The People Next Door (14 page)

Then she heard a faint ‘Is that you, Kathryn?’ from her mother-in-law’s bedroom. She groaned quietly before settling a smile on her face and turning away from the window.

‘Coming.’

From his bedroom window, Dan watched Kieran set down another brick and tap it into place with the handle of his trowel. The barbecue was certainly taking shape, even if that shape was slightly peculiar, with a few bricks sticking out at odd angles. It looked to Dan a bit like something a couple of ten-year-olds might have cobbled together on an idle afternoon.

Who cared, though? A wobbly barbecue was the least of his worries right now. Who cared about a couple of unevenly cooked steaks, a few half-burnt sausages?

‘I could finish off the barbecue, if you like,’ Kieran had said a few evenings ago, and Dan had agreed. These days, Dan was agreeing to anything. If Kieran had suggested sinking a pond in the garden and stocking it with piranhas and maybe the odd crocodile, Dan would have told him to go right ahead.

For the past couple of weeks Picasso had been sleeping in the shed, in the basket that Kieran had brought home one day. ‘Fifty cents,’ he told Dan. ‘That’s all they wanted for it.’

Dan wondered how Belford’s charity shops had stayed in business before Kieran’s arrival. He rarely came home from town without some trophy, usually kitchen related – an apple corer, a garlic press, a hand whisk, a much newer steamer than the one Dan’s mother had donated (along with several lidless saucepans) when he and Ali had bought the house.

‘I’m a great believer in charity shops,’ Kieran told Dan. ‘People donate things they’ve hardly used. I hate to see stuff wasted.’

Once he came home with what he claimed was a cat toy, a bright pink feather tied with a bit of elastic to a length of bamboo. Kieran would shake the stick, making the feather dance, and Picasso would leap around after it like a kitten.

They were definitely a team now, Kieran and the cat. Picasso adored Kieran, nuzzled against his leg while he was cooking, bounded onto his lap any opportunity he got. In turn, Kieran kept Picasso supplied with the fish heads Dan assumed were scrounged from the shops in town. He fervently hoped Kieran wasn’t going through dustbins after dark – there was a limit to recycling.

He supposed he should be grateful to Kieran for looking after Picasso. Dan could cope with the cat in small doses, but there was definitely no bond between them. At the end of the day, Dan was more of a dog man – and even if he hadn’t been, Picasso would always be Ali’s cat.

Ali. His insides lurched, as they always did when he thought of her. He turned from the window and
leaned against the sill. He closed his eyes and, right on cue, Ali walked into the bar again and told him she was pregnant.

‘It’s mine?’ He could hardly believe it, didn’t dare believe it. ‘You’re sure?’

Ali shot him a look that was gone before he could decide what it said. ‘I’m sure. I’m eleven weeks gone.’ She sipped the pineapple juice.

Not rum and Coke because she was pregnant. Eleven weeks pregnant. She’d left him just under ten weeks ago. It must have happened the very last time they’d had sex.

The thoughts slipped quietly into his head, one after another. And then an unspeakable one followed that made him blurt out: ‘You are going to keep it, aren’t you?’

Ali nodded quickly, frowning. ‘Of course I’m going to keep it. You know how I feel about that, for Christ’s sake.’

‘OK, sorry.’ He tried to clear his head, tried to sort his thoughts. ‘Well … that’s—’ he stopped. What was it? Just after your wife leaves you for someone else, she finds out she’s pregnant with your child. What in God’s name would you call that? ‘Wonderful’ hardly covered it. An unfortunate turn of events’ didn’t come close. ‘Incredibly weird timing’ might be going in the right direction.

But whatever they called it, he and Ali had made a child together. She’d have to come back now, wouldn’t she? Even if it was only for the sake of the baby. Dan could live with that. He’d learn to live with it.
She might even fall in love with him again eventually. It had happened once, hadn’t it?

He searched for a way to put it to her. He’d have to try to be tactful. She’d probably be a bit embarrassed about the whole thing. Walking out on him one minute, telling him he was going to be a father the next.

He was going to be a father. Someone was going to call him Dad. Daddy. Someone who might even look a bit like him. He could talk about ‘my child’. ‘My son.’ ‘My little girl.’ He struggled to keep the smile off his face.

‘So …’ He searched for the right words. ‘What happens now?’ Watching the foamy rings clinging to the sides of his glass. Not watching her. Afraid, suddenly, to watch her.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug. ‘Well, I suppose nothing for the—’

No, not nothing, don’t say nothing. He interrupted. ‘I mean – this changes things. It has to change things, doesn’t it?’ She must see that. She had to. ‘You’re pregnant, and it’s mine. You have to – we have to … make arrangements. It’s our child.’ Terribly lame, but he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t beg her to come home. It had to be her idea.

Ali twirled the glass slowly between her hands. She hated her short fingers, wore only narrow rings because she thought they made them look longer. Kept her nails long for the same reason. He knew so much about her.

The fly landed on the table beside his beer mat.
He slapped his palm down loudly, making Ali jump. ‘Sorry.’ A few heads swivelled at the bar, then turned back.

‘God, don’t
do
that.’

‘Sorry.’ The fly buzzed around his ear. He ignored it.

Ali put down her glass, rubbed her hands along her thighs. ‘Well, of course we’ll make arrangements when the time comes.’ She met his eye and the briefest of smiles skittered across her face, then was gone. ‘We’ll sort things out. Plenty of time. We have months yet. I just thought you should know now, that’s all. ’

She wasn’t coming home. He kept his eyes on her face and after a few seconds she looked away. She wasn’t coming home because she didn’t want to. Being pregnant didn’t change that – why would it? She was with Brendan now, where she wanted to be. What an idiot Dan was.

He drank, deep swallows, conscious again of how hungry he was. Ali glanced at her watch as he lowered his glass.

The watch he’d bought her on their honeymoon.

‘Don’t let me keep you.’ Resentment flooded through him again. ‘Lover-boy will be waiting – or should I say lover-man. Long time since he was a boy.’

‘Don’t do that, Dan.’ She reached across the table for his hand and he snatched it out of her way, almost knocking over his glass. ‘Look, this child will be as much yours as if we were still together, I promise.’

‘But we’re not still together. You’re with Brendan, and you’re not coming back.’ He threw it across the table.

Her eyes widened. ‘Coming back? Oh, is that what you thought? Oh God, Dan, I’m so sorry, I’m really—’

‘You can’t – you can’t just sit there and tell me you’re pregnant with my baby, then walk away. You can’t do that.’ His voice shook and he didn’t care. He gripped the edge of his chair.

Ali stood up quickly. Dan stayed where he was. ‘I have to go. I’ll be in touch, OK? We’ll sort everything out, I promise.’

‘Yeah – like you promised to stay married to me.’ The bitterness flooded his mouth, he spat the words out. ‘Is Brendan looking forward to being a daddy?’

Her voice was maddeningly calm. ‘It’s natural that you’re upset.’

He raised his voice. ‘Don’t you tell me—’ Heads turned again. He glared back them and clamped his mouth shut.

Ali picked up her bag. ‘I’ll call you soon. We’ll talk when you’ve had time to digest this.’ She turned and walked out.

He didn’t answer, didn’t watch her as she left. She’d hardly touched her drink. He saw the faint pink stain on the rim. He grabbed his glass and strode to the counter. The group shifted slightly to let him order another pint.

When he woke up he didn’t remember getting home. He had a hazy memory of telling Kieran the wonderful news he’d just got from his wife and, to his utter mortification, he remembered crying, sobbing into his hands at the kitchen table. He remembered wolfing down the steak that Kieran eventually fried for him with onions.

The following morning he plodded to his office, full of extra strength Disprin, sat in front of the computer and struggled through the day’s quota of work.

Since then, in the two weeks since Ali’s announcement, he’d been completely unable to get his head around the fact that he was going to become a father to a child who would grow up in another house, raised by another man. Whatever way you looked at it.

Oh, he’d have contact. He knew Ali would be scrupulously fair about him seeing the child. Once a week, maybe. Every other weekend, possibly. The odd holiday, two weeks in Ballybunion. She’d dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s on that one – it would be terribly above board and civilised.

But Dan’s son – or daughter – would be raised by Dan’s Uncle Brendan, to all intents and purposes. And try as he might, Dan could not get his head around that.

God knows what Kieran must think. God knows what Dan had said to him that night – all he could remember for sure was warning Kieran, between mouthfuls of steak, to stay away from women. But he must have said a lot more – not that Kieran had mentioned it since then. Dan had probably told him the whole sorry story, whether Kieran wanted to hear it or not.

He turned to look out of the window again. The barbecue was almost a foot higher than it had been, and so far as it was managing to just stay upright. Kieran was still bent over it, tapping another brick into place.
Picasso was watching from his usual position on the bin.

Dan should help. He couldn’t mope around forever. And, useless at DIY as he was, he didn’t think he’d make things any worse out there.

As he pulled his shirt over his head, he heard a car out at the back. Justin got out of his maroon Zafira and shouted something to Kieran as he walked quickly up the path. Kieran laughed and waved.

Life went on. Dan rummaged in the bottom of the wardrobe and found the ancient orange T-shirt he’d worn to start painting the sitting room, so long ago now it seemed. Something else he needed to tackle sometime – couldn’t leave it the way it was, half paper and half paint.

‘White paint,’ Ali had insisted. ‘Plain white paint. If I have to look at those roses for much longer I’ll throw up.’

So white paint it had been. And Dan had been halfway around the room, half the roses had disappeared, when Ali had told him about her and Brendan.

Life went on. In a few months Dan’s child would be born. Barring misfortune, nothing could change that. He pulled on his oldest pair of jeans and went downstairs.

Pawel’s head appeared around the door. ‘Could you bring in Mr Ryan’s file please?’

‘Of course.’ Yvonne riffled through the pastel-coloured files on the shelves behind her, pulled out Sean Ryan’s and walked into Pawel’s surgery with it.

‘Thank you.’ His smile was perfectly polite, just as it had always been. He took the file from her, opened it and Yvonne left the surgery, closing the door quietly.

Thank God they’d got past the embarrassment, survived the awfulness of that evening in the restaurant – although it would be a long time before Yvonne could think about walking in and seeing him sitting at the table, waiting for her, without blushing to her roots and wanting to crawl under something big. God, that was up there with trying to rub off someone’s birthmark or opening your parents’ bedroom door to find them having sex.

‘You said your name was Peter.’ She’d blurted out the first thing that came into her head. ‘I had no idea—’

‘My father’s name is Peter, in English.’ He looked as dismayed as she felt. She imagined him buying the
yellow rose and sticking it in his buttonhole, full of expectation. ‘You said your name was Deirdre.’

‘Deirdre’s my second name. I didn’t want to—’

It was awful. A man at a nearby table was watching them over his menu. Yvonne pulled out the chair opposite Pawel and sat down. What else could she do?

‘Pawel, I’m sorry about this. I wasn’t trying to deceive you.’

He frowned. ‘Well, I don’t—’

‘But I never imagined you’d be on the internet—’

‘Well, I haven’t ever—’

‘Not that it’s any of my—’

‘No, that’s—’

It was horrible. Each of them breaking into the other’s protests, both equally mortified. Finally their stuttered explanations faded into silence. Yvonne studied the tablecloth – white, some embossed material, a line where the iron had folded it running from her place setting to his. She could see her reflection in the knife that lay in front of her.

Her made-up face, when all he’d ever seen at work was a slick of lipstick. A wave of heat washed over her, which she hoped fervently was hidden from him by the foundation.

Pawel spoke again. ‘You see, I had no idea you were a widow, and you never mentioned what work you did in your emails.’ He paused. And I never thought you would be … on the internet, like me.’

‘No, I never did anything like that … not until recently.’

She supposed it was the kind of thing you should just laugh at – turning up for a blind date and finding your boss waiting for you. If someone had told her that story over coffee – ‘You’ll never guess what happened to my friend lately’ – she’d think it was hilarious.

Not right now, though. Right now she and Pawel were sitting opposite each other in a restaurant and a waiter was heading in their direction, and as far as Yvonne was concerned, there was nothing funny about their situation.

‘Good evening.’ The waiter’s nails were bitten, but his black jacket was beautifully cut. ‘Would you like to order some drinks?’

Yvonne had never felt more like a stiff gin in her life, but of course that was out of the question; they weren’t staying. She was preparing herself for their undignified exit when Pawel said, ‘Yvonne? What would you like?’