The People Next Door (29 page)

Agonising minutes later – five? twenty? – she heard Justin coming back, and she opened her mouth and screamed his name.

‘Why am I crying?’ But she was smiling too.

His voice floated out of the darkness. ‘Because you’re happy, I hope. Because you were impressed with my performance.’

Clara laughed softly and wiped her eyes. Her head rested on his bare chest, her mouth against his skin, her hair spread across him. ‘Well, as you know, I have nothing to compare you with, but I think you did very well.’

Dan played with her hair, lifted it up and twisted it around his hand. ‘Thank you. You weren’t so bad yourself.’

Her skin was damp. The room smelled of their bodies.

She ran her hand lightly across his stomach. ‘I’m sorry about earlier.’

He tapped her arm with a finger. ‘Don’t be daft. You’ve nothing to be sorry for.’

‘I was afraid.’

‘I know. It’s OK, honest.’ He stroked her upper arm. ‘You’re not afraid any more?’

She lifted her head, pulled herself up and felt her way to his mouth. She kissed the corner of it. It reminded him of the first time in the car. He remembered the smell of the lemon tarts.

‘No. I’m not afraid any more.’

Just as he was about to turn away, torn between relief and frustration, the chipped brown door was opened a few inches.

‘Yes?’

Kieran couldn’t see who was on the other side: the gap was too small.

‘Geraldine?’

A pause, then the gap grew and she stood there. Pink jumper, grey skirt, cream slippers. A blotchy yellow stain low on the jumper.

‘It’s me, Kieran,’ he said, because there was no sign that she recognised him.

‘Oh … Kieran.’ She gave no sign that his arrival was welcome or otherwise. She opened the door wider. ‘Sorry. Come in.’

He stepped past her into the hall.

‘Excuse the state of … I wasn’t expecting anyone.’

‘Sorry – I should have rung, but …’

He hadn’t rung. He’d just got into the car and driven there, afraid that if he thought about it at all, if he stopped for a minute to consider what he was doing, it wouldn’t happen.

He had little memory of the hall, didn’t recognise the faded orange tiles, couldn’t have said if the walls
had been white the last time he’d been there. There was a smallish painting halfway down, of horses galloping across a beach – had it always hung there?

Geraldine shuffled ahead of him in her slippers and opened a door at the end of the hall. Walking in after her, Kieran smelled the residue of past meals and a staleness that made him glance automatically at the closed window.

The kitchen was small, and slightly more familiar to him. The drop-leaf table, with its yellow Formica top, pushed up against the far wall – yes, that had been there. The narrow cooker – could it possibly be the same one, after so many years? – next to the open shelving that held a jumble of cartons and tins. The chipped white Belfast sink, the uncurtained window above it that looked out onto a small concrete yard, a red-headed brush outside leaning against the breeze-block wall.

A blue cup sat on the table, half full of what looked like very old, very cold tea. Next to it was an opened milk carton. Geraldine indicated one of the two chairs.

‘Sit down. Will you have tea?’ Without waiting for his answer she took the kettle and held it under the tap.

‘No tea for me, thanks.’ She’d forgotten he never drank it. ‘But have some yourself.’

She turned off the tap and put down the kettle. ‘I won’t bother so. I’m sick of drinking tea.’

He scanned the shelves and saw beans, cornflakes, creamed rice, a tin of celery soup.

She saw him looking. ‘Would you eat soup if I made it?’

‘No thanks, I don’t want a thing.’ He pulled out the chair beside him. ‘Sit down. How’ve you been?’

She shrugged, lowering herself into the chair and pulling the pink jumper down over her hips. ‘Not too bad.’ She attempted a smile. ‘Considering.’ She crossed her legs.

‘That’s good.’ He couldn’t tell her. He had to tell her. ‘Are you working at all now?’ Coward.

‘I do a couple of days at the recycling centre,’ she said. ‘Tuesdays and Thursdays, twelve to five.’ Her top foot jiggled rapidly, the slipper flopping.

‘Right.’ He studied his hands, lying on the table. ‘I have to tell you something,’ he said then. He forced himself to look into her eyes. ‘It’s about Adam.’

Something passed across her face. Her foot became still. ‘Adam?’ Kieran became aware of a clock ticking, counting out the seconds of their pauses. ‘What about him?’

‘Geraldine …’ How to tell her? ‘The night he died …’ How to tell her?

She watched him, tense as a cat. Her eyes on his mouth.

‘I was there.’ He could feel his heart pounding inside him. ‘I was there when it happened.’

Geraldine stared at him. The clock ticked.

Kieran stumbled on. His palms were damp. ‘He was coming out of a pub, and I walked past him and … he—’

‘You were there?’ She barely whispered it.

Kieran leaned forward, reached for her hand, but she snatched it away. ‘You were there?’ Barely a whisper.
He hardly heard it. ‘You were there?’

‘He began to follow me, he shouted at me to stop—’

Her mouth was open. She watched him, her hands curling into fists.

‘I kept going, I didn’t want to talk to him. I was walking along by the river, and he kept following me and shouting for me to stop—’

She said something then, so softly that he missed it. ‘What?’

‘Did you … kill him?’ The words pushed jerkily out of her. Her face – the look on her face.

The shock ran through him. ‘Jesus, no, Geraldine, of course I didn’t.’ And terrible as the accusation was, he couldn’t blame her. What was she supposed to think?

He rushed on. ‘He must have tripped and fallen in – I couldn’t see him. I looked in the river but I couldn’t see.’ Had he looked in? He couldn’t be sure now. ‘And then the others came

‘You heard him falling in?’ The same hardly audible voice, same look of horror on her face.

‘Well, I – not really … I wasn’t sure. I was walking fast, trying to—’

‘But you knew he was in the water.’ Her voice rose. Her body was rigid, leaning slightly towards him.

‘Well, I—’

‘Did you try to save him?’ The skin was white around her mouth.

‘The others came. One of them jumped in—’

‘Did you?’ Her eyes blazed into him now.
Her hands were fists, her knuckles were white. ‘Did you try?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t. I can’t swim. I didn’t—’

She sat back then, spoke almost calmly. ‘You were there when he fell in. The others were too late, but you were there.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

She looked at his face. ‘You let him die. You did nothing and he died.’ So calm. So still.

He bent his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

Her fist crashed into the side of his head. The blow, not hard but unexpected, almost knocked him off the chair. She hit him again, anywhere she could – his face, his chest, his side. He put up his hands and she thumped them. She grunted with her efforts, she spat at him, she tried to rake his face with bitten nails.

Kieran struggled to his feet and she followed him to the door, still swinging her fists, hitting him, thumping him. He tried to grab her arms as he backed away from her. They staggered down the hall together in some kind of grotesque embrace. He reached the front door and fumbled for the knob, one hand still trying to fend her off.

As he pulled the door open, she dropped her arms abruptly, slid down the wall and sat on the floor, clutching her bent knees and wailing and moaning and rocking, oblivious to him now.

‘Adam … Jesus … my child

Kieran walked outside, pulled the door shut after him and leaned against it, breathing hard. Her cries followed him out – ‘Oh, God, I can’t bear it …’
His left ear stung and there was a dull pain on one side of his face. ‘Oh Jesus.

After a minute or so he walked down the driveway on shaky legs and got into his car. He slid the key into the ignition and started the engine and drove back the eighty miles to Belford.

The Christmas morning visit to her in-laws was as challenging as it had always been. No, worse this year, since she’d had the audacity to become engaged to Jim and Peggy’s nephew.

Not that any of the other guests would have had the slightest inkling that anything was amiss between the two women. The pair of widowers who’d worked with Jim for more than forty years, the few neighbouring couples who always wandered in, Peggy’s old bridge cronies – they’d have seen a smiling hostess, walking through the chattering groups in her navy suit, offering the usual smoked salmon on brown bread, mini vol-au-vents, little cubes of Cheddar sharing cocktail sticks with black grapes.

But Yvonne sensed the coolness, caught a couple of the sharp glances, saw Peggy subtly change direction whenever she approached her one-time daughter-in-law She got the distinct feeling that the older woman wished her at the bottom of a very deep well.

Thank goodness for Greg, chatting easily with the other guests, one hand draped casually around

Yvonne’s waist. Oblivious, as far as she could see, to his aunt’s behaviour.

Thank goodness for Jim, pressing a little more Bailey’s on Yvonne, asking them about their wedding plans, joking with Greg about carrying his new bride over the threshold.

Thank heavens for Clara, engaging Peggy in conversation, admiring the navy suit, laughing when Peggy asked her if there was any new romance, saying she hadn’t time for boyfriends, she was much too busy.

Yvonne looked around the room at the small gathering of people she met once every year. One of the widower’s daughters had had a baby in the spring – he was busy handing around photos. A couple were going skiing to Austria the following day. One of the other neighbours was wearing a neck brace, after someone had driven into the back of her car two weeks before. A bridge player called Janice had won a hundred euro on a scratchcard.

All the different lives people led, all the ups and downs. Look at Grainne in number nine, look at poor Kathryn, they’d certainly had their share of misfortune lately.

And look at Dolores Mulcahy.

Not married after all, no loving husband whisking her off to Venice, no perfect children. Constructing her sad, lonely fantasies for years until everything had come slithering down in a few minutes. Yvonne thought back to the ugly scene in the clinic, remembered how Dolores had looked at her mother.

‘What are you doing here?’

And Nuala, standing up quickly, speaking in a rush, ‘I’m sorry, love, I lost my keys – I couldn’t get in at home, I didn’t think there was any harm—’

‘I told you never to come here – didn’t I tell you?’

‘But love, I – I didn’t know where else to go.’

Dolores swinging towards Yvonne then. ‘What did she tell you?’ Her face blotchy with irritation, her free hand opening and closing.

‘Dolores, I think you need to—’

‘What did she tell you?’

And Nuala bursting into tears and stammering, Ah Dolores, love, what’s going on? Why did you tell this lady you were married? Why did you do—’

Dolores marching over, before Yvonne could react, slapping her mother hard across the face, Nuala letting out a short, high cry as her shaking hand went to her cheek, as she cowered in front of her daughter.

Dolores swinging back to Yvonne, who’d started towards Nuala. ‘She shouldn’t have
come
here. She had no
right
to come here. I
told
her’ – pointing an accusing finger at Yvonne – ‘and
you,
always so perfect, with your fancy house and your fancy daughter, and going out to dinner whenever you felt like it. Why shouldn’t I make up a few things? What harm was there? Why couldn’t I have a good life too, instead of living with my mother, like some pathetic spinster everyone feels sorry for?’

It was tumbling out of her, spewing out. Her face was red with it, she was shaking with it, tears flashing in her eyes, whirling around to Nuala now. And
you –
you had to go and ruin everything, didn’t you?
You had to come here and
blab –
I
told
you never to come here. Didn’t I
say—’

And then the front door opening and Pawel walking in, and Dr Lynch appearing at the top of the stairs, having heard the commotion, and Nuala collapsing into a chair, sobbing quietly, her face in her hands.

And just like that, the fight went out of Dolores. She slumped against Yvonne’s desk, head bent, still clutching her bag of new shoes.

Poor Dolores. She was on extended sick leave now, at home with Nuala after two weeks in the psychiatric wing of a hospital in Galway. Yvonne wondered if she’d ever be back at work.

Hard to believe that they’d never existed – Martin, Chloë, Hugo, Fionn. Yvonne had almost felt that she’d known them, even though she’d never seen them, not even a photo – shouldn’t she have realised how odd that was? Such a doting mother not to have at least one family snapshot to wave around the clinic? Yes, she should have wondered about that.

Photos … it snagged on something in Yvonne’s memory, and then it came to her: Dolores telling her how their camera had fallen into the canal in Venice. Giving Yvonne a bottle of Italian wine.

She’d thought of everything, every little detail – and then her mother had walked into the clinic one day, and it was all over.

A young girl, Hazel, was covering for Dolores at work. She ate a sandwich at her desk or in the staffroom every lunchtime, and Yvonne, feeling slightly guilty, went home for the hour.

‘Can I top you up?’ Jim appeared, holding a Bailey’s bottle.

Yvonne covered the top of her glass. ‘No, thanks. I’m on driving duty.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Actually, we should get going. My parents will be ringing the guards.’

Thank goodness for her parents, coming to Miller’s Avenue for Christmas dinner every year, giving her the perfect reason to leave Jim and Peggy’s.