The People Next Door

by Roisin Meaney

  Kathryn looked at the theatre tickets. The show was nothing special – an amateur production of some play she’d never heard of – but he’d bought two tickets and he was asking her to go with him. She leaned back in her chair and smiled. Her face was towards the screen but her eyes were on him. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

  ‘Not when I want something, no.’ His dimple was fatally attractive. ‘Not when I think I have the slightest chance of getting it.’ In a louder voice, he said, ‘I think I see the problem.’

  What if he managed to charm her into bed eventually, then boasted to everyone else about the older woman he’d pulled? She’d spend her time avoiding him after that, trying to ignore the sniggers behind her back. She’d feel like a right fool. She might even have to look for another job.

  But what if he really was interested in her? It wasn’t completely outside the bounds of possibility, was it? How would she know if she didn’t take a chance with him? Was she brave enough to risk it?

  She had a lot to lose. But she had a lot to gain too. She said, ‘Actually, I’m free on Thursday.’

  ‘Good.’ He put the tickets back into his pocket and straightened up. ‘Pick you up at seven – we can grab a bite beforehand.’ She couldn’t read his face. The half-smile could have meant anything. ‘OK?’

  She nodded, unsure all over again. And then he said loudly, ‘Oh, there’s just one more thing you should remember.’ He leaned towards the screen again. ‘Look, this icon here …’ Kathryn sat forward in her chair and he whispered, ‘Thanks, I look forward to it.’ His face was inches from hers. She could feel his breath on her cheek. She smelled coffee. And then he was gone.

  She took his hand now and curled it in hers. ‘You know very well why I resisted you – or tried to.’ She loved his hands, the slim fingers so familiar now. The bump near the tip of his little finger, the narrow ovals of his nails. ‘You know why I was so hard to get.’

  He stood up and pulled her after him. ‘Because you thought you were old enough to be my grandmother or something.’

  Kathryn laughed, loving the lack of importance he’d always placed on their age difference. ‘Something like that. You go ahead, I’ll be up in a minute.’

  In the kitchen she poured what was left of the wine down the sink, rinsed the glasses and put the empty bottle outside the back door, halfway to the recycling bag in the shed. No need to give Grainne anything to comment on in the morning – she never missed an opportunity.

  And, of course, it would sound terribly harmless. ‘Don’t tell me the wine is all gone from last night, Kathryn – a bottle lasts no time at all, does it?’ Or another time, ‘That top is quite snug on you, isn’t it, Kathryn? No harm – a bit of weight never hurt anyone.’ Or ‘Would you look at her? Mutton dressed as lamb. At least you dress for your age, Kathryn.’

  Not that Grainne needed an excuse these days, not with Kathryn’s forty-fifth birthday coming up in a couple of months. That was enough to keep her going.

  Aren’t women having babies older now? There’s no reason why you still couldn’t have one. Granted, I’d had my two by the time I was thirty-three, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to. Did you see that woman in the paper the other day who had a baby in her fifties? I know that’s a bit extreme, but still. You shouldn’t let the little … setbacks in the past put you off. Think how happy Justin would be if you had a baby. I’m sure he’s dying to be a father.’

  And Kathryn would nod and agree, wincing silently at the little setbacks, and push her nails into her palms to keep from shouting at Grainne to stop, to just shut up. A stillborn baby and two miscarriages weren’t ‘little setbacks’, they were agonies that never went away, they were ghosts that Kathryn couldn’t, or wouldn’t, let go. And with each birthday, with each higher number, with each treacherous tick of her biological clock came the stronger possibility that they were all that she and Justin might ever have.

  Two years after they were married, a perfect baby boy with Justin’s long eyelashes had died in her womb a few days before he was due to be born and nobody could explain why.

  A year later, when Kathryn was thirty-nine, one miscarriage followed another, both within two months of conception. Again, there seemed to be no reason and no one could tell them what they were doing wrong.

  Since then nothing had happened. Now she was almost forty-five, and terribly afraid.

  To be fair to Grainne, she might not realise how hurtful her remarks were. She’d never had a miscarriage or a stillbirth, just two healthy children – even if she’d disowned one of them twelve years ago for having the audacity to be gay. Which meant that Kathryn, old as she was, unsuitable as Grainne clearly considered her to be, was her only hope for a grandchild.

  Maybe she meant well.

  Or maybe she knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe she took pleasure in hurting Kathryn, in punishing her for ruining Justin’s chances of being a father.

  Kathryn sighed as she climbed the stairs. She mustn’t think like that. Justin loved her – he was always telling her how much he loved her. He didn’t care about the age difference and he certainly didn’t blame her for the absence of children. Her mother-in- law was just a sad old hypochondriac with too much time on her hands, not worth getting upset about.

  She stopped at the landing window, caught a quick movement in the hedge between them and number eight. Picasso probably, out wandering in the night like he’d been since Ali had left.

  It was beginning to look like she wasn’t coming back. Kathryn had bumped into Dan a few times lately, but he hadn’t made any reference to Ali’s disappearance and it wasn’t something you could bring up casually.

  Yvonne thought she’d probably run off with someone: ‘What other explanation is there? Dan is hardly the type to wallop her over the head and bury her under the apple tree.’

  Kathryn argued that there didn’t have to be a third party. ‘Maybe she just decided they weren’t suited. Maybe she went off him.’

  They hadn’t seen that much of Ali when she was there – a real career woman by the look of her. Always very smartly dressed, usually rushing off someplace with a businesslike black bag slung across her chest. Dan had told Yvonne once that Ali was a lawyer, a solicitor or something. They seemed polar opposites to Kathryn – Dan, so laid back and down to earth, could hardly have been described as a career man.

  Yvonne had to agree. ‘I’d never have put them together.’

  But then, who’d have put Kathryn McElhinney and Justin Taylor together? Who’d have thought she could possibly make him happy?

  Who’d be surprised if he left her for a younger woman, someone who could give him babies who survived?

  Cut that out. She turned from the window and opened their bedroom door.

  Justin was unbuttoning his shirt. She crossed the room, finished off the last few buttons and placed her palms on his bare chest. He smelled of toothpaste.

  Justin pushed away the always-there thoughts of his lost son – Joey, they were going to call him Joey – and smiled at Kathryn. ‘You know, I’m not sure I’ve got the energy tonight.’

  She propped her chin on his shoulder, slid her hands around his back. ‘That’s alright – I can wait till the morning.’

  Kathryn had taken him by surprise. He hadn’t expected her, hadn’t been looking for her. He hadn’t planned to get married until well into his thirties, foolishly assuming that the right woman would oblige by not putting in an appearance until then.

  His mother had done her best to change his mind. ‘Women age faster than men – you’ll be tied to an old woman while you still have plenty of energy.’

  ‘I’ve made up my mind. I love her. She loves me. What does age matter?’

  ‘You can forget about having a family.’

  ‘She’s got lots of time – she’s only in her thirties.’

  But then the heartbreak of Joey had happened, and while he was still reeling, still trying to make sense of it, Kathryn had begged him to try again. And one
after another, two more babies had slipped away.

  And now time was running out. Hope was running out. You can forget about having a family.

  Kathryn walked towards their little en suite bathroom and Justin peeled off his shirt and began to unbutton his jeans.

  Three weeks later: 16 June

  NUMBER SEVEN

  ‘You’ll never guess what Chloë did yesterday.’

  Yvonne bit into her cheese and pickle sandwich and looked up at the perfectly blue sky and tried hard to sound interested. ‘What?’

  Dolores leaned back on the park bench. ‘Guess.’

  ‘Won a medal?’ That was usually a safe bet: it was a rare weekend when Dolores’s daughter didn’t arrive home with some prize or other from one of her many after-school activities. Chloë had cups and medals and trophies for everything from horse riding to ballet to swimming.

  But Dolores shook her head. ‘Remember, it was Mother’s Day.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Clara hadn’t done anything for Mother’s Day; they didn’t go in for that. ‘Er, did she make you breakfast in bed?’

  ‘Even better. She cooked dinner for the whole family from scratch – she even did all the shopping. Shepherd’s pie and apple crumble with custard.’ Dolores bit into her pear and waited for Yvonne’s reaction.

  ‘Wow, that’s great.’ Yvonne pulled off a bit of crust and threw it onto the ground and watched a thrush hop quickly towards it. So Chloë was a master chef, along with everything else. ‘And she’s only … ’ God, how old was Chloë again? It wasn’t as if Yvonne hadn’t been told often enough ‘… ten, is it?’

  ‘Just gone eleven. Fionn and Hugo washed up afterwards. I was a lady of leisure.’ The thrush ducked his head and grabbed the bread and flew off. ‘Martin and I didn’t know ourselves.’

  ‘Very nice.’ Yvonne sneaked a glance at her watch. Ten more minutes and they’d be able to go back. ‘You’ll have to let Chloë into the kitchen more often.’ She wondered if she was the only worker who looked forward to the end of her lunch hour.

  She and Dolores didn’t eat together every day. Some days Dolores went into town to meet her husband, Martin, for lunch. Other times, when she really couldn’t face another sixty minutes of her colleague boasting about the three most perfect children in the universe, Yvonne would invent some reason why she had to go home – the plumber was due or she was expecting a phone call. Or she’d have an errand to run in town, once she was sure Dolores wasn’t heading the same way.

  They worked in the Miller’s Avenue health clinic, diagonally across from the three redbrick houses, just beside the park. Dolores was based upstairs as secretary to the two doctors there while Yvonne manned the main reception desk downstairs and handled the administration for Pawel Tylak, whose surgery was also downstairs.

  Pawel was a forty-year-old Polish-born dentist who’d arrived in Ireland from the UK two years before and set up his practice shortly afterwards in the recently opened clinic, creating the need for a second secretary.

  Yvonne, fed up with her job as PA to two estate agents who never stopped arguing, had read the advertisement in the local paper and applied.

  Pawel had cropped blond hair, very blue eyes and even white teeth, and his English was usually more grammatically correct than Yvonne’s. He was perfectly polite to her, but revealed virtually nothing about himself. After almost two years with him, all she knew about Pawel, mostly by accident, was that he’d been educated in England, that he’d never been married and that his father had been some kind of diplomat in London.

  She guessed that he was around her own age. He didn’t appear to have much of a sense of humour, but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and put it down to shyness.

  He was always at work before her in the mornings and he was usually there when she left at five. She had no idea where he lived or whether he had any friends or family in Ireland, and he knew as little about her. Theirs was a purely professional relationship, which suited both of them perfectly.

  At five to two, Yvonne and Dolores walked the short distance back to the clinic.

  ‘So what did you get up to at the weekend, then?’ Dolores slid a look at Yvonne. ‘Bet you had a lot more excitement than boring old married me.’

  Another recurring theme: Yvonne’s eventful social life. Dolores was somehow convinced that her colleague spent every weekend painting Belford, and possibly the surrounding towns, bright red. She refused to believe that Yvonne ever sat in on a Saturday night eating mashed bananas on toast and watching whatever film was on offer. No, Yvonne was free and single so she had to be living it up with every available male for miles around.

  ‘I’m afraid Clara’s the one who has all the excitement in our house. She went to a concert in Galway with her boyfriend yesterday.’ Yvonne rummaged in her bag for the clinic keys, wishing she had more to report. Who wanted to admit that her weekends were that uneventful? ‘I cooked dinner for my father-in-law on Saturday night – I told you he comes once a month.’ Which, on an excitement scale of one to ten, would probably fall somewhere between two and three. Then she thought of something else. ‘Oh, and I’m going out to dinner this evening with a friend.’ There, that should keep Dolores happy for a while.

  ‘What – a man friend?’

  ‘Yes.’ Yvonne felt a tiny bit mean, making it sound like a date.

  ‘Who is he? Where did you meet him?’

  She had to come clean. ‘Well, he’s a kind of a relation, really. I’ve known him for years.’

  ‘A cousin?’

  ‘Well, no … at least, he’s not my cousin – he was my husband’s.’ She was sorry she’d mentioned Greg.

  Dolores frowned. ‘So he’s not related to you.’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Where’s he taking you? Or is that a surprise?’

  ‘Oh, nowhere fancy, probably the little Italian place on Curtin Street.’

  Dolores walked up the clinic steps behind Yvonne. ‘You must tell me about it tomorrow. Boring old married women need all the juicy gossip they can get. I’ll try not to be too jealous.’

  Yvonne had never met Dolores’s husband or any of her three children. They lived on the outskirts of a small village about ten miles outside Belford, in the house where Martin had grown up. Dolores had told Yvonne that he worked as an accountant in Charleton, a town another twenty or so miles beyond that, where the children attended various schools.

  Yvonne turned her key in the door and slipped the snib to keep it open. They walked through the lobby together. No sign of Pawel – probably eating lunch in his surgery, as usual. Yvonne dropped her bag by her desk and opened the appointments book, running her finger down the list of names. Looking busy, hoping that the hint would be taken.

  Dolores glanced at the closed surgery door. ‘Pity he wouldn’t ask you out.’ She made no attempt to lower her voice. ‘He’d be a good catch.’

  Yvonne stared at her, appalled. What if Pawel heard her? ‘Ssh – don’t be ridiculous.’ Why did married women always feel the compulsion to marry off their single friends? She picked a file from the bundle on the shelf behind her and leafed through it, willing Dolores to go.

  ‘I wouldn’t rule it out if I were you. That’s all I’m saying.’ Dolores finally turned towards the stairs. ‘Well, enjoy your evening, if I don’t see you later.’

  Yvonne watched her walking upstairs. That pleated skirt did nothing for her – if anything, it emphasised Dolores’s wide hips. If she even wore shoes with a bit of a heel sometimes, to give her some height, instead of those flat courts she always slopped around in. And her hair, like a bush around her face, just crying out for a good cut. She’d obviously let herself go since she’d pulled Martin.

  Not that Yvonne was any great authority on style. Unremarkable brownish-reddish hair cut into the same short bob for the past twenty years. A collection of reliable, but she suspected terribly boring, skirts and trouser suits hanging in her wardrobe since the year dot. No variation for a
ges in her shade of pink lipstick, despite the samples Clara kept bringing home from the make-up department at work.

  She hadn’t a clue how to apply eye make-up – anytime she tried, she ended up looking like some kind of demented banshee. Clara had attempted to teach her once or twice, but had quickly lost patience: ‘You’re useless, Mum, you don’t even try to do it properly.’ And she was right. Yvonne couldn’t summon up enough interest in eye shadow and mascara to make a real effort.

  Not that Greg ever minded what she looked like. There was never any pressure with him to be remotely attractive. He was just Greg, her late husband’s first cousin, whom she’d known for more than twenty years. He was like the brother she’d never had. Despite Dolores’s wishful thinking, this evening’s dinner with Greg couldn’t be further from a date.

  But at some stage, she was going to have to learn how to use make-up properly, like it or not. Because the next time she sat opposite a man in a restaurant, hopefully not too far into the future, she was determined to look as good as she could. First impressions counted for a lot, she knew that.

  She wondered how long it would take Peter to suggest a meeting. Of course they’d only been emailing for two weeks, it was early days. But he seemed nice, if a little serious, and Yvonne was curious to see if he lived up to his own description: blond hair, blue eyes, six feet tall, slim build. He sounded very interesting indeed. Pity he hadn’t posted his photo on the site – some members did – but then, Yvonne hadn’t put hers up either. Imagine if someone she knew saw it.

  She tried to picture Dolores’s face if she ever found out that Yvonne had joined an internet dating site. That would be worth seeing. Not that Yvonne had the remotest notion of telling her.

  Mind you, if someone had told Yvonne herself just three weeks ago that she’d be considering a date with a man who’d made contact with her over the internet, she’d have been just as surprised. But recently, after vowing for years that she’d never dream of going near those websites, she’d wondered if they’d be worth a try. What had she to lose? She could be totally anonymous, put up no photo, use a made-up name until she felt confident enough to reveal her real one.