She shuts off the water. She hauls the bucket from the sink and sets it on the draining-board, and gives Astrid a look that’s hard to interpret. ‘So what kind of a horrible person does that make me, to be jealous of my own kid?’
‘Now stop that – you’re probably the least horrible person I know.’
Heather laughs. ‘Oh, come on – that can’t be true!’
‘It certainly can. It’s also perfectly normal that you’d feel a little put out. You were their child, and they neglected you. But I think you must try to forget that now. Remember the good things, forget the rest.’
Heather nods. ‘You’re right. It’s great that they’re being good with Lottie. That’s really all that matters.’ Her face changes, softens into a real smile. ‘I brought her to meet the son of an old Irish nanny I had. I used to visit with him and his family when— Well, anyway, that was cool, catching up with them.’
‘I didn’t know you had an Irish nanny.’
‘Josephine.’ Nodding briskly. ‘She’s the reason I came to Ireland.’
‘Did you stay in touch, when you came over here?’
‘Nope. She was shot dead in a mall by a crazy American with a gun.’
The words, so unexpected, stated so matter-of-factly, shock Astrid into silence. She watches Heather lifting the bucket, scooping up the waiting sponge, moving with her load to the patio. A second later, she pops her head back around. ‘That might have come out a little blunt.’
‘No—’
‘Truth is, I can’t dwell on it, or I’d fall apart, you know?’ And Astrid sees the pain then in her face, hears it in the too-bright tone.
‘Heather, I’m so sorry. What a terrible thing to happen.’
‘Yup.’ She vanishes again. Shortly after, Astrid hears the splash of water – and then, in a new voice: ‘There’s something else.’
‘What’s that?’
No response. Seconds tick by. Astrid steps outside.
Heather is standing on the little step stool she uses to reach the top of the patio door. She scrubs at the glass with her sponge, not looking at Astrid.
‘You said there’s something else.’
‘Mm-hmm.’ Still she scrubs. ‘I think … Well, there’s this guy, this man. Or there might be, I’m not sure.’
‘What man?’
‘Oh, well. It might be nothing.’
She hops down to dunk the sponge, squeezes it out, dunks it again. Astrid follows a small trail of water as it snakes across the tiles. ‘What might be nothing?’
‘Well, I guess he’s just someone I got to know when I came here first.’ Scrub, scrub, her sponge squeaking on the glass. ‘He – well, I hadn’t seen him for years, and then I met him again – met him twice, actually, first time in Emily’s place – and then we just bumped into one another again. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.’
Astrid pulls a chair out from the patio table and sits. Waiting for more, because of course there’s more, if she holds her tongue.
‘I was his father’s carer,’ Heather says, now drawing a squeegee swiftly across the glass, pausing to wipe it dry after every swipe. ‘I think I told you. It was the first job I got here.’
She slides the patio door closed and turns her attention to the unwashed side. ‘I was young, and kinda desperate to start making some cash, in case my folks cut me off for coming here when I was supposed to be in England.’
Interesting, the hint of something – exhilaration, anticipation, nervousness, all of the above – that Astrid detects running through the chatter. Most interesting. ‘You told me about the man you looked after, but you never mentioned his son.’
‘Didn’t I?’ She scrubs and squeaks with her sponge, sending more water splashing onto the tiles. Astrid lifts her feet to avoid an incoming drift.
‘Well, that’s the other thing. I never really liked him – although I didn’t dislike him either. I really didn’t know him, hardly knew him at all, but he used to come with his wife and kids. His wife was a real piece of work, I mean, she was a real—’ She breaks off, glances over her shoulder at Astrid. ‘Let’s just say she was not a nice person. Anyway, like I said, I met him again out of the blue, just a little while ago.’
More scrubbing. More splashing. More squeegee.
‘And?’
‘And they’ve split up, he and his wife. Turns out …’ setting the squeegee on the table, turning to face Astrid, still on her hunkers ‘… well, it turns out that they didn’t have a good relationship.’ She lifts her shoulders, gives a bashful smile. ‘And … he’s nice. I like him. He drove me and Lottie to the airport, changed shifts with someone at his work so he could do it.’ She gets to her feet, pours the contents of the bucket into a drain. ‘Collected us when we got back too. I’m not saying— Well, I don’t know what I’m saying really. I mean, technically he’s still married. Look, forget I said anything.’
She’s all over the place. Confused about her parents, hurt that they’re better grandparents, but glad too. A part of her still mourning the nanny she lost so violently. Developing feelings for this man, terrified to admit it. The first man she’s ever discussed with Astrid: even Lottie’s father barely got half a sentence, the only time Astrid recalls her mentioning him.
‘Right,’ Heather says, ‘moving on,’ and she refills her bucket at the kitchen sink and sets off to tackle the remaining windows, leaving Astrid to wash the breakfast dishes, and to pray that this man, who seems to have begun to creep into Heather’s heart, has the sense to recognise what a treasure she is.
The next day, Astrid decides to take the bus to town for the first time in weeks. It’s not a long journey from her house to the stop – even at her measured pace it takes under five minutes – but it feels like a real achievement. At the stop she sits next to a teenage girl, who makes space for her with a sweet smile and ignores her thereafter as she runs a fingertip along the screen of her phone.
When the bus arrives Astrid climbs the steps carefully. The driver’s face is familiar, but she knows none of their names. ‘Long time no see,’ he says, and waves her on as she rummages for her travel pass, and watches in his mirror until she’s seated before he moves off.
The walk from the main street to The Food of Love seems endless: she was a little ambitious, she decides. She reaches the restaurant with relief, and Emily, emerging just then from the kitchen, greets her with the usual smile.
‘Good to see you, Astrid. All well?’
‘Very well,’ Astrid replies. ‘I came on the bus.’
‘Did you really? Well done.’
‘I might take a taxi home.’
Emily nods. ‘That would be wise, don’t overdo it.’ She pulls out a chair for Astrid. ‘I don’t suppose you have Bill’s mobile number,’ she says. ‘I thought he might have a landline, but he’s not in the phone book.’
‘I do,’ Astrid says, suddenly remembering. ‘He gave it to me, last time I saw him.’ She opens her bag, but her phone isn’t to be found there. ‘Sorry, I must have left it at home. I’ll text it to you later.’
‘Thanks. I just wanted a word with him.’
‘Hasn’t he been in?’
‘No.’
She looks preoccupied. The smile might be a little over-bright, like Heather’s the day before. She disappears with Astrid’s order, and Astrid recalls their recent conversation about the man she had reconnected with. The man who had broken her heart, and then come back saying he was sorry. Strange that Emily and Heather had both come into contact with men from their past.
‘Is everything alright?’ Astrid asks when her soup arrives.
‘Yes, everything’s fine. I’m just a little tired, that’s all.’
But Astrid doesn’t think that’s all.
When she gets home she searches for her phone, and doesn’t find it. Not in any of the usual places, not by her bed, or on the coffee table in the sitting room, or next to the kettle on the worktop, or underneath the lid of the record player. Not fallen benea
th the kitchen table, or left out on the patio. Where on earth can it be?
She tries to recall the last time she used it. Wednesday, wasn’t it, to ring a taxi for the library? Yes, she didn’t walk to the end of the road that day because it was raining.
She got the phone for emergencies, on her nephew’s advice. She manages quite well without it most of the time, but the loss of it now is annoying. Without a landline either she feels adrift, cut off from the rest of humanity, which is quite ridiculous.
When it still hasn’t turned up by Monday she returns to the library and the supermarket, but it hasn’t been handed in at either location. She travels on to the garden centre, where she finds the man she spoke with on her previous visit, and she tells him of the loss. ‘I don’t suppose I left it here?’
‘I haven’t come across it, I’m afraid.’ He asks the others; they shake their heads. ‘I’ve found you a gardener though, if you’re still looking. I passed your number on to him on Saturday, but that’s not going to be much good if your phone is gone. Hang on.’
He riffles in his wallet and finds a folded slip of paper. Astrid reads Markus Nowak and a number. ‘Do you know him?’ she asks.
‘Haven’t met him myself, but he’s done work for my sister, and she was pleased. He’s Polish, she said. Nice lad, and not too dear.’
A lad isn’t a retired person. A lad is young, or at any rate younger than Astrid had been hoping for, but she thanks the man and slips the note into her bag. ‘One more stop,’ she tells her taxi driver, and fifteen minutes later she’s bought a replica of her old phone. Her new number will have to be memorised, and her contacts, all fourteen or so, are gone.
She thinks of Emily, waiting for a text with Bill’s number on it. When the new phone has charged she calls directory enquiries and is given the number for the restaurant.
‘Sorry,’ she tells Emily, and explains the situation.
‘Thanks, Astrid. Thank you for trying. Shame about your phone.’
Has Bill given up coming to The Food of Love? Such a pity if he has. Astrid hopes it has nothing to do with Christine, hopes it’s not guilt about sending her to Astrid that’s keeping him away. So difficult, such a sad situation.
She places a call to Markus, whose accent she has some difficulty with, but she gives him her address and manages to elicit a promise from him to call later that day to see the garden.
And life goes on, as it tends to do.
Heather
HER PHONE RINGS ON TUESDAY EVENING AT SEVEN o’clock precisely. She presses the answer key and says, ‘Hi Mom,’ and ‘Yes, she’s here,’ before passing the phone to her daughter. ‘Grandma,’ she says, but Lottie already knows it’s Grandma.
Heather clears the table of dinner dishes, picturing her mother on the other side of the Atlantic, all the way across the huge landmass of the States to the west coast, where it’s eleven in the morning. She sees the fresh cup of coffee that will have been poured before the call was placed, the sun that’s probably streaming in through the big kitchen windows, the white-tiled floor that has almost certainly been mopped once already by Anita, whom she and Lottie met when they visited.
She fills the sink with water and half listens to Lottie’s side of the conversation, which consists mostly of yeses, and uh-huhs, and giggles. In the two weeks since their trip to the US, Grandma has called at seven o’clock on Tuesday and Friday – and Heather, feeling her way in this new family dynamic, says hi and passes the phone to Lottie, and tries not to feel too left out.
But like Astrid said, she must focus on the positive. Their trip to the US was a success. After an initial awkwardness – to be expected – she and her folks got on pretty much as well as she could have hoped for. Nobody yelled, nobody threw stuff – and Lottie now has grandparents who care about her.
The visit to Josephine’s son and his family was as bittersweet as she’d known it would be. Lovely to see them, to catch up with their happenings – the little girls she’d played with in the yard both in high school now, the son a pet groomer. Sweet to reconnect with them, and also sad. Josephine’s ashes were sent back to Ireland at her sister’s request, so there was no grave to visit. Just as well: Heather isn’t big on graves.
And on a completely unrelated note, there’s Shane.
He brought flowers when he came to revisit his father’s house. Big colourful daisies that made Heather’s nose itch just looking at them, but it was nice of him. She wondered if Nora had suggested it, or if it had been his own idea.
She introduced him to Lottie and gave him coffee, and afterwards she walked him through the handful of rooms in the house where he’d grown up. He was nervous at first, didn’t know what to do with himself, kept folding and unfolding his arms, stirring coffee that had already been stirred to death – but he relaxed a bit as the visit went on.
It’s strange, he said, standing on the threshold of his father’s room. That you live here now, I mean.
Strange good or strange bad?
Not bad, he said. I told you I was glad when you bought it. In the tiny front bedroom that used to be his, and that’s now Lottie’s, he pointed at the house directly across the street. Delahuntys, he said.
That’s right. Just Jim there now. The kids are living overseas. His wife died a couple of years ago.
Teresa. I was at her funeral.
Heather had gone to the removal, had lined up with the other neighbours to pay her respects to Jim and the kids. She and Shane might have come face to face then, but they hadn’t.
We’re going back to the States for a week, she said as they returned downstairs, so I can introduce Lottie to my folks.
He didn’t ask why it had taken eight years for Lottie to meet her grandparents. Heather was waiting for it, but he didn’t.
When are you off?
Tuesday.
From Shannon?
Yup.
I could run you, he said, getting into the jacket he’d left on the banister. I could bring you to the airport.
Shannon was an hour away. Wouldn’t you be working? she asked.
I can switch shifts, it’s not a problem – so he’d picked them up on Tuesday and driven them all the way to the airport. And when he was dropping them at Departures he’d said, I can collect you when you get back if you want, so that had happened too.
And after he’d been so nice to do that, Heather felt it was the polite thing to invite him to dinner. To say thanks, she said, and so three evenings after they’d got home from the trip she cooked shepherd’s pie from a recipe she found online – she’d never in her life owned a cookbook – and he came and ate it.
And at the end of that night, after Lottie had gone upstairs to get into pyjamas, he asked if Heather would like to go to a movie sometime, so they went to the new Will Smith two evenings later, and left Lottie with Madge.
And tomorrow, which is a Saturday, the three of them are meeting in the park for a walk and an ice-cream.
And she has no idea where it’s going, or if it’s going anywhere at all.
He’s older. He’s at least fifteen years older than her. He must be still married to Yvonne. Her name hasn’t come up between them since their conversation on the street, but it takes a lot longer than a year to ditch a spouse in Ireland.
And apart from his marital status, the idea of anything developing between him and Heather is still a bit weird. Since Lottie started school, and Heather saw him bringing a little boy into the classroom that first frenetic day, she’d become expert in avoiding him. When they’d both responded to the call for parents to accompany the class on the senior-infant school tour, she’d engineered it so she was never once close enough to him that they’d be forced to acknowledge one another. When he’d turned up to the cycle bus she helped organise in first class, Heather again made certain that they were well separated along the line of little cyclists.
At school concerts and parent-teacher meetings, and any other occasion where they might coincide, she was careful to give hi
m and Yvonne a wide berth. Never, she vowed, would she voluntarily have anything to do with them.
And now things are changing – and she’s not one bit sure how she feels about that.
Nothing has been said that would give her reason to think he has any romantic interest in her. They haven’t even held hands, for goodness’ sake. He hasn’t gone further than a silly little goodbye wave when he leaves her. Maybe he’s just looking for a friend – and maybe that’s all she wants too.
Is it hell.
‘Done,’ Lottie announces, setting down the phone.
‘Good girl. What did Grandma say?’
‘Nothing much – except she’ll see us at Christmas, her and Grandpa.’
Heather turns from the sink. ‘What?’
‘She said she’ll see us—’
‘Where? Where will she see us? We’re not going there for Christmas.’
‘No, they’re coming here.’
‘They’re coming here?’
Don’t be a stranger, her mother had said when they were leaving, and Heather, trying to swat away battling emotions, had said something noncommittal like See you soon. The kind of thing you say to people when you’re parting from them, even if you have no idea when you’ll see them again.
Don’t be a stranger means come visit us again at some vague time in the future. It definitely does not mean we’re coming to see you. They didn’t once hint that they might be considering a trip in this direction. Lottie must have picked her up wrong.
‘What exactly did Grandma say? Tell me her exact words.’
‘I told you. She said that she and Grandpa are coming here for Christmas.’
‘Here, to Ireland?’
‘Yeah, Mom – cos we live here, remember?’
‘Don’t be a smartass.’
Sounds like there’s no mistake. Christmas in the big house of her childhood meant more parties than usual, which also meant more rows, before and after. The house professionally decorated from top to bottom, eggnog in the refrigerator, dishes of brightly wrapped candy around the house that Heather would stuff into her pockets and eat in her room.
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