When Your Eyes Close

by Tanya Farrelly

  ‘Nick?’

  Nick turned to see Susan coming around the side of the house, a cloth in her hand. ‘I thought I heard a car.’ She was looking at him curiously.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you were at home … the car isn’t in the drive.’

  ‘It’s being serviced.’

  ‘Ah.’ They stood there, awkward. ‘You look well,’ he said.

  Self-consciously, she raised a hand to her hair. ‘You lie as well as ever,’ she said. But there was humour in the barb. ‘Do you want to come in? Or are you just going to stand around admiring the view?’

  Nick followed her round the back to the where the double glass doors opened onto the small garden, more relaxed now that she didn’t seem to mind his being there.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked, opening the press.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  ‘The usual way?’

  ‘Yeah, but with four sugars.’ Susan arched an eyebrow. ‘I’m off the drink,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘Good. Good for you, Nick,’ she said, but this time she wasn’t mocking him.

  Nick watched as she prepared their coffee. She did look well. She was as slim as she’d always been, her face was bare of make-up. She put the mugs of coffee on the breakfast bar and sat opposite him.

  ‘How’ve you been?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Good. Just getting on with it … you know how it is.’ She smiled. ‘And you? How long have you been off the drink?’

  ‘Nearly three weeks …’

  ‘Aagh.’

  ‘It’s for good this time, doctor’s orders,’ he said.

  She nodded, but she looked concerned. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just haven’t been doing the old liver any good.’ He considered whether to tell her the whole story, about how he’d be dead in a year if he didn’t get a transplant, but he didn’t want her to think that was the reason he’d come. And besides, it was nice to chat to someone who didn’t know his predicament. He wondered if they could salvage a friendship from what had been. He didn’t know, though, if she still held the past against him.

  ‘It’s been a while since I saw you. Are you doing okay?’ he asked.

  Susan smiled. ‘I keep busy, you know, justice never sleeps and all that.’

  ‘Well, you always did thrive on it.’ He took a sip of the too-sweet coffee, winced at the amount of sugar it took to reduce his cravings. ‘No time for a social life, I suppose?’

  ‘I’m seeing someone, if that’s what you’re asking me.’

  ‘Ah.’ Susan always could cut through the small talk.

  ‘A lawyer,’ she added.

  He groaned. ‘God, that should make for interesting arguments.’ He glanced at her, wondering if the joke was in bad taste, but she laughed.

  ‘Maybe, it’s early days … but we seem to get along. And you, is there anyone in your life?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m seeing someone too – Michelle. She’s … she’s great.’ For some reason, he didn’t feel like elaborating. To describe Michelle would be to divulge, and once you began to divulge, it was difficult to stop. He looked at his ex-wife. She looked happy, relaxed. He hadn’t seen her look this relaxed in a very long time – maybe never. Not even before – ‘Suse, we might have been all right, if it hadn’t happened, mightn’t we? If we hadn’t …’

  ‘Nick, let’s not … It’s-it’s taken a long time for me to get to this point. To stop blaming, you … blaming myself. What happened to Noah wasn’t our fault.’

  ‘Noah? It was a boy. You knew?’

  She nodded. ‘They told me in the hospital after it happened. I’d had that scan a couple of weeks before. At the time we said we’d wait, remember? That it’d be a nice if it were a surprise. But after … I asked if they could tell me. I didn’t name him, not straight away. It was later on I thought he had no grave, wasn’t even a proper person – not for them. But I could name him – in my head I could think of him as Noah.’

  ‘Noah.’ Nick said it out loud. As he did so, he had a flashback – of himself as Johnny in that room again, lifting the boy.

  Susan’s words summoned him back to the present. ‘It wasn’t our fault, Nick.’ She repeated. ‘I thought it was, I blamed you. But it didn’t happen because of you, us or the way things were in our marriage. It took over a year of counselling for me to see that, to get through it.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘It was an accident, that’s all. There was nothing we could have done any differently, the outcome was always going to be the same. It was just bad luck.’

  Nick was nodding. Bad luck – but had he brought that bad luck on them? ‘I don’t know,’ he said, getting up. ‘Maybe, I …’ He wanted to tell Susan that it was his fault – he felt like it was – but he could see how much she’d moved on, how much the therapy had helped her. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right, of course. I’m so glad to see you doing so well.’ He drained his coffee, swallowing the sticky mass of sugar at the bottom of the mug.

  Susan was looking at him, concerned.

  ‘I should have told you that before,’ she said. ‘You should think about it too, Nick, about seeing someone. I know you’ve never believed in that kind of thing, but it does help.’ She stood up. ‘It’s good to see you – and to hear you’ve met someone. I hope she keeps you on the right track.’

  She walked with him to the car. It was hard to lighten the mood again after they’d gone down that dark path, but it was a conversation they’d needed to have. Even so, her words would have made him feel so much better if he’d heard them before he’d started hypnosis, if he’d heard them when he believed that he was innocent. Now he felt like his past was the reason for everything, that every misdeed he’d committed as Johnny Davis was reaping repercussions in this life.

  When he opened the car door and turned to say goodbye, Susan reached out and hugged him. They held each other tight, and all he could think was that when they separated, he might just fall apart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Caitlin

  Caitlin drained the last of the water in the bottle and threw it into her backpack. Michelle was towelling herself off, saying a cheerful goodbye to the other women as they filed out of the hall. Caitlin had been surprised by the intensity of the workout, twenty minutes in and she was fighting for breath. But she’d got into it, moved forward to stand in the second line of women so she could see and imitate the correct moves rather than be blocked by the woman with two left feet in front of her. She’d heard that Zumba was fun, and found that it was true – she loved the music too, a hip-swinging Latin beat. Now she hung back, waiting until the other women had left, to have a word with Michelle.

  ‘Hey, I’m delighted you made it,’ Michelle smiled at her as she stuffed the towel into her bag. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  Caitlin nodded enthusiastically. ‘Loved it. I don’t know why I haven’t tried it before. Lack of time, I suppose, I’d normally be running circles in the park now. But I have to say, this was a lot more fun.’

  Michelle nodded. ‘I always hated exercising. Running on a treadmill in the gym just didn’t appeal to me. But when I started this … I’ve always loved dancing so, despite the intensity, it doesn’t really feel like an exercise class to me.’

  Michelle picked up her bag, and Caitlin walked with her. The café in the fitness centre was still open; it would be for another hour until the next class ended.

  ‘Do you want to get a cold drink or something?’ Michelle asked.

  ‘Sure.’ Why not, Caitlin thought. She wasn’t rushing home to anything. And since her run-in with Andy, she’d decided that maybe she ought to distance herself from him a bit, not rely on him so much. She needed to get out and meet new people, make new friends – she needed, to some degree, to try to get her life back.

  ‘How’s the article coming along? Did you get a chance to talk to anyone?’ Caitlin asked.

  Michelle nodded. ‘I think I have enough material. I’m not working to
morrow, so I’ll start typing it up. I should get it to you by tomorrow evening.’

  They got their drinks and sat at a table by the window.

  ‘We got a good response from the first one,’ Caitlin told her. ‘A lot of people commented on our Facebook and Twitter pages. You should take a look.’

  ‘Really?’ Michelle looked delighted. ‘Wow, that’s great. Anything that gets the word out. Look, last night when I was out on the soup run, I was thinking about what you told me … about your husband. If you’d like, I could circulate a photo – show it around – you never know who might have seen him. Somebody might remember something.’

  Caitlin hesitated. ‘We did that,’ she said. ‘At the time. Posters went up everywhere. They were distributed to organizations like Simon and the Salvation Army, all the shelters … It’s really nice of you, but … it’s been a year now, I doubt it would turn up anything new. And most of the people who are in the streets now, they probably weren’t back then.’ Caitlin took a long drink of orange juice.

  Michelle shook her head. ‘Unfortunately, some of them probably were. You see the same faces time and again. They disappear for a while and next thing they’re back … those are the ones it’s hardest to help. But look, if you change your mind, just let me know. I’m happy to help out in any way I can.’

  Caitlin put a hand on Michelle’s arm. ‘Thanks, Michelle. I really appreciate it.’ She sat back in her chair; she didn’t want to talk about David tonight. She was feeling elated after the class and she wanted to hold onto that feeling for as long as she could. ‘And what about you?’ she asked. ‘Is there a man in your life?’

  Michelle’s face coloured and she smiled. ‘Yeah. We’ve been together about eight months. I’m moving in with him this weekend.’

  ‘Ooh, big step. Are you nervous?’

  ‘No. Well, not really. A bit, I suppose, if I’m honest.’ She looked as if she were going to say something more, but stopped.

  ‘You’ll know if it’s right,’ Caitlin said. ‘And if you think it is and it’s not, nothing’s irreversible.’ That wasn’t strictly true, as she knew only too well, but she tried to focus on the present, on the woman before her who was now draining her drink and standing up to go.

  They left the centre and walked out into the night together. ‘Listen, do you have any plans this weekend?’ Michelle asked her.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘We were thinking of having a barbecue on Saturday, a kind of celebration of me moving in. Would you like to come? It’s nothing major, just a few friends coming round.’

  ‘Well, I’d love to. I don’t think I’ve got anything on.’ Caitlin thought of the weekend looming before her. Ever since David’s disappearance, she dreaded weekends. She tried to think of ways to fill them and often went for work drinks with her colleagues on Fridays even though she never particularly felt at ease. The girls were nice enough, but she liked to keep her distance, didn’t allow any of them to cross the boundary into her personal life. She often went to the cinema with Andy on Saturdays if he wasn’t out with the lads. They shared an interest in art house movies and the Irish Film Institute did good food, so between dinner and a film, it killed a few hours.

  ‘Great. Here, I’ll give you my number,’ Michelle told her.

  Caitlin took out her phone and unlocked it. As she did so, she saw that she had a missed call from Andy along with a new voice message. She cleared the icons. ‘Great, shout it out to me and I’ll call you, that way you’ll have mine too.’

  They parted, Michelle promising that she would text her the address, saying that she really hoped she’d come.

  Caitlin felt happy as she walked back to the car. Michelle was the first friend she’d made in a long time. She seemed genuine, and was surely a nice person given that she was a volunteer. She rang into her voicemail as she walked down the street, listening to Andy apologizing for his off-handedness the other day. She knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away for more than twenty-four hours, he never could. Still, she’d take her time in calling him back. It would be good to go to the barbecue at the weekend and meet new people. Andy had been good to her, maybe too good; it had got intense without her even realizing it. It would do them both good to pull back a bit. No matter what protestations he made, she knew that he had feelings for her and there was nowhere that could go. Not ever.

  She pulled into her driveway, one of the Latin rhythms still going round in her head as she tapped her fingertips on the steering wheel. A wind had picked up, and the bin which she’d put out for collection when she’d left that morning had blown several feet to stop outside her neighbour’s house. The lid was lifting and slapping back down as she got out of the car, gripping the door to prevent it being wrenched from her hand. She leaned in, took her backpack from the passenger seat and slung it over her shoulder. As she wheeled the bin back up the street and in the driveway, she got the horrible feeling that someone was watching her. She hurried towards the door, key poised. Rather than bring the bin round to the side gate where she normally put it, she tucked it in against the wall, and put a brick on top to stop the lid from banging.

  She’d just got in the door and turned on the lights when her phone started ringing, the sound of it jangling her nerves. She pulled it from the pocket of her hoodie, saw Andy’s name flash on the screen and knocked it onto silent. It continued to ring mutely on the table. He was far too anxious to speak to her. It was starting to make her feel smothered.

  She checked the doors and windows, took the chilli she’d cooked the day before from the fridge. She popped it in the microwave, went into the front room, pulled down the blind and zapped the television to life. It was only half past eight, but it felt later. She tried to shake the creepy feeling she’d got, thinking about Michelle’s invitation as she sat down to eat the chilli and poured herself a glass of red wine.

  She didn’t check her computer that night, didn’t see the latest photo that David A had uploaded.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Michelle

  ‘You’ll never guess what!’ Michelle said, as she threw her sports bag down on the living room floor.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Nick, lowering the volume on the TV and standing to kiss her.

  ‘Caitlin turned up at my Zumba class. And that’s not all, she’s agreed to come round here on Saturday for a barbecue.’

  ‘A barbecue?’

  ‘Yep, I told her we were having a barbecue to celebrate my moving in with you. We’ll have to invite a few others so it doesn’t look strange. So – did I do good?’ She stood back to survey his expression.

  ‘Good? Astonishing, more like. I can’t believe you’ve managed to pull this off. You only just met her last week.’

  ‘What can I say? We clicked. She likes me. And to be honest, I’d say she’s making a big effort to try to get herself out there.’

  ‘Wow.’ He wandered into the kitchen, and she walked after him, watched him fill the kettle and take two mugs from the press. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Sure.’ He hadn’t been a fan of tea, but since he’d stopped drinking alcohol, he’d been drinking it by the pot. She’d bought several varieties in the health food shop, but she hadn’t yet convinced him to try any of her fruit fusions. He said they smelt like cheap perfume and he’d rather stick to the original. She cringed as she watched him add spoon after spoon of sugar.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t gone to see her playing in the wine bar now,’ Nick said. ‘She might suspect something, think I’m some kind of oddball.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Why on earth would she think that? You know how small Dublin is, you run into the same people all the time. There was a girl who turned up in my Zumba class a few weeks ago that I used to pass every evening when I was working on Aungier Street.’

  ‘Hmm, I suppose. You don’t think it’ll look a bit too coincidental though? It’s only two weeks since I was there. I wouldn’t want her thinking I was some kind of crazy fan!’

  Michelle laughed. ‘Hardly. Yo
u’ve only seen her once, it’s not like you’re there every Wednesday … you’re not, are you?’ It had just occurred to her that she hadn’t seen him the previous Wednesday.

  ‘God, no,’ he said. ‘I’m not that stupid. Now, who should we invite? Saturday’s just a few days away.’

  Michelle could see how nervous Nick was about meeting Caitlin. She hoped he really hadn’t been to the wine bar more than once. He’d been quick to change the subject, but she’d have to take his word for it. ‘I could invite Siobhan,’ she said. ‘And maybe Clare and Keith, but not too many couples. A few single people would be good – we don’t want her to feel the odd one out, especially since I’m the only person she’ll know.’

  Nick handed her the mug of tea, took a sip of his own. ‘When are you going to phone your landlady to give notice?’

  She shrugged. ‘Soon, I guess. She’s not going to be happy. I already told her I was going to renew the lease. Just as well she’s been so blasé about sending it on. The old one expired three weeks ago. I hope she doesn’t use it as an excuse to keep my deposit though.’

  ‘She can’t, the place is spotless. And besides, you haven’t signed anything. She hasn’t a leg, as they say.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’ She smiled, not wanting him to know she had her reservations. What she’d told Caitlin was true: it wasn’t that she didn’t want to move in with Nick – but she worried that the anxiety of looking after and then potentially losing another person she loved would be too much for her.

  She tried to think positively, but she had to be realistic too. Neither of them knew what the outcome of Nick’s predicament would be.

  ‘What are you thinking about? You look like you’re about to go to the guillotine.’

  ‘Hmm? Nothing. Just the landlady.’

  ‘You do want to move in, don’t you?’ he asked, concerned.

  ‘Of course I do. Why else would we be having a barbecue to celebrate?’ She hoped that her flippancy covered any of the lingering reservations in her mind.