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Chapter 12

Emma

Wednesday is one work disaster after another. The day starts with a system crash, and we’re offline for three hours. I use this time to catch up on filing and some other admin. It turns out that I would have been better off using the down time to investigate why we’ve unexpectedly exceeded our credit limit, but of course the bank doesn’t call to advise me of this fact until five minutes after the system comes back online! Had I known earlier, I could have met with Caroline (who takes care of treasury duties) and with Brendan (our relationship with the bank, just like the board, seems to be of disproportionate importance to him). Instead, the entire afternoon is taken up with these meetings, mollifying the bank, who want to charge a small fortune for the breach, and Brendan, who wants to know where our internal controls ‘broke down’, and Caroline, who is completely mortified by the magnitude of the error found in her cashflow projection. Before I know it, it’s time to go home. A system crash and a credit emergency. That’s the sum of my day.

As I put on my anorak and brace myself for the miserable evening outside, I’m cranky and frustrated and cannot think of anything worse than a ballet class for beginners. So I decide not to go.

I call Mum while I’m waiting for the bus.

‘It’s me. You don’t need to babysit after all.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not going.’

‘What’s wrong? Are you feeling sick?’

‘No. Yes. Sick of work.’

She adopts the coaxing tone I know all too well. ‘The dancing will take your mind off it.’

‘I’ll go on Saturday, Mum.’

‘Oh, Emma. For goodness sake, can’t you just—’

‘Sorry, I have to go.’ I hang up before she can guilt me into changing my mind.

I should call Eddie to let him know I’m coming home after all, but I’m not in the mood to make any more calls, and it feels so much easier to get from A to B without fielding any more questions on why I don’t want to dance this evening. I never wanted to dance — these classes weren’t my idea — but everyone seems to have forgotten this fact.

The rain becomes more insistent, pinging off the road, puddles swelling along the kerbside. Of course the bus is late. When it finally comes into view I notice that it’s travelling rather fast. In fact, it looks like the driver is away in his own little world. A few of my fellow commuters realise this too, and we stick out our arms and jump up and down to get his attention. Visibly startling as he finally notices us, he pulls the steering wheel with a sudden jerk, and the bus proceeds to spray dirty rain water over those of us standing closest to the kerbside before it comes to an abrupt halt. Oh, for fuck’s sake! I’m soaked from head to toe, streams of water running down my face. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Of course Eddie is surprised to see me. They’re already eating dinner. Isla’s face is animated, her eyes bright. While I’ve been inwardly seething at how my entire working day was hijacked, and how I’ll have to pay to have my suit dry-cleaned due to that stupid, day-dreaming bus driver, Isla and Eddie have been eating and chin-wagging.

‘What happened to dancing?’ he asks.

‘I decided today wasn’t the right day for it. Pirouetting across a room just might push me over the edge.’

‘We would have waited if we knew you were coming.’

‘Sorry. I should have called to let you know.’

I wrap my arms around Isla in her chair, kissing the top of her head. She tolerates my embrace for a few seconds before wriggling free.

‘Have you cancelled Ann-Marie?’ Eddie checks.

‘Yeah, I spoke to her.’

‘Sit.’ He stands up from his meal and goes to the stovetop. ‘It should still be warm. Here.’

I love how he feeds me, how he always makes me sit before he sets my meals down in front of me. The love in this routine of his, the nurturing, the sheer romance — all the flowers or chocolates in the world couldn’t come close to it. Even though my pants are still damp and I’d rather have a shower and a change of clothes before eating, I sit down at the table.

Dinner is a bowl of steaming spaghetti bolognaise.

Eddie pours some chilled water into a glass and gives it to me along with a glossy flyer.

‘What’s this?’ I ask.

‘A house I thought might be good for us.’

‘Oh, Eddie.’

I know from a quick glance at the pictures that we can’t afford it. Three bedrooms, a nice kitchen with white cabinets and dark countertop, a neat square of grass out the back. Modest as this house is, it’s way out of our reach.

‘It’s a buyer’s market,’ he declares, excitement causing his usually steady voice to gather momentum. ‘And it’s a nice estate. There are a few houses for sale there, but I think this is the best of them. It’s practically brand new.’

I shake my head sadly. ‘It’s nobody’s market. The banks aren’t lending any money.’

A few years ago, the bank wouldn’t have made half the fuss they did today about an accidental credit breach. But if commercial credit lines are tough at the moment, personal loans and mortgages are tougher again.

‘If the price dropped another twenty, we’d almost have enough for a deposit.’

I say nothing. This is his dream. I’ll leave the banks to shatter it.

Isla takes the brochure, her head tilting to one side as she examines the pictures.

‘You can’t climb out the window. The sink’s in the way.’ She doesn’t sound impressed by this particular shortcoming.

Eddie and I share a fond look before we laugh. She is such a blessing, my daughter. Now I sound like Mum again.

‘Well, we can’t possibly buy it so,’ Eddie says matter-of-factly.

We laugh again, all three of us, though Isla doesn’t really get the joke.

The system crash, the credit crisis, the drenching at the bus stop, all those things happened to another person. This is my real life: this homely kitchen, wholesome food and heart-warming laughter.

Once I have this, I can work at any job, live in any old place.

‘This’ being Eddie and Isla.

When Eddie has gone to work (much to Isla’s disappointment, he used the traditional means of departure: the doorway), and Isla is bathed and put to bed, the phone rings.

It’s Louise.

‘Hey, it’s me.’ Her voice is bouncy, happy. She sounds like she’s a million miles away from here.

‘Hello, stranger.’ I’ve had a shower at this point, and I’m in my favourite fleecy pyjamas and fluffy slippers. I curl up on the couch with the phone, settling in for a long talk. ‘How’re things?’

‘Great. The weather’s been incredible. Actually, a little too hot, if anything.’

‘It’s pissing rain here.’ My tone is deeply sarcastic. ‘Just in case you care.’

She laughs. There’s glee in that laughter. Bitch.

‘How’s Isla?’

‘She’s grand. Still loving school.’

‘I miss her,’ Louise says in a more serious tone. ‘I bought her a soft toy yesterday, a koala bear with an Australian-flag T-shirt and an akubra. Gimmicky but cute. She might think it’s too babyish, though.’

‘She’ll love it,’ I say firmly, adjusting the cushions behind my back to make myself more comfortable. ‘She misses you too, Lou. She keeps asking about you. I blue-tacked a map onto her bedroom wall so she could see how far apart Dublin and Sydney are, but she can’t comprehend the distance.’

‘Sometimes I can’t either.’ Louise laughs again. ‘And how’s Eddie?’

Louise is like my mother in that respect, always asking about Isla and Eddie before me. Isla and Eddie are my barometer, I suppose: I can’t be happy unless they are. Sometimes I think they’re all that I am, the sum of me, and without them I’d be nothing at all.

‘Yeah, grand. Determined to be a home-owner. Showed me a brochure tonight of a house in Clondalkin. As if we could afford it.’

‘Maybe …’ Louise begins.

‘No fuckin’ chance … Shit, there I go again. I’m trying to stop swearing.’

‘Isla?’

‘Yeah. I don’t want her growing up and talking like I do … Anyhow, so what’ve you been up to?’

‘The usual. Working. Actually, I really like this job. Lovely people, an interesting project … And, of course, I’m spending all my spare time looking at phone directories and the like … Actually, Joe’s brother, Dan, is helping me.’

I feel my hackles rise. ‘How do you mean “helping”?’

‘He’s a journalist … he has contacts.’

‘Are you seeing him?’

She snorts, as though I’m being absurd. ‘No, I’m not seeing him, at least not in the way you mean.’

I’m not put off by that sardonic tone of hers. If anything, it makes me only more suspicious. ‘You like him, don’t ya?’

‘Of course I like him,’ she exclaims. ‘I like all the family. I’ve told you about the mother, Mary, haven’t I? Well, she has offered to help, too. She works at the local library, and she’s familiar with the resources people use to research their family history and so on.’

‘Isn’t family genealogy a completely different thing?’

‘Yes, but some of the resources might be of use.’

It has been a long time since Louise has been so optimistic. This worries me.

‘It’s nice of them to help,’ I say with some difficulty.

‘Yes, it is. I feel very touched. They’re such a genuinely lovely family, Em. You’d like them.’

I feel jealous, insanely envious of this ‘lovely family’ who have taken it upon themselves to help her. And I feel inadequate, as though I have somehow let her down. Quite suddenly, I’m berating myself for not having helped her in a more practical way. Instead of being a shoulder to cry on and a sounding board, I should have taken a more active role in the search, trawled through the internet and library records, like this Mary, this woman who hardly knows Louise.

‘I’d better go,’ she says. ‘I’m late for work. This time difference is a nightmare, isn’t it?’

‘The nightmare is that I’m stuck here in this miserable weather while you’re complaining of being too fuckin’ hot.’

‘You’d better start a swear jar.’ With one final laugh, a laugh that has sunshine and blue skies and hope in it, she hangs up.

Distractedly, I pick up the remote and turn up the volume of the TV. There’s a show on that Louise likes: Secret Millionaire. I forgot to tell her about the ballet classes. We could have laughed our heads off at that. And I also forgot to mention how Jamie is supposedly turning over a new leaf, and how nervous that makes me feel. Louise is the only one who gets how I feel about Jamie. She witnessed the ugliest moments of our relationship, and understands how precarious the current situation is.

I hug one of the cushions to my body. The truth is, I don’t just need Eddie and Isla to feel whole. I need Louise, too.

From the sounds of it, she’s settling in well. Her job is going great, she seems to have made friends with this entire Connolly clan, and I can’t remember the last time she sounded so hopeful.

I’m happy for her, I really am. It hurts only because in recent years I suspect she has needed me less than I need her.