Two Fridays in April

by Roisin Meaney

  Seventeen today, her birthday tainted now by association: hardly surprising that she shows little enthusiasm for it. Both their birthdays ruined from now on, Una’s because of his death, Daphne’s because of her wedding on the day she turned thirty-two, and the heartless anniversaries that will keep coming around now without him, reappearing every so often like a painted grinning horse on a carousel, forever reminding her of her loss.

  Una spoons instant coffee into a mug. Never touched coffee until Finn died: now she starts each day with it, presumably because he did too. As she takes her seat Daphne notes her lightly flushed face, the puffy skin around her eyes. Crying for him, like Daphne had cried earlier. Instinctively she reaches for the girl’s hand – but Una moves it smoothly towards the milk jug before contact is made, leaving Daphne feeling hurt and foolish. She’s a child; let it go.

  She indicates instead the package on the table by Una’s plate. ‘I got you something small. I have the receipt if you want to change it.’

  Bought a few days earlier in a little boutique near the estate agency, the amount on the price tag not that small, but worth it if Una likes it. Of course it might never be worn or exchanged, its non-appearance serving as another unspoken rejection.

  Una glances at the package, wrapped in yellow paper. ‘Thanks,’ she says, making no move to open it. She twists the lid off the peanut butter, dips in her knife and slathers a glob of it onto the toast. Only a year and a bit away from her Leaving Cert, noncommittal about future plans. Showing some artistic flair certainly, but seeming uninterested in taking it further.

  Have you thought about college? Daphne asked her a few months ago. Any idea what you want to do when you leave school? But Una just shrugged and said she hadn’t decided, and Daphne backed off and hasn’t brought it up since.

  What has happened to them? It’s like they’ve gone back to the bad old days when they were first introduced to one another, a month or so after Daphne met Finn. Una was twelve: Daphne could sense her wariness, and it made her apprehensive in turn. If she and Finn ended up together – and already he was becoming frighteningly important to her – how would she cope? She knew nothing at all about twelve-year-old girls, least of all how to be a mother, or stepmother, to one of them.

  But when she eventually confided her fears to Finn, shortly after he’d proposed and she’d accepted, he brushed them aside. It’s been just the two of us for a long time, he said. She’s got used to it, that’s all. She’ll come round, wait and see. She’s had it tough, her mum dying when she was so young, and then the bombshell I had to drop when she was old enough. Poor kid, she’s been through a lot.

  So they married – and like Finn had promised, Una eventually accepted Daphne’s presence in their lives, and things were fine, if not always perfect. They were never like a real mother and daughter, that would have been too much to expect – but Daphne did the best she could, and it seemed to be enough.

  To her relief, she wasn’t called on to teach the facts of life; when she forced herself, after weeks of procrastination, to bring up the subject, Una immediately headed her off, telling her they’d learnt it in school – but Daphne provided sanitary towels when the need arose, she brought Una shopping for her first bra, she persuaded Finn to allow a mobile phone when the girl was begging him for it.

  Of course it went without saying that Una had a stronger bond with Finn than with Daphne – but she and Daphne were friends, weren’t they? Connected through Finn, united by their mutual attachment to him, but friends too in their own right. They had plenty of good times, the three of them.

  And then Finn had died, and Una retreated to her room, emerging only when bullied downstairs at mealtimes by Mo in those first few days. After Mo packed up and went home, Daphne forced herself to keep up the routine and put some kind of a dinner on the table each evening. She and her stepdaughter sat silently across from one another, shell-shocked with misery, bereft without him, and totally unable to communicate their heartbreak to one another.

  And in the year since his death, not a lot has changed. A trembling kind of harmony has settled between them, but they may as well be fellow patients in a doctor’s waiting room for all the intimacies or confidences they exchange these days.

  Daphne does her best, attends the parent-teacher meetings, gives pocket money on Friday, feeds and clothes this child, this almost-woman who’s ended up in her care, but beneath their polite, meaningless interaction the cold, ugly truth exists: they didn’t choose one another. Their only connection was through Finn, and now he’s gone. And while Daphne does feel a fondness for Una – how could she not have grown attached to the girl who played such an important part in Finn’s life? – she feels unable to demonstrate that fondness in the face of Una’s nonchalance.

  She knows virtually nothing about Una’s life. Friends who would have called to the house in the past – Ciara, Jennifer, Emma – haven’t appeared since Finn died. Una has dinner in one or other of their houses at least once a week, but she keeps turning down Daphne’s offers to feed them in return. There’s no sign of a boyfriend either, which is not to say he doesn’t exist.

  The two of them need to talk, that’s what they need to do. They need to sit down some evening and really talk, really open up to one another, break down whatever wall has grown up between them – but Daphne simply can’t bring herself to broach the subject. She’s afraid of the rejection her approach might well be greeted with, afraid of being hurt any more.

  So she never ventures far, never takes it beyond where she feels safe. ‘You OK?’ she asks now, because Una cried alone upstairs this morning, and because it’s her birthday.

  ‘Yeah.’

  A short silence falls, broken only by the muted tick of the clock above the sink, and the tiny sound of Una chewing and swallowing.

  ‘Today will be tough,’ Daphne dares to say eventually. ‘Try not to dwell too much on it.’

  Something she can’t define – an uncertainty, a mild alarm – flits across the girl’s face. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she replies shortly, thrusting her chair back as she gets to her feet, the movement making Daphne feel like she’s the one who’s being pushed away.

  ‘You haven’t finished.’ Barely half a slice of toast gone, her coffee mug still three-quarters full.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You forgot your present.’

  Una scoops up the package wordlessly. At least she’s taken it.

  School shoes thump on the stairs. Daphne stands and begins to clear the table. Twenty-five to nine, nearly time they were going anyway.

  They never mention it, there’s never a comment. Every morning she drives past the spot where his life came to an end – not fifty yards from the house, seconds away from her – and neither of them remarks on it.

  But every morning Daphne feels the horror of it. Every single time they pass Buckley’s – there, just there – she’s thrown back to that awful day. The images that have seared themselves into her head insist on flipping one after another into view, like a series of playing cards flashed for an instant before a magician’s rapt audience.

  Annie and Hugh Moloney’s stunned expressions when she opened the door to them, apron still on, her smile fading as Hugh began to speak—

  The buckled wheels, the cracked handlebars of the unfamiliar lavender-coloured bicycle propped against Buckley’s wall, a curl of matching mudguard lying nearby—

  The bald circle in the bowed head of the bin-lorry driver, who sat on the edge of the path, the slop and wobble of the tea in the red mug that was clamped between his hands—

  The clutches of neighbours on the road, elbows nudging, heads swivelling at her approach, the muffled gasps of someone’s sobs—

  Finn’s tan shoe poking from the grey blanket someone had covered him with, his half-open, unseeing eyes when she pulled the blanket away to look at him, the bright crimson patch he left behind on the road when they lifted him onto the stretcher—

  Mo’s blank face in the
morgue, Finn stretched out between them on a slab; a slight shifting of her jaw, a small twitch of her mouth, no more, when the attendant lifted the sheet so she could look down at her son’s dead face—

  ‘Thanks for the present.’

  The memories scatter. Daphne glances at Una. ‘What?’

  ‘The top, it’s nice.’

  ‘Really, you like it? Because I have the receipt if you want—’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I do like it.’

  ‘It fits OK? I wasn’t sure whether to get ten or—’

  ‘Ten is fine.’

  ‘That’s good. I’m glad you like it.’

  She flicks on the indicator, makes a turn. Enough, she thinks. Enough sadness. She’s so tired of sadness; she’s exhausted from it snatching the joy away, day after day after day. When will it stop?

  They pass the corner shop that sells the Macaroon bars Mo likes.

  ‘I told you Mo is coming to dinner tonight, didn’t I? She didn’t want to miss your birthday.’

  ‘Yeah, you told me.’

  Mo would probably have been just fine about missing Una’s birthday but they’ll paint on smiles for her, try to make the day less awful than it is. Even if the girl doesn’t feel like celebrating – which of course she doesn’t – they have to mark it; they can’t ignore it.

  ‘What are you doing after school? Any plans?’

  ‘… Not sure yet.’

  ‘Well, don’t be late, OK? I told Mo dinner at eight.’

  ‘OK.’

  She thinks of the chocolate cake she ordered from a bakery that opened just a few months ago. It looked busy anytime she passed; she figured that had to be a good sign, so she called in on Monday and told them she wanted a chocolate cake for Friday. Happy Birthday Una, it’ll say, in gold script on treacle-coloured icing.

  She was in the middle of baking Una’s cake last year when Annie and Hugh rang the doorbell. She remembers the abandoned bowl of mix still sitting on the table in the kitchen when they finally got home from Mo’s house, not long before midnight. The place littered with eggshells and scattered chocolate drops and torn butter paper, a pale dusting of flour and cocoa over everything.

  She remembers sitting in the middle of the mess, still frozen with shock, her mind refusing to take in what had happened, as her father and George cleaned up. She recalls the wash of their conversation – not the words, she has no idea what the words were – as they tried unsuccessfully to drown out the wails of Una’s grief from the room above.

  The price they quoted her for the cake in the new bakery was astronomical but she paid up, grateful to have someone else, anyone else, making it this year. She’ll collect it on the way home from work.

  They reach the school. She pulls up and takes out the ten-euro note that’s been sitting in her pocket. ‘Here,’ she says, ‘in case you go someplace after school.’

  Una looks at the money.

  ‘Take it,’ Daphne urges, pressing it into her hand. ‘Go on. Treat yourself to … ice-cream, or something.’

  Ice-cream, on a day as cold as this. Ice-cream, as if she’s seven instead of seventeen.

  But Una takes it, not meeting Daphne’s eye as she stows it away. ‘Thanks,’ she says, getting out, slinging her rucksack across a shoulder. ‘See you later,’ she says, pushing the door closed and turning to merge into the groups of teenagers making their way to the big iron gates.

  Daphne watches her walk off. Poor lost creature, everyone abandoning her until she’s finally left with someone who can hardly look after herself, let alone anyone else. A stepmother is all the family she has now, apart from a pair of grandparents who barely acknowledge her existence, and an acquired other grandmother not exactly given to displays of affection.

  When the head of gold curls has vanished from view Daphne pulls out into the line of cars and makes her way to work. Traffic is heavy, like it is every Friday. Next week the roads will be quieter, schools closed for Easter and the children still in bed.

  She parks her car in the little yard behind the office. As she takes out her briefcase she becomes aware of a distant droning noise. She looks up and sees a small plane crossing the sky, trailing a white banner that reads Congratulations Charlotte and Brian in dark lettering.

  A wedding, more than likely. She watches it crossing the sky, imagines Charlotte, whoever she is, looking up too and clapping with delight. About to marry Brian, already getting into the dress, or having her hair done. The future stretching ahead of them, all the possibilities yet to come.

  Inevitably, her own wedding day slides into her head, less than four years ago. Her birthday making it even more special, her happiness almost tangible for the entire day, so gorgeously real it felt. Everything splashed with it, every minute drenched in happy.

  She recalls waking early that morning, lying in bed thinking, This is the last time I wake up as Daphne Carroll: tomorrow morning I’ll be Daphne Darling. Such a perfect name, like something out of a book, a name for a heroine. Daphne Darling, fearless righter of wrongs, blazer of trails.

  She remembers the sausages her father fried for them – We can’t be walking up that aisle on an empty stomach – and the knee-length cream dress she wore. Not exactly bridal, nothing fancy about it at all really, but catching her eye on the rail in a little boutique a few weeks before, when she hardly knew what she was looking for. Tiny orange and pink embroidered flowers scattered willy-nilly through the outer layer of cream net. Pink sandals on her feet, a posy of orange and red daisies, not quite matching the ones on the dress but the closest she could find.

  She thinks of her mother and Alex meeting them in the church porch before the ceremony, the awkward, terribly polite little conversation the four of them had. She remembers her relief when the organ struck up in the church, their signal for things to get moving. The slow walk up the aisle beside her father, her throat unexpectedly tight, her legs trembling a little. Finn waiting for her at the—

  No, too painful. She locks the car and makes her way inside.

  Mr Donnelly doesn’t remember the significance of today – or if he does, he gives no sign.

  ‘This came in yesterday,’ he says, sliding a page across his desk. ‘You might check it out this afternoon.’

  His office smells as it always does of the clove-drop sweets he loves. Bags of them he goes through, always an open one sitting by his phone. ‘Bridestone Avenue,’ he says, ‘small little cul-de-sac somewhere behind the maternity hospital, as far as I can gather. Owner will give you proper directions.’

  At Finn’s funeral he had shaken her hand along with all the other mourners, squeezed her fingers painfully as he told her how sorry he was. His wife Barbara’s eyes were red-rimmed. I couldn’t believe it when I heard, she’d whispered, leaning in to press a hot cheek against Daphne’s, bringing with her a faint waft of something chemical – TCP? Dettol? – but since she’d barely known Finn, and had never come across as particularly soft-hearted, Daphne had been inclined to put the red eyes down to hay fever.

  ‘Tea?’ she asks now, because she needs to give herself something else to think about, and because there’s no reason why he should remember the anniversary, however raw and fresh and painful it is for her. ‘I’m making a cup.’

  ‘Lovely,’ he replies, and she goes into the tiny kitchenette and fills the kettle, and dries the few mugs on the draining board while she waits for the water to boil. Busy, that’s what she needs to be today. Busy following up on offers and keeping an eye on ongoing contracts and making sure her paperwork is up to date before the weekend.

  Good that a new house has come in: give her something to fill up the afternoon. She likes checking out new properties, being the first to assess them, measuring and recording and giving them a thorough going over.

  When the tea is made she adds a Hobnob to Mr Donnelly’s saucer and delivers it to his office. Barbara wouldn’t approve, always has him on some diet or other – and definitely wouldn’t be impressed if she knew how many clove drops he
puts away – but he enjoys a Hobnob, and life is too short.

  At her desk she dials the number he gave her and listens to the soft, rhythmic burrs. The other two desks in the front office are unoccupied this morning, William and Joanna out and about. People buying and selling again, thank goodness, the market beginning to pick up at last after a few anxious years when they’d been forced to do three- and four-day weeks in rotation to keep Mr Donnelly from having to let any of them go.

  The ringing stops with a click. She waits, glances down at the name on the page before her.

  ‘Yes.’ The word isn’t a question. The voice is deep.

  ‘Tom Wallace?’

  ‘Yes.’ Precisely the same measured tone.

  ‘I’m Daphne from Donnelly and Co. You were in touch about putting a house up for sale with us.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  In the beat that follows she watches the steam curling slowly upwards from her cup. Finn always drank his tea black, wasn’t a fan of dairy; she’d cut out her beloved blue cheese because he couldn’t stomach the smell. Some weeks after he died she threw a wedge into her shopping trolley, trying to coax her appetite back to life, but the first taste, bringing with it the reminder that he could never again object to it, made her double up in anguish. She hasn’t bought it since.

  ‘Hello?’

  She pulls herself back. ‘Sorry – I’m ringing to arrange an appointment for a valuation. Would you be around this afternoon? I could—’

  ‘Four o’clock would suit me.’

  Later than she was going to suggest – she won’t be finished before five now. Should still be OK, though: cemetery doesn’t close till six, and dinner isn’t until eight. Time enough.

  ‘Four is fine,’ she says. ‘See you then. I think Bridestone Avenue is between—’

  But he’s gone, the deep voice replaced by the gentle rumble of a vacant line, leaving her to locate him and his house without his help. Man of few words.

  As she hangs up, her mobile phone beeps in her desk drawer. She takes it out and sees George’s name.