Things We Never Say

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  ‘I used to love driving,’ he said. ‘Cars were a hobby that became a business and eventually turned back into a hobby again. I worked on the Beetle and the Merc but I’m stuck with the Ford for day-to-day driving. Not that I drive much any more.’

  ‘What were you?’ she asked. ‘A salesman? A mechanic?’

  ‘No, no. All I did was install car alarms,’ he replied. ‘Afterwards I moved into home alarms and security systems. But the car business meant I got to work on some great motors.’ He pressed a button and the garage doors slid open. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk you around the rest of the property.’

  At this level, with the high surrounding walls, it was impossible to see the sea any more. But the garden, as they walked along a narrow twisting path, was lush and green, although a little overgrown, and crammed with multicoloured flowers.

  ‘I fired the gardener a while back,’ said Fred. ‘Haven’t got a new one yet. But I will.’

  ‘I like it,’ Abbey told him. ‘The whole untamed look you’ve got going outside works.’

  ‘Too much land,’ Fred said. ‘Relative to the size of the house. But I always wanted space. Where I first lived in Dublin all we had was a small yard, so this is heaven for me. When we moved here, I spent a lot of time in the garden and the garage. Then the old ticker started to give me some trouble so I don’t walk around it as much as I used to.’ He pulled a dead blossom from a rose bush. ‘This place was worth a fortune at the height of the property boom. Not so much now, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter in the slightest when you’re living in it, does it?’ she said. ‘I think it’s beautiful.’

  He looked pleased. ‘You really do, don’t you?’

  She nodded enthusiastically. ‘I love being near the sea and being able to see it from the house. In California …’ She stopped. She’d been about to tell him about Pete’s place, but she wasn’t sure if he’d want to know.

  ‘I’d like to know all about you,’ he said when she faltered. ‘And I want to know about your mother and your lives. Unvarnished truth,’ he added. ‘No sugar-coating.’

  ‘OK,’ said Abbey.

  ‘Let’s sit in the garden,’ suggested Fred.

  They walked slowly to the back of the house, where there was a large patio area with outdoor seating.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make us some tea,’ said Fred.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ Abbey said. ‘But I should do it. You’ve a sore wrist …’

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself.’ Fred’s voice was testy. ‘But of course – you’re American. Would you prefer coffee?’

  She smiled at him. ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Coming up,’ said Fred, and went into the house.

  It was peaceful in the garden. Enormous bumblebees lumbered from flower to flower, while graceful butterflies alighted then departed from the small green bush to the side of the seat where Abbey was sitting. Amid the sweet smell of honeysuckle and later summer blooms, she could detect the tang of the sea, which sparkled in the distance. Furze Hill was both similar to and different from Bella Vista Heights. But it struck Abbey as a happy coincidence that both Pete and Fred’s homes had magnificent views over water.

  She tapped her fingers anxiously against the arm of the seat. Fred had asked for the unvarnished truth. She wasn’t sure how that would present either her or her mother from his perspective. She wondered if he was still holding a grudge against these Magdalene laundry people (she’d googled it after her meeting with Ryan Gilligan and been appalled) and if he’d expect her and Ellen to hold a grudge too. But how on earth would Ellen feel about that? She wished now that she’d emailed her mother before coming here, no matter how difficult that would have been for her. It would have been good to have found out how much Ellen herself already knew.

  She strained her ears to hear if Fred needed any help with the coffee. Despite his protestations that he was able to manage, she was very conscious of his age. He could be weaker than he thought and she didn’t want him putting himself to any trouble for her. She thought she’d heard the sound of beans grinding earlier (and had been impressed that he had a grinder and hadn’t succumbed to Nespresso like everyone else she knew), but she hadn’t heard any sounds from the house for the last few minutes. Still, she thought, making decent coffee took time. She didn’t want to hassle him.

  She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. She truly could be on Pete’s deck, she thought, as the sun warmed her face. There was the same sense of serenity. Calming. Soothing. She felt herself drifting into sleep. It had been a busy few days, and despite sleeping on the flight (she’d always been good at sleeping on planes), her body clock was completely out of synch. Her head lolled to one side. She was only half conscious now, thinking that her mother was sitting beside her, talking of how her father had abandoned her and her mother and of how lonely that made her feel.

  ‘But you can’t be lonely,’ she told Ellen seriously. ‘You have me.’

  And then she heard the crash and she woke up.

  Chapter 15

  More than fifty people had been invited to Zoey’s thirtieth birthday party. Too many, really, for the house in Baldoyle, even with the double doors between the living and dining room open. Now that the rooms had been festooned with balloons and banners, as well as vases of fresh flowers, the space looked even more limited. But, thought Zoey, as she looked at it critically, people could drift into the garden because the warm spell of weather still hadn’t broken. So all things considered, it would probably work out OK.

  She walked upstairs to the bedroom and looked at her dress. It was firecracker-red and plunged pleasingly both front and back, showing off her sleek body and its generous curves to their best advantage. She’d bought a set of matching costume jewellery with ruby-red stones (so totally cutting back by not asking for real gems) which complemented the dress (Harvey Nicks, expensive but definitely worth it) and the almost identically coloured shoes (Topshop, absolute bargain). She reckoned that she was putting together a fabulous look for a fabulous party as cheaply as was humanly possible. There was the slight issue of her hair, to which she’d added more extensions for the evening, which weren’t cheap, but by and large she felt that Donald couldn’t complain. And he wouldn’t, she knew, when he saw her in her gorgeous dress, looking beyond stunning. He wouldn’t be able to help comparing her to her sister-in-law, Lisette, who’d undoubtedly be wearing something supposedly understated and chic, but which in reality would be safe and boring. Zoey knew that Lisette thought she was sophisticated, but she wasn’t, she was dull. And as for her hair – Zoey reckoned the older woman could knock at least ten years off herself if she’d get a decent colouring job done. Or even if she bought a bottle of Clairol and did it herself!

  Not that it mattered how Lisette looked tonight. The attention would all be on Zoey herself and how great she looked for thirty. Thirty. She repeated it to herself. It was only a number, after all, but there was a small part of her that thought it also sounded a lot more grown-up than twenty-nine. Maybe that was what had happened with Lisette, she thought in a sudden spurt of amusement. She hit thirty and decided to be a grown-up. Only she went straight to being a middle-aged grown-up.

  Anyway, thought Zoey, the party would be grown-up and sophisticated but with a fun dimension. All her friends would be there, after all, so it couldn’t get boring; and thankfully this would also be a family occasion at which there’d be no unwanted appearance from Disgruntled Deirdre and her equally disgruntled daughters. Zoey hoped that Donald was finally coming to realise that she was far more important to him than his former wife and just as much a part of his family as his pampered girls. And that she was worth every single cent he spent on her.

  Lisette wasn’t looking forward to Zoey’s party in the slightest. If it had been at all possible to get out of it, she would have, but she hadn’t been able to come up with a single excuse not to go. It wasn’t that Lisette didn’t enjoy part
ies and going out, but her idea of a good time was very different to Zoey’s. Besides, her sister-in-law’s family would be there too, and they were far too raucous for Lisette. They all talked at the same time, didn’t listen to each other, drank too much, laughed loudly at unfunny jokes and generally took over any gathering they were at. Not that she could blame them for taking over Zoey’s birthday – it was her night after all – but Lisette truly would have preferred a quiet evening in a restaurant, with good wine and equally good conversation.

  She couldn’t remember what she’d done for her own thirtieth birthday. Fifteen years ago, she realised with a sense of dismay. Where had those years gone? Years when she didn’t have to worry about anyone other than herself and when she could go where she liked and do what she liked. She hadn’t appreciated them at the time. Hadn’t appreciated how good living and working in Dublin as a young, free and single girl could be. Only the thing was, she hadn’t really lived a hectic young, free and single life. She’d actually been quite lonely, spending most of her free time studying her English and traipsing around the city’s cultural highlights, until she’d met Gareth at Dublin’s Alliance Française. They’d both come to a talk about French painters (not a topic she was madly interested in, but she was feeling homesick and wanted to hear French accents), and she’d noticed the bearded Irishman with his grey eyes, narrow chiselled face and unfashionably long hair almost at once. He looked like an artist, she thought, as she observed him sitting in his seat making notes in a spiral-bound book. After the talk, when people were drinking coffee, she’d manoeuvred her way to his side and asked him, in her still less-than-fluent English, what he’d thought of it.

  She’d been surprised when he spoke to her in more than passable French, which had led to a much longer conversation than she’d expected. And then he’d opened the notebook and shown her that the notes she’d thought he was making were in fact profile sketches of her, which delighted her even more.

  ‘You have an interesting face,’ he told her. ‘It’s worth drawing.’

  She’d been told before that she had an interesting face, although it wasn’t something she’d ever taken as a compliment. Good bone structure, which she undoubtedly had, didn’t necessarily lead to beauty. In her case it gave her a slightly aloof, angular appearance that, together with her hair, generally made people think she was older than she was.

  But Gareth liked her hair. He told her that it was soignée, which made her smile. But he meant it.

  He asked her out and she accepted. She liked the coincidence of them both being teachers, art and history being his subjects, while she specialised, not surprisingly, in French. At a boys’ comprehensive school, which, she told Gareth, could be tricky.

  ‘But I love it,’ she added. ‘I love the boys and I love being here.’

  She eventually fell in love with him too, thinking that he was one of the gentlest men she’d ever met, thoughtful and kind. He was a good teacher and a good painter and a good person. Unfortunately, as it turned out, he wasn’t a good businessman.

  God, she thought, as she looked at the pile of bills stuffed on to the kitchen shelf, we’re in such damn trouble here. Over the past few months they’d cut everything back to the bone. They’d got rid of their multi-room satellite TV and downgraded their phone and internet packages. Lisette took advantage of any money-saving coupons she could find and she was now a pathological switcher-off of electrical appliances. But none of these savings could possibly make a dent in the mortgage payments on the investment properties they owned, which were now less of an investment and more of a millstone.

  Except for Papillon. She felt an almost physical pain in her heart when she thought of selling it. When she was in her twenties, all she’d wanted to do was to leave France, which she’d always believed was too bureaucratic and too stuffy and too much – as she used to say – up its own derrière. But when Jerome was born and she’d brought him home, she suddenly felt French as well as Irish, and she wanted her son to feel as though he was a citizen of both countries. She wanted that for Fleur too.

  Buying the house in La Rochelle had been a culmination of that desire. It was more than a holiday house. It was their home in another country. Unfortunately it had become a major bone of contention between them, the elephant in the room in every single conversation they had these days. And because they were in such a deep financial hole, every conversation they had was about money. It had never been like that before. Money hadn’t been important to them. They’d joked about Donald, who seemed to believe that as Fred’s elder son, and because he worked in the business with him, he had a certain image to maintain. They secretly mocked his apparent obsession with sales targets, profitability and income, even though, back then, they were both quietly envious of his beautiful home in Clontarf.

  Not that he had that any more, thought Lisette. Somehow, Donald too had slid backwards, because his house in Baldoyle wasn’t anything like the one he had left behind. Even his new wife was a cheaper model. Or, Lisette amended, a model who looked cheaper but who might actually be more expensive to maintain. Deirdre used to buy sparingly but well. Zoey, from what Lisette could make out, took a more scattergun approach. Both Lisette and Gareth had been sad when Donald and Deirdre split up, and at first Lisette had tried to maintain her relationship with Donald’s wife, with whom she’d got on well. But that friendship had faded since her brother-in-law’s remarriage. He didn’t like anyone being in touch with Deirdre, who, Lisette had to admit, had taken him to the cleaners in the divorce.

  Funny how things had all started to change after Ros had died, she thought. Fred’s wife had been a quiet sort of woman but somehow her influence seemed to hold the entire family together on every level. And now it had splintered apart and nothing was the same as it had been before. Although perhaps nothing had been as wonderful as she was remembering. That was the trouble with looking back. You couldn’t help doing it from the perspective of where you were now.

  She got up from the kitchen table, ignoring the pile of bills, and not wanting to depress herself still further by deciding which ones they could pay this week. The thing to do, she told herself, was to get off her high horse about tonight, take full advantage of Zoey and Donald’s hospitality and have a great time. Maybe even drink too much. Lisette rarely drank too much. But sometimes letting the alcohol take you over wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

  I’ll trawl through my wardrobe, she decided, and find the most suitable outfit I have for a bling-bling night, even though my bling-bling days are far behind me. And I’d better remind Gareth that we’re picking up his dad too. She knew that Fred was looking forward to the party, despite the fact that he was more than twice the average age of Zoey’s friends. He was probably convinced that one or two of them would fancy him!

  What is it about men, she asked herself as she climbed the stairs and went into the bedroom, that no matter what age they are, they think they’re eternally attractive to women? Whereas we perpetually worry about lines and wrinkles and looking older and undesirable? She glanced at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror and frowned. If she didn’t make a big effort tonight, people would think that she was Fred’s wife, not his son’s. And that would be one blow too many to take. She opened her make-up bag. She had a lot of work to do.

  Chapter 16

  It took Abbey a few seconds to realise where she was. The half-dream had seemed so real that she was sure Ellen was physically there beside her and reached out to touch her. Meeting nothing but thin air, she blinked a couple of times, and then the noise of the crash filtered back into her consciousness. That was what had jerked her into wakefulness again. She rubbed her eyes, got up from the chair and made her way to the kitchen, where she expected to find Fred fussing over whatever he had dropped.

  But there was no sign of him. She called his name tentatively, not wanting to appear as though she was checking up on him. She’d already gained the very strong impression that Fred didn’t like being thought of as ol
d or helpless, despite their conversation about age and mortality.

  ‘Mr Fitzpatrick?’ she called, slightly louder. And then, with a touch of embarrassment, ‘Fred?’

  There was still no response, and she stood uncertainly in the kitchen, thinking that although being on the patio outside had reminded her of Bella Vista Heights, the inside of Fred’s home was very different. The airy kitchen was cluttered and untidy, with a selection of unwashed mugs on the worktop beside the sink, a pile of newspapers on another worktop and a variety of empty bottles on a third. There were also two cups beside the kettle. One contained a tea bag and the other a spoonful of instant coffee. Which meant, she thought, that the sound she’d heard of grinding beans hadn’t been Fred making her coffee at all.

  She tried calling again, but there was still no reply.

  He could be a bit deaf, she supposed, and unable to hear her. Yet she couldn’t help feeling a little bit concerned. She walked slowly out of the kitchen and paused in the hallway. Once again she called his name, without reply. She looked into the living room where he’d been sitting when she first arrived, but there was no sign of him.

  She crossed the hallway to a smaller, more comfortably furnished, television room. In the centre, a Lay-Z-Boy recliner faced an enormous wall-mounted flat-screen TV. It was connected to a state-of-the-art speaker system. He’d be with Pete on that one, thought Abbey. Pete loved his gadgets. Cobey had been a gadget fan too. She remembered, with a dart of anger, that she’d bought him the latest iPad as soon as it had hit the Apple store on Stockton Street, even though he already had the previous one. He’d taken both of them when he’d left.

  She moved through the house, still calling Fred’s name, but it wasn’t until she pushed open the door to a home office with a desk that she let out a cry of shock.