Jumping in Puddles

by Claire Allan

  “So that makes it okay then? I was a frumpy mummy and you were there waiting in the wings?”

  “It wasn’t like that. And you were never frumpy, but you know men like Seán . . . they have to have it all.”

  Niamh snorted again, a big sob bursting from her throat. “I thought we did have it all!”

  “He never loved me,” Caitlin offered sadly. “It was nothing more than a bit of fun to him.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it matters. Of course it matters. How could it not matter?”

  Caitlin shook her head and stood up. “I’m going to get changed into something less ridiculous and I have a phone call to make. Then we can keep talking.”

  She walked into the bedroom and Niamh sat down on the leather sofa in front of the glowing gas fire and shivered. She sipped from her glass of champagne but it sickened her now so she stood back up again and walked to the breakfast bar and set it down. She glanced around, at the sterile off-white walls, the few select arty prints hung here and there. There were no pictures of people on Caitlin’s walls – no smiling faces, no grinning, drunken friends or messy, sticky children. There were no sticky fingerprints or doodles courtesy of overeager toddlers.

  Everything was sterile, perfect, clean and controlled. Niamh wondered for a moment if Seán was more interested in having an affair with this apartment than with Caitlin. If there was one thing he liked, it was order. The one thing guaranteed to send him into a foul mood would be any sign that their perfect, gorgeous show home had actually been lived in. A trace of paint on the kitchen table, a glob of cookie dough on the kitchen tiles, a lump of Play Doh walked into the marble floor.

  He wanted the perfect house, the perfect family and the perfect life. He just wasn’t so great coping with mess – except, of course, for his office which was a perfect breeding ground for experimentation in microbiology. She used to tease him that it was his dirty little secret – oh, how the absolute irony of it all stung now!

  Caitlin walked back into the room, marabou slippers abandoned for a pair of fluffy socks, her body-skimming dressing gown for a pair of jeans and a jumper. Her face was still overly made-up, however. It made her look old, Niamh thought with some bitchy glee. Oh she knew it was wrong to be a cow, but in the circumstances she felt pretty justified. You sleep with my husband, I turn into a bitch. Seemed fair enough.

  “Right,” Caitlin said, sitting down across from Niamh. “You really want to know what happened?”

  Niamh felt like banging her head off the wall. “No, I’m just here for the craic. Have you seen the new lip-glosses from Clarins? I thought we could chat about them,” she said sarcastically.

  “Yes, I loved him,” Caitlin said sadly. “But he made it clear, Niamh, that he was never going to leave you. It wasn’t one of those affairs where I was hanging on waiting for him to walk out on you and set up home with me. I knew the score. This was fun to him – stress relief – nothing more. I would imagine sometimes that it was more, but I knew it wasn’t. You came first, Niamh, always.”

  “Clearly not,” Niamh replied. “If I know Seán the way I know Seán, he would have come first most of the time. In and out of bed.”

  Caitlin gave a weak laugh and Niamh almost joined in. For a second it was like they were eighteen again and laughing over boyfriends – drunk on cheap Peach Schnapps with a sickening blend of pineapple juice. At any second she half-expected Caitlin to raise her hand and wiggle her little finger while raising one eyebrow. It would have been hilariously funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

  “I didn’t mean to betray you. I can’t explain it. I loved him. I knew it was wrong. I just got carried away.”

  “He wasn’t yours to love.”

  They sat in silence for another while, Niamh gathering her thoughts. She knew that when she walked out the door she would not set foot here again. She needed all the answers now.

  “So I know the why and the when and the where but what I don’t get, Caitlin, is just how you could do this to me? How could you do it to us?”

  “I dunno,” Caitlin shrugged her shoulders. “What do you want me to say, Niamh? Does it matter now? He’s gone and he’s not coming back. Does any of it matter now?”

  Caitlin looked stricken and Niamh felt a momentary pang of empathy pass between them. But she steadied herself. “Of course it matters. He was my husband. You were my friend.”

  “We just got close. We spent time together. It happened. It wasn’t deliberate but we know we shouldn’t have done it. I’ll not patronise you.”

  It was very nice, Niamh thought, for Caitlin to have such consideration for her feelings as not to patronise her. It was only a shame she hadn’t extended that consideration to not shagging the arse off her husband.

  “But you were my friend. You visited my house. You chatted to me on the phone. We went to the spa together and all the time you were sleeping with my husband!”

  Caitlin blushed.

  “You really are a brazen slut, aren’t you?” Niamh spat the words out, past caring any more.

  “I’m sorry,” Caitlin said, then paused. “Actually I’m not sorry. I loved him.”

  “What about me? What about our friendship? Did that mean nothing to you? You were my friend,” she repeated sadly.

  Niamh didn’t understand – couldn’t understand – how the one person she had trusted most in the whole world (apart from Seán, of course) could do this to her.

  “And then you stopped,” she said, looking into the fire. “You could be my friend when he was alive. You could sit across the dinner table from me and drink wine and share gossip and when he died, when he was gone, you stopped. You just walked away.”

  “I couldn’t face you.”

  “You couldn’t face me? You could swim in my pool and help yourself to the contents of my fridge (and my bed for that matter) two days before, but he dies and you couldn’t even talk to me.”

  “It was too hard.”

  “You,” Niamh said, her eyes blazing once again, “don’t know the meaning of hard. Try telling two children their daddy is gone and not coming back. Try waking up to find out your life has been a lie. Try rebuilding it from nothing. That is hard.”

  “Try grieving for the man you loved in secret,” Caitlin bit back. “Try wanting to tear your heart from your body because it hurts so much but not being able to tell anyone why.”

  Niamh ran her fingers through her hair and stifled what even she considered a cruel laugh. “Don’t get all fecking dramatic-y Wuthering Heights on me. Tear your heart from your body? Caitlin, you don’t know pain. You don’t know hurt and you sure as hell don’t know how to think of anyone else but yourself.”

  They sat in silence for a bit, each lost in her own thoughts. Niamh felt the anger drain from her. There wasn’t much of a point any more. Her kick-arse boots would have to wait another day to fulfil their arse-kicking destiny.

  “Do you miss him?” she asked, gingerly lifting the glass of champagne to her lips again.

  “Do bears shit in the woods?” Caitlin said with a raised eyebrow – and then immediately apologised. “Sorry, I’m being crass. I’m guessing you’re not ready for crass yet.”

  Niamh shook her head.

  “Yes, I miss him. I miss picking up the phone and calling him, hearing his voice. Getting a text message, seeing him smile as he walks into the bar to buy me a drink. I miss him, everything about him.”

  The words cut through Niamh. But then again it would have been harder, she realised, to hear Caitlin say she didn’t miss him – that him not being there hadn’t touched her at all. That would have cut deeper – to know that he risked their marriage for someone who couldn’t even miss him.

  “I miss you too,” Caitlin said, her eyes pooling with tears. “I’m so sorry, Niamh. Can you ever forgive me?”

  Niamh nodded slowly. “I’ll forgive you, Caitlin, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Thank you for explaining this all to me
. Now, I think I’d better go.”

  She stood up, fighting back a crushing pain in her chest, and walked to the door. She didn’t look back, or stop to say any further goodbyes. She just walked out, into the corridor and down the hall, her steps getting faster as she went.

  No, she could never, ever forget.

  48

  “You can stay, if you want,” Eimear said, sitting down beside Ciara. Ciara couldn’t quite read the look on her face – was it a genuine offer or merely obligation? Sure, the pair of them had bonded on the stairs the other night but that didn’t mean they were friends as such.

  And even if they were, that didn’t mean she wanted to stay and come face to face with the smug wee bastard that was Ben Quinn. Knee to bollocks with him, maybe, but face to face not so much.

  “It’s okay. I told my mum I wouldn’t be long,” Ciara lied and sat up straight.

  “Well, if you’re sure, but it might be a bit of craic. We’re just going to watch a DVD or something. Ben’s bringing some cider he smuggled from his granny’s shop.” Eimear immediately blushed. Ciara could almost see the lightbulb ping above Eimear’s head as it dawned on her that gossiping about pilfered goods from the local shop might not be safe in the present company.

  “It’s okay. I won’t tell,” Ciara reassured her, falling short of adding that she doubted very much Mrs Quinn would believe any wrongdoing of her precious grandson anyway. That fecker could be caught out of his head on cheap booze, lying in a pool of his own puke and his granny would put it down to a bad cold or a touch of hay fever.

  “Thanks,” Eimear said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You used to hang about with Ben and his friends, didn’t you?” Eimear asked.

  “Aye, but not in ages.”

  “What happened? Did you fall out?”

  “No, I just grew up.”

  Eimear bristled at the insinuation that she wasn’t a grown-up. “Yeah, they said you were a bit snooty.”

  Ciara choked. She was as far from snooty as they came. For the love of God, she was seventeen, had a baby and worked in a corner shop. Where could anyone get the notion she had even an ounce of snootiness about her?

  This wasn’t going well at all. Ruth had entrusted her to check on Eimear and here they were on the brink of an all-out girly bitch fight.

  “Look, I just wanted to warn you, be careful of Ben Quinn. He’s not the big shakes you think he is.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Eimear asked, instantly enraged.

  “I mean be careful.”

  Matthew looked at them, mildly alarmed, and Ciara took a deep breath. She wouldn’t push this. The last thing she wanted to do was get Matthew caught up in the middle of this but she hadn’t reckoned for Eimear’s teenage brattishness and her determination to push things to the limit.

  “If you have something to say, Ciara, then say it. And don’t tell me it’s nothing because you clearly think me and my friends aren’t as good as you.”

  “Look, just leave it,” Ciara replied, walking to the kitchen so that Matthew wouldn’t be a witness to just how ugly this conversation could become.

  If Eimear pushed her any further, she would tell her what a fecking gobshite Ben Quinn was and take the smug look off her face once and for all.

  Eimear followed her. “I will not leave it,” she raged, stamping her foot. “Don’t you go telling me to be careful when you don’t want to tell me why. That’s just pathetic. You’re just pathetic.”

  “You know what’s pathetic?” Ciara replied, her temper flaring, “You running around after Ben Quinn like he is something special. He’s nothing special at all.”

  “So you’re jealous? He turned you down and you’re jealous because he likes me now.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. He didn’t turn me down – and I have a baby to prove it.”

  “You’re making that up,” Eimear seethed.

  “No, I’m not. Ella is very much real – not an ounce of her is made up. I have the dirty nappies to prove it.”

  “Ha ha, very funny.”

  “It’s not meant to be funny, Eimear, but you wanted the truth and I’m telling it to you.”

  “You’re lying!” Eimear’s face had gone a strange shade of red.

  Matthew was watching with a mixture of fear and amusement from the door.

  “Why would I lie? What have I to gain from lying? There’s only one person who has ever lied about this before and it’s Ben Quinn.”

  “Well, he has nothing to gain from lying either,” Eimear replied defiantly.

  “Apart from remaining the golden balls of Rathinch, not having his granny beat the head off him and not actually having to deal with the responsibility of a baby, you mean?”

  Eimear’s mouth opened and shut. Ciara could almost hear the cogs whirr as she tried to come up with a witty response. She obviously couldn’t and closed her mouth, crossing her arms in a huff and blowing her fringe from her face.

  “I’m not lying,” Ciara replied, more softly this time. “And I’m not trying to be a bitch. I wish someone had warned me before I got involved with him.”

  “I’m not a little kid and I don’t need warning.”

  “I didn’t think I did either. I thought I knew everything,” Ciara said, starting to feel sorry for Eimear. After all, she remembered all too well herself how it felt when Ben lost his shiny halo and turned out to be an utter prick. “Can we talk about it? Please. If you still don’t believe me after, then fair enough. I’ll go and we’ll never mention it again.”

  “S’ppose,” Eimear said opening a bottle of WKD.

  In for a penny, Ciara thought as she lifted one herself and started to drink.

  “We were kind of going out. I suppose everyone knew that, but Ben, well, he thinks he is one of the cool kids and he always toned it down around his friends. When we were together, just the two of us, things were different. We would go for walks along the beach and he would leave notes in my locker in school. I thought he was the perfect boy and he made me feel really special.”

  Ciara was aware that sounded really cheesy but she could think of no other way to describe it. At the time she had felt a little like Sandy from Grease and Ben had been her Danny. It was all she could do to stop telling Eimear he was dreamy and at the time her chills multiplied every time she set her eyes on him.

  “I wouldn’t have slept with him if I didn’t think he loved me,” she went on. “I don’t just sleep with anyone. He’s the only person I ever slept with. And I didn’t rush into it. I thought we had something special. He told me he loved me.”

  Eimear’s face softened and Ciara could see traces of Ruth’s compassion in her eyes.

  Taking a deep breath, she continued: “When I found out I was pregnant I nearly died. I thought Mum was going to kill me, or throw me out of the house. She’s a single parent and she always said she wanted more for me. I was disappointing her in the biggest way – but I thought, well, if Ben stands by me it won’t be so bad. And honestly, I never even thought there was a chance he wouldn’t stand by me.”

  “If youse were so in love, why didn’t everyone know about it?”

  Ciara could see that Eimear was grasping at straws in the same way she had grasped at straws when Ben had turned her away.

  “I told you. In front of his friends it was all cool and casual. But when we were alone . . .”

  “And he didn’t want to know about the baby?”

  Ciara shook her head. “Not a bit. He told me that if I tried to tell anyone the baby was his he would either deny ever having slept with me or tell everyone I’d slept around. That would have been worse.”

  “But how would it? He would have got what was coming to him eventually?”

  “But not before me and Mum, and Ella too, had been dragged through the mud. I couldn’t put my mum through that.”

  “You shouldn’t have had to put yourself through it.”

  “I didn’t think I had a
choice.”

  Eimear gazed unseeingly at the clock on the wall. “Why now then? Why are you telling me now? If you wanted to keep this to yourself, why not just keep it to yourself?”

  “Because why should I keep it to myself? I’ve kept it to myself for long enough. He made me think I had to. But Eimear, I don’t want you going through the same thing. You don’t deserve it, and neither does your mum.”

  Eimear sighed and put her head in her hands. “I don’t know what to think,” she muttered.

  “Look, I’m telling you the truth. Think about it and be careful, that’s all. You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”

  * * *

  Ruth decided to get some fresh air – and if she was honest with herself she wanted to allow Liam and Detta some alone time. It wasn’t so much that she felt like a spare part, it was more that with the haze of several glasses of Cosmopolitan she was feeling a little bit like a fairy godmother. All she was missing was the big frilly frock and a wand. And maybe a tiara. She really fancied owning a tiara. When she married James all she wore was a single flower in her hair. And a dress, of course. She smiled to herself. A tiara would nice – one subtle and scattered with diamonds, and maybe pearls which would glitter when she turned her head. One day, maybe.