Semi-Sweet (41 page)

“Well, maybe she has a point. Maybe you
didn’t
give him a chance.”

Had she given up on John too soon? Could something have developed between them if she hadn’t been so hasty? Too late now—she’d
never know. “He’s gone back to Scotland,” she told Adam. “I heard yesterday.”

She’d met Wally as she was rounding a bend in the supermarket, struggling to control the wheels of her cart.

Steady on, there,
he’d said.
You’re not in the fairground now.
He held a basket. She saw Rice Krispies, frozen pizza, and frozen chips.

They’d chatted briefly. She’d laughed at his choice of cereal. He’d promised not to spread the word that she was buying six
bottles of wine; she’d protested it was only to get the bulk discount with a coupon she had.

And then he’d said,
I assume you know Johnny’s moved back home,
and Hannah’s smile had faded, and he’d said quickly,
Sorry, me and my big mouth,
and she’d said,
No, no, it’s fine,
but the mood had changed, and he’d said,
Well, I’ll let you get off,
and moved away, and Hannah had added toothpaste and macaroni and olives to her cart, and they hadn’t come face-to-face again.

The trouble was, it
was
fine. She couldn’t honestly say she missed John, now that he was gone. She regretted its not working out between them, of
course—but the fact remained that she was fine without him. She missed him a little, like you’d miss the company of anyone
you got on well with, but that was it.

“What’ll you do with the clarinet?” she asked Adam.

“Sell it,” he answered. “I’ll put an ad on eBay. Easy come, easy go. Might even make a few bob.” He opened the sitting-room
door and whistled at Kirby. “Come on, you fat lump—time for a walk.”

Left alone, Hannah dried the dishes and set out her ingredients as usual. Was this it from now on? Would she and Adam still
be sitting down to dinner together in twenty years’ time, with the rest of Clongarvin assuming they were living happily ever
after? Would her joke about marrying each other when they were sixty turn out to be horribly prescient?

Would she meet Patrick on the street every so often, surrounded by his family, and pretend that her life was just as full?

She sighed and made her way upstairs to bed.

“You’re not going to believe it,” Geraldine said, barely in the door, her jacket still on.

Stephen lowered the volume on the
Late Late
. “What’s that?”

“Patrick Dunne and Leah Bradshaw have split up.” She picked up the poker. “Can you credit it, and that little baby hardly
arrived?”

Stephen raised his eyebrows, genuinely surprised. “You don’t say.”

“And what’s more, I got it from Fiona Bradshaw herself,” Geraldine added, thrusting the poker into the center of the glowing
briquettes, collapsing Stephen’s hastily constructed pyramid, ten minutes earlier. “She told me in person, made a point of
it.”

I just thought I’d let you know,
Fiona had said.
It didn’t work out, and they’ve decided to separate.
And Geraldine had said,
Thank you for telling me,
because it couldn’t have been easy, and they’d nodded at each other, and Fiona had drifted away again as Geraldine had reached
for a slice of the shop-bought apple tart that Dolores Mulcair always tried to pass off as her own.

“That poor little baby,” she said now, unbuttoning her jacket.

Stephen said nothing.

“It didn’t take him long, did it?” Geraldine hung the poker back on its hook. “At least he lasted over a year with Hannah.”

“Well, we shouldn’t—”

“Oh, God,” she said abruptly, swinging around to look at her husband in dismay, “I’ve just thought of something.”

“What?”

“He wouldn’t try and get back with Hannah, would he?” She regarded Stephen anxiously. “Maybe he already has. Maybe that’s
why Hannah dropped that lovely Scotsman.”

“Hang on now,” Stephen said. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you. We’ve absolutely no evidence—”

“No, but it would make sense, wouldn’t it? There was no reason for Hannah to finish with that nice man. They were getting
on so well.”

“Geraldine, we don’t know that, and people break up all the—”

“Oh God,” she said again, dropping onto the couch next to him. “Stephen, she wouldn’t be that foolish, would she?”

“No, love,” Stephen said patiently, “I really don’t think she would.”

“Because he’d only turn around in a few months and break her heart all over again.”

“That’s probably true.”

Geraldine stared into the fire, frowning. “Should I ring her, do you think?”

“No,” Stephen said firmly. “Definitely not. We have to let Hannah live her own life.”

“Yes,” she said, “I suppose you’re right.”

But the doubt was there all the same, the worry was there. And she knew well that Stephen was worried, too, even if he’d never
admit it.

“I don’t know what I’ll do with the pair of you,” their mother said crossly. She turned to Wally. “I don’t know why you bothered
coming for your tea, when all you’re doing is pushing it around your plate. And you”—stabbing a finger at Vivienne—“haven’t
had a proper meal in ages.”

“I have so,” Vivienne said. “I’m just not that hungry today.”

“Not for ages,” their mother repeated to Wally. “She’s doing her best to get that anorexia.”

Wally smiled. “Hardly.”

He studied his sister, who did seem quieter than usual. It occurred to him that she might be pining for John Wyatt—maybe she’d
had a thing for him that nobody had noticed.

“And why aren’t
you
eating?” his mother demanded of Wally. “You’re hardly watching your figure, are you?”

“God, no.” He speared a piece of boiled potato. “Look, I am eating.” But the potatoes held no more appeal for him than the
poached salmon or buttered carrots—and he certainly wasn’t pining for John Wyatt.

“We got a temporary replacement for the man who left the band,” he said, to take his mother’s mind off their poor appetites,
“but we’re still looking for a permanent saxophonist. It’s either that or force Viv to play two instruments at once.”

The ghost of a smile flitted across his sister’s face. “Even I can’t do that.”

He wished again that he could somehow inject some confidence into her. He’d thought that being in the band might be good for
her, but the experience didn’t seem to have had the smallest effect. She played the pieces, but she might as well have been
at home in her bedroom for all the attention she paid to her surroundings. She was as shy and withdrawn in company as she’d
ever been.

In the car later, on the way to Vintage, he said, “It’s a shame John left, isn’t it?”

Vivienne nodded. “It’ll be hard to find someone as good.”

No sign of discomfiture, no indication that the loss of John mattered beyond its implications for the band. “Anything wrong,
Viv?” he asked her. “Anything you want to get off your chest?”

She turned to him, and he glanced from the road to her face.

“No,” she said, after the briefest of pauses. “Nothing at all.”

While she was moving down the columns as she always did, the name caught Alice’s eye and stopped her in her tracks.

“O’Brien, Jason,”
she read.
“Fifth-birthday remembrance. Our darling son, taken from us suddenly on 26 March. Gone but never forgotten.”

She lay down the paper and imagined them sitting around the kitchen table of number 37. Their families there, of course, to
support them. Tea cooling in cups, remembering his last birthday maybe, the four candles on the cake, the party with his little
friends gathered around. None of them knowing it was to be his last.

She remembered the mother at the courthouse, the hate plain in her expression as she’d looked at Alice.
Your husband destroyed us,
she’d said, her features twisted and ugly with pain.
Don’t come near us again.

But Alice had already stopped driving to Springwood Gardens, and she’d given up visiting the cemetery. Now she stayed in the
shop with Geraldine in the afternoons and went home at the usual time.

“The house is quiet without you,”
she’d written to Tom.
“I never realized how quiet it is, living on your own. I planted out the hanging baskets. They’ll be in full bloom when you
get home. I’m thinking of painting the sitting room, maybe cream this time, for a change. I’m a bit tired of the white. What
would you think?”

She didn’t tell him about Ellen. He didn’t need to hear that now.

I can’t believe it,
Ellen had wept on the phone.
My father drove while he was drunk and killed a child. How could he? How could you have let him? Why didn’t you tell me, Ma?
Why did I have to hear about it from Avril O’Regan?

The smallness of Ireland. Someone from Clongarvin working in the courthouse in Galway, some clerk with a sister living in
the same neighborhood as Ellen. A chance remark, a few careless words, and Ellen knew.

Alice had sat quietly on the bottom stair with the phone to her ear until her daughter had run out of questions.
Listen,
she’d said then, her eyes closed, her words slow and careful.
Listen to me. I’ve just got back from dropping your father into a treatment center in Dublin. He’s there to try to stop drinking.
He’ll be there for a month, maybe longer. The accident happened the morning after a night out, and neither of us realized
he could still be…under the influence. I didn’t tell you because, right or wrong, I thought I could spare you all this.

She’d taken a ragged breath then, and Ellen hadn’t jumped into the silence
. We have both gone through hell in the past few months,
Alice had said tightly,
so I need you not to be angry now, because I’m not sure I can take any more—
and her voice had broken then, and she’d bitten her lip and stopped talking, her eyes still squeezed shut.

Oh, Ma,
Ellen had said, her voice thick with tears, too,
I’m sorry. I’m not angry, at least. I don’t know what I am. It’s just…

I know,
Alice had whispered.
I know what you mean.

Ma, I’m coming home,
Ellen had said then,
when Dad has to…when the case comes to court. You’ll need someone with you. I can get a couple of weeks off, and Lenny will
hang on to the kids. Let me know when you have a date, and I’ll book my flight.

Alice had opened her mouth to protest—and then she’d shut it again, thinking about having Ellen sitting beside her when Tom
was on trial. Her daughter’s hand to hold, her child’s arm in hers while Jason’s parents sat in the same room.

“The strawberries will be good this year,”
she’d written to Tom.
“I sprayed the roses—there was a bit of greenfly. I’m afraid the front lawn is full of daisies again, even after that stuff
you put down last year. I’ve mown it, but I can’t get the stripes like you can.”

She didn’t mention the shop. She didn’t tell him what she was planning. Time enough for that.