But she couldn’t answer, because what he was doing was taking her breath away, like it always did.
At fifty-six. Downright ridiculous to be so utterly enthralled with any man at that age – let alone
this
man, who’d been the bane of her life for so long, who’d barked orders down the phone at her, who’d demanded a thousand words by the end of day or she’d be out on her ear, did she think it was a charity he was running? – and look at them now, for
Jesus’
sake.
‘You like it?’ he
breathed, his face inches away. ‘You want more?’ His eyes blazing into hers, and all she could do, all she was capable of doing, since he’d reduced her to a state of quivering, almost unbearable arousal, was to grab what hair he had left and pull it towards her, hard, until he was forced to cover her mouth with his.
Fifty-six – and he was sixty-eight, for Christ’s sake. Look at them, rolling around in her bed night after night like a pair of teenagers. Serve him right if he got a coronary.
If Alice only knew.
But Alice had no idea: Alice had gone back to Edinburgh two days after the funeral, before any of this nonsense had started.
‘You don’t mind?’ she’d asked Helen. ‘It’s just that we’ve got this new job on, and I don’t feel I should leave the others alone too long.’
‘Of course not,’ Helen had said.
‘You’ll be OK?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘I’ll come back as soon as I can for a few more days.’
‘That would be good.’
Frank had been mentioned. ‘It was nice of him to come to the church, wasn’t it?’
‘Very nice,’ Helen had replied, in a voice that said leave it alone, and Alice had wisely left it alone. And then she was gone, waving as she’d walked through to the departure lounge, promising to bring Lara next time.
Helen had driven home and made herself a pot of coffee. Halfway through her second mug she’d opened her bag and found the piece of paper Breen had given her two days earlier.
It was a supermarket till receipt, dated the previous week. His cashier had been Vivienne, and he’d bought washing-up liquid, olives, bin liners, broccoli, milk, lemon curd, gin, cat food and anchovies. She’d turned it over and there was his phone number.
She’d give him a call; they’d meet and drink coffee, like she’d suggested. She felt sorry for him, with his dead child and his mentally unstable and now also dead wife. She was doing him a kindness, nothing more.
She’d picked up her phone. She’d put it down again and poured herself another refill.
‘What’s wrong
with you?’ she’d said aloud. ‘It’s Breen. You’re meeting him for coffee.’
She’d dialled his number and listened as it rang seven times. She’d hung up and torn the receipt into tiny pieces and dropped them into the bin. Stupid idea.
Two minutes later her phone had rung. She’d started, slopping coffee onto the table.
Private number
, the display had told her.
‘Hello.’
A pause. ‘O’Dowd?’
She’d closed her eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘Did you just try to ring me?’
‘Yes.’
Silence.
‘You want to go for coffee?’ It had blurted out of her, too suddenly. ‘Would you like to?’ she’d amended. God, that sounded worse, as if she was desperate to see him.
‘Sure.’ If he thought she sounded odd, he’d given no sign. ‘Or would you prefer to go to dinner tomorrow night?’
Something had jumped inside her, around her abdomen. It was not a pleasant sensation. ‘Dinner?’
‘You know,’ he’d said, ‘the meal that comes after lunch, and before supper.’
It had completely washed away the tension. She didn’t know whether to laugh or hang up. ‘You’re asking me out to dinner.’ She watched a fly walk its way around the inside of the kitchen lampshade.
‘Yes, O’Dowd. That’s what I’m doing.’
Dinner with Breen. A whole meal in his company, just the two of them sitting across a table for an hour at least. He was probably sick of opening a can of beans, or a tin of anchovies. And she hadn’t been taken out to dinner in almost three years.
It wouldn’t kill her to say yes. It might even be a bit of a laugh.
‘Yes,’ she’d said, watching the fly.
He was at the restaurant before
her, wearing one of his well-cut suits and the usual dazzling white shirt. He stood and pulled out her chair, and made no comment on the black dress she’d agonised over. Bastard.
He ordered pâté and sea bream, and chocolate cake for dessert. She had a green salad and a steak, bloody, and no dessert, and she drank a bottle of red wine all by herself. He stuck to water until the plates were cleared, and then he ordered coffee and brandies without consulting her.
They talked; it was easy. He asked about her writing. She told him how Alice was doing. He described the two cats he’d inherited a month ago when his only niece had emigrated; she told him about Malone’s cat. They talked about books and films and music. He hated
Casablanca
, had never got The Beatles. They both loved Chandler’s stories, and The Rolling Stones, and
Death in Venice.
She refused to believe he’d never seen
It’s a Wonderful Life.
He didn’t mention his wife. She didn’t tell him about Cormac, or about nearly marrying Frank.
‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said as they got up. She didn’t argue, although her car was in the car park. She felt woozy from the alcohol; probably better to leave it there till the morning. He placed his hand lightly in the small of her back as they walked towards his car.
She directed him to her house. He parked and switched off the engine. They sat in silence for several seconds.
‘You smell,’ he said finally, with no particular inflexion in his voice, ‘quite flowery.’
She turned her head towards him. ‘Do you want to come in for coffee?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want coffee.’ He reached across and ran a finger down her cheek. His touch sent a lightning bolt through her.
They barely made it into the house. When she woke in the morning, he was gone. She spent the day in Alice’s dressing-gown with her head in her hands.
Breen.
What had possessed
her? And then she’d remember what he’d done to her, and what she’d done to him, and her face would scald with the memory.
In the evening she stood under the shower, trying to wash away the images that wouldn’t leave her head. She remembered her car, still hopefully sitting in the restaurant car park. Tomorrow she’d deal with it. She wrapped her hair in a towel and put on a clean T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. She went downstairs and made custard. As she was about to spoon it into a bowl, the doorbell rang.
‘I have no idea what happened,’ Breen said. ‘It’s all very confusing.’
He stood unsmiling on her doorstep. At the sight of him, warmth flooded outwards to the tips of her fingers, shot down to her toes, spiralled up into her towel-wrapped head.
‘You want some custard?’ she asked.
He looked suspiciously at her. ‘Is that a trick question? Is custard a euphemism for something else?’
A euphemism. She smiled at him. ‘Yes, it is.’
She held the door open and he walked in. She took his hand and led him into the sitting room and pulled him down onto the floor, and afterwards they ate cold custard out of the saucepan with two spoons. And that had been a month ago.
And over the past four weeks she had told him about Cormac.
And he had told her about his wife.
And she had told him about Frank.
And he had told her about his daughter.
And she had told him about her parents, and Sarah.
There would never be enough time for them to say all that there was to be said between them.
Breen, it would appear, was the second big love of her life.
Breen
, for crying
out loud.
S
he heard the car pulling up at the gate. When she opened the front door, Martha and Stephen were dragging their rucksacks up the path. ‘Hello there – did you have a good time?’
‘Yeah,’ Stephen said, dropping his rucksack to return her hug. ‘We went to
Flubber.
’
‘Did you now?’
‘Yeah, it was
really
funny.’
‘How’s Grandpa?’ Martha asked.
‘He’s fine, lovey, having a lie-down.’
She’d told her father that the children knew nothing about the break-ins. ‘I didn’t want to worry them,’ she explained. To Martha and Stephen she’d simply said that her father’s memory was getting bad, and it was better if he stayed with them for a while. ‘He might forget to turn off the cooker in his house, and it could cause a fire. He’ll be safer here, with us to look after him.’
If they suspected the truth they didn’t say – were they still a little young, at ten and twelve, to realise the full significance? – but in the month that he’d been living with them, Sarah had witnessed his continuing decline with great sadness, and she knew it had to be only a matter of time before the real reason for his presence became clear to both of them.
The children disappeared into
the house. Sarah walked to the gate. Neil was standing by the open car door.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
He’d got his hair cut since last weekend, shorter than usual. Over the past few months she’d noticed that his waist was thickening, and for the first time she saw the beginning of a double chin. If he was still living with her she’d be cutting down on the cakes, serving up more salads and fish, making porridge for his breakfast.
‘How’s your father?’ he asked.
‘Much the same … but he’s in good enough form. What about Nuala?’
‘She’s fine.’
Her mother-in-law had been devastated, of course, when Neil had walked out to be with Noreen. Sarah had forced herself to lift the phone and call her, about a week after it had happened.
‘I’m so glad you rang,’ Nuala had wept. ‘I didn’t know whether you’d want to talk to me. I can’t believe he’s done this to you. I’m so sorry, Sarah, I had no idea about any of it – you must believe me.’
‘Of course I believe you.’
And their relationship had remained intact, if temporarily shaken. Nuala had returned joyfully to Sarah’s Christmas dinner table after the year she and Neil had been absent; and no one had been more pleased at the news that Sarah and Neil were to reunite.
‘I prayed for this,’ she’d told Sarah. ‘I hoped so much you’d be able to forgive and forget. You’ve made me very happy.’
Hardly surprising then that the eventual dissolution of her son’s marriage at Sarah’s hand hadn’t gone down well.
‘I don’t know why you’re doing this to him,’ she’d told Sarah stiffly. ‘To hurt him like this, straight after what’s just happened … why would you do that?’ – and in the weeks and months that followed, while she continued to see her grandchildren, her manner towards her daughter-in-law remained polite but distant. What could Sarah do but accept with great sadness that their once-warm friendship was over?
She waited for Neil to get back
in the car, but he remained where he was. Over the past few weeks she’d sensed a change in his attitude towards her, a small softening of the bitterness her rejection of him had caused. He asked about the new book project, enquired after her father, commented on the primroses in her window box.
For the children’s sake she was glad of it, happy for them not to sense any rancour between their parents. She decided it could do no harm to let him share the occasional meal with them. Might be good for her father too, to have another male at the dinner table now and again. The two of them had always got on well, before all the upheaval. She opened her mouth to suggest it.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘there’s something I wanted to tell you.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve met someone,’ he said lightly. ‘Well, I’ve actually known her a while, but we’ve recently … got close.’
Close. ‘Oh,’ Sarah said again. ‘Well, that’s good. I’m pleased for you.’
‘I thought I should mention it.’
‘Yes, of course … Thank you.’
‘I’d like the children to meet her. Would that be OK?’
‘Of course, yes, that’s fine. That would be fine.’ The words coming out in terribly polite little bursts. ‘Of course it is. Absolutely.’
‘Alright then. Maybe next weekend.’
He nodded and got into the car, and she stood there with what she hoped was a perfectly normal smile on her face until he’d driven off. And then she stood there some more.
They’d been apart for almost three years. She’d told him she didn’t love him, that she didn’t want to be married to him any more. She’d sent him away. They were living separate lives, they’d both moved on. And now he’d met someone else, and he wanted the children to meet her, which meant, which had to mean, that it was serious, or becoming serious.
It was perfectly natural for Sarah to feel a little put out. It was human nature, wasn’t it? Wanting to be wanted, even by the person you’d spurned. Wanting that door to remain ajar, to feel that there was still an infinitesimal chance that some day—
No. She turned abruptly and
went back in through the gate, banging it behind her.
‘I
don’t suppose,’ he said, two months after their first night together, ‘you’d like to marry me.’
Helen stopped typing and looked across the kitchen table at him. He was eyeing her over his reading glasses, the newspaper spread open in front of him. It was the middle of the afternoon.
Although he hadn’t officially moved in, he was spending most nights with her. His two inherited cats, which had taken up residence when Helen hadn’t been looking, sat on the windowsill, purring out at the pathetic April sun.
‘Pardon?’
He took off his glasses and laid them on the paper. ‘We just seem to be heading in that direction.’
Helen smiled.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ he said, reaching for his glasses again. ‘Make the arrangements and let me know.’
She continued to watch him for a minute. When he turned a page, she got to her feet and walked around the table and stood beside his chair.
‘Get up.’
He got up.
She looked into his
eyes, their faces inches apart. ‘Call that a proposal?’