The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes (12 page)

Just as she said it Alan Short tripped and landed face down in the dirt. On another day they would have laughed loudly, but not then. Juliet got up.

‘Where are you going?’ Della asked, but Juliet didn’t answer. Instead she just walked away.

Don’t cry, Juliet. Don’t overthink it. Everything is fine. Ma is coming home. All we have to do is get through the next few days. We’ll be OK.

She started to run.

Grace had fallen in love with Lenny on the day she met him. He wasn’t the handsomest man in the world, but he had a warm smile and sad, soulful eyes, and when he accidentally brushed against her in the office break room, her skin tingled and her stomach turned. ‘I’m Lenny,’ he’d said, and put out his hand. Her da had warned her of the dangers of a weak handshake so she shook it firmly, too firmly, in fact, so much so that he yelped and rubbed it with his other hand as soon as she let go.

‘So sorry,’ she’d said. ‘Nervous, first day.’

‘Don’t be, we’re all lovely here.’ He offered her a mug from the shelf above the sink. She took it, smiled and held his gaze.

‘Really?’ she said hopefully.

‘No, but I’ll let you decide who to avoid.’

‘Oh.’

He poured himself a coffee, then poured some into her waiting mug. ‘So, what drew you to the wonderful world of banking?’

‘Me da.’

‘He works here?’ Lenny said, a little alarmed.

‘No, he’s with the opposition.’

Lenny went to the fridge and sniffed the milk, then lifted it high in Grace’s direction. She nodded and he poured. ‘Sugar?’

‘Sweet enough,’ she responded, and he laughed. He was wearing a black suit and a crisp white shirt; his tie was sky blue and matched his eyes. He wore his top button open and the tie a little loose, as though he’d just tugged at it absentmindedly, but Grace could tell even then that he had carefully orchestrated it to look nonchalant. It was Lenny’s small rebellion. He looked really good in that suit, although, when he reached for the top shelf to retrieve the biscuit tin, she noticed he was wearing white socks with black loafers.
They’ll have to go
. He offered her a biscuit and she politely declined, even though they were chocolate HobNobs, her absolute favourite.

‘Right, I’d better get back to work,’ he said, and she stepped out of his way.

‘Me too.’

‘It was nice meeting you.’

‘Yes, you too.’

As he walked away, she couldn’t help but notice he had a lovely arse. He turned as she was cocking her head to get a side view. ‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ he said.

‘Grace.’

‘Nice to meet you, Grace.’ He held out his hand again, remembered the pain and retracted it with a grin. ‘Still tender.’ He winked.

‘Sorry.’

Five minutes later, sitting in her cubicle, she looked around nervously to see if anyone was watching. Those around her were typing, filing or talking business. Her immediate boss was in a meeting so she took a moment to call her ma.

‘Ma?’

‘How are you gettin’ on?’

‘I’ve just met the man I’m going to marry.’

‘Ah, would you ever fuck off, Grace.’ Ma hung up.

Watch this space, Ma
.

Within a month they were going out, and a year later they were engaged. Two months before her wedding day, Grace discovered she was three months pregnant with Stephen. That had been twenty years ago, and Grace loved her husband more every day. It sounded cheesy, even to her, but it was true. She had been lucky. Sometimes she felt bad about it. When her best friend Emily’s marriage collapsed, because of her husband’s constant philandering, and she was forced to move into a council flat with her two young sons, it was a cold reminder of how good Grace had it. When her neighbour Sheena’s husband walked out on her to join a New Age cult in Dorset, it came out of nowhere. One day they were a happy couple, always up for a few drinks in the local on a Friday, the next he was a shavenheaded commune-dweller living off the land, and she was a single mother. Then there was her sister-in-law Serena’s sister, Kate, who had caught her husband pulling himself off to gay porn while wearing her red silk knickers and bra. He’d said he was just experimenting. After a huge fight and a few weeks apart, she’d decided to believe him. Three kids down the line, they were still together and she appeared oblivious to the fact that her husband was a ‘screaming’ queen.

Grace was a lucky woman. Lenny was a one-woman atheist, who shuddered at the notion of sucking another man’s cock. He was a good father, too. He loved his kids and would have done anything for them. When Stephen was five he loved Irish dancing, and Lenny, who would have preferred to shove his head in a gas oven, had gone to every competition, clapping and cheering his son on to many wins. Bernard had been a sick baby, and even though Lenny had had to work in the morning, he did his share of walking the floorboards, never avoided changing a nappy and, although he and Grace often almost killed each other from sheer exhaustion, he was always quick to apologize if he was in the wrong.

They’d known Ryan would be trouble as early as two. He just had something about him. He was cute as a button, stubborn as a mule and the craftiest little bugger. Ryan didn’t do rules. They just didn’t apply. So much so that Grace was hauled into the office of Tesco twice on suspicion of theft and only released with a caution when the tape revealed Ryan had been lifting items from the shelf at his eye-level and shoving them into his jacket whenever his mother wasn’t looking. He was banned from two supermarket chains before he was four, and on the rare occasion she was forced to bring him shopping, she handcuffed him to the trolley until he was six. When it came to Ryan, Lenny was the calm one. Grace was too emotional and, with a temper like her mother’s, it was a miracle, and thanks to his level-headed father, that the child wasn’t buried under the patio.

Jeffrey was their video-game kid. He was a whiz on computers and even at nine he was the go-to person in the house for anything technical, but he was physically lazy and, of course, he ate far too much. Lenny had tried to get him interested in Bernard’s various football, swimming and athletics teams, and even brought him to Stephen’s old Irish-dancing hall, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Yet the child was always
starving
and Grace didn’t believe in saying no – at least, not until his medical revealed that he was obese. Lenny had shared his concerns about Jeffrey over the years and she had dismissed him. He was kind enough not to say, ‘I told you so.’

Lenny Black was a very good man, so it really made no sense at all when Grace packed a bag and walked out of her house when he simply suggested that she had ruined a lentil roast.

The incident had started off amiably enough. Lenny had arrived home from a half-day’s work and found Grace in the kitchen, poring over a cookbook. He’d kissed her cheek and turned on a radio show he’d been listening to in the car. He put on the kettle and automatically took two mugs off the shelf. The radio presenter was talking to a woman who was raffling her house. The tickets were a hundred euro and she was giving out a website address to anyone interested in buying one. She’d sold 150,000-euro-worth of tickets already and needed just another fifty thousand to pay off her mortgage and leave the country.

‘What if you don’t meet the mortgage?’ the presenter asked.

‘The bank can swing for the rest.’

‘Do you think we should buy a ticket?’ Lenny had asked, handing his wife a mug of coffee.

‘Where’s the house?’

‘Mayo.’

‘No.’

‘Mayo’s nice.’ He sat at the counter opposite her. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘It’s the lentil roast.’

‘No. Really? Jesus, if we had a dog I’d swear it had farted.’

And that was all it had taken for Grace Black to lose her mind. She grabbed an oven mitt, opened the oven, took out the lentil roast and threw it at the wall. Lenny jumped up. ‘What the hell, Grace?’

‘You do it then!’ Grace screamed. ‘You shop and chop and cook and listen to everyone whine and whinge and belly-fuckingache. You take over, Lenny! You’re so much better at everything than I am.’

‘You need to calm down.’ He really couldn’t have said anything worse, because it was then that she briefly considered picking up a carving knife and ramming it through his head. She grabbed a cup inches from the knife and slammed it onto the tiled floor. It smashed.

‘OK, OK! Whatever it is, we can talk about it.’ He was waving his hands in front of him in a bid to hold her off.

‘Whatever it is? Whatever it is?’ she screamed. ‘Ah, what could it be, Lenny? I wonder! Whatever could be wrong?’ She grabbed a mug and was about to throw it.

‘Stop! Stop this bullshit, Grace! You are not five years old, and tantrums are not acceptable.’

She didn’t think. She just threw the mug and it hit him hard in the face. His nose was instantly bloody and his eye began to swell. The shock of seeing blood and watching him wobble on his feet sent Grace running from the room.
What have I done?
Instead of helping her husband or even apologizing, she had the terrible urge to leave. Upstairs in her bedroom she put some fresh underwear, jeans and a few tops into a case; she grabbed her washbag and, thankfully, her handbag was in the hallway. She could hear Lenny in the downstairs bathroom, washing the blood from his face as she opened the front door. She didn’t know if she’d broken his nose, blackened his eye or both. She couldn’t think about that, couldn’t yet admit what she’d done. The shock had dissipated her rage but her head was still spinning. He called to her. He sounded more shocked and confused than angry. She couldn’t face him, so she quietly closed the front door behind her and ran to her car with no destination in mind, only the desperate need to run and hide.

The school called the house just after two thirty. Juliet had a severe headache and Grace wasn’t answering her phone. Molly and Jack had come home for just long enough to grab an old diary full of numbers, so Davey agreed to pick Juliet up as soon as he could. He called a taxi and made a sandwich while he waited for it to arrive. The cab was quicker than expected so he ate en route. The taxi man was a talker from Uganda; he ended each sentence with either a laugh or a snort. He liked to bang on the steering-wheel to emphasize a point.

‘You know what I think about abortion?’ he asked, out of nowhere. Davey didn’t have a clue what he thought about abortion. ‘Nothing,’ said the taxi driver. ‘I don’t care about abortion. This legislation is a distraction from what’s really going on.’

‘What’s that?’ Davey asked.

‘Robbery.’ He slapped his steering-wheel. ‘I didn’t leave Uganda to come to Ireland to be robbed. They tax, tax, tax – everywhere I look, tax.’

Davey stayed quiet. He had nothing to add to the conversation.

‘Ah, but the Irish women . . .’ The driver chortled. ‘They are nice.’

Davey didn’t remember Irish women being nice. The last girlfriend he’d had before he left for the States had set her two brothers on him when he broke up with her. If it wasn’t for Francie and Jay he would have been a dead man. He said nothing.

‘You married?’ the man asked.

‘No.’

‘Gay?’

‘No.’

‘Alone?’

‘No.’

‘Ha.’ He snorted. ‘You look alone.’

‘Well, I’m not.’
Actually!

‘OK.’

‘Define alone,’ Davey asked.

‘Not accountable.’

Davey thought about it for a few seconds. He had been off the grid for two days, and the only text he’d received was from Casey sending kisses and her wife Mabel asking what she could do. Not one of the women he slept with had called or even noticed he was missing. ‘Yeah, OK, I’m alone.’

‘You like being alone?’

‘I don’t think about it.’
I’m lying to a stranger.

‘A man needs a woman.’

‘I think I’ll survive.’

‘Surviving is not living.’

Fine. I’m lonely. Are you happy?
Davey was sorry he’d engaged. In his head he told the Ugandan to fuck off.

‘You like music?’

‘Yes.’ He was grateful for the distraction.

The guy smiled and turned on his CD player. It was some high-energy, beat-driven Ugandan band. ‘You like?’ he said.

‘No,’ Davey answered.

The taxi driver shrugged. ‘Too bad.’

The school grounds were quiet. Davey made his way to the main door and looked around for someone to assist him when he entered the dreary hallway. He hated schools and hadn’t been in one since he was kicked out. He knocked on the door marked ‘Office’, but nobody answered. He walked towards the staff room and, before he knocked, he actually felt his stomach flutter.
I’m an adult, for Christ’s sake
, he thought, but still he fixed his hair and straightened his T-shirt. A woman answered his second knock. She was in her twenties, pretty and armed with a bright smile.

‘I’m looking for my niece, Juliet Hayes,’ he said.

‘Oh, OK, just give me a second.’ She allowed the door to open, revealing that she was the only one in the room and halfway through a sandwich. ‘Come in.’

‘Sorry to interrupt.’ He stared at the chipped paint, fold-down tables and plastic chairs.
So this is what a staff room looks like
. He wasn’t impressed.

She wiped her hands on a towel and grabbed her coffee. ‘It’s no trouble. Follow me.’

They walked down the corridor together. ‘I have Juliet for English and maths.’

‘Oh.’

‘She’s a good student.’

‘So was her ma,’ he said. ‘Brains to burn.’

‘How is her mother?’

Davey felt uncomfortable. He didn’t know how to answer.
Oh, God, she’s dying. Rabbit’s dying.
She must have noticed he was struggling because she didn’t wait for an answer.

‘Juliet has been through so much but she’s very strong.’

‘Yeah, she is.’
Whatever that means
.

She asked Davey to give her a minute, then disappeared into an unnamed room. She returned not long after with Juliet.

‘Davey?’ Juliet said, surprised and delighted to see him.

‘Grace is MIA so you’re stuck with me, Bunny.’