Authors: Marita Conlon-McKenna
‘Alice, this is one of my all-time favourite songs,’ he explained as he led her on to the dance floor.
For the rest of the night they danced and laughed and chatted, and she felt so at ease with him. Maybe he did this with every woman he came across, but Alice felt pretty and attractive and interesting when she was with him, and had to admit she found him attractive, too. For a big man he was unexpectedly light on his feet, and was a bit of a music buff, which surprised her.
When the music ended and everyone began to file out to collect their coats and jackets she felt strangely reluctant to go.
Sally and Hugh offered her a ride home in their taxi, but as she felt the pressure of Alex’s hand in hers she turned them down.
‘Hugh, I’m taking this young lady to the Residence for a last nightcap,’ Alex explained. ‘But I promise I’ll look after her.’
‘You’d better!’ warned Sally drunkenly from their taxi.
Alice found herself ten minutes later in the Residence, the exclusive private members’ club on St Stephen’s Green, with Alex ordering some more drinks for them. They found a quiet corner to relax and talk. They danced a little more to some soul and jazz, and Alice felt like she was young again as they talked and laughed. It was well after 4 a.m. when they finally left and got a taxi home, Alex’s arms around her as they stopped at Martello Avenue.
‘Thanks for a wonderful night,’ she said, giving him a quick hug as she got out of the car.
‘I’ll be in touch, Alice,’ he promised, and somehow Alice knew that he meant it.
Alice enjoyed a blissful Sunday morning lie-in, the house quiet until Conor and Sean came into her bedroom.
‘What time did you get home last night, Mum?’ asked Sean.
‘Late, very late,’ she said, rolling on to her side. She had absolutely no intention of telling either of her sons what time she had actually got home.
‘We’re having lunch with Dad,’ reminded Conor. ‘Do you want us to get you a cup of coffee or something before we go?’
‘No thanks,’ she said, wrapping the duvet around her. ‘I’m fine.’
‘It’s lovely out!’ Conor said. ‘Really sunny.’
An hour later the doorbell went, and she remembered that she had invited Joy for brunch. She managed to find her flip-flops and raced down the stairs in her pyjamas to let Joy in.
‘Look what the cat dragged in!’ teased Joy, as Alice poured them each a large glass of orange juice. ‘Where’s Sean?’
‘Conor’s taken him over to meet Liam for lunch.’
‘Bit of fatherly bonding,’ quipped Joy.
‘I suppose if there is one good thing that has come out of the accident it’s that Liam is making an effort with the boys.’
As Alice hopped in the shower upstairs and dressed, Joy made bacon and scrambled eggs and a mound of French toast for them.
‘Don’t burn it!’ warned Alice.
After they had eaten, Joy persuaded Alice to put on her sunglasses and come for a walk. It was a glorious day and they wandered down to the little beach in Seapoint, which was only a few minutes from the house. They watched the gangs of kids and toddlers in shorts and togs splash and play around.
‘Summer’s here!’ They laughed, seeing all the exposed white skin being revealed for the first time.
Alice watched as the sunlight bounced off the water, and a load of small yachts flew by, their sails catching the light breeze. Such a beautiful day! A perfect summer Sunday! The marina in Dun Laoghaire was busy as boats sailed in and out of the harbour.
Alice’s phone had a message, and when she checked it she saw that Alex had sent her a text.
Lovely night, Alice. Let’s do it again. What about dinner in the Unicorn on Friday?
Alex Ronan
She smiled. Sally or Hugh must have given him her number.
She texted him back.
Yes please … Looking forward to it
.
She put her sunglasses back on, and as she walked in the sunshine she began to tell Joy all about meeting Alex.
It had been an awful week. Matt had barely spoken to Kerrie since coming home late on Sunday night. They had avoided each other at breakfast, and on Monday he had texted her to say he was working late and not to wait up for him. She had her cookery class on Tuesday, and afterwards sat in her car crying for an hour eating the melt-in-your-mouth shortbread slices that Alice had showed them how to make. Matt was, by the way, asleep in bed when she eventually went into the apartment. She lay on her side of the bed wide awake for hours, listening to his breathing and wondering what was happening to them.
He was out on Wednesday, and on Thursday she met Ruth and they went around the shops looking at possible bridesmaid dresses.
‘You OK, Kerrie?’ asked her friend, concerned.
‘Fine,’ Kerrie lied as she despatched Ruth into the changing room to try on some more dresses.
On Friday when she came home she found Matt had left a note for her to say he was heading down to Moyle for the weekend. This time he hadn’t even bothered asking her to accompany him.
She couldn’t sleep all night and knew somewhere deep inside that their relationship was starting to unravel, spinning out of control. She was losing him … losing Matt.
On Saturday she couldn’t settle to anything. She felt sick and scared, and, after trying to waken herself with an invigorating shower, found herself pulling on a clean pair of jeans, a white knitted ribbed sweater and a jacket, and getting into her car and driving home.
She passed the massive new high-rise developments of apartments and hotels in Tallaght, many empty, some now at least let to students at the local college. She gazed at The Square shopping centre and the hospital. They’d all been built since she was a kid. When they’d moved there, their estate had been surrounded by green fields. The green fields were long gone, replaced with more and more housing.
She had loved the freedom of it, the wildness of the place where they could run and roam with gangs of kids, all playing together. Slowing down at the traffic light she turned into Forest Road and took a right into Riverfield Grove. A group of five small boys were kicking a football, and her little nephew Jamie was among them. He gave her a shy wave. This road had been home for so long, a place of security and comfort, with the Murphys and the Kennedys next door, along with the Griffiths and the Conroys and a whole host of families that had all grown up together. Their mothers had kept an eye on them all, and their fathers had worked hard to put food on the table and pay off the mortgages they’d taken on to buy the three-bedroomed semi-detached houses.
She stopped outside Number 248. Nothing ever changed. The red painted gate hanging from the pillar, the big palm
tree in the front garden, and her mam’s sparkling clean net curtains in the window.
‘You should have told me you were calling today, Kerrie, pet, and I’d have got something in.’
‘I just felt like coming home,’ Kerrie said, trying not to cry as her mother hugged her. Her dad was out the back, pottering like he always did, fixing a bicycle.
‘Mike’s young one nearly came off it the other day going to school. It needs a new chain,’ he said, greeting her. She watched as he checked the tyres on the bike.
‘Is everything OK?’ he asked.
‘Dad, can I not just call home like everyone else?’ she said, wishing he wasn’t so perceptive.
‘Sure you can, pet,’ interjected her mam. ‘This place is like a railway station at times with all the comings and goings. Martina’s gone off into town shopping for a few hours, and little Max is upstairs having a nap, and Jamie is somewhere outside.’
‘He’s fine, he’s playing football.’
‘Come on then, and we’ll have a cup of tea while things are quiet.’
‘The place looks great.’ Kerrie admired the kitchen which had been painted a fresh creamy white, and there was a new silver fridge standing in the corner.
‘Your dad and Mike painted it two weeks ago and it looks so much better now. The poor old fridge gave up the ghost last week so we went down to Power Electrics and got a new one!’
‘Well, it all looks great!’ Kerrie said, noticing the tumbling mass of petunias and geraniums in her mother’s window boxes and planters and tubs.
She sat at the big pine table, where she had spent so much of her life, as her mother made a pot of tea and produced some of Kerrie’s favourite Club Milk biscuits.
‘How’s everyone?’ she asked.
Claire O’Neill began to give her the weekly rundown on the family. Mike’s wife Nicola was expecting again; Andy’s little girl Emma might need to get her tonsils out; Tara was getting on well in England, and loved the London hospital where she was working; Martina’s husband Darren had just been taken on by an electrical contractor in Walkinstown, which was great news; and Kerrie’s little sister Shannon was studying so hard for her Leaving Cert exams that her ma was worried she’d make herself ill.
‘Where is she?’ Kerrie asked.
‘At the library. She says it’s quieter there for her to study at the weekends.’
Kerrie felt guilty. Shannon was eighteen, and a lot like her. The teachers said she was very bright, and she was aiming to get into college and study science. Why hadn’t she tried to help her little sister more, encourage her?
‘She’ll be home at teatime … you can talk to her then,’ said her mam, as if reading her mind. ‘How’s Matthew?’ asked her mother. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Matt’s fine, Mam, he’s gone down to stay with his parents for the weekend.’
‘Down to that lovely big house of theirs? Why didn’t you go, too?’
Kerrie didn’t know what to say, and could see the concern in her mother’s eyes, and found herself blurting out all about Matt’s family’s troubles and Matt’s involvement in trying to fix things.
‘Matt’s a good boy,’ her mother said, pouring more tea. ‘Maureen and Dermot seemed fine types of people. A bit different from us, I’ll give you, but they must be finding this all very hard. Imagine losing your home or business at our age! The poor things, Kerrie. Is it any wonder your Matt is trying to help them?’
Kerrie stared at the photos on the kitchen wall. They were family photos of herself and her brothers and sisters when they were younger, and now there were also the new grandchildren. Her mam had a heart of gold and, instead of being angry at the Hennessys, pitied them.
‘Thank God, your dad and I own every stick and stone and tile in this house. No one can touch it, as our mortgage was paid off four years ago!’ she said proudly. ‘We paid off the car last summer, and we’ve a bit of money put by for our pension and holidays and emergencies like the fridge. You know your dad! He wouldn’t have it any other way. That man is as straight as they come!’
‘I know that, Mam, you and Dad are the best,’ Kerrie said, jumping up and hugging her.
‘Kerrie, what about your wedding plans?’ her mother said softly. ‘How are they coming?’
‘Everything is a bit up in the air at the moment,’ Kerrie said. ‘I’ve the church booked for the ninth of September, and Father Louis, the priest who’s going to marry us, speaks English, so the mass will be in English. I’m trying to find someone to sing in the church. And the restaurant is all organized, but I’m trying to sort out the menu. You and Dad need to book your flights, and there is a lovely hotel overlooking the water. I’ve provisionally booked twelve rooms there. The church is only a few minutes away …’
‘Kerrie, is everything all right?’ pressed her mum.
Kerrie had been rabbiting on about the wedding arrangements, unaware that tears were running slowly down her face.
Her mother passed her some tissues from the box she kept in the kitchen.
‘Matt and I have had a fight … we’re barely speaking. He hates me … He’s gone down to his parents again this weekend, and he barely even told me that he was going.’
‘Did he ask you to go with him?’ quizzed her mother.
‘Yes, he did last week. I just didn’t want to go down. His mother is such a snob, she hates me … hates that Matt and I are getting married. She thinks that I’m not good enough for her precious son.’
‘I see,’ said Claire O’Neill quietly, her hands resting on her patterned apron, her brown hair flecked with grey, her eyes sad. ‘Is that why your father and I and your brothers and sisters, well, those who can manage it, are being dragged off to France, Kerrie, for this wedding of yours?’
Kerrie stopped.
‘No, Matt and I love France. We want to get married there. We—’
‘Are you ashamed of us, Kerrie? Ashamed of your family, where you come from?’
‘No, I’m not. It’s just that his family are so different from ours,’ Kerrie trailed off lamely.
‘Matt is a nice boy,’ her mother said firmly. ‘What his family are like makes no odds to your father and me, once he is a good kind husband to you and a good father to your children. That’s what makes a man. Not the money in his bank account, though that can ease things a bit, or where he did or did not go to school, or whether he grew up in a
big house or one of the council flats like where Darren came from.’
‘I know that, Mam. It’s just that the Hennessys are used to different things from us. I love Matt, but sometimes I feel I don’t really fit in with them.’
‘Lord rest your Granny O’Neill, but she was a right rip. When I married your father she thought I wasn’t good enough for him. Told me to my face! She made my life a misery with her sour face and ways. My father worked in Guinness’s brewery and she was always going on about it. I only found out after she died that her husband John had been turned down by the brewery. She held a right old grudge about it, as John got a job in the Swastika laundry then, but sure, that had none of the benefits Guinness’s had! There was no widow’s pension when he died and he left her with a young family.’
‘That’s different!’
‘Don’t you think your daddy and I think it strange that Matt has never been to this house? All the other boyfriends and girlfriends practically lived in the place. Your dad used to have to throw Darren out at midnight when he and Martina were going steady.’
‘It’s just that Matt’s busy … with his job and …’
‘When you went to college, we were all so proud of you, Kerrie. You are the first person on both sides of the family to not just get a university degree but to do a Master’s. Why do you think young Shannon is working so hard? She wants to be just like her big sister! I see her looking at the photo of you in your cap and gown on your graduation day, and I know it spurs her on. Why would you be ashamed of what you are, what you have achieved? We are all so proud of you. But I’m proud of all our children and their achievements.’