Something in Common (15 page)

Then again, who’d want her as a friend? She tormented her elderly neighbour. She tore badly written books and mediocre plays to shreds. She spoke her mind, even when nobody wanted to hear it. She was mouthy and uncompromising. She drank more whiskey than was good for her whenever she got the chance, and most of the time she probably smelt like an ashtray. She could hardly blame people for steering clear.

When she thought about it, her most significant adult relationship these days was probably with Breen, which was very sad indeed, seeing as most of their conversations were conducted through mutually gritted teeth.

‘Can I have another one?’ Alice asked.

‘Course you can.’

Helen transferred a croquette from the serving dish to her daughter’s plate. Tomorrow she might try the chicken thing. She liked a bit of chicken, and the mashed potato topping would make a nice change from chips.

She liked beef too. Sarah Flannery probably had a stack of beef recipes.

T
he bedroom
wallpaper was getting on her
nerves. She couldn’t understand how it had ever appealed to her. Rows of silly daisies in lavender and blue marching up the walls, trapped within pompous gold swirls and curlicues. All the go in 1977, bedroom walls covered with colour and loud patterns. She could update it now by adding a border, like Christine had done in her house, but she was heartily sick of it.

She tried to
think back to the time she’d chosen it, coming on for six years ago. Revelling in her newly married status and eager to put her stamp on Neil’s house, which had marvellously become their house. She remembered buying new curtains for the sitting room, rearranging the contents of his kitchen presses, replacing his shockingly dilapidated mop and ancient vacuum cleaner, throwing out the vast numbers of empty bottles and jars and paint cans that had been living under his stairs for what looked like years.

All the details were there, but the emotional memory of that time refused to return. She couldn’t recall what pure happiness felt like. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling happy again.

‘You don’t need to stay in bed,’ the doctor had told her. ‘In fact, it would do you good to be up and about’ – but the thought of getting up held no appeal. What was there to get up for? What was the point of getting dressed? Easier to stay put and hate the wallpaper.

‘We can try again,’ Neil had murmured last night, both of them lying sleepless, side by side but not touching. ‘You’re only thirty-two, we’ve still got lots of time.’

Sarah had made no response, the tears sliding silently down her face. The thought of another failure was impossible to contemplate – not now, not yet, maybe never – but the prospect of admitting defeat brought fresh, sharp anguish.

‘And they’ve told us there’s no medical reason why we can’t have a baby. I’m sure it’ll happen for us.’

She’d turned onto her side, away from him, and pressed her wet face into the pillow, willing him to stop talking. No reason why they couldn’t have a baby, apart from the fact that her womb kept rejecting the idea. It let her get started, it allowed her a few weeks of hope, it waited until the doctor had confirmed it – and then, a week or two later, it changed its mind and emptied itself out. It rid itself of her baby, and left her hollow and useless and destroyed.

Three times it had happened, in six years of trying. Three lots of hoping and dreading and praying – real prayers, down on her knees by the bed, like she used to do as a child – that had all come to nothing, ending with cramps that folded her in two, and blood that came out of her in clotted waves, and tears. So many tears.

The third time was just five days ago, the same day that Karen Carpenter had died, a month before her thirty-third birthday. The world was mourning a tragic young singer who’d starved herself to death while another barely begun baby was draining out of Sarah.

She should have been a mother of three now. Two boys and a girl, maybe, or a clutch of daughters, too early to tell when she’d lost them. Neil taking boys to football matches, Sarah teaching all three how to cook – no reason why the boys shouldn’t learn, with all the talk of equality now. The kitchen table strewn with eggshells and jars of spices and cake tins, the house full of laughter and delicious scents.

A dog chasing
a ball around the garden, a cat sitting on the windowsill. Birthday parties, days out at the zoo, picnics, bedtime stories. A family making memories that she and Neil could pull out in old age and be warmed by. Torture … torture to conjure up the life that was being denied to her, and yet she couldn’t seem to stop doing it.

She reached for a folded sheet that sat on the bedside locker. She opened it and reread the letter that had come earlier that morning, in response to the brief, heartbroken note she’d sent the day after it had happened. Helen must have written back by return of post.

Helen, as direct as ever. Helen, whose honesty Sarah clung to.

And Sarah did trust her, because Helen did know what she was talking about. Because Helen’s husband had died.

He got cancer
, she’d written, a few months after they’d begun to exchange letters.
He was thirty-three. I was a basket case for a while, but life went on. I had Alice, I had no choice.
And that was all, and Sarah had never asked any more, sensing that questions would not be welcome.

This morning’s letter
had been stuffed into a peculiar cardboard container that appeared to have been glued together using pieces of an Ajax box –
Stronger than dirt
, Sarah read on one side of the blue and green card – along with a small jar that was wrapped in newspaper.

‘Eight Hour Cream’, the jar’s label read. ‘Relieves chapped lips, soothes grazes and minor burns, moisturises and softens skin.’ It had a slightly musty smell, but it was something to do as Sarah lay in bed. It passed a few minutes, every so often.

In five years of letter writing, one or two each a month, they hadn’t met, even though they lived about an hour’s drive apart. Neither of them had suggested a meeting, nor had they exchanged photographs, although the same small head and shoulders shot accompanied most of Helen’s articles.

Impossible to make her out clearly, with her face in three-quarter profile and her gaze tilted down so you couldn’t see her eyes. Her dark hair was cut close to her head, pixie-like, and the colour of her skin suggested dark eyes too. It was as if she was trying to be unrecognisable. Not necessarily a bad thing, given some of her views – surely deliberately controversial sometimes – and the awful things she still said about books or plays that didn’t appeal to her.

You’re heartless
, Sarah
would write after a typically unflinching review, but Helen remained unrepentant.
I’m a critic
, she’d reply,
I’m paid to be heartless. And besides, someone has to compensate for all the allowances you make, Mrs Benefit-of-the-Doubt.

They were different. They were as different as it was possible for two women to be. They shouldn’t have fitted together, but somehow they did. Something kept them writing to one another – maybe it was the very fact that they were such opposites; maybe they recognised in the other what was lacking in themselves. Whatever the reason, Sarah welcomed Helen’s letters in all their bluntness, particularly at a time like this when she felt so bereft, so alone. Helen understood sadness.

The bedroom door opened and Neil appeared with a tray. Could it be lunchtime already? Sarah hoisted herself up to sitting, although the last thing she wanted to do was eat. But he was trying his best, and he was in mourning too, even if he was better at hiding it.

‘Soft-boiled egg,’ he announced, laying the tray across her lap. ‘Toast and tea.’ He sniffed. ‘What’s the smell?’

‘Helen sent cream.’ She looked without appetite at the food. He’d cut the buttered toast into strips, chopped the top off the egg. Making it as easy as possible for her, as if she were a small child learning to feed herself. She picked up a piece of toast – and let it fall back onto the plate.

‘Sarah,’ he said gently, ‘you have to eat, love.’

She didn’t have to eat. She didn’t have to do anything except wake up each morning and wait for the night to come back. But she reached again for the toast and bit into it and forced herself to chew and swallow, conscious of his eyes on her. She took a spoonful of egg – he’d forgotten the salt – and a sip of tea.

‘Your father phoned again,’ he said, crossing to the window. ‘I told him you were asleep.’

‘Good.’

‘And Christine wants to call around. She thought you might like to see Aidan and Tom.’

‘No,’ Sarah said quickly. ‘I hope you put her off.’

‘She said she’ll phone again later.’

‘Tell her I’m not
up to it yet. Tell her I’ll be in touch when I feel better.’

She couldn’t face them, it was too hard. Aidan running to her like he always did, two-year-old Tom tottering after his big brother. And Christine, growing a third baby in her hospitable womb, five months to go until she held him in her arms.

It was too much. It was too unfair.

But Christine meant well. Everyone meant well. Matron at the nursing home, telling her to take what time she needed, they’d manage. Neil’s mother, Nuala, bringing rock buns and Milk Tray. Nobody at all mentioning the miscarriage, everyone acting as if the pregnancy had never existed. Everyone except Helen.

‘It’s nice out,’ Neil said, looking down on the garden. ‘Not as cold as yesterday, and the rain has finally stopped.’

‘Oh.’

She couldn’t give a damn about the weather. Let it rain till kingdom come for all she cared.

‘The cherry blossom will be budding soon.’

‘That’s good.’

He turned to face her. ‘By the way, Shergar’s been kidnapped. It was on the radio just now.’

‘Who?’

‘Shergar, a racehorse. He won the Epsom Derby two years ago, by ten lengths. You must remember, it was big news.’

A horse, kidnapped. She smiled weakly at her boiled egg. ‘Oh dear.’

‘He’s worth a fortune. They think it might be the IRA.’

‘Really.’

But she’d lost interest in Shergar and his problems. She laid down her spoon, unable to face more food.

‘Would I run you a bath?’ Neil asked.

‘No.’ Her fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket. She pushed the tray aside. ‘Just … give me more time, OK?’

He crossed the room
and sat on the bed. ‘Darling, it’s been nearly a week.’ He reached for her hand and held it between both of his. ‘It’s not doing you any good, lying here moping.’

She resisted the impulse to snatch her hand away, to tell him to shut up, leave her alone. She’d never told him to shut up, never. They rarely rowed.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said, watching his fingers curled over hers. ‘I’ll get up tomorrow, OK?’