Eggshell Days (28 page)

*   *   *

“Mum won't open her sewing room door,” Maya whispered to Niall on the landing. “She keeps saying she'll be out in a minute, but I've been waiting here for ages.”

“It's not your fault, sweetheart,” he told her, suddenly so incensed with Emmy's behavior that he banged on the door without effect. It had always been about extremes with Emmy—she had the capacity to be both happier and sadder than anyone else he knew—but this was getting silly.

Maya looked at him with her nose screwed and her lips slightly curled. “Who says I thought it was?”

Niall laughed, relieved. “No one. I just thought—”

“Oh, God!” Maya groaned. “Grown-ups are always ‘just thinking.' I don't care whether she comes out or not. I want to go outside, and I've promised I will ask first.”

“Since when?”

“Since Cathal came. Don't ask me. Eggshell rule.” She shrugged.

“Right. Cathal? What's he got to do with it?”

“Search me. What's wrong with Mum, anyway? I thought she'd be happy now you and Kat have split up.”

“Oh, we have, have we? Who told you that?”

“I heard Kat tell you to, you know, the ‘f' word you're so fond of.”

“That doesn't necessarily meant we've…” he said feebly.

“But you have, haven't you? I looked in your room and you've put her stuff in a box.”

“I think I ought to tell Kat before I tell you, don't you?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, when I've told her, you'll be the first to know.”

Maya smiled, happy with that. “Okay, deal. Now will you find out why Mum won't come out?”

“She's busy working, I expect.”

“Oh yeah, right,” Maya said sarcastically.

“Anyway, I thought you didn't care,” Niall teased.

“No, you didn't.”

“It'll be something to do with the real estate agent's visit, I should think. I don't suppose she fancied bumping into him.”

“I've already told her he mentioned a million. Jay and I were spitting at him from Jay's bedroom. None of it hit him. The wind made it all come back in our faces.”

“Serves you right.”

“We heard him tell you it would be upward of a million. Does that mean we'll be rich?”

“Hey, come on. I think you should leave this to the adults. It's not kids' stuff.”

“Why? Everyone is equal at Bodinnick, remember? That's what it says in the rules.”

“Yeah, but some are more equal than others.”

“Great.” She groaned again. Her foot was still against the wall and her hands were still in her pocket, as if she was waiting outside the principal's study on detention. “Anyway, it's not that. I know it's not.”

Niall was inclined to go with Maya when it came to Emmy. Her instinct was usually right.

“Is she ill?” he asked.

“No.”

“Is she cross?”

“No.”

“Then it'll be one of those women things that kids and blokes don't get.”

Maya shook her head. “If you mean her period, it isn't that, either.”

Niall furrowed his eyebrows. “I can't think of anything else, can you?”

She looked puzzled, only half sure of herself. “I think she doesn't want to come out because Cathal is here. She wasn't very pleased to see him when he arrived. I don't think she likes him.”

“Oh.” Niall was taken aback. “He's okay, isn't he? Do you like him?”

“Yeah, of course. He's your brother.”

“Cor-rect. Maybe she's cross with me for inviting people without asking.”

“You did ask. When he phoned, remember? And she ran off into the garden.”

“She did, didn't she? You're right. Am I thick or thick?”

“You said it.”

“Will I try and talk to her for you? Is that what you're wanting?”

“Yes, please,” Maya said quickly. “Now can I go outside?”

“I should think so.”

And she scooted off, scuffing the Persian runner as she went. That was what she had hoped he would say. Niall was the only one who could get her mum out of herself sometimes.

He knocked a second time on Emmy's door, less angrily. He had been waiting for an opportunity to talk to her, anyway.

“Emmy?” he said through the door.

“Go away, Niall.”

“No. Open up. I've, er … Me and Kat have … Well, I'm going to … I need to talk to you.”

“I heard. So did the rest of the house, I should think. If you have to argue, try and do it quietly, can you?”

“Let me in.”

The door opened, but she didn't drag him in by the shirt collar as she might have done a few weeks ago. Instead, she stood there limply.

“Can it wait?” she asked. It was years since he had seen her wearing glasses instead of contacts.

“What's wrong with now?”

“I've got to get this done.” She waved a bit of fabric at him. “And I'm not in the mood for postmortems.”

“Oh, you're working!”

“Yes.”

“That's great.” He felt more relieved than he'd expected to. “Maya was a bit worried. She said you wouldn't come out because Cathal was here.”

Emmy made a nervous sound that was meant to come out as a laugh. “Cathal? What on earth made her say something like that?”

“I don't know,” he said.

But actually he did, now. Emmy's reaction was too tense, too false.

“Look, as you pointed out, I'm working. Tell Maya to stop jumping to ridiculous conclusions, will you? Why she has to get you to talk to me instead of coming in here herself, I've no idea.”

“Oh, really? Stop being such a bitch, Emmy. She's worried and I am, too.”

“Well don't. I don't need you to worry and I don't need to be called a bitch.”

“Thank you for your time,” Niall said with a sarcastic nod but he didn't feel sarcastic. He felt gutted.

Emmy pushed her door to again, almost in his face, and went back to stand by the machine. She clenched her fist and held it against her mouth, listening to him walk down the stairs. What he was thinking? Did he really have no idea? Was he not in any way suspicious of his brother just turning up like this? There was something terrible about his apparent ignorance.

The floor was covered in piles of red satin, and remnants of the same fabric in orange were strewn around. It looked like a furnace in there, and why not? She was surely in hell.

It was a double-edged sword, hiding away like this. She sat on the satin on the floor, pulled her legs up and held them tight to her body with her arms. A tissue-paper pattern for a devil's outfit was partly unfolded next to her. She could see the outline for a pronged fork. She knew a devil transformed into an angel, but how in God's name was she expected to be able to create anything like that when she no longer believed in heaven? A discarded tabard of mock chainmail hung over the back of the chair. She felt as if her guts had been skewered on a lance and the dragon's flames had burned every cell of her skin.

There was another knock on the door.

“Look, unless you are Maya, I'm not in,” she shouted.

The last person she expected to walk in was Cathal.

*   *   *

He went straight to the window.

“Come in why don't you?” Emmy snapped, jumping to her feet, but when she forced herself to look at him—the way his shoulders were slumped and his head hung from all the thinking—she almost felt sorry for him. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to be hostile.”

She had meant to be, a few seconds ago. A few seconds ago it was her only defense. Now he'd even taken that away.

He didn't speak, but blew out, fogging a little damp circle on the inside of the window.

Emmy reminded herself of her carefully chosen catalog of facts. The last time they had been alone together, Maya hadn't even technically been a fusion of egg and sperm. That miraculous little explosion had happened only once Cathal was on his way back to Ireland to join his heavily pregnant wife. Maya had happened all on her own.

“I'm sorry, too,” he said. “I know you don't want me here, but I gave up hoping you would reply to my letters.”

“I sent you a text message,” she said defensively.

“I was already on my way by then.”

They were both looking out of the narrow window, knowing there was no point in clarifying what was blindingly obvious. Out in the garden, through the spotless panes of glass in the narrow sash window, they were looking at their daughter. Emmy had cleaned the glass herself that morning for something to do, and now she wished she hadn't. By doing so, she had put Maya into perfect focus. It was impossible not to want to claim some of her for yourself.

Their daughter was pushing Asha around in a wheelbarrow, trying not to let it tip. She knew she was being watched. She just wasn't sure where from, or why.

“I told her not to go outside without asking me.”

“I know. Niall told her he didn't think you would mind.”

Emmy bit her lip. “A mind reader, is he?”

“No, you're just transparent. While I'm here with you, there's no chance of her being outside with me, is there?” he said. “You're making me feel like a pedophile.”

“That's ridiculous.”

There was a silence while they tried to rein in their anger, and then he said it. It came out in a rush as he turned to look straight into Emmy's eyes, his muscles twitching, his lips taut.

“She
is
mine, isn't she?”

He hadn't meant it to be one of the first questions, but there Maya was, the living, breathing version of the photograph he had been staring at for the past few weeks, and it was all too much.

Emmy felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. “No,” she said, bracing herself for the next hit.

“Is that true?”

She looked away from the window, trying to control the fog that had closed in over her head. She tried to remember the things she had thought of to say. “Anyone who knows anything about Maya will tell you she doesn't belong to anyone,” she hissed.

“I'm not interested in that kind of ownership. You know what I mean.”

“If she is anyone's, she's mine. Any court in the land will tell you.”

“God, Emmy, please slow down.”

“I can't,” she said quickly. “You shouldn't be here. Look, I don't want to disappoint you, but she really isn't interested.”

“That's because she doesn't know,” Cathal replied quietly. His voice was so like his brother's, it was confusing. He was like a wolf in sheep's clothing.

“How do you know she doesn't know?”

“I can tell by the way she is with me.”

A silence fell between them. The tiniest, tiniest part of Emmy wanted to stand at the window with him and bask in shared parental pride. The words “She's beautiful, isn't she?” wanted to form on her lips. It was so minuscule a part that she knew she didn't have to acknowledge it.

“I wish you hadn't ignored my letters,” he said. “I feel like a bastard for turning up like this, but I didn't know what else to do.”

“I didn't ignore them. I didn't get the first one straight away—Jonathan left it over at the chapel—and, well, it hardly matters.”

“No.”

“No.”

“Which is why I was forced to come here instead.”

“What do you mean, ‘forced'? Who forced you?” She felt as if she were on the end of a seesaw. One minute she felt safe, the next she had vertigo.

“You did.”

“Don't make me hate you, Cathal.”

“Oh, I think you already do that, don't you?”

He watched Maya tip Asha out of the barrow. She stopped laughing and helped her up. Good girl, he felt like shouting down.

“I don't hate you, I hate what you're doing.”

“I can't help what I'm doing.”

“You shouldn't be here,” she repeated. “We can't talk here.”

“Then meet me somewhere. We don't have to make an evening of it. A layby would do. Anywhere. You know we're going to have to do it some time.”

“Someone would see us. You don't know what it's like round here.”

“Please.”

“No. For the first time in my life, I feel I'm where I should be, with the people I should be with. And you're threatening that. You're invading it.”

“I'm not invading it. I'm trying to make the best decision I can without hurting everyone. I haven't just got on a boat and come over here to shoot my mouth off and give you a hard time because I feel like it. I'm here because this isn't the kind of stuff you can ignore. It needs sorting.”

“If you take this to its logical conclusion, you'll wreck all of it.”

“How will I?”

She wasn't sure. She said the first thing that came into her head. “Niall will leave.”

Cathal made a noise of disbelief and started almost to shout. “This isn't about Niall, Emmy. This is the one thing in your life that isn't about Niall. I know everything else is. I even know that sleeping with me was about Niall, but it isn't about him anymore. It's about Maya.”

“And you. It's about you. The one thing it isn't about is me.”

“You've had ten years to prepare for this. You should have worked all this out.”

“But I didn't prepare. That's the point.” She blew into the silence, fighting back the tears. She didn't want him to see her cry.

“Please don't cry, Emmy.”

“It's too late for that,” she choked.

“Let's not do this now.”

“Let's never do it.”

“Never isn't an option, though, is it? Never isn't fair.”

Fair? she wanted to scream. Since when has my life ever been fair?

“I don't want to ruin anything, anything at all, I just want—”

“What? What do you want?” she spat. Soon she was spraying her venom without caution all over the room, because once she had started she couldn't stop. “If it's Maya you want, you can forget it. You can't pick and choose the right times to be a father—either you are or you're not, and you are clearly not. Did you hear that? You are clearly
not
a father, Cathal, so don't try and be one. You're not even a father to your boys anymore. Where have you been all these years? I know where you've been, you've been at home with your wife and kids, bringing them up, and now they've gone. Well, bad luck, but there is nothing here you can replace them with. Life isn't like that. You say I've had ten years to prepare for this, well so have you—don't you dare try and tell me it has never occurred to you before, because—”