I’ll be home for Christmas

by Roisin Meaney

  Her passport, her money, her phone, all gone. Everything gone, along with the ticket for the coach to Stansted and her boarding pass for the Kerry flight that was due to take off from there in – she checked her watch – ten minutes. All she had left was the sterling in her pocket. She counted it and got twenty-four pounds and fifty pence.

  Her phone gone, and no possibility of replacing it – which meant she had no way of texting Ma now. How long would it be before she managed to contact them again? And how long would they wait before taking action? And what then?

  A new and horrible thought occurred: what if Ma sent a text asking Tilly why they hadn’t heard from her – and what if the man who now had the phone decided to respond with something vile? She’d heard of that happening, she’d read accounts of it on Facebook. She imagined Ma getting some kind of obscene message; she thought of her reading it in bewilderment, assuming it to have come from Tilly. The prospect of her being upset in that way was utterly appalling – as if Tilly hadn’t caused them enough grief already.

  She sank her head into her hands, thoroughly defeated. Lien had been right about the money: she shouldn’t have got all those euro in advance. They were gone now, every one of them, along with Pa’s dollars. Nothing to be done, everything ruined: serve her right for all the lies she’d told.

  Serve her right for doing what she’d done with John Smith.

  A fresh thought struck her: without a passport, she’d surely be put on the first plane back to Australia. The authorities would probably insist on contacting Ma and Pa to let them know: they’d discover her whereabouts through an unfamiliar voice on the phone. Pa would surely come and meet her at Brisbane airport, she’d have to confess everything to him and Ma, right before Christmas.

  The whole thing was unbearable, it was unthinkable; it brought more tears that she didn’t bother wiping away. They dropped onto her knees, causing big damp spatters on her jeans.

  ‘Knock knock.’

  She looked up.

  ‘Here you go,’ Amanda said, handing her a mug, ignoring the tears. ‘Nothing like a cuppa to make things look a little brighter. Get that inside you, sweetheart, it’ll do you good.’

  Tea was the last thing Tilly wanted, but she sipped it obediently. It was far too sweet and much too milky, but she was hardly in a position to complain.

  ‘Now,’ Amanda went on, leaning against the jamb, ‘here’s what’s going to happen. First, we need to get you an emergency passport so you can continue your journey to Ireland. I’m afraid that means waiting until—’

  ‘Excuse me.’ A voice, a man’s voice, coming from outside, accompanied by a quick rap on the counter. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’ Authority in the voice, as if he expected prompt attention. An edge of impatience in it, as if he wasn’t normally kept waiting.

  ‘Hang on a mo,’ Amanda said, and disappeared.

  Tilly felt a tiny hope flaring within her. She was being allowed to fly on. She was going to get to Ireland after all, even without a passport or a plane ticket. It might take a lot longer than she’d planned, and she’d be pretty much penniless when she arrived, but it sounded like she was still on her way to Ireland.

  For the first time since she’d woken up and reached for the handbag that wasn’t there, she felt her spirits lifting a fraction. Maybe all wasn’t lost, not completely.

  ‘Tilly? This wouldn’t by any chance be yours, would it?’

  ‘Oh—’ She laid the tea aside, flooded with relief. ‘Oh, yes, it’s mine, it’s my bag.’ She accepted it eagerly, fumbled with the zip. ‘Oh, where did you get it?’

  ‘A gentleman found it shoved into a bin, just down the way. Purse missing, I expect.’

  She rummaged quickly through the contents as Amanda looked on. ‘Yes, my purse is gone … but I think that’s all.’

  ‘Passport? Phone? Credit card?’

  ‘Yes … they’re all here.’

  She didn’t have a credit card but the other two were there, along with her coach ticket and her boarding pass, her lipstick and her Kindle, her gum and pen and tissues and house key. All still there.

  ‘Good, that’s excellent. I’m so pleased for you, sweetheart.’

  Tilly looked at her, blinking back new tears. Seemed she couldn’t stop crying – but at least this time they were fairly happy ones. She was practically broke, but at least her other important stuff was back. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thanks very much.’

  The words were pitifully inadequate. She wanted to throw her arms around the woman who’d come to her rescue – but she thought she’d better not chance it. Embracing a uniformed member of the British police might well be frowned upon.

  ‘You’re very welcome, darling. That’s what we’re here for – wouldn’t want you to think nobody cared in England. Now then, let’s sort out the rest of your trip for you.’

  In the end, the best she could do for Tilly was a flight to Dublin in the early afternoon – ‘No direct flights from here to Kerry, I’m afraid’ – and a standby ticket from Dublin to Kerry. ‘We could send you to Stansted and put you on standby for a direct Kerry flight from there, but at this stage, so close to Christmas, I’d say it’s too risky. At least this way you’ll definitely get to Dublin.’

  ‘That’s great. I thought I was going to be sent back to Australia.’

  ‘No – we could have got you fixed up with an emergency passport, but it’s good we don’t need to do that now. You’ll probably have a bit of a wait in Dublin, might not even get to Kerry today – not much we can do about that. Can you contact whoever was meeting you, and explain what happened?’

  ‘Yes, I can.’ More lies – but it sounded too pathetic to say that nobody was meeting her.

  ‘You sure? Like me to place a call here for you?’

  ‘No, I can do it, thanks.’

  Amanda gave her a form to show at the check-in desk in Dublin. ‘And bring that Stansted coach ticket back to where you bought it. They’ll refund you the price when you explain what happened. It’ll give you a bit more cash to keep you going until you get to Kerry.’

  ‘OK.’ Twenty-two more pounds: better than nothing. Enough to get her to Roone, and she’d have to take her chances after that. Don’t think about it now: just concentrate on getting there.

  ‘And I can also give you this.’ The policewoman pulled a slip from a bundle and handed it to Tilly. Food voucher, it said. Eight pounds, it said. ‘That’ll get you a light meal in any of the cafés while you’re waiting – and if your flight to Dublin is delayed, come back to me and I’ll issue you another.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Now, is there anything else?’ She cocked a thumb at the brown jacket, still lying across the counter. ‘You’re welcome to that if you want it, doubt that anyone will come looking for it’ – but Tilly shook her head. She never wanted to lay eyes on it again.

  ‘Can’t say I blame you.’ Amanda bundled it up and pushed it underneath. ‘I’ll hang on to it then. Some poor sod who needs it will turn up.’ She rested her arms on the counter and smiled at Tilly. ‘Not too much longer to go now. Be good to finally get there, eh?’

  ‘Yes, it will.’

  ‘You said it was family you were visiting, didn’t you, sweetheart?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tilly told her. ‘My sister.’

  Which was the only true bit.

  ‘All done, nice and tidy again.’

  Nell held the mirror to the back of Laura’s head. ‘Thanks,’ Laura said, ‘that’s lovely,’ but it wasn’t lovely, not really.

  As far back as she could remember, she’d worn her hair long. She’d adored it, loved how it tumbled down her back when it was loose. Her crowning glory, silky to the touch, source of many a compliment. And the colour of it – a wonderful warm bronze that the sun lifted each summer to shades of paler gold and caramel. She’d never gone near a box of dye, hadn’t needed to.

  Her first husband Aaron would bury his face in it, grab handfuls of it. He’d wind it around his neck like a scarf,
giving her no choice but to draw close – and Gavin, when he’d come along, loved it too. You’re like a young one with that hair, he’d say, pulling out the clips at night, and Laura would slap him and tell him she was a young one.

  And then five months ago, the poison that was killing her cancer had begun to kill her hair.

  Not everyone on chemo loses it, the oncologist had said. You might be one of the lucky ones, you might get to keep it – but Laura didn’t turn out to be one of the lucky ones.

  Get rid of it, she’d ordered Nell as soon as it had started falling out, the very day after she’d pulled a brush through it and dislodged a sizeable clump. Unable to bear the thought of its slow decline, not wanting to risk coming away with another hank the next time she ran her hand through it.

  Poor Nell, who’d been after Laura for ages to let her at it with the scissors. Just a few layers, she’d say. Take a bit of the weight out of it, that’s all. I won’t touch the length if you don’t want – but until the chemo, Laura was having none of it. No layers, no change. Not even a trim, much to Nell’s frustration.

  But cutting it all off had never been part of Nell’s plan. Cutting it all off was the last thing she wanted to do that day. Laura well remembered her stricken expression, her swimming eyes as she stood in her kitchen, scissors lying on the table beside her.

  Come on, Laura said. You’ve been dying to get your hands on it.

  Not like this. Look, I don’t have to take it all off. I could do a nice short—

  But Laura butted in and told her she wasn’t interested in a nice short anything. She was going to lose it anyway, and it was the only bit of this horrible situation that she had full control over, so would Nell kindly get on with it.

  So Nell wiped her eyes and took up the scissors and started to cut. The long hanks dropped with barely a whisper onto the kitchen floor as the two of them talked about the ankle Maisie Kiely had sprained coming out of the church after Sunday Mass, and Leo Considine’s younger daughter Julie, who had just married a Frenchman, and Nell’s father Denis, who was working as a volunteer in a refugee camp in Sudan, and anything else they could think of that had nothing in the world to do with hair.

  And when Nell had taken away as much as she could with the scissors Laura said, Now finish it – and finishing it involved an electric razor buzzing its way softly all around her head. And when that was done Nell laid it down without a word, and no hand mirror was produced, so Laura got to her feet and walked into Nell’s bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror there.

  And after crying quietly for three minutes she washed her face and plastered a smile onto it and pulled a bright pink bandana splashed with green stars from her pocket, one of the ones Susan had brought from Dublin on her last visit, by special request. Get me something bright and fun, Laura had ordered, the possibility that her hair would go still just a possibility then, but she’d needed to be prepared.

  The kids took the new look in their stride. The boys proclaimed it cool, and promptly forgot about it; the girls helped Laura to rub coconut oil into her scalp every morning. Gavin insisted it suited her. Takes years off you, he told her – the joke, or the lie, or whatever it was supposed to be, sounding pathetic to her.

  Her thirtieth birthday in August had been pretty much a non-event: she’d warned Gavin against any kind of celebration, and thankfully he’d listened, and hadn’t rounded up the usual suspects. Susan sent a package from Dublin – perfume, earrings, a cheque – and Nell got James to do a charcoal drawing of the children from one of Laura’s favourite photos, but that was it. And in September, two weeks after her last chemo, her hair had started growing back, and this was its first trim since then.

  It was coarser and darker this time round. It wasn’t the hair she remembered; it felt like someone else’s had been transplanted onto her head. More brown than bronze now, no more honey splashes. But it was back, and she was grateful. And sometimes, in some lights, she thought there might be auburn hints in it.

  It could have been worse – it could have been much worse.

  ‘So,’ Nell said, untying the nylon cape and shaking it out, ‘am I allowed to ask how you’re coping with Gladys?’

  ‘I’m surviving. She stayed in bed this morning till eleven, so we had great peace. I made her a poached egg when she came down, but it was a little harder than she was used to, God love her. And her own brown bread is far better for us than anything you can buy – I had to hide the sliced pan – so she’s passing me on her recipe.’

  ‘How thoughtful. You can get up early tomorrow and have it ready for her breakfast.’

  ‘Tomorrow she can have buck’s fizz for breakfast, as long as she goes home after it.’

  ‘What time is she off?’

  ‘The one o’clock ferry, if not sooner.’ Laura got to her feet, picked up her bag. ‘I left her decorating the tree. I said I knew she’d be far better at it than me. Wait till she sees the state of the decorations. She’s roped in the kids to help her – can you imagine?’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be lovely. We can all admire it tomorrow night.’

  ‘Don’t even say that out loud – if she heard I was having a party the minute she was gone she’d probably stay, just to spite me.’ Laura found her purse and took out the tenner that was all Nell would ever accept. ‘Tell me, how’s Andy these days? I haven’t seen him around much.’

  Nell’s smile faded. ‘He’s doing a bit better now – but he took it hard.’

  ‘Of course he took it hard: break-ups always hurt. I remember the first boy who broke my heart. Conor Daly, we were both fourteen. I was nuts about him, but after a fortnight he told me his mother said he couldn’t have a girlfriend until after the Junior Cert. Cried myself to sleep for ages, swore I’d never look at another boy. He was only making it up anyway: I saw him with Fidelma Sweeney a few days after.’

  Nell hung the cape on its hook. ‘This was different, though. Andy and Eve were together nearly two years. He was mad about her.’

  ‘I know, it’s a shame.’ Laura retrieved her scarf and jacket. Andy was young, he’d get over it. ‘Come on, let’s call into Fitz’s and flirt with your husband for fifteen minutes. I told Gavin I’d be an hour, and I’m damned if I’m going to show my face a second sooner.’

  ‘Can’t today, I’m afraid – Tommy was a bit chesty this morning, I told Jacinta I’d look in at lunchtime to check him out. You go in. James would love the company.’

  They went downstairs together, the chatter from the bar drifting up to meet them. By the sound of it James had plenty of company – but Laura wasn’t about to throw over a chance to avoid Gladys for a while longer.

  ‘See you tomorrow night,’ she said, pushing open the bar door. ‘Eight o’clock, don’t be late.’

  ‘We’ll be there.’

  The place was warm, and more crowded than normal at lunchtime on a winter Wednesday. People getting into the Christmas spirit, only two days to go. She wished she could feel more festive. She was greeted: glasses were raised in her direction as she made her way to the counter. Roone’s population being as small as it was, she and Gavin had encountered most, maybe all, of its inhabitants by now.

  James glanced up from the glass he was filling as she approached. ‘Look who it is.’

  Months since she’d been into the bar – although of course they saw one another often as neighbours. ‘Hey there,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d drop in and say hello.’

  ‘Nell on the way?’

  ‘No – she’s gone home to check on your son. Chesty cough, apparently.’

  ‘He’s grand. She likes to fuss.’

  ‘That’s what mothers of sons are for.’ She took possession of a high stool.

  ‘What’ll it be?’

  ‘Good question.’

  Her taste for wine was returning slowly: she hadn’t been able to look at it, or any other alcohol, while chemo was ongoing. But she’d better not order it today – if Gladys got a whiff of it, Laura would be an alcoholi
c along with everything else.

  ‘Tomato juice,’ she said. ‘Dash of Tabasco if you have it.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘How times have changed.’ Sympathy in the tone: she got a lot of that these days.

  ‘I have to behave,’ she told him. ‘I’m going home to Mother-in-law.’

  ‘Ah.’ He uncapped a tomato juice and decanted it. He set it before her, along with a little bottle of Tabasco. His first wife, whose name Laura had heard but couldn’t recall, had died from cancer a year or so before he’d relocated with Andy to Roone. Some won the battle, some lost.

  ‘Something to eat?’ he asked, indicating the sandwiches behind the display counter.

  ‘No thanks – lunch is waiting at home.’

  Spaghetti hoops and potato waffles on today’s menu; she could only imagine what Gladys would have to say about it. No matter: this time tomorrow they’d be waving her off.

  ‘How’re you doing?’ James asked then, and she told him what she told everyone, which was that she was doing just fine. Nobody wanted to hear how tired she was all the time, how she lay awake and afraid for a long time most nights. Nobody wanted to know about her dysfunctional marriage.

  A pair of women approached the counter. She watched James attend to them, remembering how she’d tried to seduce him four years earlier, when she and the boys were on their first visit to Roone.

  She’d been on her own for six years by then, and widowed bartender and artist James Baker, whom she’d met in this very bar, had seemed the perfect candidate for a holiday romance, or maybe a bit more. So she’d invited him over for a drink one evening, and she’d lit a few candles and put Billie Holiday into the CD player, and she’d treated him to a little striptease.

  Nothing had come of it, though. One of the twins had woken up before things had had a chance to go any further: nothing like a six-year-old calling for his mother to ruin an atmosphere. James’s heart wasn’t in it anyway, what with him being in love with Nell at the time. Shame he hadn’t thought to mention it to Laura.