by Karen Perry
But when she goes outside and looks up towards the front door, she finds it closed and the step empty. There are marks on the walls where the egg has started drying in the sun, and it makes her uneasy, the randomness of the act. None of the other houses seem to have been picked out for this abuse.
‘Any sign of him?’ Jake asks, when she comes back inside. She tells him no, and he remarks: ‘Scuttled back into his lair, has he?’
‘Perhaps he’s shy.’ Being shy herself, she feels a duty to defend him.
‘Perhaps he’s a weirdo. Some mad recluse who only comes out at night and spends the rest of his time dressing in the dead wife’s clothes.’
She moves past him to the kitchen to make a start on dinner. ‘I’m sure he’s perfectly nice,’ she says.
‘If you say so.’
The atmosphere between them has grown slightly strained since his arrival home. This is not how she wants it to be – not how she envisaged it. So she lifts her mood, and adopts a more cheerful tone. ‘I got fish,’ she tells Jake.
He makes a noise of approval. ‘So this guy I met on the shoot today – Dara – he was telling me about a new round of funding the Film Board are putting out. Reckons I’d have a shot if I send in the short I’ve been working on.’
Leah listens to him talk as she rinses the salad and waits for the oven to heat. She has bought sea bass – Jake’s favourite – and there’s a bottle of white in the fridge. They’re going to eat outside, and Leah wonders whether she should make her announcement before or after dinner.
She is aware of the changed energy in the room since Jake’s return, the busy snap of his thoughts as he recounts his day’s events, breaking off to follow different tangents, his conversation interspersed with swigs from his can of beer and flipping the pages on the script he is half reading, his phone giving pipping alerts every time a WhatsApp message appears. It strikes her that there has been no transition from the solitary peace of being alone with the slow strains of her delicate piano-playing to the bustle and noise of Jake’s presence, the steady insistent beat of music he has put on, the demands on her attention. It is something she will grow used to, she expects – a period of adaptation, a settling in. They are so different from each other, yet it was his busy warmth, his almost childlike prattle and need for attention that drew her to him, saved her from drowning in her own quiet introspection. This is what I need, she tells herself.
‘How was work?’ Jake asks. Then, remembering, he adds: ‘Hey, did you guys go for lunch?’
‘Good. Yes, we all went.’
‘And how was it? How’s Tricia?’
‘Fine. The baby’s doing great.’
Leah is careful to keep her voice level. She doesn’t want it to betray any hint of how she’d felt.
It was a lunch they’d organized for Tricia – one of the girls from the office – to celebrate the recent birth of her baby. A pizza in the Italian on Ranelagh Road – and Tricia had taken her new baby girl, all bundled up in a soft downy Babygro, like a little pink parcel being handed around the table, each of them having a go holding her. When it was Leah’s turn, she had sat still and quiet, looking into the baby’s squashed face, tiny curled fists held close to the little one’s cheeks, Leah trying to quell the thudding of her own heart. She avoided babies as a rule, but on this occasion, she had allowed herself to relax, her defences temporarily down. Absorbed in the peaceful miracle of holding a sleeping child in her arms, she hadn’t noticed the waitress approach with the tray of coffees. It was not until Tricia called sharply, ‘Hey! Careful there, would you?’ that Leah had looked up with sudden alarm, anxiety waking like an angry beast in her chest. The waitress, handing out the coffees, had blithely lifted the brimming cup from the tray and passed it over the child’s head before placing it on the table.
‘God, I can’t stand the way they do that,’ Tricia had hissed, once the waitress was out of earshot. ‘I mean, haven’t they any awareness? Any common sense?’
Leah handed back the baby and excused herself to use the bathroom. None of them had noticed the change that had come over her. Nothing had happened, yet the vulnerability of that infant’s head throbbed in her thoughts. In the cubicle, her legs were shaking so hard that she had to reach out and place both hands on the walls, trying to steady her nerves until the trembling stopped.
Those girls have no idea of what she’d done.
‘I always liked Tricia,’ Jake says, flipping through his script.
He knows all the girls from the office. His courier route meant he was regularly dispatched to the patents firm where she worked. It was how they had met.
It would seem like such a small thing, what had happened to her at lunch. He wouldn’t understand her reaction. To explain it, she would be forced to open up the side of her she locks away; she would have to let him into the secrets she keeps hidden and she cannot countenance that. Not now, not this evening when there are other things she wants to tell him. So she says nothing.
Leah slides the fish into the oven and opens the wine.
Because the evening has come on warm and balmy, she opens the doors and carries the little table from the kitchen out on to the patio, returning for the chairs. She sets the table, brings a candle in a jar, clips some stray roses from overhanging branches of the climber next door and pops them into a water glass. She wants the setting to be perfect. She wants them to remember it.
Briefly, she looks up at the house, but the windows are all closed and there is something forbidding about the place. She calls Jake and he carries their plates outside, whistling, while Leah pours wine into his glass.
‘To us,’ Jake toasts, clinking his glass with hers, and he leans across to kiss her tenderly and happily, then raises the wine to his lips.
All week, she has been waiting for this moment: Friday evening, just the two of them alone together, no distractions, sharing a meal. And it’s more perfect than she could have imagined. The taste of the food she has prepared, the privacy of this outdoor space, the scent of roses rising strongly from the little glass between them. Her senses feel alive, a shiver of nerves in her tummy as she waits for the right moment to tell him.
Over dinner, Jake talks about the progress of the pilot he’s been filming – a project coordinated by one of his friends, whom Leah doesn’t know. She’s somewhat amazed by the number of friends Jake has. Her boyfriend is a sociable creature, someone who forges bonds easily – a talent she does not possess. It’s because of the openness of his nature – a lack of guile coupled with a genuine interest in other people. She envies him this quality. Perhaps it’s one of the things that attracted her to him – as if she might absorb some of his confidence through sheer osmosis. And it amazes her that this gregarious life-embracing man has fallen so completely for a bookish, introverted person like her.
‘Ian had another meeting with RTÉ – showed them the latest cut of the pilot,’ Jake tells her, between mouthfuls. ‘He says they loved it, that they’re giving serious consideration to commissioning a series.’
‘That would be amazing.’
‘Of course there’ll be a few things they’ll want to change. I mean, that’s inevitable. But they were really positive about it.’
‘What things would they want to change?’
‘Ian didn’t say. He said we don’t need to worry about any of that until we get the green light. Anyway, who cares, right? A part in a series, Lee,’ he says, reaching over the table for her hand. ‘On national TV! And not just any part – the main part! I’d be sorted. I’d be made.’
‘When will you know?’
‘Ian says they’re going to get back to him in the next couple of weeks. And I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up,’ he adds, perhaps sensing her reserve, her caution, ‘but I could tell by the way he was talking that he thinks it’s in the bag. And this is Ian we’re talking about – he’s super-cautious. Almost as cautious as you!’
His excitement is infectious and they both laugh and she drinks from her water glass, allowing h
erself, just for a moment, to get caught up in his dream. What would it be like, she wonders, to have her boyfriend a successful actor? Even modest success would be life-changing.
He picks up the bottle and refills his glass. ‘Aren’t you drinking?’ he asks, noting her full glass, and she shakes her head.
‘I’m fine.’
‘All the more for me,’ he replies.
His happiness matters to her, in some ways more than her own, and she thinks of how charged he is these evenings after a shoot, the pump of adrenalin through his veins making him garrulous and full. Distantly, she hears the bleat of his phone from inside the flat, hopes he will ignore it, which he does, and for a few more moments, they talk about the opportunities such a career move would involve, allowing themselves to occupy the fantasy for a little while.
She decides to tell him as soon as the meal is over, after the table is cleared and they’re sitting, relaxing, looking up at the moon. But as he’s gathering up their plates, she hears the ringtone of his phone start up again, and when he goes inside, she hears the small clatter of the dishes on the counter, followed by Jake’s voice saying: ‘Hey there, what’s up?’
A warm breeze wafts across the patio carrying the scent of cigarette smoke from a neighbouring garden. From a few doors down, she can hear the clink of glassware, laughter, soft jazz in the background – Leah and Jake are not the only couple dining al fresco this evening – and she feels a warm glow of belonging, of community, that is both unfamiliar and welcome. Leah wonders briefly about the other people living on the street. Apart from the first day, carrying their furniture into the house, when that man had got out of his car to help them – Greg was his name – she hasn’t met or spoken to another neighbour. She has seen Greg’s wife walking past the flat, glimpsed her from the bedroom window. A small stout woman, being pulled along by a big dog on a lead, Leah had caught her glancing up at the house, with a harried look, as she rushed past. Leah remembers the way she had sat in the car that evening, something cold about her, stand-offish.
‘I know, but can I just talk to him for a sec?’
Her attention is caught by Jake’s rising tone, a whine of impatience in it. She sees him standing by the couch, his back to her, the phone pressed against his ear, and knows that he is talking to Jenna, his ex.
‘Okay, just calm down,’ he says, and Leah shifts in her seat, listening carefully now, alert to the change in his mood.
‘Fine,’ Jake says, a note of unhappy resignation there, and adds, ‘About fifteen minutes,’ then ends the call.
She watches him, the phone in his hand hanging down by his hip, the bend in his neck, before he straightens and turns. When he comes out on to the patio, there is an expression of apology on his face.
‘It’s Matthew,’ he tells her.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I don’t know. Some fight at school. He’s upset.’
On the occasions she has met him, Leah has found Matthew to be quiet to the point of stubbornness. A shy boy, he averts his gaze from her in a way that feels pointed. Even his interactions with his father seem strained and tense.
Jake sits down opposite her, reaches for her hand. ‘I’m sorry, babe. I hate to do this.’
‘It’s okay,’ she tells him, forcing herself to smile, forcing herself not to betray any disappointment. ‘You should go to him.’
‘It’s probably nothing, just Jenna overreacting.’
‘Really, it’s fine,’ she assures him. ‘You should call around there, make sure he’s okay. You know you’re not going to be able to think about anything else until you do.’
He squeezes her hand, smiles his apology. ‘I won’t be long. I promise.’
‘I’ll wait up.’
He kisses her quickly, then he’s gone, and the breath Leah has been holding releases. Another puff of warm air into the hot night. Alone once more, she sips from her water glass, fingers the petalled head of the rose, feels a tear roll down her cheek.
‘Stupid,’ she tells herself.
Stupid to feel this disappointment. Stupid to have allowed the evening to become so freighted with hope.
She shakes her head a little – a quick twitch – masters her emotions. He will be back soon, and she will be waiting with the wine and the soft night air, and then she will tell him. In the meantime she will wait. She goes indoors, into the bathroom where she wets a flannel with cold water and holds it to the back of her neck. In the bedroom, she kicks off her shoes and takes her book from the night-stand – Old School, by Tobias Wolff – a favourite that she rereads for comfort whenever she’s in need.
Back outside on the patio it seems darker, as if the sun has dipped lower and faster in her absence. She resumes her place, feels the quietness of the garden behind her, and something else – a low, whispery presence.
Quickly, she turns around. Trees and grass, black boughs, the faintest swish in the undergrowth.
The smell of smoke reaches her where she sits. It’s absurd, straining through the darkness to see, nerves alive in her throat, so that when she speaks, the words come out strangled. ‘Is someone there?’
And through a break in the thinning screen of leaves that separates the patio from the garden she sees the red glow of a cigarette, the brief inflation of it before it recedes into darkness.
Again, she speaks, ‘I said, is someone there?’ and gets to her feet.
A moment then of dry-mouthed uncertainty.
But then the stillness of the garden fractures, and someone moves towards her.
7
Anton
Her voice crackles through the darkness. It tingles on his skin.
‘Is someone there?’ she asks again, sounding a little firmer now, as he draws closer.
‘I’m here,’ Anton replies, keeping his own voice soft and low.
She is standing just beyond him on the patio. There can’t be more than three or four feet separating them. But the trees are heavy with rich summer foliage casting thick shadows, making it difficult for her to see him. His heart beats steadily in his chest as he moves towards her, watching the pale orb of her face as he moves into the direct line of her vision.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Anton. I live upstairs.’
He indicates the house with a nod, and watches her processing this. It’s clear that he’s frightened her, but now, given his position as landlord, he sees her vacillating on how to admonish him. And yet she doesn’t seem the admonishing type. Not from what he’s learnt of her over this period of observation.
‘That’s all right,’ she tells him. ‘I’m Leah,’ she adds.
‘Leah,’ he says, pleased with the softness of the name on his tongue.
She is standing there, looking awkward, one hand clutching the back of her chair.
‘I’ve only just come into the garden,’ Anton tells her. ‘I assure you I haven’t been lurking here in the shadows,’ he says softly, before looking down at his feet. Humility seems the best approach with her. He’s given it some thought over the past few days.
‘It’s your garden,’ she says. ‘You’re entitled to be in it.’
‘I met your young man outside earlier this evening. I’m afraid I was a little rude to him.’ His eyes flicker past her to the open French windows, the dark rooms inside. ‘I wonder, is he home? I’d like to apologize, if I may.’
‘He had to go out.’
‘Oh dear,’ says Anton, making a show of being surprised. He’d heard the front door bang, watched the young man cycling off down Wyndham Park not ten minutes ago, before seizing upon the opportunity. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’
Her forehead creases with suspicion.
‘No. Just a family thing,’ she answers, cagey. ‘He’ll be back soon.’
‘Well, perhaps you might convey my apology to him when he returns.’
‘I’ll tell him.’
‘Thank you.’ He smiles and nods, aware that she’s waiting for him to go. But
instead of turning and making his way back up the steps to the lifeless rooms of his home, he lingers. It’s been such a long time since he’s spoken to a woman like this – he’s not quite ready for the encounter to end. His eyes flicker over her, coming to rest on her legs. There is a plaster on one of her shins and he gestures to it now. ‘Your leg. Is it all right?’
She glances down, then back at him, a guarded expression on her face. ‘Yes. It’s fine. I cut it in the garden.’
‘I’m so sorry. I hope the cut didn’t go too deep. The rust –’
‘It’s fine, really. It was just an accident.’
She shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other, something prickly and defensive about her stance, and he wonders whether he should have said anything about the rust, worrying that he’s crossed a line.
‘And how are you settling in, otherwise?’ he asks her, anxious to change the subject. ‘Everything to your satisfaction?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she says, and there, a little twitch of a smile. A glimmering of an opening. ‘It’s great. We’re delighted, and grateful.’
‘Good. Good. Nice to have young people living here again. Such a shame for it to be locked up, unused.’
‘It’s a lovely house,’ she offers, her eyes coasting up towards the rooms above.
Has she wondered about those spaces? Have her thoughts been scouring the rooms he occupies? ‘We bought it in 1990, my wife and I. Before our children were born. Back then, Dún Laoghaire was quite different. A big drug problem. Very down at heel. Half the houses on this street were full of bedsits. Not like today.’ He shakes his head, acts a little baffled. ‘When I hear what people today have to pay just to rent in this area, it makes my eyes water.’
He gives her a benign smile, but the implication is there – the favourable rent – and the same thoughts flicker visibly across her face.
‘Yes, I know. That’s why we’re so grateful.’
‘Oh, not at all.’ He flaps away her gratitude. ‘Well, I should leave you to your evening. No doubt your young man will be back soon and you can enjoy finishing the wine together.’ He indicates the half-empty bottle, turns as if to leave, then looks back, and adds: ‘You know, I think I might take your cue. Go upstairs now and pour myself a glass. I could do with it after the day I’ve had.’