It felt odd, sitting in the front pew. I hadn’t known Abi and I suspected that she was turning in her grave even having me in the same building that was about to honour her memory, but Charlie wanted me there and I wouldn’t be the world’s most dedicated counsellor if I turned tail and ran like I wanted to. Charlie sat with me on one side and Siobhan on the other, her hand in his throughout the service.
It was almost two by the time Charlie had finished making small talk with people he hadn’t seen in years, accepting their condolences with gritted teeth. He gave Jamie a wide berth and talked with people as if he wasn’t on the verge of tears again, as if what had just happened hadn’t made him feel as if he was dying.
I made my way over to the river and leaned against the wall. The water burbled by slowly and the sound was a calming quiet after an hour of talking, prayer and music. Enjoy that, did yer?
Oh shit, not her again.
I opened my eyes and there she was, sitting on the wall, her long arms crossed over her chest and her eyes watching the dissipating crowd. ‘Not in the way you’re insinuating, no,’ I replied quietly.
Well, my mother likes yer. Maybe yer can invite her to your wedding for old time’s sake.
‘Why are you so mean to me?’ I asked.
Don’t ask me, love, I’m the product of your brain.
‘I don’t want him to forget you or replace you and I think you know that.’
If you know it, then I do. I’m inside your brain, remember? She smiled and it held the slightest hint of affection.
‘I just want him to be happy,’ I said, closing my eyes and breathing in the fresh spring air.
I heard shuffling feet behind me and when I opened my eyes again, Abi was gone.
‘Who yer talkin’ to?’ I turned, just in time to see Charlie join me at the flower-strewn wall.
‘Oh, no one,’ I replied. ‘Just myself.’ It wasn’t a complete lie. ‘So, what happens now?’
‘They’re all going to the Aughaval, but I thought we could walk back to Siobhan’s and I could show yer a couple of places in town?’
‘Aughaval?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘It’s the name of the graveyard.’
My brows knitted together in the middle. ‘Oh, well in that case, don’t you think you should go with them?’
He sighed and looked down at the water. ‘I don’t know if I can.’
I glanced behind me and made sure that no one was watching us before taking his hand and squeezing his fingers. ‘Isn’t this why we came? To get closure, to move on?’
‘I have closure. It’s not like I’m under any illusion that she’s alive still, I just don’t wanna see the patch of grass above her skeleton is all.’
‘That’s not what it is. It’s her final resting place. It’s the place she’s going to be for the rest of time and I think you need to see that with your own two eyes. Yes, you saw her after it happened, but, Charlie, you were in shock then. Your brain probably still hasn’t processed, I mean really processed, the fact that she isn’t coming back and I think that’s something you need to see before you can move on.’
He turned from the water and back to me. ‘See, I know you’re right, but I still don’t think I can go.’
‘Of course, yer can,’ Carrick said as he appeared behind us. ‘Come on, yer can sit next to me in the limo. Hopefully it’s one of those ones with champagne and disco lights.’
‘Oh, yeah. I hear that they always rent the ones with stripper poles out for funerals.’ Charlie rolled his eyes.
‘Ah, that’s good.’ Carrick grinned. ‘I’ve been meaning t’brush up on my technique. My fireman knee spin is in definite need of some work.’
We both stared at him for a moment, with scarring mental images playing out in our brains, before I turned back to Charlie, ignoring everything Carrick had just said.
‘How about this: you go in the car with Carrick and, if when you get there you think you can, you get out and stand in the graveyard for a little while. And, you know, if that’s not too bad then maybe you can walk over and see Abi’s grave. How does that sound?’
He thought for a moment, his body ready to turn tail and run, but his head knowing that this was what we came here for. ‘Okay,’ he replied.
‘She’s smart,’ Carrick said, linking arms with his nephew and tugging him gently in the direction of the car. ‘Far too smart for yer.’
‘Do yer wanna come too?’ Charlie asked.
I shook my head. ‘No, I think this is something that you can do without me.’
‘What are yer gonna do then?’ he asked, worried.
‘She can come with me,’ Kenna said, appearing behind Carrick and coming to stand beside me.
‘I’m not goin’ either. Can’t stand it there.’ She shuddered. ‘Walk with me back to the house?’
‘See,’ I said to Charlie as Carrick struggled to get him towards the car. ‘I’ll be just fine.
‘Great.’ Kenna grinned. ‘Yer can help me put out the cocktail sausages.’
I turned to Charlie and shrugged. ‘How can I turn down an offer like that?’
The thought of being alone with Kenna was far more terrifying than the reality of actually being alone with her.
‘So, what d’yer do over there?’ she asked as we wandered through town, over bridges and past brightly painted shops.
‘I’m a counsellor, of sorts. I work for a mental health helpline.’
‘Yer kiddin’? What a great job.’
‘What about you?’ I asked as we took a left up to a more residential part of the town.
‘Oh, I do a bit of everythin’. I do some modellin’ in Dublin and over in London – I gotta place with a couple of other girls that overlooks the Liffey.’ Her accent was more genteel than Charlie’s and soothing in a way that made me think she had missed her calling for recording audiobooks.
‘Impressive,’ I said, trying to not let the intimidation flare up again. ‘Who do you model for?’
‘Anyone who’ll have me really.’ She sighed. ‘I do a lot of foot modelling. I have really nice feet. It’s mostly shoe stuff, although it is my foot and lower leg on those blister plaster packets, the ones in the purple box.’
‘Very impressive.’ I glanced down at her peep-toed, monstrously high-heeled shoes. From what I could see of them, they were very good feet. Although, I didn’t know what state they’d be in when we got back to the house, which seemed to be miles away. My shoes, although nowhere near as high-heeled as Kenna’s, were higher than my poor arches were used to and that ache, fondly remembered from my late teen years of wearing shoes I had no hope of doing anything other than sitting down in, came back to my feet like an old friend that I’d hoped had cut ties with me.
‘I did do some private modelling for a client. They just wanted pictures of my feet standing in things like cakes and custard.’
‘What the hell did they want those for?’
‘Sometimes it’s best not to ask questions,’ she answered and we both chuckled. ‘So, you and Charlie, huh?’ she asked after a short pause.
‘Erm, I have no idea, to be honest,’ I replied, not really knowing how to talk about this with her.
‘Charlie Stone is about as good as they come. Sure, sometimes he’s the world’s biggest eejit, but he’s a good person.’
I looked down at the toes of my shoes and smiled. ‘What about you?’ I asked, eager to change the subject. ‘You must be fighting off men with foot fetishes left, right and centre.’
She laughed, swinging her arms casually by her sides. ‘That may well be the case, but I’m not interested in them. Or men at all for that matter. I have a … companion in London – Naomi – but we’re nothing serious.’ She abruptly turned to her right and began walking up a driveway towards a large blue front door beneath a wisteria-draped awning porch. It reminded me of the colour of the door to Charlie’s flat and I wondered if Abi had painted it that colour to remind her of home.
‘I just want you to know
,’ I said as she slid her key into the door, turning around at the sound of my voice, ‘that what’s been happening between Charlie and me, it wasn’t easy for him. It still isn’t easy.’
She smiled at me with her crimson, Cupid’s bow lips and soft brown eyes. ‘This is Charlie Stone we’re talkin’ about. Nothin’ with him is ever easy. Now come along, these tiny sausages aren’t goin’ to arrange themselves around some ketchup.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
I sat on a short set of stone steps and stared out into Siobhan’s large garden and imagined the young versions of Abi and Charlie settling down on the grass after their first attempt at taming the wild beast that had once been this now expertly pruned garden. How could they know back then that they would make such an impact on each other’s lives? I guess there’s no confetti cannons or marching bands when the most important people unwittingly stroll into your life. I placed my half-empty glass of Prosecco down on the low stone wall beside me, and wondered how much longer Charlie and Carrick were going to be. I was starting to get anxious, but I kept telling myself that he needed to take his time with this.
Yer were in town and yer never even popped in to say hello.
I sighed into my palm and saw her, lounging nonchalantly on the steps beside me. Abi was shaking her head in forced disappointment.
‘Are you actually here?’ I asked, turning to look at her face on and seeing her as clearly as I saw the steps beneath her. ‘Or am I having some sort of psychotic break?’
I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.
‘Yes, you do. You’re inside my brain, as you like to remind me so often. So, tell me, am I really talking to you or am I going insane?’
She exhaled loudly through her nose and looked down the length of the garden. Who knows? The only thing I’m sure of is that either way, people look at yer funny whenever yer talk to me.
I heard a clattering of plates and turned towards the kitchen window where Siobhan and Kenna stood at the sink. Siobhan was crying, her face pressed into her daughter’s shoulder, her body juddering as sobs racked her.
‘Poor woman,’ I whispered.
Always the mourner, never the corpse, Abi said sadly. God knows she wishes we could swap places.
‘If she’s back then that must mean that Charlie is too,’ I said, my heart leaping a little as I stood. I took my Prosecco flute in hand and began scanning the crowd inside.
Tell my husband that I appreciate the effort, she called, making me stop and look back her way. She was staring down the garden now, her eyes half hooded with what looked like sadness. He’ll be able to let go of it someday and when he does, I’d like it to be with me. I frowned her way and wondered what the hell she meant. She was inside my head, a manifestation of my prickling conscience; she wasn’t meant to say things that I didn’t understand.
I walked back into the house and nodded politely to the faces that sent me smiles and greetings, but none of those faces were Charlie’s.
I walked into the kitchen where Siobhan and Kenna stood at the counter, having some alone time under the guise of making tea for the guests. ‘Hi,’ I said nervously. Siobhan turned to me with a sad smile and red-ringed eyes, her lower lashes still clumped together with tears. I opened my mouth to ask the questions that people ask at times like this like, ‘are you okay?’ and ‘how did it go?’ but those questions seemed silly right now. So instead I asked, ‘Are Carrick and Charlie back too?’
‘No, love. They decided to walk home. Takes the best part of an hour, so give ’em some time,’ she said, her voice soft and wavering with bridled emotion. ‘Tea?’
‘No, thank you,’ I said, holding up the glass of Prosecco.
‘Let me get that for yer,’ Kenna said, topping up the glass.
Almost an hour and a half passed by and I felt every single second of it like a knife twisting in my gut. I spent the time hovering by the window, drinking glass after nervously drunk glass of Prosecco and nibbling on cooled samosas and triangular ham sandwiches when I began to feel a little light-headed.
Hovering by the buffet table in the front window was a good place to keep watch for Charlie and Carrick’s return, but the downside was that I kept being pulled into small talk with grey-haired, round-bellied men who returned to the table every twenty minutes or so to replenish their paper plates with more smoked salmon and miniature quiches. Why is it that all buffet tables smell the same? The miasma of slowly staling bread, margarine and cake frosting that come together to create the same scent, no matter if you’re at a funeral or a fifth birthday party.
The fear that something had happened to Charlie, or rather that Charlie had happened to Charlie, had begun around an hour ago, but I took solace in the knowledge that Carrick was with him.
I pulled my phone out of my bra and checked the screen again: no texts, no responses to the message I’d sent him. I cleared my throat in frustration and emptied what little was left in my glass. I wandered towards the kitchen, the front of my shoes pinching my toes more and more as time wore on. I was almost at the kitchen when I heard a familiar and overtly loud voice. I turned towards it and saw that Carrick was stood in the centre of the room with a slightly drunk look in his eyes and a group of people around him who all seemed to be laughing at something he’d said. I spotted Ava and Eoin over in the corner, looking embarrassed about the attention he was demanding from the whole room.
‘You two took your time. Where’s Charlie?’
‘Dunno, I just got here,’ he said.
‘You haven’t been with him?’ I asked, my heart sinking down into my stomach.
‘At the graveyard yes, then we walked back to town and went to Matt Malloy’s. We had a pint of the black stuff and then I got chattin’ to someone. He said he’d be back here.’
‘Well he isn’t.’
‘Ah, he’ll be about,’ he said flippantly, although I could see a hint of panic in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment before.
‘Carrick, you know where I met him. You know what he’s planned to do before.’ I kept my voice low as pricked ears tried to listen in, especially Ava and Eoin’s.
‘I know. But he wouldn’t do anythin’, not today.’ He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself with his own words.
‘What, on the day he visits Abi’s grave for the first time? On the day he finally has to face up to everything he’s been running from? Really, Carrick, of all days, would today not be the one you’d choose?’
‘Come on,’ he said, placing his drink down and taking my wrist in his hand as he marched towards the door. ‘We’ve only been apart about thirty …’ he checked the clock on the wall ‘… thirty-five minutes.’
‘That’s a pretty good head start.’
I placed my empty glass down on a sideboard in the hall and walked out into the front garden. I instantly started thinking of high-up places that I’d seen on my walk through the town. But I didn’t know the place well enough.
I raised my palm to my forehead. The skin there was hot to the touch, warmed by fear.
‘Where would he go?’ I asked, stabbing my thumb into the screen of my phone and dialling Charlie’s number. Carrick arrived on the path beside me with his phone in hand too.
‘No idea. D’yer know yer way back here if we split up?’
‘No,’ I said as the call went to voicemail. ‘But I have Google maps.’ I opened the app, set my current location as home and turned expectantly back to Carrick. ‘Where should I go?’
‘Erm, you take that way,’ he said pointing behind me, ‘and I’ll go this way. Call me if you find him.’
‘Okay, you too,’ I replied, before taking off at a run, or as much of a run as I could manage in these shoes.
I tried my best not to panic as I jogged through the streets of a town I didn’t know, but the thought of him disappearing off the face of the earth, of him not being around anymore, brought hot, wet tears to my eyes. The sky was swollen with dark, storm-grey clouds and I knew that,
before long, it would be sending its wrath down on to me.
I dialled Charlie’s number for the ten thousandth time and held it to my ear. Voicemail again. I groaned and began tapping out a text.
Charlie, please let me know you’re okay. Just one word will do.
I sent it and waited, watching the screen for little typing bubbles to appear, but nothing came.
I stopped for a moment, my head feeling light with Prosecco and fear. I leant against a wall; my fingers white with the amount of pressure falling on them. I tried to summon Abi with my brain, to ask her where he would have gone, but she didn’t appear and I wondered why I seemed to be losing control of my own imaginary friend.
The plinking sound of my xylophone ringtone tinkled out of my phone and into my ears.
My heart leapt as I brought the phone up to my face, almost clocking myself on the nose, and saw Charlie’s name on the screen. I answered and held it to my ear.
‘Charlie! Thank God, where are you?’
‘Nell, have you found him yet?’ My heart sank as Carrick’s voice came down the line.
I felt tears of false hope roll down my cheeks.
‘No. Where did you find his phone?’ I asked.
‘On the table in the pub. He must’a left it. I’ll carry on lookin’.’ The line went dead and I felt my knees give way. I sank to a crouch and rested my forehead against the wall in an effort to try and calm myself. I had never felt this level of fear before, this all-encompassing dread. Everything was at stake here, everything. There was a rumbling above me. The sky began to turn dark as if it was reflecting my own tumult back at me.
I twisted on the toes of my shoes and collapsed back against the wall. I opened my phone again and did what I always did when I needed help.
‘Nell?’ Ned’s voice came through the phone.
At First Sight Page 23