At 4 a.m. he phoned Sully, knowing he would be up for the early shift.
‘What do you want with Emmanuel’s phone number?’ Sully sounded suspicious. As if he thought Richie might phone him up and scream obscenities down the line.
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘You’re not after finding fucking Jesus or anything are you?’
‘I’m not, no. No worries on that score.’
He had enough sense to wait until a more reasonable hour. When the news started on about the rescue, he changed the channel. He didn’t want to chicken out and go about his business as if nothing had happened. It was like he told Sully: he hadn’t turned religious or anything, he just wanted to get a couple of things off his chest. Make amends. Like in AA, only without the alcoholism or the side order of God-bothering.
In the end, though, he bottled the phone call and sent a text instead. ‘Can we meet and talk? No funny business. Richie Murray (from work).’
* * *
Emmanuel kept him waiting. Richie was the bigger fool, sitting in the window like a girl on a blind date. He’d forgotten how much the little prick liked his power plays. Even when he arrived, he sat at the table beside Richie’s, as if he was afraid of him. Breakfast time in a busy coffee place, what did he think Richie was going to do? Shake sugar at him and turn him into a diabetic? Jesus wept.
He needed to focus. He had a reason for asking him here.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Richie said. ‘Can I get you a coffee or something? A bun, maybe?’
‘I don’t want anything from you.’
Richie couldn’t help it. ‘Why did you come?’
‘Everybody at work said it was you in the crash yesterday. I thought it was your typical exaggeration until I saw the news.’
‘It was real, all right.’ Richie pointed to the crutches leaning against the window. ‘I have the injuries to prove it.’
Emmanuel looked at the cast on Richie’s leg. ‘Perhaps I will have a cup of tea after all,’ he said.
The little feck sat and watched while Richie crutched to the counter and ordered the tea, then limped down to the table with it on one crutch before limping back up to the counter to get the second crutch. By the time he sat back down he could feel the sweat seeping through his shirt.
‘It is an awful business, this crash,’ Emmanuel said. He seemed prepared to talk now that something had been satisfied by Richie’s humiliating show of hopping. ‘Of course, there is corruption at the heart of it. Tell me, did anybody ask you to change your story about what happened?’
‘No,’ Richie said. ‘They came and took a short statement yesterday, that was it.’
Emmanuel nodded once, knowingly. ‘I expect they will come and talk to you again.’
‘You and your conspiracy theories,’ Richie said. He might have been trying for jovial, but it fell flat.
‘You and your blindness,’ Emmanuel replied. He stirred his tea without looking at Richie.
At the Christmas party, Sandra had marvelled at his sweet-rough accent. She leaned in too close and told him it was like a strawberry milkshake with the seeds left in for a bit of grit. When she lurched off to the ladies’, Emmanuel watched her walk away, shaking his head. ‘I bet she go down easy, hey? Like ice cream. The big girls always do.’
Richie’s fist had made a surprising mess of his face. He didn’t think he had it in him, truth be told, but he was after a whiskey or two. Oh, he was his dad’s son, right enough, the whiskey making puppets of his fists.
‘Why did you ask me here?’ Emmanuel asked. ‘What purpose is all this’ – he waved his hand in the air – ‘to serve?’
He could keep his superiority complex and his vowels. There was no way on earth Richie was going to ask him how he walked around unafraid. He must have been mad to think he could ask him. It was the lack of sleep that had turned his thinking around.
‘I wanted to apologise. In person, like,’ Richie said. It sounded lame in light of the apology he had been forced to write before being allowed back to work. ‘To clear the air.’
‘You are looking for my forgiveness,’ Emmanuel said, in such a way that it wasn’t a question.
‘I only wanted to clear the air,’ Richie said again. He was tempted to add, ‘I want nothing from you,’ but he held it in.
* * *
The joy of knowing he wasn’t racist followed him to the car. Emmanuel was a jumped-up little prick, pure and simple. No one, whether black, white, blue, yellow or any damn colour, got to talk about his woman – his ex-woman – like that. That, as his old mam would say, was the holy all of it.
The radio cut through his relief.
‘The bodies of all those trapped on the bus have now been recovered—’
He snapped it off and drove home, unable to recapture the feeling.
Racist. Hero.
All words.
All bullshit.
LUCY
‘Lucy?’
‘Yes, Orla?’
‘Do you think they’ll come to get us soon?’
She knew she should be positive, if only so she could say it afterwards. Modestly, of course. Think awshucks-it-was-only-what-any-living-saint-would-do. Princess Diana sauntering across a field of landmines.
‘I’m sure it won’t be long. It might take a while to clear away all the rocks and stones you see. That’s probably what they’re doing.’ She didn’t add that the noise would be unmistakable when it came. If it came.
‘Will it be scary?’ Orla said.
‘It will be just like being on a roller coaster.’ It was her best guess.
‘I never went on one. I was always too scared.’
‘When you get out of here, you’ll be well up for roller coasters. Look how brave you are!’
‘Do you think my parents are wondering where I am?’
Lucy breathed in and out twice before answering. Imagine, it took two years for that term of yoga classes to pay off. Great and all as it was that Orla had warmed up to her, she needed such constant reassurance that there was nothing left to spare for Lucy herself. The panic was in the post, she could feel it. Pretty soon there would be no stopping it.
Was this what it would be like to be a parent? If there was a little blue cross on the pregnancy test in her bag? The one she put there on Monday afternoon when she finally admitted the possibility. It must have happened the night of the party, which was mostly a blur of poker and tequila. In all honesty, she overdid it a bit that night, relieved that James showed up. She had planned in secret for two full weeks before casually letting it slip that she was having a few friends over on one of his unscheduled nights. Already tipsy by the time he got there, she all but ignored him, flirting shamelessly with everyone, male and female. He had pushed her into the bathroom and leaned her against the sink while she watched them in the mirror, smug that her hold on him had not yet eroded entirely. She usually made him wear a condom, but for the night that was in it, it would only undo her pretence at laid-back. Not for her the stop-start logistics of wives. She puked later that night and enough of her precious little pink pill must have come with it to give James the power over her life that she never intended him to have.
Did the manufacturers pick the shape deliberately? Those two intersecting lines, the safely married free to read them as ‘X’, the kiss of their wanted future. While the ones like her saw only the cross they invited onto their own backs.
‘I don’t want my parents to be worried,’
Orla said. Orla must have been thinking and worrying about her family all the while, Lucy realised. If she was struck down for her own selfishness, it would be no more than she deserved.
‘My mother will tell them you’re here with me and that we’ll mind each other.’
A kind lie would rebalance the karmic scale, wouldn’t it? Her mother would know full well that Lucy could hardly look after herself, not to mind somebody who’s retarded. God, she wasn’t supposed to use that word. What was it she should say? It was i
mportant not to label people, so she couldn’t say ‘a retarded person’, wasn’t that it? Instead she had to say it like it was only one aspect of Orla. Although did that mean that saying ‘a person who’s retarded’ was all right? On television, she would skip over that part and just call Orla by her name, as if she was the kind of person who treated everyone the same, even the ones with special needs.
Special needs, that was it. She exhaled in relief. Orla had special needs.
‘They’re probably having a cup of tea and telling stories about us while they wait for the machines to take up all these stones.’
That wasn’t so hard. It just took a bit of imagination and a few white lies. Maybe she wouldn’t be such a bad mother. But, oh, Jesus, her mother would kill her. She was already mad at Lucy for not having a proper job. In the two weeks she had been home, her mother’s friends – who seemed to be there every night, a conveyor belt of white wine and mascara – asked her repeatedly what she was ‘up to’, what her ‘plans’ were. She could hardly say she was still fannying around doing postgrad support work and considering yet another career change. Especially not with Pat hovering.
It was hard to blame her mother. With all the years of further education – Lucy had not one but two postgrad diplomas, for crying out loud! – her mother had assumed that a life on easy street would be theirs for the taking. But the fucking recession put paid to all of that and Pat still dragged herself to the job that a decade ago, high on the promise of Lucy’s brains, she had boasted of leaving just as soon as she could. An unwanted baby would be the icing on the cake. Her mother would never forgive her. She could forget the flat, too. She could never pay for it herself and James wouldn’t want anything to do with her. The move to her mother’s house would be permanent. It would be like her freedom never existed.
‘I’d like a cup of tea,’ Orla said. ‘With a scone.’
‘Me too,’ Lucy agreed. ‘Two scones, even. I’m starving!’
‘What did you have for your breakfast?’
‘I didn’t have any breakfast.’ She didn’t add that she had been too busy sneaking out the door of her creepy ex-boyfriend’s flat before he woke up and barricaded her in, like last time.
‘You should always have a breakfast,’ Orla said. ‘My mother says it’s the most important meal of the day.’
‘I forgot to set my alarm clock,’ she lied. ‘What did you have?’
‘I had a bowl of cornflakes and a slice of toast. It’s what I always have. Except on Saturday mornings when I have an extra slice of toast because I have my dance class and my mam says I need to have extra energy for it. Dancing is my favourite thing. I want to be a dancer. It’s been my dream since I was a baby.’
Granted she couldn’t see much of Orla from this angle, but she looked to be a bit on the chunky side. Surely she was too old to be a dancer? Even assuming she was any good.
Lovely, Lucy. Just lovely. She should be right proud of herself, sniggering at the dreams of some poor special needs kid to make herself feel like less of a loser.
‘What kind of dancing do you do?’ she asked Orla, trying to make it up to her even though Orla couldn’t know what she was thinking.
‘All kinds. Modern dance. Tap-dancing. Ballroom dancing, sometimes.’
‘Which one’s your favourite?’
‘I like tap best. I like the clicking noise my shoes make.’
‘Those shoes are pretty cool.’
‘I got them for my birthday from my sisters. They were teasing me about my dancing, but then it turned out the teasing was only so I didn’t guess that they got me tap-dancing shoes for my present.’
Clearly the ruse had worked, the charm of the surprise was still plaited through Orla’s voice.
‘It must be nice to have sisters,’ she said.
‘I have two. Ailish and Emer. They’re both lots older than me. Do you have sisters?’
Ailish and Emer. The names rang a distant bell. ‘No. There’s just me. You’re lucky.’
‘I know. Even though they don’t live at home any more, they still come over every Sunday. We watch TV together. So You Think You Can Dance is my favourite. The shows are all on Saturday nights, so I record them and we watch them together on Sundays.’
This girl was in the heart of her family, their grownup lives were still built around her. She would have liked that for herself. To have someone to sit on the couch with her and watch movies. Or to play with on Sunday afternoons when her mother was in bed with the curtains pulled against her headache. Lucy brought her cups of tea and sat with her back against the door, dealing hands of Patience until it was time to scramble eggs and toast bread. She had to be careful not to burn anything so that her mother would not shout down the stairs that it smelled too horrible to come down to. ‘Disgusting,’ she would screech, putting strong emphasis on the first part of the word so that it sounded like the noise of a bee landing on skin. Lucy still smelled eggs whenever she heard that word.
‘Lucy?’
‘Yes, Orla?’
‘Will it be much longer?’
Sweet Jesus, give her enough patience not to answer. Not to say, ‘I hope so, because I’m not sure how much air is left in here, or if that’s only a problem on TV shows. I hope so, because I’m too young to die here. I’ve never done anything and I don’t even know who I want to be when I grow up’.
Instead, she smiled so that the younger girl could hear it in her voice. ‘Any minute now, Orla, I’d say. We just have to sit tight and be brave until someone comes and gets us out of this mess.’
* * *
She woke to the sound of someone coughing. James. No, not James. The other one. Kieran. But even before she opened her eyes, she remembered it was neither. It was Orla, which meant this wasn’t just a bad dream.
‘Are you all right, Orla?’ she asked into the darkness.
‘My throat hurts,’ Orla said.
‘Do you have any water or anything in your bag you can drink?’
Orla began to cry. ‘I needed to go to the toilet, Lucy, but there was nowhere to go so I had to go in my pants.’
‘That’s all right, Orla. Don’t worry about it. There is nowhere else to go.’
‘People will think I’m a baby!’
‘They’ll have to think we’re both babies so,’ Lucy said, keeping her voice cheerful. ‘I had to wee in my pants too.’ She even managed to tack on a bit of a laugh. One little white lie wouldn’t hurt. Or, rather, one more.
‘Gross,’ said Paul, his voice thick and low.
‘Paul! You’re awake. Do you feel all right?’
‘Thirsty,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing to drink. Unless you have something near you?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘… bag.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sure someone will be in to get us out in a few minutes and then we’ll have all the water we want. Toilets, too,’ she added, for Orla’s benefit.
‘Paul, this is Orla,’ she said, even though neither could see each other and, really, did it even fucking matter at this point? Funny to still be worrying about being rude. It was one of her mother’s mantras, how she didn’t rear Lucy so she could let her down. ‘Orla wants to be a dancer,’ she said.
Paul said nothing.
‘Paul is still in school,’ she told Orla.
Orla coughed again.
‘The woman,’ Paul said, with difficulty. ‘Old. Teacher.’
‘She wasn’t old,’ Lucy said. ‘She was only in her forties or something.’ She pulled it together. ‘Do you remember her name? We could call her.’
‘No.’
Orla started to cry. Not the gentle, pretty tears that Lucy herself employed in front of other people when she had to, but big noisy snorkles. She felt her own tears rise.
‘How about I tell a story?’ she said, trying to keep the edge of hysteria out of her voice. ‘Orla? Would you like to hear a story? It’ll be like when people are camping, the way they tell stories around the campfire.’
‘Okay.’ It took Orla a few minutes to calm down.
‘I know a great adventure story,’ Lucy said. ‘Although it’s not as exciting as our adventure. Maybe we’ll be able to write our own story in a few days’ time. What do you think?’
Silence.
‘All right then. This is a very very famous story…’ She started to tell them the story of the Princess Bride. Or as much of it as she could remember – she had the main parts right, but she wasn’t one hundred per cent sure that there really was a wicked queen or a dwarf. Or whether she should use the word dwarf at all, but it was only a story, so surely it didn’t matter? Orla and Paul didn’t correct her, so she just ploughed on with it.
She always loved stories. Even as a little kid, it was one major bonus of spending so much time on her own. The highlight of her life back then was the fortnightly visit of the mobile library. She used to sit at the living-room window with the curtain pulled right back, waiting to see the bright yellow bus come around the corner before running out with her bag of read books, eager to swap them for new lives.
She was allowed seven books and she agonised over her choices, terrified of choosing poorly, afraid she would run out of things to read before the big bus rolled round again.
Most days, her mother came with her to pick out some books for herself. Mills & Boon, Barbara Cartland, Jilly Cooper. Big joyful bricks that Pat raced through in the early evening, paging through them more slowly as the wine level lowered in the bottle. She used to laugh at the idea of the mobile library. ‘The national bid to civilise the culchies,’ she called it. But she never missed her chance either, even when Lucy got older and faster and burned through her books so quickly that she begged her mother for her book allowance too.
It was always the same two people, Hugh the driver and Martha the librarian. Martha ruled over the library cards and the shelves, ensuring respect for the books from behind the card table set up behind the passenger seat. Lucy used to imagine them driving home in the evenings from a happy day of dream-giving. In her head, they parked the library behind their little cottage before each choosing a book to read aloud to the other that night. For a long time – a mortifyingly long time – Lucy had assumed they were married. There was a quiet understanding between them that suggested they were on the same team.
Where the Edge Is Page 19