She returns to the restaurant, where the loaves are ready to be knocked back and left to rise again. She paces the kitchen floor, her head pounding, her insides knotted with tension. It feels like everything is breaking apart, everything familiar changing and disappearing, leaving her spinning in confusion, leaving her struggling to breathe, to survive.
The bread is in the oven when her phone beeps to signal a new text. She opens her inbox and reads, Thanks for calling. I know about Astrid – Bill.
He can’t even talk to her, can’t even address her by name any more. What did she do that he cut her off so absolutely? How wrong she was to think he was a good man. In the end he has shown himself to be no better than Fergal, turning his back on her without explanation when it suited him.
She’s taking the bread from the oven when Heather phones.
‘She’ll be OK. She had a good night and she’s eaten a little breakfast. They let me in for a second, literally – I barely got to give her a hug and tell her we’re thinking of her – but it looks like she’s out of the woods. I have a few jobs to do now but I’ll go back in a few hours, and Shane will see her later too, and get a proper update.’
‘That’s wonderful.’
‘It sure is. She’ll outlive us all. Did you tell Bill?’
‘Not in person.’ She fills her in.
‘Oh no – poor Bill. Text me his number and I’ll call him later. So what were you going to tell me last night?’
Emily closes her eyes. ‘It’s over,’ she says, her heart again dropping. ‘He broke up with me. He’s gone back to his ex.’ No details. She hasn’t the heart for details – and thankfully, Heather doesn’t look for them.
‘Oh Jeez, I don’t believe it. Oh, Emily, sweetheart. Are you OK?’
‘Not really.’
‘Want me to come around? I can cancel a few jobs. I could help with lunch – I mean, not cook, obviously, but I could lend a hand, just be there.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it, but Mike is due soon.’
‘I’m so sorry, honey. We’ll talk later. I’ll call you this afternoon.’
Shortly afterwards, Mike arrives. Emily tells him, haltingly, that her plans have changed. ‘I’m staying put,’ she says. ‘I’m not moving to Dublin, not selling up. I hope you’ll stay too,’ she says, her voice trembling, every ounce of willpower needed not to break down in front of him. ‘I really hope so.’ Her eyes swimming.
‘Emily,’ he says, regarding her with such concern on his face that she can’t bear it.
‘Don’t – don’t be nice to me, or I’ll make a fool of myself.’ Pressing a tea towel to her eyes, doing her best to smile.
‘Listen,’ he says, steering her to a stool, pushing her onto it, ‘here’s what I think. I think you should take the day off.’
‘Oh no, I can’t—’
‘Of course you can. When was the last time you had a break, apart from the days we don’t open?’
‘Never – but that’s—’
‘Exactly. Never, not one single time. And – sorry, but by the look of you, I’m guessing you didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night. Am I right?’
‘Well …’
‘So here’s what you need to do. You need to get me a sheet of paper so I can write a note and put it on the door, and then you need to turn off your phone, and go to bed and sleep. OK?’
‘But the bread is done.’
‘I’ll make stuffing from it tomorrow. Anything else?’
She shakes her head, out of energy, and feeling now an overwhelming urge to sleep. ‘I’ll get you a page.’
The note is written, and pinned to the door. Closed due to unforeseen circumstances, it reads. Sorry to disappoint. Back tomorrow.
‘Thank you,’ she says, hugging him.
‘Not a bother. I’m glad you’re staying – for purely selfish reasons, of course.’ He smiles; she tries to smile back.
Back upstairs she finds fresh pyjamas and climbs into bed. Everything can wait. Everything will still be there in a few hours.
She switches off her phone and closes her eyes – and this time, sleep comes rushing in.
Bill
‘I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND ME RINGING YOU AT WORK,’ the man says. ‘My son asked me. He met you a while ago, when he went to help you paint the nursing home.’
‘Eoin,’ Bill says, wondering where this is going. Conscious of Mrs Phelan, into whose office he has been summoned to take the call, hovering outside in the corridor. Able to hear every word, whether she wants to or not.
‘Eoin, that’s right. And he says you mentioned that you were a friend of Mrs Carmody’s, so he thought you’d want to know.’
Mrs Carmody. Astrid. Eoin delivers her paper; she gives him biscuits.
‘Yes, I’m a friend. Is something wrong?’
And then Eoin’s father tells him what happened to Astrid. And as he listens to the account, Bill feels a cold fear oozing up from the soles of his feet and travelling into every square inch of him.
Christine.
No. It wasn’t Christine. It couldn’t have been Christine.
‘How is she?’ he asks, and the man, who says he’s a paramedic, tells him she’s in Intensive Care, but that her injuries aren’t thought to be life-threatening.
Not thought to be life-threatening. Jesus Christ.
He thanks the man and hangs up. He stands for a second, two seconds, the fear still worming its way around him, a sheen of sweat on his forehead that he swipes away with his overall sleeve.
The door is pushed open. He attempts to gather his wits.
‘Bill, are you alright?’ Mrs Phelan, frowning at him. ‘You’re terribly pale.’
‘I – I might head home,’ he says. ‘I think I’m coming down with some bug.’ In the three and a bit years he’s been working in the nursing home he hasn’t taken a single sick day. The white lie will be forgiven.
‘Of course you must go. Get yourself back to bed. Will I call you a taxi?’
‘No, I’ll pick one up on the road. Thank you.’
He hurries from the room, his only thought to get away, to marshal his scattered thoughts, to rid his mind of its horrible suspicions. In his cubbyhole he pulls off his overalls and gets back into his jacket, praying he’s wrong. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
‘I’m taking off,’ he says to Olivia in Reception. ‘Not feeling too good,’ he says, and keeps going before she can quiz him. He walks home, he half runs home, and searches for a photo of his daughter that doesn’t make her look like a different person from the one she is now.
The best he can find is a snap of Christine and Betty sitting side by side in some café, cups and buns and a teapot on the table before them. He vaguely remembers taking the photo. It was during a weekend they spent in West Cork, he thinks, about a year before Betty died. Christine, in a red sweater, leans into her mother’s side, an arm around Betty’s shoulders. She’s unsmiling, with her hair caught up at the back of her head.
It’s not ideal. She looks too healthy, too young and fresh, but it will have to do. He folds it so Betty is hidden, and slips it into his pocket.
He’s halfway to the main street when his phone rings. He ignores it, knowing it won’t be Christine, and she’s the only one he wants to talk to now. Twice more it rings, and after the third call, he hears the ping that announces a voice message.
He pulls it out then and sees three missed calls from the same unknown number. It occurs to him, belatedly, that it might be an update on Astrid. It could be Eoin’s father again, having got Bill’s mobile number from Mrs Phelan. He presses the voicemail key and waits – and then, with a heart lurch, he hears the last voice he was expecting.
‘Bill, it’s Emily. I have news about Astrid. Please give me a call.’
Emily, having got his number from someone – Astrid, maybe. Emily asking him to call her, wanting to tell him what he already knows. He can’t talk to her now. He can’t think about anything else until he finds his daughter.
For the next hour he trudges the network of streets around the centre, crouching to speak to anyone who looks like they might know Christine. ‘My daughter,’ he says, showing them the snap. ‘I need to speak to her, it’s urgent.’
Heads shake, nobody can help him – until finally, an emaciated youth with an empty beans tin on the ground in front of him says, ‘Yeah, I know where she is.’
Bill takes a tenner from his wallet. ‘Bring me to her,’ he says, ‘and I’ll give you this,’ but the boy shakes his head.
‘I can’t bring you, but I’ll get her. For twenty,’ he says, gambling on Bill’s desperation.
‘OK.’
He waits, leaning against a shop window. People pass without glancing at him. He searches faces and sees preoccupation, everyone headed somewhere, everyone busy with life. Is this what it’s like for Christine? he wonders. Everyone rushing past, nobody looking at her, apart from the odd few who toss her a coin.
After a while he takes out his phone and listens again to Emily’s voice. He can’t ignore it. He must at least acknowledge the message. He opens a text box and types, Thanks for calling. I know about Astrid – Bill. It sounds so cold. He should put her name on it. He’s about to add it when a movement catches the corner of his eye. He looks up to see Christine and the youth advancing in his direction. He presses send and pockets his phone, and walks towards them.
‘Christine,’ he says. Her padded coat is unfamiliar, green and grubby. She doesn’t meet his eye. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘My money,’ the lad says, and Bill fumbles a twenty from his wallet and hands it over before turning back to Christine. ‘We need to talk.’
‘What about?’
‘Let’s go somewhere quieter.’
She shrugs. He takes her arm and brings her down the street and towards the canal. They walk in silence. In his head he frames questions. Stay calm, he tells himself. Stay focused. Don’t get angry. Don’t accuse.
He sees a bench. ‘Here,’ he says, and they sit. Following a sudden impulse he pulls the photograph from his pocket. He smooths it out and offers it to her.
‘You and Mum,’ he says, and she looks at it wordlessly but doesn’t take it. He watches her profile and sees no reaction, no hint of feeling.
He returns the snap to his pocket, never taking his eyes from her. ‘My friend Astrid,’ he says then – and he senses rather than sees a sudden stillness, a new alertness in her. ‘You remember Astrid.’
‘Yes.’ She’s looking at the water, her face in profile. She blinks rapidly.
‘She lost her phone,’ he goes on. Watching her, watching her. ‘Did you know that?’
She turns. ‘No.’
‘You took it,’ he says calmly. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘No. I didn’t.’
‘You took it and sold it for drugs.’
‘I didn’t,’ she repeats, more forcefully. ‘I didn’t take it.’
‘I know you did,’ he says, in the same even tone. ‘You stole from her like you stole from me.’
‘No!’ She makes as if to get up. He puts a hand on her arm to keep her there.
‘I haven’t finished. You stole her phone when you were in her house, and then, the day before yesterday, or maybe in the middle of the night, you went back for more.’
‘What? No.’ But this denial is less vehement.
‘You broke in. You attacked her—’
‘No! I didn’t! I didn’t touch her!’
‘You put her in hospital. She’s in Intensive Care.’
‘That’s not down to me! She wasn’t even—’
She breaks off. She bites her lip, looks sharply away from him. Tries to tug her arm from his grip, but he holds on tight.
‘She wasn’t even what?’
No response.
‘She wasn’t even what, Christine? We can stay here all day if we have to.’
She mutters something he doesn’t catch.
‘What was that?’
‘I said she wasn’t there.’
He digests this. ‘So you did break in.’
‘No – I had a key. I took a key.’ Sullen now, head bowed. ‘I wasn’t going to use it, I just wanted – I was mad at her for telling me to go. I saw the key and just … took it.’
‘And you did use it.’
Silence. A teenage couple walks by, hand in hand. He waits until they’re out of earshot.
‘You let yourself in with her key. You attacked her and robbed her.’
‘No – she left! I saw her going away in a taxi.’
‘So she came back while you were still there. She walked in and found you, and that was when you attacked her.’
‘I didn’t! I did not attack her!’
‘She’s in hospital. She’s badly injured. She was found lying on the floor, the morning after you robbed her. She’s ninety-two years old, Christine.’
‘I didn’t do it! I didn’t touch her!’
He bows his head. Enough. He can’t.
‘Christine,’ he says, his voice low, his words measured, ‘I have to let you go. I can’t deal with you any more. I can’t take it. I can’t take your lies. I can’t bear what you’ve done with your life. I can’t watch you destroy yourself any more. I don’t want you to come to the house again. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you.’
‘Why won’t you believe me? She wasn’t there!’
‘I don’t believe you,’ he says. ‘I can’t believe you. You’ve forgotten what the truth is.’ He gets up. ‘Don’t come home,’ he says. He turns on his heel and walks blindly away, swerving around people on the path, almost tripping over a dog lead in his haste. He has just told his daughter goodbye. He has just disowned her.
At the end of the path he stops and looks back. The bench where they sat is empty. There’s no sign of her.
The hospital. He must go there. He must find Astrid. He walks rapidly past shops and offices and roadworks, his face set, his mind racing.
Christine will be caught and arrested and put away – and if Astrid dies, Christine will become a murderer. The thought makes him want to retch. Waiting at an intersection for the green man, he pulls out the photograph of mother and daughter again. He looks from one face to the other, seeing the similarities that used to delight him. Same mouth, same chin, same hairline. The green man beeps: he pockets the snap and moves on.
He turns through the hospital gates, wondering if he’ll be allowed to see Astrid, if she’s in any condition for visitors. Wondering what reception he’ll get, if he does manage to see her. Will she remember who attacked her? She might already, if she’s well enough, have given Christine’s name to the guards. She might refuse to speak to Bill, refuse to let him near her – and who would blame her?
His fault, all of it.
‘Bill?’
It’s Heather, coming down the driveway towards him. ‘You’re here about Astrid?’
‘Yes.’
‘They won’t let you in, I tried just now. I got in earlier, but there’s a new nurse on duty and she’s like the Gestapo. Astrid had a good night and she managed some breakfast.’
‘Is she – will she be OK?’
‘They think so.’
He took a breath. ‘Do they know who – attacked her?’
‘She wasn’t attacked,’ Heather says. ‘She told the nurse. She slipped and fell on some smashed records, or something. They caused cuts to her arms, and she banged her head, and fractured a hip … but whoever burgled the place was gone when she got home.’
Relief, gratitude, floods through him. Christine is not out of the woods, not by a long shot, but she didn’t hurt Astrid. That much, at least, is true.
‘Hang on – I thought you were sick. Emily told me.’
He thinks of the three missed calls. ‘Not sick – more of a day off.’
She takes his arm. ‘Come on then,’ she says. ‘I’d kill for an espresso,’ so they cross the road to a café, where she orders the coffee and an apple Danish.
‘Tea for me,’ Bill says to the waitress, and it arrives in a pot with an accompanying little biscuit.
He tells her of the phone call from a man he didn’t know. ‘His son helped me to paint the nursing home a few weeks ago. Astrid came up in conversation – he has a paper round, it’s a long story.’
‘Shane,’ she says, stirring sugar into coffee. ‘He’s my new boyfriend – that’s a long story too. You just missed Emily.’
He frowns, trying to keep up. It’s just that I miss you. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She called to the nursing home this morning. That’s where she got your number.’ Heather pulls her Danish apart and dunks a piece in the small espresso cup. ‘I said I’d go and tell you, but she said leave it to her. I’m guessing she was hoping to make things up with you. She told me you’d had words.’
He says nothing.
‘And you haven’t been to the restaurant in forever. I don’t know what’s going on, Bill, and I know it’s none of my business, but for the life of me I can’t figure how you two could have fought about anything. I mean, it’s plain that you worship the ground she walks on—’
‘What?’
‘Oh, come on – you can’t deny it.’
He can’t. He lets it go. ‘Listen,’ he says. He looks into his teacup, but finds no inspiration there. ‘It’s just – I’m going through some family stuff right now. I need time to sort it out.’ Weak – he can hear how weak it sounds, even though it’s true. Mostly.
Heather signals to the waitress. ‘I’ll have another espresso, honey. Bill, how’re you doing with that tea?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You going to eat that biscuit?’
‘No.’
‘Look,’ Heather says, when the waitress has disappeared, ‘I’m sorry if you’re having problems – and believe me, I know all about how families can mess you up. But honest, Emily could do with all her pals around her now.’
‘What do you mean? She’s moving to Dublin. She doesn’t need us.’ It shoots out, a little stronger than he meant it to.
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