“I know – you’re right – I do know that and it’s not fair that I’m ringing you now. I’m being a selfish pratt and I’m thinking of myself first. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you. I’m no good for you. You need to find somebody else, somebody who can give you the happiness that you deserve. I love you, look after yourself, Rach.”
The next day Rachel is seated in the restaurant where she has arranged to meet Shirley for lunch. She comes in a few minutes after her, pushing Tiernan in his buggy. She is dressed in her Tod’s loafers, camel trousers cut-off at the ankle, pale-blue shirt and a navy blazer. It is the daytime uniform of so many of the young mothers around here.
She can’t believe how much Tiernan has grown. She takes him up in her arms and lets him nestle back against her while they read the menu. She breathes him in. He is warm and soft and smells of apricot oil.
“I can’t believe how big he’s after getting.”
“He is, isn’t he?” Shirley beams.
“So how was your breastfeeding club? I can’t believe they have clubs for that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, I’ve replaced nightclubs with breastfeeding clubs.”
“I presume it’s not quite strobe lights, smoke machines and drum ’n’ bass while women sit around breastfeeding?”
“No, not quite. It’s just a chance for new mothers to chat and get advice on the questions that we have – it’s really good actually. I’ve met lots of new friends who understand what it’s like – you know, the sleep deprivation, the feeding worries and all of that.”
Sometimes when Shirley mentions her other new-mum friends, Rachel feels a bolt of jealousy flood through her – she can’t help it. Sometimes she feels like she is being left behind. Rachel knows that she and Shirley will move on and meet new friends at different stages of their lives but she worries that since she had Tiernan the differences between them are too great and that their friendship will drift away and come to its natural end.
“Oh God, listen to me – I’m being insensitive, aren’t I?”
“No, you’re not – not at all. I’m glad for you – I’ve never seen you look happier.”
“Thanks, Rachel. Tiernan is literally the best thing to ever happen to me.”
“Well, he is pretty gorgeous.” Rachel has never seen her friend so happy. It makes her feel the heartache of her and Marcus’s situation even more.
“So how’ve you been doing?” Shirley says, closing the menu and putting it down on the table.
“I’m okay.” She doesn’t tell her about last night’s phone call. She knows it will just anger Shirley.
“Really?”
“So have you, ladies, decided what you would like to order?” A white-aproned waiter comes over with a pen in one hand and his notebook flipped open in the other.
“Hmmmh . . . I think I’m going to go for the calamari – I would choose the chilli beef salad but I’m afraid Tiernan won’t like the way it makes my milk taste . . . so, yeah, I’ll go for the calamari, please.”
“And you?” He turns to Rachel.
“I think I’ll have the goat’s cheese tartlet, please.”
“Great, thanks, ladies.” He takes their menus from them and goes off to another table.
Tiernan is batting his little arms and smiling up at Rachel. She cuddles him against her. “He is just precious. I just feel so sad right now.”
“I’m so sorry you feel like that – but you have me. I know I have Tiernan now and we don’t get to see each other like we used to but I miss you too.”
“But you have all your new Earth Mother buddies.”
“Come on, Rachel, you’re my best friend. Don’t get me wrong – those girls are great but sometimes I want to talk about something other than babies, you know. I did have a life before this little man came along and I’m still the same person that I was then.” She reaches across the table for Rachel’s hand. “I’ll always have time for you, you know that, don’t you?”
“I know.”
That weekend Rachel drives home to Antrim. She tells her mam and dad everything about her and Marcus. They just listen and only interrupt to fill her mug with more tea. They don’t say things like they never liked him anyway or we told you it would all end in tears. When she pulls back the duvet of her childhood bed that night where her mam had left in a hot water bottle to warm up the sheets for her, she feels surprisingly all right. She wishes she had confided in them earlier. It is good to have it all out in the open and not have the burden of trying to put on a brave face on their relationship. To simply be here, embraced in the welcoming arms of her home is exactly what she needs right now.
Chapter 40
“So this is where you are!” John-Paul’s voice roars into the shop. “Your ma’s been on the phone roaring at me again to know if you’re with me – I had to leave my pint after me and everything to go looking for you again. What are you playin’ at, Jack, running off all the time?”
“Ma forgot to pick me up from school!” he protests.
“Well, you know where the house is! You could have gone home! Now your ma is up the walls because she thinks something has happened to you. You know what your ma is like when she starts banging on, Jack. She’s chewing me ear the whole time. I don’t need the hassle! I can’t even have a quiet pint any more without your ma ringing me up – like it’s all my fault. I thought that Rachel one told you that you weren’t to come back here again?”
He turns then to Conor.
“I’m starting to think you’re bribing him in the door – what do you use? Smarties, is it? What is it with you hanging out with young fellas?”
“Now hang on there a minute – I don’t know what you’re getting at but I don’t ask Jack to come here – he comes of his own accord.” Conor is starting to get nervous. There is look about Jack’s dad that warns he could just snap at any minute.
“I’m watching you – don’t you think that I don’t know what you’re at!”
His finger is millimetres from Conor’s face. Conor can smell the alcohol on his breath – he moves backwards.
John-Paul stands and stares at Conor for a minute, his eyes narrowed.
“Come on, Jack – outta here. Now!” He grabs his shoulder roughly and pushes him towards the door.
“I’m coming, Da.”
Conor watches them go out the door. He goes out and stands on the doorstep and watches them walking up the street. Jack trails behind John-Paul. His shoulders are sunken and he’s dragging his feet along the pavement. The boy turns around. Conor forces a smile on his face but Jack doesn’t smile back at him.
Rachel is just coming out Tina’s gate when she sees John-Paul coming up the path towards her. Jack storms past her and goes straight into the house without a word.
“Rachel – hang on there a minute, love – I want to talk to you about something.”
She waits for him to come up beside her on the path.
“What is it, John-Paul? I’m already running late for my next appointment.”
“Tina told me you found Jack hanging out in the bookshop down on Haymarket Street the other day. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve found him in there a few times meself and I don’t trust that fella. There’s something weird about him hanging around with a young boy like that and a few of the young fellas around here are saying he’s a pervert. Fellas like that need to have their bits chopped off, the dirty scumbag!” His purple-rimmed eyes are ablaze.
“Right, okay. Thanks for letting me know, John-Paul.” She opens the car and sits into it. She goes to pull the door shut but John-Paul is still holding onto it. He rests his folded arms on the frame.
“There’s too many of those sorts around, y’know, always looking out for young fellas to be taking advantage of. You should keep an eye on him, y’know?”
“All right, I’ll look into it.”
“Okay, I’m just heading in to see Jack for a while.”
Rachel knows he is trying to make a point. “Well, that�
�s good, I’m glad to hear it. Look, I’d better go. See you, John-Paul.”
The next day at the usual time Conor hears the usual screech of a bike outside his shop. When he goes over to the window to look, he sees it is Jack in his grey tracksuit bottoms that are too short for him. He opens the door.
“Hiya, Jack. You’re going to have to get those brakes fixed – that thing is lethal! Was everything all right when you went home yesterday?”
“Oh yeah, Ma didn’t wake up – that’s why she forgot to pick me up.”
“I see. Is she okay, your mother?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Oh, I was just wondering.”
“I’m sorry Da wasn’t very nice to you yesterday. Sometimes he gets mad and shouts a lot. When he lived with us, Ma used to tell him to get out of the house whenever he’d start his roaring and carrying on. That’s why he doesn’t live with us any more because Ma was sick of telling him to be quiet so one night she told him to get out of the house and now every day she says ‘Isn’t the peace and quiet grand, Jack?’ and she’s right because me and Ma are a good team. When she’s resting in bed I make her a cup of tea and put it on her locker and she says ‘Jack, you’re a darlin’, an absolute darlin’ and then she gets up and sometimes we do tidying up or else sometimes she says ‘I’m too tired – let’s take a day off from the cleaning today, love’. I’m her big strong boy. I mind her when she’s tired or sad. I make her tea when she’s in bed in the mornings and I help carry in the briquettes and stack them in the fireplace but she won’t let me light them yet. She says it’s too dangerous but maybe when I’m nine she’ll let me.”
“Sounds like you’re the man of the house, Jack. Your ma is a lucky lady to have a fella like you taking care of her.”
He smiles and his little cheeks start to pinken. Conor notices his chest is plumped out a little.
“Well, I better go, Ma will be looking for me.”
“All right, Jack, I’ll see you soon, I suppose.”
Just as Jack is going out the door the bell tinkles and a glamorous woman with a lot of dark, glossy waves billowing around her shoulders, is standing in the shop. She is wearing a skirt suit and she has a string of pearls around her neck.
“What are you doing here?” Jack says, blushing furiously.
“Eh . . . can I help you there at all?” Conor asks, looking from one to the other.
“I was just looking for Jack.” She turns to him. “You were meant to be in the house today, wee man – why did you run off like that?”
“How did you find me here?” he says stubbornly.
“Well, I was on my way home but I saw your bike outside so I said I’d see if you were in here.”
“Well, you shoulda kept on driving!”
“Jack!” Conor says and then turns to the woman. “Sorry but do you mind me asking who are you?”
“I’m Rachel, Rachel McLoughlin,” She offers him a slender manicured hand. “I’m a social worker.”
So this is the famous Rachel. “I’m Conor Fahy – Jack has mentioned you before.”
“Oh?”
“No, he just said you sometimes call to see him.”
“I see.” She turns to Jack. “I need to talk to you, wee man.” She bends down to his level. “What do you say we go back home and have a chat, huh?”
“I don’t want to!”
“Well, maybe we could ask your mum to give you something nice when we get back there, how about that?”
“I’m not a baby – that’s not going to make me go.”
“Ach, wee man, I know you’re not a baby,” she cajoles.
“And I don’t like you calling me ‘wee man’ either!”
“Okay, I promise not to call you ‘wee man’ again but I really do need to talk to you, Jack.”
“Jack, maybe you should head on home with Rachel. You can call back tomorrow, yeah?”
“It’s not fair – why won’t you just leave me and Ma alone!” He storms out of the shop.
“Thanks,” she mumbles. “I’d better go, while I have him.” She follows him out the door, trying to keep up with him in her heels. “I’ll meet you back at the house, Jack!” She shouts after him as he gets up on his bike and cycles off down Haymarket Street. She gets back into her car to follow him.
When Rachel arrives back at the house, there is no sign of Jack. She waits in the kitchen until he finally comes through the door.
“You took your time. You must have done the Tour de France on the way back and all,” she says jokily.
“I told you, I don’t want to talk to you!”
Tina is sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. “Where did you go to, Jack? I told you Rachel was coming to talk to you today. You have to stop running off on me like that.”
“He was in the bookshop – you know, the wee one up on Haymarket Street,” Rachel says.
“Jack? In a bookshop?” She turns to Jack. “What were you doing in there?”
“I like going there. Conor is my friend.”
“Who the hell is Conor?”
“He seems to be the owner,” Rachel says.
“How often are you going there?”
“I go most days after I come home from school.”
“Well, this is the first I knew of it! I thought you were out playing with your friends!” Tina goes to get up from the table but the pain slices through her so she stays where she is. “What are you doing there?”
“Conor lets me read his books and help out in the shop.”
“So let me get this straight – you’re hanging out in a bookshop every day with a man and I don’t even know? What are you playing at, Jack?”
“At least Conor gives me sandwiches and lets me read his books. You’re always asleep or too tired to play with me!” His little face is red with rage and he looks close to tears.
“Okay, calm down, everyone,” Rachel says, stepping in to diffuse the situation. “Tina, you look tired – why don’t you go and have a lie-down for a little while, while I have a chat with Jack, okay?”
Tina does as she is told and gingerly gets up from the table and goes out the door. They hear her footprints, laboured and slow, as she climbs the stairs and then finally a door closes.
The time has come to tell Jack. Rachel has been thinking about it all week, worrying how he is going to react and the best way to tell him. There is no ‘best way’, she has decided.
She takes a deep breath. “Jack, I know you don’t want to talk to me but it’s important.”
“Now you’ve got Ma all mad with me.”
“She’s not mad really, Jack – you worried her, that’s all. You need to tell her where you’re going from now on, deal?”
“I guess so.”
“Look, Jack, there is something I want to talk to you about. Something important.”
He is kicking the backs of his heels against the legs of the chair. He won’t meet her eyes.
“Jack, pet, you do know that your ma is very sick, don’t you?”
His feet stop swinging and he goes very still. He nods slowly and then starts to speak almost in a whisper. “Ma doesn’t know I hear her but sometimes I do hear her getting sick in the toilet because it’s beside my bedroom and Ma says the walls are made from paper.”
“Your ma has cancer, Jack. Do you know what that is?”
He starts to talk. “Kinda – me granda had it and it’s like having lots and lots of bad bugs inside your body and you need lots of medicine to fight them but the medicine makes you very sick and tired.”
“That’s the best way I’ve ever heard it described, Jack. You could teach the doctors a thing or two, huh?”
He smiles his gappy smile at her.
“With your ma, Jack, the doctors have given her lots of medicine which is why you’ve seen her being sick and tired but it hasn’t worked. The medicine hasn’t made her better. Do you understand, Jack?”
“Can’t they just give her a new one? One time when I had a coug
h and Dr Maguire gave me medicine and it didn’t work so Ma had to bring me back again to get a different one and the new one worked.”
She nods. “It’s kind of the same except the doctors have no more medicine for your ma, Jack.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s very hard for me to tell you this, Jack, but the doctors don’t think your ma is ever going to get better.”
Silence.
“Your ma is dying, Jack. I’m so sorry.” She reaches out to hold his hand but he pulls it away from her. “Do you understand what that means, wee man?”
She tries to read his face but it remains expressionless.
All he can hear is a loud buzzing noise inside his ears like there are a million bees buzzing around in there, swarming around him and he can’t get away from them. They are chasing him around and around in circles. He feels very hot and there are black and yellow stripes everywhere. They are on the wall, on the floor; everywhere he looks they are there in front him. They are on Rachel’s face and she looks like the biggest bee of all.
Into the Night Sky Page 20