Two Fridays in April

by Roisin Meaney

  His voice sounds different. She nods again, frightened now, heart thudding.

  He begins to whistle, some tune she doesn’t recognise. Again she gets a whiff of alcohol. He makes another turn. More houses, less densely packed. They must be nearly there. She shivers, wishing he’d put on the heat.

  He stops whistling to glance at her again. ‘You cold?’ he asks. ‘Not to worry, Jean has a lovely fire on, soon be cosy.’

  Jean.

  Una forces herself to look at him. ‘You said her name was Joan.’

  He smiles, not taking his eyes from the road. ‘Oops,’ he says, turning the car into what looks like an industrial estate.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asks, watching low buildings fly by as they lurch over a speed bump. Wrong, all wrong, her insides knotted in fear.

  ‘Just a little shortcut,’ he answers lightly. ‘Soon be landed.’

  Every muscle tense, something hard lodged in her throat, making it difficult to breathe. Fingers clutching Judy’s wrap so tightly her hands ache.

  ‘I love your hair,’ he says then. ‘Beautiful.’ They pass more buildings. He makes another turn, slows down. Moves a meaty hand from the steering wheel to place it, almost absently, on her thigh.

  She jerks away but he hangs on, clamps his fingers around her leg. She clicks open her seat belt, presses herself back against the car door. ‘Stop,’ she says, a pulse banging in her neck, thumping in her ears. ‘Stop the car.’

  He laughs, pulls in beside what looks like a warehouse. ‘Thought you’d never ask,’ he says, turning off the engine, twisting in his seat to lift a handful of her hair with his free hand. ‘Beautiful,’ he repeats, pulling it towards his face, forcing her head to follow, closing his eyes as he inhales loudly. ‘Mmmm,’ he says softly, ‘smells like strawberries.’

  ‘Please …’ She’s fighting to keep her voice steady, rearing back from him as much as she can. ‘Please let me go.’ She tries to pull her head away, feeling the pain in her scalp as he maintains his grip on her hair. It’s black beyond the windows: she can see nothing but the giant blacker shapes of the warehouses all around. Nobody there, nobody to help her. ‘Please,’ she repeats.

  He laughs again. ‘Oh, come on now, sweetheart,’ he says softly, his hand moving swiftly up from her thigh to find the waistband of her jeans. ‘Don’t be like that,’ he murmurs, fumbling at the button, popping it open. ‘Be nice to me, darling.’

  She shrieks, scratching at his hand, slapping at it, wriggling her hips in an effort to shake him off but he’s strong, too strong for her as he releases her hair to wrench with both hands now at her zip. She hears the sharp sound of it ripping apart.

  ‘Good girl,’ he breathes, his mouth pressing into her ear now. ‘I like a good fight, makes it twice as spicy …’ Sliding her towards him, forcing her down in the seat as he tugs at the jeans, trying to pull them past her hips.

  ‘Come on,’ he pants, his breath hot on her face, ‘that’s the girl, that’s it …’

  She reaches down with her left hand and scrabbles around frantically till she succeeds in yanking off one of her shoes. She grabs it by the toe and jabs the pointed heel blindly at his face. He lifts a hand, laughing, and tries to grab the shoe from her – but miraculously she manages, in her wild swipes, to connect with her target.

  He howls and jerks his head back, hands flying to his eye. With all her strength she shoves him away and turns to feel in the darkness for the door handle as he curses her loudly, hands still clamped on the stabbed eye. She pushes the door open and half-falls from the car, palms and knees slapping onto the road.

  She stumbles to her feet, sobbing with fright. She pulls off her remaining shoe and throws it aside, then breaks into a hobbling run, one hand holding closed her ruined jeans as she makes her escape, waiting all the time to hear him in pursuit, waiting for the sound of his car starting up.

  Her breath tight in her chest, the air coming out of her in ragged, painful gasps, she reaches a corner and darts down another road, trying to remember the route they took, heedless of the tights that are being ripped to shreds under the soles of her flying feet, heedless of Charlotte’s bag, with the silk dress inside, that still sits in his car.

  She runs on, knowing where she has to go, knowing she must make her way to the only place she’ll be safe.

  DAPHNE AND MO

  She hangs up, shakes her head at Mo. Voicemail, for the umpteenth time. Where is she? Where in God’s name is she?

  How can a day last so long? How is this still the one that began with her waking to the knowledge, before she’d even opened her eyes, that it was Finn’s anniversary? The morning feels like it happened in another lifetime – breakfast, Una’s present, dropping her to school, going to work – yet here they still are, inhabiting the same interminable twenty-four hours. How can that be?

  And where is she?

  We’ll find her, Louise said, the same Louise who had made Daphne a cup of tea when her car was stolen a million years ago. Louise, who was miraculously still working the same shift at the police station, who picked up the phone when Daphne rang. She can’t have gone far – but, of course, Una can have gone far. Since nine o’clock this morning she can have gone very far indeed.

  Find her passport, Louise said, see what clothes are missing from her room – but while the passport was quickly located in a drawer by Una’s bed, figuring out if any items of clothing were gone was impossible. Daphne doesn’t know all the clothes Una has, she doesn’t know.

  Her birthday top, Daphne’s present, is nowhere to be found – but that’s not much help. One blue top, not nearly warm enough on its own today. If she’s wearing it, she must have another layer at least on top. She must.

  And without a passport she could still have left the country, couldn’t she? She could get on a boat to England without a passport, couldn’t she? And where are the guards Louise promised to send to the house? What’s taking them so long?

  ‘Stop biting your nails.’

  She rounds on Mo. ‘Leave me alone,’ she says sharply. ‘I’m worried sick.’ Stop, don’t take your guilt out on her, she’s done nothing.

  The photo of Una she has found for the guards sits on the table. A recent one, Louise said, a clear one of her face. We’ll scan it and circulate it.

  Finn had taken the photo in March of the previous year. He and Una had just returned from one of their Sunday-afternoon cycles. Daphne heard them laughing about something in the garage as she basted the root vegetables she was roasting to go with the leg of lamb.

  A minute later the back door opened and in they came, bringing a blast of cold air with them. Una was still giggling, cheeks flushed from two hours of pedalling the roads on a frosty day. Daphne can’t recall what the joke was – did they tell her? – but she remembers Finn, also in high good humour, taking out his phone and snapping his daughter as she peeled off her outer clothes.

  She’s standing by the table, her cycling helmet and scarf already shed, in the act of unzipping her jacket. Her hair has been gathered into a fat bunch from which several tendrils have escaped. Her smile is mischievous as she looks at Finn.

  Less than three weeks later he was dead, and there were no more smiles. And now she’s disappeared.

  Mo gets to her feet. ‘Tea,’ she says firmly, and fills the kettle. As if tea will help.

  ‘I don’t want any.’

  ‘Well, I do.’ She plugs in the kettle. ‘Have you any biscuits? I’m sick of that cake.’

  Biscuits – who can think about biscuits at a time like this? ‘Don’t you care?’ Daphne demands. ‘Are you so unfeeling that this doesn’t mean anything to you?’

  For a minute it seems Mo isn’t going to respond. She takes two cups from the draining board and sets them on the worktop. She empties the pot, still warm from its last outing, and drops in new teabags. And then she turns to face Daphne.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ she says quietly.

  And still standing by the worktop, h
ands dangling by her sides, she tells Daphne about her babies.

  She was never going to tell, it was never on the agenda. She had planned to go to her grave without sharing that secret with anyone. In all her sessions with the counsellor, she never spoke of the babies. And of all the people she wasn’t going to tell, Daphne would probably have been top of the list.

  But when she heard, Don’t you care? Are you so unfeeling that this doesn’t mean anything to you? something cracked open – maybe something that had been loosened by the counsellor, who knows? – and here it is now, all falling out. Here she is, telling Daphne everything.

  The months each of them lasted in her womb, the names she’d picked out in her head for them. The tiny bootees and cardigans and vests and nappies she’d hung on to from Finn’s babyhood, hung on to through all five of her miscarriages. Unable to let them go, unable to give up hope.

  And as she speaks, as it all tumbles out, all of it, she’s aware that a part of her feels horrified – what are you doing? – but there’s another part that feels like she’s shedding something, like it’s dropping away like a length of rope that was wound tightly around her, now suddenly cut.

  ‘They did something to me, the miscarriages,’ she tells Daphne steadily. ‘They closed me up. They locked everything up tight in me. It’s not that I don’t feel – I feel everything. It’s that I can’t show it, I can’t let it out, for fear of what it might do to me.’

  All the while she’s speaking Daphne remains unmoving, her elbows resting on the table, her eyes locked on Mo’s face. Her mouth is half open, but no words come out. She makes no effort to interject, simply waits to hear what there is to be said.

  When Mo finally stops there’s silence in the room, broken only by the soft chick-chick of the kitchen clock, and the singing of the almost-bubbling kettle. And then Daphne lets out a slow breath, as if she were the one who’d been doing all the talking, still looking all the while at Mo.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ she asks quietly. ‘Why did you never tell me about this?’

  Mo lifts a shoulder. ‘Why would I?’ But she puts no meanness into the words – she feels no antipathy towards Daphne.

  ‘Finn never said anything.’

  ‘Finn didn’t know. Nobody knew except me and Leo, and the people at the hospital.’

  ‘Mo, I’m so sorry—’

  ‘Don’t be,’ she replies brusquely, turning to lift the kettle from its base. ‘It’s in the past. It’s over. I just … I don’t know, maybe it was time you knew. Why I am the way I am, I mean.’ She fills the teapot, brings it to the table. She doesn’t want tea, it was just something to do.

  She checks the clock again, clicking her tongue with impatience. ‘What’s keeping those guards? And your mother’s taking her time too – I thought she was to be here in fifteen minutes.’

  She’s beginning to regret it. She shouldn’t have spoken, shouldn’t have let it out. She feels exposed, she feels her raw edges are showing. Why did she open her mouth? What possessed her?

  ‘Mo,’ Daphne says.

  Mo brings the cups to the table, busies herself stirring the tea in the pot, pouring for both of them. Spooning sugar into her cup, stirring, stirring. When the silence stretches she raises her head.

  ‘I have something to tell you too,’ Daphne says, pressing palms to her cheeks as if to cool them. ‘Sit down, please.’

  Mo sits.

  Daphne speaks slowly, taking her time to settle on each phrase, as if she’s assembling it in its entirety before letting it out. ‘We wanted children, we did, Finn and I … We both wanted them … but it didn’t happen, it just … and I know it’s not the same as what you went through, it’s not the same at all … but I wanted you to know … it wasn’t that we didn’t want any.’ She stops, looks up. ‘Just in case you were ever wondering. I wouldn’t want you to think …’

  She lets it drift away. It’s like a gift she’s offering, a confidence in exchange for the one Mo shared earlier. Mo studies her hands as she feels her way around Daphne’s words, picks at the sense of them, thinks about what they mean.

  Finally she nods slowly. ‘I did wonder,’ she says. ‘I thought maybe you didn’t want children.’

  Daphne closes her eyes briefly. ‘I did,’ she whispers. ‘I did want children, his children, so much—’ She presses a hand to her mouth, and Mo sees a tear make its way out and roll unstopped down her cheek.

  Who would have thought it? How wrong had she been to assume that the lack of babies had been Daphne’s decision, all Daphne’s fault? Clearly very wrong indeed.

  Daphne hadn’t been denying Finn anything: she’d wanted his child, his children, as much as he surely did. What kind of cock-eyed God decides to give babies willy-nilly to ones who don’t want them, and refuse them to the most deserving?

  And to Mo’s dismay, she feels the heat of incipient tears in her own eyes. She blinks rapidly several times until the impulse has passed. No cause for two of them to be bawling.

  It’s a lie but a permitted one. It’s a kind lie, born of the need to cause no pain. Maybe less of a lie than a tweaking of the truth. What’s the difference, after all, between ‘it didn’t happen’ and ‘it couldn’t happen’? A hair’s breadth at the most. Mo doesn’t need to know that her son, her dead son, had been incapable of fathering a child. Not with all she’s going through with Leo, with all she went through in the past.

  Despite her preoccupation with Una’s disappearance, Mo’s confession floored Daphne. She listened with growing disbelief to the account of the lost babies, the facts made all the more poignant from being delivered in Mo’s trademark no-nonsense way. It’s not that I don’t feel – I feel everything. You’d never think it from her.

  How did she bear it, though? To lose one baby must be horrendous: how could any woman cope with losing five? And as Daphne listened, she was reminded of her own heartache. They weren’t, she realised, so dissimilar after all. Both with secrets, both denied the thing they most wanted: Mo to have more than one child, Daphne to have any at all.

  But Mo had shared her secret, and Daphne owed it to her to do the same. And now they sit across the table from one another, with nothing left to tell. It’s a relief of sorts, she supposes, to have told Mo: it felt like something she should do – but where do they go from here? What are they to do now with one another’s intimacies? She has no idea.

  And just then, as she lifts the cup Mo has pushed towards her – might as well drink it, now that it’s made – the doorbell rings, making her start. Making her remember, with a lurch of fright, what the real business of tonight is.

  ISOBEL AND DAPHNE

  There’s a squad car parked outside the house. Isobel pulls in behind it, praying there’s no bad news. As she hurries up the path the front door opens and two uniformed guards emerge, one of them still in conversation with Daphne.

  ‘… keep you posted,’ is all Isobel catches, but it’s enough. The story still ongoing, thank the Lord. She nods as the two men pass. ‘I’m Daphne’s mother,’ she tells them, although they haven’t asked.

  She steps into the hall and faces her daughter, who regards her silently and unsmilingly.

  ‘I take it there’s no news,’ Isobel says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m later than I said,’ she goes on. ‘It took me longer than I thought it would. I wasn’t at home when Jack phoned,’ she adds, when no response is forthcoming. ‘I was … somewhere else. I forgot it would take me longer.’

  Daphne plucks her jacket from the hallstand. ‘Can we go and look for her?’ Her voice trembles, and it becomes apparent to Isobel how frightened she is. ‘Mo is here, she’ll stay. Can we go?’

  ‘Of course we can, love.’ Isobel aches to put her arms around her daughter, wishes it were possible.

  As Daphne pulls on her jacket the kitchen door opens and Mo appears, a somewhat smarter version of the woman Isobel encountered earlier in the day. Her face made up, albeit a little garishly. Better
clothes, better shoes. Isobel wonders if she’s told Daphne about their meeting in the café. Such a long time ago it seems now, so much changed since then.

  Mo nods at her, as solemn as Daphne. ‘You’re heading out so,’ she says, to no one in particular. ‘I’ll be here if she turns up.’

  Daphne moves swiftly towards her and enfolds her in an embrace, over as soon as it’s begun but not so fast that it doesn’t cause a whip of jealousy in Isobel. Mo doesn’t react – she hasn’t time before Daphne is out of the door. Isobel follows, pulling it closed behind her. They walk down the path in silence. At the gate Isobel presses her key fob and the car lights wink an answer.

  They get in. Isobel looks at Daphne as she turns on the heater. ‘Where to?’

  Daphne frowns. ‘I don’t know – she could be anywhere. I don’t—’ She breaks off, bites her lip, turns away from Isobel to look out of the window.

  Isobel starts the car, executes a three-point turn. She drives quickly to the corner, turns onto the road that leads back to the city centre. Retracing the journey she’s just taken, passing the same houses and shops, crossing the river again.

  ‘Have you called her friends?’

  ‘… Yes.’

  ‘And they’ve no idea where she might have gone? None of them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And she’s still not answering her phone?’

  A not quite concealed sigh. ‘No.’

  Isobel drives on, meandering through the dark streets, passing knots of people on their way home, or maybe on their way out. What time is it? She’s lost track. She can still taste the coffee she drank in the hotel bar. She should have taken the refill when the barman offered it; looks like none of them will be getting to bed for a while.

  A lone man stumbles against a wall; a pair of women, arms linked, give him a wide berth as they overtake him. A small dog scurries down a street, stopping to cock a leg briefly against a lamppost. A couple embrace – or maybe get up to a bit more – in a doorway.