The People Next Door (6 page)

I’m years older than you
was on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t say it. She wondered if he’d enjoyed the evening half as much as she had. She’d forgotten how lovely it was to be made to feel attractive.

She wished he was older. No, she wished she was younger.

‘Well …’ She eased her hand from his and reached for the door handle. They’d had a good time – better just to leave it at that. ‘Thanks for dinner, I really enjoyed it.’

He didn’t seem to mind not being asked in. ‘You’re very welcome. Feel free to splash water over me anytime.’ Before she had a chance to react, as she was pushing down the handle, he leaned across and put a hand to the side of her head and turned her face back towards him and kissed her goodnight, a warm quick kiss that caused something to flicker pleasantly inside her. He tasted of strawberries.

‘See you on Monday.’

She watched him drive off, back to his mother’s
house across town, in the black Honda Civic he’d bought when he’d got his first job three years earlier. At least it didn’t have L plates. At the age of thirty-four, Kathryn McElhinney had just been out to dinner with a man who was still on his first car, who still lived at home with his mother.

She suddenly wondered who she was closer in age to – him or his mother. Not that it mattered in the slightest. The evening had been a pleasant blip, but that was all. A one-off, something to laugh about with her friends – as, no doubt, he’d be doing too, first chance he got.

But that wasn’t what had happened.

The music stopped just then. Justin sat up and stretched. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed – I’m half asleep already.’ He turned to her. ‘What are you smiling about?’

‘I was just thinking about when we started going out.’

He grinned. ‘I remember. You ran a mile any time I tried to get close. I had to practically drag you out a second time.’

He’d waited until she’d run out of excuses – meeting friends, headache, evening class, because what was the point? – and then, one afternoon, he’d made his way over to her desk and peered at her computer screen. ‘Pretend you’re showing me a problem.’

Kathryn glanced around. Nobody was taking any notice of him. ‘My computer’s working perfectly, thanks.’ His hand, planted on the desk beside her, was lightly tanned. His fingers were slim for a man’s.
The small button on his pale blue shirt cuff was sewn on with black thread. She remembered his hand on the side of her head, turning her face towards him, and felt the same lightning shiver in her abdomen.

He raised his voice slightly. ‘I’m not sure why it’s doing that.’ In the next cubicle Fiona turned briefly towards them, then went back to her screen.

Without changing his stance, his eyes still on Kathryn’s computer, Justin reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, pulled something out and set it on her desk. ‘I’m going anyway – are you going to make me seem totally pathetic with an empty seat beside me?’

Kathryn looked at the theatre tickets. The show was nothing special – an amateur production of some play she’d never heard of – but he’d bought two tickets and he was asking her to go with him. She leaned back in her chair and smiled. Her face was towards the screen but her eyes were on him. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

‘Not when I want something, no.’ His dimple was fatally attractive. ‘Not when I think I have the slightest chance of getting it.’ In a louder voice, he said, ‘I think I see the problem.’

What if he managed to charm her into bed eventually, then boasted to everyone else about the older woman he’d pulled? She’d spend her time avoiding him after that, trying to ignore the sniggers behind her back. She’d feel like a right fool. She might even have to look for another job.

But what if he really was interested in her?
It wasn’t completely outside the bounds of possibility, was it? How would she know if she didn’t take a chance with him? Was she brave enough to risk it?

She had a lot to lose. But she had a lot to gain too. She said, ‘Actually, I’m free on Thursday.’

‘Good.’ He put the tickets back into his pocket and straightened up. ‘Pick you up at seven – we can grab a bite beforehand.’ She couldn’t read his face. The half-smile could have meant anything. ‘OK?’

She nodded, unsure all over again. And then he said loudly, ‘Oh, there’s just one more thing you should remember.’ He leaned towards the screen again. ‘Look, this icon here …’ Kathryn sat forward in her chair and he whispered, ‘Thanks, I look forward to it.’ His face was inches from hers. She could feel his breath on her cheek. She smelled coffee. And then he was gone.

She took his hand now and curled it in hers. ‘You know very well why I resisted you – or tried to.’ She loved his hands, the slim fingers so familiar now. The bump near the tip of his little finger, the narrow ovals of his nails. ‘You know why I was so hard to get.’

He stood up and pulled her after him. ‘Because you thought you were old enough to be my grandmother or something.’

Kathryn laughed, loving the lack of importance he’d always placed on their age difference. ‘Something like that. You go ahead, I’ll be up in a minute.’

In the kitchen she poured what was left of the wine down the sink, rinsed the glasses and put the empty bottle outside the back door, halfway to the
recycling bag in the shed. No need to give Grainne anything to comment on in the morning – she never missed an opportunity.

And, of course, it would sound terribly harmless. ‘Don’t tell me the wine is all gone from last night, Kathryn – a bottle lasts no time at all, does it?’ Or another time, ‘That top is quite snug on you, isn’t it, Kathryn? No harm – a bit of weight never hurt anyone.’ Or ‘Would you look at her? Mutton dressed as lamb. At least you dress for your age, Kathryn.’

Not that Grainne needed an excuse these days, not with Kathryn’s forty-fifth birthday coming up in a couple of months. That was enough to keep her going.

Aren’t women having babies older now? There’s no reason why you still couldn’t have one. Granted, I’d had my two by the time I was thirty-three, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to. Did you see that woman in the paper the other day who had a baby in her fifties? I know that’s a bit extreme, but still. You shouldn’t let the little … setbacks in the past put you off. Think how happy Justin would be if you had a baby. I’m sure he’s dying to be a father.’

And Kathryn would nod and agree, wincing silently at the little setbacks, and push her nails into her palms to keep from shouting at Grainne to stop, to just shut up. A stillborn baby and two miscarriages weren’t ‘little setbacks’, they were agonies that never went away, they were ghosts that Kathryn couldn’t, or wouldn’t, let go. And with each birthday, with each higher number, with each treacherous tick of her
biological clock came the stronger possibility that they were all that she and Justin might ever have.

Two years after they were married, a perfect baby boy with Justin’s long eyelashes had died in her womb a few days before he was due to be born and nobody could explain why.

A year later, when Kathryn was thirty-nine, one miscarriage followed another, both within two months of conception. Again, there seemed to be no reason and no one could tell them what they were doing wrong.

Since then nothing had happened. Now she was almost forty-five, and terribly afraid.

To be fair to Grainne, she might not realise how hurtful her remarks were. She’d never had a miscarriage or a stillbirth, just two healthy children – even if she’d disowned one of them twelve years ago for having the audacity to be gay. Which meant that Kathryn, old as she was, unsuitable as Grainne clearly considered her to be, was her only hope for a grandchild.

Maybe she meant well.

Or maybe she knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe she took pleasure in hurting Kathryn, in punishing her for ruining Justin’s chances of being a father.

Kathryn sighed as she climbed the stairs. She mustn’t think like that. Justin loved her – he was always telling her how much he loved her. He didn’t care about the age difference and he certainly didn’t blame her for the absence of children. Her mother-in-
law was just a sad old hypochondriac with too much time on her hands, not worth getting upset about.

She stopped at the landing window, caught a quick movement in the hedge between them and number eight. Picasso probably, out wandering in the night like he’d been since Ali had left.

It was beginning to look like she wasn’t coming back. Kathryn had bumped into Dan a few times lately, but he hadn’t made any reference to Ali’s disappearance and it wasn’t something you could bring up casually.

Yvonne thought she’d probably run off with someone: ‘What other explanation is there? Dan is hardly the type to wallop her over the head and bury her under the apple tree.’

Kathryn argued that there didn’t have to be a third party. ‘Maybe she just decided they weren’t suited. Maybe she went off him.’

They hadn’t seen that much of Ali when she was there – a real career woman by the look of her. Always very smartly dressed, usually rushing off someplace with a businesslike black bag slung across her chest. Dan had told Yvonne once that Ali was a lawyer, a solicitor or something. They seemed polar opposites to Kathryn – Dan, so laid back and down to earth, could hardly have been described as a career man.

Yvonne had to agree. ‘I’d never have put them together.’

But then, who’d have put Kathryn McElhinney and Justin Taylor together? Who’d have thought she could possibly make him happy?

Who’d be surprised if he left her for a younger woman, someone who could give him babies who survived?

Cut that out.
She turned from the window and opened their bedroom door.

Justin was unbuttoning his shirt. She crossed the room, finished off the last few buttons and placed her palms on his bare chest. He smelled of toothpaste.

Justin pushed away the always-there thoughts of his lost son – Joey, they were going to call him Joey – and smiled at Kathryn. ‘You know, I’m not sure I’ve got the energy tonight.’

She propped her chin on his shoulder, slid her hands around his back. ‘That’s alright – I can wait till the morning.’

Kathryn had taken him by surprise. He hadn’t expected her, hadn’t been looking for her. He hadn’t planned to get married until well into his thirties, foolishly assuming that the right woman would oblige by not putting in an appearance until then.

His mother had done her best to change his mind. ‘Women age faster than men – you’ll be tied to an old woman while you still have plenty of energy.’

‘I’ve made up my mind. I love her. She loves me. What does age matter?’

‘You can forget about having a family.’

‘She’s got lots of time – she’s only in her thirties.’

But then the heartbreak of Joey had happened,
and while he was still reeling, still trying to make sense of it, Kathryn had begged him to try again. And one after another, two more babies had slipped away.

And now time was running out. Hope was running out.
You can forget about having a family.

Kathryn walked towards their little en suite bathroom and Justin peeled off his shirt and began to unbutton his jeans.

‘You’ll never guess what Chloë did yesterday.’

Yvonne bit into her cheese and pickle sandwich and looked up at the perfectly blue sky and tried hard to sound interested. ‘What?’

Dolores leaned back on the park bench. ‘Guess.’

‘Won a medal?’ That was usually a safe bet: it was a rare weekend when Dolores’s daughter didn’t arrive home with some prize or other from one of her many after-school activities. Chloë had cups and medals and trophies for everything from horse riding to ballet to swimming.

But Dolores shook her head. ‘Remember, it was Mother’s Day.’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Clara hadn’t done anything for Mother’s Day; they didn’t go in for that. ‘Er, did she make you breakfast in bed?’

‘Even better. She cooked dinner for the whole family from scratch – she even did all the shopping. Shepherd’s pie and apple crumble with custard.’ Dolores bit into her pear and waited for Yvonne’s reaction.

‘Wow, that’s great.’ Yvonne pulled off a bit of crust
and threw it onto the ground and watched a thrush hop quickly towards it. So Chloë was a master chef, along with everything else. ‘And she’s only … ’ God, how old was Chloë again? It wasn’t as if Yvonne hadn’t been told often enough ‘… ten, is it?’

‘Just gone eleven. Fionn and Hugo washed up afterwards. I was a lady of leisure.’ The thrush ducked his head and grabbed the bread and flew off. ‘Martin and I didn’t know ourselves.’

‘Very nice.’ Yvonne sneaked a glance at her watch. Ten more minutes and they’d be able to go back. ‘You’ll have to let Chloë into the kitchen more often.’ She wondered if she was the only worker who looked forward to the end of her lunch hour.

She and Dolores didn’t eat together every day. Some days Dolores went into town to meet her husband, Martin, for lunch. Other times, when she really couldn’t face another sixty minutes of her colleague boasting about the three most perfect children in the universe, Yvonne would invent some reason why she had to go home – the plumber was due or she was expecting a phone call. Or she’d have an errand to run in town, once she was sure Dolores wasn’t heading the same way.

They worked in the Miller’s Avenue health clinic, diagonally across from the three red-brick houses, just beside the park. Dolores was based upstairs as secretary to the two doctors there while Yvonne manned the main reception desk downstairs and handled the administration for Pawel Tylak, whose surgery was also downstairs.

Pawel was a forty-year-old Polish-born dentist who’d arrived in Ireland from the UK two years before and set up his practice shortly afterwards in the recently opened clinic, creating the need for a second secretary.

Yvonne, fed up with her job as PA to two estate agents who never stopped arguing, had read the advertisement in the local paper and applied.

Pawel had cropped blond hair, very blue eyes and even white teeth, and his English was usually more grammatically correct than Yvonne’s. He was perfectly polite to her, but revealed virtually nothing about himself. After almost two years with him, all she knew about Pawel, mostly by accident, was that he’d been educated in England, that he’d never been married and that his father had been some kind of diplomat in London.