Maggie nodded. Mum hadn’t seen what was going on and that had made Maggie lonelier than ever. Home hadn’t been her refuge: it became a place where nobody understood her and what she was going through. Her parents’ lovable idiosyncrasies had become irritating, their cheerful innocence annoying. If’ only they’d been more observant, they’d have understood.
‘It’s not their fault,’ Christie said. ‘It was St Ursula’s fault. Bullying shouldn’t have been tolerated.
And it was Sandra’s fault.’ She noticed how Maggie winced at the mention of her tormentor’s name. ‘You were not to blame.’
‘I thought I was,’ blurted out Maggie. ‘Something about me that was weak or odd.’ ‘Nothing I could see, though we all have weaknesses.
But that’s no excuse for their behaviour.
You were just someone to pick on, nothing more.
Christie paused. ‘Have you ever seen Sandra since?’ ‘No, although … I’ve been thinking about it a lot,’ Maggie admitted. ‘Since I met Faye and you, and Faye has had to face her own demons, I keep thinking I should face her. Stupid, I know. I haven’t seen her for years.’
‘Not stupid at all. You last saw her as a child.
As an adult, you could put it all behind you, lay the secrets to rest.’
‘Yeah, but who knows where she is.’ Maggie couldn’t even bring herself to say Sandra’s name. ‘What are the odds on her walking back into my life now?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Christie thoughtfully. ‘You’re thinking about her and talking about her.
You’re ready to meet her again. That’s happened for a reason. Life is never random: I always find that, don’t you?’
Maggie was on a late shift at work which meant she started at noon. As she walked towards the library, she went over what Christie had said to her.
Christie seemed to think that seeing Sandra Brody would allow the past to settle into the past, but it wasn’t that easy, was it?
And Maggie had quite enough on her plate right now, anyway, what with being chairwoman of the campaign, getting over Grey and trying to get her life back on track.
She could face most things, but not Sandra Brody.
That afternoon, Christie went into St Ursula’s and found that overnight, almost the entire teaching population had plunged headfirst into exam anxiety. June was fast approaching and on the third of the month, the state exams would begin, the culmination of years of hard work distilled into a dozen two-and-a-half-hour exams spread out over three tortured weeks.
‘It’s like an incessant headache pounding away,’
said Mr Sweetman, thinking of the third years’
still-limited interest in As You Like It and how a small section of the English sixth-year class had still only half read Pride and Prejudice and were using one of the movie versions as their guide instead of the actual novel.
‘C’est vrai,’ sighed Mademoiselle Lennox, who was reciting Guy de Maupassant in her sleep because of how many times she’d read out passages to her beloved girls in 6 and 6A.
‘We must be positive, for the girls’ sake,’ boomed Ms Ni Rathallaigh, the sports teacher, who didn’t care much because the fifth-year netball team had won the league.
Everyone in the staff room glared at her.
Everyone except Christie, who was finding it hard to concentrate on worrying about the exams because of how much she was worrying over Carey Wolensky and his trying to track her down. She hadn’t returned the strange phone call asking her to get in touch, and during the day, she left the answering machine off in case James came home early and heard another message on it. Nobody, she hoped, would phone in the evenings, would they?
In the meantime, mentions of Carey were everywhere.
The arts section in one of the Saturday papers had carried a review of his work, accompanied by photographs of three of his paintings.
Thank heavens there wasn’t a picture of him, Christie thought with relief. She couldn’t have coped with seeing his brooding eyes gazing out at her from a photograph.
Instead she had to look at one of his trademark wildly furious landscapes, and two of his rare and infinitely more valuable - paintings of a darkhaired woman. In one, she was lying between the paws of a predatory stone tiger in a crumbling Greek temple, and in the other, she stood in the centre of a Turkish bath, where other women chattered and bathed, and she was alone, staring out, hair partly covering a face that was never completely shown in any painting.
‘It is his uncanny ability to bring new meaning to traditional themes that makes Wolensky a master,’
raved the article. ‘His moody landscapes are imbued with energy, but it’s his Dark Lady paintings that elevate him to another level. They are his masterpieces, but the identity of the lovely Dark Lady remains one of modern art’s most fascinating secrets.’
Those words made Christie break out in a sweat.
She’d spent long enough studying symbolism in art to understand that the darkhaired woman in Wolensky’s paintings was always slightly beyond his reach, and by obscuring her face, he wanted her to be beyond everyone’s reach. If he couldn’t have her, nobody else could, either.
Her naked body was womanly, complete with the not-so-pert breasts and stretchmarks of childbirth.
He’d painted his first Dark Lady some twenty-five years before and she was no figment of the imagination, the art critics reckoned.
Wolensky had lived in Ireland round about then, the article went on, and this was his first trip back with this triumphant exhibition. Christie thought of Carey Wolensky back in her city, living, breathing only miles away in some classy city centre hotel, and felt sick.
If only she could really see the future and know what was happening, then she could deal with it all. Tell James, if that’s what it took. Face his pain.
Whatever was required.
But the waiting and not knowing was killing her.
Ana hadn’t mentioned Carey again, which was something, but still Christie couldn’t think of anything else. How she’d betrayed James and Ana in one fell swoop.
Suddenly fed up with the stuffy staff room and everyone’s moaning, she left early for her next class.
At least she’d have a few moments of peace before the lesson started.
In the blue-painted corridor that led to the art room, a pile of papers lay scattered on the floor.
Bending, she slowly gathered them up and as she did so a white feather fluttered out from underneath, lifting in the gentle draught, drifting away.
White feathers were a sign of angels passing by, her mother used to say.
Christie looked down at the papers. They were exam notes, several scrawled sheets of foolscap with a small bit of paper sandwiched in the middle.
She pulled this out. It was a flyer for a market where stalls promised second-hand books, antiques at prices nobody would believe, plants, homeknitted sweaters, a coffee shop and there, at the bottom, almost as an afterthought, were the words, fortunetelling.
Things happened for a reason - wasn’t that what she’d told Maggie only the other day? This flyer and the white feather had come to her for a reason.
She folded the flyer up and put it in her pocket.
She’d think about it later.
That evening, she and James were supposed to go to a party at the house of some neighbours. The
Hendersons had lived on Summer Street for fifteen years and they had been good friends with James and Christie for most of that time. Tommy Henderson, the husband, was a motorbike aficionado and while James had never had the funds for a bike, he loved standing in Tommy’s garage watching him take apart the latest model, discussing the merits of the new BMW versus the classic Norton.
While James got on with Tommy, Christie found that she got on pretty well with Laurie Henderson.
Tom and Laurie had three sons around Shane and Ethan’s ages, and Laurie had worked outside the home for most of her life too, so she and Christie had reached the same stages in their lives together.
Therefore, when Tommy Henderson hit sixty and a big party was to be held in the Hendersons’ back garden, it was natural that the Devlins should be the first on the list.
‘I’m not really in the mood to go,’ said Christie as they pottered about their bedroom getting ready. ‘You’ll change your mind when you get there,’
said James soothingly. ‘It’ll be fun. There’ll be loads of people you’ll know.’
‘That’s the problem,’ said Christie, with irritation. ‘I’m not in the mood to talk to the same old people.’
James stopped putting in his cuff links and began to massage her neck tenderly. For once, it didn’t instantly relax her. ‘You are tense, Christie,’ he said. ‘Is everything OK, darling? Do you have a headache?’
‘No,’ said Christie, slightly crossly. ‘I don’t, I’m just tired, that’s all.’
Being tired was the ultimate excuse for everything, wasn’t it? Any bad behaviour could be excused with ‘I’m sorry, I was just tired.’ I’m sorry, your honour, I didn’t mean to steal a million pounds, I was just tired. I’m sorry, darling, I didn’t mean to cheat on you with another man, I was just tired.
She turned to face James. ‘I am sorry for moaning. I’ll be fine.’
‘Good,’ said James, pleased. ‘It’ll be fun. You got flowers, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Christie.
‘I’ll find a bottle of wine and we’re all set.’
James finished getting ready, a job that took perhaps seven or eight minutes, and he was gone, leaving Christie sitting at her dressing table, staring at herself in the mirror, wondering if guilt was written all across her face.
They got there a bit late and the fun had obviously started.
‘So you decided to grace us with your presence?’
beamed Tommy Henderson, at the front door.
He threw an arm around James and Christie and pulled them together in a giant bear hug.
‘So glad you could come,’ he said.
‘We only came for the free drink and the free food,’ joked James.
‘Free drink? You mean you didn’t bring your
own?’ demanded Tommy. ‘You lousers, I never had you down as mean, James Devlin.’
And the two men were off, joking, teasing, laughing, James asking what fabulous motorbike Tommy had got for his birthday from the family and Tommy jovially explaining that they hadn’t got him a bike at all, but a girlfriend in a flat. ‘That’s what every man needs when he hits sixty,’
he said. ‘The wife thinks it’s a brilliant idea too.
No more messing about giving me my conjugals!’
The two men roared with laughter and Christie tried to join in, half-heartedly. She was so fond of Tommy and normally loved his palace jester persona, but not tonight.
The party was set up in the garden and it seemed as if half of Summer Street were there, talking, chattering animatedly, laughing, drinking, spearing bits of chicken into dip, discussing house prices, what their children were up to, what their children weren’t up to and, of course, what the developers planned to do to the Summer Street park.
‘I was at the meeting you know,’ said one woman, ‘and Una Maguire suggested a petition, but really a petition isn’t the way to go. No council are going to be moved by a load of names on a list. Her daughter, Maggie, is taking it over, she’s chairwoman. Clever girl, I always say, quiet though. I think there was some problem with her and the boyfriend, you know.’
Christie moved on, irritated by this gossipy attitude to Maggie. She must be growing old, she thought. So many things irritated her now. Some stranger, who barely knew Maggie, talking about her life and her pain, as if it didn’t matter a bit.
There was probably lots of gossip about Faye and Amber too. How the ultra-private and conservative Faye Reid hadn’t a clue what was really going on in her house and what a wild one that Amber had turned out to be, for all her nice manners and the way her mother had tried to bring her up.
Christie moved over to where Laurie was holding court, wondering if in a few weeks the neighbours would be able to talk about her.
Did you hear about Christie Devlin, the most incredible news ever. Split up with that lovely husband of hers, I always said he was too good for her. She was a bit wild and arty really, despite her airs and graces and reputation for wisdom. Hem, if she was that wise she might have seen this one coming. Imagine, some story about a Polish artist who painted her in the nude. He’s filthy rich apparently. Disgraceful. Goes to show you don’t know people, do you? You can live beside them for thirty years and you haven’t a clue what’s going on in their lives.
‘Christie, how lovely to see you.’ Laurie moved away from the group of people she was talking to, reached out, and gave Christie a genuine, welcoming hug. There was nothing two-faced about Laurie. She wouldn’t gossip about Christie, no matter what happened.
‘Sorry we’re late,’ said Christie. ‘I’m a bit tired and I couldn’t get ready, to be truthful.’
‘That’s fine,’ soothed Laurie. One of the many nice things about Laurie was that she wasn’t the sort of person with whom you had to pretend. ‘Come and let me introduce you to my sister in law, Beth. You met before I think? She’s a teacher too, and a gardener, you’ll have a lot to talk about.’
Christie smiled gratefully at Laurie.
Mercifully, Laurie’s sister-in-law wasn’t an art teacher, so there was no conversation about new, exciting exhibitions by enigmatic Polish artists who painted nude, darkhaired women over the past twenty-five years. She was an English teacher and they enjoyed a highly pleasurable hour talking about the difficulties of teaching, how hard the exams were on the students and how schools had changed so much over the past few decades.
‘Oh, look,’ said Beth.
Laurie had wheeled in a hostess trolley with an enormous cake on top. For pure fun, she hadn’t gone for the one big candle saying happy sixtieth: she’d gone the whole hog with sixty single candles blazing with heat and possibly visible from space.
‘There’s a lot of candles there. Is it your ninetieth, did you say, Tommy?’ said one wag.
‘Call an ambulance, please,’ said another. ‘He’ll need it by the time he’s blown all them out.’ ‘Come on everybody,’ insisted a third voice.