Hush Hush (7 page)

‘For God’s sake, try
to stop worrying,’ murmured Robert inside her head.

She sat down on the toilet lid,
suddenly weepy with nostalgia. On Sunday mornings, he’d always
got up first and made rounds of toasted cheese. Straining her ears,
she could even hear the grill pan tinkle downstairs.

Slowly, she rose and went to get
dressed.

She’d kept him in the
living room for the week before the funeral, in a closed casket.
She’d asked Sadie to stay for the week, partly for the company
and partly to keep Robert’s mother at bay, farming her out to a
sympathetic neighbour. Robert’s mother, who’d made the
journey from Wales, didn’t approve of bodies in the house and
other Catholic mumbo-jumbo.

On the night of his homecoming,
Angela had a vivid dream of Robert climbing out of the casket to come
upstairs and sleep in his bed where he belonged. She’d woken
suddenly in the wee hours, already damp with sweat, alerted by creaks
on the stairs. She’d stared at the door handle a long time,
panic clawing with hope, but the creaks fell silent, the door handle
stayed unturned. She’d never told Sadie. Sadie had a robust
impatience with ghosts.

Once dressed, Angela wandered
downstairs. She stared at the grill pan, then foraged in the cupboard
for cereal. Sadie had stocked up in her absence. The cupboards now
bulged with siege supplies of rice, tinned vegetables and even
powdered milk. No cereal, though. Angela fancied nothing less at this
juncture than a Cadbury’s Flake crumbled over a bowl of Rice
Krispies.

She was finishing her second cup
of coffee and her third chocolate wafer from a six-pack, when
knuckles rapped loudly on her front door. She jumped guiltily,
brushing crumbs off her lap. Sadie was here already!

‘Coming!’ she called,
running a hand through uncombed hair
en route
to the door.

She flung it open.

‘Your doorbell’s
knackered,’ grimaced Conor McGinlay.

Angela gaped. He looked vaguely
familiar. Fish-Jumper! Only he’d smartened himself up, an
open-necked shirt visible beneath
a
cleanish-looking fleece
. He was shaven too, a plaster clinging
raggedly to the sheer cliff of his chin.

‘Well, can I come in?’
he grunted.
‘
I’ve
come all this way to reunite you with your luggage.’

‘What luggage?’

‘You mean, you haven’t
even missed it?’ He stepped into the hallway, brandishing a
small holdall.
‘
I
haven’t looked inside it, but I assumed you’d be going
bonkers, reporting it as lost to the airline.’

‘Oh.’ Angela glanced
guiltily at her unopened baggage behind the door. The only thing
she’d unpacked the previous night was her toilet bag.
‘
How
did you end up with it?’

‘You must’ve left the
plane at warp speed without checking you had everything. I would’ve
assumed anything left was mine.’

‘Blimey. Well, thanks for
bringing it round.’ That was a lucky stroke, attaching an
address tag. She didn’t usually bother for hand luggage. One of
Robert’s little habits that died hard with her.
‘
Did
you have far to come?’ she asked belatedly.

‘Loxton,’ he grunted.
‘
Fifteen minutes in
the jalopy.’ He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.
‘
Sorry
just to turn up, but obviously, without a mobile number
‒
’

‘
And
we had no reason to exchange those,
’
she reasoned primly.
‘Er,
c
up of tea?’

‘No thanks. Things to do.’

‘Angela? Who’s your
friend?’

Angela groaned as Sadie trotted
up to the door, right on cue.
‘
We
haven’t been introduced,’ she said breathlessly to
Fish-Jumper.
‘
I’m
Angela’s mother.’

He allowed his large brown hand
to be pumped up and down, glowering at Angela from under thick,
rust-coloured brows.

‘Oh, sorry Mum, this is
…
er
…
it’ll
come to me in a second.’

‘Conor McGinlay,’ he
snapped.
‘
And remind
me again. You are
…
?’

‘Angela Carbery,’
supplied Sadie.
‘
You
mean, I’ve doorstepped you two on your first meeting? I’m
so sorry to intrude.’

‘Angela and I met
yesterday,’ drawled Conor with a momentary gleam in his eye.
‘
She failed to
recognise me with my clothes on.’

Angela threw him a furious look.

But Sadie actually laughed.
‘
I
like a man with a sense of humour! So you two met in Morocco?’

‘Angela chatted me up on
the plane coming home,’ hissed Conor McGinlay intimately, and
dug Sadie in the ribs.
‘
Now
I see where she gets her spark from!’

Sadie pinkened coyly.
‘
Get
away with you, flatterer! Now, I mustn’t hold you two up, if
you’re going out to lunch. You might have said on the phone,
Ange.’

Angela glared.
‘
But
I
‒
we
‒
there’s no
…
’

‘Get along, the pair of
you!’ Suddenly, Sadie was in the hallway and Angela out on the
porch with Conor.
‘
You
don’t want an old biddy cluttering up your first date after
your holiday! I’ll crack on with the unpacking while you’re
gone, love, load up the washing machine. Don’t suppose you’ll
bother otherwise!’ She waved merrily and shut the door in their
faces.

Conor wiggled a mobile brow at
Angela.
‘
Forceful
little thing, isn’t she?’

‘You were a big help, with
your sexual innuendo.’

‘Ach, she was tickled pink
that her spinster daughter might have been up to naughties abroad.’

‘I’m a widow, not a
spinster!’ She held up her finger in an unintentionally rude
gesture, flourishing the band of gold topped by a solitaire
engagement ring.

‘Sorry!’ Conor
McGinlay’s brown face flushed a shade deeper to match his wiry,
rust-coloured mop of hair.
‘
I’m
not known for my subtlety. You hungry?’

‘Not really. I’ve
just had breakfast.’

‘I’ve just had a big
fry-up. Tell you what, we’ll go for a spin to keep your mother
happy. She’ll never let you into your own house again until she
sees proof of you making an effort.’

‘I can’t see
anything! My lenses
‒
remember?’

Conor eyed the front door.
‘
I
can’t see your mum letting you back in with that excuse.’

Angela raised the letterbox flap
and squinted into the hallway.
‘
Ma!
Open the door. I can’t go out, cos I’m blind as a bat.
Ma? You listening?’

Sadie’s aproned midriff
shuffled into view. She opened the door a crack and thrust out a
dusty glasses case. Then the door shut again.

Angela opened the case and
winced. She’d forgotten what Deirdre-from-
Coronation
-
Street
dinner-plates they were, complete with pale pink plastic frames.
‘
I
can’t be seen dead in these,’ she announced, snapping the
case shut.

Conor McGinlay proffered a
guiding arm with slow and deliberate flamboyance for the benefit of
her narrowed gaze.

‘I need a coat to go
anywhere,’ she stalled.
‘
It’s
brass monkeys.’

He peeled off his
navy
fleece
.

Before he could hand it to her,
and score even more points for gentlemanly conduct, Angela shoved on
the glasses and hurried down the path ahead of him, looking into the
grass verge as she went. Already, she’d reverted to her
pre-lens stance of hair over face and face bent over a minute
examination of pavement cracks.

Conor
McGinlay, fleece flung over one wrist, whistled as he unlocked his
car.

They ended up with coffees in a drive-thru
McDonald’s.

‘Not like you to forgo a
nosh-up,’ observed Angela, falling back on the one
characteristic she remembered about him.
‘
By
the way, you drive like a maniac.’

He stirred his coffee
aggressively.
‘
I do
not! I’m merely assertive.’

Angela made patterns in spilt
sugar with her fingertip. She bet he was assertive in every situation
‒
including bed.
Hands as big as shovels gripped his coffee. He was stocky rather than
huge, weather-beaten but not haggard. His mouth was a fine, rather
sensitive specimen and his eyes a deep jade green. A bristly stubble
matched his thatch of luxuriant, wavy, collar-length hair. Rachel
would’ve called him
‘
moreish’.

‘Giving me marks out of
ten, are you?’ he muttered.

Angela looked down at the table.
She must’ve been staring.

That gave Conor McGinlay his
chance to look at her. Second impressions: tall, thin, no boobs to
speak of, marvellous skin (courtesy of the Irish blood, no doubt).
Dead straight, shiny brown hair with a centre parting. The glasses
magnified eyes of a pale, translucent blue. Not a raving beauty, but
then, neither was he. She was restful to look at. Like a watercolour
you wouldn’t mind hanging over the fireplace. Christ, I’m
a sexist, he realised, and grimaced.

‘Lousy coffee,’ he
said to Angela, who caught him in mid-grimace.

‘How come you were
holidaying alone?’ she asked abruptly. Might as well get the
answers to Rachel’s key questions.

‘I wasn’t on holiday.
I go around the world helping to build hotels. I’m a civil
engineer. How come you haven’t got a tan?’

‘Oh.’ Blood rushed to
her pale face.
‘
I
just go red and peel. My husband was the same.’

‘Er
‒
how long ago did he
‒
?’

‘Over a year,’ she
replied quickly.
‘
Heart
attack. We’d been married sixteen years. No kids or pets.’

‘You did better than me. My
wife left me.’

Angela’s tongue stuck to
the roof of her mouth. She hadn’t expected that. He was big and
bluff
‒ ma
ybe he’d
hit his wife?

‘It was a civilised
parting,’ he shrugged dejectedly.
‘
I
was always gallivanting off to build hotels, and she got sick of
being stuck at home with Shane, our son. She warned me often enough
before she took off. Can’t say I blame her for calling my
bluff. Shane lives with me. Kate lives in New York. She wanted a
clean break. She’s very creative, a graphic designer. They were
keen to snap her up over there and make her feel appreciated again.’

‘So, you have a son?’
echoed Angela feebly.
‘
H-how
old?’

‘Fourteen now,’
grunted Conor.
‘
Stroppy
adolescent runs rings round me. Course, I’m battling the guilt
of absent father syndrome half the time. My cleaning lady, Mrs
Turner, moves in for the duration when I’m away. She loves
being there and she keeps a gimlet eye on Shane. It’s not
ideal, but I have to work.’

‘Well
‒
yes, of course. Don’t we all?’

‘What do you do?’

‘Sub-editor,’
muttered Angela shyly.
‘
Women’s
mag. Boring old desk job. Start a new one tomorrow.’

Conor nodded absently. He was
fidgeting now, eager to be gone from this set-up. He hadn’t
fooled himself. He couldn’t small-talk a woman any more.

‘You’re Irish,’
she reminded him shyly, apparently seeking confirmation.

‘Yeah. Both your parents or
just your ma?’

‘Both. Dad’s dead
now. My husband, Robert, was half-Irish and half-Welsh.’

‘A Celtic conspiracy,’
he nodded.
‘
Kate was
as English as flapjacks. Her dad was a fire and brimstone, slightly
to the right of Attila the Hun low-churcher who threw a wobbly when
she married a bog-trotter. I didn’t realise it at the time, but
my racial inferiority was my main attraction. One in the eye for Der
F
ü
hrer.’

Angela got up, sensing his
restlessness.
‘
Are
you and Kate divorced?’ she asked nosily, information-gathering
for Rachel (she told herself).

‘Yes,’
he replied, and sadness leapt out of his mobile face.
‘
Paperwork
came through five months ago. Her dad was right about us for the
wrong reasons. A crying shame we ever got married. And I say that
with her best interests at heart.’

She made Conor McGinlay drop her off at the bottom
of her road. His car was a big, four-wheel drive thing. She couldn’t
put a name to it, though Sadie and Rachel would want to know.

‘Well, I enjoyed that,’
he said in a tone that implied the opposite.

Angela squirmed out of the
passenger seat, overcome with nerves and shyness. Was she supposed to
say,
‘
Me too?’

‘We must do it again some
time,’ grunted Conor at the dashboard.

‘Pardon?’

‘You, me, go out,’ he
repeated, in Tarzan-like staccato.
‘
If
I’m not stepping on toes. I mean
‒
your husband. Got a phone number?’

As she turned away, she was
ninety-nine per cent certain that she was going to feign deafness.
But the stray one per cent
‒
curiosity? A lifetime habit of responding politely to strangers’
requests?
‒
got the
better of her.

‘
Zero,
seven seve‒
’ she began to gabble, just as
Conor crunched his gears, preparing to depart.

‘Come again?’ he
shouted above a tortured gear-box.

Angela
turned and fled.

In Angela’s rarely used dining room, Sadie
ladled out her famous fish pie. Angela poured two glasses of
full-bodied Moroccan wine.
‘
McDonald’s!’
chided Sadie.
‘
You
could’ve steered him towards a Harvester at least.’