Jumping in Puddles

by Claire Allan

  She nodded and he wanted to hug her, but he was afraid he would hurt her, so he rubbed her hand gently instead and pretended not to notice her flinch slightly.

  As soon as he could, he excused himself. He had locks to change, bolts to retrieve, work to be done, so he got into his van and drove to the yard. It was only when he got there he realised he was shaking. It might have been shock, or it might have been anger or a combination of the two but he took several deep breaths and tried to shake off the feeling. He prided himself on keeping his cool in almost every situation – should a house literally (as had happened at least once) fall down around him he would usually just brush himself off, take a deep breath and get on with things.

  He couldn’t imagine ever lifting his hand to a woman. And he had been tried all these years, between Agnes and Laura and their increasingly demanding ways. They had made him angry – of course they had – but he would generally stomp off and swear a bit before calming down. If it was a real doozy of a fight he would maybe decide to have a two-day huff – which would drive Laura to absolute distraction. But most of the time Liam was a two-minute-rage kind of a guy and he could never imagine willingly inflicting pain on someone he was supposed to love just to exert control.

  He set to work collecting locks and bolts, rattling about in the yard giving things a good kick to vent his frustration.

  “Damn it,” he swore, realising the steel toolbox had won the fight between it and his toe and sat down and put his head in his hands. His gut instinct told him to go round to Laura now and warn her – but not because he wanted her back, he realised once again, but because no matter what she had done to him she did not deserve to live with such a bastard of a man.

  He would go and see her in the morning, at work, when James wouldn’t be about. Maybe Ruth was right that he hadn’t hit Laura yet, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t get a straight answer from her while yer man was knocking about.

  He didn’t understand it, not one bit. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and tried to steady his thumping heart. He thought of Poppy and reading her a story, he thought of drinking a cold beer and putting his feet up and then he found himself thinking of Detta and her blue eyes and the way she had tried to reassure him – which of course led him back to thinking about getting a cold drink – and soon. Things were definitely getting more complicated.

  39

  That had to have been the most surreal night Ciara had ever experienced. She had thought her strange night in Derry was off the wall enough – her at seventeen enjoying the company of those twice as old – but this beat that hands down.

  She had just been putting Ella, who was now feeling much better, to bed when her mobile had burst into life. At first she hadn’t recognised the number and had been tempted just to ignore the call. When she had first got pregnant she got all manner of anonymous calls from Ben Quinn and his cronies calling her all sorts of names until she had taken to ignoring them altogether, but it had been months since anything like that had happened so she figured she was safe enough.

  When she answered Detta had breathlessly asked her to come to Ruth’s, as quickly as she could, as there was a bit of an emergency. It had unnerved Ciara that Detta sounded less than calm and collected. She wasn’t the type to get in a flap. Ciara had been sure she had never been in a flap her entire life. No one who smelled so strongly of essential oils could be flappable, surely?

  “What’s wrong?” she had asked.

  “Best I tell you when you get here. Your mum won’t mind, will she?”

  Lorraine had just sat down with a cup of tea and Corrie so Ciara was sure she could wangle an hour’s baby-sitting. “It should be fine.”

  “Great, great. We’ll see you soon,” Detta said, hanging up before Ciara could say her goodbyes.

  Pulling on a cardigan over her T-shirt and jeans, Ciara had run downstairs and popped her head round the door to Lorraine. “I need to go out, Mum. Some crisis with Ruth. I shouldn’t be long.”

  “What kind of crisis?” Lorraine asked.

  “I don’t know, Mum. Detta just phoned and asked me to get there as soon as possible. You don’t mind keeping an ear out for Ella, do you?”

  “This isn’t anything dodgy, is it?” Her mother’s eyebrow was raised. Lorraine was trying to be more understanding these days but it was never going to be easy for her to let go of her suspicious mind.

  “Mum, it’s Detta and Ruth, not Thelma and Louise.”

  Lorraine didn’t seem to appreciate the humour.

  “Look, Mum, I’ll phone you when I get there and let you know what’s going on. I don’t imagine I’ll be long. Please, Mum, it sounded important.”

  “Okay,” Lorraine replied, “But yes, make sure you phone me.”

  Ciara had nodded and headed out down the road towards Ruth’s.

  She was shocked to see a Garda car outside, and the door ajar.

  Gingerly she pushed at the door and opened it to come face to face with Eimear. It was odd to walk into her house looking for her mother. In any other circumstance it should have been Ciara and Eimear who were friends. They were more or less the same age and they had enough in common – the mutual Ben Quinn obsession – and yet Ciara couldn’t help but see her as just a child.

  “Is your mum in?” she asked.

  Eimear nodded in the direction of the living room door before bursting into dirty big snottery sobs. Ciara suddenly felt a panic descend on her – the Garda car, the open door, the daughter sobbing on the stairs. It didn’t sound good, did it? Jesus, what if Ruth was hurt or dead or something?

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting down beside Eimear and taking her hand in hers. She felt sort of as if she should be hugging her – but she didn’t want Eimear to think she was some mad kissy huggy loony. She wanted to at least maintain some air of coolness about her. She was seventeen not thirty-seven.

  Eimear sniffed at the touch of her hand. Ciara almost thought she was going to pull it away, but she obviously changed her mind and held on a little tighter.

  “My daddy, he hit Mum,” she sniffed and Ciara felt as if she, in a way, had been hit herself.

  “Is she okay? Are you okay?” The words were coming out jumbled and rushed. She was trying to remain cool while at the same time trying to show enough maturity so that Eimear felt she could confide in her. She obviously needed to sound off to someone and there wasn’t a chance that Ben and his cronies would offer a supportive listening ear. The Samaritans would never coming knocking at his door looking for his services as a volunteer.

  “She’s hurt, but she’s okay. She called the guards. Thomas helped her chase him off.”

  Eimear looked upstairs towards a closed door. Thomas was no more than fourteen or fifteen. Ciara could only imagine how scared he must have been.

  “And you?” she added gently.

  “I saw it. I saw him hurting her. It’s my fault, Ciara. It’s all my fault!”

  Ciara shook her head. “Now why would you think that?” She wanted to add that James was obviously just an awful bollocks of a man and that was no one’s fault but his own, but she figured Eimear had seen her daddy fall far enough off his pedestal for one night.

  “Because I knew. I knew and I did nothing.”

  “You knew?”

  “That he hit her before. That he called her names. I knew but I said nothing and then when he moved out I thought it was all in the past, and I’ve been such a cow to her lately and I’ve been nice to him and it’s all my fault.”

  Ciara felt herself blush. Yes, she was mature but she wasn’t sure what to say. She’d never dealt with anything like this before. She didn’t have a daddy she adored, or a mammy who was knocked about. Lorraine had her faults but she didn’t take abuse from anyone – not that Ruth had been asking for this, obviously. Her thoughts became as jumbled as her words – she was struggling to process all this. A part of her wanted to go into reverse, get back out of that house and back to her own home where things, if not perfect
, were at least a little less scary. If she left now she could easily make it back in time for the second episode of Corrie.

  But then she felt Eimear’s hand holding tight to her own and she looked at her. She was far from the confident, overly smug, sixteen-year-old Ruth often spoke about. In fact she looked like a scared child.

  “I don’t know much,” Ciara said, as Liam blundered through the door looking equally as flustered as she felt, “but I know that, horrible as this is – and I know it is really horrible – it isn’t, and wasn’t, your fault.”

  Eimear nodded – not quite believing what she was being told but all Ciara could do was reassure her.

  “Look, the police are gone now. Let’s go in and see your mum.” Ciara said the words but she didn’t feel half as brave as she sounded. She really, really liked Ruth. Of all the people in the group, Ruth had been kindest to her and she didn’t know what she would feel like when she saw her. When Detta had said she was in a bad way, Ciara’s imagination had run away with her and being a teenager she had quite the imagination.

  She took a deep breath and held Eimear’s hand as they walked in together. Ruth was sitting there, hand to her swollen face.

  “It only hurts when I laugh,” she said with a watery smile and Ciara sat down beside her.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said honestly.

  “It’s okay, neither do I. But thanks for being here.”

  “Least I could do,” Ciara replied, rubbing her hand and feeling very much out of her depth.

  * * *

  Walking home later, after the guards had gone and Liam had come back with enough locks to secure almost every house in the village, Ciara shivered. It’s funny, she thought, the things that go on behind closed doors and you never even know about it. She would never have thought Ruth – motherly, funny and confident Ruth who had encouraged her to follow her dreams – could have been the victim of domestic violence. She shuddered thinking of the life she must have had, and yet she wondered why it was Ruth had still managed to look devastated when James left her?

  Eimear had really been quite a pathetic-looking creature too and Thomas hadn’t come out of his room all evening. Matthew came downstairs at one stage and Ciara had felt physically sick when she saw his tearstained face. In a lot of ways it was harder to see than the cut on Ruth’s face.

  She opened her front door and walked in, and when Lorraine looked at her she burst into tears and buried her head in her mother’s shoulder and sobbed until she could cry no more.

  Lorraine and Ciara never really been the huggy types. Yes, they got on reasonably well and when she was a child, Ciara remembered curling up on her mother’s knee for countless stories. But they didn’t do public, or private, displays of affection any more. Since Ella arrived on the scene it felt as if they channelled all that affection into the baby and the most they managed for each other was a cursory kiss on the cheek or a friendly rub of an arm.

  It should, therefore, have felt alien to hug now – especially with tears and snotters included. The last time Lorraine had seen Ciara cry had been when she was in labour and was sobbing buckets at the thought of having to actually push a baby out of her fandango when all she wanted to do was go to sleep and wake up with it all over and done with. She had begged her mother to make it stop and Lorraine had simply taken her face in her hands and told her that she would have to be a brave girl and get on with it. There she was, just emerging into motherhood – the most grown-up responsibility in the world – and her mother was referring to her as a girl. She cried harder then, and Lorraine had mopped her brow and assured her that she wasn’t going to die from the pain. At least, Ciara had consoled herself, as she felt her tummy tighten again, her mother was no longer telling her how disappointed she was or that she going to kill her. Although, at that moment she would have been quite happy to be a murder victim.

  Now though, she allowed Lorraine to hug her – she didn’t care if it felt awkward or if they didn’t normally do hugs. She loved her mother. She needed her mum. She wanted her mum to know she loved her back and that she was grateful her mother wasn’t an evil baggage who knocked her about.

  “What is it, love?” Lorraine asked as she shushed her appropriately and stroked her hair.

  “Oh Mum, I know we don’t think it often, but we’re lucky, aren’t we? Me and you? We get on okay and we’re happy?”

  “Ciara, you’re scaring me now? What has happened that has you so upset?”

  Ciara spilled out the details while Lorraine listened, horrified.

  “That poor, poor woman,” she said, shaking her head. “I would never have known.”

  “I don’t think anyone did.”

  “And those poor children!” She shook her head and pulled her daughter close to her and they sat there, for a long time.

  “I’m going to go see Ruth tomorrow,” Lorraine said determinedly. Ciara looked up.

  “Don’t look at me as if I’m cracked in the head. Sounds to me like she could do with a friend at the moment and, yes, I know she has all you Loonies. But I’m a ‘lone parent’ too.” She pulled a face and used finger quotation marks at the phrase “lone parent”.

  “I think that’s a brilliant idea, Mum.”

  “Good, because I’m going to do it.”

  It almost sounded to Ciara as if her mother was trying to convince herself of that, but she decided to say nothing.

  They sat in silence for a bit, still cuddled on the sofa, before Lorraine spoke again. “Did I see you had a prospectus for the college?”

  “Yes, Mum. I was thinking of taking a night class. Just thinking, mind,” she said almost apologetically.

  “Well, I think that would be a great idea. I might have a look at it myself.”

  40

  Niamh stood under the power shower and let the hot water wash over her. This was her third attempt at a decent, relaxing, massaging and reviving shower. First of all Connor had decided he needed a poo and could absolutely not use any of the other bathrooms in the house, and then when he was done and she had just stepped back under the soothing jets, Rachel had decided it was her turn for the toilet.

  Niamh had given up then, wrapped herself in her robe and waited till the children had gone to bed. She wanted to enjoy herself – luxuriate under the bubbles and release the knot of tension in her neck and shoulders.

  If she was honest with herself she felt pretty useless. She had offered, last night, to let Ruth and her brood come and stay with her for a while. Lord knows she had enough room and thought it might have been good to have some company for a bit. Ruth had, however, politely declined. “If I take us out of this house now, then he has won, and I’m not going to let him win,” she said. Niamh had to admire that.

  When she had got home she was utterly beat. Robyn, who had been minding the children, had gently asked what had happened and all Niamh could think to say was that all men were bastards. It was clichéd and she didn’t really mean it. Her daddy was as lovely as they came and Liam seemed like a decent sort – but as for the rest of them? They could go hang.

  Robyn had looked a little dejected, so Niamh opened another bottle of Seán’s good wine and sat down to fill her in on all the gory details.

  When she was done, and Robyn was thoroughly shocked at the goings-on in what seemed like such an idyllic village, Niamh raised her glass and said: “Let’s just be merry. We never know what’s around the corner.”

  At that she thought of her husband, his car careering down a bank and she realised that she was right and the only way to survive was to take things slowly and hope for the best.

  “Good idea,” Robyn said, clinking her glass against Niamh’s and settling back into her chair. “God, there’s a lot of drama around this here village,” she said in a fake American accent.

  “There sure is,” Niamh replied. “It’s like The Waltons meets Dynasty – never a dull moment.”

  “And I thought Derry was a centre of scandal and intrigue,” Robyn laughed
.

  “Oh, but it is,” Niamh replied, her mind once again turning to Caitlin. It was actually starting to annoy her now – how much she was thinking about it. She would have to tackle it – there was no reason now to put it off apart from her roots still needing doing but she could have them done en route. She would have to go to Derry to get them sorted anyway – there was no way she was letting the purple-rinse brigade at Curl Up and Dye (no, they hadn’t quite got the pun) on the Main Street have a go at her hair.

  She decided then that on Friday, when her parents usually kept the children, she would get her hair done, book into Natural Touch for a last-minute manicure and then put this whole sorry mess behind her once and for all.

  You never knew what was around the next corner, she reminded herself again, and she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her days wondering. Caitlin would have to give her answers – whether she wanted to or not.

  Climbing out of the shower, she wrapped herself in her warmest, fluffiest bathrobe and lay down on the bed. The real-flame, natural-gas, uber-designer fireplace was glowing softly across the room and she had a glass of wine (just Jacob’s Creek this time – fancy wine not being as fabulous as Seán would have had her believe) on the bedside table alongside a king-size box of Lily O’Brien’s chocolates.

  She revelled in the decadence as she applied a rich facemask before popping a chocolate in her mouth and allowing it to melt slowly.

  “Aaaaah,” she exhaled blissfully as the sweet chocolate dissolved. Had Seán been there he would have given out buckets about her eating in bed, and risking melted chocolate on the Egyptian cotton sheets.