The One I Love (7 page)

After that Kurt told his grandmother about his run-in with his mother, expressing how annoyed he was that she was punishing him for something he’d done eight months previously. For once his grandmother was on his mother’s side as she felt that anyone who jumped out of a perfectly good plane deserved to be crippled for life. Having said that, she felt that Jane’s withdrawal of funds was an overreaction, bearing in mind which night it was. “How much do you need?” she asked.

“Seventy?” Kurt said, testing his grandmother.

“Fifty it is,” she responded, knowing full well he was
chancing his arm. She took fifty euro out of her handbag and handed it to him.

“Cheers, Gran!”

She waved him away. He left the basement flat and she watched him through her window as he turned on his iPod, searched for some noise, pressed play and walked down the street, probably deafening himself.
Kids are mad
, she thought. Then she picked up the open bottle of red wine that was resting against her chair. She drained her cup of tea and poured in the wine. She took a sip and smiled to herself.
Happy New Year, Rose
.

Chapter 4

So Far Gone

I’m so far gone that it seems like home to me
.

I’m so far gone, have I lost my way or am I free?

Jack L,
Universe

It was just after eight thirty on New Year’s Eve when Leslie got off the train, returning from the bungalow she owned in the country. Her apartment was located conveniently beside the railway station so she wheeled her suitcase past all those queuing for a taxi, turned the corner, tapped her number into the keypad on the apartment-building gate and she was home.

In the lift, she could hear crashing and banging, and the closer she got to her floor, the louder the noise became. She exited and walked towards a bunch of five people she recognized as neighbours. They were blocking the way so she mumbled, “Excuse me.” They didn’t notice as they were wrapped up in what was going on around the corner. It was then Leslie noticed a fireman. He was standing in front of the group as though he was there to hold them back. Leslie couldn’t smell any smoke. She said, “Excuse me,” again, but this time the banging was louder.

One of the girls she recognized but didn’t know turned and looked her up and down. “Oh, shit!” she said. “She’s here!”

Leslie wasn’t one for pleasantries but the girl’s response to her arrival was slightly shocking. The others gaped at her. The fireman called to his buddies, “Lads, it’s a false alarm!”

The gaping neighbours parted and she was allowed to walk through them with her case rolling behind her. She rounded the corner to be met by two firemen standing in the space where she used to have a front door. “What the hell?” she asked.

“It’s my fault,” the girl who had uttered “Oh, shit” said. “I haven’t heard your music in a few days and there was a smell.”

A fireman walked through the doorway. “Well, the good news is we have no dead body. The bad news is the cat has shat all over the place.”

“I was down the country,” Leslie said, a little shocked at the scene.

“I’m really sorry,” the girl said, to the fireman rather than to Leslie. “She rarely leaves the apartment,” her tone slid from apologetic to accusatory, “and for the past few days no music and then that awful smell.”

“You smelt cat-shit and thought I was dead?” Leslie said, in a voice laced with contempt and disbelief.

The girl turned to her, hands raised in the air. “Look, I was just being a good neighbour – you hear all the time about people left to rot and, to be fair, I don’t know what death smells like.”

“Well, it doesn’t smell like cat-shit – and what do you mean ‘these people’?”

“Well,” said the girl, becoming a little uncomfortable, “loners.”

Leslie stood dumbfounded.

“She thought you’d killed yourself,” a random man said.

The girl nudged him and mouthed the words “shut” and “up”.

“Well,” he said, directing his speech to the firemen, “everyone knows that New Year’s Eve is a big night for suicides.”

“Am I going to get charged for this call-out?” the girl asked.

“Don’t give them your name, Deborah!” the man said.

“Brilliant, Damien,” she said, walking away and shaking her head. “Thanks for that.”

The firemen gathered their gear; the five people disappeared.

Leslie entered her doorless apartment and sat on the sofa. Her cat, which had apparently recovered from its gastrointestinal malady, jumped on her lap and together they surveyed the pile of cat-shit matted into the carpet near the electric fire. Then the realization of how she was perceived in her building hit Leslie like a ton of bricks.
I’m the crazy-loner cat lady, who drops dead and rots in her apartment
. The irony was not lost on her as she had only recently rejoined the society she had shunned for so long.

A mere two months before this night Leslie had been sitting in a chair opposite her oncologist. He had cared for her mother and both her sisters through their cancer. He had also been testing Leslie twice a year for more than twenty years. He was smiling. “Good news,” he said. “You’re clean as a whistle.”

“Right,” Leslie said. “Fine. Thanks.” She stood up to leave.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

“Nothing. Apparently I’m clean as a whistle.”

“You sound disappointed.”

She sat. “Well, would it be odd if I said I was?”

“Very odd.”

“I’m sick of waiting,” she said. “I’m sick of waiting for this stupid tick-tocking time-bomb to go off.”

“Oh,” he said. “I see.”

“The truth is, when Imelda died I stopped living.” She hunched her shoulders. “Now I’m a woman about to turn forty with a cat for company. I thought I’d be well dead by now but yet here I am, alive and lonely.” She smiled at her doctor to assure him she wasn’t going to cry. He must have been shocked at her revelation as it was possibly the most she’d ever said to him.

“You know that you might never get cancer,” he said, “but a lot has changed in recent years. Although I’m not a huge advocate of preventive surgery I can give you some brochures.”

She looked at him. “We talked about this years ago. You were adamant it was just self-mutilation.”

“A lot has changed,” he repeated, “and, besides, I might have thought differently if I’d known how you were feeling or if you’d given even the slightest indication of the effect this worry was having on your life.”

She stared at him and asked abruptly, “Are you talking about a double mastectomy?”

“Yes. And in your case I’d recommend a full hysterectomy also, for peace of mind.”

“Wow,” she said. “Jesus. Holy crap.” She nodded. “Give me the information.”

This new prospect was daunting but even as Leslie pulled out of the hospital car park she had made up her mind.
I’m going to do it
.

It was around that time that Leslie also decided she’d
had enough of being lonely and tentatively she had stepped back out into the world. As she was a web designer who worked from home, she decided instead to rent an office in town. She had yet to move on this but the plan was in place. As she had no friends she decided to visit museums and art galleries so that, even if she was alone, at least she was outside and partaking in life.

It would be a slow road back but, thanks to that night stuck in a lift, not as slow as she had first envisaged. Elle had become a fixture in her world over the past two months and to a lesser extent Tom and Jane. She had created a website for Alexandra and was in contact with Tom, giving him updates, and Jane filled her in on how the exhibition idea was coming along so that she could blog about it. But Elle wanted more than her help. Elle wanted her friendship and, although it was unnatural to Leslie to be a friend to a woman so much younger, she had become fond of her. So, the fact that she had so recently ventured back into the world and actually made friends meant that the comments from her annoying neighbour served to really bug her. “I’m not a loner, Deborah!” she shouted at the wall. “I have friends. I go out. I have a life.”

Someone coughed. It was the caretaker. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I was just talking to the wall.”

“I’m here to fix the door,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “Please forgive the smell. I’m about to clean.”

“Will do,” he said, and got to work.

Much later, after the caretaker had hastily fitted a new door, Leslie poured a glass of wine, picked up her phone
and dialled a number she hadn’t dialled in more than ten years.

“Hello?”

“Jim?”

“This is Jim.”

“Hi, it’s Leslie Sheehan.”

“Leslie – Jesus! I can’t believe it’s you!”

“I know. It’s odd. I hope I’m not intruding.”

“No, I’m just sitting in.”

“Me too.”

“Happy New Year, by the way!”

“Happy New Year.”

“So, what made you call after all this time?” he asked.

“I don’t know – well, it sounds stupid.”

“You’re sick?”

“No, no, not sick,” she said. “I’m thinking about having preventive surgery actually.”

“I think you should,” he said, without missing a beat.

“Wow.”

“If Imelda’d had that choice I know she would have done it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Are you scared?”

“No.”

“Have you got anyone in your life?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to be there for you?”

Leslie couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t spoken to Jim in so many years and before that she’d usually been rude or standoffish. “That is really kind of you,” she said, “but no.”

“So why have you called?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” she said, and laughed a little. “People are mad, aren’t they?”

Jim laughed too. “Yes, Leslie, people are mad.”

After that she asked him how he was and what he was doing and if he’d ever remarried. He was fine, doing well and, no, he hadn’t. He’d seen a Russian woman for a year but she’d returned to Russia when her father had died six months earlier.

They spoke for about fifteen minutes and before she hung up she promised to call him to arrange to go out for a drink.

“You see, Deborah! I’m going out for a drink, with a man, very soon!” she shouted at the wall once more. “I am not Crazy Dead Cat Lady, not today and not tomorrow!”

The cat stared at her from its freshly washed and pine-scented bed. Leslie looked at her watch and as it was only nine she opened her computer and watched three episodes of
Desperate Housewives
Season One, before hitting the hay around eleven thirty.

“Yeah, Happy New Year, Deborah, and up yours!”

Tom beeped the horn and, within seconds, Jane appeared. She waved, closed the door and ignored her mother’s face, pressed to the basement window, when she turned to shut the gate. Tom had got out and opened her car door. She buckled up while he made his way around to his side. He got in and thanked her for agreeing to come to the Walshes’ with him, explaining how awkward it had been since Alexandra had disappeared. She wondered why he put himself through it and he admitted he had a soft spot for Alexandra’s mother, Breda.

They got to the house just after nine and Alexandra’s younger sister, Kate, opened the door. She hugged Tom and said a polite hello to Jane. The last time Jane had seen Kate she had probably been no more than ten so she wasn’t surprised when she didn’t recognize her. They entered the hallway and Jane felt as though she had stepped back through time. The carpet was still brown with red diamonds, the telephone table still had two yellow telephone books under it, the walls were still dotted with holiday photos from the seventies and eighties and at least three included her. She was ushered quickly into the sitting room.

There, sitting on the green velvet chair by the window, was Breda. The chair was the same but Breda had aged well beyond her years. Having begun her family young, Breda couldn’t have been older than sixty-five but she looked ninety. Her face was wizened and her tall frame shrivelled. Her hair was white and cropped. Her hands, clasped and holding rosary beads, were so thin they were transparent, revealing blue and purple veins and knuckles that appeared knotted.

She saw Jane, smiled and held out her hand. Jane took it and felt a little weak.

“Jane Moore,” said Breda, “you’ve grown into such a beautiful woman.”

“Thank you, Breda. It’s lovely to see you again.”

“And Tom tells me you’ve been so good helping him find my Alexandra.”

“I’m only setting up an exhibition to highlight her case and the Missing of Ireland.” Jane was embarrassed and wished she was in a position to do more.

“You were always such a lovely girl. Alexandra will be
so pleased to have you in her life again.” She was crying but her tears were silent.

From the corner of her eye Jane noticed Eamonn enter the room but Breda still had a firm grip of her hand and deserved her full attention.

“Still so blonde,” said Breda, and flipped Jane’s shoulder-length hair.

“It has some help, these days,” Jane said.

“Do you remember Alexandra’s hair?”

Jane nodded.

“She had the richest chestnut hair, so glossy,” said her mother. “It was just above her shoulders when we saw her last but the police say it could have changed now. I hope it hasn’t. She had the most beautiful hair.”

“Mam,” Eamonn said, “Jane doesn’t want to hear that.”

Jane turned to Eamonn and nodded hello. “It’s fine,” she said. “I understand.”

Breda let go of Jane’s hand. “You should get a drink.” She looked at Tom, who was still standing at the door. “Tom, you should get Jane a drink.”

Tom took Jane into the kitchen where Kate, her husband Owen, Eamonn’s wife Frankie and Alexandra’s father Ben were standing around the counter. Frankie welcomed Tom with a hug and Ben nodded to him. Kate offered him a drink but Tom said he’d make it himself.

Ben shook Jane’s hand and thanked her for coming. “It’s great to see you. How’s that boy of yours?”