Thanks for the Memories
Cecelia Ahern

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

This edition published by Harper 2016

Copyright © Cecelia Ahern 2008

Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cecelia Ahern asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operationa at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007233694

Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN: 9780007283347

Version: 2017-10-06

Praise for Cecelia Ahern

‘Cecelia Ahern’s novels are like a box of emeralds … they are, one and all, dazzling gems’

Adriana Trigiani, author of The Shoemaker’s Wife

‘Beautiful and unexpected … both thought-provoking and life-affirming’

Sunday Express

‘Intricate and emotional … really completely lovely’

Grazia

‘A wry, dark drama’

Daily Mail

‘Life-affirming, warm and wise’

Good Housekeeping

‘Cecelia Ahern is an undisputed master when it comes to writing about relationships … Moving, real and exquisitely crafted.’

Heat

‘Exceptional … both heartbreaking and uplifting’

Daily Express

‘Both moving and thought-provoking’

Irish Independent

‘An exquisitely crafted and poignant tale about finding the beauty that lies within the ordinary. Make space for it in your life’

Heat

‘An unusual and satisfying novel’

Woman

‘Ahern cleverly and thoughtfully turns the tables, providing thought-provoking life lessons.’

Sunday Express

‘An intriguing, heartfelt novel, which makes you think about the value of life’

Glamour

‘Insightful and true’

Irish Independent

‘Ahern demonstrates a sure and subtle understanding of the human condition and the pleasures and pains in relationships’

Barry Forshaw

‘Utterly irresistible … I devoured it in one sitting’

Marian Keyes

‘The legendary Ahern will keep you guessing … a classic’

Company

Dedication

Dedicated, with love, to my grandparents,

Olive & Raphael Kelly and Julia & Con Ahern,

Thanks for the Memories

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Cecelia Ahern

Dedication

Prologue

One Month Earlier

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Present Day

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

One Month Later

Chapter Forty-Three

Keep Reading…

Exclusive Extract

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Cecelia Ahern

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Close your eyes and stare into the dark.

My father’s advice when I couldn’t sleep as a little girl. He wouldn’t want me to do that now but I’ve set my mind to the task regardless. I’m staring into that immeasurable blackness that stretches far beyond my closed eyelids. Though I lie still on the ground, I feel perched at the highest point I could possibly be; clutching at a star in the night sky with my legs dangling above cold black nothingness. I take one last look at my fingers wrapped around the light and let go. Down I go, falling, then floating, and, falling again, I wait for the land of my life.

I know now, as I knew as that little girl fighting sleep, that behind the gauzed screen of shut-eye, lies colour. It taunts me, dares me to open my eyes and lose sleep. Flashes of red and amber, yellow and white speckle my darkness. I refuse to open them. I rebel and I squeeze my eyelids together tighter to block out the grains of light, mere distractions that keep us awake but a sign that there’s life beyond.

But there’s no life in me. None that I can feel, from where I lie at the bottom of the staircase. My heart beats quicker now, the lone fighter left standing in the ring, a red boxing glove pumping victoriously into the air, refusing to give up. It’s the only part of me that cares, the only part that ever cared. It fights to pump the blood around to heal, to replace what I’m losing. But it’s all leaving my body as quickly as it’s sent; forming a deep black ocean of its own around me where I’ve fallen.

Rushing, rushing, rushing. We are always rushing. Never have enough time here, always trying to make our way there. Need to have left here five minutes ago, need to be there now. The phone rings again and I acknowledge the irony. I could have taken my time and answered it now.

Now, not then.

I could have taken all the time in the world on each of those steps. But we’re always rushing. All, but my heart. That slows now. I don’t mind so much. I place my hand on my belly. If my child is gone, and I suspect this is so, I’ll join it there. There … where? Wherever. It; a heartless word. He or she so young; who it was to become, still a question. But there, I will mother it.

There, not here.

I’ll tell it: I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m sorry I ruined your chances, my chance – our chance of a life together. But close your eyes and stare into the darkness now, like Mummy is doing, and we’ll find our way together.

There’s a noise in the room and I feel a presence.

‘Oh God, Joyce, oh God. Can you hear me, love? Oh God. Oh God. Oh, please no, Good Lord, not my Joyce, don’t take my Joyce. Hold on, love, I’m here. Dad is here.’

I don’t want to hold on and I feel like telling him so. I hear myself groan, an animal-like whimper and it shocks me, scares me. I have a plan, I want to tell him. I want to go, only then can I be with my baby.

Then, not now.

He’s stopped me from falling but I haven’t landed yet. Instead he helps me balance on nothing, hover while I’m forced to make the decision. I want to keep falling but he’s calling the ambulance and he’s gripping my hand with such ferocity it’s as though it is he who is hanging on to dear life. As though I’m all he has. He’s brushing the hair from my forehead and weeping loudly. I’ve never heard him weep. Not even when Mum died. He clings to my hand with all of the strength I never knew his old body had and I remember that I am all he has and that he, once again just like before, is my whole world. The blood continues to rush through me. Rushing, rushing, rushing. We are always rushing. Maybe I’m rushing again. Maybe it’s not my time to go.

I feel the rough skin of old hands squeezing mine, and their intensity and their familiarity force me to open my eyes. Light fills them and I glimpse his face, a look I never want to see again. He clings to his baby. I know I’ve lost mine; I can’t let him lose his. In making my decision I already begin to grieve. I’ve landed now, the land of my life. And, still, my heart pumps on.

Even when broken it still works.

One Month Earlier

ONE

‘Blood transfusion,’ Dr Fields announces from the podium of a lecture hall in Trinity College’s Arts building, ‘is the process of transferring blood or blood-based products from one person into the circulatory system of another. Blood transfusions may treat medical conditions, such as massive blood loss due to trauma, surgery, shock and where the red-cell-producing mechanism fails.

‘Here are the facts. Three thousand donations are needed in Ireland every week. Only three per cent of the Irish population are donors, providing blood for a population of almost four million. One in four people will need a transfusion at some point. Take a look around the room now.’

Five hundred heads turn left, right and around. Uncomfortable sniggers break the silence.

Dr Fields elevates her voice over the disruption. ‘At least one hundred and fifty people in this room will need a blood transfusion at some stage in their lives.’

That silences them. A hand is raised.

‘Yes?’

‘How much blood does a patient need?’

‘How long is a piece of string, dumb-ass,’ a voice from the back mocks, and a scrunched ball of paper flies at the head of the young male enquirer.

‘It’s a very good question.’ She frowns into the darkness, unable to see the students through the light of the projector. ‘Who asked that?’

‘Mr Dover,’ someone calls from the other side of the room.

‘I’m sure Mr Dover can answer for himself. What’s your first name?’

‘Ben,’ he responds, sounding dejected.

Laughter erupts. Dr Fields sighs.

‘Ben, thank you for your question – and to the rest of you, there is no such thing as a stupid question. This is what Blood For Life Week is all about. It’s about asking all the questions you want, learning all you need to know about blood transfusions before you possibly donate today, tomorrow, the remaining days of this week on campus, or maybe regularly in your future.’

The main door opens and light streams into the dark lecture hall. Justin Hitchcock enters, the concentration on his face illuminated by the white light of the projector. Under one arm are multiple piles of folders, each one slipping by the second. A knee shoots up to hoist them back in place. His right hand carries both an overstuffed briefcase and a dangerously balanced Styrofoam cup of coffee. He slowly lowers his hovering foot down to the floor, as though performing a t’ai chi move, and a relieved smile creeps onto his face as calm is restored. Somebody sniggers and the balancing act is once again compromised.

Hold it, Justin. Move your eyes away from the cup and assess the situation. Woman on podium, five hundred kids. All staring at you. Say something. Something intelligent.

‘I’m confused,’ he announces to the darkness, behind which he senses some sort of life form. There are twitters in the room and he feels all eyes on him as he moves back towards the door to check the number.

Don’t spill the coffee. Don’t spill the damn coffee.

He opens the door, allowing shafts of light to sneak in again and the students in its line shade their eyes.

Twitter, twitter, nothing funnier than a lost man.

Laden down with items, he manages to hold the door open with his leg. He looks back to the number on the outside of the door and then back to his sheet, the sheet that, if he doesn’t grab it that very second, will float to the ground. He makes a move to grab it. Wrong hand. Styrofoam cup of coffee falls to the ground. Closely followed by sheet of paper.

Damn it! There they go again, twitter, twitter. Nothing funnier than a lost man who’s spilled his coffee and dropped his schedule.

‘Can I help you?’ The lecturer steps down from the podium.

Justin brings his entire body back into the classroom and darkness resumes.

‘Well, it says here … well, it said there,’ he nods his head towards the sodden sheet on the ground, ‘that I have a class here now.’

‘Enrolment for international students is in the exam hall.’

He frowns. ‘No, I—’

‘I’m sorry.’ She comes closer. ‘I thought I heard an American accent.’ She picks up the Styrofoam cup and throws it into the bin, over which a sign reads ‘No Drinks Allowed’.

‘Ah … oh … sorry about that.’

‘Mature students are next door.’ She adds in a whisper, ‘Trust me, you don’t want to join this class.’

Justin clears his throat and corrects his posture, tucking the folders tighter under his arm. ‘Actually I’m lecturing the History of Art and Architecture class.’

‘You’re lecturing?’

‘Guest lecturing. Believe it or not.’ He blows his hair up from his sticky forehead. A haircut, remember to get a haircut. There they go again, twitter, twitter. A lost lecturer, who’s spilled his coffee, dropped his schedule, is about to lose his folders and needs a haircut. Definitely nothing funnier.

‘Professor Hitchcock?’

‘That’s me.’ He feels the folders slipping from under his arm.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she whispers. ‘I didn’t know …’ She catches a folder for him. ‘I’m Dr Sarah Fields from the IBTS. The Faculty told me that I could have a half-hour with the students before your lecture, your permission pending, of course.’

‘Oh, well, nobody informed me of that, but that’s no problemo.’ Problemo? He shakes his head at himself and makes for the door. Starbucks, here I come.

‘Professor Hitchcock?’

He stops at the door. ‘Yes.’

‘Would you like to join us?’

I most certainly would not. There’s a cappuccino and cinnamon muffin with my name on them. No. Just say no.

‘Um … nn–es.’ Nes? ‘I mean yes.’

Twitter, twitter, twitter. Lecturer caught out. Forced into doing something he clearly didn’t want to do by attractive young woman in white coat claiming to be a doctor of an unfamiliar initialised organisation.

‘Great. Welcome.’ She places the folders back under his arm and returns to the podium to address the students.

‘OK, attention, everybody. Back to the initial question of blood quantities. A car accident victim may require up to thirty units of blood. A bleeding ulcer could require anything between three and thirty units of blood. A coronary artery bypass may use between one and five units of blood. It varies, but with such quantities needed, now you see why we always want donors.’

Justin takes a seat in the front row and listens with horror to the discussion he’s joined.

‘Does anybody have any questions?’

Can you change the subject?

‘Do you get paid for giving blood?’

More laughs.

‘Not in this country, I’m afraid.’

‘Does the person who is given blood know who their donor is?’

‘Donations are usually anonymous to the recipient but products in a blood bank are always individually traceable through the cycle of donation, testing, separation into components, storage and administration to the recipient.’

‘Can anyone give blood?’

‘Good question. I have a list here of contraindications to being a blood donor. Please all study it carefully and take notes if you wish.’ Dr Fields places her sheet under the projector and her white coat lights up with a rather graphic picture of someone in dire need of a donation. She steps away and instead it fills the screen on the wall.

People groan and the word ‘gross’ travels around the tiered seating like a Mexican wave. Twice by Justin. Dizziness overtakes him and he averts his eyes from the image.

‘Oops, wrong sheet,’ Dr Fields says cheekily, slowly replacing it with the promised list.

Justin searches with great hope for needle or blood phobia in an effort to eliminate himself as a possible blood donor. No such luck – not that it mattered, as the chances of him donating a drop of blood to anyone are as rare as ideas in the morning.

‘Too bad, Dover.’ Another scrunched ball of paper goes flying from the back of the hall to hit Ben’s head again. ‘Gay people can’t donate.’

Ben coolly raises two fingers in the air.

‘That’s discriminatory,’ one girl calls out.

‘It is also a discussion for another day,’ Dr Fields responds, moving on. ‘Remember, your body will replace the liquid part of the donation within twenty-four hours. With a unit of blood at almost a pint and everyone having eight to twelve pints of blood in their body, the average person can easily spare giving one.’

Pockets of juvenile laughter at the innuendo.

‘Everybody, please.’ Dr Fields claps her hands, trying desperately to get attention. ‘Blood For Life Week is all about education as much as donation. It’s all well and good that we can have a laugh and a joke but at this time I think it’s important to note the fact that someone’s life, be it woman, man or child, could be depending on you right now.’

How quickly silence falls upon the class. Even Justin stops talking to himself.

TWO

‘Professor Hitchcock.’ Dr Fields approaches Justin, who is arranging his notes at the podium while the students take a five-minute break.

‘Please call me Justin, Doctor.’

‘Please call me Sarah.’ She holds out her hand.

Very ‘Nice to meet you, Sarah.’

‘I just want to make sure we’ll see each other later?’

‘Later?’

‘Yes, later. As in … after your lecture,’ she smiles.

Is she flirting? It’s been so long, how am I supposed to tell? Speak, Justin, speak.

‘Great. A date would be great.’

She purses her lips to hide a smile. ‘OK, I’ll meet you at the main entrance at six and I’ll bring you across myself.’

‘Bring me across where?’

‘To where we’ve got the blood drive set up. It’s beside the rugby pitch but I’d prefer to bring you over myself.’

‘The blood drive …’ He’s immediately flooded with dread. ‘Ah, I don’t think that—’

‘And then we’ll go for a drink after?’

‘You know what? I’m just getting over the flu so I don’t think I’m eligible for donating.’ He parts his hands and shrugs.

‘Are you on antibiotics?’

‘No, but that’s a good idea, Sarah. Maybe I should be …’ He rubs his throat.

‘Oh, I think you’ll be OK,’ she grins.

‘No, you see, I’ve been around some pretty infectious diseases lately. Malaria, smallpox, the whole lot. I was in a very tropical area.’ He remembers the list of contraindications. ‘And my brother, Al? Yeah, he’s a leper.’ Lame, lame, lame.

‘Really.’ She lifts an eyebrow and though he fights it with all his will, he cracks a smile. ‘How long ago did you leave the States?’

Think hard, this could be a trick question. ‘I moved to London three months ago,’ he finally answers truthfully.

‘Oh, lucky for you. If it was two months you wouldn’t be eligible.’

‘Now hold on, let me think …’ He scratches his chin and thinks hard, randomly mumbling months of the year aloud. ‘Maybe it was two months ago. If I work backwards from when I arrived …’ He trails off, while counting his fingers and staring off into the distance with a concentrated frown.

‘Are you afraid, Professor Hitchcock?’ she smiles.

‘Afraid? No!’ He throws his head back and guffaws. ‘But did I mention I have malaria?’ He sighs at her failure to take him seriously. ‘Well, I’m all out of ideas.’

‘I’ll see you at the entrance at six. Oh, and don’t forget to eat beforehand.’

‘Of course, because I’ll be ravenous before my date with a giant homicidal needle,’ he mumbles as he watches her leave.

The students begin filing back into the room and he tries to hide the smile of pleasure on his face, mixed as it is. Finally the class is his.

OK, my little twittering friends. It’s pay-back time.

They’re not yet all seated when he begins.

‘Art,’ he announces to the lecture hall, and he hears the sounds of pencils and notepads being extracted from bags, loud zips and buckles, tin pencil cases rattling; all new for the first day. Squeaky-clean and untarnished. Shame the same can not be said for the students. ‘The products of human creativity.’ He doesn’t stall to allow them time to catch up. In fact, it is time to have a little fun. His speech speeds up.

‘The creation of beautiful or significant things.’ He paces as he speaks, still hearing zipping sounds and rattling.

‘Sir, could you say that again ple—’

‘No,’ he interrupts. ‘Engineering,’ he moves on, ‘the practical application of science to commerce or industry.’ Total silence now.

‘Creativity and practicality. The fruit of their merger is architecture.’

Faster, Justin, faster!

‘Architecture-is-the-transformation-of-ideas-into-a-physical-reality. The-complex-and-carefully-designed-structure-of-something-especially-with-regard-to-a-specific-period. To-understand-architecture-we-must-examine-the-relationship-between-technology-science-and-society.’

‘Sir, can you—’

‘No.’ But he slows slightly. ‘We examine how architecture through the centuries has been shaped by society, how it continues to be shaped, but also how it, in turn, shapes society.’

He pauses, looking around at the youthful faces staring up at him, their minds empty vessels waiting to be filled. So much to learn, so little time to do it in, such little passion within them to understand it truly. It is his job to give them passion. To share with them his experiences of travel, his knowledge of all the great masterpieces of centuries ago. He will transport them from the stuffy lecture theatre of the prestigious Dublin college to the rooms of the Louvre Museum, hear the echoes of their footsteps as he walks them through the Cathedral of St-Denis, to St-Germain-des-Prés and St-Pierre de Montmartre. They’ll know not only dates and statistics but the smell of Picasso’s paints, the feel of baroque marble, the sound of the bells of Notre-Dame Cathedral. They’ll experience it all, right here in this classroom. He will bring it all to them.

They’re staring at you, Justin. Say something.

He clears his throat. ‘This course will teach you how to analyse works of art and how to understand their historical significance. It will enable you to develop an awareness of the environment while also providing you with a deeper sensitivity to the culture and ideals of other nations. You will cover a broad range: history of painting, sculpture and architecture from Ancient Greece to modern times; early Irish art; the painters of the Italian Renaissance; the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe; the architectural splendours of the Georgian era and the artistic achievements of the twentieth century.’

He allows a silence to fall.

Are they filled with regret on hearing what lay ahead of them for the next four years of their lives? Or do their hearts beat wildly with excitement as his does, just thinking about all that is to come? Even after all these years, he still feels the same enthusiasm for the buildings, paintings and sculptures of the world. His exhilaration often leaves him breathless during lectures; he has to remember to slow down, not to tell them everything at once. Though he wants them to know everything, right now!

He looks again at their faces and has an epiphany.

You have them! They’re hanging on your every word, just waiting to hear more. You’ve done it, they’re in your grasp!

Someone farts and the room explodes with laughter.

He sighs, his bubble burst, and continues his talk in a bored tone. ‘My name is Justin Hitchcock and in my special guest lectures scattered throughout the course, you will study the introduction to European painting such as the Italian Renaissance and French Impressionism. This includes the critical analysis of paintings, the importance of iconography and the various technical methods used by artists from the Book of Kells to modern day. There’ll also be an introduction to European architecture. Greek temples to the present day, blah blah blah. Two volunteers to help me hand these out, please.’

And so it was another year. He wasn’t at home in Chicago now; he had chased his ex-wife and daughter to live in London and was flying back and forth between there and Dublin for his guest lectures. A different country perhaps but another class of the same. First week and giddy. Another group displaying an immature lack of understanding of his passions; a deliberate turning of their backs on the possibility – no, not the possibility, the surety – of learning something wonderful and great.

It doesn’t matter what you say now, pal, from here on in the only thing they’ll go home remembering is the fart.

THREE

‘What is it about fart jokes, Bea?’

‘Oh, hi, Dad.’

‘What kind of a greeting is that?’

‘Oh, gee whizz, wow, Dad, so great to hear from you. It’s been, what, ah shucks, three hours since you last phoned?’

‘Fine, you don’t have to go all porky pig on me. Is your darling mother home yet from a day out at her new life?’

‘Yes, she’s home.’

‘And has she brought the delightful Laurence back with her?’ He can’t hold back his sarcasm, which he hates himself for but, unwilling to withdraw it and incapable of apologising, he does what he always does, which is to run with it, therefore making it worse. ‘Laurence,’ he drawls, ‘Laurence of A—inguinal hernia.’

‘Oh, you’re such a geek. Would you ever give up talking about his trouser leg,’ she sighs with boredom.

Justin kicks off the scratchy blanket of the cheap Dublin hotel he’s staying in. ‘Really, Bea, check it next time he’s around. Those trousers are far too tight for what he’s got going on down there. There should be a name for that. Something-itis.’

Balls-a-titis.

‘There are only four TV channels in this dump, one in a language I don’t even understand. It sounds like they’re clearing their throats after one of your mother’s terrible coq-au-vins. You know, in my wonderful home back in Chicago, I had over two hundred channels.’ Dick-a-titis. Dickhead-a-titis. Ha!

‘Of which none you watched.’

‘But one had a choice not to watch those deplorable house-fixer-upper channels and music channels of naked women dancing around.’

‘I appreciate one going through such an upheaval, Dad. It must be very traumatic for you, a sort-of grown man, while I, at sixteen years old, had to take this huge life adjustment of parents getting divorced and a move from Chicago to London all in my stride.’

‘You got two houses and extra presents, what do you care?’ he grumbles. ‘And it was your idea.’

‘It was my idea to go to ballet school in London, not for your marriage to end!’

‘Oh, ballet school. I thought you said, “Break up, you fool.” My mistake. Think we should move back to Chicago and get back together?’

‘Nah.’ He hears the smile in her voice and knows it’s OK.

‘Hey, you think I was going to stay in Chicago while you’re all the way over this side of the world?’

‘You’re not even in the same country right now,’ she laughs.

‘Ireland is just a work trip. I’ll be back in London in a few days. Honestly, Bea, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be,’ he assures her.

Though a Four Seasons would be nice.

‘I’m thinking of moving in with Peter,’ she says far too casually.

‘So what is it about fart jokes?’ he asks again, ignoring her. ‘I mean what is it about the sound of expelling air that can stop people from being interested in some of the most incredible masterpieces ever created?’

‘I take it you don’t want to talk about me moving in with Peter?’

‘You’re a child. You and Peter can move into the wendy house, which I still have in storage. I’ll set it up in the living room. It’ll be real nice and cosy.’

‘I’m eighteen. Not a child any more. I’ve lived alone away from home for two years now.’

‘One year alone. Your mother left me alone the second year to join you, remember.’

‘You and Mum met at my age.’

‘And we did not live happily ever after. Stop imitating us and write your own fairy tale.’

‘I would, if my overprotective father would stop butting in with his version of how the story should go.’ Bea sighs and steers the conversation back to safer territory. ‘Why are your students laughing at fart jokes, anyway? I thought your seminar was a one-off for postgrads who’d elected to choose your boring subject. Though why anybody would do that, is beyond me. You lecturing me on Peter is boring enough and I love him.’

Love! Ignore it and she’ll forget what she said.

‘It wouldn’t be beyond you, if you’d listen to me when I talk. Along with my postgraduate classes, I was asked to speak to first-year students throughout the year too, an agreement I may live to regret, but no matter. On to my day job and far more pressing matters, I’m planning an exhibition at the Gallery on Dutch painting in the seventeenth century. You should come see it.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Well, maybe my postgrads over the next few months will be more appreciative of my expertise.’

‘You know, your students may have laughed at the fart joke but I bet at least a quarter of them donated blood.’

‘They only did it because they heard they’d get a free KitKat afterward,’ Justin huffs, rooting through the insufficiently filled mini-bar. ‘You’re angry at me for not giving blood?’

‘I think you’re an asshole for standing up that woman.’

‘Don’t use the word “asshole”, Bea. Anyway, who told you that I stood her up?’

‘Uncle Al.’

‘Uncle Al is an asshole. And you know what else, honey? You know what the good doctor said today about donating blood?’ He struggles with opening the film on the top of a Pringles box.

‘What?’ Bea yawns.

‘That the donation is anonymous to the recipient. Hear that? Anonymous. So what’s the point in saving someone’s life if they don’t even know you’re the one who saved them?’

‘Dad!’

‘What? Come on, Bea. Lie to me and tell me you wouldn’t want a bouquet of flowers for saving someone’s life?’

Bea protests but he continues.

‘Or a little basket of those, whaddaya call ’em muffins that you like, coconut—’

‘Cinnamon,’ she laughs, finally giving in.

‘A little basket of cinnamon muffins outside your front door with a little note tucked into the basket saying, “Thanks, Bea, for saving my life. Anytime you want anything done, like your dry cleaning picked up, or your newspaper and a coffee delivered to your front door every morning, a chauffeur-driven car for your own personal use, front-row tickets to the opera …” Oh the list could go on and on.’

He gives up pulling at the film and instead picks up a corkscrew and stabs the top. ‘It could be like one of those Chinese things; you know the way someone saves your life and then you’re forever indebted to them. It could be nice having someone tailing you everyday; catching pianos flying out of windows and stopping them from landing on your head, that kind of thing.’

Bea calms herself. ‘I hope you’re joking.’

‘Yeah, of course I’m joking.’ Justin makes a face. ‘The piano would surely kill them and that would be unfair.’

He finally pulls open the Pringles lid and throws the corkscrew across the room. It hits a glass on top of the minibar and it smashes.

‘What was that?’

‘House-cleaning,’ he lies. ‘You think I’m selfish, don’t you?’

‘Dad, you uprooted your life, left a great job, nice apartment and flew thousands of miles to another country just to be near me, of course I don’t think you’re selfish.’

Justin smiles and pops a Pringle into his mouth.

‘But if you’re not joking about the muffin basket, then you’re definitely selfish. And if it was Blood For Life Week in my college, I would have taken part. But you have the opportunity to make it up to that woman.’

‘I just feel like I’m being bullied into this entire thing. I was going to get my hair cut tomorrow, not have people stab at my veins.’

‘Don’t give blood if you don’t want to, I don’t care. But remember, if you do it, a tiny little needle isn’t gonna kill you. In fact, the opposite may happen, it might save someone’s life and you never know, that person could follow you around for the rest of your life leaving muffin baskets outside your door and catching pianos before they fall on your head. Now wouldn’t that be nice?’

FOUR

In a blood drive beside Trinity College’s rugby pitch, Justin tries to hide his shaking hands from Sarah, while handing over his consent form and ‘Health and Lifestyle’ questionnaire, which frankly discloses far more about him than he’d reveal on a date. She smiles encouragingly and talks him through everything as though giving blood is the most normal thing in the world.

‘Now I just need to ask you a few questions. Have you read, understood and completed the health and lifestyle questionnaire?’

Justin nods, words failing him in his clogged throat.

‘And is all the information you’ve provided true and accurate to the best of your knowledge?’

‘Why?’ he croaks. ‘Does it not look right to you? Because if it doesn’t I can always leave and come back again another time.’

She smiles at him with the same look his mother wore before tucking him into bed and turning off the light.

‘OK, we’re all set. I’m just going to do a haemoglobin test,’ she explains.

‘Does that check for diseases?’ He looks around nervously at the equipment in the van. Please don’t let me have any diseases. That would be too embarrassing. Not likely anyway. Can you even remember the last time you had sex?

‘No, this just measures the iron in your blood.’ She takes a pinprick of blood from the pad of his finger. ‘Blood is tested later for diseases and STDs.’

‘Must be handy for checking up on boyfriends,’ he jokes, feeling sweat tickle his upper lip. He studies his finger.

She quietens as she carries out the quick test.

Justin lies supine on a cushioned bench and extends his left arm. Sarah wraps a pressure cuff around his upper arm, making the veins more prominent, and she disinfects his inner elbow.

Don’t look at the needle, don’t look at the needle.

He looks at the needle and the ground swirls beneath him. His throat tightens.

‘Is this going to hurt?’ Justin swallows hard as his shirt clings to his saturated back.

‘Just a little sting,’ she smiles, approaching him with a cannula in her hand.

He smells her sweet perfume and it distracts him momentarily. As she leans over, he sees down her V-neck sweater. A black lace bra.

‘I want you to take this in your hand and squeeze it repeatedly.’

‘What?’ he laughs nervously.

‘The ball,’ she smiles.

‘Oh.’ He takes a small soft ball into his hand. ‘What does this do?’ His voice shakes.

‘It’s to help speed up the process.’

He pumps at top speed.

Sarah laughs. ‘Not yet. And not that fast, Justin.’

Sweat rolls down his back. His hair sticks to his sticky forehead. You should have gone for the haircut, Justin. What kind of a stupid idea was this—‘Ouch.’

‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ she says softly, as though talking to a child.

Justin’s heart beats loudly in his ears. He pumps the ball in his hand to the rhythm of his heartbeat. He imagines his heart pumping the blood, the blood flowing through his veins. He sees it reach the needle, go through the tube and he waits to feel faint. But the dizziness never comes and so he watches his blood run through the tube and down under the bed into the collection bag she has thoughtfully hidden below the bed on a scale.

‘Do I get a KitKat after this?’

She laughs. ‘Of course.’

‘And then we get to go for drinks or are you just using me for my body?’

‘Drinks are fine, but I must warn you against doing anything strenuous today. Your body needs to recover.’

He catches sight of her lace bra again. Yeah, sure.

Fifteen minutes later, Justin looks at his pint of blood with pride. He doesn’t want it to go to some stranger, he almost wants to bring it to the hospital himself, survey the wards and present it to someone he really cares about, someone special, for it’s the first thing to come straight from his heart in a very long time.

Present Day

FIVE

I open my eyes slowly.

White light fills them. Slowly, objects come into focus and the white light fades. Orangey pink now. I move my eyes around. I’m in a hospital. A television high up on the wall. Green fills its screen. I focus more. Horses. Jumping and racing. Dad must be in the room. I lower my eyes and there he is with his back to me in an armchair. He thumps his fists lightly on the chair’s arms, I see his tweed cap appearing and disappearing behind the back of the chair as he bounces up and down. The springs beneath him squeak.

The horse racing is silent. So is he. Like a silent movie being carried out before me, I watch him. I wonder if it’s my ears that aren’t allowing me to hear him. He springs out of his chair now faster than I’ve seen him move in a long time, and he raises his fist at the television, quietly urging his horse on.

The television goes black. His two fists open and he raises his hands up in the air, looks up to the ceiling and beseeches God. He puts his hands in his pockets, feels around and pulls the material out. They’re empty and the pockets of his brown trousers hang inside out for all to see. He pats down his chest, feeling for money. Checks the small pocket of his brown cardigan. Grumbles. So it’s not my ears.

He turns to feel around in his overcoat beside me and I shut my eyes quickly.

I’m not ready yet. Nothing has happened to me until they tell me. Last night will remain a nightmare in my mind until they tell me it was true. The longer I close my eyes, the longer everything remains as it was. The bliss of ignorance.

I hear him rooting around in his overcoat, I hear change rattling and I hear the clunk as the coins fall into the television. I risk opening my eyes again and there he is back in his armchair, cap bouncing up and down, pounding his fists against the air.

My curtain is closed to my right but I can tell I share a room with others. I don’t know how many. It’s quiet. There’s no air in the room; it’s stuffy with stale sweat. The giant windows that take up the entire wall to my left are closed. The light is so bright I can’t see out. I allow my eyes to adjust and finally I see. A bus stop across the road. A woman waits by the stop, shopping bags by her feet and on her hip sits a baby, bare chubby legs bouncing in the Indian summer sun. I look away immediately. Dad is watching me. He is leaning out over the side of the armchair, twisting his head around, like a child from his cot.

‘Hi, love.’

‘Hi.’ I feel I haven’t spoken for such a long time, and I expect to croak. But I don’t. My voice is pure, pours out like honey. Like nothing’s happened. But nothing has happened. Not yet. Not until they tell me.

With both hands on the arms of the chair he slowly pulls himself up. Like a seesaw, he makes his way over to the side of the bed. Up and down, down and up. He was born with a leg length discrepancy, his left leg longer than his right. Despite the special shoes he was given in later years, he still sways, the motion instilled in him since he learned to walk. He hates wearing those shoes and, despite our warnings and his back pains, he goes back to what he knows. I’m so used to the sight of his body going up and down, down and up. I recall as a child holding his hand and going for walks. How my arm would move in perfect rhythm with him. Being pulled up as he stepped down on his right leg, being pushed down as he stepped on his left.

He was always so strong. Always so capable. Always fixing things. Lifting things, mending things. Always with a screwdriver in his hand, taking things apart and putting them back together – remote controls, radios, alarm clocks, plugs. A handiman for the entire street. His legs were uneven, but his hands, always and for ever, steady as a rock.

He takes his cap off as he nears me, clutches it with both hands, moves it around in circles like a steering wheel as he watches me with concern. He steps onto his right leg and down he goes. Bends his left leg. His position of rest.

‘Are you … em … they told me that … eh.’ He clears his throat. ‘They told me to …’ He swallows hard and his thick messy eyebrows furrow and hide his glassy eyes. ‘You lost … you lost, em …’

My lower lip trembles.

His voice breaks when he speaks again. ‘You lost a lot of blood, Joyce. They …’ He lets go of his cap with one hand and makes circular motions with his crooked finger, trying to remember. ‘They did a transfusion of the blood thingy on you so you’re em … you’re OK with your bloods now.’

My lower lip still trembles and my hands automatically go to my belly, not long enough gone to even show swelling under the blankets. I look to him hopefully, only realising now how much I am still holding on, how much I have convinced myself the awful incident in the labour room was all a terrible nightmare. Perhaps I imagined my baby’s silence that filled the room in that final moment. Perhaps there were cries that I just didn’t hear. Of course it’s possible – by that stage I had little energy and was fading away – maybe I just didn’t hear the first little miraculous breath of life that everybody else witnessed.

Dad shakes his head sadly. No, it had been me that had made those screams instead.

My lip trembles more now, bounces up and down and I can’t stop it. My body shakes terribly and I can’t stop it either. The tears; they well, but I stop them from falling. If I start now I know I will never stop.

I’m making a noise. An unusual noise I’ve never heard before. Groaning. Grunting. A combination of both. Dad grabs my hand and holds it hard. The feel of his skin brings me back to last night, me lying at the end of the stairs. He doesn’t say anything. But what can a person say? I don’t even know.

I doze in and out. I wake and remember a conversation with a doctor and wonder if it was a dream. Lost your baby, Joyce, we did all we could … blood transfusion … Who needs to remember something like that? No one. Not me.

When I wake again the curtain beside me has been pulled open. There are three small children running around, chasing one another around the bed while their father, I assume, calls to them to stop in a language I don’t recognise. Their mother, I assume, lies in bed. She looks tired. We catch eyes and smile at one another.

I know how you feel, her sad smile says, I know how you feel.

What are we going to do? my smile says back to her.

I don’t know, her eyes say. I don’t know.

Will we be OK?

She turns her head away from me, her smile gone.

Dad calls over to them. ‘Where are you lot from then?’

‘Excuse me?’ her husband asks.

‘I said where are you lot from then?’ Dad repeats. ‘Not from around here, I see.’ Dad’s voice is cheery and pleasant. No insults intended. No insults ever intended.

‘We are from Nigeria,’ the man responds.

‘Nigeria,’ Dad replies. ‘Where would that be then?’

‘In Africa.’ The man’s tone is pleasant too. Just an old man starved of conversation, trying to be friendly, he realises.

‘Ah, Africa. Never been there myself. Is it hot there? I’d say it is. Hotter than here. Get a good tan, I’d say, not that you need it,’ he laughs. ‘Do you get cold here?’

‘Cold?’ the African smiles.

‘Yes, you know.’ Dad wraps his arms around his body and pretends to shiver. ‘Cold?’

‘Yes,’ the man laughs. ‘Sometimes I do.’

‘Thought so. I do too and I’m from here,’ Dad explains. ‘The chill gets right into my bones. But I’m not a great one for heat either. Skin goes red, just burns. My daughter, Joyce, goes brown. That’s her over there.’ He points at me and I close my eyes quickly.

‘A lovely daughter,’ the man says politely.

‘Ah, she is.’ Silence while I assume they watch me. ‘She was on one of those Spanish islands a few months back and came back black, she did. Well, not as black as you, you know, but she got a fair ol’ tan on her. Peeled, though. You probably don’t peel.’

The man laughs politely. That’s Dad. Never means any harm but has never left the country in his entire life. A fear of flying holds him back. Or so he says.

‘Anyway, I hope your lovely lady feels better soon. It’s an awful thing to be sick on your holliers.’

With that I open my eyes.

‘Ah, welcome back, love. I was just talking to these nice neighbours of ours.’ He seesaws up to me again, his cap in his hands. Rests on his right leg, goes down, bends his left leg. ‘You know I think we’re the only Irish people in this hospital. The nurse that was here a minute ago, she’s from Sing-a-song or someplace like that.’

‘Singapore, Dad,’ I smile.

‘That’s it.’ He raises his eyebrows. ‘You met her already, did you? They all speak English, though, the foreigners do. Sure, isn’t that better than being on your holidays and having to do all that signed-languagey stuff.’ He puts his cap down on the bed and wiggles his fingers around.

‘Dad,’ I smile, ‘you’ve never been out of the country in your life.’

‘Haven’t I heard the lads at the Monday Club talking about it? Frank was away in that place last week – oh, what’s that place?’ He shuts his eyes and thinks hard. ‘The place where they make the chocolates?’

‘Switzerland.’

‘No.’

‘Belgium.’

‘No,’ he says, frustrated now. ‘The little round ball-y things all crunchy inside. You can get the white ones now but I prefer the original dark ones.’

‘Maltesers?’ I laugh, but feel pain and stop.

‘That’s it. He was in Maltesers.’

‘Dad, it’s Malta.’

‘That’s it. He was in Malta.’ He is silent. ‘Do they make Maltesers?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. So what happened to Frank in Malta?’

He squeezes his eyes shut again and thinks. ‘I can’t remember what I was about to say now.’

Silence. He hates not being able to remember. He used to remember everything.

‘Did you make any money on the horses?’ I ask.

‘A few bob. Enough for a few rounds at the Monday Club tonight.’

‘But today is Tuesday.’

‘It’s on a Tuesday on account of the bank holiday,’ he explains, seesawing around to the other side of the bed to sit down.

I can’t laugh. I’m too sore and it seems some of my sense of humour was taken away with my child.

‘You don’t mind if I go, do you, Joyce? I’ll stay if you want, I really don’t mind, it’s not important.’

‘Of course it’s important. You haven’t missed a Monday night for twenty years.’

‘Apart from bank holidays!’ He lifts a crooked finger and his eyes dance.

‘Apart from bank holidays,’ I smile, and grab his finger.

‘Well,’ he takes my hand, ‘you’re more important than a few pints and a singsong.’

‘What would I do without you?’ My eyes fill again.

‘You’d be just fine, love. Besides …’ he looks at me warily, ‘you have Conor.’

I let go of his hand and look away. What if I don’t want Conor any more?

‘I tried to call him last night on the hand phone but there was no answer. But maybe I tried the numbers wrong,’ he adds quickly. ‘There are so many more numbers on the hand phones.’

‘Mobiles, Dad,’ I say distractedly.

‘Ah, yes. The mobiles. He keeps calling when you’re asleep. He’s going to come home as soon as he can get a flight. He’s very worried.’

‘That’s nice of him. Then we can get down to the business of spening the next ten years of our married life trying to have babies.’ Back to business. A nice little distraction to give our relationship some sort of meaning.

‘Ah now, love …’

The first day of the rest of my life and I’m not sure I want to be here. I know I should be thanking somebody for this but I really don’t feel like it. Instead I wish they hadn’t bothered.

SIX

I watch the three children playing together on the floor of the hospital, little fingers and toes, chubby cheeks and plump lips – the faces of their parents clearly etched on theirs. My heart drops into my stomach and it twists. My eyes fill again and I have to look away.

‘Mind if I have a grape?’ Dad chirps. He’s like a little canary swinging in a cage beside me.

‘Of course you can. Dad, you should go home now, go get something to eat. You need your energy.’

He picks up a banana. ‘Potassium,’ he smiles, and moves his arms rigorously. ‘I’ll be jogging home tonight.’

‘How did you get here?’ It suddenly occurs to me that he hasn’t been into the city for years. It all became too fast for him, buildings suddenly sprouting up where there weren’t any, roads with traffic going in different directions from before. With great sadness he sold his car too, his failing eyesight too much of a danger for him and others on the roads. Seventy-five years old, his wife dead ten years. Now he has a routine of his own, content to stay around the local area, chatting to his neighbours, church every Sunday and Wednesday, Monday Club every Monday (apart from the bank holidays when it’s on a Tuesday), butchers on a Tuesday, his crosswords, puzzles and TV shows during the days, his garden all the moments in between.

‘Fran from next door drove me in.’ He puts the banana down, still laughing to himself about his jogging joke, and pops another grape into his mouth. ‘Almost had me killed two or three times. Enough to let me know there is a God if ever there was a time I doubted. I asked for seedless grapes; these aren’t seedless,’ he frowns. Liver-spotted hands put the bunch back on the side cabinet. He takes seeds out of his mouth and looks around for a bin.

‘Do you still believe in your God now, Dad?’ It comes out crueller than I mean to but the anger is almost unbearable.

‘I do believe, Joyce.’ As always, no offence taken. He puts the pips in his handkerchief and places it back in his pocket. ‘The Lord acts in mysterious ways, in ways we often can neither explain nor understand, tolerate nor bear. I understand how you can question Him now – we all do at times. When your mother died I …’ he trails off and abandons the sentence as always, the furthest he will go to being disloyal about his God, the furthest he will go to discussing the loss of his wife. ‘But this time God answered all my prayers. He sat up and heard me calling last night. He said to me,’ Dad puts on a broad Cavan accent, the accent he had as a child before moving to Dublin in his teens, ‘“No problem, Henry. I hear you loud and clear. It’s all in hand so don’t you be worrying. I’ll do this for you, no bother at all.” He saved you. He kept my girl alive and for that I’ll be forever grateful to Him, sad as we may be about the passing of another.’

I have no response to that, but I soften.

He pulls his chair closer to my bedside and it screeches along the floor.

‘And I believe in an afterlife,’ he says a little quieter now. ‘That I do. I believe in the paradise of heaven, up there in the clouds, and everyone that was once here is up there. Including the sinners, for God’s a forgiver, that I believe.’

‘Everyone?’ I fight the tears. I fight them from falling. If I start I know I will never stop. ‘What about my baby, Dad? Is my baby there?’

He looks pained. We hadn’t spoken much about my pregnancy. Early days and we were all worried, nobody more than he. Only days ago we’d had a minor falling-out over my asking him to store our spare bed in his garage. I had started to prepare the nursery, you see … Oh dear, the nursery. The spare bed and junk just cleared out. The cot already purchased. Pretty yellow on the walls. ‘Buttercup Dream’ with a little duckie border.

Five months to go. Some people, my father included, would think preparing the nursery at four months is premature but we’d been waiting six years for a baby, for this baby. Nothing premature about that.

‘Ah, love, you know I don’t know …’

‘I was going to call him Sean if it was a boy,’ I hear myself finally say aloud. I have been saying these things in my head all day, over and over, and here they are, spilling out of me instead of the tears.

‘Ah, that’s a nice name. Sean.’

‘Grace, if it was a girl. After Mum. She would have liked that.’

His jaw sets at this and he looks away. Anyone who doesn’t know him would think this has angered him. I know this is not the case. I know it’s the emotion gathering in his jaw, like a giant reservoir, storing and locking it all away until absolutely necessary, waiting for those rare moments when the drought within him calls for those walls to break and for the emotions to gush.

‘But for some reason I thought it was a boy. I don’t know why but I just felt it somehow. I could have been wrong. I was going to call him Sean,’ I repeat.

Dad nods. ‘That’s right. A fine name.’

‘I used to talk to him. Sing to him. I wonder if he heard.’ My voice is far away. I feel like I’m calling out from the hollow of a tree, where I hide.

Silence while I imagine a future that will never be with little imaginary Sean. Of singing to him every night, of marshmallow skin and splashes at bath time. Of kicking legs and bicycle rides. Of sandcastle architecture and football-related hot-headed tantrums. Anger at a missed life – no, worse – a lost life, overrides my thoughts.

‘I wonder if he even knew.’

‘Knew what, love?’

‘What was happening. What he would be missing. Did he think I was sending him away? I hope he doesn’t blame me. I was all he had and—’ I stop. Torture over for now. I feel seconds away from screaming with such terror, I must stop. If I start my tears now I know I will never stop.

‘Where is he now, Dad? How can you even die when you haven’t even been born yet?’

‘Ah, love.’ He takes my hand and squeezes it again.

‘Tell me.’

This time he thinks about it. Long and hard. He pats my hair, with steady fingers takes the strands from my face and tucks them behind my ears. He hasn’t done that since I was a little girl.

‘I think he’s in heaven, love. Oh, there’s no thinking involved – I know so. He’s up there with your mother, yes he is. Sitting on her lap while she plays rummy with Pauline, robbing her blind and cackling away. She’s up there all right.’ He looks up and wags his forefinger at the ceiling. ‘Now you take care of baby Sean for us, Gracie, you hear? She’ll be tellin’ him all about you, she will, about when you were a baby, about the day you took your first steps, about the day you got your first tooth. She’ll tell him about your first day of school and your last day of school and every day in between, and he’ll know all about you so that when you walk through those gates up there, as an old woman far older than me now, he’ll look up from rummy and say, “Ah, there she is now. The woman herself. My mammy.” Straight away he’ll know.’

The lump in my throat, so huge I can barely swallow, prevents me from saying the thank you I want to express, but perhaps he sees it in my eyes as he nods in acknowledgement and then turns his attention back to the TV while I stare out the window at nothing.

‘There’s a nice chapel here, love. Maybe you should go visit, when you’re good and ready. You don’t even have to say anything, He won’t mind. Just sit there and think. I find it helpful.’

I think it’s the last place in the world I want to be.

‘It’s a nice place to be,’ Dad says, reading my mind. He watches me and I can almost hear him praying for me to leap out of bed and grab the rosary beads he’s placed by the bedside.

‘It’s a rococo building, you know,’ I say suddenly, and have no idea what I’m talking about.

‘What is?’ Dad’s eyebrows furrow and his eyes disappear underneath, like two snails disappearing into their shells. ‘This hospital?’

I think hard. ‘What were we talking about?’

Then he thinks hard. ‘Maltesers. No!’

He’s silent for a moment, then starts answering as though in a quick-fire round of a quiz.

‘Bananas! No. Heaven! No. The chapel! We were talking about the chapel.’ He flashes a million-dollar smile, jubilant he succeeded in remembering the conversation of less than one minute ago. He goes further now. ‘And then you said it’s a rickety building. But honestly it felt fine to me. A bit old but, sure, there’s nothin’ wrong with being old and rickety.’ He winks at me.

‘The chapel is a rococo building, not rickety,’ I correct him, feeling like a teacher. ‘It’s famous for the elaborate stucco work which adorns the ceiling. It’s the work of French stuccadore, Barthelemy Cramillion.’

‘Is that so, love? When did he do that, then?’ He moves his chair in closer to the bed. Loves nothing more than a scéal.

‘In 1762.’ So precise. So random. So natural. So inexplicable that I know it.

‘That long? I didn’t know the hospital was here since then.’

‘It’s been here since 1757,’ I reply, and then frown. How on earth do I know that? But I can’t stop myself, almost like my mouth is on autopilot, completely unattached to my brain. ‘It was designed by the same man who did Leinster House. Richard Cassells was his name. One of the most famous architects of the time.’

‘I’ve heard of him, all right,’ Dad lies. ‘If you’d said Dick I’d have known straight away.’ He chuckles.

‘It was Bartholomew Mosse’s brainchild,’ I explain and I don’t know where the words are coming from, don’t know where the knowledge is coming from. From where else, I don’t know. Like a feeling of déjà vu – these words, this feeling is familiar but I haven’t heard them or spoken them in this hospital. I think maybe I’m making it up but I know somewhere deep inside that I’m correct. A warm feeling floods my body.

‘In 1745 he purchased a small theatre called the New Booth and he converted it into Dublin’s first lying-in hospital.’

‘It stood here, did it? The theatre?’

‘No, it was on George’s Lane. This was all just fields. But eventually that became too small and he bought the fields that were here, consulted with Richard Cassells and in 1757 the new lying-in hospital, now known as the Rotunda, was opened by the Lord Lieutenant. On the eighth of December, if I recall correctly.’

Dad is confused. ‘I didn’t know you had an interest in that kind of thing, Joyce. How do you know all that?’

I frown. I didn’t know I knew that either. Suddenly frustration overwhelms me and I shake my head aggressively.

‘I want a haircut,’ I add angrily, blowing my fringe off my forehead. ‘I want to get out of here.’

‘OK, love.’ Dad’s voice is quiet. ‘A little longer, is all.’

SEVEN

Get a haircut! Justin blows his fringe out of his eyes and glares with dissatisfaction at his reflection in the mirror.

Until his image caught his eye, he was packing his bag to go back to London while whistling the happy tune of a recently divorced man who’d just been laid by the first woman since his wife. Well, the second time that year, but the first that he could recall with some small degree of pride. Now, standing before the full-length mirror, his whistling stalls, the image of his Fabio self failing miserably against the reality. He corrects his posture, sucks in his cheeks and flexes his muscles, vowing that now that the divorce cloud has lifted, he will get his body back in order. Forty-three years old, he is handsome and he knows it, but it’s not a view that is held with arrogance. His opinions on his looks are merely understood with the same logic he applies to tasting a fine wine. The grape was merely grown in the right place, under the right conditions. Some degree of nurturing and love mixed with later moments of being completely trampled on and walked all over. He possesses the common sense enabling him to recognise he was born with good genes and features that were in proportion, in the right places. He should be neither praised nor blamed for this just as a less attractive person should not be viewed with flared nostrils and a media-obsessed induced smirk. It’s just how it is.

At almost six feet, he is tall, his shoulders broad, his hair still thick and chestnut brown, though greying at the sides. This he does not mind, he’s had grey hairs since his twenties and has always felt they give him a distinguished look. Though there were some, afraid of the very nature of life, that viewed his salt-and-pepper sideburns as a thorn that would burst the bubble of their pretend life every time he was in their presence. They would come at him, bowing over and hunchbacked, and taking on the appearance of a sixteenth-century black-toothed tramp, thrusting hair dye at him as though it were a carafe of precious water from the fountain of eternal life.

For Justin, moving on and change are what he expects. He is not one for pausing, for becoming stuck in life, though he didn’t expect his particular philosophy of ageing and greying to apply to his marriage. Jennifer left him two years ago to ponder this, though not just this, but for a great many other reasons too. So many, in fact, he wishes he had taken out a pen and notepad and listed them as she bellowed at him in her tirade of hate. In the initial dark lonely nights that followed, Justin held the bottle of dye in his hand and wondered if he gave in to his solid tight philosophy, would he make things all right? Would he wake up in the morning and Jennifer be in their bed; would the light scar on his chin have healed from where the wedding ring had landed; would the list of things about him she hated so much be the very things she loved? He sobered up then and emptied the dye down his rented accommodation kitchen sink, blackened stainless steel that proved a reminder to him everyday of his decision to stay rooted in reality, until he moved to London to be closer to his daughter, much to his ex-wife’s disgust.

Through strands of his long fringe hanging over his eyes, he has a vision of the man he expects to see. Leaner, younger, perhaps with fewer wrinkles around the eyes. Any faults, such as the expanding waistline, are partly due to age and partly of his own doing, because he took to beer and takeaways for comfort during his divorce process rather than walking or the occasional jog.

Repeated flashbacks of the previous night draw his eyes back to the bed, where he and Sarah finally got to know one another intimately. All day he definitely felt like the big man on campus and he was just seconds away from interrupting his talk on Dutch and Flemish painting to give details of his previous night’s performance. First-year students in the midst of Rag Week, only three-quarters of the class had shown up after the previous night’s foam party and those that were in attendance he was sure wouldn’t notice if he launched into a detailed analysis of his lovemaking skills. He didn’t test his assumptions, all the same.

Blood For Life Week is over, much to Justin’s relief, and Sarah has moved on from the college, back to her base. On his return to Dublin this month he coincidentally bumped into her in a bar, that he just happened to know she frequented, and they went from there. He wasn’t sure if he would see her again though his inside jacket pocket was safely padded with her number.

He has to admit that while the previous night was indeed delightful – a few too many bottles of Château Olivier, which, until last night he’s always found disappointing despite its ideal location in Bordeaux, in a lively bar on the Green, followed by a trip to his hotel room – he feels much was missing from his conquest. He acquired some Dutch courage from his hotel mini-bar before calling round to see her, and by the time he arrived, he was already incapable of serious conversation or, more seriously, incapable of conversation – Oh, for Christ’s sake, Justin, what man do you know cares about the damn conversation? But, despite ending up in his bed, he feels that Sarah did care about the conversation. He feels that perhaps there were things she wanted to say to him and perhaps did say while he saw those sad blue eyes boring into his and her rosebud lips opening and closing, but his Jameson whiskey wouldn’t allow him to hear, instead singing over her words in his head like a petulant child.

With his second seminar in two months complete, Justin throws his clothes into his bag, happy to see the back of his miserable musty room. Friday afternoon, time to fly back to London. Back to his daughter, and his younger brother, Al, and sister-in-law, Doris, visiting from Chicago. He departs the hotel, steps out onto the cobbled side streets of Temple Bar and into his waiting taxi.

‘The airport, please.’

‘Here on holidays?’ the driver asks immediately.

‘No.’ Justin looks out the window, hoping this will end the conversation.

‘Working?’ The driver starts the engine.

‘Yes.’

‘Where do you work?’

‘A college.’

‘Which one?’

Justin sighs. ‘Trinity.’

‘You the janitor?’ Those green eyes twinkle playfully at him in the mirror.

‘I’m a lecturer on Art and Architecture,’ he says defensively, folding his arms and blowing his floppy fringe from his eyes.

‘Architecture, huh? I used to be a builder.’

Justin doesn’t respond and hopes the conversation will end there.

‘So where are ye off to? Off on holiday?’

‘Nope.’

‘What is it then?

‘I live in London.’ And my US social security number is …

‘And you work here?’

‘Yep.’

‘Would you not just live here?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why’s that then?’

‘Because I’m a guest lecturer here. A previous colleague of mine invited me to give a seminar once a month.’

‘Ah.’ The driver smiles at him in the mirror as though he’d been trying to fool him. ‘So what do you do in London?’ His eyes interrogate him.

I’m a serial killer who preys on inquisitive cab drivers.

‘Lots of different things.’ Justin sighs and caves in as the driver waits for more. ‘I’m the editor of the Art and Architectural Review, the only truly international art and architectural publication,’ he says proudly. ‘I started it ten years ago and still we’re unrivalled. Highest selling magazine of its kind.’ Twenty thousand subscribers, you liar.

There’s no reaction.

‘I’m also a curator.’

The driver winces. ‘You’ve to touch dead bodies?’

Justin scrunches his face in confusion. ‘What? No.’ Then adds unnecessarily, ‘I’m also a regular panelist on a BBC art and culture show.’

Twice in five years doesn’t quite constitute regular, Justin. Oh, shut up.

The driver studies Justin now, in the rearview mirror. ‘You’re on TV?’ He narrows his eyes. ‘I don’t recognise you.’

‘Well, do you watch the show?’

‘No.’

Well, then.

Justin rolls his eyes. He throws off his suit jacket, opens another of his shirt buttons and lowers the window. His hair sticks to his forehead. Still. A few weeks have gone by and he still hasn’t been to the barber. He blows his fringe out of his eyes.

They stop at a red light and Justin looks to his left. A hair salon.

‘Hey, would you mind pulling over on the left just for a few minutes?’

‘Look, Conor, don’t worry about it. Stop apologising,’ I say into the phone tiredly. He exhausts me. Every little word with him drains me. ‘Dad is here with me now and we’re going to get a taxi to the house together, even though I’m perfectly capable of sitting in a car by myself.’

Outside the hospital, Dad holds the door open for me and I climb into the taxi. Finally I’m going home but I don’t feel the relief I was hoping for. There’s nothing but dread. I dread meeting people I know and having to explain what has happened, over and over again. I dread walking into my house and having to face the half-decorated nursery. I dread having to get rid of the nursery, having to replace it with a spare bed and filling the wardrobes with my own overflow of shoes and bags I’ll never wear. As though a bedroom for them alone is as good a replacement as a child. I dread having to go to work instead of taking the leave I had planned. I dread seeing Conor. I dread going back to a loveless marriage with no baby to distract us. I dread living every day of the rest of my life while Conor drones on and on down the phone about wanting to be here for me, when it seems my telling him not to come home has been my mantra for the past few days. I know it would be common sense for me to want my husband to come rushing home to me – in fact, for my husband to want to come rushing home to me – but there are many buts in our marriage and this incident is not a regular normal occurrence. It deserves outlandish behaviour. To behave the right way, to do the adult thing feels wrong to me because I don’t want anybody around me. I’ve been poked and prodded psychologically and physically. I want to be on my own to grieve. I want to feel sorry for myself without sympathetic words and clinical explanations. I want to be illogical, self-pitying, self-examining, bitter and lost for just a few more days, please, world, and I want to do it alone.

Though that is not unusual in our marriage.

Conor’s an engineer. He travels abroad to work for months before coming home for one month and going off again. I used to get so used to my own company and routine that for the first week of him being home I’d be irritable and wish he’d go back. That changed over time, of course. Now that irritability stretches to the entire month of him being home. And it’s become glaringly obvious I’m not alone in that feeling.

When Conor took the job all those years ago, it was difficult being away from one another for so long. I used to visit him as much as I could but it was difficult to keep taking time off work. The visits got shorter, rarer, then stopped.

I always thought our marriage could survive anything as long as we both tried. But then I found myself having to try to try. I dug beneath the new layers of complexities we’d created over the years to get to the beginning of the relationship. What was it, I wondered, that we had then that we could revive? What was the thing that could make two people want to promise one another to spend every day of the rest of their lives together? Ah, I found it. It was a thing called love. A small simple word. If only it didn’t mean so much, our marriage would be flawless.

My mind has wandered much while lying in that hospital bed. At times it has stalled in its wandering, like when entering a room and then forgetting what for. It stands alone dumbstruck. At those times it has been numb, and when staring at the pink walls I have thought of nothing but of the fact that I am staring at pink walls.

My mind has bounced from numbness to feeling too much, but on an occasion while wandering far, I dug deep to find a memory of when I was six years old and I had a favourite tea set given to me by my grandmother Betty. She kept it in her house for me to play with when I called over on Saturdays, and during the afternoons when my grandmother was ‘taking tea’ with her friends I would dress in one of my mother’s pretty dresses from when she was a child and have afternoon tea with Aunt Jemima, the cat. The dresses never quite fit but I wore them all the same, and Aunt Jemima and I never did take to tea but we were both polite enough to keep up the pretence until my parents came to collect me at the end of the day. I told this story to Conor a few years ago and he laughed, missing the point.

It was an easy point to miss – I won’t hold him accountable for that – but what my mind was shouting at him to understand was that I’ve increasingly found that people never truly tire of playing games and dressing up, no matter how many years pass. Our lies now are just more sophisticated; our words to deceive, more eloquent. From cowboys and Indians, doctors and nurses, to husband and wife, we’ve never stopped pretending. Sitting in the taxi beside Dad, while listening to Conor over the phone, I realise I’ve stopped pretending.

‘Where is Conor?’ Dad asks as soon as I’ve hung up.

He opens the top button of his shirt and loosens his tie. He dresses in a shirt and tie every time he leaves his house, never forgets his cap. He looks for the handle on the car door, to roll the window down.

‘It’s electronic, Dad. There’s the button. He’s still in Japan. He’ll be home in a few days.’

‘I thought he was coming back yesterday.’ He puts the window all the way down and is almost blown away. His cap topples off his head and the few strands of hair left on his head stick up. He fixes the cap back on his head, has a mini battle with the button before finally figuring out how to leave a small gap at the top for air to enter the stuffy taxi.

‘Ha! Gotcha,’ he smiles victoriously, thumping his fist at the window.

I wait until he’s finished fighting with the window to answer. ‘I told him not to.’

‘You told who what, love?’

‘Conor. You were asking about Conor, Dad.’

‘Ah, that’s right, I was. Home soon, is he?’

I nod.

The day is hot and I blow my fringe up from my sticky forehead. I feel my hair sticking to the back of my clammy neck. Suddenly it feels heavy and greasy on my head. Brown and scraggy, it weighs me down and once again I have the overwhelming urge to shave it all off. I become agitated in my seat and Dad, sensing it again, knows not to say anything. I’ve been doing that all week: experiencing anger beyond comprehension, so that I want to drive my fists through the walls and punch the nurses. Then I become weepy and feel such loss inside me it’s as if I’ll never be filled again. I prefer the anger. Anger is better. Anger is hot and filling and gives me something to cling on to.

We stop at a set of traffic lights and I look to my left. A hair salon.

‘Pull over here, please.’

‘What are you doing, Joyce?’

‘Wait in the car, Dad. I’ll be ten minutes. I’m just going to get a quick haircut. I can’t take it any more.’

Dad looks at the salon and then to the taxi driver and they both know not to say anything. The taxi directly on front of us indicates and moves over to the side of the road too. We pull up behind it.

A man ahead of us gets out of the car and I freeze with one foot out of the car, to watch him. He’s familiar and I think I know him. He pauses and looks at me. We stare at one another for a while. Search each other’s face. He scratches at his left arm; something that holds my attention for far too long. The moment is unusual and goose bumps rise on my skin. The last thing I want is to see somebody I know, and I look away quickly.

He looks away from me too and begins to walk.

‘What are you doing?’ Dad asks far too loudly, and I finally get out of the car.

I start walking towards the hair salon and it becomes clear that our destination is the same. My walk becomes mechanical, awkward, self-conscious. Something about him makes me disjointed. Unsettled. Perhaps it’s the possibility of having to tell somebody there will be no baby. Yes, a month of nonstop baby talk and there will be no baby to show for it. Sorry, guys. I feel guilty for it, as though I’ve cheated my friends and family. The longest tease of all. A baby that will never be. My heart is twisted at the thought of it.

He holds open the door to the salon and smiles. Handsome. Fresh-faced. Tall. Broad. Athletic. Perfect. Is he glowing? I must know him.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘You’re welcome.’

We both pause, look at one another, back to the two identical taxis waiting for us by the pavement and back to one another. I think he’s about to say something else but I quickly look away and step inside.

The salon is empty and two staff members are sitting down chatting. They are two men; one has a mullet, the other is bleached blond. They see us and spring to attention.

‘Which one do you want?’ the American says out of the side of his mouth.

‘The blond,’ I smile.

‘The mullet it is then,’ he says.

My mouth falls open but I laugh.

‘Hello there, loves.’ The mullet man approaches us. ‘How can I help you?’ He looks back and forth from the American to me. ‘Who is getting their hair done today?’

‘Well, both of us, I assume, right?’ American man looks at me and I nod.

‘Oh, pardon me, I thought you were together.’

I realise we are so close our hips are almost touching. We both look down at our adjoined hips, then up to join eyes and then we both take one step away in the opposite direction.

‘You two should try synchronised swimming,’ the hairdresser laughs, but the joke dies when we fail to react. ‘Ashley, you take the lovely lady. Now come with me.’ He leads his client to a chair. The American makes a face at me while being led away and I laugh again.

‘Right, I just want two inches off, please,’ the American says. ‘The last time I got it done they took, like, twenty off. Please, just two inches,’ he stresses. ‘I’ve got a taxi waiting outside to take me to the airport, so as quick as possible too, please.’

His hairdresser laughs. ‘Sure, no problem. Are you going back to America?’

The man rolls his eyes. ‘No, I’m not going to America, I’m not going on holiday and I’m not going to meet anyone at arrivals. I’m just going to take a flight. Away. Out of here. You Irish ask a lot of questions.’

‘Do we?’

‘Y—’ he stalls and narrows his eyes at the hairdresser.

‘Gotcha,’ the hairdresser smiles, pointing the scissors at him.

‘Yes you did.’ Gritted teeth. ‘You got me good.’

I chuckle aloud and he immediately looks at me. He seems slightly confused. Maybe we do know each other. Maybe he works with Conor. Maybe I went to school with him. Or college. Perhaps he’s in the property business and I’ve worked with him. I can’t have; he’s American. Maybe I showed him a property. Maybe he’s famous and I shouldn’t be staring. I become embarrassed and I turn away again quickly.

My hairdresser wraps a black cape around me and I steal another glance at the man beside me, in the mirror. He looks at me. I look away, then back at him. He looks away. And our tennis match of glances is played out for the duration of our visit.

‘So what will it be for you, madam?’

‘All off,’ I say, trying to avoid my reflection but I feel cold hands on the sides of my hot cheeks, raising my head, and I am forced to stare at myself face to face. There is something unnerving about being forced to look at yourself when you are unwilling to come to terms with something. Something raw and real that you can’t run away from. You can lie to yourself, to your mind and in your mind all of the time but when you look yourself in the face, well, you know that you’re lying. I am not OK. That, I did not hide from myself, and the truth of it stared me in the face. My cheeks are sunken, small black rings below my eyes, red lines like eyeliner still sting from my night tears. But apart from that, I still look like me. Despite this huge change in my life, I look exactly the same. Tired, but me. I don’t know what I’d expected. A totally changed woman, someone that people would look at and just know had been through a traumatic experience. Yet the mirror told me this: you can’t know everything by looking at me. You can never know by looking at someone.

I’m five foot five, with medium-length hair that lands on my shoulders. My hair colour is midway between blonde and brown. I’m a medium kind of person. Not fat, not skinny; I exercise twice a week, jog a little, walk a little, swim a little. Nothing to excess, nothing not enough. Not obsessed, addicted to anything. I’m neither out-going nor shy, but a little of both, depending on my mood, depending on the occasion. I never overdo anything and enjoy most things I do. I’m seldom bored and rarely whine. When I drink I get tipsy but never fall over or get ill. I like my job, don’t love it. I’m pretty, not stunning, not ugly; don’t expect too much, am never too disappointed. I’m never overwhelmed or under it either; just nicely whelmed. I’m OK. Nothing spectacular but sometimes special. I look in the mirror and see this medium average person. A little tired, a little sad, but not falling apart. I look to the man beside me and I see the same.

‘Excuse me?’ the hairdresser breaks into my thoughts. ‘You want it all off? Are you sure? You’ve such healthy hair.’ He runs his fingers through it. ‘Is this your natural colour?’

‘Yes, I used to put a little colour in it but I stopped because of the—’ I’m about to say ‘baby’. My eyes fill and I look down but he thinks I’m nodding to my stomach, which is hidden under the gown.

‘Stopped because of what?’ he asks.

I continue to look at my feet, pretend to be doing something with my foot. An odd shuffle manoeuvre. I can’t think of anything to say to him and so I pretend not to hear him. ‘Huh?’

‘You were saying you stopped because of something?’

‘Oh, em …’ Don’t cry. Don’t cry. If you start now you will never stop. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I mumble, bending over to play with my handbag on the ground. It will pass, it will pass. Someday it will all pass, Joyce. ‘Chemicals. I stopped because of chemicals.’

‘Right, this is what it’ll look like,’ he takes my hair and ties it back. ‘How about we do a Meg Ryan in French Kiss?’ He pulls hairs out in all directions and I look like I’ve stuck my fingers in an electric socket. ‘It’s the sexy messy bed-head look. Or else we can do this.’ He messes about with my hair some more.

‘Can we hurry this along? I’ve got a taxi waiting outside too.’ I look out the window. Dad is chatting to the taxi driver. They’re both laughing and I relax a little.

‘O … K. Something like this really shouldn’t be rushed. You have a lot of hair.’

‘It’s fine. I’m giving you permission to hurry. Just cut it all off.’ I look back to the car.

‘Well, we must leave a few inches on it, darling.’ He directs my face back towards the mirror. ‘We don’t want Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, do we? No GI Janes allowed in this salon. We’ll give you a side-swept fringe, very sophisticated, very now. It’ll suit you, I think, show off those high cheekbones. What do you think?’

I don’t care about my cheekbones. I want it all off.

‘Actually, how about we just do this?’ I take the scissors from his hand, cut my ponytail, and then hand them both back to him.

He gasps. But it sounds more like a squeak. ‘Or we could do that. A … bob.’

American man’s mouth hangs open at the sight of my hairdresser with a large pair of scissors and ten inches of hair dangling from his hand. He turns to his and grabs the scissors before he makes another cut. ‘Do not,’ he points, ‘do that to me!’

Mullet man sighs and rolls his eyes. ‘No, of course not, sir.’

The American starts scratching his left arm again. ‘I must have got a bite.’ He tries to roll up his shirtsleeve and I squirm in my seat, trying to get a look at his arm.

‘Could you please sit still?’

‘Could you please sit still?’

The hairdressers speak in perfect unison. They look to one another and laugh.

‘Something funny in the air today,’ one of them comments and American man and I look at one another. Funny, indeed.

‘Eyes back to the mirror, please, sir.’ He looks away.

My hairdresser places a finger under my chin and tips my face back to the centre. He hands me my ponytail.

‘Souvenir.’

‘I don’t want it.’ I refuse to take my hair in my hands. Every inch of that hair was from a moment that has now gone. Thoughts, wishes, hopes, desires, dreams that are no longer. I want a new start. A new head of hair.

He begins to shape it into style now and as each strand falls I watch it drift to the ground. My head feels lighter.

The hair that grew the day we bought the cot. Snip.

The hair that grew the day we picked the nursery paint colours, bottles, bibs and baby grows. All bought too soon, but we were so excited … Snip.

The hair that grew the day we decided the names. Snip.

The hair that grew the day we announced it to friends and family. Snip.

The day of the first scan. The day I found out I was pregnant. The day my baby was conceived. Snip. Snip. Snip.

The more painful recent memories will remain at the root for another little while. I will have to wait for them to grow until I can be rid of them too and then all traces will be gone and I will move on.

I reach the till as the American pays for his cut.

‘That suits you,’ he comments, studying me.

I go to tuck some hair behind my ear self-consciously but there’s nothing there. I feel lighter, light-headed, delighted with giddiness, giddy with delight.

‘So does yours.’

‘Thank you.’

He opens the door for me.

‘Thank you.’ I step outside.

‘You’re far too polite,’ he tells me.

‘Thank you,’ I smile. ‘So are you.’

‘Thank you,’ he nods.

We laugh. We both gaze at our taxis queuing up waiting, and look back at one another curiously. He gives me a smile.

‘The first taxi or the second taxi?’ he asks.

‘For me?’

He nods. ‘My driver won’t stop talking.’

I study both taxis, see Dad in the second, leaning forward and talking to the driver.

‘The first. My dad won’t stop talking.’

He studies the second taxi where Dad has now pushed his face up against the glass and is staring at me as though I’m an apparition.

‘The second taxi it is, then,’ the American says, and walks to his taxi, glancing back twice.

‘Hey,’ I protest, and watch him, entranced.

I float to my taxi and we both pull our doors closed at the same time. The taxi driver and Dad look at me like they’ve seen a ghost.

‘What?’ My heart beats wildly. ‘What happened? Tell me?’

‘Your hair,’ Dad simply says, his face aghast. ‘You’re like a boy.’

EIGHT

As the taxi gets closer to my home in Phisboro, my stomach knots tighter.

‘That was funny how the man in front kept his taxi waiting too, Gracie, wasn’t it?’

‘Joyce. And yes,’ I reply, my leg bouncing with nerves.

‘Is that what people do now when they get their hairs cut?’

‘Do what, Dad?’

‘Leave taxis waiting outside for them.’

‘I don’t know.’

He shuffles his bum to the edge of the seat and pulls himself closer to the taxi driver. ‘I say, Jack, is that what people do when they go to the barbers now?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Do they leave their taxis outside waiting for them?’

‘I’ve never been asked to do it before,’ the driver explains politely.

Dad sits back satisfied. ‘That’s what I thought, Gracie.’

‘It’s Joyce,’ I snap.

‘Joyce. It’s a coincidence. And you know what they say about coincidences?’

‘Yep.’ We turn the corner onto my street and my stomach flips.

‘That there’s no such thing as a coincidence,’ Dad finishes, even though I’ve already said yes. ‘Indeedy no,’ he says to himself. ‘No such thing. There’s Patrick,’ he waves. ‘I hope he doesn’t wave back.’ He watches his friend from the Monday Club with two hands on his walking-frame. ‘And David out with the dog.’ He waves again although David is stopping to allow his dog to poop and is looking the other way. I get the feeling Dad feels rather grand in a taxi. It’s rare he’s in one, the expense being too much and everywhere he needs to go being within walking distance or a short bus hop away.

‘Home sweet home,’ he announces. ‘How much do I owe you, Jack?’ He leans forward again. He takes two five-euro notes out of his pocket.

‘The bad news, I’m afraid … twenty euro, please.’

‘What?’ Dad looks up in shock.

‘I’ll pay, Dad, put your money away.’ I give the driver twenty-five and tell him to keep the change. Dad looks at me like I’ve just taken a pint out of his hand and poured it down the drain.

Conor and I have lived in the red-brick terraced house in Phisboro since our marriage ten years ago. The houses have been here since the forties, and over the years we’ve pumped our money into modernising it. Finally it’s how we want it, or it was until this week. A black railing encloses a small patch of a front garden where the rose bushes my mother planted preside. Dad lives in an identical house two streets away, the house I grew up in, though we’re never done growing up, continually learning, and when I return to it I regress to my youth.

The front door to my house opens just as the taxi drives off. Dad’s neighbour Fran smiles at me from my own front door. She looks at us awkwardly, failing to make eye contact with me each time she looks in my direction. I’ll have to get used to this.

‘Oh, your hair!’ she says first, then gathers herself. ‘I’m sorry, love, I meant to be out of here by the time you got home.’ She opens the door fully and pulls a checked trolley-bag behind her. She is wearing a single Marigold glove on her right arm.

Dad looks nervous and avoids my eye.

‘What were you doing, Fran? How on earth did you get into my house?’ I try to be as polite as I can but the sight of someone in my house without my permission both surprises and infuriates me.

She pinks and looks to Dad. Dad looks at her hand and coughs. She looks down, laughs nervously and pulls off her single Marigold. ‘Oh, your dad gave me a key. I thought that … well, I put down a nice rug in the hallway for you. I hope you like it.’

I stare at her with utter confusion.

‘Never mind, I’ll be off now.’ She walks by me, grabs my arm and squeezes hard but still refuses to look at me. ‘Take care of yourself, love.’ She walks on down the road, dragging her trolley-bag behind her, her Nora Batty tights in rolls around her thick ankles.

‘Dad,’ I look at him angrily, ‘what the hell is this?’ I push into the house, looking at the disgusting dusty rug on my beige carpet. ‘Why did you give a near-stranger my house keys so she could come in and leave a rug? I am not a charity!’

He takes off his cap and scrunches it in his hands. ‘She’s not a stranger, love. She’s known you since the day you were brought home from the hospital—’

Wrong story to tell at this moment, and he knows it.

‘I don’t care!’ I splutter. ‘It’s my house, not yours! You cannot just do that. I hate this ugly piece of shit rug!’ I pick up one side of the clashing carpet, I drag it outside and then slam the door shut. I’m fuming and I look at Dad to shout at him again. He is pale and shaken. He is looking at the floor sadly. My eyes follow his.

Various shades of faded brown stains, like red wine, splatter the beige carpet. It has been cleaned in some places but the carpet hairs have been brushed in the opposite direction and give away that something once lay there. My blood.

I put my head in my hands.

Dad’s voice is quiet, injured. ‘I thought it would be best for you to come home with that gone.’

‘Oh, Dad.’

‘Fran has been here for a little while everyday now and has tried different things on it. It was me that suggested the rug,’ he adds in a smaller voice. ‘You can’t blame her for that.’

I despise myself.

‘I know you like all the nice new matching things in your house,’ he looks around, ‘but Fran or I wouldn’t have the likes of that.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry I shouted at you. You’ve been nothing but helpful this week. I’ll … I’ll call around to Fran at some stage and thank her properly.’

‘Right,’ he nods, ‘I’ll leave you at it, so. I’ll bring the rug back to Fran. I don’t want any of the neighbours seeing it outside on the path and telling her so.’

‘No, I’ll put it back where it was. It’s too heavy for you to bring all the way around. I’ll keep it for the time being and return it to her soon.’ I open the front door and retrieve it from the outside path. I drag it back into the house with more respect, laying it down so that it hides the scene where I lost my baby.

‘I’m so sorry, Dad.’

‘Don’t worry.’ He seesaws up to me and pats my shoulder. ‘You’re having a hard time, that I know. I’m only round the corner if you need me for anything.’

With a flick of his wrist, his tweed cap is on his head and I watch him seesaw down the road. The movement is familiar and comforting, like the motion of the sea. He disappears round the corner and I close the door. Alone. Silence. Just me and the house. Life continues as though nothing has happened.

It seems as though the nursery upstairs vibrates through the walls and floor. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. As though like a heart, it’s trying to push out the walls and send blood flowing down the stairs, through the hallways to reach every little nook and cranny. I walk away from the stairs, the scene of the crime, and wander around the rooms. It appears everything is exactly as it was, though on further inspection I see that Fran has tidied around. The cup of tea I was drinking is gone from the coffee table in the living room. The galley kitchen hums with the sound of the dishwasher Fran has set. The taps and draining boards glisten, the surfaces are gleaming. Straight through the kitchen the door leads to the back garden. My mum’s rose bushes line the back wall. Dad’s geraniums peep up from the soil.

Upstairs the nursery still throbs.

I notice the red light on the answering machine in the hall flashing. Four messages. I flick through the list of registered phone numbers and recognise friends’ numbers. I leave the answering machine, not able to listen to their condolences quite yet. Then I freeze. I go back. I flick through the list again. There it is. Monday evening. 7.10 p.m. Again at 7.12 p.m. My second chance to take the call. The call I had foolishly rushed down the stairs for and sacrificed my child’s life.

They have left a message. With shaking fingers, I press play.

‘Hello, this is Xtra-vision, Phisboro calling about the DVD The Muppet Christmas Carol. It says on our system that it’s one week late. We’d appreciate it if you could return it as soon as possible, please.’

I inhale sharply. Tears spring in my eyes. What did I expect? A phone call worthy of losing my baby? Something so urgent that I was right to rush for it? Would that somehow warrant my loss?

My entire body trembles with rage and shock. Breathing in shakily, I make my way into the living room. I look straight ahead to the DVD player. On top, is the DVD I rented while minding my goddaughter. I reach for the DVD, hold it tightly in my hands, squeeze it as though I can stop the life in it. Then I throw it hard across the room. It knocks our collection of photographs off the top of the piano, cracking the glass on our wedding photo, chipping the silver coating of another.

I open my mouth. And I scream. I scream at the top of my lungs, the loudest I can possibly go. It’s deep and low and filled with anguish. I scream again and hold it for as long as I can. One scream after another from the pit of my stomach, from the depths of my heart. I let out deep howls that border on laughter, that are laced with frustration. I scream and I scream until I am out of breath and my throat burns.

Upstairs, the nursery continues to vibrate. Thump-thump, thump-thump. It beckons me, the heart of my home beating wildly. I go to the staircase, step over the rug and onto the stairs. I grab the banister, feeling too weak even to lift my legs. I pull myself upstairs. The thumping gets louder and louder with every step until I reach the top and face the nursery door. It stops throbbing. All is still now.

I trace a finger down the door, press my cheek to it, willing all that happened not to be so. I reach for the handle and open the door.

A half-painted wall of Buttercup Dream greets me. Soft pastels. Sweet smells. A cot with a mobile of little yellow ducks dangling above. A toy box decorated with giant letters of the alphabet. On a little rail hang two baby grows. Little booties on a dresser.

A bunny rabbit sits up enthusiastically inside the cot. He smiles stupidly at me. I take my shoes off and step barefoot onto the soft shagpile carpet, try to root myself in this world. I close the door behind me. There’s not a sound. I pick up the rabbit and carry it around the room with me while I run my hands over the shiny new furniture, clothes and toys. I open a music box and watch as the little mouse inside begins to circle round and round after a piece of cheese to a mesmerising tinkling sound.

‘I’m sorry, Sean,’ I whisper, and my words catch in my throat. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

I lower myself to the soft floor, pull my legs close to me and hug the blissfully unaware bunny. I look again to the little mouse whose very being revolves around eternally chasing a piece of cheese he will never ever reach, let alone eat.

I slam the box shut and the music stops and I am left in silence.

NINE

‘I can’t find any food in the apartment; we’re going to have to get take-out,’ Justin’s sister-in-law, Doris, calls into the living room as she roots through the kitchen cabinets.

‘So maybe you know the woman,’ Justin’s younger brother, Al, sits on the plastic garden furniture chair in Justin’s half-furnished living room.

‘No, you see, that’s what I’m trying to explain. It’s like I know her but at the same time, I didn’t know her at all.’

‘You recognised her.’

‘Yes. Well, no.’ Kind of.

‘And you don’t know her name.’

‘No. I definitely don’t know her name.’

‘Hey, is anyone listening to me in there or am I talking to myself?’ Doris interrupts again. ‘I said there’s no food here so we’re going to have to get take-out.’

‘Yeah, sure, honey,’ Al calls automatically. ‘Maybe she’s a student of yours or she went to one of your talks. You usually remember people you give talks to?’

‘There’s hundreds of people at a time,’ Justin shrugs. ‘And mostly they sit in darkness.’

‘So that’s a no then.’ Al rubs his chin.

‘Actually, forget the take-out,’ Doris calls. ‘You don’t have any plates or cutlery – we’re going to have to eat out.’

‘And just let me get this clear, Al. When I say “recognise”, I mean I didn’t actually know her face.’

Al frowns.

‘I just got a feeling. Like she was familiar.’ Yeah, that’s it, she was familiar.

‘Maybe she just looked like someone you know.’

Maybe.

‘Hey, is anybody listening to me?’ Doris interupts them, standing at the living-room door with her inch-long leopard-print nails on her skin-tight leather-trouser-clad hips. Thirty-five-yearold Italian-American fast-talking Doris had been married to Al for the past ten years and is regarded by Justin as a lovable but annoying younger sister. Without an ounce of fat on her bones, everything she wears looks like it comes out of the closet of Grease’s Sandy post makeover.

‘Yes, sure, honey,’ Al says again, not taking his eyes off Justin. ‘Maybe it was that déjà vu thingy.’

‘Yes!’ Justin clicks his fingers. ‘Or perhaps vécu, or senti,’ he rubs his chin, lost in thought. ‘Or visité.’

‘What the heck is that?’ Al asks as Doris pulls over a cardboard box filled with books, to sit on, and joins them.

‘Déjà vu is French for “already seen” and it describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was coined by a French psychic researcher Emile Boirac, which expanded upon an essay that he wrote while at the University of Chicago.’

‘Go the Maroons!’ Al raises Justin’s old trophy cup that he’s drinking from, in the air, and then gulps down his beer.

Doris looks at him with disdain. ‘Please continue, Justin.’

‘Well, the experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of eeriness or strangeness. The experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience genuinely happened in the past. Déjà vu has been described as remembering the future.’

‘Wow,’ Doris says breathily.

‘So what’s your point, bro?’ Al belches.

‘Well, I don’t think this thing today with me and the woman was déjà vu,’ Justin frowns and sighs.

‘Why not?’

‘Because déjà vu relates to just sight and I felt … oh, I don’t know.’ I felt. ‘Déjà vécu is translated as “already lived”, which explains the experience that involves more than sight, but of having a weird knowledge of what is going to happen next. Déjà senti specifically means “already felt”, which is exclusively a mental happening and déjà visite involves an uncanny knowledge of a new place, but that’s less common. No,’ he shakes his head, ‘I definitely didn’t feel like I had been at the salon before.’

They all go quiet.

Al breaks the silence. ‘Well, it’s definitely déjà something. Are you sure you didn’t just sleep with her before?’

‘Al.’ Doris hits her husband across the arm. ‘Why didn’t you let me cut your hair, Justin, and who are we talking about anyway?’

‘You own a doggie parlour.’ Justin frowns.

‘Dogs have hair,’ she shrugs.

‘Let me try to explain this,’ Al interrupts. ‘Justin saw a woman yesterday at a hair salon in Dublin and he says he recognised her but didn’t know her face, and he felt that he knew her but didn’t actually know her.’ He rolls his eyes melodramatically, out of Justin’s view.

‘Oh my God,’ Doris sings, ‘I know what this is.’

‘What?’ Justin asks, taking a drink from a toothbrush holder.

‘It’s obvious.’ She holds her hands up and looks from one brother to another for dramatic effect. ‘It’s past-life stuff.’ Her face lights up. ‘You knew the woman in a paaast liiife,’ she pronounces the words slowly. ‘I saw it on Oprah.’ She nods her head, eyes wide.

‘Not more of this crap, Doris. It’s all she talks about now. She sees somethin’ about it on TV and that’s all I get, all the way from Chicago on the plane.’

‘I don’t think it’s past-life stuff, Doris, but thanks.’

Doris tuts. ‘You two need to have open minds about this kind of thing because you never know.’

‘Exactly, you never know,’ Al fires back.

‘Oh, come on, guys. The woman was familiar, that’s all. Maybe she just looked like someone I knew at home. No big deal.’ Forget about it and move on.

‘Well, you started it with your déjà stuff,’ Doris huffs. ‘How do you explain it?’

Justin shrugs. ‘The optical pathway delay theory.’

They both stare at him, dumb-faced.

‘One theory is that one eye may record what is seen fractionally faster than the other, creating that strong recollection sensation upon the same scene being viewed milliseconds later by the other eye. Basically it’s the product of a delayed optical input from one eye, closely followed by the input from the other eye, which should be simultaneous. This misleads conscious awareness and suggests a sensation of familiarity when there shouldn’t be one.’

Silence.

Justin clears his throat.

‘Believe it or not, honey, I prefer your past-life thing,’ Al snorts, and finishes his beer.

‘Thanks, sweetie.’ Doris places her hands on her heart, overwhelmed. ‘Anyway as I was saying when I was talking to myself in the kitchen, there’s no food, cutlery or crockery here so we’ll have to eat out tonight. Look at how you’re living, Justin. I’m worried about you,’ Doris looks around the room with disgust and her back-combed hair-sprayed dyed red hair follows the movement. ‘You’ve moved all the way over to this country on your own, you’ve got nothing but garden furniture and unpacked boxes in a basement that looks like it was built for students. Clearly Jennifer also got all the taste in the settlement too.’

‘This is a Victorian masterpiece, Doris. It was a real find, and it’s the only place I could find with a bit of history as well as having affordable rent. This is an expensive town.’

‘I’m sure it was a gem hundreds of years ago but now it gives me the creeps and whoever built it is probably still hanging around these rooms. I can feel him watching me.’ She shudders.

‘Don’t flatter yourself.’ Al rolls his eyes.

‘All the place needs is a bit of TLC and it’ll be fine,’ Justin says, trying to forget the apartment he loved and has recently sold in the affluent and historic neighbourhood of Old Town Chicago.

‘Which is why I’m here.’ Doris claps her hands with glee.

‘Great.’ Justin’s smile is tight. ‘Let’s go get some dinner now. I’m in the mood for a steak.’

‘But you’re vegetarian, Joyce.’ Conor looks at me as though I’ve lost my mind. I probably have. I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten red meat but I have a sudden craving for it now that we’ve sat down at the restaurant.

‘I’m not vegetarian, Conor. I just don’t like red meat.’

‘But you’ve just ordered a medium-rare steak!’

‘I know,’ I shrug. ‘I’m just one crazy cat.’

He smiles as if remembering there once was a wild streak in me. We are like two friends meeting up after years apart. So much to talk about but not having the slightest clue where to start.

‘Have you chosen the wine yet?’ the waiter asks Conor.

I quickly grab the menu. ‘Actually I would like to order this one, please.’ I point to the menu.

‘Sancerre 1998. That’s a very good choice, madam.’

‘Thank you.’ I have no idea whatsoever why I’ve chosen it.

Conor laughs. ‘Did you just do eeny-meeny-miny-mo?’

I smile but get hot under the collar. I don’t know why I’ve ordered that wine. It’s too expensive and I usually drink white, but I act naturally because I don’t want Conor to think I’ve lost my mind. He already thought I was crazy when he saw I’d chopped all my hair off. He needs to think I’m back to my normal self in order for me to say what I’m going to say tonight.

The waiter returns with the bottle of wine.

‘You can do the tasting,’ Al says to Justin, ‘seeing as it was your choice.’

Justin picks up the glass of wine, dips his nose into the glass and inhales deeply.

I inhale deeply and then swivel the wine in the glass, watching for the alcohol to rise and sweep the sides. I take a sip and hold it on my tongue, suck it in and allow the alcohol to burn the inside of my mouth. Perfect.

‘Lovely, thank you.’ I place the glass on the table again.

Conor’s glass is filled and mine is topped up.

‘It’s beautiful wine.’ I begin to tell him the story.

‘I found it when Jennifer and I went to France years ago,’ Justin explains. ‘She was there performing in the Festival des Cathédrales de Picardie with the orchestra, which was a memorable experience. In Versailles, we stayed in Hôtel du Berry, an elegant 1634 mansion full of period furniture. It’s practically a museum of regional history – you probably remember my telling you about it. Anyway, on one of her nights off in Paris we found this beautiful little fish restaurant tucked away down one of the cobbled alleys of Montmartre. We ordered the special, seabass, but you know how much of a red wine fanatic I am – even with fish I prefer to drink red – so the waiter suggested we go for the Sancerre.

‘You know I always thought of Sancerre as a white wine, as it’s famous for using the Sauvignon grape, but as it turns out it also uses some Pinot Noir. And the great thing is that you can drink the red Sancerre cooled exactly like white, at twelve degrees. But when not chilled, it’s also good with meat. Enjoy.’ He toasts his brother and sister-in-law.

Conor is looking at me with a frozen face. ‘Montmartre? Joyce, you’ve never been to Paris before. How do you know so much about wine? And who the hell is Jennifer?’

I pause, snap out of my trance and suddenly hear the words of the story I had just explained. I do the only thing I can do under the circumstances. I start laughing. ‘Gotcha.’

‘Gotcha?’ he frowns.

‘They’re the lines to a movie I watched the other night.’

‘Oh.’ Relief floods his face and he relaxes. ‘Joyce, you scared me there for a minute. I thought somebody had possessed your body.’ He smiles. ‘What film is it from?’

‘Oh, I can’t remember,’ I wave my hand dismissively, wondering what on earth is going on with me and try to recall if I even watched a film any night during the past week.

‘You don’t like anchovies now?’ he interrupts my thoughts, and looks down at the little collection of anchovies I’ve gathered in a pile at the side of my plate.

‘Give them to me, bro,’ Al says, lifting his plate closer to Justin’s. ‘I love ’em. How you can have a Caesar salad without anchovies is beyond me. Is it OK that I have anchovies, Doris?’ he asks sarcastically. ‘The doc didn’t say anchovies are going to kill me, did he?’

‘Not unless somebody stuffs them down your throat, which is quite possible,’ Doris says through gritted teeth.

‘Thirty-nine years old and I’m being treated like a kid.’ Al looks wistfully at the pile of anchovies.

‘Thirty-five years old and the only kid I have is my husband,’ Doris snaps, picking an anchovy from the pile and tasting it. She ruffles her nose and looks around the restaurant. ‘They call this an Italian restaurant? My mother and her family would roll in their graves if they knew this.’ She blesses herself quickly. ‘So, Justin, tell me about this lady you’re seeing.’

Justin frowns. ‘Doris, it’s really no big deal, I told you I just thought I knew her.’ And she looked like she thought she knew you too.

‘No, not her,’ Al says loudly with a mouthful of anchovies. ‘She’s talking about the woman you were banging the other night.’

‘Al!’ Food wedges in Justin’s throat.

‘Joyce,’ Conor says with concern, ‘are you OK?’

My eyes fill as I try to catch my breath from coughing.

‘Here, have some water.’ He pushes a glass in my face.

People around us are staring, concerned.

I’m coughing so much I can’t even take a breath to drink. Conor gets up from his chair and comes around to me. He pats my back and I shrug him off, still coughing with tears running down my face. I stand up in panic, overturning my chair behind me in the process.

‘Al, Al, do something. Oh, Madonn-ina Santa!’ Doris panics. ‘He’s going purple.’

Al untucks his napkin from his collar and coolly places it on the table. He stands up and positions himself behind his brother. He wraps his arms around his waist, and pumps hard on his stomach.

On the second push, the food is dislodged from Justin’s throat.

As a third person races to my aid, or rather to join the growing panicked discussion of how to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre, I suddenly stop coughing. Three faces stare at me in surprise while I rub my throat with confusion.

‘Are you OK?’ Conor asks, patting my back again.

‘Yes,’ I whisper, embarrassed by the attention we are receiving. ‘I’m fine, thank you. Everyone, thank you so much for your help.’

They are slow to back away.

‘Please go back to your seats and enjoy your dinner. Honestly, I’m fine. Thank you.’ I sit down quickly and rub my streaming mascara from my eyes, trying to ignore the stares. ‘God, that was embarrassing.’

‘That was odd; you hadn’t even eaten anything. You were just talking and then, bam! You started coughing.’

I shrug and rub my throat. ‘I don’t know, something caught when I inhaled.’

The waiter comes over to take our plates away. ‘Are you all right, madam?’

‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine.’

I feel a nudge from behind me as our neighbour leans over to our table. ‘Hey, for a minute there I thought you were going into labour, ha-ha! Didn’t we, Margaret?’ He looks at his wife and laughs.

‘No,’ Margaret says, her smile quickly fading and her face turning puce. ‘No, Pat.’

‘Huh?’ He’s confused. ‘Well, I did anyway. Congrats, Conor.’ He gives a suddenly pale Conor a wink. ‘There goes sleep for the next twenty years, believe you me. Enjoy your dinner.’ He turns back to face his table, and we hear murmured squabbling.

Conor’s face falls and he reaches for my hand across the table. ‘Are you OK?’

‘That’s happened a few times now,’ I explain, and instinctively place my hand over my flat stomach. ‘I’ve barely looked in the mirror since I’ve come home. I can’t stand to look.’

Conor makes appropriate sounds of concern and I hear the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘pretty’ but I silence him. I need for him to listen and not to try to solve anything. I want him to know that I’m not trying to be pretty or beautiful but for once just to appear as I am. I want to tell him how I feel when I force myself to look in the mirror and study my body that now feels like a shell.

‘Oh, Joyce.’ His grip on my hand tightens as I speak, he squeezes my wedding ring into my skin and it hurts.

A wedding ring but no marriage.

I wriggle my hand a little to let him know to loosen his grip. Instead he lets go. A sign.

‘Conor,’ is all I say. I give him a look and I know he knows what I’m about to say. He’s seen this look before.

‘No, no, no, no, Joyce, not this conversation now.’ He withdraws his hand from the table completely and holds his hands up in defence. ‘You – we – have been through enough this week.’

‘Conor, no more distractions.’ I lean forward with urgency in my voice. ‘We have to deal with us now or before we know it, ten years on we’ll be wondering every single day of our miserable lives what might have been.’

We’ve had this conversation in some form or another on an annual basis over the last five years and I wait for the usual retort from Conor. That no one says marriage is easy, we can’t expect it to be so, we promised one another, marriage is for life and he’s determined to work at it. Salvage from the skip what’s worth saving, my itinerant husband preaches. I focus on the centre flame’s reflection in my dessert spoon while I wait for his usual comments. I realise minutes later they still haven’t come. I look up and see he is battling tears and is nodding in what looks like agreement.

I take a breath. This is it.

Justin eyes the dessert menu.

‘You can’t have any, Al.’ Doris plucks the menu out of her husband’s hands and snaps it shut.

‘Why not? Am I not allowed to even read it?’

‘Your cholesterol goes up just reading it.’

Justin zones out as they squabble. He shouldn’t be having any either. Since his divorce he’s started to let himself go, eating as a comfort instead of his usual daily workout. He really shouldn’t, but his eyes hover above one item on the menu like a vulture watching its prey.

‘Any dessert for you, sir?’ the waiter asks.

Go on.

‘Yes. I’ll have the …’

‘Banoffee pie, please,’ I blurt out to the waiter, to my own surprise.

Conor’s mouth drops.

Oh dear. My marriage has just ended and I’m ordering dessert. I bite my lip and stop a nervous smile from breaking out.

To new beginnings. To the pursuit of … somethingness.

TEN

A grand chime welcomes me to my father’s humble home. It’s a sound far more than deserving of the two up-two down, but then, so is my father.

The sound teleports me back to my life within these walls and how I’d identified visitors by the sound of their call at the door. As a child, short piercing sounds told me that friends, too short to reach, were hopping up to punch the button. Fast and weak snippets of sound alerted me to boyfriends cowering outside, terrified of announcing their very existence, never mind their arrival, to my father. Late night unsteady, uncountable rings sang Dad’s homecoming from the pub without his keys. Joyful, playful rhythms were family calls on occasions, and short, loud, continuous bursts like machine-gun fire warned us of door-to-door salespeople. I press the bell again, but not just because at ten a.m. the house is quiet and nothing stirs; I want to know what my call sounds like.

Apologetic, short and clipped. Almost doesn’t want to be heard but needs to be. It says, sorry, Dad, sorry to disturb you. Sorry the thirty-three-year-old daughter you thought you were long ago rid of is back home after her marriage has fallen apart.

Finally I hear sounds inside and I see Dad’s seesaw movement coming closer, shadowlike and eerie, in the distorted glass.

‘Sorry, love,’ he opens the door, ‘I didn’t hear you the first time.’

‘If you didn’t hear me then how did you know I rang?’

He looks at me blankly and then down at the suitcases around my feet. ‘What’s this?’

‘You … you told me I could stay for a while.’

‘I thought you meant till the end of Countdown.’

‘Oh … well, I was hoping to stay for a bit longer than that.’

‘Long after I’m gone, by the looks of it.’ He surveys his doorstep. ‘Come in, come in. Where’s Conor? Something happen to the house? You haven’t mice again, have you? It’s the time of the year for them all right, so you should have kept the windows and doors closed. Block up all the openings, that’s what I do. I’ll show you when we’re inside and settled. Conor should know.’

‘Dad, I’ve never called around to stay here because of mice.’

‘There’s a first time for everything. Your mother used to do that. Hated the things. Used to stay at your grandmother’s for the few days while I ran around here like that cartoon cat trying to catch them. Tom or Jerry, was it?’ He squeezes his eyes closed tight to think, then opens them again, none the wiser. ‘I never knew the difference but by God they knew it when I was after them.’ He raises a fist, looks feisty for a moment while captured in the thought and then he stops suddenly and carries my suitcases into the hall.

‘Dad?’ I say, frustrated. ‘I thought you understood me on the phone. Conor and I have separated.’

‘Separated what?’

‘Ourselves.’

‘From what?’

‘From each other!’

‘What on earth are you talking about, Gracie?’

‘Joyce. We’re not together any more. We’ve split up.’

He puts the bags down by the hall’s wall of photographs, there to provide any visitor who crosses the threshold with a crash course of the Conway family history. Dad as a boy, Mum as a girl, Dad and Mum courting, married, my christening, communion, débutant ball and wedding. Capture it, frame it, display it; Mum and Dad’s school of thought. It’s funny how people mark their lives, the benchmarks they choose to decide when a moment is more of a moment than any other. For life is made of them. I like to think the best ones of all are in my mind, that they run through my blood in their own memory bank for no one else but me to see.

Dad doesn’t pause for a moment at the revelations of my failed marriage and instead works his way into the kitchen. ‘Cuppa?’

I stay in the hall looking around at the photos and breathe in that smell. The smell that’s carried around everyday on every stitch of Dad’s back, like a snail carries its home. I always thought it was the smell of Mum’s cooking that drifted around the rooms and seeped into every fibre, including the wallpaper, but it’s ten years since Mum has passed away. Perhaps the scent was her; perhaps it’s still her.

‘What are you doin’ sniffin’ the walls?’

I jump, startled and embarrassed at being caught, and make my way into the kitchen. It hasn’t changed since I lived here and it’s as spotless as the day Mum left it, nothing moved, not even for convenience’s sake. I watch Dad move slowly about, resting on his left foot to access the cupboards below, and then using the extra inches of his right leg as his own personal footstool to reach above. The kettle boils too loudly for us to have a conversation and I’m glad of that because Dad grips the handle so tightly his knuckles are white. A teaspoon is cupped in his left hand, which rests on his hip, and it reminds me of how he used to stand with his cigarette, shielded in his cupped hand that’d be stained yellow from nicotine. He looks out to his immaculate garden and grinds his teeth. He’s angry and I feel like a teenager once again, awaiting my talking-down.

‘What are you thinking about, Dad?’ I finally ask as soon as the kettle stops hopping about like a crammed Hill 16 in Croke Park during an All-Ireland Final.

‘The garden,’ he replies, his jaw tightening once again.

‘The garden?’

‘That bloody cat from next door keeps pissing on your mother’s roses.’ He shakes his head angrily. ‘Fluffy,’ he throws his hands up, ‘that’s what she calls him. Well, Fluffy won’t be so fluffy when I get my hands on him. I’ll be wearin’ one of them fine furry hats the Russians wear and I’ll dance the hopak outside Mrs Henderson’s front garden while she wraps a shiverin’ Baldy up in a blanket inside.’

‘Is that what you’re really thinking about?’ I ask incredulously.

‘Well, not really, love,’ he confesses, calming down. ‘That and the daffodils. Not far off from planting season for spring. And some crocuses. I’ll have to get some bulbs.’

Good to know my marriage breakdown isn’t my dad’s main priority. Nor his second. On the list after crocuses.

‘Snowdrops too,’ he adds.

It’s rare I’m around the area so early on in the day. Usually I’d be at work showing property around the city. It’s so quiet now with everyone at work, I wonder what on earth Dad does in this silence.

‘What were you doing before I came?’

‘Thirty-three years ago or today?’

‘Today.’ I try not to smile because I know he’s serious.

‘Quiz.’ He nods at the kitchen table where he has a page full of puzzles and quizzes. Half of them are completed. ‘I’m stuck on the number six. Have a look at that.’ He brings the cups of tea to the table, managing not to spill a drop despite his swaying. Always steady.

‘“Which of Mozart’s operas was not well received by one especially influential critic who summed up the work as having ‘Too many notes’?”’ I read the clue aloud.

‘Mozart,’ Dad shrugs. ‘Haven’t a clue about that lad at all.’

‘Emperor Joseph the Second,’ I say.

‘What’s that now?’ Dad’s caterpillar eyebrows go up in surprise. ‘How did you know that, then?’

I frown. ‘I must have just heard it somwh—do I smell smoke?’

He sits up straight and sniffs the air like a bloodhound. ‘Toast. I made it earlier. Had the setting on too high and burned it. They were the last two slices, as well.’

‘Hate that.’ I shake my head. ‘Where’s Mum’s photograph from the hall?’

‘Which one? There are thirty of her.’

‘You’ve counted?’ I laugh.

‘Nailed them up there, didn’t I? Forty-four photos in total, that’s forty-four nails I needed. Went down to the hardware store and bought a pack of nails. Forty nails it contained. They made me buy a second packet just for four more nails.’ He holds up four fingers and shakes his head. ‘Still have thirty-six of them left over in the toolbox. What is the world comin’ to at all, at all.’

Never mind terrorism or global warming. The proof of the world’s downfall, in his eyes, comes down to thirty-six nails in a toolbox. He’s probably right too.

‘So where is it?’

‘Right where it always is,’ he says unconvincingly.

We both look at the closed kitchen door, in the direction of the hall table. I stand up to go out and check. These are the kinds of things you do when you have time on your hands.

‘Ah ah,’ he jerks a floppy hand at me, ‘sit yourself down.’ He rises. ‘I’ll go out and check.’ He closes the kitchen door behind him, blocking me from seeing out. ‘She’s there all right,’ he calls to me. ‘Hello, Gracie, your daughter was worried about you. Thought she couldn’t see you but sure, haven’t you been there all along watchin’ her sniffin’ the walls, thinkin’ the paper’s on fire. But sure isn’t it only madder she’s gettin’, leaving her husband and packing in her job.’

I haven’t mentioned anything to him about taking leave from my job, which means Conor has spoken to him, which means Dad knew my exact intentions for being here from the very first moment he heard the doorbell ring. I have to give it to him, he plays stupid very well. He returns to the kitchen and I catch a glimpse of the photo on the hall table.

‘Ah!’ He looks at his watch in alarm. ‘Ten twenty-five! Let’s go inside quick!’ He moves faster than I’ve seen him in a long time, grabbing his weekly television guide and his cup of tea and rushing into the television room.

‘What are we watching?’ I follow him into the living room, watching him with amusement.

‘Murder, She Wrote, you know it?’

‘Never seen it.’

‘Oh, wait’ll you see, Gracie. That Jessica Fletcher is a quare one for catching the murderers. Then over on the next channel we’ll watch Diagnosis Murder, where the dancer solves the cases.’ He takes a pen and circles it on the TV page.

I’m captivated by Dad’s excitement. He sings along with the theme tune, making trumpet noises with his mouth.

‘Come in here and lie on the couch and I’ll put this over you.’ He picks up a tartan blanket draped over the back of the green velvet couch and places it gently over me, tucking it in around my body so tightly I can’t move my arms. It’s the same blanket I rolled on as a baby, the same blanket they covered me with when I was home sick from school and was allowed to watch television on the couch. I watch Dad with fondness, remembering the tenderness he always showed me as a child, feeling right back there again.

Until he sits at the end of the couch and squashes my feet.

ELEVEN

‘What do you think, Gracie – will Betty be a millionaire by the end of the show?’

I have sat through an endless amount of half-hour morning shows over the last few days and now we are watching the Antiques Roadshow.

Betty is seventy years old, from Warwickshire, and is currently waiting with anticipation as the dealer tries to price the old teapot she has brought with her.

I watch the dealer handling the teapot delicately and a comfortable, familiar feeling overwhelms me. ‘Sorry, Betty,’ I say to the television, ‘it’s a replica. From the eighteenth century. The French used them but Betty’s one was made in the early twentieth century. You can see from the way the handle is shaped. Clumsy craftsmanship.’

‘Is that so?’ Dad looks at me with interest.

We watch the screen intently and listen as the dealer repeats my remarks. Poor Betty is devastated but tries to pretend it was too precious a gift from her grandmother for her to have sold anyhow.

‘Liar,’ Dad shouts. ‘Betty already had her cruise booked and her bikini bought. How do you know all that about the pots and the French, Gracie? Read it in one of your books maybe?’

‘Maybe.’ I have no idea. I get a headache thinking about this new-found knowledge.

Dad catches the look on my face. ‘Why don’t you call a friend or something? Have a chat.’

I don’t want to but I know I should. ‘I should probably give Kate a call.’

‘The big-boned girl? The one who ploughed you with poteen when you were sixteen?’

‘That’s Kate,’ I laugh. He has never forgiven her for that.

‘What kind of a name is that, at all, at all. She was a messer, that girl. Has she come to anything?’

‘No, not at all. She just sold her shop in the city for two million to become a stay-at-home mother.’ I try not to laugh at the shock on his face.

His ears prick up. ‘Ah, sure, give her a call. Have a chat. You women like to do that. Good for the soul, your mother always said. Your mother loved talking, was always blatherin’ on to someone or other about somethin’ or other.’

‘Wonder where she got that from,’ I say under my breath but just as if by a miracle, my father’s rubbery-looking ears work.

‘Her star sign is where she got it from. Taurus. Talked a lot of bull.’

‘Dad!’

‘What? Is it an admittance of hate? No. Nothing of the sort. I loved her with all my heart but the woman talked a lot of bull. Not enough to talk about a thing, I had to hear about how she felt about it too. Ten times over.’

‘You don’t believe in star signs,’ I nudge him.

‘I do too. I’m Libra. Weighing scales.’ He rocks from side to side. ‘Perfectly balanced.’

I laugh and escape to my bedroom to phone Kate. I enter the room, practically unchanged since the day I left it. Despite the rare occasion of guests staying over after I’d gone, my parents never removed my leftover belongings. The Cure stickers were still on the door and parts of the wallpaper were ripped from the tape that had secured my posters. As a punishment for ruining the walls, Dad forced me to cut the grass in the back garden, but while doing so I ran the lawnmower over a shrub in the bedding. He refused to speak to me for the rest of the day. Apparently it was the first year the shrub had blossomed since he’d planted it. I couldn’t understand his frustration then, but after spending years of hard work cultivating a marriage, only for it to wither and die, I can now understand his plight. But I bet he didn’t feel the relief I feel right now.

My box bedroom can only fit a bed and a wardrobe but it was my whole world. My only personal space to think and dream, to cry and laugh and wait until I became old enough to do all the things I wasn’t allowed to do. My only space in the world then and, at thirty-three years old, my only space now. Who knew I’d find myself back again without any of the things I’d yearned for, and, even worse, still yearning for them? Not to be a member of The Cure or married to Robert Smith, but with no baby and no husband. The wallpaper is floral and wild; completely inappropriate for a space of rest. Millions of tiny brown flowers cluster together with tiny splashes of faded green stalks. No wonder I’d covered them with posters. The carpet is brown with lighter brown swirls, stained from spilled perfume and make-up. New additions to the room are old and faded brown leather suitcases lying on top of the wardrobe, gathering dust since Mum died. Dad never goes anywhere, a life without Mum, he decided long ago, enough of a journey for him.

The duvet cover is the newest introduction. New, as in, over ten years old; Mum purchased it when my room became the guest room. I moved out a year before she died, to live with Kate, and I wish everyday since that I hadn’t, all those precious days of not waking up to hear her long yawns that turned into songs, talking to herself as she made her verbal diary with Gay Byrne’s radio show on in the background. She loved Gay Byrne; her sole ambition in life being to meet him. The closest she got to that dream was when she and Dad got tickets to sit in the audience of The Late Late Show and she spoke about it for years. I think she had a thing for him. Dad hated him. I think he knew about her thing.

He likes to listen to him now, though, whenever he’s on. I think he reminds him of a precious time spent with Mum, as though when we all hear Gay Byrne’s voice, he hears Mum’s instead. When she died, he surrounded himself with all the things she adored. He put Gay on the radio every morning, watched Mum’s television shows, bought her favourite biscuits in his weekly shopping trip even though he never ate them. He liked to see them on the shelf when he opened the cupboard, liked to see her magazines beside his newspaper. He liked her slippers staying beside her armchair by the fire. He liked to remind himself that his entire world hadn’t fallen apart. Sometimes we need all the glue we can get, just to hold ourselves together.

At sixty-five years old, he was too young to lose his wife. At twenty-three I was too young to lose my mother. At fifty-five she shouldn’t have lost her life, but cancer, the thief of seconds, undetected until far too late, stole it from her and us all. Dad married late in life for that time, and didn’t have me until he was forty-two years old. I think that there was somebody that broke his heart back then that he has never spoken of and that I’ve never asked about, but what he does say about that period is that he spent more days of his life waiting for Mum than actually being with her, but that every second spent looking for her and, eventually, remembering her, was worth it for all the moments in between.

Mum never met Conor but I don’t know whether she would have liked him, though she was too polite ever to have shown it. Mum loved all kinds of people but particularly those with high spirit and energy, people that lived and exuded that life. Conor is pleasant. Always just pleasant. Never overexcited. Never, in fact, excited at all. Just pleasant, which is just another word for nice. Marrying a nice man gives you a nice marriage but never anything more. And nice is OK when it’s among other things but never when it stands alone.

Dad would talk to anyone anywhere and not have a feeling about them one way or another. The only negative thing he ever said about Conor was, ‘Sure, what kind of man likes tennis?’ A GAA and soccer man, Dad had spat the word out as though just saying it had dirtied his mouth.

Our failure to produce a child didn’t do much to sway Dad’s opinion. He blamed it on the tennis but particularly on the little white shorts Conor sometimes wore, whenever pregnancy test after pregnancy test failed to show blue. I know he said it all to put a smile on my face; sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t, but it was a safe joke because we all knew it wasn’t the tennis shorts or the man wearing them that was the problem.

I sit down on the duvet cover bought by Mum, not wanting to crease it. A two-pillow and duvet cover set from Dunnes with a matching candle for the windowsill, which has never been lit and has lost its scent. Dust gathers on the top, incriminating evidence that Dad is not keeping up with his duties, as if at seventy-five years old the removal of dust from anywhere but his memory shelf should be a priority. But the dust has settled and so let it stay.

I turn on my mobile, which has been switched off for days, and it begins to beep as a dozen messages filter through. I have already made my calls to those near, dear and nosy. Like pulling off a Band-Aid; don’t think about it, move quickly and it’s almost painless. Flip open the phonebook and bam, bam, bam: three minutes each. Quick snappy phone calls made by a strangely upbeat woman who’d momentarily inhabited my body. An incredible woman, in fact, positive and perky, yet emotional and wise at all the right times. Her timing impeccable, her sentiments so poignant I almost wanted to write them down. She even attempted a bit of humour, which some members of the near, dear and nosy coped well with while others seemed almost insulted – not that she cared, for it was her party and she was crying if she wanted to. I’ve met her before, of course; she whizzes around to me for the occasional trauma, steps into my shoes and takes over the hard parts. She’ll be back again, no doubt.

No, it will be a long time before I can speak in my own voice to people other than the woman I am calling now.

Kate picks up on the fourth ring.

‘Hello,’ she shouts and I jump. There are manic noises in the background, as though a mini-war has broken out.

‘Joyce!’ she yells and I realise I’m on speakerphone. ‘I’ve been calling you and calling you. Derek, SIT DOWN. MUMMY IS NOT HAPPY! Sorry, I’m just doing the school run. I’ve to bring six kids home, then a quick snack before I bring Eric to basketball and Jayda to swimming. Want to meet me there at seven? Jayda is getting her ten-metre badge today.’

Jayda howls in the background about hating ten-metre badges.

‘How can you hate it when you’ve never had one?’ Kate snaps. Jayda howls even louder and I have to move the phone from my ear. ‘JAYDA! GIVE MUMMY A BREAK! DEREK, PUT YOUR SEATBELT ON! If I have to brake suddenly, you will go FLYING through the windscreen and SMASH YOUR FACE IN. Hold on, Joyce.’

There is silence while I wait.

‘Gracie!’ Dad yells. I run to the top of the stairs in panic, not used to hearing him shout like that since I was a child.

‘Yes? Dad! Are you OK?’

‘I got seven letters,’ he shouts.

‘You got what?’

‘Seven letters!’

‘What does that mean?’

‘In Countdown!’

I stop panicking and sit on the top stair in frustration. Suddenly Kate’s voice is back and it sounds as though calm has been restored.

‘OK, you’re off speakerphone. I’ll probably be arrested for holding the phone, not to mention cast off the car-pool list, like I give a flying fuck about that.’

‘I’m telling my mammy you said the f word,’ I hear a little voice.

‘Good. I’ve been wanting to tell her that for years,’ Kate murmurs to me and I laugh.

‘FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK,’ I hear a crowd of kids chanting.

‘Jesus, Joyce, I better go. See you at the leisure centre at seven? It’s my only break. Or else I have tomorrow. Tennis at three or gymnastics at six? I can see if Frankie is free to meet up too.’

Frankie. Christened Francesca but refuses to answer to it. Dad was wrong about Kate. She may have sourced the poteen but technically it was Frankie that held my mouth open and poured it down my throat. As a result of this version of the story never being told, he thinks Frankie’s a saint, very much to Kate’s annoyance.

‘I’ll take gymnastics tomorrow,’ I smile as the children’s chanting gets louder. Kate’s gone and there’s silence.

‘GRACIE!’ Dad calls again.

‘It’s Joyce, Dad.’

‘I got the conundrum!’

I make my way back to my bed and cover my head with a pillow.

A few minutes later Dad arrives at the door, scaring the life out of me.

‘I was the only one that got the conundrum. The contestants hadn’t a clue. Simon won anyway, goes through to tomorrow’s show. He’s been the winner for three days now and I’m half bored lookin’ at him. He has a funny-looking face; you’d have a right laugh if you saw it. Don’t think Carol likes him much either and she’s after losin’ loads of weight again. Do you want a HobNob? I’m going to make another cuppa.’

‘No, thanks.’ I put the pillow back over my head. He uses so many words.

‘Well, I’m having one. I have to eat with my pills. Supposed to take it at lunch but I forgot.’

‘You took a pill at lunch, remember?’

‘That was for my heart. This is for my memory. Short-term memory pills.’

I take the pillow off my face to see if he’s being serious. ‘And you forgot to take it?’

He nods.

‘Oh, Dad.’ I start to laugh while he looks on as though I’m having an episode. ‘You are medicine enough for me. Well, you need to get stronger pills. They’re not working, are they?’

He turns his back and makes his way down the hall, grumbling, ‘They’d bloody well work if I remembered to take them.’

‘Dad,’ I call to him and he stops at the top of the stairs. ‘Thanks for not asking any questions about Conor.’

‘Sure, I don’t need to. I know you’ll be back together in no time.’

‘No we won’t,’ I say softly.

He walks a little closer to my room. ‘Is he stepping out with someone else?’

‘No he’s not. And I’m not. We don’t love each other. We haven’t for a long time.’

‘But you married him, Joyce. Didn’t I bring you down the aisle myself?’ He looks confused.

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