There was a silence, so deep and intense that Orla could almost hear the sound of something clicking neatly into place in her brain. With a stunning clarity, she realised that she did want a baby of her own to love and cherish. It was the only thing she’d really ever wanted, now she thought about it. How could she not have copped on to this sooner? She’d minded her twin baby brothers as if they were her own. At first, she’d been doing it mainly to earn the approval and attention of her mother and stepfather, but she’d grown to love the twins as if she herself had given life to them. She worked in a crèche because she wanted to be around babies. There was one baby there, a little boy of about eighteen months called Seb, who was her particular favourite, her pet. With his golden curly hair and huge trusting blue eyes, he was a precious little good-natured cherub who all the staff loved. Orla spent as much time minding him as she could, changing his nappies, settling him with his bottle and helping him to play with the building blocks, loving the way he chuckled when he knocked down the blocks. She pretended she was his mother and he her darling baby boy. She spent so much time with Baby Seb, who was always dressed in such gorgeous blue romper suits with ducks and sheep and teddy bears on them, that her supervisor had given her some funny looks and reminded her that the other babies in the crèche needed attention too. One day Orla was so lost in her lovely warm fuzzy fantasy that she was Seb’s mummy that she’d been shocked and almost angry when his mother had come to the crèche to collect him at five-thirty. If she was to be unflinchingly honest with herself, she’d have to admit that she’d fantasised more than once about somehow sneaking Baby Seb home with her one night and keeping him with her for ever. She’d even worked out where in her bedroom his cot would go. Of course, she knew that this type of thinking was very wrong and so she’d never breathed a word of it to Nathan. He’d have been horrified and probably called the Guards or had her committed. She wouldn’t have blamed him. She wasn’t insane, though. She knew perfectly well that stealing someone else’s baby was wrong, a terrible crime, and she’d never have gone through with it. It was just nice to fantasise sometimes. That was all it was. A fantasy, nothing else. Something nice to think about sometimes.
Now, some of the party people had come outside with their drinks and were laughing and eyeballing the drama unfolding in front of them, as if it were a particularly absorbing play or a television soap opera that they were watching.
Nathan, on the other hand, was standing stock-still. His face was white and sweaty. He looked shell-shocked, as if he’d been struck dumb or something. It was cold and damp on Mornington Crescent.
Orla shivered. “See? I told you we didn’t want the same things,” she told him quietly. “I’m going now. Goodbye. Don’t follow me.”
She turned to leave. It was pissing down heavily now, to add insult to injury. She had no coat, no boyfriend and she’d probably never again meet anyone she loved enough to have a baby with, a baby and a cosy little family whose members always had time for one another and were always there for each other. Yes, she knew it sounded like a soppy American television sitcom, but that was what she wanted. She was only surprised that it had taken so long for the thought to really crystallise in her brain the way it had tonight at this shitty party. She knew what she wanted now and, if she couldn’t have it, well, then she didn’t want anything.
“Orla, no – don’t go, love! We need to talk about this. Can’t you see that?”
She began to walk, albeit a bit unsteadily in her party heels, throwing words back over her shoulder at him. “What’s the point? There’s nothing to talk about. I want a baby and you don’t.” Then she swung around again and stood stock-still, staring at him. “You don’t ever want one because your parents split up and your mum was awful to you and you don’t ever want that to happen to a child of yours. I don’t blame you for that. Really I don’t.” Her voice broke on a sob.
“What if I do want a baby, though, same as you?” Nathan said, stepping close to her and lightly taking hold of her arm.
“But you don’t,” said Orla, doubtfully. “Do you?”
“Maybe I do. Maybe I do want the same things as you. Can’t we go back to your house where it’s nice and warm and at least talk about it?”
The heavens opened properly now. There might even have been a clap of thunder. Orla wavered.
STOP 5: DUNDRUM
Mick and Donna
Donna McKenna walked to the Luas stop at Balally by herself. She’d be taking the tram as far as Dundrum, where Mick would meet her with the car and they’d drive on together to Avondale Road. It was a damp, drizzly day, which didn’t help her humour.
“Good luck, Mum,” Livvy had said before she’d left for school, enveloping Donna in a giant bear-hug.
“I’ll be fine,” said Donna, more cheerfully than she felt. “It’s your dad I’m bothered about.”
“Dad’s fine, Mum.” Livvy’s voice held all the optimism of youth. “He’s strong. He can handle anything.”
Which is exactly what fathers want their daughters to think about them, Donna reflected as she watched her youngest child, seventeen now, head off down the garden path with her giant schoolbag bumping off her sturdy frame.
“I thought that schools were all computerised nowadays,” Donna was always saying to her when she saw Olivia trying to lift the heavy backpack. “I thought you kids did everything on the one tablet thing.”
“We still need books, Mum,” Livvy would counter with an eye-roll and the worldly-wise, patronising tone of voice the young reserve for the old and decrepit.
Donna put the finishing touches to her make-up in the mirror. It was a long time since she’d been to a solicitor’s office, so she wasn’t sure what you were supposed to wear to them nowadays or what the protocol was. Did you shake hands with the solicitor, or call her by her first name or what?
“You’re not going to tea in the Phoenix Park with the President, Mum,” Livvy had giggled when she’d seen her mother frantically rummaging through her wardrobe the night before the big appointment.
“That’s not till next week, silly,” Donna had deadpanned back, quick as a flash. She mostly wore tracksuits and old T-shirts to her work as a cleaner (anything else would get destroyed), but she had a few decent tops, skirts and pairs of trousers. The trouble was picking things that would go well together.
“Can you wear trousers to a solicitor’s office?” she’d asked Livvy.
Livvy had laughed at that. “Mum, you can wear anything you want to a solicitor’s office. You can wear a clown’s outfit with giant shoes and a red-rubber nose, or you can waltz in there in the nip if you want!”
Ah, the confidence of youth! The kids of today had none of the niggling fears and insecurities their parents had had. They didn’t kow-tow to people like solicitors or teachers or priests or even the Guards, the people who’d once had all the power in the community back in the bad old days. And maybe that was a good thing, Donna thought. Maybe it didn’t do to give a small number of individuals all the power. Too much power corrupted, that was the problem. And shure, weren’t priests and nuns the same as all the rest of us when it came down to it? They all had to wee and poo too, just like everyone else, and eat and drink and take baths and go to sleep. They were human, just like everyone else. Whether or not they acted as if they were, that was another matter altogether.
In the end, Donna had settled on a black top and trousers which could be worn with a little blue jacket she really liked. She sprayed on some perfume and picked up her handbag, the battered black one she always carried. There was so much stuff in it that transferring its contents to another, less knackered, bag was out of the question. Better to just keep everything together in this one. If Madam Solicitor didn’t like it, she would just have to lump it. The bag was non-negotiable.
When she was finally ready, she locked up the house and left. Across the close, the party house from the night before was quiet and empty-looking. A few deflating balloons tied to a tree were bobbing a
bout tiredly in the light breeze, as if they’d seen enough action the night before and now simply couldn’t be arsed doing whatever was expected of them today. A few cans littered the damp grass. All the curtains were still closed. Donna looked curiously across and wondered if the party people were inside and still sleeping off the booze, or if they had all stumbled hungover down to the Luas and gone to work. Today was a workday, after all, even if it was a Friday, a day which a lot of Irish people chose to regard as optional, or at least a take-it-easy-here-comes-the-weekend kind of day. The Irish loved their weekends, especially their Bank Holiday ones.
What had happened at the house the night before was so strange. That beautiful young woman, all tearful and rain-sodden, being shouted at by that tosser in the pinstripe trousers. Neither Donna nor her husband Mick, who’d been unpacking their groceries from a late-night Thursday supermarket run, had any time for bullies like him. Mick, who had worked for nearly thirty years as a bouncer in various pubs and clubs, was well able to handle himself. He’d intervened at one point, asking the girl if she needed help. Mick could have taken on that blustering wally in the pinstripes without breaking a sweat. But the girl had said no, as girls in her situation often did, and Mick had left it. You rarely got thanks for intervening between a warring couple, and sometimes you even got a smack in the chops yourself for your trouble. Donna knew that.
They had gone inside then, Mick and Donna, but despite Mick’s advice to leave well enough alone, Donna had raced upstairs to the open bathroom window, where she’d had a ringside seat for the final act. Livvy had wandered in from her bedroom, curious about all the palaver, and watched alongside her mother as the man, who was called Nathan, begged his girlfriend, Orla (they could hear everything perfectly well), to come back to him. A baby seemed to be the main bone of contention between them, although Donna reckoned personally that the man’s temper was the real issue they should be looking at. Orla had screamed across the close at the man: “I want a baby!” Then the man, who’d looked flabbergasted at first, had seemed to be saying, okay, yes, we can have one if you want, if it’s that big a deal to you. As if they were talking about buying a new couch from IKEA or something.
Orla had stood outside by herself in the rain while the man had gone back into the party house for their jackets. The party people, who by this stage were clustered in the dripping garden watching the little drama play out, mock-booed and hissed at him for making such a dog’s dinner of the whole thing as he stormed past them. He slammed the front door behind him, which only served to occasion more mirth and merriment from the watchers. A few minutes later, he came out of the house carrying the two jackets. He wrapped his soaking wet girlfriend in her coat and the pair walked off together in the rain, holding hands, in the direction of the Luas. Well. Only when Donna was certain that there was no more to be seen did she close the bathroom window and go back downstairs to put away the shopping.
“Talk about being a nosey neighbour, Mum,” Livvy had teased her good-naturedly then.
“I didn’t see you minding your own business either,” Donna pointed out, at which her daughter merely grinned like the mischievous imp she was.
“I was just keeping you company, Mum, that’s all.”
Donna had been genuinely worried about the girl, Orla, though. Having a baby with a man like that Nathan fella, who’d been bullying her publicly and shouting at her, and who’d even started threatening Mick, a total stranger (Mick would have mopped the floor with him), would be the ruination of her, surely. A baby tying her down to that lump of a brute was the last thing she needed. At least the night before she’d been able to run away, even if she’d come back almost immediately afterwards. There’d be no running away with a baby. Donna sincerely hoped that the girl would see sense before it was too late and run far enough away so that Pinstripes would be unable to find her. Donna had never had that kind of trouble herself with Mick. Mick was what they called a gentle giant. He was six foot two, burly and broad-built, with hands like two shovels, but he’d never hurt anyone who hadn’t hurt him first.
He could separate a bunch of drunken men brawling outside a pub or club without turning a hair (well, his head was actually shaved), but he’d never once laid a hand on Donna or on any of their three kids. Never even raised his voice, really, unless Donna screeched at him first, which happened occasionally. They weren’t perfect – what couples were? – but Mick loved his family. They were very lucky to have him. He worshipped Donna and his only daughter Olivia, and he loved his two sons, James and Adam. He’d make shite of anyone who looked crooked at any one of them, and they all knew that and were secure in the knowledge that, at least while Mick was around, they were safe and nothing could harm them. But Donna sometimes worried about her husband. She was worrying about him now as she boarded the Luas at Balally that would take her to Dundrum to meet him. From there, they would go on together to the solicitor’s office. He took so much on himself. That was the main problem with Mick. He carried the weight of his whole family on his broad shoulders and sometimes Donna worried that it might be too much for him, especially because he wasn’t one to ever really talk about his feelings.
“Please move down the tram,” said the automated female voice now over the tannoy.
James and Adam were exactly like Mick. They never talked about their feelings either, which drove her mad. But you could expect that with teenage boys or lads in their early twenties, or so her friends were always telling her. Boys were secretive – they kept a lot of things inside. Adam though, their middle child, was a real worry. He was in his second year of music college now and Donna genuinely couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a proper conversation about anything other than mealtimes, dirty washing or course fees. He’d been staying over with a college friend since Tuesday night and, as far as she knew, he hadn’t even bothered to text any of them, never mind phone. And he hadn’t smiled or seemed happy in God knows how long, either. But on the rare occasions when he did smile, to Donna it felt like the sun suddenly shining through the clouds. She loved all her children but, if she was being honest, she’d always had a soft spot for Adam, her gentle, quiet middle child. Livvy at least was an open book, thank God. You always knew what Livvy was thinking or feeling because she told you out straight. Donna loved that about her, even though there were times when she wished that her daughter would keep more stuff to herself.
Donna was yanked abruptly from her thoughts when she saw that Mick was waiting for her at the Luas stop, bless him.
“Where’d you park the car?” she asked after she’d hugged him and given him a peck on the cheek.
“In the car park up the street. It’s only a few minutes’ walk to Avondale Road.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked him, thinking how well he looked in his dark leather jacket and good black trousers. Under the jacket, he was even wearing a proper dark shirt with long sleeves, instead of his old Metallica T-shirt. She had shined his black shoes for him herself and they were positively gleaming.
Mick shrugged his giant shoulders. “What choice do I have?” he said simply. Then, to change the subject, he asked, “Any sign of life from the party house?”
Donna shook her head and rolled her eyes in a would-you-look-at-the-state-of-them kind of way.
“The garden is in bits but there’s been nobody about all morning, so either they’ve all fecked off to work, dragging their hangovers behind them, or they’re all still in bed dying.” Then she blurted out, “I hope that girl’s okay, Mick, that poor Orla one from last night. I honest to God hope she won’t get back with that . . . that prat in the suit. The state of him, threatening you like that.”
“I think she probably already has. Didn’t you tell me that they both went off together in the rain? Holding hands, no less. Very romantic. He must’ve promised her the sun, the moon and the stars, anyway, to get her to go off with him meekly like that.”
“Well, please God she has the common sense to get away fr
om him for good,” said Donna. “That kind of thing just worries me, you know? It makes me think of our Olivia and what might happen if she ever ended up in an abusive relationship like that one.”
“Any man who lays a hand on our Livvy will wish he’d never been born,” Mick said grimly.
“I know, love, I know.” Donna squeezed his arm. “But what parents really have to do is to teach girls that the kind of man they deserve is the man who treats them well. Still, most girls are supposed to go for guys that remind them of their dads. Livvy won’t go far wrong if she picks a lad who reminds her of you.”
They chatted on about the kids and the job of furniture-moving that Mick had been doing for a friend in Dundrum that morning – hence his meeting her there with the car – and then, suddenly, they were standing outside the solicitor’s office which formed part of the parade of shops on Avondale Road. To Donna’s relief, it looked more understated and shabby than she’d been expecting. I’m more than good enough to be here, she told herself firmly as she mounted the narrow staircase behind Mick. I own and run my own business, an office-cleaning company with two employees besides myself.
But she needn’t have worried. The solicitor was lovely. For one thing, she was much younger than either of them had anticipated.
“Hi, I’m Aideen Quinlan and it’s really nice to meet you both,” she said warmly in a lilting Donegal accent, coming towards them with an outstretched hand. “Won’t you sit down and make yourselves comfortable? Would either of you like tea or coffee?”
Mick said no at the same time as Donna said yes. Then Mick said yes while Donna said no. The solicitor laughed and said that they’d all have tea or coffee, herself included.
When they were all three of them sitting comfortably with the hot drinks and a plate of biscuits in front of them, Aideen, a personable and bright young woman with big fashionable glasses and chestnut-coloured hair drawn back off her face into a messy bun, picked up a blue folder off her desk.
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