‘I’ll remember that,’ Luca looked amused.
‘Fundamental rights. Just because my job is a domestic waste issue, doesn’t mean that it’s any less important than any other job. I’m not afraid to stand up to radical attacks.’
‘Do you get a lot of that around here?’ Luca asked.
‘With your mother as a boss. Yeah.’
‘Oh I like him,’ Charlie whispered to Stella. ‘When you asked me to do this favour, Stella, you never told me it was going to be so much fun!’
‘I’m not sure it’s like this in here every day,’ Stella answered.
‘Louis, you can relax. Your job is safe. Now if you put as much energy into doing the bins as you do running your mouth …’
‘Mrs B loves me really,’ Louis said, reaching for a second bar.
‘I can see that,’ Luca replied.
‘Did you eat yet today?’ Rea asked, grabbing the bar from him. He shrugged in response.
She pulled out some ham and quickly made him a sandwich. ‘None of Stella’s gorgeous lunch is left, but this will do ya.’
They all watched him as he wolfed down the two cuts of bread in a couple of mouthfuls.
‘Dave ate the last of the bread for his breakfast before he left,’ he said, gulping down a glass of the pink lemonade.
‘Earring guy?’
‘Yep. He’s there most nights. On the plus side, there’s pizza for dinner every night.’
‘Every cloud …’
He nodded. ‘Right, I’ve places to be, have you anything else for the bins?’
Rea walked into her utility and pulled out two black sacks. ‘The black bin bag is for the general waste, the white one for the recycling bin.’
‘I know! I’ll be back on Saturday.’ He threw a look at Luca, as if to say, don’t be thinking about muscling in on my turf.
‘Where’d you find him?’ Luca asked with amusement.
‘He lives across the road. His mam is a nice woman, but is led by her heart rather than her head.’
‘In other words, she’s a man-eater,’ Charlie said seriously.
‘Stop!’ Stella warned, but Rea laughed in response.
‘She forgets that she’s got a young fella who needs feeding sometimes when she falls in love. That’s all.’
‘Does he come here a lot?’ Luca asked.
‘Sometimes he comes every day, other times I can’t find head nor tail of him. He’s been particularly bad lately. But I wouldn’t trade him. He makes me laugh.’
‘Well, that’s good then,’ Luca said and Stella watched him closely to see if he meant that or was being smart. No sign of a smirk on his face whatsoever.
‘Listen, I think it’s time we left. You must be tired from travelling, from, wherever you travelled from …’
‘Western Australia.’
So that’s where he’d been. ‘Rea, I’ll pop over in a day or two if that’s okay?’ Stella asked.
‘Course it is,’ Rea said, hugging her tight. ‘Thank you for today.’
Charlie hugged her tightly too, as if she was an old, dear friend. ‘I don’t do house calls for many, but as far as I’m concerned you are now one of my regulars.’ He handed her a business card. ‘Here’s my number. Just call me when you want me back.’
And then, loaded up with their bags, Stella and Charlie left. Rea wiped down the kitchen table for the second time and Luca said, ‘would you sit still for five seconds and just ask me.’
‘Ask you what?’
‘The question that has been burning you since I walked in the front door.’
Rea took a deep breath and turned to face her son, ‘Is your father with you?’
Chapter 28
REA
Luca’s face softened. ‘I’m sorry, Mam, I’m on my own. Dad is … well, he’s still in Australia. He doesn’t know I’m here. He thinks I’m away on business in Sydney.’
Rea felt disappointment flood her. She had hoped that George was back too, that he was waiting outside, to see how the land lay. She was ready to forgive and forget, why couldn’t he? She was stupid for even thinking for a second he would have come. She turned away from Luca to gather herself. She didn’t want him to see how upset she was.
‘Mam, are you okay?’ Luca was behind her, his hand lightly touching her arm. She longed to turn around and tell him, ‘No, I’ve not been okay for over a decade and I’m never likely to be.’ Instead, she said, sharper than she intended, ‘why are you here, what do you want?’
‘I wanted to see you. I missed you.’ The look on his face brought Rea back to when he was a boy.
‘You said the same thing to me a long time ago. Oh, it must be near on thirty years ago. You’d gone off with the scouts camping. But you hated it, thumbed a lift home and landed on our doorstep. You nearly sent me and your father to an early grave. The guards had been called, neighbours and friends all over the city were out looking for you. And then you walked in, not a bother on you. Your father and I wept with relief. Your dad said to me, afterwards, that he didn’t know whether to hug you or kick you in your arse. And when I asked you what you were thinking of, just upping and leaving like that, without a by your leave to your scout leaders, you said the very same thing to me. “I missed you. I wanted to see you”.’
‘It was true then and it’s true now.’
Rea closed her eyes. Every night in her dreams she went back to that time, when the children were young. Her happy place. And every morning when she awoke and felt fresh pain that her family were gone, she wanted to close her eyes again. It was nice there. It was pain-free. It was love. He touched her hand lightly and it seared her skin. Since George left, she’d not felt the touch of another human being. Then Stella came tumbling into her life and suddenly everything was changing.
Luca was back at number 72. Why had he stayed away so long? Why had he turned his back on her, though, when she needed him most?
‘The hardest thing I’ve ever done was staying away, breaking all contact with you,’ he said, reading her mind.
‘Then why do it?’ Rea screamed, ‘Why cut off all ties, when I needed you the most? When your father left me. When I’d lost everyone.’
‘It went against everything I believed, Mam. You brought us up to respect and take care of each other. That’s always been the way we rolled in this house.’
‘It was how I was brought up and your father too,’ Rea replied. ‘All that matters is us, our family. But you seemed to have forgotten that.’
Luca looked wounded again by her words. He took a deep breath, then said, ‘I think we are all guilty of that in some way or other, Mam. We’re not the same family we were. We’ve changed and not for the better. It felt as though our family became consumed with fear, pain, hurt and so much grief I couldn’t breathe any more. Neither could Dad. You said some harsh things to us. Mam you have to admit it, you pushed us away.’
Rea walked towards him, her voice rising with emotion. ‘I never meant any of those things I said to you. I apologised as soon as I said them. I don’t hold you responsible for what happened to this family. It was wrong of me to say it back then.’
Luca looked at her, then said, ‘But there was truth in those words, as hard as they were to hear. Maybe if I hadn’t gone to Australia in the first place, Elise and Dad would still be here. We all would be here, living our best lives.’
‘Maybe,’ Rea said. ‘Maybe not. Elise would probably have gone anyhow. She had wanderlust in her blood.’
‘We’ll never know, will we?’ Luca replied. ‘Dad was a mess when he came over to me. I couldn’t believe my eyes when he arrived over there. He’d aged, literally aged on that flight from Ireland. Why did you let him go, Mam? Why?’
‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, not throwing myself at his feet begging him to stay. But he couldn’t understand this … this disease I have. And it is a disease. I’ve tried so hard to find a way to move on, get over this all-consuming fear, but I just can’t. You have no idea what I’ve
been through, trying to beat this. Do you think I like living like this?’
‘No, Mam, I don’t believe I do,’ Luca’s voice was flat with sadness.
‘But we were fighting constantly. He kept coming home with all these grand gestures, thinking he could fix me. He’d arrange dinner in our favourite restaurant. Or book tickets to the theatre. A day at the spa, a weekend break to Wexford. He tried them all. But what he never seemed to realise was that I couldn’t just “snap out of it”, I couldn’t get into the car with him and switch off this bloody fear I have. And don’t think for one minute that I don’t know how irrational it is. I know that. But I can’t help it, Luca. Just the thought of leaving this house destroys me. Destroys me, do you hear? The fear has taken over my life and I’m drowning in it, but I can’t swim my way out of it. I’ve tried, I really have, but I can’t …’ Rea couldn’t continue any more, her body wracked with emotion as she tried for the one hundredth time to make her family understand what it was like for her.
‘It’s okay, Mam. Don’t upset yourself. It’s okay.’ Luca soothed her and tears glistened in his eyes as he saw the pain his mother was in.
‘I don’t want to live like this any more. I’m a mother and a wife, living by herself with nobody to take care of. All I’ve ever known as an adult is to take care of my family. It’s who I am. But I’ve nobody now.’
Rea was on a roll now and couldn’t stop, ‘I’ve tried so hard to beat this, but each time I’ve failed. Do you know that only a few weeks ago a parcel arrived for me? My kettle broke and I had no choice but to order one online. And it arrived while I was upstairs in the shower. The postman was kind enough to leave it behind the flower pot, just in front of the front porch. But it took me hours, crawling on my stomach, inch by inch, to reach my hand out to pick it up. The more my body was outside, the more I sweated, the more my stomach cramped up, the more I thought I’d pass out.’
‘Oh Mam,’ Luca was distraught at his mother’s words. How had things gotten so bad?
‘I don’t understand it, so I don’t expect you to either. But it’s real. And if you’ve come back to tell me to snap out of it, to just pull myself together, don’t bother. There’s no one harder on themselves than I am. There’s nothing you can say to me that I haven’t said to myself already.’
Rea stood up and walked to the fridge, pulling out a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a bottle of Pilsner.
‘You have some of my beer?’ Luca asked.
‘Of course. And Club Milks and Tayto crisps. I buy all of my family’s favourites every week. There’s quite a stock of them all here. Old habits die hard.’
She placed two glasses on the table and Luca poured her a glass of wine and himself a beer.
Luca said, ‘I used to tell myself that all families had some degree of dysfunction. Ours was no better nor worse than others. But when Dad left you and arrived on my doorstep, the fantasy that our family was going to be okay again disappeared.’
Rea shook her head and said, ‘I’m so sorry. I really am.’
‘It’s just that all that time I was away, my constant, my anchor, was the thought of you both here at home, together. And suddenly when Dad stood there, his shoulders hunched, his face aged with grief and sorrow, that all shattered. All I was left with was memories of a time that I no longer trusted was true. Everything I used to believe was true … gone. Elise, Dad and you, it was too much, Mam.’
‘Your memories were no illusion! We had a good life here,’ Rea cried. ‘We loved you, George and me. We loved the bones of the both of you. Our every thought, our every hope and dream was centred around you two.’
‘I know, Mam. I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to upset you. I’m sorry.’
Rea looked at her son and reached up to brush back his hair from his face. ‘There’s been too much regret in this house. You’ve done nothing wrong. None of us have. But something bad happened and we’re broken. Maybe that’s just our fate. Maybe we need to just pick up the broken shards as best we can, without cutting ourselves.’
‘When Dad came to Australia, my first instinct was to fly home to you. My heart broke thinking of you here on your own.’
‘I survived,’ Rea said and closed her mind to the days when she prayed that her heart would stop beating, so she could end her living hell, to only a few short weeks ago, when she contemplated ending it all.
‘Dad and I spoke for days and days, worrying about what we should do to help you. But Dad was tired from years of trying to help you, watch you decline. He’s heartbroken. He misses you. He loves you. But he couldn’t stay in this house any longer, living like that.’
‘Your dad has nothing to reproach himself about. He was a good husband, an even better father. He had to leave. He needed to be with you. He missed his children every bit as much as me and he refused to live away from you one more day.’
‘I know,’ Luca sighed. ‘We both tried to understand Mam. We really did. Dad nearly came home, you know.’
‘Really?’ Rea sat up, hope once more sparking inside her.
‘We thought that perhaps the best thing we could do was to stay away. That if we gave you time to yourself, without us breathing down your necks, calling you, or skyping you, then you could work out your demons yourself … ‘
‘Oh if it were that easy. Because, I’ve had over a year now on my own and there’s been no strolls around town with an alleluia, amen and praise the lord, I’m cured!’
Luca laughed, ‘funny as ever. Look, we’re idiots, Dad and I. But we’re making it up as best we can. We thought, sure we haven’t been able to help so far, with all our pep talks, so maybe staying away was the answer. But you have to believe me when I say that it was bloody hard. It went against the grain. I kept thinking: I’m letting Mam down.’
Rea didn’t contradict him. ‘You got that much right, anyhow.’ But she smiled as she said it, to take any sting from her rebuke.
‘Dad misses you.’
‘So you said. Yet he’s not here.’
‘He frets, he worries. He’s not right without you. I don’t think he knows what to do.’
And any anger that she felt towards George disappeared in that instant.
‘How does he like it in Oz?’
‘He’s like a fish out of water. Keeps forgetting to put factor on himself and has sun burnt himself several times.’
‘The daft eejit,’ Rea said, but her heart leapt at his words. ‘He never put sun cream on here unless I told him too. Luca, I miss him so much. My every waking thought is about him and you two children.’
‘He wants to come back. But he doesn’t know how to live with you, like this. He can’t watch you, a prisoner in your own world of pain. He can’t live here with the memories. It’s too hard for him.’
Rea stood up and paced around the kitchen table, ‘I tried my best to make it easier for him. I kept quiet whenever he argued with me, trying to get me to go out for dinner. I knew that every time I said no, I disappointed him. I could see it in his eyes. I knew that every time he pleaded with me to just go out into the garden for five minutes, even, I was making him so mad when I said no. Life became a daily grind of me being on edge, cautious and scared.’
‘That must have been very hard for you,’ Luca acknowledged.
‘You know what the hardest moment for me was? The moment I realised that he felt the same way. On edge, cautious and scared. My illness was killing him. So when he said he had to leave, that he needed to see you, how could I stop him? I had to watch my love, my heart, my husband, walk out of my life and I was powerless to do anything to stop him.’
Rea started to cry, fat tears of frustration, loss and guilt dropping onto the kitchen table. Luca walked over and hugged her close. She leaned into her son, remembering his scent, his touch and she wept.
‘It’s okay, Mam. I’m here now and I’ll not leave you. I’m going to help you.’
‘I’m beyond help, son. I’ve gotten worse, not better. I’m broken. And the best thi
ng you can do is to walk away too.’
Chapter 29
STELLA
It had been a tough week. Stella had tried to give Rea and Luca some space. She heard raised voices every now and then, which was a really strange feeling. She got to understand a little about what it must be like for Rea, to be an unwitting eavesdropper on next door’s domestics.
She was thrown by Luca’s arrival. She didn’t want to be that person who thinks, ‘it’s all about me,’ but in truth, his arrival complicated things for her. Rea was the first person she had ever opened up to about Matt. She trusted her. Then Charlie became part of it too. But Luca? She didn’t know him. Who was to say that he wouldn’t let something slip to Matt if he saw him? She didn’t want the whole word knowing her business. Okay, Luca wasn’t the whole word, but even so. She’d spent so long just being on her own it was disconcerting that her world had suddenly become bigger.
She hated that she worried what people thought of her, but she did. She could imagine the judgement he and others would make. A woman with no backbone. Weak. Why stay with a man who treated her so badly?
Why indeed? At first Stella was in shock, she supposed. Then she rallied and tried to become the wife that Matt needed. That didn’t work either. And then, as he slowly chipped away at her self-confidence, she began to withdraw into fear. And when she let fear back into her life, it grew and overcame her, until she was paralysed by it all. She lost who Stella was. She ceased to exist.
Stella wanted to scream at the world that she wasn’t always like this. There was a time when she was brave and fearless, afraid of nothing. But most of the world had no idea who she really was. Her world now only knew part of her. There were whole universes hidden inside of her that nobody knew existed. Not even Matt.
Maybe the girl she once was still existed somewhere deep inside, because she was ready to fight back. She had saved half of her generous weekly allowance that Matt gave her. Swapping the more expensive shops for supermarkets meant she only needed a fraction of what he gave her. He didn’t need to know that. She left the cash at Rea’s. She hoped that she didn’t need to run, that she could plan her departure, so that she had money, but this was her back-up.
The Woman at 72 Derry Lane Page 17