Information about the book
I wouldn’t mind – I mean, this is the sheer irony of the thing
– but I’m the only person I know who doesn’t think it would
be delicious to go into ‘someplace’ for ‘a rest’. You’d want to
hear my sister Claire going on about it, as if waking up one
morning and finding herself in a mental hospital would be
the most delightful experience imaginable.
‘I’ve a great idea,’ she declared to her friend, Judy. ‘Let’s
have our nervous breakdowns at the same time.’
‘Brilliant!’ Judy said.
‘We’ll get a double room. It’ll be gorgeous.’
‘Paint me a picture.’
‘Weeeeell. Kind people . . . soft, welcoming hands . . .
whispering voices . . . white bed-linen, white sofas, white
orchids, everything white . . .’
‘Like in heaven,’ Judy said.
‘Just like in heaven!’
Not just like in heaven! I opened my mouth to protest, but
there was no stopping them.
‘. . . the sound of tinkling water . . .’
‘. . . the smell of jasmine . . .’
‘. . . a clock ticking in the near distance . . .’
‘. . . the plangent chime of a bell . . .’
‘. . . and us lying in bed off our heads on Xanax . . .’
‘. . . dreamily gazing at dust motes . . .’
‘. . . or reading Grazia . . .’
‘. . . or buying Magnum Golds from the man who goes
from ward to ward selling ice cream . . .’
But there would be no man selling Magnum Golds. Or
any of the other nice things either.
‘A wise voice will say –’ Judy paused for effect: ‘“Lay down
your burdens, Judy.”’
‘And some lovely wafty nurse will cancel all our appointments,’ Claire said. ‘She’ll tell everyone to leave us alone.
She’ll tell all the ungrateful bastards that we’re having a nervous breakdown and it was their fault and they’ll have to be a
lot nicer to us if we ever come out again.’
Both Claire and Judy had savagely busy lives – kids, dogs,
husbands, jobs and an onerous, time-consuming dedication
to looking ten years younger than their actual age. They were
perpetually whizzing around in people carriers, dropping
sons to rugby practice, picking daughters up from the dentist, racing across town to get to a meeting. Multitasking was
an art form for them – they used the dead seconds stuck at
traffic lights to rub their calves with fake-tan wipes, they
answered emails from their seat at the cinema and they baked
red velvet cupcakes at midnight while simultaneously being
mocked by their teenage daughters as ‘a pitiful fat old cow’.
Not a moment was wasted.
‘They’ll give us Xanax.’ Claire was back in her reverie.
‘Oh lovvvvely.’
‘As much as we want. The second the bliss starts to wear
off, we’ll ring a bell and a nurse will come and give us a topup.’
‘We’ll never have to get dressed. Every morning they’ll
bring us new cotton pyjamas, brand new, out of the packet.
And we’ll sleep sixteen hours a day.’
‘Oh sleep . . .’
‘It’ll be like being wrapped up in a big marshmallow
cocoon; we’ll feel all floaty and happy and dreamy . . .’
It was time to point out the one big nasty flaw in their delicious vision. ‘But you’d be in a psychiatric hospital.’
Both Claire and Judy looked wildly startled.
Eventually Claire said, ‘I’m not talking about a psychiatric
hospital. Just a place you’d go for...a rest.’
‘The place people go for “a rest” is a psychiatric hospital.’
They fell silent. Judy chewed her bottom lip. They were
obviously thinking about this.
‘What did you think it was?’ I asked.
‘Well . . . sort of like a spa,’ Claire said. ‘With, you know
. . . prescription drugs.’
‘They have mad people in there,’ I said. ‘Proper mad people. Ill people.’
More silence followed, then Claire looked up at me, her
face bright red. ‘God, Helen,’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re such a
cow. Can’t you ever let anyone have anything nice?’
THURSDAY
I was thinking about food. Stuck in traffic, it’s what I do.
What any normal person does, of course, but now that I
thought about it, I hadn’t had anything to eat since seven
o’clock this morning, about ten hours ago. A Laddz song
came on the radio for the second time that day – how about
that for bad luck? – and as the maudlin syrupy harmonies
filled the car I had a brief but powerful urge to drive into a
pole.
There was a petrol station coming up on the left, the red
sign of refreshment hanging invitingly in the sky. I could
extricate myself from this gridlock and go in and buy a
doughnut. But the doughnuts they sold in those places were
as tasteless as the sponges you find at the bottom of the
ocean; I’d be better off just washing myself with one. Besides,
a swarm of huge black vultures was circling over the petrol
pumps and they were kind of putting me off. No, I decided,
I’d hang on and –
Wait a minute! Vultures?
In a city?
At a petrol station?
I took a second look and they weren’t vultures. Just seagulls. Ordinary Irish seagulls.
Then I thought: Ah no, not again.
Fifteen minutes later I pulled up outside my parents’ house,
took a moment to gather myself, then started rummaging for
a key to let myself in. They’d tried to make me give it back
when I moved out three years ago but – thinking strategically
– I’d hung on to it. Mum had made noises about changing
the locks but seeing as she and Dad took eight years to decide
to buy a yellow bucket, what were the chances that they’d
manage something as complicated as getting a new lock?
I found them in the kitchen, sitting at the table drinking
tea and eating cake. Old people. What a great life they had.
Even those who don’t do t’ai chi. (Which I’ll get to.)
They looked up and stared at me with barely concealed
resentment.
‘I’ve news,’ I said.
Mum found her voice. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I live here.’
‘You don’t. We got rid of you. We painted your room.
We’ve never been happier.’
‘I said I’ve news. That’s my news. I live here.’
The fear was starting to creep into her face now. ‘You have
your own place.’ She was blustering but she was losing conviction. After all, she must have been expecting this.
‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘Not as of this morning. I’ve nowhere to
live.’
‘The mortgage people?’ She was ashen. (Beneath her
regulation-issue Irish-Mammy orange foundation.)
‘What’s going on?’ Dad was deaf. Also frequently confused. It was hard to know which disability was in the driving
seat at any particular time.
‘She didn’t pay her MORTGAGE,’ Mum said, into his
good ear. ‘Her flat’s been RECLAIMED.’
‘I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage. You’re making it
sound like it’s my fault. Anyway, it’s more complicated than
that.’
‘You have a boyfriend,’ Mum said hopefully. ‘Can’t you
live with him?’
‘You’ve changed your tune, you rampant Catholic.’
‘We have to keep up with the times.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t move in with Artie. His kids
won’t let me.’ Not exactly. Only Bruno. He absolutely hated
me but Iona was pleasant enough and Bella positively adored
me. ‘You’re my parents. Unconditional love, might I remind
you. My stuff is in the car.’
‘What! All of it?’
‘No.’ I’d spent the day with two cash-in-hand blokes. The
last few sticks of furniture I owned were now stashed in a
massive self-storage place out past the airport, waiting for
the good times to come again. ‘Just my clothes and work
stuff.’ Quite a lot of work stuff, actually, seeing as I’d had to
let my office go over a year ago. And quite a lot of clothes
too, even though I’d thrown out tons and tons while I’d been
packing.
‘But when will it end?’ Mum said querulously. ‘When do
we get our golden years?’
‘Never.’ Dad spoke with sudden confidence. ‘She’s part of
a syndrome. Generation Boomerang. Adult children coming
back to live in the family home. I read about it in Grazia.’
There was no disagreeing with Grazia.
‘You can stay for a few days,’ Mum conceded. ‘But be
warned. We might want to sell this house and go on a Caribbean cruise.’
Property prices being as low as they were, the sale of this
house probably wouldn’t fetch enough money to send them
on a cruise of the Aran Islands. But, as I made my way out
to the car to start lugging in my boxes of stuff, I decided
not to rub it in. After all, they were giving me a roof over
my head.
‘What time is dinner?’ I wasn’t hungry but I wanted to know
the drill.
‘Dinner?’
There was no dinner.
‘We don’t really bother any more,’ Mum confessed. ‘Not
now it’s just the two of us.’
This was distressing news. I was feeling bad enough, without
my parents suddenly behaving like they were in death’s waiting room. ‘But what do you eat?’
They looked at each other in surprise, then at the cake on
the table. ‘Well . . . cake, I suppose.’
Back in the day this arrangement couldn’t have suited me
better – all through my childhood my four sisters and I considered it a high-risk activity to eat anything that Mum had
cooked – but I wasn’t myself.
‘So what time is cake?’
‘Whatever time you like.’
That wouldn’t do. ‘I need a time.’
‘Seven, then.’
‘Okay. Listen . . . I saw a swarm of vultures over the petrol
station.’
Mum tightened her lips.
‘There are no vultures in Ireland,’ Dad said. ‘Saint Patrick
drove them out.’
‘He’s right,’ Mum said forcefully. ‘You didn’t see any vultures.’
‘But –’ I stopped. What was the point? I opened my mouth
to suck in some air.
‘What are you doing?’ Mum sounded alarmed.
‘I’m . . .’ What was I doing? ‘I’m trying to breathe. My
chest is stuck. There isn’t enough room to let the air in.’
‘Of course there’s room. Breathing is the most natural
thing in the world.’
‘I think my ribs have shrunk. You know the way your
bones shrink when you get old.’
‘You’re only thirty-three. Wait till you get to my age and
then you’ll know all about shrunken bones.’
Even though I didn’t know what age Mum was – she lied
about it constantly and elaborately, sometimes making reference to the vital part she played in the 1916 Rising (‘I helped
type up the Declaration of Independence for young Padraig
to read on the steps of the GPO’), other times waxing lyrical
on the teenage years she spent jiving to ‘The Hucklebuck’
the time Elvis came to Ireland (Elvis never came to Ireland
and never sang ‘The Hucklebuck’, but if you try telling her
that, she just gets worse, insisting that Elvis made a secret
visit on his way to Germany and that he sang ‘The Hucklebuck’ specifically because she asked him to) – she seemed
bigger and more robust than ever.
‘Catch your breath there, come on, come on, anyone can
do it,’ she urged. ‘A small child can do it. So what are you
doing this evening? After your . . . cake? Will we watch telly?
We’ve got twenty-nine episodes of Come Dine With Me
recorded.’
‘Ah . . .’ I didn’t want to watch Come Dine With Me. Normally I watched at least two shows a day, but suddenly I was
sick of it.
I had an open invitation to Artie’s. His kids would be there
tonight and I wasn’t sure I had the strength for talking to
them; also their presence interfered with my full and free
sexual access to him. But he’d been working in Belfast all
week and I’d . . . yes, spit it out, might as well admit it . . . I’d
missed him.
‘I’ll probably go to Artie’s,’ I said.
Mum lit up. ‘Can I come?’
‘Of course you can’t! I’ve warned you!’
Mum had a thing for Artie’s house. You’ve probably seen
the type, if you read interiors magazines. From the outside it
looks like a salt-of-the-earth working-class cottage, crouched
right on the pavement, doffing its cap and knowing its place.
The slate roof is crooked and the front door is so low that the
only person who could sail through with full confidence that
they wouldn’t crack their skull would be a certified midget.
But when you actually get into the house you find that
someone has knocked off the entire back wall and replaced it
with a glassy futuristic wonderland of floating staircases and
suspended bird’s-nest bedrooms and faraway skylights.
Mum had been there only once, by accident – I had warned
her not to get out of the car but she had blatantly disobeyed
me – and it had made such a big impression on her that she
had caused me considerable embarrassment. I would not
permit it to happen again.
‘All right, I won’t come,’ she said. ‘But I’ve a favour to ask.’
‘What?’
‘Would you come to the Laddz reunion concert with me?’
‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Out of my mind? You’re a fine one to talk, you and your
vultures.’
Midgety working-class cottages are all well and good except
that they don’t tend to have handy underground parking lots
– it took me longer to find a parking place than it had taken
to drive the three kilometres to Artie’s. Eventually I edged
my Fiat 500 (black with black interiors) between two ginormous SUVs then let myself into the heavenly perspex
cocoon-world. I had my own key – it was a mere six weeks
since Artie and I had done the ceremonious exchange. He’d
given me a key to his place; I’d given him a key to my place.
Because back then I’d had a place.
Dazzled by the June evening sunlight I blindly followed
the sound of voices through the house and down the magic,
free-floating steps, to the deck, where a cluster of goodlooking, fair-haired people were gathered around, doing – of
all wholesome things – a jigsaw puzzle. Artie, my beautiful
Viking, Artie. And Iona and Bruno and Bella, his beautiful
children. And Vonnie, his beautiful ex-wife. Sitting on the
boards next to Artie, she was, her skinny brown shoulder
bumping up against his big broad one.
I hadn’t been expecting to see her, but she lived nearby and
often dropped in, usually with her partner, Steffan, in tow.
She was the first one to notice me. ‘Helen!’ she exclaimed
with great warmth.
A chorus of greetings and flashbulb smiles reached out
for me and I was drawn down into a sea of welcoming arms,
to be kissed by everyone. A cordial family, the Devlins. Only
Bruno withheld and he needn’t think I hadn’t noticed; I kept
a mental tally of the many, many times he’d slighted me.
Nothing escaped me. We all have our gifts.
Bella, head-to-toe pink and reeking of cherry bubblegum,
was thrilled by my arrival. ‘Helen, Helen.’ She flung herself at
me. ‘Dad didn’t say you were coming. Can I do your hair?’
‘Bella, give Helen a moment,’ Artie said.
Aged nine and of a loving disposition, Bella was the
youngest and weakest member of the group. Nevertheless it
would be foolhardy to alienate her. But first I had business to
attend to. I gazed at the region where Vonnie’s upper arm
met Artie’s. ‘Move away,’ I said. ‘You’re too close to him.’
‘She’s his wife.’ Bruno’s ladyboy cheekbones blazed indignant colour . . . was he wearing blusher?
‘Ex-wife,’ I said. ‘And I’m his girlfriend. He’s mine now.’
Quickly and insincerely I added, ‘Hahaha.’ (So that if anyone
ever criticized me for selfishness and immaturity and said,
‘What about poor Bruno?’ I could always reply, ‘God’s sake,
it was a joke. He has to learn to take a joke.’)
‘In fact Artie was leaning against me,’ Vonnie said.
‘He wasn’t.’ Tonight I was quite wearied by this game that
I always had to play with Vonnie. I could hardly summon the
words to press on with the charade. ‘You’re always at him.
But give it up, Vonnie. He’s mad about me.’
‘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, narrowcut 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 halfglasses-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.
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.’
