“Conor?” She sounds weary.
“Hi there.”
“Hang on and I’ll let you in.”
Eventually the gates open and he walks up the driveway towards the house.
“I could have picked you up from the station,” she chides when she opens the door to him.
“The walk did me good. Look, I just want to say I’m sorry again about joking about the quiz team the other day – I didn’t realise I was overstepping the mark.”
“Don’t worry about it. I know you didn’t mean any harm.”
“Conor, why haven’t you been over to see us?” Dot comes down the stairs with her hands on her hips.
“Hi, Dot, I’m sorry, I was really busy.”
“Well, Mummy was sad.”
Ella looks down at her daughter. “I’m okay, Dot.”
“Well, why are you always crying then?”
She feels her stomach sink. She wishes she’d been able to hide it from the children.
“Are you okay, Ella?” He notices she is wearing her grey jersey pyjamas.
“Sorry, I never bothered getting dressed today,” she says.
“But didn’t you have to pick up the girls from school?”
“I put a coat on.”
She has lost more weight over the few weeks. Her fringe has now grown down over her eyes. He follows her upstairs and through the living room where he sees Celeste lying the length of the sofa watching TV.
“Hi, Celeste.”
“Hi, Conor,” she mutters.
He follows Ella up to the kitchen on the top level. Maisie is in her highchair. There are pots bubbling on the stove.
“Will you stay for dinner?”
“I’d like that thanks,” he says and adds quickly, “if it’s not too much trouble.”
“We’re just having pasta.”
“Sounds great.”
He sits down at the table and Ella continues feeding Maisie some bright orange purée.
Every surface is taken over with children’s paraphernalia – school books, tiny plastic Barbie shoes and children’s artwork all compete for space. The red shiny Formica presses are covered in pink butterfly stickers.
“The girls have been busy.” He gestures to the presses.
“To think that this place was once sought after by interiors magazines looking to do a feature on it!” she says.
When Maisie has eaten all of her food, Ella wipes her face and unstraps her.
She comes to sit down at the table with Maisie on her knee.
“Can I take her?” he asks.
“Sure.”
He lifts the sleepy form over the table and sits her on his knee. She sits back against his chest and he can feel her little heart thumping below his palm. He puts his index finger inside her pudgy hand. Her mouth is forming little O shapes and small gurgles come out.
He turns to Ella. “Leni would have been due today.”
Chapter 28
Eight Months Earlier
She is late. Two days now. She stops into the Tesco Metro on the way home. She finds the aisle where the pregnancy tests are and looks at the rectangular boxes on the shelves. She is bombarded with different types – own brand compete against some which claim to be 99% accurate from the day of a missed period – but then, when she looks at the shelf underneath, there are others that are sensitive from six days before and she is torn. She picks them up and reads the backs of the boxes. She decides on the one that is accurate from the early stages and she feels as though everyone is staring at her as she walks through the aisle, even though she knows they are probably preoccupied with sniffing shampoos or burying boxes of tampons under the groceries in their own baskets.
She cycles home with the bag in the basket and rushes upstairs to their bathroom. She takes the pregnancy test out of its foil wrapper. She knows she should wait for him but she can’t. Patience isn’t her strength. She unfolds the instructions to make sure she has them right in her head. She holds the test under her urine then puts the cap back on and leaves it on the side of the bathtub, making sure it is level like the instructions have told her to do. The three-minute wait is interminable. Three minutes can change your life. She gets up and starts tidying shampoo bottles and hair-gel containers on the shelves, but keeps stopping to see if the test is done. Finally she sees the second pink line. She is pregnant. They are pregnant. Two will become Three.
Then her mind starts racing with thoughts. What will he say? Can they afford this?
She hears his key in the door soon after. He climbs the stairs and they meet in the bedroom. He takes her in his arms. She pulls back and thrusts the pregnancy test into his hands. He looks confused for a minute and then it dawns on him. He is going to be a father. He wraps his arms around her and lifts her into the air. He swings her around until they both feel slightly dizzy and have to sit down on the edge of the bed.
“That night after Ryan’s?” he asks.
She nods. “I think so.”
“Wow.” He is stunned.
“It is good, yes?” Her forehead creases in worry. The chicken-pox scar between her eyes folds in on itself.
He turns to reassure her. “Yes, it is – it’s a shock but a good shock.”
“You don’t think it will be too much with the shop and everything?”
“No, this is good. Really, really good.” A slow grin spreads across his face as the realisation starts to sink in.
She sits back with a stunned smile on her face. “I have to ring Mutti to tell her.”
“Already! Don’t you want to wait until we get it confirmed in the doctor’s?”
“But I have to tell her, I’m so excited.” She is already off the bed and pulling out her laptop to bring up Skype.
“Okay.” He laughs. “Let’s call her.”
Chapter 29
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Conor!” Ella’s hands fly to her mouth. “I didn’t know she was pregnant!”
“Nobody did – we hadn’t told anyone – well, except for her parents.” He smiles at the memory.
“So she was pregnant when she was . . . y’know?” She can’t bring herself to say the word.
“Yeah . . . she was.”
“How far along was she?”
“Two months. We wanted to wait until after the first trimester before we started to tell people.”
“God, I’m so sorry, Conor – I can’t believe it.” She is stunned. She gets up and stands at the sink and looks out into the evening darkness that has descended over Dublin Bay. She can see the lights of Dún Laoghaire twinkling far in the distance before her. “I didn’t even know you were trying.”
“Well, we weren’t, not really. It came as a bit of a surprise, to be honest.” Then he adds quickly, “But a good one.”
He looks around her kitchen, which is full of fond memories. He can almost hear the laughter echoing off the stone walls again. Late-night dinner parties with lots of wine, Dan and Ella regaling them with funny stories. Leni would sometimes miss the punch line to a joke because of the language barrier so he would have to explain it to her and then she would throw her head back and laugh too a little bit later than everyone else. The kids’ christenings, the birthday parties. They had even spent Christmas here two years ago when the snow had been so bad that the flight to Germany they were meant to be on was cancelled and Ella had insisted that they come to hers. She had underestimated the time on the turkey and they had eaten a plate of vegetables followed by the turkey on its own nearly two hours later.
Maisie is now pushing upwards with her feet on his knees.
Dot comes up the stairs wearing peacock-blue suede high heels and a full-length evening dress belonging to Ella, which she has to lift with every step she takes. She is also wearing her pink bicycle helmet on her head.
She wobbles on the heels as she reaches the top and Ella jumps up to steady her. “Be careful in those things, for God’s sake!”
“How do I look?” Dot asks, attempting a wobbly twirl in
front of Conor.
“You look beautiful – you’re way better-looking than that Rapunzel one!”
“Thank you, Conor.” She bows to him. “Will you marry me when I’m twenty-seven?”
“Absolutely. I’m waiting for you, Dot Devlin – you know you’re the only girl for me.”
She flashes him a smile and turns to go back down the stairs again.
“Take those heels off before you go anywhere!” Ella says.
After the sound of Dot’s footsteps fade on the stairs, Ella turns back to Conor. “Why didn’t you tell me about the pregnancy?”
“I couldn’t say it – you were pregnant with Maisie at the time and I couldn’t do it to you.”
“Oh Conor, you should have though – I feel really bad about you carrying that grief along with losing your partner. God, it’s just awful.” She reaches over and takes his hand.
“Do you know what gets me?” he says.
“What?”
“That I could be passing him every day on the street and I wouldn’t know that it was he who robbed me of the two people I loved most in the world – he took away my whole future and he’s just out there now living his life but I don’t get to live mine. It’s so . . . so . . . hard.”
“I’m sorry, Conor.” She squeezes his hand tightly. “Want to go out and get pissed tonight? I can get Andrea to come over to mind the kids until Dan get home?”
“Nah, think I’d just prefer to be alone, if that’s okay?”
“Sure, well, give me a shout if you need someone to get paralytic drunk with.”
“Thanks for the offer.”
There is a hissing from the cooker and she gets up to see the water has almost boiled off the pasta. It has started to fragment. Hardly al dente but it would have to do. She drains it in a colander and stirs in the sauce before serving it into bowls. She shouts down to the girls who come back up the stairs, Dot still in her bicycle helmet/ball gown regalia.
They sit in around the table, lunging for Parmesan and forks.
“Eh . . . do you want to leave some Parmesan for the rest of us?” Ella says to Dot who is spooning snowy mounds of cheese onto her plate.
Conor uses his right hand to spear some pasta onto his fork – he has his left arm around Maisie who is still on his knee. She is holding a teething ring between her fingers and lifting it towards her mouth.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to put her in her high chair?” Ella asks Conor.
“No, I like holding her actually.”
She smiles sadly at him. She feels the pressure of tears building behind her eyes and she forces herself to look up at the timber beams which span her kitchen ceiling. He would have been holding his own newborn in his hands today if things had been different.
“Is Dan going to be home soon?” he asks.
“No, he’s working late all week on the new Four from Saskatchewan album.”
“Cool!” He starts tapping out their last single, which was full of ukuleles and banjos. They are one of these new folk/rock bands.
Celeste puts her fork down and glares down the table at him. He stops tapping.
“Celeste, honey, have you had enough?” Ella asks her.
She doesn’t answer.
“Celeste, I’m speaking to you.”
Still no answer.
After they’ve finished, Ella tells Celeste to finish her homework. The child stares back at her.
Conor stands up and hands Maisie over to her. “I should probably be heading on – you probably need to get them into bed.”
“Will you be okay?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I mean about Leni, y’know . . . and the baby and everything.”
He shrugs. “I’ll be fine honestly.”
“I’ll give you a lift to the station.”
“No, the walk will do me good. I could do with the fresh air to clear the head.”
He stands outside the Martello tower in the darkness. He breathes in the evening air and can taste the sea-salt on his tongue.
“It’s just another day,” he tells himself. “Time moves forward. ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day . . .’”
Later that evening he sits down at the kitchen table and pours out his feelings on to paper like he has been doing since she died. It’s the only thing that helps.
My Darling Leni,
Today has been a hard one. They’re all hard but today was pretty bad. I didn’t think I would get through it to be honest but then I thought of you and I knew that that wasn’t what you would want for me. So that’s why I’m doing this instead – you always loved lanterns.
Today should have been different for us – we should have been holding our baby in our arms or maybe counting down the days if you went overdue. You see what really gets me is that people lie. They lie all the time – blatant lies – they tell me that it will get easier but it never does. Never. I know it’s just because they don’t know what else to say to me – what can you say to the man who has lost his world? That’s why they feel like they have to say something full of positivity and hope – but I’m not five years old. All I ever wanted from life was for us to be together – that was it – but it seems that even that was too much to ask.
Wherever you are out there, sleep well, my love.
My love, always,
Conor
Then he steps out into his back garden and puts the letter inside a lantern before lighting it and sending it up into the night sky.
Chapter 30
The small freckly face with the gap-toothed grin comes through the door and Conor can’t help smiling when he sees him. His visits are now a daily occurrence and, rather than seeing them as an irritation like he used to, Conor has found himself actually looking forward to them.
“Hey, Jack, how’ve you been?”
“Hey, Conor. What are you doing?” This is the first time the boy has called him by his name instead of the usual ‘mister’.
“Working. How about you?”
“I said I’d better give you a hand – it’s not fair on you having to do all the work by yourself.”
Conor smiles at him. “Or maybe you just want a sandwich?” He has now started to make sure that the mini-fridge out the back is stocked with ham and cheese so that he can always make Jack a sandwich.
“Well, okay, if you’re offering. Can I use your crapper? I’m burstin’!”
“Excuse me?”
Jack starts to laugh. “That’s what Da always calls it – a crapper.”
“It’s kind of disgusting.”
“Yeah, that’s what Ma says too.”
“Go on,” he sighs.
While Jack is in the toilet he realises this is the part of the day that he looks forward to most. His visits from Jack are the only thing keeping him going at the moment. They get him through the day and he doesn’t dread the four walls of his shop quite as much as he has been for the last few months. His chats with Jack take his mind off his problems and worries. Through Jack, he gets to enjoy the innocence of childhood once again.
“What happened to you yesterday? I was wondering where you got to?” Conor asks as he cuts the bread.
“Me and Ma never woke up so I missed school! I usually wake up first – Ma says that I must have been a bird in another life because I’m always up with the lark and then I go in and wake Ma and give her a cup of tea, but yesterday I didn’t wake early and neither did Ma and when I went into her room and she looked at the clock, she said, ‘Oh my God, Jack, it’s after ten o’clock! You’re late for school!’ So I thought I was going to be in big trouble with Teacher but Ma said, ‘Why don’t we have a day on the couch with our quilts and watch TV?’. So we watched a film from the olden days about a girl and she had no ma and da so she had to mind herself and feed herself and buy all the things herself but her dad gave her a suitcase full of golden coins so she was rich and she had a horse in her house.”
“Pippi Longstock
ing?”
“Yeah, that was it. The horse was walking around inside in her sitting room but lucky her ceilings were high and he didn’t bang his head. A horse would never fit inside my house. Ma says you couldn’t swing a cat in our kitchen so you definitely couldn’t fit a horse in there. Then we watched a show about cooking and Ma said, ‘All that effort and then it’s eaten in about two minutes flat’, then Ma had a little sleep on the couch so I watched Ben 10 and Four Arms is my favourite because he can crush anything even stuff that is super strong. Then Ma woke up so it was her turn to choose something to watch so she picked Judge Judywho was shouting at a man and then Ma said Judge Judy annoys her sometimes though because she doesn’t listen to the people and it’s important to listen, isn’t it, Conor?”
“It is, Jack –”
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