The Mystery of Mercy Close

by Marian Keyes

  ‘Ah, fair enough.’ Good-naturedly Vonnie shifted along the deck, putting lots of space between herself and Artie.

  It wasn’t my way but I couldn’t help but like her.

  And what about Artie in all of this? Taking a highly focused interest in the lower-side, left-hand corner of the jigsaw, that’s what. At the best of times he had a touch of the Strong Silents about him, but whenever Vonnie and I started our alpha-female jostling, he had learned – on my instructions – to absent himself entirely.

  In the beginning he’d tried to protect me from her but I was mortally offended. ‘It’s as if,’ I’d said, ‘you’re saying that she’s scarier than me.’

  Actually, it was thirteen-year-old Bruno who was the real problem. He was bitchier than the most spiteful girl, and yes, I knew he had good reason – his parents had split up when he was at the tender age of nine and now he was an adolescent in the grip of anger hormones, which he expressed by dressing in fascist chic, in form-fitting black shirts, narrow-cut black pants tucked into shiny black knee boots, and with very, very blond hair, tightly cut, except for a big sweeping eighties fringe. Also he wore mascara and it looked like he’d started on the blusher.

  ‘Well!’ I smiled, somewhat tensely, at the assembled faces.

  Artie looked up from the jigsaw and gave me an intense, blue-eyed stare. God. I swallowed hard. Instantly I wanted Vonnie to go home and the kids to go to bed so I could have some alone time with Artie. Would it be impolite to ask them to hop it?

  ‘Something to drink?’ he asked, holding my gaze. I nodded mutely.

  I was expecting he’d get to his feet and I could follow him down to the kitchen and cop a quick sneaky smell of him.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Iona said dreamily.

  Biting back a howl of frustration, I watched her waft down the floating stairs to the kitchen, to where the drink lived. She was fifteen. I found it amazing that she could be trusted to carry a glass of wine from one room to the next without guzzling the lot. When I was fifteen I drank anything that wasn’t nailed down. It was just what you did, what everyone did. Maybe it was shortage of pocket money, I didn’t really know; I just knew that I didn’t understand Iona and her trustworthy, abstemious ilk.

  ‘Some food, Helen?’ Vonnie asked. ‘There’s a fennel and Vacherin salad in the fridge.’

  My stomach clenched tight: no way was it letting anything in. ‘I’ve eaten.’ I hadn’t. I hadn’t even been able to force down a slice of Mum and Dad’s dinner-time cake.

  ‘You sure?’ Vonnie gave me a shrewd once-over. ‘You’re looking a little skinny. Don’t want you getting skinnier than me!’

  ‘No fear of that.’ But maybe there was. I hadn’t eaten a proper meal since … well, a while – I couldn’t actually remember; it was a week or so ago, perhaps a bit longer. My body seemed to have stopped notifying my mind that it wanted food. Or maybe my mind was so full of worry that it couldn’t handle the information. The odd time that the message had actually got through I was unable to do anything remotely complicated, like pouring milk on to Cheerios, to quell the hunger. Even eating popcorn, which I’d tried last night, had struck me as the strangest thing – why would anyone eat those rough little balls of styrofoam, which cut the inside of your mouth and then rubbed salt into the wounds?

  ‘Helen!’ Bella said. ‘It’s time to play!’ She produced a pink plastic comb and a pink Tupperware box filled with pink hairclips and pink furry elastic bands. ‘Take a seat.’

  Oh God. Hairdressers. At least it wasn’t Motor Vehicle Registration Lady, I supposed. That was the very worst of our games – I had to queue for hours and she sat at an imaginary glass hatch. I kept telling her we could do it online, but she protested that then it wouldn’t be a game.

  ‘Here’s your drink,’ she said, then hissed at Iona, ‘Quick, give it to her – can’t you see she’s stressed?’

  Iona presented me with a goblet of red wine and a tall, chilled glass clinking with ice cubes. ‘Shiraz or home-made valerian iced tea. I wasn’t sure which you’d prefer so I brought both.’

  There was a second when I considered the wine, then decided against it. I was afraid that if I started drinking I’d never be able to stop and I couldn’t take the horror of a hangover.

  ‘No wine, thanks.’

  I braced myself for the pandemonium that usually followed that sort of statement: ‘What? No wine! Did she say, “No wine”? She’s gone quite mad!’ I expected the Devlins to rise up as one and wrestle me into an immobile headlock so that the glass of Shiraz could be poured into me via a plastic funnel, like a sheep being hoosed, but it passed without comment. I’d forgotten for a moment that I wasn’t with my family of origin.

  ‘Diet Coke instead?’ Iona asked.

  God, the Devlins were the perfect hosts, even a flaky, floaty type like Iona. They always had Diet Coke in their fridge for me, although none of them drank it.

  ‘No, no thanks, all fine.’

  I took a sip of the valerian tea – not unpleasant, although not pleasant either – then lowered myself on to a massive floor cushion. Bella knelt by my side and began to stroke my scalp. ‘You have beautiful hair,’ she murmured.

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  Mind you, she thought I had beautiful everything; she wasn’t exactly a reliable witness.

  Her small fingers combed and separated strands and my shoulders started to drop and for the first time in about ten days I had the relief of a proper breath, where my lungs filled fully with air and then eased it out again. ‘God, that’s so relaxing …’

  ‘Bad day?’ she asked sympathetically.

  ‘You have no idea, my little pink amiga.’

  ‘Try me,’ she said.

  I was all set to launch into the whole miserable business, then I remembered she was only nine.

  ‘Well …’ I said, working hard to put a cheery spin on things. ‘Because I haven’t been able to pay the bills, I had to move out of my flat –’

  ‘What?’ Artie was startled. ‘When?’

  ‘Today. But it’s fine.’ I was speaking more to Bella than to him.

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

  Why hadn’t I told him? When I’d given him the key six weeks ago I’d warned him that it was a possibility, but I’d made it sound like I was joking; after all, the entire country was in mortgage arrears and up to their eyeballs in debt. But he’d had the kids last weekend and he’d been away all week and I found it hard to have heavy conversations on the phone. And, in fairness, I hadn’t told anyone what was going on.

  Yesterday morning, when I realized I’d reached the end of the road – that in fact the end of the road had been reached a while back, but I’d been in denial, hoping the road people might come along with their tarmac and white lines and build a few more miles for me – I just quietly organized the two removal men for today. Shame was probably what had kept me silent. Or sadness? Or shock? Hard to know for sure.

  ‘What will you do?’ Bella sounded distraught.

  ‘I’ve moved back in with my mum and dad for a while. They’re going through an old patch at the moment, so there isn’t much food, but that might pass …’

  ‘Why don’t you live here?’ Bella asked.

  Instantly Bruno’s peachy little face lit up with fury. He was generally so angry that you’d think he’d be carpeted with spots, an external manifestation, if you will, of all his inner bile, but actually he had very soft, smooth, delicate skin.

  ‘Because your dad and I have been going out with each other only a short time –’

  ‘Five months, three weeks and six days,’ Bella said. ‘That’s nearly six months. That’s half a year.’

  Anxiously, I looked at her fervent little face.

  ‘And you’re good together,’ she said with enthusiasm. ‘Mum says. Don’t you, Mum?’

  ‘I certainly do,’ Vonnie said, smiling wryly.

  ‘I couldn’t move in.’ I tried hard to sound jolly. ‘Because Bruno would stab me
in the middle of the night.’ Then steal my make-up.

  Bella was appalled. ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘I would,’ Bruno said.

  ‘Bruno!’ Artie yelled at him.

  ‘Sorry, Helen.’ Bruno knew the drill. He turned away, but not before I’d seen him mouth the words, ‘Fuck you, cunt-face.’

  It took all of my self-control not to mouth back, ‘No, fuck you, fascist-boy.’ I was almost thirty-four, I reminded myself. And Artie might see.

  I was diverted by a light flashing on my phone. A new email fresh in. Intriguingly entitled ‘Large slice of humble pie’. Then I saw who it was from: Jay Parker. I nearly dropped the machine.

  Dearest Helen, my delicious little curmudgeon. Although it kills me to say it, I need your help. How about we let bygones be bygones and you get in touch?

  A one-word reply. It took me less than a second to type.

  No.

  I let Bella fiddle about with my hair and I sipped my valerian tea and I watched the Devlins do their jigsaw and I wished the lot of them – except Artie, of course – would piss off. Couldn’t we at least go inside and turn on the telly? In the house I’d grown up in we’d treated ‘outside’ with suspicion. Even at the height of summer we never really got the point of gardens, especially because the lead on the telly didn’t stretch that far. And the telly had been important to the Walshes; nothing, but nothing, had ever happened – births, deaths, marriages – without the telly on in the background, preferably some sort of shouty soap opera. How could the Devlins stand all this conversation?

  Perhaps the problem wasn’t them, I realized. Perhaps the problem was me. The ability to talk to other people seemed to be leaking out of me like air out of an old balloon. I was worse now than I was an hour ago.

  Bella’s soft fingers plucked at my scalp and she clucked and fussed and eventually reached some sort of resolution that she was happy with.

  ‘Perfect! You look like a Mayan princess. Look.’ She thrust a hand-mirror at my face. I caught a quick glimpse of my hair in two long plaits and some sort of handwoven thing tied across my fringe. ‘Look at Helen,’ she canvassed the crowd. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

  ‘Beautiful,’ Vonnie said, sounding utterly sincere.

  ‘Like a Mayan princess,’ Bella stressed.

  ‘Is it true that the Mayans invented Magnums?’ I asked. There was a brief startled silence, then the conversation resumed as though I hadn’t said anything. I was way off my wavelength here.

  ‘She’s exactly like a Mayan princess,’ Vonnie said. ‘Except that Helen’s eyes are green and a Mayan princess’s would probably be brown. But the hair is perfect. Well done, Bella. More tea, Helen?’

  To my surprise, I’d – at least for the moment – had it with the Devlins, with their good looks and grace and manners, with their board games and amicable break-ups and half-glasses-of-wine-at-dinner-for-the-children. I really wanted to get Artie on his own but it wasn’t going to happen and I couldn’t even muster the energy to be pissed off – it wasn’t his fault he had three kids and a demanding job. He didn’t know the day I’d had today. Or yesterday. Or indeed the week I’d had.

  ‘No tea, thanks, Vonnie. I’d better head off.’ I got to my feet.

  ‘You’re going?’ Artie looked concerned.

  ‘I’ll see you at the weekend.’ Or whenever Vonnie next had the kids. I’d lost track of their schedule, which was a very complicated one. Its basic premise was that the three kids spent scrupulously equal amounts of time at the homes of both their parents, but the actual days varied from week to week to factor in things like Artie or Vonnie (mostly Vonnie, if you ask me) going on mini-breaks, weddings down the country, etc.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Artie was starting to look worried.

  ‘Fine.’ I couldn’t get into it now.

  He caught my wrist. ‘Won’t you hang on a while?’ In a quieter voice he said, ‘I’ll ask Vonnie to leave. And the kids will have to go to bed at some stage.’

  But it might be hours and hours. Artie and I never went to bed before them. Of course I was often there in the morning so it was obvious I’d stayed the night but we’d – all of us – fallen into a pretence that I’d slept in some imaginary spare bed and that Artie had spent the night alone. Even though I was Artie’s lovair we tended to behave as though I was just a family friend.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ I couldn’t do any more deck-sitting, waiting to get Artie on his own, for the chance to take the clothes off his fine body. I’d burst.

  But first, the farewells. They took about twenty minutes. I had no truck with lengthy valedictions; if it was up to me, I’d rather mutter something about going to the loo, then just slip away and be halfway home before anyone even noticed I was missing.

  I find saying goodbye almost unendurably boring; in my head I’m already gone, so it seems like a total waste of time, all that ‘Be well’ and ‘Take care’ and smiling and stuff.

  Sometimes I want to tear people’s hands from my shoulders and push them away and just bolt for freedom. But making a big production of it was the Devlin way – hugs and double kisses – even from Bruno, who clearly couldn’t entirely break free from his middle-class conditioning – and quadruple kisses (both cheeks, the forehead and the chin) from Bella, who suggested that we do a sleepover soon in her room.

  ‘I’ll loan you my strawberry shortcake pyjamas,’ she promised.

  ‘You’re nine,’ Bruno said, super-sneery. ‘She’s like, old. How’re your pyjamas going to fit her?’

  ‘We’re the same size,’ Bella said.

  And the funny thing was, we practically were. I was short for my age and Bella was tall for hers. They were all tall, the Devlins; they got it from Artie.

  ‘Are you sure you should be on your own?’ Artie asked, as he walked me to the front door. ‘You’ve had a really bad day.’

  ‘Ah, yeah, I’m grand.’

  He took my hand and rubbed the palm of it against his T-shirt, over his pecs, then down towards the muscles of his stomach.

  ‘Stop.’ I pulled away from him. ‘No point starting something we can’t finish.’

  ‘Oookay. But let’s just take this off before you go.’

  ‘Artie, I said –’

  Tenderly he untied the Mayan headband that Bella had put on me, demonstrated it with a flourish, then let it drop to the floor.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. Then ‘Oh,’ again, as he slid his hands under my hairline and over my poor tormented scalp, and began to free up the two plaits. I closed my eyes for a moment, letting his hands work their way through my hair. He circled his thumbs around my ears, on my forehead, on the frown lines between my eyebrows, at the tight spot where my neck met my scalp. My face began to soften and the hinge of my jaw started to unclamp, and when eventually he stopped I was so blissed out that a lesser woman would have toppled over.

  I managed to stand up straight. ‘Did I dribble on you?’ I asked.

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Okay, I’m off.’

  He bent his head and kissed me, a kiss that was more restrained than I would have preferred, but best not to start any fires.

  I slid my hand up, to the back of his head. I liked tangling my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and pulling it, not hard enough to hurt. Not exactly.

  When we drew apart I said, ‘I like your hair.’

  ‘Vonnie says I need a haircut.’

  ‘I say you don’t. And I am the decider.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Get some sleep. I’ll call you later.’

  We’d got into a – well, I suppose it was a routine – over the past few weeks where we had a quick little chat just before we went to sleep.

  ‘And about your question,’ he said. ‘The answer is yes.’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Did the Mayans invent Magnums?’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘Yes, of course the Mayans invented Magnums.’

  3

  As soon as I started drivi
ng, I realized I had nowhere to go. I headed out on to the motorway but when the exit came up for my parents’ house I ignored it and just kept on going.

  I liked driving. It was like being in a little bubble. I wasn’t in the place I’d left and I wasn’t in the place I was going to. It was as if I’d ceased existing when I left and I wouldn’t exist again until I arrived and I liked it, this state of non-being.

  As I drove, I gasped for air through my mouth, trying to swallow it down, trying to stop my chest from closing in on top of itself.

  When my phone rang, anxiety spiked within me. I picked it up and took a quick look at the screen: Caller Unknown. Which could potentially be lots of people – I’d been getting a fair few unwelcome calls over the past while, the way people with unpaid bills tend to do, but my gut was telling me exactly who this mystery caller was. And I wouldn’t be talking to him. After five rings the voicemail kicked in. I threw the phone on to the passenger seat and kept driving.

  I turned on the radio, which was permanently tuned to Newstalk. Off the Ball, a sports show, was on, featuring items I cared nothing about – matches and running and stuff. I half listened to athletes and coaches talking away and you could hear in their voices how important it was to them. It made me think: It’s so important to you but it doesn’t affect me at all. And my stuff is vital to me but means nothing to you. So is anything really important?

  For a moment I got some perspective. For them, the world will end if they don’t win the county final on Saturday. They’re already terrified of defeat. They’re already practising their despair. But it doesn’t matter.

  Nothing matters.

  My phone rang again: Caller Unknown. As with the previous call, I’d a strong suspicion who it was. After five rings it stopped.

  The motorway was almost empty at this time of night – heading up for ten – and the sun was starting to go down. That was early June for you; the days went on interminably. I hated this endless light. My phone started up again and I realized I’d been waiting for it to happen. It did the usual thing of ringing five times then stopping. A few minutes later it started again. Stopping and starting, stopping and starting, again and again, just like he always used to. Whenever he wanted anything he wanted it now. I grabbed the phone, so desperate to silence it that my fingers seemed to have swollen to ten times their normal size and couldn’t make the keys work.