The People Next Door (23 page)

She told him about her husband’s potato allergy – ‘He can’t even take a tiny bit before he starts sneezing. I wouldn’t mind, but he loves them, the creature’ – and their trip to Lourdes two years ago, in
the hope of curing his multiple sclerosis. ‘We said all the prayers, did all the treatments, and he was no better coming home. I suppose they have to ration the miracles.’

He told her about Kieran. ‘He’s a great cook – he inspired me to come here, actually.’ Pity Judy was married. She might have suited Kieran fine, even if she was a good bit older than him. He wondered if her husband was going to last much longer. He asked her if she liked violin music and she told him she never listened to music, didn’t see the point of it, really, she’d much rather watch
Fair City
or
Eastenders
on telly, or a nice film.

He thought maybe she and Kieran might not be so well suited after all.

After every class Dan walked home with Clara. She told him she liked to hear Kieran playing the violin: ‘The first time, I thought I was dreaming.’

He told her about the baby, his baby. He didn’t know he was going to tell her, it just dropped into their conversation.

‘God, that’s a bit weird, isn’t it?’ And he agreed that it was, definitely, a bit weird.

After a few minutes, she said, ‘So – are you going to share the upbringing or what?’

He shrugged. ‘We’re trying to figure that out now.’

Ali had written to him after he’d hung up on her that last time. After she’d called him back three times over the following few days and he’d hung up again, three times. The letter was short. He knew it by heart.

And underneath, a woman’s name he didn’t recognise, an address and a phone number. Reading it, he’d felt bereft.

On the evening of the fourth class, he’d come out of the house and realised it had begun to rain lightly since he’d got home from work. He decided to drive – might be pouring later. It hadn’t rained for a good while, except at night. He’d hear it pattering on the roof before he fell asleep, trickling into his dreams.

Clara always went straight from her job to the classes – the department store stayed open late on Thursdays, like a lot of Belford’s shops. There was no sign of her when Dan walked into the long, narrow room. He crossed to his and Judy’s table. Hello. Lovely weather.’

Judy smiled. ‘There you are, Dan. Ah, I don’t mind the rain. I’d rather that than live in a desert.’

How’s your husband?’ He felt obliged to ask each time.

And Judy’s answer hardly varied: Ah sure, as well as can be expected, the creature.’

She’d told him they had two children, both living abroad. The son worked on an offshore oil rig somewhere in the North Sea; the daughter lived in Paris, married to a photographer. Judy’s husband had been diagnosed sixteen years ago, but had been in remission for twelve.

As they whisked egg yolks for their lemon tarts, Dan told her about Grainne. ‘She’s been given six months, her daughter-in-law says.’

‘Tch, the poor woman, that’s terrible. How old is she?’

Dan thought. ‘Around seventy, I’d say.’ He knew Judy wasn’t far off that herself. ‘Not old.’

Clara arrived, shaking the drops off a grey scarf as she walked in. Her hair was tousled. She smiled and waved at Dan as she went down the room to her usual table.

While the lemon tarts were baking, they learnt how to blanch and sauté, how to make a roux and how to keep sauces from getting lumpy.

Dan was surprised at how much he was enjoying the classes. Cooking had never interested him before and he’d never put much thought into creating a meal. Now he was discovering a fascination with it, the idea that you could combine various ingredients, stir, blend and mix, until something new came out. You could experiment, change the flavours, try new combinations. He was hooked.

At the end of the class, the room smelled wonderful. The lemon tarts emerged, marigold yellow speckled with a darker caramel, firm to the touch.
Douglas went around doling out tinfoil. ‘You’re all doing very well. Now, when you get home you take a bowl of single cream and whip it until it stays in peaks for a couple of seconds after you pull the beater out. You have a slice of tart and cream, then do ten laps around the block. Next week we’ll be healthier, I promise.’

‘I’m driving,’ Dan told Clara as they walked down the corridor.

‘I had to wait for the bus,’ she said. ‘That’s why I was late.’

He opened the passenger door first. ‘Hop in.’

He was acutely aware of her, sitting less than a foot away from him in the car. ‘You’ve changed your perfume.’

She laughed. ‘How observant of you. I’ve switched to my winter one now.’ It was warmer and flowery, and it still didn’t remind him of Ali’s.

He’d gone back to the solicitors who’d handled the purchase of the house. He was told they didn’t operate in the area of family law, but that they could recommend someone who did.

Family law – that was ironic. What would you call the kind of family his son was going to be born into? A mother who was living with his great-uncle, a father he might see only now and again. Some family.

He rang the number they’d given him and arranged to meet the new solicitor.

‘David Burton.’ The handshake was firm. He was about Dan’s age. He listened while Dan spoke, scribbling on a pad in front of him.

When Dan lapsed into silence, he tapped the page with the end of his biro. ‘It’s an unusual situation.’

‘Yes.’ Dan hoped he wasn’t being charged God knew what to be told what he already knew. ‘I’m wondering if I can apply for full custody once the baby’s born.’ He was sorry he hadn’t said ‘my baby’. Because hadn’t he as much a right as Ali to bring up their son, if not more? Wasn’t she the one at fault here, having deserted the marriage to shack up with her husband’s relative? If that didn’t show she was an unfit parent, nothing did.

But David Burton wasn’t encouraging. ‘It simply doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. You can take a case, certainly – nothing to stop you applying for custody – but I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I pretended you had a hope of getting it.’ He saw Dan’s expression and said, more gently, ‘You have to understand that both you and your wife have equal ownership, to put it very crudely, of the child—’

‘But she deserted the marriage. She’s gone off with my uncle, for Christ’s sake. How can that be a stable home for any child?’

The solicitor dropped his biro and rested his hands on the desk. ‘Dan, you need to let go of the fact that it’s your uncle. Believe it or not, that has no bearing on the case—’

‘No bearing? How can—’

Dan’s interruption was ignored. ‘—and it won’t further your cause one iota if you become fixated on it. Your wife walked out on the marriage, end of story. Who she left you for is immaterial.’

Dan glowered at the polished dark wood of the table that separated him from this man who was saying all the wrong things. What did he know anyway? He hardly looked as if he’d had a lot of experience. He might even be younger than Dan.

‘I can’t believe that he’d be allowed to raise my son just like that.’

David Burton picked up his pen again, ran a finger along its barrel. ‘Dan, you must remember that the child is the innocent party in all of this. He’s had nothing to do with any of it. If you start a war with his mother, you’ve got no way of knowing what that’s going to do to him, or to your relationship with him in the future.’

Dan glared at him. ‘So that’s it. I let her keep him. I get no say.’

The solicitor spoke gently. ‘It’s not a question of her keeping him – as I said, you’ve got joint ownership. Ideally, it’s up to the two of you to work out a sensible arrangement whereby you share responsibility for his upbringing.’ He hesitated. ‘You need to understand, though, that from a legal point of view, the mother is commonly regarded as the primary carer and her place of residence will be seen as the most likely one for him to live in.’

‘So you’re pretty sure that’s what would be decided if I went ahead and took a case? That the child would live most of the time with … them?’

‘In all likelihood, yes, with you getting alternate weekend custody, say, and some holidays, possibly midweek access too.’ Again the solicitor paused,
studying Dan. ‘Do you think there’s any possibility of you and your wife working something out between you?’

Dan lifted his shoulders. ‘That’s what she wants.’

‘I’d strongly advise you to think about it. It’ll mean swallowing your anger and being prepared to compromise, but in the long run it’ll make things a lot easier. I can draw up a draft agreement, if you like, that you can run by her.’

And that was it. All Dan was being offered was exactly the same as Ali had wanted. It took all he had to shake hands with the man and tell him he’d think about it. What was there to think about, except how much the idea of Brendan raising his son appalled him?

‘You’re miles away.’

Dan changed gear, gave Clara a brief smile. ‘Sorry – a lot on my mind.’

They got to Miller’s Avenue. Dan drove up the lane beside Clara’s house and stopped at her back gate. It was still raining, the drops splattering against the windscreen before the wipers swept them away.

Clara reached into the back seat for her lemon tart and wrapped the grey scarf around her head. ‘Well, thanks very much – I’d have got drenched if I’d had to wait for another bus.’ And before Dan could react, as he was about to say ‘Not at all’, she leaned across and touched the corner of his mouth briefly with her lips.

‘Goodnight, Dan.’ The softest of kisses, barely there at all.

And she was gone, slamming the door, leaving her flowery scent behind. He drove the few extra feet until he was beside his gate. Then he switched off the engine, took his tart from the back seat and got out. The rain pelted against his face and made little metallic pings as it bounced off the tinfoil.

He walked up the path. There was a light on in the kitchen. Kieran looked up from the newspaper as Dan opened the door. ‘Terrible night.’

Dan ignored Picasso, who eyed him calmly from a kitchen chair. They ate two slices of warm lemon tart each, with a scoop of ice cream instead of cream. Dan told Kieran about the class. He told him about Judy’s cat having kittens in the drum of the washing machine, and Douglas’s confession that he could only drink Guinness with a dash of blackcurrant, and Judy preferring
Eastenders
to music.

He didn’t mention Clara. He didn’t tell Kieran about her lips against his mouth for an instant, or his almost overwhelming urge, as she opened the car door, to pull her back, turn her face towards his and kiss her properly.

‘What?’ Kathryn’s hands flew to her face.

Dr Lynch smiled. ‘You weren’t expecting it.’

‘No, it was the last thing I …’ She stopped. ‘The last thing.’ She lowered her hands slowly. ‘Are you sure? I mean, could you be wrong?’

‘No, you’re definitely pregnant. About seven weeks. You haven’t had a period in that time, have you?’

‘No, but I thought maybe it was my age – I thought it might be …’

She had thought it might be the menopause, and the idea had been terrifying. The notion that she might be pregnant hadn’t occurred to her as the cause of her queasiness in the mornings, her sudden aversion to coffee, her general loss of appetite – because she’d never been sick before, had sailed through each of her doomed pregnancies, feeling exactly as she always did.

She had to ask: ‘What are my chances of keeping it? You know my history – and I’m forty-five now.’

Dr Lynch wrote on his pad. ‘I don’t blame you for being nervous, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t carry this baby to full term. Your earlier miscarriages,
and the stillbirth, are no indication that you’ll have any problem now. All the same, we’ll take every precaution, even if it means keeping you flat on your back for a lot of the next few months.’

She thought of her mother-in-law. ‘I’ll be needed at home – with Grainne.’

Justin’s compassionate leave had run out and he was back at work part-time, twenty hours a week, ten of which he could do from home. After making a few enquiries they’d found Marzena, a Latvian who’d trained as a nurses’ aide in her home country and who cleaned houses in Ireland. Marzena came when Justin was out at work, just so somebody would be in the house with Grainne.

Dr Lynch considered. ‘The timing could have been better, certainly, and Justin’s going to have his hands full with both of you. But you need to look after yourself now, Kathryn – and your baby. You must do what’s best for him or her, and for you.’

She passed Yvonne’s desk on the way out. Yvonne was putting on her jacket.

‘Oh good, I was hoping you’d be back down before I left. Everything alright?’

‘Fine – just a tummy bug, he said.’ She hated lying, but what else could she say? It was far too early to tell anyone, even Yvonne. ‘I’ll live.’

‘Oh, poor you – why don’t you come home with me and I’ll make a pot of tea?’ Yvonne lowered her voice. ‘I’m trying to avoid having lunch with Dolores – I’ve had a bellyful of her this week.’

Kathryn smiled and shook her head. ‘I won’t, if
you don’t mind. Justin is at home and I promised I’d be straight back.’

‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t think. How’re you coping?’

‘OK – she’s very down all the time, of course, but at least Justin’s persuaded her to get up for an hour or two in the afternoons. And she’s not in any pain. They’ve given her loads of pills. She sleeps a lot. And Ann’s coming at the weekend. Grainne actually agreed to it.’

‘Good. And you?’ Yvonne searched her pale face. Are you really alright?’

Kathryn almost told her – she was bursting to – but she couldn’t. ‘I’m fine, really. This thing just has to take its course.’

Too much uncertainty. Too much at stake to say it out loud, even to Justin. How could she tell him this news now, give him fresh worry with all that was happening to Grainne? She’d have to wait until the first three months were over, when they could begin to hope.