Expecting Emily

by Clare Dowling

  Neasa came in from the storeroom at the back. Her arms were laden with items of stationery.

  “How did it go?” she asked immediately.

  “Okay,” Emily said. “Robert didn’t cry at all. I left Conor in charge of them all back at the house.”

  “I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it, Emily.”

  “I know, Neasa.” Emily checked her watch anxiously. “I said I’d be back in an hour. Robert might need a feed . . .”

  “I hope you’re not going to be a pain in the arse about that child,” Neasa complained, hurling a stapler, a puncher and three new packets of floppy disks into a cardboard box on her desk.

  “Don’t those belong to Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly?” Emily enquired.

  “Oh, they won’t miss them,” Neasa said. She threw in some headed notepaper too. “For my references,” she explained.

  “I said I’d write you references,” Emily said.

  “I know, and thanks, but to be honest I’d prefer to write my own.” Neasa now closed the top on the cardboard box and grabbed a roll of sellotape to tape it all up. She was leaving Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly today for good.

  “Are you nervous about the decision?” she asked now.

  “A bit. Are you?”

  “Bricking it,” she said with her customary baldness. “I’m kind of glad that I’m not in court when the judgement is handed down.”

  She was trying to be brave, Emily saw. Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly had stabbed her in the back.

  “They’re spineless bastards,” Emily said quietly.

  “Well, I wasn’t a ‘suitable representative’ for Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly in court,” Neasa said sarcastically. “They were probably afraid I’d get drunk and make a holy show of them.”

  “But to choose Gary to go up instead . . .”

  “Emily, I don’t care. I am so over Gary,” Neasa said plaintively. “I was over him before I’d even finished with him.”

  “True,” Emily said. “So. Which way do you think it’ll go?”

  Robert had been one day and three hours old when the courts had handed down the decision that a judicial review would be held of the closure of St Martha’s Hospital. Dee, Laura, Maggie and Emily had nearly burst their stitches, those that had them. Then the slow trawl through the courts of the actual judicial review, and now the final moment had arrived. At 3pm in Court No 5 Justice Patrick Leahy would seal their fate.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Neasa admitted.

  Emily felt another nervous twinge in her tummy. “At least we got this far,” she said stoically.

  “Oh, don’t give me that shite about how it’s not about winning but about taking part,” Neasa said.

  She would not understand that to Emily it was in a way. The court action might seem a bit removed from her now, but she had still fought the fight. That would be with her always.

  “All set then?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to go over to the pub at all,” Neasa said gloomily. “Could we not just wait to hear the news here?”

  Gary was on instructions to phone Phil’s new mobile phone the minute he left the courtroom.

  “It shouldn’t take longer than half an hour,” Emily told her.

  “Half an hour is about all I’ll last on bloody mineral water.”

  Emily looked at her. “How did this morning go?”

  “Oh, awful,” Neasa said cheerfully.

  “How awful?”

  “Cringe-making awful. All these fecking eejits standing up and announcing that they were alcoholics – like none of us knew! Like it was some big surprise to us! And we all at an AA meeting!”

  “So it wasn’t worth missing my son’s christening for?” Emily said lightly.

  “I wouldn’t miss a tea break for it,” Neasa declared.

  She was deliberately making it out to be silly. She could not tell Emily the depth of her upset at being at one of the things in the first place. It was the last stop. You really were an alcoholic if you turned up at AA meetings.

  Maybe it would help her in time. But this morning she had been too embarrassed to do anything except lurk at the back of the room, looking at the door and waiting to see all the desperate, depraved alcoholics arriving in. After half an hour nobody arrived, and it slowly dawned on her that the alcoholics were already present; all those nice, well-dressed and educated men and women who Neasa had somehow presumed were the meeting facilitators. None of them looked any different to her. Or she didn’t look any different to them.

  “Did you talk to that bastard?” Neasa said, deliberately changing the subject.

  Emily knew immediately to whom she was referring: Garda Andrew Mitchell from Mitchelstown, the arresting garda on her drink-driving charge.

  “Yes, he’s back from his holidays,” Emily confirmed.

  “I hope he had lovely time,” Neasa said insincerely.

  “He did, actually, and he apologised for the delay in sending out a copy of your statement. But I have it now, and he’ll let us know the results of your blood test as soon as he has them.”

  “When do you think it’ll get to court?” Neasa asked efficiently.

  “Given the court lists, not a chance before next year, I would say.”

  “Next year!”

  “It’s usual, Neasa. I’m hoping it’ll be heard within nine months.”

  “Nine months of this hanging over me?”

  “I know. I know.”

  Neasa stopped her fierce sellotaping of the box. “I really fucked up this time, didn’t I?”

  Part of Neasa’s decision to move back to Cork City was the fact that she would almost certainly get the mandatory two-year ban for drink-driving, and she needed to be within walking distance of a job, or else near a reliable form of transport. There would be no spur-of-the-moment drives into the country, or trips up to see Emily. Everything would have to be planned and worked out and she would have no freedom at all.

  “You still have the car until then,” Emily pointed out.

  “I know. The law is gas, isn’t it?” Neasa agreed. “You get arrested for drink-driving but they’ll let you merrily drive around for a whole year until it gets to court.”

  “Be thankful for small mercies.”

  They talked about the probability of her being banned quite a lot. They never talked about the other probability, which was that they might hand down a jail sentence. She might only have dented a bumper, but she had still caused an accident. In those first weeks off drink, when Neasa had literally sweated poisons from her system, she would have wild dreams at night about Mountjoy and porridge and slopping out in the mornings. And having to say to her new co-workers, whoever they might be, “Cheerio now, I’m just off to do a three-month prison sentence. Keep my seat warm!”

  It was just all so wrong. People like Neasa didn’t get arrested. They didn’t get hauled up before a court, and they certainly didn’t go to prison. Their names did not appear in the court reports of the regional newspaper, in the same column as lunatics who had set their neighbours’ noisy dog on fire.

  “Come on, Neasa,” Emily said sternly, seeing her descent into depression.

  “I know. I know. I’ll probably laugh about it in two years’ time.” She dumped the cardboard box onto the floor. Her desk was now completely bare and she looked at it for a moment. Emily thought that she was getting emotional.

  “You’re better than this place, Neasa.”

  “Of course, I bloody am,” Neasa agreed robustly. “I don’t know what I was hanging around here for anyway.” She moved on swiftly before Emily could say ‘Gary’. “Actually, I’m looking forward to setting up all over again in a new place.”

  Where nobody knew her or anything about her.

  It had been all over the office, of course. That little snitch Phil had been coming out of the chemist the morning it happened and had seen the whole thing. Some of her so-called colleagues had contented themselves with disgusted looks, like she was a mass murderer or somethi
ng. Others had confided that they regularly jumped into cars blind drunk but had never had the bad luck to be caught. On balance, Neasa preferred the mass-murderer brigade.

  Neasa had never cared about other people’s opinions. But that was when people’s opinions of her had generally been great.

  “Oh, here,” she said, taking a solitary document from her out tray and holding it out.

  “What is it?”

  “The blueprint for the new litigation division. Creepy asked me to pass it on to you and get back to him with any comments.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t he tell you? Honestly! Well, you should be getting a phone call. He wants you to head up the new division, Emily.”

  “Does he now,” Emily said slowly, leafing through the introduction. It was full of tight-arsed words and phrases, and everything was broken down into niggly headings and sub-headings. She felt the back of her neck tingle. A migraine.

  “Gary’s totally pissed off that they didn’t ask him,” Neasa confided.

  Emily closed the document and threw it back in Neasa’s out tray. There was a silence.

  “You’re not coming back here, are you?” Neasa said slowly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Emily.”

  “My maternity leave isn’t up for another three weeks, I haven’t decided,” Emily insisted.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t. They’re a right bunch of fuckers.”

  “They did pay all the court costs for me,” Emily said uncertainly. “Although if we lose today . . . they might refuse point blank.”

  Neasa smiled wolfishly. “I already got them to sign a letter.”

  “What?”

  “You can thank me later,” Neasa said airily. “Anyway, back to you resigning.”

  “I haven’t resigned yet.” Emily bit the bullet. “Oh, all right! I’ve had a couple of people approach me to act for them. You know, after the publicity about the court case and everything. I could do it from home.”

  Neasa shook her head, marvelling. “You’d go into competition against Creepy?”

  “It wouldn’t be competition,” Emily insisted.

  “They’re setting up a new litigation division! I would say they’ll look on it as a direct assault!”

  “So what!” Emily said loudly. “There’s room in this town for both of us!”

  It was a relief to say out loud what she had been planning for weeks. Or, half-planning. It was difficult to concentrate on a new career path with Robert puking in the background.

  But being here today had only strengthened her resolve. She could not go back to being a cog in this machine.

  “You won’t make any money,” Neasa said baldly. “Not for ages and ages.”

  “I know that.”

  “Still, I suppose now that Conor is taking Hollywood by storm . . . sorry, Belgium.”

  Neasa made no effort to conceal her ongoing dislike of Conor. Privately, she thought it was only a matter of time before he strayed again. Oh, once they got a taste for it at all there was no stopping them. Even after her own experiences, Neasa had lost none of her ability to spot glaring great faults in others, including addiction.

  “So long as Robert has enough to eat, we’ll manage,” Emily said.

  “I’d wait until he’s on solids before I go making any assumptions,” Neasa said darkly.

  Belatedly she realised she was being a tad negative about Emily’s new venture. And, really, Emily might do very well, given that half of the southwest now knew her name. Plus there was Emily’s marvellous organisational abilities and the wad of start-up cash that must be lying in one of her savings accounts. Emily was a great saver. “Do you need a partner?” Neasa offered magnanimously. “I know I said I was moving to Cork, but I’ll stay if you need me. We could call ourselves Collins & Martin. Or Martin & Collins, that has a better ring. “

  “No, Neasa,” Emily said gently. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Just because I’m a lush doesn’t mean I’m not a good solicitor!”

  “You’re an ex-lush, and yes, you’re a marvellous solicitor. But if I’m going to do it, I want to do it on my own.” Emily hoped Neasa would understand. She didn’t need the weight of another person’s expectations on her. But her reasons were more selfish than anything. And she wasn’t going to make any apologies about it.

  “You’re right. We’d probably end up killing each other anyway,” Neasa said, the idea already forgotten. “Well, good luck to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Let’s go,” Neasa sighed, picking up her cardboard box. “I don’t want that shower of bastards thinking I’m afraid to go into a pub or something.”

  She was. She hadn’t set foot in a licensed establishment in ten weeks, two days and ten hours. The lunch with Terry Mitton had been in a cheapish café that served no alcohol – Neasa had chosen it. It had been awful. He had been much shorter than he’d looked in his black gown and wig – five-seven at a push. Neasa had thrown back orange juice in the hope that it would loosen her tongue. But she found she had nothing to say, or at least nothing that sounded quite as devastatingly witty or meaningful as it did on red wine. And she couldn’t stop noticing the hairs that protruded from his nose, or the way he kept going on and on about how his two properties had doubled in value in a year.

  Reality sucked. It was grey and cold and depressing, and she had no armour any more to protect herself from it. Who could blame her for wanting to dress it up a bit? Was there a single person out there who did not want to escape the daily toil that was work, dreary boyfriends and endless bills? Didn’t half the population go to the pub on a Friday night to block it out with a few pints, to loosen up, just to have a good time? That was all she had done.

  She had just wanted it to go on.

  The boyfriends had gone with the drink. What was the point? She was sure she would eventually become sufficiently comfortable with reality to start dating again. But, by God, The One had better be something special indeed if she had to put up with him stone cold sober.

  They stopped down by the front door of Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly. Both of them knew they wouldn’t be setting foot in the place again.

  “To victory!” Neasa shouted defiantly.

  “If we win, I’m going to get pissed,” Emily declared. “Oh. Sorry, Neasa.”

  “Will you miss me?” Neasa suddenly asked, letting two big tears well up in her eyes. Surely she was allowed be a bit mawkish at a time like this?

  “Of course, I will.”

  “You’re only saying that. You won’t give me a thought now that you have Robert.”

  “Robert only takes up ninety-five percent of my time, Neasa. I’ll miss you the other five percent.”

  “You won’t. You’ll be smooching with Conor,” Neasa said jealously.

  “I can assure you that Conor and I are not smooching.”

  “You can’t pull the wool over my eyes – you’ve kissed and made up, the two of you, haven’t you?”

  “He’s going to move back in when he gets home from Belgium,” Emily admitted.

  “So it’s all worked out okay in the end,” Neasa said.

  “Yes,” Emily said, wondering again why it all sounded so bloody hollow. She was cross now at her own disillusionment. She had got what she wanted, hadn’t she? She had dug deep and got to the truth. She had not taken second best. So what if it didn’t come with streamers and party hats attached? The important thing was that after all the grief, she had emerged with her relationship intact.

  It struck her now how workmanlike all this was. It was the old Emily, putting her head down, doing the hard graft, and expecting the rewards that came with toil. And she knew in a rush that part of her was still stuck back there, for all her new risk-taking and assertion. These she had saved for her career, for High Court cases, for Robert even, who required plenty of assertion and some risk-taking. But not for Conor. Not for her marriage.

  Why was she so afraid of making that last leap?
Part of it she knew was the aftermath of the affair. Trust was not a cheap commodity. But neither was passion, or impulse, or being in love again.

  She thought of that last leap again. Maybe it was finally time to jump.

  “Can I use your nappy-changing unit, Conor?”

  “Of course you can,” Conor said benevolently.

  “I thought I’d change Chloe before we turn the news on,” Maggie confided.