by Alex Coleman
Relations between us remained good right throughout our teenage years. We argued about little things, of course – who had used the last of the conditioner, who had ruined a particular T-shirt – but by and large we stayed pretty close. Things turned sour, for a while at least, when I became pregnant with the twins. I wasn’t surprised to find that Mum and Dad were horrified. They were old-school Catholics, apart from anything else, and not so keen on the old pre- marital – not to mention teenage – sex. But I expected a certain level of support from Melissa – more than none, I mean. She was at university then, studying law, and her principle concern seemed to be that I would never be able to “advance”, as she called it, with a couple of babies in tow. When I reminded her of my mediocre Leaving Certificate results and pointed out that the advancement ship had sailed, as I frequently did, she clammed up and gave me a look of unbearable disappointment. Her attitude to Gerry, on the few occasions when she could bring herself to meet him, ranged from frosty to openly hostile (Mum and Dad, at least, gave him points for sticking around and declaring his intention to marry me as soon as I turned eighteen). There was a time, in fact, when I was sure that our relationship had been trashed beyond repair. Then the twins were born and the thaw set in. When Melissa saw that the barrier to my advancement, the awful burden that had caused her so much concern, was a beautiful little boy with twinkly blue eyes and a gorgeous little girl with the chubbiest cheeks this side of Louis Armstrong, she seemed to forget what her point had been. Our relationship got back to normal and stayed that way until we were both well into our thirties. Then, on the night of November 29th, 2002, my parents drove into Dublin to visit Melissa and her husband, Colm. Melissa was pregnant for the first (and last) time and was feeling highly gregarious. I’d been invited over there myself every couple of days for the past several weeks and, on every occasion, had solemnly done the duty that was expected of me – smiling shyly, placing my hand on her expanding middle and declaring her “blooming” and/or “glowing”. Mum and Dad brought a small gift on this particular occasion, a book of baby names. Melissa and Colm already had at least three of these – two of their own and another that I gave them – and my parents knew that. It was all they could think of, my mother confessed on the phone (during our final conversation). The gift went down a treat, Colm told me later – it was thicker than its three predecessors combined – as did the home-made pavlova that accompanied it. Even my father seemed to enjoy himself, which was something of a wonder; he was invariably uncomfortable in social situations, even those involving family. The last cup of tea was knocked back at about eleven and my parents set off for home. They were about three miles away from their destination when an oncoming van decided to overtake on a corner. The driver of the vehicle that he was trying to pass later classified the manoeuvre as “suicidal”. It was all that, and homicidal too. In the inevitable head-on, Dad was killed instantly. Mum died at the scene, shortly after the ambulance arrived. The van driver made it to hospital, but he too died within a couple of hours.
I suppose any pair of bereaved siblings might have found something to fight about in the debris of such a loss. But with Melissa and me, there was an extra edge. About a month before the accident, I’d had the house to myself for once, so I decided to curl up with a Marie-Claire and a small glass of wine. One small glass became two, then three, then certainly four and possibly five. I’d had most of a bottle, at any rate, when I noticed the DVD that Robert had rented the night before sitting on the mantelpiece. If I’d told him once that afternoon, I’d told him six times that I was sick of paying his fines at Xtravision and still he had once again failed to leave his movie back. I tried to tell myself that this time I wasn’t going to play ball. But I knew that it was pointless. Robert would be quite happy to enter into a battle of wills because he knew that the longer it went on, the bigger the fine that would be owed, and I was the one who would have to pay it. I did have a moment of doubt as I snatched my car keys from the coffee table. You’ve had a glass or two of wine, I said to myself. But the follow-up thought came quickly: So you’ll have to drive very, very carefully. And I did. I left the movie back, having done a pretty neat job of parking in a tight spot, and headed for home, congratulating myself on my achievement. I was halfway down the main street when the door of a parked car swung all the way open right in front of me. The thing to do, of course, was to stand on the brakes. Instead, I swerved to my right, at which point I remembered oh yeah – that there was traffic on that side of the road. I swerved back and caught the open door with my left wing; then I hit the brakes. The owner of the parked car went nuts at once and then nuttier still when I criticised his over- enthusiastic door-opening technique. He called the Guards, who chatted to me quite amiably for a couple of minutes, then breathalysed me and pronounced me over the limit. Long story short, I wound up in court and received a three- month ban, which I thoroughly deserved. I didn’t tell the kids about it; I was too ashamed. We only had one car at the time and it was easy enough to think of excuses for me to stay out of it. I faked a (recurring) stomach bug that kept me house-bound for almost a month and when that finally went away, I pretended to be on a health kick; I bought new trainers and walked everywhere, glancing excitedly at the pedometer that was permanently clipped to my waist. In all probability, I could have got away without telling Melissa either. I confessed the truth to her, no doubt, because of the guilt; I wanted someone (other than Gerry, who was furious) to give me a right telling off. And Melissa certainly did. “You could have run over a child,” she pointed out (stroking her tummy), as if I hadn’t already thought of that. “Just so you could save a few quid on The Mask of Zorro.” Her anger only lasted for that first conversation, however. Next time we spoke, she made no mention of my “lapse”, as she had called it. She might never have mentioned it again, in fact, if it hadn’t been for one unfortunate detail: the van driver who killed our parents turned out to have been plastered at the time. It was Melissa who heard it first. She passed the information on to me in an even, colourless tone. She didn’t come right out and say it, but as far as I was concerned, she didn’t need to. The message was clear enough: I could mourn my parents all I wanted, but I had no right to complain about the man who killed them. Not with my record.
It would have helped a lot – obviously – if one of us had said something to bring it all out into the open. But we didn’t. We just sat back and let things fester between us. In the days following the double funeral, I would sometimes catch her looking at me out of the corner of her eye. I never swivelled round and asked, “What?”. I knew what? As time went on, the dirty looks became less of regular occurrence and then disappeared entirely. Nevertheless, the damage had been done. We called each other less frequently and, even when we did, we seemed to run out of conversation within minutes. Then Melissa stopped calling me at all. Feeling rejected and small, I cut back even more on my own calls. Before long, we were speaking no more than once a month. I slowly came to accept that it would take quite a while before we were back on track. But I didn’t think we were talking about years.
The bottom line is this: when I decided to call on Melissa that Friday the 13th, I didn’t do it because I thought it would help me. I did it because I thought it would help us.
Melissa and Colm lived in Dublin – Ranelagh to be precise. Even if we’d been on proper speaking terms, I don’t think I would have visited their house very often. It was just too depressingly beautiful. And huge – the sort of place you pass and think “Now who the hell lives there?” As it was, I’d only been over maybe half a dozen times. It had been quite a while since the last occasion, which was my excuse for driving straight past the front door on this one. After I’d hastily reversed and parked, I took a moment to compose myself. My number one concern (apart from my headache and the obvious) was that Niall, Melissa’s three-year-old, would be having one of his episodes. He had been a late arrival, but the joy his parents experienced at his birth had quickly been replaced by anxiety, frus
tration and exhaustion. Niall was one of those babies who got everything. Jaundice, measles, impetigo, whooping cough; it was like he had The Big Book of Baby Illnesses and was working his way through it, ticking them off as he went. I think it was harder on Colm than it was on Melissa – it didn’t seem right, somehow, that a consultant cardiologist should be the father of such a perfect poster-child for ill-health. The last time I had spoken to Melissa, about a month previously, she’d reported that Niall was currently quite healthy by his standards, being host to nothing more than a low-grade flu, but that his physical state was no longer the main concern. “He’s gone nuts” was the way she put it. I tried to reassure her that all toddlers have tantrums. She interrupted and sneered that, no offence, I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. A tantrum was whinging and maybe rolling around a bit. When the mood took him – and it frequently did – Niall was given to outright hooliganism. He’d demolished toys and eaten picture books. He’d painted carpets and superglued locks. He’d savaged every curtain in the house with a pair of scissors that neither Melissa nor Colm had ever seen before. He’d smashed innumerable pieces of crockery and ruined several pieces of consumer electronics, some of them by throwing them through windows. Taken on their own merits, these would have been instances of bad behaviour. What raised them to the level of “episodes”, apparently, was the way the child screamed throughout. It was like “a cross between a dentist’s drill and a horny cat,” according to Melissa. On one occasion, during a standard room-wreck, he’d screamed so loudly and for so long that he’d lost his voice for two days, only to resume screaming – and room- wrecking – as soon as he got it back. She blurted all of this out in a rush and seemed to immediately regret doing so. Nevertheless, the information had lodged in my brain. Our conversation was going to be weird enough, I thought, without that kind of thing going on in the background. With a sigh so heavy it was really more of a groan, I climbed out of the car and crunched up the gravel path to Melissa’s door. Not wanting to ruin my surprise, I left my suitcase in the boot.
“Jackie?” she said when she answered my ring.
I made a stab at a smile. “You sound like you’re not sure.” “I didn’t expect to see you, that’s all. You’ve had your hair done. It’s … nice.” She still hadn’t opened the door more than a crack.
I thought I’d better force the issue. “Um … can I come in?”
Melissa didn’t seem at all embarrassed. She stepped back and created just enough room for me to squeeze through.
“So,” she said flatly. “What brings you here?”
CHAPTER 6
I told Melissa my story at the kitchen table. Niall sat on the floor by her feet, gamely beating an old stuffed rabbit with a rubber hammer. The constant squeaks were more than a little bit off-putting, but at least they weren’t screams.
I didn’t want to jump right in at the good bit (as such), so I started with my headache. That was a mistake; Melissa seemed to assume that there would be nothing more to it and kept interrupting with pointless work and head-related questions. Eventually, I had to give up and skip past the preliminaries. The big moment, when it came, was less solemn than I would have liked. As soon as I had whispered the words “over the back of the sofa”, Niall gave his rabbit an extra-hard thump and it was that squeak, rather than my shocking revelation, that seemed to echo round the room.
Melissa put her hand over her mouth, took it away, put it back, took it away again. I hadn’t expected her to leap from her chair and gather me in a warm embrace, but I’d hoped for some sort of physical contact. There was none. On the plus side, she did, at last, start to pay proper attention.
When I finished speaking, she fiddled with her teaspoon for a moment, then said, “Jesus Christ”.
“Yeah,” I said. “Exactly – Jesus Christ.” “Jesus CHRIST!” said Niall.
Melissa nodded down at him then returned her gaze to me, shaking her head slowly and empathically. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Me neither,” I replied. “It’s hard to believe.” “Believe it.”
“Lisa. What’s she like?”
“You know what? I just realised I don’t even know her second name. She moved in not long after Christmas with a friend of hers. Paula. They’re renting. They’ve kept to themselves. I don’t know what they do for a living or anything. But I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Lisa’s a model.”
“A looker.”
“Yes. She is. She sure is. Blonde, but classy blonde, you know? Mid, late-twenties. Legs up to her ears. Slim. Big green eyes. Lovely skin. Always dressed to kill. Looks like she rolls out of bed in the morning with her make-up already done.”
“Stop it. You’re making me sick.”
“I’m making you sick? How do you think I feel about it?” “Sorry. Go on.”
“She’s always had the hots for Gerry, I can tell you that much.”
“How do you know?” “I just –”
At that point Niall farted so violently that he almost levitated. He didn’t seem to notice and carried on hammering his rabbit.
“Excuse you,” Melissa said with a hint of pride. “Sorry, Jackie, he’s been chuffing away like that all day. Must have been something he ate. Probably a wallet or a phone.”
It wasn’t a topic I was keen to explore. I hurried on. “I just knew she fancied him, right from the off. First time we ever met her was on the day she moved in. She knocked on the door, introduced herself and asked if I had any ‘big strapping men’ lying around to help her get her TV out of the car. I was all friendly, the way you are, said I had a big man lying around, but I couldn’t vouch for his strappingness. So I called Gerry out off the sofa and when he appeared at the front door, she practically licked her lips. And you know what she said to him? Christ, when I think about it. She said, ‘Your wife doesn’t think you’re strapping, did you know that?’ Looking out from under her fringe like Princess frigging Di.”
“What did Gerry say?”
“He didn’t say anything, he didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Every time I met her after that, she always used to say, ‘How’s Gerry, still as strapping as ever, is he?’ It was like a running joke. We had a barbeque in the summer. All the neighbours were there, Chrissy and Robert – not that Robert stayed long – and she stuck her head in. She was at it then too. Strapping this, strapping that. I can’t believe I used to go along with it.”
“Well, why did you? If you thought it was proof that she fancied him …”
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Oi, you, stop calling my husband strapping!’ And besides …”
“What?”
“Well … lots of women fancy Gerry. I see them all the time, on the street, in shops. Their eyes follow him when he goes past. They think I don’t notice them, but I do. I’ve always noticed them. I’m kinda used to it at this stage. I’m sure Posh Spice gets something similar.”
Melissa pulled a face. She looked as if she had something to say. When she shrugged and muttered “Suppose so” I knew that wasn’t it.
We sat in silence (bar the squeaking) for a few moments. “Anyway,” I said then. “This suitcase that I packed … I was hoping I might be able to unpack it here. For tonight, at least.” I tried not to feel hurt – and certainly not to show it – when Melissa’s brow furrowed.
In fairness to her, she recovered quickly. “Of course,” she said, then remembered to smile. “Yeah, of course you can stay here, there’s a room lying free. But …”
“What?”
“Well … have you got a plan? What are you going to do?” Slowly, I pushed my shoulders towards my ears. “The only plan I’ve made so far is to get net curtains put up again.”
Melissa pulled another face.
