The Mystery of Mercy Close (2 page)

‘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 good-looking, 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, 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.