The Mystery of Mercy Close (43 page)

I took him in my mouth and slid one of my hands under his balls and held his shaft with the other. Slowly, I got into a rhythm, my tongue twirling, my hand pushing him upwards into my mouth, and I could hear his breathing become more ragged.

I took a quick glance at him. His jaw was clenched and he was watching me with such intensity he almost looked afraid.

‘No,’ he said, gently lifting my head away from him.

‘No?’

‘It’ll be over too soon. And,’ he said, a wicked gleam in his eyes, ‘I want to make this last.’

Unexpectedly he flipped me on to my stomach, his forearm across the small of my back, pinning me to the bed. ‘Can you breathe?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll soon sort that out.’

With tortuous slowness, he began to kiss the backs of my knees, the inside of my thighs, my bum. It was so wonderful that eventually I had to say – almost beg – ‘Please, Artie.’

‘What did you say?’ he whispered, his breath hot against my ear, his full weight pinning me to the bed.

‘Please, Artie,’ I said.

‘Please, Artie, what?’

‘Please, Artie, fuck me.’

‘You want me to fuck you?’

‘I want you to fuck me.’

From behind, he placed his tip against my entrance. ‘This much?’ he asked.

‘More,’ I implored.

He moved in a little further. ‘This far?’

‘More.’ I was almost crying from frustration.

‘This far?’ And he moved right into me, all the way in, right to the end, filling me up.

‘God, yes, thank you.’ The relief was short-lived. I needed him to keep doing it.

‘Again,’ I said. ‘Again. Fast.’

He balanced himself on his arms like he was doing press-ups and moved in and out of me, not too smoothly, a little rough and ragged, the way I liked it, fast, faster, faster, until the circles of pleasure exploded in me and I whimpered into a pillow.

He gave me a few minutes of recovery time. ‘Now,’ he said with a sexy glint, ‘it’s my turn.’

He lay on his back and I sat on top of him, placing the flats of my hands on his stomach, the skin on my palms electrified by the contact with him. ‘I can feel your stomach
muscles,’ I said. ‘Must be from the running and sit-ups you do. I can feel everything so … so
much
.’ A line of hair, darker than the rest of his hair, led from his belly-button down to his pubes and I followed it with my finger, almost in wonderment.

I lowered myself down on to him and he held my bum in his hands. As I rotated on top of him we looked into each other’s eyes and I could handle it, I could take the intimacy, at least while I was in the throes of passion like this, and it made me feel a little better in myself, that I wasn’t a total weirdo.

He waited until I’d come for a second time then he let go completely, shuddering, panting, gasping, almost yelling. He was usually such a controlled man – so discreet in his job, so protective of his children – and to see the wildness in him was thrilling.

He gathered me to him and within moments he’d fallen asleep. When he woke up, about ten minutes later, he was a little confused and dopey.

‘Coffee?’ I asked. ‘I’ll even go downstairs and make it, that’s how much I like you.’

‘Even though you don’t believe in hot drinks.’ He yawned.

‘What?’

‘It was one of the first things you ever said to me, that day in my office. “I don’t believe in hot drinks.”’

‘And what did you think?’ We’d had this discussion countless times, but I still liked hearing it.

‘I thought you were the most intriguing woman I’d ever met.’

‘So would you like me to get you a coffee? My offer still stands.’

‘No, I’ll get one in a little while, but I don’t want to let go of you.’

‘Can you reach your laptop? It’s there on the floor.’

He stretched and almost fell off the bed, but returned
triumphant. I didn’t even have to tell him what to do. I wanted to see the Booker winner’s lady-hair on YouTube.

Sleepy and relaxed, we watched several interviews with the man and laughed and laughed at his hair. Then we watched some dogs doing the ‘Thriller’ routine, some cats singing ‘Silent Night’, some horses re-enacting the ‘Do I amuse you?’ scene from
Goodfellas
, then we watched the author’s lady-hair again.

It felt like a long time since we’d been together like this. Between his kids and his job, it had been a couple of weeks and a flash of resentment made me say, ‘I wish we could do this whenever we want.’

After a long pause Artie said, ‘… yeah …’

I waited for more and when it didn’t come, I said, ‘That’s all you’re going to say? “Yeah”?’

‘Yeah. I said “Yeah”, because I mean, “Yeah, I wish we could do this whenever we want.”’

I don’t know why, but I found it an unsatisfactory answer.

We lay side by side in a silence that was no longer so companionable.

Eventually he spoke. ‘So,’ he said, in a very different tone of voice, suddenly sounding business-like. ‘Who’s Jay Parker?’

‘Laddz’s manager.’

‘Who is he?’

A shaft of guilt – it might even have been fear – pierced me. It was like Artie could see into my soul, as if he knew that earlier today Jay Parker had kissed me, that for a moment I had wanted him to. I twisted to look at Artie full in the face. ‘He’s nobody.’

‘He’s not nobody.’ Artie’s tone was verging on cold and I felt both ashamed and stupid for trying to fool him.

I waited for a moment before I spoke. ‘I had a thing with him. It was short. Three months. It ended over a year ago and it didn’t end well, and I’ll tell you about it sometime, but not now.’

‘When, then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Right.’

‘Right what?’

‘Does that mean you don’t want to talk about losing your flat either?’

I
definitely
didn’t want to talk about losing my flat.

‘Look, Helen, maybe we should –’ Artie said.

Just then the doorbell rang. Artie froze. ‘Ignore it,’ he said. ‘It’ll be one of those poor bastards trying to get us to change cable suppliers.’

‘Maybe we should what?’ I asked.

Then came the sound of the front door being opened and someone – probably Bella – sobbing.

‘Shit,’ I hissed, jumping out of bed and scrabbling for my clothes. ‘Bella’s back.’

It was one thing Bella suspecting that Artie and I sometimes slept together at night, but discovering us in bed in the middle of the day was a totally different story.

‘Daaad,’ Bella wailed.

‘Mr Devlin?’ a man’s voice called. ‘Are you home?’

Artie was pulling on his clothes and there was a hard set to his face. A kind of weariness. Like he was wondering if all this was worth it.

Bella had fallen out of a tree. The play-date’s dad had brought her home. ‘She’s okay,’ he said. ‘Nothing broken, although she might have a few bruises tomorrow, but she got a fright.’

I lurked upstairs, listening. I wasn’t coming down to be introduced. With my injured face it wouldn’t be right. And I felt it wouldn’t be right anyway: I wasn’t Bella’s mother, I wasn’t Artie’s wife. How would Artie explain away me and my dishevelled clothing to a complete stranger? It would be way too obvious what we’d been up to. If we’d been on the deck reading the Sunday papers when they’d arrived, it would
be all right, but not when we’d both just jumped out of bed, reeking of sex.

I decided not to hang around. Anyway, I should be working. I wasn’t exactly sure what I could be doing, but it didn’t feel right to stay here. I said a quick hello to Bella, a quick goodbye to Artie, then I got into my car and started driving.

I didn’t want to go back to Mercy Close if there was still a chance that Walter Wolcott was there, so I drove aimlessly for a while. Until I discovered that my aimlessness actually had a purpose: I was driving north, heading for Skerries and Birdie Salaman.

A text had arrived from Zeezah. Jay had told her about me getting hit. She expressed sympathy and concern and suggested that if searching for Wayne was putting me in danger, perhaps I should stop. Immediately I was suspicious of her motives.

Thanks to the Talking Map I found Birdie’s house easily. It was a small, newly built box in an estate of small, newly built boxes, but somehow Birdie’s seemed cute and pretty.

Her front door was yellow and looked freshly painted, and two hanging baskets – one on either side of the door – overflowed with cascades of bright flowers.

Before I’d even parked, my instinct was telling me that she wasn’t there. There was no sign of her car. (I’d discovered via a mildly illegal vehicle reg search that she drove a yellow Mini. A car that met with my approval, even though it wasn’t, strictly speaking, black.)

All the same, I got out of my car and rang her bell. As expected, no one came; the house just radiated stillness. I took a quick shufti through her window at her front room. Very nice floorboards,
very
nice. Three-piece suite, not to the same high standard as the floorboards. Not horrible or anything, just meh. Clearly she’d blown the budget on the floorboards. Nevertheless the overall impression was attractive. Fairy lights were draped around a mirror and, placed
randomly about the room, there were several vibrant green plants in cheerful polka-dotted plant holders.

Casually, hoping not to attract the attention of Birdie’s neighbours, I slid along the side of her house and round to the back. The kitchen windows were high off the ground, the way kitchen windows often are, and I had to jump to get a proper look in. Ikea job. White cupboards. Not fabulously beautiful but no harm in them.

I took another jump and saw an oval-shaped wood laminate table and four yellow chairs – Birdie was obviously a big fan of the colour yellow and as colours went it wasn’t the worst – with a polka-dotted apron slung on the back of one of them.

A third jump revealed a ceramic cookie jar on a shelf and an oil painting of a cupcake on a wall. All a little too Cath Kidston for me, but I’ve seen people do a lot worse with their homes, oh
a lot
worse.

At that stage I decided I’d done enough jumping. My wounded knee couldn’t take any more and, really, there was nothing interesting to see.

I wondered what her upstairs was like. Had she gone mad entirely on the girliness? Did her bed have a pink muslin princess canopy? Or had I got her all wrong? Was her bedroom cool and elegant and grown-up?

I really did wonder. But to find out I’d have to break in, and on a Sunday afternoon in suburbia, in plain view of youths on the green doing something with matches (what
is
it with eleven-year-old boys and the desire to set things on fire?), I’d get caught. I was intrigued about the rest of Birdie’s house, but not intrigued enough to run the risk of being arrested, I suppose is the best way of putting it.

Before I left, I wrote Birdie a little note, telling her I’d ‘popped round’ to see her and how sorry I was to have missed her and that if she felt like talking to me I’d be delighted and, sorry to rub salt into wounds that were obviously raw, but if
she felt like telling me how I’d find Gloria, I’d be most grateful and here was my number.

My hopes of a result weren’t high, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

I returned to my car and got in and let my head fall back against the headrest. My head was throbbing and I was exhausted. It took a lot of energy to survive a bout of depression. I knew it looked like I was just traipsing around doing close to nothing, but all that inner torment is a killer.

I swallowed back four painkillers and I closed my eyes. I was thinking of this woman, a friend of my mother’s, who’d got breast cancer. There was no history of it in her family, she wasn’t a smoker, she didn’t take HRT or live a high-stress existence, she hadn’t fought in Operation Desert Storm. Nor were
there any of the other reasons that are routinely wheeled out as
possible
causes of cancer, just to make the misfortunate sufferers feel guilty as well as terrified. Not in the most judgmental of universes could you have said that she’d ‘brought it on herself’. Anyway, she had chemo, she was sick as a dog, her hair fell out, her eyelashes fell out, she was so weak she couldn’t even watch
Countdown
. After the chemo she had radium treatment, which burned her breast so badly she couldn’t even have a sheet on it at night, and it left her so feeble she had to crawl – quite literally crawl – across her living-room floor. Her hair grew back – different, funnily enough: it used to be curly and it grew back straight. That was twenty years ago. She’s still alive. Going strong. Plays bridge. Quite good at it. Recently enough she won a voucher for a two-night stay in a three-star hotel in Limerick. (Mum came second, but got only a tin of biscuits. Quite sore about it.)

Then I was thinking about another woman, a friend of my sister Claire’s. She got breast cancer too. As with Mum’s friend, there was no history of it in her family, she wasn’t a smoker, she didn’t take HRT or live a high-stress existence, she hadn’t fought in Operation Desert Storm. Nor were there any of the other reasons that are routinely wheeled out as
possible
causes of cancer, just to make the misfortunate sufferers feel guilty as well as terrified. Not in the most judgmental of universes could you have said that she’d ‘brought it on herself’. Anyway, she had chemo, she was sick as a dog, her hair fell out, her eyelashes fell out, she was so weak she couldn’t even watch
Countdown
. After the chemo she had radium treatment, which burned her breast so badly she couldn’t even have a sheet on it at night, and it left her so feeble she had to crawl – quite literally crawl – across her living-room floor. This woman – Selina was her name – did a fair bit of new age stuff as well as taking her medicine. Fighting the war on several fronts, you might say. She was a great espouser of positive thinking; she was going to ‘beat this cancer’. She did yoga, coffee enemas and visualization. She spent a fortune that she didn’t have on going to some swizzer in Peru who promised to shamanize away her cancer. And guess what? She died. She was thirty-four. She had three children. A while after she died I came across her mother lurching around Blackrock shopping centre in a state that I now understand as crazed grief. She half recognized me as someone who’d known her daughter and she stared into my eyes with wild intensity, but at the same time she was completely absent. ‘Selina fought like a tiger,’ she said, holding on to my arm so tightly that she hurt me. ‘She fought like a tiger for life.’