The People Next Door

by Roisin Meaney

  ‘We haven’t got that much. This house isn’t exactly—’

  ‘So are you saying you don’t want her because we haven’t enough room? I thought you were worried about her losing her independence. Make up your mind.’

  She let out her anger then. ‘Your mother is well able to live on her own. You can visit her as often as you like – I’ll visit her. She can have all the company she needs.’

  ‘And she’ll still go to bed on her own every night, and wake up on her own.’

  ‘She did that no problem before she broke her hip. What’s changed now?’

  He looked at her then, a look that shocked her with its coldness. ‘Right then, since it’s clear you don’t want her, I’ll tell her we can’t keep her.’

  And he’d turned to go, and of course Kathryn, never able to bear his anger, had grabbed his arm to stop him. ‘Look, if it means that much to you …’

  He’d promised they’d still have time to themselves and they’d hardly know Grainne was there, and it wouldn’t make much difference at all, having her living with them.

  And Kathryn had nodded, as if she believed every word.

  In the two years since then she’d held her tongue. What good would it have done? Grainne was with them now – forever, it looked like. Oh, her house was still there, lying empty at the other end of town, but she showed not the slightest inclination to go back to it.

  And there wasn’t anyone who could help them out with her, who could take her for a couple of weeks now and again to give them time to themselves. Justin’s father William certainly wasn’t a candidate, having quietly departed the marriage twenty-nine years before to move in with his business partner’s fiancée.

  Justin’s only sister, Ann, lived in Spain – not that she would have been much use to them even if she’d been around the corner. According to Justin, his mother had hit the roof when Ann announced, at the age of twenty-one, that she was gay.

  ‘Told her never to darken her door again – I think she actually used that phrase. They haven’t laid eyes on each other since.’

  ‘How many years ago was that?’

  ‘Let’s see, it must be twelve now.’

  Twelve years without seeing your only daughter. Twelve Christmases. Twelve birthdays.

  ‘Did Ann ever try to make contact?’

  Justin shrugged. ‘She phoned a few times at the start, but Mother just hung up on her.’

  ‘Does Grainne ever ask you about her?’

  He shook his head. ‘She’s a stubborn woman, my mother.’

  Kathryn could think of several less charitable words than ‘stubborn’ to describe her mother-in-law. Now thirty-three, Ann Taylor lived in Seville with her partner Suzannah, an American artist she’d met one summer when they’d both taught English in Galicia. They’d opened a small restaurant and an even smaller adjoining craft shop, and they lived upstairs in a surprisingly spacious loft apartment full of Suze’s paintings and ceramics.

  Justin and Kathryn had spent a week there in the spring, two years before, and had sat every evening under the stars on the roof garden, wrapped in rough cream blankets and drinking red wine. Grainne’s name hadn’t come up once in the week.

  Suze had painted Kathryn lying in a hammock one afternoon, wearing a short red dress, one hand resting on her stomach and the other trailing over the side. She was dappled with sunshine, her cheeks were flushed and she looked perfectly happy. They’d brought the painting home, had it framed and hung it over their bed.

  Three weeks after that, Grainne had tripped over the flex of her iron and broken her hip.

  Now Kathryn took another sip of wine, conscious of her mother-in-law’s eyes on her, and cast around for a safe topic of conversation. Something that would move them away from her birthday.

  She turned to Justin. ‘Con’s retirement do is on Friday, isn’t it? Remind me to make a hair appointment tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I need my roots doing too.’ Grainne placed her knife and fork neatly side by side on her empty plate – nothing wrong with that appetite – and smiled at Kathryn. ‘Would you be a dear and make an appointment for me some afternoon?’

  ‘Of course.’ Kathryn began to gather plates. ‘I’ll try for Wednesday, will I? Might as well get the bargain.’

  Grainne’s smile slipped a little. ‘Any afternoon will do – it doesn’t have to be Wednesday.’

  ‘Right.’ Because Wednesday is half-price day for senior citizens and you don’t like being reminded that you’re one of them, even though you never lose an opportunity to remind me of my age. ‘I’ll just take the first free slot, then.’

  As Justin began to talk about the old mill up the lane finally being demolished – ‘I heard there’s going to be an arts centre there’ – Kathryn loaded the plates into the dishwasher and glanced out the window.

  There was Dan in next door’s garden, pushing that old hand mower of his through the grass. See how he was struggling – his lawn must be full of lumps and bumps. No wonder it was always such a fright. Kathryn kept meaning to offer him the loan of their petrol mower and kept forgetting to mention it when they met.

  He must be uncomfortable. Even from this distance, she could see his T-shirt clinging to his back. How long was this heatwave going to go on? Must be nearly a month already and no sign of a break in the weather. Not that she was complaining – Grainne did enough of that for all of them put together. The heat gave her migraines, it kept her awake at night, look how it was ruining the garden …

  As Kathryn was about to turn away from the window, an older man came out of the house next door and immediately Dan’s little grey cat hopped down from the bin he’d been sitting on. The man shouted something to Dan, who waved a hand and went on mowing. The man bent, vanishing from Kathryn’s view, and reappeared a second later holding the grey cat in his arms. Dan’s father, maybe, calling around to see how his son was coping with the breakup of his marriage.

  ‘Kath? Finish it?’ She turned to see Justin holding the almost empty wine bottle over her glass.

  Kathryn nodded. ‘Please.’ Let Grainne pinch her mouth together as much as she wanted, Kathryn would drink what she liked in her own house. She walked back to the table and picked up the potato dish.

  ‘Everyone ready for dessert? Raspberries and cream – I thought we might have them out on the patio.’

  And immediately Grainne said, as Kathryn had suspected she would, ‘Oh, in this heat? I’m sorry, dear, I don’t think I could stick it. And that lawnmower next door is making a terrible racket. You two go out and I’ll stay in here.’

  Kathryn gritted her teeth as she put the dish on the draining board. ‘Not at all – we’ll have it in here. It really doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Would you mind awfully?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ She turned to Justin. ‘Would you dish them out, love? They’re in the fridge. I’ll be back in a minute – just remembered a call I have to make.’

  Clara answered the phone. ‘Hang on, I think she’s out of the shower.’

  Kathryn heard her calling for Yvonne. She took deep breaths as she waited, sitting on the edge of her bed. Safely out of earshot.

  ‘Hi, what’s up?’

  ‘Look, I know it’s still miles away, but I wanted to invite you to my birthday party.’

  ‘What? You’ve certainly changed your tune – I thought you were dead against having anything. What’s brought this on?’

  ‘You mean who.’

  ‘Don’t tell me she’s worn you down?’

  Kathryn shook her head. ‘No – in a way, it’s the opposite. It’s my new strategy.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘Well, you know how she keeps on at me to do something for my birthday?’

  ‘Yeah, so you tell me.’

  ‘And it’s because she wants to draw as much attention to the age difference as she can, right?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do say so. I could throttle her sometimes. God, it’s such a re
lief to say that out loud. Anyway, I’ve decided that the best way to deal with her is to show her I don’t care, that it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I’m going to have a party and make sure everyone knows it’s because I’m forty-five.’

  ‘Good for you – take away her ammo. So, is it going to be a big bash?’

  Kathryn hesitated. ‘Well, maybe not that big. Just a few from work, and yourself, and Clara if she feels like it, a few bottles of champagne and nibbles probably. We’ll see. Hopefully she’ll take to her bed with a headache – sorry, a migraine – and we’ll be able to enjoy it.’

  Yvonne laughed. ‘By the way, I have to ask, have you met Dan’s new tenant yet?’

  ‘Tenant? I didn’t know there was one.’

  ‘There is. I met Dan the other day and he mentioned someone had moved in.’

  Kathryn remembered the man on the patio. ‘Oh, I did see someone just now. I thought he was Dan’s father.’

  ‘Oh, great – he’s that old? I was hoping he’d be eligible.’

  Kathryn laughed. ‘Actually no, he’s not that old, more … mellow. Quite pleasant looking, from what I could see. And speaking of pleasant looking men, how’s the internet hunt going?’

  Yvonne lowered her voice. ‘You do remember you’re sworn to secrecy, don’t you? Not even Justin – you promised.’

  ‘My lips are sealed. How many dates have you lined up?’

  ‘No dates yet, but one promising contact. We’ll have coffee at the weekend and I’ll fill you in. Now, I’d love to stay chatting, but I have to dash – Greg’s taking me out to dinner and I’m only half dressed.’

  As she hung up, Kathryn hoped again that Yvonne understood how careful she had to be – God only knew who she might meet through one of those sites. But maybe it was worth a try.

  Yvonne had made several attempts to meet men in the past – evening classes in everything from car maintenance to French, hill walking and amateur dramatics – and each of them had been a pretty impressive failure. She deserved to find someone nice this time.

  Kathryn walked downstairs and into the kitchen in time to hear Grainne complaining loudly about the raspberry seeds getting stuck in her teeth.

  Two days later, she phoned the hairdresser’s from work.

  ‘What are you having done?’ the girl asked her.

  Kathryn watched Justin across the open-plan room, bent over a computer in the accounts department. ‘I’m getting my roots touched up so my husband won’t leave me for a younger woman.’

  She heard the girl’s laugh. ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Oh, and I need to make an appointment for my mother-in-law too. Could you make that one for Wednesday afternoon, please? She’s a pensioner and she likes to get the half-price deal.’

  She hoped Justin wouldn’t look over at her. He’d wonder why she was smiling.

  Five days later: 21 June

  NUMBER EIGHT

  Dan waited for his pint to settle.

  Monday evening, this early, the only other people in the pub were two men playing cards in a corner. The younger one shuffled, splitting the deck cleanly, splicing the two stacks together with a quick rattle, gathering up the full deck and thumping it on the table once, twice, then repeating the sequence. A single crutch leaned against a nearby chair.

  The air in the small pub was heavy. A late afternoon sunbeam, glimmering with dust motes, slanted in through the front window and threw a yellow pool onto the wooden floor. A fly darted around the room, landing briefly on tabletops and chair backs. The older card player slapped his open palm onto the table and said something that made his companion laugh.

  The barman leaned on the counter reading the paper and picking absently at a scab on one of his knuckles. Dan didn’t know him, had never been in this pub before, on the far side of Belford. He supposed that was why Ali had suggested it – no danger of bumping into anyone they knew.

  He was early. She wasn’t due for another twenty minutes, but he’d got sick of trying to proofread the same few paragraphs over and over. His mind couldn’t settle on the frozen food market in Holland, kept jumping about, pulling up images he’d spent the last few weeks trying to forget.

  The first time they’d gone out, a few days after she’d allegedly saved his life, it was to a play in what used to be a church in Listowel’s main square. Her choice – he’d asked her if she’d like to go for a drink and she’d said, ‘Actually, I’d rather see a play, if it’s all the same to you.’

  He kept glancing sideways at her, safe in the dimness of the theatre. She wore glasses, little purple-rimmed oval ones that should have clashed with her coppery hair. At the interval she drank rum and Coke with two slices of lemon and no ice and laughed at Dan’s Homer Simpson socks. During the second half, she reached across and took his hand and held it lightly on her thigh. He felt the heat of her, remembered her body in the yellow bikini she’d worn on the beach, and promptly got an erection.

  In John B Keane’s pub afterwards she told him about Picasso. ‘He’s adorable – completely grey with these huge dark blue eyes. He’s tiny – he still falls over when he tries to wash himself. D’you like cats?’

  ‘Er, yeah, I suppose so.’ It wasn’t a complete lie. He might like cats if he ever lived with one. He might feel differently about them if he owned one.

  They got pizza slices at a takeaway afterwards – dried up pepperoni, past-their-best mushrooms – that they fed, in the end, to a stray dog they met on the main street. Outside her B and B she had said, ‘Well, I’d ask you in, but …’

  Her perfume was warm and heady. She had half leaned, half sat against the stone wall outside the house and hooked her index fingers through his belt loops. His three pints gave him the courage to take her face in his hands and brush his lips against hers. As he was about to draw back, she put a hand behind his head, opened her mouth and bit his bottom lip, just hard enough to bring his erection hurrying back. He pressed his hips against her and she laughed softly into his mouth.

  ‘Down, boy.’

  The first bed they shared was in a little hotel in Lisdoonvarna, three weeks later. The sheets were decidedly nubbly. Neither of them noticed until the morning.

  He’d forgotten her birthday last year and she’d thrown a shoe – one of his – at him.

  She’d cried when Picasso arrived home after a two-day absence, minus the tip of his tail.

  She couldn’t eat strawberries without black pepper. Honey brought her out in a rash. She had strong political views. She slept on her stomach.

  She’d stood in front of him two months ago and said, ‘Look, I’m in love with Brendan.’

  With Brendan – so of course Dan had known she was joking. Uncle Brendan, who’d given them a cheque for two hundred euro as a wedding present. Who’d danced with the bride like all the other men, who’d kissed her cheek when she and Dan were leaving for the hotel at Dublin Airport.

  Brendan, who’d helped them move into the redbrick house they’d bought just before the wedding, then stayed to share their first takeaway dinner there.

  Brendan, the only one of his mother’s brothers who’d never got married.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Dan had said, smiling. ‘You and Brendan, love’s young dream. Stop messing around and come and eat this before it gets cold.’

  But of course she hadn’t. They’d already eaten their last meal together, and he’d had no idea.

  And this afternoon, all afternoon, the thought that he was about to come face to face with her again – the first time since that horrendous night – had kept him from giving a tuppenny damn about the frozen food market in Holland.

  Finally he’d clicked his laptop shut and come away early. Might as well be sitting over a pint as over a job he couldn’t concentrate on.

  His stomach rumbled and he was tempted to ask the barman if he did sandwiches – he’d been too keyed up to eat lunch – but then he thought of the steak that was waiting for him when he got home, with Kieran’s spicy pepper sauce that took
the roof off your mouth. He’d keep his appetite for that. Better go easy on the pints though.

  He wondered what Ali would say if she knew he was buying fillet steaks on a regular basis these days. In the two years they’d been together, they’d probably eaten steak half a dozen times – and most of those times would have been in a restaurant. He wondered if she still hated cooking or if she and— His mind refused to go any further with that thought. He couldn’t bear to imagine them doing anything together, even something as innocent as cooking a meal.

  Or not so innocent. He remembered trying to make pancakes one Shrove Tuesday, remembered Ali dipping a spoon into the jug of batter and pasting it solemnly into his hair, then running from him, shrieking, when he’d tried to get even.

  He remembered how that night had ended up. How she’d washed his hair, poured jugfuls of hot water over his head, sitting opposite him in the bath.

  He picked up his pint and took a deep, savage swallow.

  In the corner, one of the card players laughed loudly, swooping on the small bunch of coins on the table and sweeping them towards him.

  The phone in the hall had rung two nights ago. He’d been upstairs, had heard Kieran coming out from the kitchen to take it. Had listened for the shout that he knew would come.

  ‘Dan? For you.’

  He’d waited until the second hand of his watch had crawled jerkily from three to seven, then got up and walked downstairs, taking his time. Straightening a picture that didn’t need to be straightened. Tapping with his middle finger on the banisters as he walked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dan, it’s me.’ She sounded hesitant.

  He said nothing. He could hear her breathing as she waited.

  ‘Who was that who answered the phone?’

  ‘A friend.’ What right had she to know how she’d changed his life? How she’d forced him to change his life?

  ‘Right … you got my letter.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I did.’ Not an inch would he give her. He turned his hand over and studied his nails. They needed clipping. There was a fresh slit in the wood of the banister, about three inches long and quite deep. He wondered how Kieran had managed it.