Minding Frankie (34 page)

There were a lot of questions when Emily read the e-mails to Betsy and Eric, so Emily explained who was who. Moira was considered the enemy and April was considered a love rival of Lisa’s; the twins were teenagers in the catering business; Muttie was their grandfather or uncle or guardian, no one quite knew. And Anton? The nonavailable object of Lisa’s adoration …

Eric and Betsy, by now an established married couple, saw Emily off at the airport. They waved long after she had disappeared in the crush of people heading into Terminal 4. They would miss her, but they knew that soon she would be sitting on that Aer Lingus flight, resetting her mind and orienting herself towards Dublin again.

It sounded like an insane place and it had certainly changed Emily. Normally so reserved and quiet, she seemed to have been entirely seduced by a cast of characters who sounded as if they should be on an old Broadway variety show.…

Emily didn’t sleep, like so many of the other passengers did. She sat making comparisons between this journey and the one she had made across the Atlantic when coming to Ireland for the very first time. Then she had been looking for roots, trying to work out what kind of life her father had lived back then in Dublin and how it had shaped him. She had learned next to nothing about this, but had become deeply involved in a series of dramas, ranging from helping to raise a motherless child who was living with a functioning alcoholic to working in a thrift shop trying to help her aunt to raise money to build a statue to an unknown saint who, if he had ever existed, had died back in the sixth century, to organizing a dog-walking business for her uncle.

It seemed quite mad, and yet she felt like she was going home.

It was early morning in Dublin when the transatlantic flights came in, and the crowds stood around the luggage carousels. Emily reached for her smart new suitcases—a gift from Eric to thank her for being maid of honor.

As they moved out through customs, she thought it would be nice if someone had come to meet her, but then who would have been able to?

Josie and Charles didn’t have a car. Neither did Noel or Lisa. Dingo Duggan, with his van, would have been nice, but that was hardly likely. She would get the bus as before. Except this time she would know what she was getting into.

Just as she came out into the open air, she saw a familiar figure; Dr. Hat was standing there waving at her.

“I thought I’d come to meet you,” he said, taking one of her cases.

In the midst of all the crowds of people embracing each other, Emily was thrilled to see him.

“I’m in the short-term car park,” he said proudly and led the way. He must have gotten up very early to be there in time.

“It’s so good to see you, Hat,” she said as she settled into his small car.

“I brought you a flask of coffee and an egg sandwich. Is that as good as America?” he asked.

“Oh, Hat, how wonderful to be home!” Emily said.

“We were all afraid that you would stay out there and get married yourself.” Hat seemed very relieved this was not the case.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Emily said, flattered that they had wanted her back here. “Now you can tell me all the news before I get back to St. Jarlath’s Crescent.”

“There’s a lot of news,” Hat said.

“We’ve a lot of time.” Emily settled happily back in his car.

It was mixed news.

The bad news was that Muttie had got a great deal worse. His prognosis, though not discussed or admitted in public, was no more than a few months now. Lizzie seemed to find it difficult to take this onboard and was busy planning a trip to the sunshine. She was even
urging the twins to speed up their plans to go to New Jersey—somewhere that she and Muttie could come and visit.

Simon and Maud realized that there would be no such journey; they were very down. Young Declan Carroll had been marvelous with them, giving them extra babysitting to keep their minds off things.

Hat’s good news was that baby Frankie was going from strength to strength. Emily didn’t dare to ask, but Hat knew what she wanted to know.

“And Noel has been a brick. Lisa has been away a bit, but he manages fine.”

“Which means that you help him too.” Emily looked at him gratefully.

“I love the child. She’s no trouble.” Hat negotiated the traffic.

“Any more news?” Emily inquired.

“Well, Molly Carroll said you wouldn’t believe how many garments she got from some madwoman.”

“ ‘Mad’? Angry or crazy? I never know which you mean.”

“Oh, crazed is what she was. She discovered her husband had been buying clothes for another lady and she took them all and brought them to the thrift shop!” He seemed amused.

“But are we entitled to them? Were they the crazy lady’s to give?”

“Apparently so. The husband was singing dumb over it all, saying that he had bought them for his wife, but they were entirely the wrong size and the wrong color! Amazing things, I heard, like black and red corsets!”

“Heavens! I can’t wait to get back,” Emily said.

“And you know the old lady who gave Charles the dog?”

“Mrs. Monty, yes? Don’t tell me she took Caesar away.…”

“No. The poor lady died—rest in peace—but didn’t she leave all her money to Charles!”

“Did she have any money?”

“We think, amazingly, that she did.”

“Isn’t that wonderful!” Emily cried.

“It is until you think how it’s going to be spent,” Dr. Hat said, drawing a halo around his head with his finger.

Charles and Josie were waiting for her at Number 23; they were fussing over Frankie, who had a bit of a cold and was very fretful, not her usual sunny self. Emily was delighted to see her and lifted her up to examine her. Immediately, the child stopped grizzling.

“She’s definitely grown, so much in three weeks. Isn’t she wonderful?” She gave the baby a hug and was rewarded with a very chatty babble. Emily realized how much she had missed her. This was the child none of them had expected or, to be honest, really wanted, at the start—and look at her now! She was the center of their world.

Dr. Hat had been invited in for a cup of tea and was enjoying a game of picking up Frankie’s teddy bear in order for her to drop it again, and Molly Carroll stopped in to welcome Emily back. Noel rang from work to make sure she really
had
returned and hadn’t decided to relocate to New York.

Frankie was fine, he said, a runny nose, but otherwise fine. The nurse had said she was thriving. Lisa was away again. She had missed three lectures now and it would be so hard for her to catch up. Oh, yes, he had plenty of help. There was this woman called Faith at his lectures who had five younger brothers at home and had no place to study, so she had come to help Noel three evenings a week.

Faith was delighted with Frankie. She had a lot of experience bringing up younger brothers herself but had never been close to a little girl.

The evening slipped into an easy routine: bath time, bottle, Frankie off to sleep, then revision papers and the Internet notes to help them study. Faith sympathized deeply with Noel having to work in a place like Hall’s: she was in a fairly dead-end office job but had great hopes that the diploma they were working for would make a difference. People in her office respected such things greatly.

She was a cheerful and optimistic woman of twenty-nine; she had dark curly hair, green eyes, a mobile face and a wide smile and she loved walking. She showed Noel a great many places he had never known in his own city. She said she needed to walk a lot because it concentrated her mind. She had suffered a great blow: six years ago, her fiancé had been killed in a car accident just weeks before the wedding day. She had coped by walking alone and being very quiet, but recently she had felt the need to get involved with the world about her. That was one of the reasons she had joined the course at the college, and it was one of the reasons she had adapted so easily to Noel’s demanding life.

She had bought a baby album for Frankie and put in little wisps of the child’s hair, her first baby sock and dozens of photographs.

“Have you any pictures of Stella?” she asked Noel.

“No—none at all.”

Faith didn’t inquire further.

“I could do a drawing of her, maybe,” he said after a while.

“That would be great. Frankie will love that when she gets older.”

Noel looked at her gratefully. She was very good company to have around the place. Perhaps later he might try to sketch her face too.

Lisa and Anton were at a Celtic food celebration in Scotland. They were looking into the possibility of pairing with some similar-type Scottish restaurant where they could do a deal: anyone who spent over a certain sum in Anton’s could get a voucher for half this amount in the Scottish restaurant and vice versa. It would work because it was tapping into an entirely new market, mainly American.

It was Lisa’s idea. She had special cards printed to show how it would work. The Scottish restaurant’s name was a blank at the moment until the deal was done.

Several times Lisa felt rather than saw Anton’s glance of approval,
but she knew better now than to look at him for praise. Instead, she concentrated entirely on getting the work done. There would be time later over meals together.

At one of the hotels they had visited the receptionist asked them if they’d like the honeymoon suite. Lisa deliberately said nothing. Anton asked, with apparent interest, if they looked like a honeymoon couple.

“Not really, but you
do
look happy,” the girl said.

Lisa decided to let Anton speak again. “Well, we are, I hope. I mean, who wouldn’t be happy in this lovely place and if there was a complimentary upgrade to the honeymoon suite, that would be the icing on the cake.” He smiled his heartbreaking smile and Lisa noticed the receptionist join the long line of women who fancied Anton.

It was so cheering to be here with him and to know that April was out in the wilderness, not posturing and putting her small bottom in her skintight jeans on Anton’s desk or the arm of his chair. April was miles and miles away.…

But then the trip was over and it was back to reality. Back to lectures in the college three nights a week, back to Frankie waking up all hours of the night, back to April, who was inching her way again into Anton’s life.

Lisa noted that a lot of free events had been arranged in Anton’s, occasions that would be written up in the papers, perhaps, but that did not put paying customers in seats, which was what they needed. She worried that too much was being spent on appearance rather than reality. The bottom line was the numbers of people you got in to pay for the meals and tell their friends, who would also come in and hand over money. Not just another charity press conference with minor celebrities who would be photographed for gossip columns. This was April’s world.

Lisa was not so sure it was right. But when Lisa was alone with Anton, she kept quiet about her misgivings. Anton hated being
nagged. To tell him he was high on publicity and low on paying punters could well have been considered nagging.

Lisa was not happy to be home.

Emily was walking towards Muttie and Lizzie’s house when she saw Lisa, and she could judge Lisa’s mood from a long way off. She wondered was it going to be her only role in life from now on cheering people up and stressing the positive.