by Faith Hogan
Tess had a feeling that Amanda would be a fair-weather walker, falling out of the habit with the arrival of the first wet and windy night. Not so for Tess, she had a mission now. She’d made a command decision. She’d even weighed herself in one of the offices she temped in regularly – that had been an unpleasant experience. When had she grown so heavy? Then she realised, it was probably fifty years since she’d stood on scales. She couldn’t expect to be the very same as she had been all those years ago. She wasn’t exactly overweight, but she was brave enough to face the facts that it would do her no harm to lose half a stone.
Well, seeing Amanda King out there in her ridiculous sports clothes was just another stroke of motivation for her. She was damned if that snooty cow was going to be walking faster or further than her. If either of them was going to live a long and healthy life it was bloody well going to be Tess. She wouldn’t give that pair the satisfaction of getting their noses inside her front door, much less their measuring tapes – unless it was refitting her old bathroom as a measure of Richard King’s mortification and complete humiliation. The very notion of it made Tess feel pleased with herself all over again. So, when she ran into Amanda as she rounded her first circuit she was smiling and her greeting, instead of being bitten back, was almost pleasant.
Usually, she would have kicked herself for such a mistake, but today the look of complete shock and misapprehension on Amanda King’s face almost made it okay. On her next circuit, she could say something a little less pleasant. Now, what to say… maybe something motivational. She settled on, ‘It’ll take more than walking to shift what you need to get off those hips.’ Unfortunately, Amanda seemed to have ducked into the Square garden before she could follow it up with another motivational mantra to keep her going…
*
It struck Tess as karma in some offbeat way, the morning Matt arrived was also the morning that she learned about Douglas. It came as she’d always known it would. Out of nowhere, or more accurately, out of the letter box. It might have been there for days, Tess had gotten out of the habit of checking daily for letters that would contain nothing more than bills or fliers. A neat postcard, so she couldn’t not read it, she supposed. It was a small three by five inches, with Nancy’s flowing hand on the back. It was somehow obscene, to think that her sister would select an image of the sunrise in Ballycove to give her the news that Douglas had passed away. Tess sat with the card in her hands for she wasn’t sure how long, the cat next to her, silently keeping time to her thoughts.
It was reassuring in some strange way to think that even though Douglas was gone, she was not entirely alone in this moment. Matt was here. Of course, he’d have to go back next door, but when she needed to know she was not on her own, he was here, doing as much as anyone could while the tears silently slipped down her cheeks. She had the strangest feeling that she was moving closer to her destiny, although she couldn’t imagine how that might be. It felt wholly unnerving, but as with so many things in her life, Tess was too stubborn to make a move that might bring it closer just a little more quickly.
Chapter 13
Twenty-two years earlier…
It was because her mother wouldn’t be at her wedding. That was why, Nicola, Clarissa and Megan had become so important to her. Mind you, even if her mum had lived to see the day when her little girl would trip down the aisle with one of Dublin’s most eligible men, Amanda wasn’t sure that they’d have been able to organise the kind of wedding Richard and his family expected.
Ann Young had passed away tragically, when her daughter was just two years old. Amanda couldn’t remember her mother, but she had a feeling they’d have been close. She had been close to her dad – growing up, before Line-dancing Linda arrived on the scene. Linda sashayed into their lives as a little gift for Amanda’s fourteenth birthday. At the time, with her blue mascara and diamante-encrusted accessories, Amanda had almost believed that her dad had found Linda just for her. After all, she was coming to an age where having a woman about the place would be useful for conversations that a man like her dad just couldn’t have with his daughter. They’d rubbed along, well enough. Linda certainly couldn’t be described as a wicked step mother, but at the same time, she was hardly maternal either. She was a platinum blonde, orange-skinned Oompa-Loompa of a woman who lived to dance and soon got Amanda’s Dad hooked on the country and western music scene.
‘We’ll be there, love,’ her Dad reassured her on the phone. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for all the world.’ The line wasn’t great, crackly and breaking up, but there was no missing his genuine joy for her.
‘It’s the heat,’ Linda said. ‘Summertime in the Canaries, it plays havoc with your highlights and the phone lines.’ They’d moved over there as soon as Amanda started college. ‘What does your dad want with farming when we can live for half nothing out there?’ Linda had said and Amanda had a feeling she was reassuring herself as much as she was Amanda.
‘Well, I’m just looking forward to seeing both of you,’ Amanda said and she was, because even though Nicola had helped her to organise the wedding, she was not family. Although, in practical terms, she’d been as good as family. She had been very good – she’d helped with everything from the band to the orchid petals that would carpet the church. Nicola just always knew what was right and, more importantly, what was fashionably right. Amanda adored Nicola, really looked up to her. One day, she hoped, she would grow into a red-haired version of Nicola – not that she was all that much older than Amanda, but still, one day, she promised herself.
Even so, it wasn’t the same as having her dad, stocky, soft, reliable and ordinary there at her side. Even Linda, yes, she could be a little embarrassing and Amanda was ashamed to admit it but part of her dreaded the Kings meeting her stepmother in all her garish glory. All the same, Linda was the nearest thing she had left to a mother and, in their way, Amanda knew that what passed between them was a comfortable kind of love that was easy and effortless.
‘This time tomorrow we’ll be in a nice old Dublin pub having a pint of the black stuff,’ her father said to her just as they were about to catch their flight from Tenerife South Airport. It was six days before her wedding and that was the last time Amanda spoke to him. It turned out that Tenerife was good for keeping the arthritis at bay, but not so good for making her dad stop to think about the niggling pain in his chest in the run-up to his daughter’s wedding. He had a massive heart attack as they set down in Ireland. He made it home, but not to the wedding.
‘The show must go on,’ Richard said gently, but she could see the stress of it all in his eyes. She wanted to marry him, so very much, but at the same time, it seemed wrong to come from burying her father to marrying her fiancé.
‘It’s what he would have wanted,’ Linda said, but her voice had lost all its lovely musical quality and rode out between them like a tired old dray. ‘Don’t think for a minute of cancelling it, he’d be broken-hearted if he thought that you’d…’ she couldn’t finish the words. Bless her, she wanted to say the right thing. She wanted to be brave and strong and hold it all together for just a few more days.
‘I don’t know, it won’t be the same and it won’t be right without him there.’
‘God, Amanda,’ Richard sighed and then he lowered his voice so it sounded velvety and smooth, ‘I’m sorry, babe, but he’s never going to give you away now. He’s gone, but at least you have a future, a family to take care of you, my family.’ He put his arm around her, squeezed her gently.
‘You’ll always be family too, Linda, you know that, don’t you?’ Amanda smiled a wobbly movement of her lips; she couldn’t force anything more out and knew the photographs would be terrible. ‘All right, we’ll do it. Everything is booked; it’d be silly not to go ahead with it. Maybe Linda could give me away?’ Amanda smiled at her stepmother, that at least would make her feel a little closer to her dad.
‘Oh, really, Amanda, I don’t think you can do that. No, we’ll ask Nicola’s husband, Hugo to stand i
n and do the honours, just for today, okay, Linda?’ Richard smiled at Linda, but Amanda felt the loosening of the ties with her former life, with who she was and where she had come from. She was so head over heels in love with Richard though, what did it matter? After all, he was her future; as he said, she would have her own family now, the Kings. Soon, she wouldn’t be Young anymore. It was the end of the line – the last of the Youngs would become Mrs Richard King.
Chapter 14
January 9 – Friday
As Amanda came down the steps outside, a splash of colour from the square’s garden opposite caught her eye. There were young mothers sitting on the benches chatting. Their small children made fun in the mini maze she had designed for her own children years earlier. The sunny morning, like a pied piper, had charmed them from the little streets that bled onto the square. They rocked designer prams laden down with all the paraphernalia of young motherhood. At the far end, Amanda noticed that two gardeners were hard at work. They were clearing back the remains of winter foliage around a large spring shrub decorated with huge wooden hearts painted in red and deep pink. With a sense of purpose, she made her way towards them.
‘Hello?’ Amanda called up to a young man who was busy cutting back ivy in its march along an ancient chestnut tree.
‘Hi!’ he said, turning to look at her.
‘What’s all this for?’ she asked, a little put out because she had put so much work into the garden over the years and it had left her feeling quite possessive of it.
‘Oh, the city council. Apparently, this has been named the most romantic spot in Dublin this year and it’s on the map for the “Love Dublin festival,”’ he said, smiling at her and she couldn’t help but notice he really had the most enigmatic smile. It was broad and full, showing off perfect white teeth and it was somewhat contagious.
‘Never heard a word of it,’ Amanda said, not moving, but noticing the man’s strong arms and shoulders as he leant towards a branch to hang the last of the hearts. She found herself unable to look away while he climbed down the ladder. When he stood opposite, he smiled as though he knew she’d been watching him, which only made her blush.
‘Were we supposed to notify you, Miss…’ he held out a hand and winked at her.
‘Amanda,’ she said, shaking his hand. ‘And, no, I suppose not. But I’ve put a lot of work in here, so I keep an eye on it and I just like to know what’s going on.’ She felt foolish now.
‘Amanda? Amanda King?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Oh, God, had the younger mothers been talking about her? There was a time, not so long ago, when she used to march over to them and make their kids put back any tufts of grass that they’d kicked up. She wanted to die now at the embarrassment of what she’d let herself become. ‘And you are?’ She looked into his eyes which creased at the corners from hours spent in the sun.
‘I’m Carlos. Carlos Giordano. My dad did some of the work with you?’
‘Oh, God, yes of course, Antonio. How is he these days?’
‘Retired. I’m running the business now, but you know, he still likes to keep his hand in. This,’ he cast his hand about in the same dramatic fashion as his father might have done, ‘he was very proud of the work you both did here. He wanted to come along with me this morning, but he’s at a doctor’s appointment for his knee.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Is he all right?’
‘Old age and gardener’s knees, it’s going to come to us all with a bit of luck.’ He laughed then, because of course the alternative to getting old was not so attractive. ‘It looks as if he has arthritis, but he doesn’t want to have the operation, he can be a stubborn old goat when he wants to be.’
‘Yes, I remember, he certainly had spirit.’ Amanda smiled thinking of the old Italian, they’d had some fantastic spats, but she had to admit, he knew his stuff, so she just had to concede when it came to plants.
‘He liked you,’ Carlos said softly and for a moment they stood shyly looking at each other. Then he smiled a rakish grin that made her feel giddy and a little scared all at once. ‘And I can see why.’ His voice dipped and Amanda wondered if he was flirting with her. His father had been the very same, incorrigible, she’d seen him with the older ladies and the younger ones, a charmer when he wasn’t at loggerheads over the herbaceous border.
‘Well, I’ll have to look up this Love Dublin Festival, see if we can’t be involved in it, here on the square,’ she said, taking a step away from him. ‘Are you finished here today?’
‘For now, but we’ll be back again. The council have contracted us to carry out repairs to the paths, benches and any of the beds that might be in need of it. Then, we’ll take care of the spring planting. It’ll be a sea of red and pink for the fourteenth.’ He winked at her now.
‘Well, then, I suppose I’ll be seeing you again, Carlos,’ Amanda said and even if she knew he was just flirting with her out of habit, she felt a little better as she headed back to real life once more. It was coffee morning with the girls again. God, it seemed to come round more quickly these days than ever before. Was it because she dreaded it for the six days beforehand, she wondered.
*
She had taken to doing an evening walk, just a quick stroll around the square before dinner and maybe to avoid Tess too, if she was honest. She wasn’t exactly power-walking, but she was out of breath by the time she got back most days. She wasn’t sure that being fit, or being thin, would win Richard back for her, she wasn’t sure of anything much at all these days. The one thing she was certain of was that he would not have been so tempted away if, somehow, she’d just been a slightly better version of herself. Perhaps it was just once, a slip. If she convinced herself of that, maybe she could live with it? Did she want to live with it? With him? Would she always want to check his phone? Not that she was quite sure how she could. Yes, of course, she’d already tried, but it was password-protected and that in itself had made her stop. Maybe she’d think up a way of getting her hands on it, with plenty of time to spare, and figure out the password.
She was having conversations in her head all the time now. There were so many questions that she wanted to ask, but the truth was, she was frozen rigid by fear. She knew, she should find out if he had a mistress, or if this was a one-night stand. She just didn’t know what to do next. It’s not as though she expected him to tell the truth and, if he did, then where were they? At the end, that’s where, she was sure of that much.
No, she wasn’t proud of it, but she was too afraid to know the gory details yet. Too weak to face it head on, she wanted an easy way to find out, but she hadn’t a living soul to confide in, so what was there to do? Try to pretend everything was normal and wait for one more slip. It was a cowardly approach but somehow better than seeing him leave her for some newer, thinner, maybe cleverer model. She couldn’t blot out the girls he’d dated before they’d married. They’d all been the same: leggy, elegant blondes. He’d always gone for a ‘type’, until he’d met her. ‘Gold-diggers,’ Megan had said as though she’d married just for love.
It was funny, but back then, the girl he fell in love with – that girl she used to know – wouldn’t have dithered for one second. That was probably more galling than anything else. Amanda had allowed herself to become weak and, in that altering of her very self, Richard had lost all interest in her. It was ironic and tragic all at once.
Either way, for now, she knew enough to put her off her food – and that was as much as she could handle. Into another day of starvation and it seemed like there was no more clarity than there was that day she had started calling condom-gate. Time would tell if she could hold onto him, she knew that.
The exercise was meant to make her feel better and maybe it was doing her head some good, but her body was ready to give in before she started. She wondered what people got out of getting sweaty, sore and breathless just for kicks. She couldn’t see it herself. Funny though, perhaps it was the walking, more likely, it was the worry, but she’d all but gone of
f cake and biscuits – how had that happened? She always thought she’d eat her way through any crises. It turned out that the worst crises killed her appetite better than any gastric band. Tonight, most of the other buildings were in darkness. The office workers departed for the weekend, the only lights shone from houses that were still used as homes.
Amanda climbed the steps to her house, doing her best to ignore the little porch light that shone up from the flat below. Tess Cuffe had started walking too, she’d never thought of her as someone who might enjoy physical exercise. She really wasn’t sure what to make of Tess these days. One minute she was smiling at her, the next she was sounding off as if she was some kind of corny fascist self-help guru. If she was trying to be funny, she certainly wasn’t. Perhaps it was her idea of motivating. Really, it didn’t bear thinking about, just something else to sap her energy, as if she hadn’t enough already to worry about.
She would not think about Tess Cuffe now or her grotty little flat that Amanda had earmarked all those years ago as her state-of-the-art kitchen. She’d imagined a room that ran the length of the house and opened out into the garden, a place she could entertain with dining areas both inside and out. After all the trouble between Richard and Tess, she couldn’t imagine having her dinner down there now. Instead, she admired the old glass in the Georgian windows of her lovely home that curved and wobbled so the lights inside seemed to glitter with more sparkle than they should.