March 15th: they took her home. A blur of worry about car seat straps and heating. Nina herself in the back seat with the baby. The quiet of the living room when they closed the front door and found themselves, all of a sudden, a family of three.
March 19th: heel-prick test. The first evidence that the world could hurt her daughter and all she could do was stand by and let it happen.
March 21st: Tim went back to work, his week’s holiday over. She and Aisling figuring out their new world, together.
The counting of days, cataloguing of moments in her memory, absorbed her, drove out the noise of the other vigil. When the crowd began to disperse, she waited where she was, smiling at anyone who looked her way.
‘I know you,’ the woman said, stopping in front of her. ‘Nina Cassidy, isn’t it? From the TV?’
The woman was of a certain age, as the French said, and fighting it all the way. Her make-up was poured deep into her eye sockets, her hair frozen in place. Normal people feared the march of time.
‘Nina, please.’ She held her hand out and the woman shook it.
‘Pat Phelan. Patricia, I mean. Patricia Phelan.’
‘Lucy’s mother,’ Nina said and the woman nodded. ‘Would you be willing to talk to me for a few minutes?’ Nina asked, resisting the urge to tilt her head to one side, to place a sympathetic hand on the woman’s arm.
‘Would there be a camera?’ Patricia asked.
‘Not if it makes you uncomfortable,’ Nina said.
‘No, no, that’s fine. I just need a minute to get ready.’ She turned away, taking a mirror and mascara out of her bag.
The families were moving back towards the fire station, where they would wait, and then wait some more. Don’t hate the limbo, she wanted to tell them. Sometimes it’s better than the alternative. Tim walked with them, a little apart. He had gained back the weight he lost, after Aisling. She wanted to run after him, to grab his arm, to ask about his woman. Whether she took away his tiredness. If she made him happy.
He glanced up as if he felt her eyes on him. She held her smile while she turned away, letting it fade from her lips a millimetre at a time in case he was still looking: such things are the pillars of perceived wellness.
You are all surface, Nina, don’t pretend to be shocked at yourself. Didn’t the three days in the hospital with Aisling prove that you couldn’t live anywhere but the surface of the world? Your rusty prayers, the deals you made with a god you didn’t believe in, your shallow faith that changed nothing. Your fake smiles and congratulations when people texted to tell you about the fundraiser they were doing for the meningitis research foundation for the hospital, the children’s ward. Yes, you lied, it would be wonderful if some other baby was saved by their 10K run. Their climb to the top of some fucking mountain. Yes, you agreed, their achievement would dwarf her loss. Yes, indeed. Yes.
Three coats of mascara and a dusting of powder into the wrinkled suede of her cleavage and Patricia pronounced herself ready.
‘Mrs Phelan – Patricia – your daughter is one of the bus passengers involved in today’s accident,’ Nina began.
‘My Lucy, yes,’ Patricia nodded. ‘She texted me early this morning to say that she was on her way home on the early bus.’ She paused, then dabbed at her eyes. That was the first layer of mascara gone. ‘She tells me everything, you know, we’re more like sisters than mother and daughter.’
Nina never understood why women prized this statement. Parents were one category, friends another, children a third. The overlap was incidental, surely, rather than sought-after. Keep the child safe, that was head-and-tail of the job.
‘Does Lucy usually take the early bus?’ she asked. To be random was to be universal, everyone saw themselves there.
‘No, never,’ Patricia shook her head, playing her part to perfection. ‘She was out last night and stayed with a friend, so she was just on her way home to get ready for work.’
Nina nodded, let the silence sit.
‘She should have been at home in the safety of her own bed.’
‘Tell me a little bit about Lucy,’ Nina said, when Patricia had wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. Second layer of mascara gone. ‘What is she like?’
‘She’s warm and… and fun-loving. Smart, you know, forever stuck in a book. It’s always been just the two of us. Her father was a dead loss, wanted nothing to do with the responsibility, just walked away and washed his hands of her. We’re better off, I told her. A father who doesn’t want to be there is worse than nothing.’ Patricia began to cry and Nina signalled to Ben to stop filming.
It was worse than nothing, sometimes.
Tim had suggested they go away for a weekend. ‘A chance to get our heads clear,’ he said.
Nina couldn’t help but think of it as a weekend of trying. She planned the dates to coincide with ovulation, telling him she had to work the weekends either side. That meant four days in the office with little to do, but a few hours of online browsing would be a small price to pay for another baby. For a fresh start.
The first hour of the journey was bumper-to-bumper and they sat in silence, letting the radio do the talking for them. The open road was no better, the heat of the car and the winding roads joined forces to turn her stomach. The bump-bump of the rumble strips on the way into the car park was the last straw and she crouched beside the car, retching into a border of French lavender while Tim walked ahead of her down to the beach. As if privacy had been renewed between them, turning them back into strangers.
The place was almost empty, the sand boggy and grey, a bold dog’s paradise. The sea seemed far away and she fell for the grand illusion of it, walking out too far and getting caught by a stray wave. The sting of wet jeans around her knees was nothing compared to Tim’s voice as he told her he couldn’t do it any more.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. To give him his due, he looked straight at her. ‘We’re just… we’re not us and there isn’t anything else left.’
‘There could be.’
‘It wouldn’t be fair to bring a child into this mess.’
When she cried, he kissed her head and whispered into her hair. And when her hand, the hand that was stroking his arm, moved around to pet his back, sweeping into the waistband of his jeans, he didn’t stop her, easing himself around into her palm.
When jeans and socks and pants lay tangled on the sand at their feet, it felt like redemption. But his sad smile as he pulled out early told her that he was serious, that it was over, there would be no more talk of a family, a future. Somewhere in the last days or weeks, while she had been anxiously counting backwards and forwards between her last period and her ovulation date, trying not to do the excited dance of if-I-get-pregnant-this-month-then-the-baby-will-be-due-on-that-date-and-that’s-perfect-because-, he had been dreaming of a future without her in it.
She followed his footsteps back to the hotel, placing her shoes inside his prints, watching the scuff on the inside left where his fallen arch had dragged the sand with it. His feet were always easy to read.
‘I’m sorry,’ Patricia wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. ‘It’s just that she’s the most precious thing in the world to me.’
‘I know,’ Nina said. Something about the way the other woman squared her shoulders and lifted her chin made it personal. ‘Is someone here with you, for support? Family?’
‘My sister is on her way down from Limerick.’
‘What time will she be in at?’
‘Not for a good while yet, she has to get the connecting train from Dublin. She didn’t want to get the bus.’ She caught Nina’s eye and they laughed together, harsh and helpless.
‘Are you okay in the meantime?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Patricia said, and Nina could see, suddenly, the steel it must have taken to raise her girl by herself. ‘I’m going to go back upstairs and get a coffee, see if there is any news. Thank you.’
Nina watched her walk away, unsteady on heels an inch too high for her, like a tower
block built by a child. The poor woman. Hopefully her sister would be here shortly, nobody should go through this alone. Easy to wish family on others. If their positions were reversed, she might well prefer solitude over the burdensome concerns of others.
Tim, of course, was not alone for long. Smart, good-looking, a hint of damage – he was snapped up quickly. He phoned her when he started dating. He didn’t used to be so concerned with doing the right thing and she wondered how long his guilt would last at having left her. Not long, she guessed. Men had a capacity to compartmentalise, to move on.
‘It’s a small city, I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else,’ he said. As if she spoke to anyone outside of work. Or listened when anyone spoke.
‘Is it serious?’ Giving him the opportunity to tell her no, of course not, sure, they were still at the dinner-and-a-movie stage.
‘I think so.’
Did he remember telling her, thrilling her, years before, with the same careful words: ‘I think this might be serious,’ whispered in her ear as he walked two-armed with her down the quays after a long night of talk and quiet? If he had forgotten, she remembered it well enough for both of them.
‘At our age, what isn’t?’
To which ‘our’ was he referring? Was he the serious one, chasing some flighty twenty-something barely out of college? Or, worse, still going?
‘I’ve met her children,’ he said. ‘Well, not children exactly. Teenagers, almost. A boy and a girl.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said.
Later that night, the real words spilled from her throat, thick and heartsick.
‘Already?’ she spat at the empty armchair across from her own.
‘A ready-made family, how convenient,’ she sneered into the silence.
It was not his cruelty she cried over, but the return of his hope.
She saw them together once or twice. He was right, it was a small city, although she had to go a little out of her way to do it. She was not young, his new – his new what? Lover? Partner? It would be three years before Tim could file for divorce, so she couldn’t have much by way of formal status.
She was not young, but that didn’t mean she was too old. She had teenage children, everything in tormenting working order. Nina began to brace herself every time the phone rang, waiting for the call in which he would tell her – with halting words unable to mask his joy – that their family was growing. Theirs, not hers. Her family seemed capable only of shrinking.
‘You the reporter?’ The kid’s voice startled her. Lost in her own thoughts, she hadn’t noticed him approaching. He was a stubby teenager, the kind that made people shudder and remember the horror of their own teen years, all spots and gawky self-importance.
‘Nina Cassidy.’ She held out her hand for him to shake. If she made him feel respected, then he would open right up; teenagers were oddly dependable.
‘Declan Rafferty. But my friends call me Dec.’
‘Do you know someone involved in the accident, Dec? Can I call you Dec?’ She smiled at him.
‘My friend? Paul? He’s one of the people on the bus. I thought it might, like, help people to know more about him?’
‘Is there a parent or someone with you right now, Dec? Someone I could check in with to see if it would be all right to interview you on camera?’
‘My dad picked me up at school and dropped me in. He’s over there talking to Mr Teegan, Paul’s da. Hang on, I’ll get him.’
Dec’s father was a smiling version of his son. A man who wore short sleeves in all weathers.
‘Sure, as long as he wants to do it. You want to do it, do you, Dec?’
Dec nodded. ‘It’s Paul, like.’
‘All right, so. Just watch your language or your mam’ll kill the pair of us.’
‘So, Dec, tell us a little bit about Paul, he’s a good friend of yours?’
‘My best mate since we started secondary, ya,’ Dec nodded. ‘We live in the same park and we always do everything together, like.’
‘Do you usually travel to school together?’ Nina asked.
‘We used to get the eight o’clock together every morning, but Paul started getting the early bus a few weeks ago.’
‘Was he going to school early to study?’ Nina knew this was unlikely, but it might loosen Dec up a little bit, get him to stop glancing at the people around him to see if they were watching.
Sure enough, Dec hooted with laughter. ‘Paul’s no swot. He’s down in pass maths with the rest of us. No, this girl started stalking him, like, so he was trying to avoid her.’
‘A girl?’ A man behind Dec cut in. ‘What girl?’
‘His… I suppose she was his girlfriend for a while. Should I say her name?’ Dec asked Nina.
She was more interested in Mr Teegan, the angry man from earlier, the one that Tim had been urging upstairs. If she changed tack now, though, she would lose Dec, possibly for nothing. She could approach the father afterwards, see if he was willing to talk. ‘Probably better not to,’ she told Dec, with one eye on Mr Teegan. ‘It might not be respectful.’
‘Right, well, this girl he had a thing with—’
‘A thing?’ Paul’s father’s voice was loud. ‘I can assure you that my son did not have “a thing” with any girl.’
‘Jason, please.’ A woman with him placed her hand on his arm. ‘Let Declan talk, he’s not doing any harm.’
‘Ya, so, they just got together once, like, at a party?’ Dec continued. ‘Then she wouldn’t leave him alone, always texting and wanting him to be her boyfriend, but he wasn’t into that. He was all, like, “Get in line, girl”—’
‘This is simply not true. Turn off your camera,’ Mr Teegan turned to Nina. ‘Paul was brought up in a good God-fearing home. He wouldn’t engage in lewd behaviour. We never met any girl.’
‘Jason, calm down,’ his wife said again. ‘He did mention a girl to me once, but in a nice, respectful way…’
‘What girl?’ But Paul’s mother lowered her head.
‘It’s true, I swear,’ Dec said. ‘But it was at a party so maybe he was, like, you know, a bit buzzed or whatever—’
‘Buzzed?’
‘That’s enough now,’ Dec’s father pulled his son away by the arm.
‘Girls? Drinking? Pass maths?’ Jason rounded on his wife. ‘What are these lies?’
‘That’s not quite…’ his wife said. ‘There was a girl. And, yes, he gave up higher-level maths a little while back. But you know Paul, he was always such a good boy.’ She turned to Nina. ‘He still notices if I am wearing something new. Imagine that for a teenager!’
Her eyes were sad and eager. Nina smiled at her.
‘He sounds like a lovely boy,’ she said.
‘You know what they say about boys and their mothers.’ She leaned in towards Nina. ‘It was all true in our case. All true.’
Jason put out his hand, cutting his wife off. ‘I would have thought you media people would have been trying to find out the real story about what happened here. That woman that got out? That Muslim and her so-called miraculous escape? That’s what you should be looking into.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Nina asked, knowing full well what he was suggesting but wanting it on camera.
‘Terrorism in your own back yard and you’re here flapping your mouth about some girl that my son probably never even met. Do we have to tell you how to do your goddamn job?’
Behind him, his wife began to cry quietly.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he shouted. ‘You’ve upset my wife. As if she hasn’t enough to worry about today. You delete this, all of it, you hear me?’ He reached out as if to take the camera from Ben.
‘Mr Teegan?’ Tim’s voice was welcome. ‘We’re asking all of the families to come inside, please.’
‘Make them delete it!’
‘Please. This way now, Sir.’ Tim glanced at Nina and she nodded slightly, thanking him.
‘He’s worried about Paul, that’s all,’
Jason’s wife said to Nina, her face anxious. ‘He’s not usually like this. He’s under a lot of pressure at work… The important thing is Paul. He was a good boy. He is a good boy.’ She gripped Nina’s hand, ‘A mother knows these things. A mother always knows.’ She let go of Nina and hurried after her husband.
‘Poor lady,’ Ben said from behind Nina. ‘He’s an asshole, no doubt about it. Work pressure, my backside. He looked like he was going to hit one of us. You okay?’
Nina, too, had wondered if he might lash out. She almost wished he had, it would have spared her Mrs Teegan’s words. A mother knows these things. The words left her feeling oily and raw, as if she might slide right out of her own life and into the endless past.
You might not have known everything, but did that make you less of a mother? You want to run after the woman and scream at her. Tell her that sometimes you still cradle your arms as if she is held within them.
‘I’m fine,’ she told Ben. ‘Why don’t you head on inside? I’ll go and grab us a couple of decent coffees and meet you in there.’
That bought her a few minutes peace but meant she had to head towards the town square, where the small supermarket would surely have a decent machine. She recognised the same homeless woman the moment she turned the corner. The woman sat on the footpath, licking powdered soup out of its small packet. There was a whole layer of people living in a parallel world, invisibility the tax they paid on whatever circumstances had led them out of their lives. People talked about small towns as if their lack of anonymity conferred a kind of security, but, in reality, self-interest lived everywhere. Any other day, it would be a piece she could drum up interest in.
On a whim, she ordered a third coffee and a scone with the works, and handed them to the woman sitting down on the ground beside her, tucking her knees awkwardly to avoid flashing her knickers at passers-by. Unlikely, she realised after a minute or two. Most gave them a wide berth.
The woman placed the half-finished soup packet into the plastic bag at her feet, glancing sideways at Nina as if she might try to grab it and run. Nina looked away, up into the sky, searching for clouds, for rain, for a face peering down from heaven. She went to Mass with Tim once, watching the reverence on his face as he took the host into himself, the sheer voodoo of it all. Hearing the priest promise she would see Aisling in the next life made her feel dizzy and hateful.
Where the Edge Is Page 9