside now and one by one the visits had become less frequent until they had petered out altogether. She knew it was probably the deadly combination of looking at a broken woman – when they looked at her she was a reminder of how cruel life could be – that and the fact she was hardly ‘Exuberant Emma’ these days. The last few months had been the litmus test for most of her friendships and in the end it was only her best friend Zoe still left flying the flag solo for the former group of schoolfriends.

  A few minutes later, a panting Zoe wearing a cream baker-boy cap on top of her sleek black bob came running up.

  “Sorry I’m late – I got called into a design meeting. Fucking directors wondering how thin we can make the fabric before the dress becomes completely see-through! Bloody tight-arses!”

  “No worries. I’ve only just arrived myself.”

 
Zoe had studied fashion design in college and now worked in the rag-trade for a company that ripped off catwalk designs and sold them on to low-cost retailers. It was a job that allowed her a limited amount of creativity but not nearly the amount that a person like her needed. It was constantly drilled into her that she needed to be more commercially astute; she needed to be aware of fabric costs and whether she could substitute a particular fabric for a cheaper one instead. Did she really need to use six buttons down the front of a cardigan or would they get away with five? She hated having to be so cost-conscious and she would argue that the cardigan would “look shit” with five buttons but, inevitably, her bosses would win out.

  “So how’re you doing today?” Zoe asked, her face showing her concern.

  “Same as all the other days.”

  “Stupid question, isn’t it?”

  Emma smiled. “I know, but what else can you say?”

  “True.”

  “So how was the date with ‘The Accountant’?” Emma asked, changing the subject. It was great just to switch off and get a break from her thoughts and get caught up in Zoe’s world instead.

  “Disastrous. The man is potentially deranged.”

  “Why?”

  “What kind of man bores a girl to tears about the size of his diversified stock portfolio? The only question he asked about me was whether I was worried about my pension provision! Do I look like the kind of girl losing sleep over a pension? Then he nearly lost his life when I ordered a cocktail! He checked the menu to see the price and then he kept on exclaiming ‘Nine euro, nine euro for one of them!’ He tried to talk me out of it by saying that they wouldn’t use full measures and that maybe I should just get a vodka and Coke!”

  Emma had to laugh.

  “Oh, it gets worse, Emma – when the bill arrived he totted up who had eaten what and made me pay the extra because I had ordered the bloody cocktail!”

  “He did not!” Emma said in horror.

  “Oh yes! You see what I have to deal with? This is what is left on the Dublin dating scene!”

  Zoe had spent her twenties, and now her early thirties too, plunging from one disastrous relationship to the next. She had stories that made Emma, who had been in a relationship for almost her entire twenties, wince with wide-eyed disbelief at the dating game. The Accountant had been a blind date set up for Zoe by her cousin but, as she said, she had to wonder which was the blind one – herself or her cousin?

  Emma’s theory was that Zoe’s inability to take life seriously stemmed from the fact that her father had walked out on her mother when she was only four years old. Her mother had gone on a year later to have a nervous breakdown when she learned that her ex-husband’s new girlfriend was now pregnant with his baby. It was all too much for her to take and she ended up spending three months in the psychiatric unit in St Anne’s Hospital. Zoe had been shipped off to her grandmother who at the age of seventy-five wasn’t able to devote the attention to her that a spirited five-year-old required. This had resulted in Zoe being passed around to various aunties and friends of her mother’s until her mother was well enough to care for her again. To this day, Zoe always had that fear of people leaving her and Emma believed that humour was Zoe’s internal defence mechanism. She could imagine the five-year-old Zoe acting the joker just to put a smile on her mother’s face and believing that if she could stop her mother from feeling sad, then perhaps she wouldn’t need to go back into hospital.

  After Zoe filled her in on her escapades, Emma checked her watch and it was just gone two.

  “Jesus – where does the time go? It’s gone two. I’d better head back before Maureen starts trying to track me down.”

  “Shit, I’d better run too – I’ll mail you tomorrow.”

  They walked back through the park together and hugged warmly before heading off to their respective office blocks.

  4

  Behind the spare-bedroom door, Emma lay wide awake; sleep had forsaken her in the early hours of the morning. She listened to the sounds of the house breathing at night, the rattling pipe in the attic, cars whirring past on the road outside. She was plagued by her own thoughts; they kept on swirling over and over, sloshing around inside her head, spinning like a top until she could no longer keep up with them. She could hear the sound of contented slumber brimming from the bedroom next door. Well for some, being able to sleep, she thought bitterly.

  She lay there looking around the familiar room. Its high ceilings were adorned with the original cornicing and the sash windows still retained the folding wooden shutters. It had been one of the main reasons that they had fallen in love with the house: to think that over one hundred years ago someone had chosen to decorate the house in this way and the features remained to this day! They had spent so long agonising over the shade of grey for this room; they had tried at least ten different samples before eventually settling on a shade called ‘Elephant’s Breath’, but now the grey walls just made the room feel cold.

  She must have drifted back to sleep at some stage because she woke to find her alarm blaring beside her. She never slept through her alarm; she was normally awake before it even had time to sound. She jolted upright and tried to silence the bleeping. It took her a few seconds to register what day it was and, when she realised she didn’t have to get up for work, she eased herself back down onto the pillows again for a few moments. But it was already after eight and she knew she would need to hurry on if she wanted to be gone before Adam got up. She wondered where she would go today. Emma didn’t like weekends; the constant feeling of trying to avoid her own husband wore her out. At least when he was in work, she didn’t come into contact with him. But at the weekends the day was stretched out ahead of her in an endless field of time that would have to be killed and she felt weary even thinking about it. But she had no choice; it had to be done.

  She had a quick shower and got dressed in black leggings, black leather riding boots and a black and white silk tunic with a butterfly print. It was almost nine when she finally sat into her car, wondering where she was going to go. It was too early to call in on anyone; most of her friends had a life and would be enjoying their Saturday morning lie-ins. And she was sick of shopping centres. Normally these were her usual port of call but at this stage she had seen all the clothes in every shop. She decided to go to Dee’s coffee shop on Gregory Street, which was the only café that would be open at this hour. That would kill time until ten o’clock and then she would call in to her parents. Ten was a safe time; if she went too early they would start to worry.

  She cut a lonely figure in Dee’s. She was obviously their first customer of the day and the wiry dark-haired girl working there resented actually having to be functional at that time on a Saturday morning. The radio was blaring something that sounded like an eastern European Eurovision entry backed by a techno beat. Emma ordered a black coffee and sat down at a small circular laminated table in the corner, out of the way. Out of the way of what she wasn’t sure because there wasn’t a soul in the place – but that was how she felt, almost like she wanted to hide away from the world. She stirred the spoon around in circular movements so that the coffee swirled around inside the mug. She took a few sips but it tasted smoky and scalded. She took out her notebook and tried to come up with tag lines for the Sofa World campaign. She scribbled down a few words – ‘snugly’, ‘comfort’ – but nothing was jumping out at her, every sofa retailer was using the same straplines. She wanted to create a warm-feeling advert, especially as it was targeted at the Christmas market. Frustrated at her efforts, she shut her notebook again.

  After a while she looked at her watch, it was almost ten. She could call in to her parents now, without too much suspicion. She knew that they would be up at this stage; they didn’t have that hectic a social life that they’d need a lie-in. She finished the last of her coffee and moved her chair back with such force that it caused the waitress to jump up from where she had been perched on a stool, sleeping with her head resting on her folded
arms.

  * * *

  When she arrived into their driveway, she opened the creaking, rusty gate that had been there since before she was born. Rounding the corner to the back door, she met her dad pottering around the back yard with two pieces of pipe in his hands.

  “Hi there, Dad!” She forced herself to sound cheery but it didn’t ring true in her voice.

  “Emma, love! How’re you keeping?” He sounded surprised but thrilled to see her.

  “Not bad, Dad, thanks. How’re you?”

  “Aragh, you know yourself. You’re over early?”

  It wasn’t a statement, it was a question.

  “Yeah, I was passing out this way anyway so I said I’d drop in for a cuppa.”

  “Well, it’s great to see you. Your mother’s inside – go on in and get yourself a cup of tea and I’ll be in shortly.”

  She let herself into the house and found her mother standing over the cooker, busy frying sausages and rashers.

  “Hi, Mam!”

  “Emma, darling! Come in, come in, love, here, sit down here.” She flustered around the place, acting like Emma was a very important visitor. She started scattering magazines and newspapers off chairs and clearing bundles of clothes from the table. “Here, sit here, love. Here you are now.” She patted the armchair.

  Emma did as she was told, happy to let her mam make a fuss of her. Even though she was the eldest daughter, her mam still treated her like she was her baby.

  “Will you have a fry, love? I’ve one on for your dad and your brother. He’s still in bed – it was after four when he got in last night – I was listening out for him. Twenty-five years of age and he still has no sense, that fella!”

  “Okay, if you’re cooking for everyone I’ll have just a small one so.”

  “Well now, love, you’re looking a bit frail to me. Do you know, I was just looking at you there when you came through the door and you look like you’ve lost even more weight.”