And he didn’t know how much longer his mother could even live with him. Nursing homes cost money, much more money than he had or could get.
‘They need to go upstairs,’ she said now. ‘Did I tell you that? It’s for the view.’
Andrew frowned. ‘The view?’
The ad break had ended and now some greasy young politician was waving at the audience from the top of the set’s stairs.
‘Yeah,’ his mother said. ‘The view. I told you that.’
She hadn’t. But this had a ring of truth to it, of logic. These developers, they were planning to build holiday homes here. You couldn’t see the sea from ground level and, two storeys up, you could only see it from certain angles. It made sense that they would want to go to the highest point of the house and see what they could see from there.
‘Did you hear me, love?’
‘Yeah,’ Andrew said absently. His pulse had quickened.
‘They need to go upstairs.’
‘I heard you.’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘Mmm.’ He had closed his eyes again and was touring the upstairs of the house in his mind’s eye, which was even worse than down here, covered as it was in a thick layer of dirt and dust, filled with even more things, choked with even heavier air and—
‘You’d want to get rid of that stuff.’
He opened his eyes. ‘What?’
‘You’d want to get rid of that stuff, I said.’
Andrew almost said, What stuff? But he quickly swallowed those words because he didn’t want to hear her say the answer, didn’t want confirmation that even though it had been months since she’d been upstairs, he’d kept his stuff up there long before that, and although she’d never mentioned it before now, she’d known all along that he had.
What had she seen?
What did she know?
‘I pray for you, Andy love. I do.’ His mother sighed, long and loud. ‘I pray that the good Lord will save your soul.’ She paused. ‘Did you hear me?’
‘Let’s get that skip,’ he said.
‘What was that now?’
‘I said, let’s get that skip.’
They needed to make the sale. He needed to make the sale, he saw now. Because his mother was just hell-bent on interfering with things, wasn’t she? She wasn’t as stupid as she looked after all.
And it was time, Andrew decided, for her to go into a home.
September had always been Natalie’s favourite month. New copybooks, blue skies, fresh starts. On Stephen’s Green, the leaves were turning. In the ten minutes it took her to cut through the park, she counted three Instagram Husbands, each one peering intently into a phone that was trained on a girl or a woman who wasn’t looking at it or him at all, but away, into the middle distance, smiling with her mouth open, shoulders hunched, head angled to the side, acting as if she didn’t even know this perfectly composed shot of her looking glossy and ethereal was even being taken. Natalie had spent the last half-hour with a woman who’d advised her to start posting more photos to Instagram that looked just like that, and she didn’t know how she felt about it.
Ellie Fox called herself a brand manager. That’s what it said on her business cards. She’d given Natalie one at some function long ago, but it was only today that they’d finally sat down for a proper meeting. Now Natalie’s head was swarming with the possibilities Ellie’s services would offer. Higher ad revenue. Partnerships. Sponsored travel. She’d even mentioned a company who would professionally edit your videos before they went online; if Natalie signed with her, she’d have access to it. Although she’d long suspected some of the big accounts must have that kind of thing at their disposal, it was weird to know for sure, as if someone had just yanked back the curtain. But Natalie knew she needed to wise up, to get smart about things. To treat this endeavour like a business, to scale it up. They had a mortgage now, a whopper of one, and Natalie wanted to get to a place where thinking of the future – five years down the line, ten – didn’t automatically make her throat tighten.
Bestseller was relatively empty so Natalie could see immediately that Carla wasn’t there. They’d known each other since they were kids and in all that time Carla had never once been on time, so it wasn’t surprising.
The café was a small space with few tables, but it was cosy and did great coffee and had walls lined with books. Natalie nabbed their usual table, right at the back. She ordered an Americano, which she’d all but drained when Carla came bustling in fifteen minutes later, flushed and apologetic and out of breath.
‘Sorry,’ she said, leaning down to give Natalie a one-armed hug. ‘Work is a fucking nightmare. We’re trying to get this funding proposal in …’ She flopped down. ‘You know what? I’m not even going to get into it. The short version is the place is an absolute shit-show and I really need a coffee the size of my head.’ She looked around for a waiter, then back at Natalie. ‘Anyway. You. How goes it?’
‘Good,’ Natalie said. ‘I’ve just come from a meeting. A bit of an exciting one, actually.’
‘Oh? What about?’
‘Well, this is going to sound weird, but—’
‘What can I get for you, ladies?’
A waiter had materialised alongside them.
‘A coffee, please,’ Carla said to him. ‘An Americano. A big one. The biggest one you have.’
Natalie ordered a fresh cup.
‘Honestly,’ Carla said once he’d left them alone again, ‘if I don’t get some caffeine into me soon … How can it only be Tuesday? This week feels like a fortnight long already.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway. Sorry. I interrupted you. You were saying something’s weird?’
‘Yeah. I, ah, I met with a manager this morning.’
‘A manager of what?’
‘Of brands, technically speaking. But really people. She’s kind of like an agent.’
Carla raised her eyebrows. ‘An agent?’
‘I know, I know. It sounds like premium arseholery, but I—’
‘Why do you need one of those?’
Natalie told herself she was imagining the stress she’d heard on the you.
‘It’s not so much that I need one, exactly. More that I could benefit from one. She seems to think I could, anyway. Of course, she would say that, she’s trying to get me to hire her. But she was talking about brand partnerships and sponsored holidays and all sorts of stuff. And how it’s all about micro-influencers these days. Apparently.’
‘Your favourite word,’ Carla said wryly.
‘Now with added notions.’
‘Micro-influencers – what does it even mean?’
‘Small-timers,’ Natalie explained. ‘I think. Basically. The big names with a zillion followers are charging loads, so brands have copped on to the fact that if they get a group of relative nobodies to post about their products instead, they’ll get the same audience numbers but for half the price.’
‘How many followers do you have now?’
Natalie shifted in her seat. She didn’t like saying the figure. Even though it was online for all to see, saying it aloud felt wrong. Obnoxious. Like sharing your annual salary, when your annual salary was a lot.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘A hundred thousand or so?’ The number was actually 103,149. Natalie had checked before meeting Ellie. Carla’s expression was unreadable; a change of subject felt like the safest option. ‘Anyway, the manager, she was lovely. You’d like her. You actually might know her, she was at Trinity when you were. Ellie Fox?’
Carla shook her head. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’
A beat passed.
‘So what’s going on at work, then?’ Natalie asked. ‘Same shit or new shit?’
‘Same shit, but more of it than ever.’ Carla’s boss was a tyrant on the verge of retirement who delighted in making life hell for all his subordinates. He’d made her hate what had once been her dream job. But as a civil servant, her best option was to grin and bear it until the bastard’s pension kicke
d in a few months from now. ‘Maybe I should get in on this Instagram thing. What do you think? Is there a gap in the market for a thirty-one-year-old who lives with her parents, works in a museum and spends all day dreaming of violent ways to kill her boss?’
Natalie felt herself bristle at this Instagram thing and then immediately admonished herself for being overly sensitive.
‘I’m sure there is,’ she said. ‘I’d follow you.’
The coffee arrived. Carla downed a gulp of hers like it was cold water in the desert.
‘He’s worse than ever,’ she said then, wiping foam from her mouth. ‘I’m not sure how much longer I can hang on for. Really. You don’t know how bloody lucky you are, Nat.’
Natalie thought that she did, actually. But she didn’t correct Carla. Now wasn’t the time.
‘Hey,’ she said instead, ‘I’ve an idea. I’ve been invited to this drinks thing on Friday night at the Westbury. They said I can bring a plus-one. Canapés and prosecco and a goody bag. I’m going for the bag, obviously. You should come. Free night out. With free stuff.’
‘Thanks,’ Carla said, ‘but fuck no. Kim K wannabes chewing one too many teeth-whitening strips? I’d rather be at work.’
Natalie felt her cheeks colour.
‘It’s not that bad,’ she said. ‘Most of the girls are lovely. And smart, hard-working businesswomen.’
Carla rolled her eyes.
‘Yeah, I’m sure it’s incredibly taxing to be at home on your phone all day in your pyjamas without anyone bossing you around. God. Won’t someone start a charity for them or something?’ She saw Natalie’s face. ‘I don’t mean you. Obviously.’
‘No, I know.’
The pause that followed was more than long enough to qualify as an awkward silence.
‘I really like her glasses,’ Carla said then, jerking her head towards the front of the café.
Natalie got the distinct impression Carla was just saying something to fill the dead air, but she played along. When she turned to look, she saw a woman a few years older than them seated on the other side of the café, blonde and slim, wearing a sharp black blazer over black jeans. Her hair was in one of those perfectly neat, sleek ponytails that Natalie, no matter what length her hair was, had never been able to master. The women’s glasses were black too – thick, trendy frames with some designer insignia on the side. She looked to be engrossed in her phone.
‘Yeah,’ Natalie said. ‘They’re nice.’
Carla asked how Mike was.
‘Oh, he’s fine. Obsessed with the house. And we don’t even have the keys yet – we’re supposed to be getting them this weekend.’
‘That’s exciting,’ Carla said in a tone that didn’t match the words.
‘Yeah …’
Natalie didn’t want to go on too much about the house. Not when Carla was still stuck in her childhood bedroom and years away from being able to afford to buy. And she had just bought a place with four bedrooms in the most expensive postcode in the country and was paying her half with the money she made off playing with her phone.
She was trying to think of a topic of conversation that wouldn’t immediately run aground when Carla’s phone started to blare, interrupting the pleasant, clinking hum of café background noise.
When Carla said, ‘I have to go,’ Natalie felt sorry for her friend.
But also, a little relieved.
_________
The house was finally theirs, but also a jungle. Cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes were stacked in every room, kept company by the odd suitcase, overstuffed refuse bag, plastic carton and hanging rail. Each morning for the last five, Natalie had got up, shared a coffee with Mike before he ran to the DART and then started thwacking away at it, box by bag by case.
This morning, she was going to make a start on her office.
She’d been neglecting And Breathe ever since they’d got the keys a week ago; by now there were probably hundreds of direct messages and comments clamouring for her attention, as well as a stack of emails from PR contacts awaiting her response. She also needed to get back to Ellie, who’d sent on an official contract.
Natalie was hoping that if she got things in the office sorted, she’d be motivated to spend some solid time at her desk.
She’d commandeered the smallest of the three bedrooms to be the new And Breathe HQ. Mike had kindly spent yesterday evening piecing together IKEA bookshelves and securing them along one wall in there. The room was filled with more boxes than any other, but here the boxes were small and had their old address on them: deliveries. Stuff Natalie had been buying online for the office, or stuff she’d been sent for it. It was going to be like Christmas morning opening them all up and she was childishly excited about it.
Before she did anything else, Natalie picked up her phone and took a 360-degree video of the room. ‘Good morning, everyone!’ she narrated. ‘I know, I know – I’ve been a bit quiet on here the last few days but as you know, we moved into our new house and it’s just been crazy. We’re drowning in boxes but progress is being made. And guess what I’m doing today? My office! I’m trying to act cool but I’m actually really excited about this. Stay tuned!’ She posted the video to Instagram and set the phone aside on a shelf.
Natalie was slicing through the tape on the first box when she heard the doorbell go.
She thought, Postman.
She assumed postman.
But a short, broad woman was who she found outside. She was dressed in an unflatteringly long and shapeless raincoat that reached her ankles, and sporting a head of frizzy, too-bleached shoulder-length hair. It was impossible to tell what age the woman was. She could’ve been anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five.
‘Hi,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Ah, hi …?’ Natalie had no idea who the woman was.
The stranger’s eyes raked her up and down. Natalie crossed her arms, feeling exposed. She was dressed for unpacking dusty boxes: a pair of grey, baggy sweatpants and a wrinkled, misshapen T-shirt in mourning for its bright white past. She hadn’t brushed her hair or teeth yet and her feet were in mismatched socks.
‘I hope I haven’t disturbed you,’ the woman said, frowning.
‘No, no. I was just – we just—’ Natalie took a breath, smiled, restarted. ‘Unpacking. I’m unpacking. We’ve just moved in.’
‘Oh, I know. That’s why I’m here. I wanted to give you this.’ The woman raised a small pink flowerpot with two hands, like it was a religious offering. It was filled with pink and white carnations and sprays of wilting baby’s breath. A mini ‘New Home’ card was resting among the blooms and the handle had been wrapped in ringlets of Barbie-pink ribbon. It looked like something you’d give your grandmother that you’d picked up last minute in a petrol station forecourt on the way to her house, but Natalie appreciated the gesture.
She thought, Neighbour.
She assumed neighbour.
Neighbours were a new thing. Mike and Natalie had spent the last five years in the effortless anonymity of city centre apartment blocks, where they might nod and smile and murmur, ‘Hi, how are you?’ to the other residents they passed in the hall or the car park or met at the letterboxes, but that was it. If even that. Natalie had once had a conversation with the woman who’d lived directly opposite and this had made her feel justified in saying, Well, I do know one of my neighbours … until the day she saw a completely different person emerge from the same door and realised that the woman had packed up, moved out and moved on without her even knowing. Now they were homeowners, on a residential street, in a mature area, as the estate agent had said a hundred times. There was a duty to be neighbourly.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, taking the pot. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’m Natalie, by the way.’
The woman beamed. ‘Alice.’
When they shook hands, Natalie felt rough skin. When she looked down, she glimpsed cracked, flaky knuckles and flesh swelling horribly around a too-tight gold ring.
&n
bsp; ‘Have you lived here long?’ Natalie asked.
‘Gosh, I must be in Dublin ten years now. Eleven? To tell you the truth, I’ve lost track.’
‘It seems like a lovely street.’
Alice looked behind her. ‘It’s a fantastic street. Really. I love this area. And this house. You’re so lucky. I’m in an apartment, myself.’
There was a complex of 1970s red-brick apartment blocks down at the end of the road, facing the beach.
‘Is it one of the ones with a sea view?’ Natalie asked. ‘I always think that must be lovely to wake up to.’
‘God, no,’ Alice said. ‘I wish!’
‘Still. It’s nice to be so close to the water.’ She paused. ‘Well …’ Natalie glanced back over her shoulder, thinking of the unpacked boxes upstairs. ‘Thanks so much for this. It’s lovely. And I really appreciate it.’
A shadow crossed Alice’s face.
‘You’re very busy,’ she said flatly. ‘I get it.’
Natalie realised she’d said the wrong thing. She was failing miserably at being neighbourly and she’d only been at it a couple of minutes.
‘Actually, I was just about to make some coffee. Would you like a cup?’
Alice visibly brightened. ‘Oh, I’d love some. You have one of those fancy machines, don’t you?’
Natalie laughed. Are we that obvious? ‘We do, but I’m afraid it’s lost in a box somewhere. We’re surviving with paper filters until we find it.’ She stepped aside, beckoning Alice in. ‘It’s Boxes ’R’ Us in here at the moment. Please excuse the mess. The living room isn’t too bad; there’s space to sit down in there, at least.’ She motioned for Alice to go and do that. ‘How do you take your coffee?’
‘With a little milk, please.’
‘I’ll be right back.’
Natalie went into the kitchen. One of Mike’s moving responsibilities had been to prepare a box of kitchen stuff just to get them through the move and, clearly not anticipating company, he’d only put two mugs in there, both of them novelties. His was the present she’d got him from Hairy Baby: the Jaws 2 poster with the, ‘It’s a different shark’ Father Ted quote. Hers was one of the many caffeine-themed gifts she’d got over the years: a black mug that said, in white lettering, ‘What do we want? Coffee! When do we want it? I’LL FUCKING CUT YOU.’ She blushed now at the Solomon’s Choice of which one to serve Alice. She figured Jaws was the lesser of two evils. She was about to rinse them in the sink when she heard the unmistakable sound of a photo being taken with a smartphone, that sharp, faux-mechanical click.
Rewind Page 16