Barefoot Over Stones (28 page)

‘Gee, thanks, Sis.’

‘You know me. I tell it like I see it. So spit it out. Did this Colm guy treat you bad or what? ’Cause I’ll go and beat him up if he has. I have some vengeance of my own that I could take out on him.’

‘No, not Colm. He wouldn’t do that. The thing is, I had a baby boy seven weeks ago.’

Ciara had just downed a huge mouthful of her lunch, and the shock of what she just thought she heard her sister say made her gag. She ditched what was left of the mouthful into her cloth napkin. ‘What did you just say?’

‘I said I had a baby. Seven weeks ago. It’s a boy.’

‘Am I raving here or something? This means you were pregnant when you were in Spain. Why didn’t you tell me? What’s his name? Where is he?’

Believing that his customer was choking on something in her lunch, the waiter rushed to Ciara’s aid with a tumbler of water. She gulped it down in one go while staring at her younger sister in disbelief.

‘Couldn’t get my head around it myself. Came to see you out of shock really when I found out for definite. My periods are always all over the place so I take no notice when I miss one or two. Then you kept going on about how well and healthy I looked, and you and José seemed to have such a perfect thing going. So I pretended it wasn’t happening, which was quite easy because I was a lot happier not thinking about it.’

‘I take it this Colm guy is the father and the baby is with him. Why didn’t you bring him over? You should have known I would want to see him, see them both for that matter. Are you living together now?’ Questions tumbled out of Ciara. She had expected her sister to come bearing news of some disaster, some predicament that would be difficult to solve, but she never expected this. How could she have missed the clues in Spain and how could Leda have spent four days with her and never divulge a thing?

Leda took a generous sip from her wine to steel herself for the next bit. ‘The thing is, I’m not really cut out for motherhood. It’s not as if I planned it. Colm seems really into it, so I have left Tom with him indefinitely, permanently probably.’

‘How could you give your own baby away? What has come over you that you think that is an OK thing to do?’

‘You know as well as I do that we lived in a house with two people who happened to be our parents but neither were cut out for the job. All I have done is save Tom finding that out about me. Colm is a good person. He takes care of things and he is brilliant in a crisis. He will do everything for Tom and he will never even miss me. I haven’t given him away as such. I’ve just
left his father in charge of him.’

Ciara pushed her plate away from her and downed her wine in one furious gulp. She was stunned, disappointed and incredibly angry. ‘I have never understood you, Leda. Yes, you are right: we had a shit upbringing by two people who couldn’t even look after themselves, but you know what?’

‘What?’ Leda asked sharply, ready to dismiss whatever wisdom was to come.

‘They might have been useless but we knew their names. We knew which door to knock on if we needed to go home. We knew they would never close the door in our faces. How can you seriously say that you gave your son away because you are not really into motherhood? It’s not a lifestyle, Leda, it’s a responsibility, and I will not let you get away with turning your back on it.’

Leda’s face flushed. Ciara had never lost her ability to cut somebody down to size.

‘I’m too young for this. This is not what I want for my life. Colm is OK but it was just a bit of fun. I never wanted it to last.’

‘Don’t tell me you still think you have a future with that ratbag Abernethy. No matter how many times he walks on you, you always come back for more. His wife died but you still weren’t good enough to be anything but a dirty little secret. He has treated you like something he brought in on his shoe, a problem to be disposed of, but you still think he will change.’ Disdain melted from Ciara’s every word. As she berated her sister the thought niggled at her that if Leda was still sleeping with Con there was a chance that this baby was his and not this Colm guy’s at all. ‘Are you sure the baby is Colm’s and not Con’s?’ she asked as calmly and coolly as she could manage.

‘The baby’s got nothing to do with Con, OK, so don’t get your knickers in a twist.’ Leda was sorry that she had ever told her sister a thing. A moment of weakness and doubt had brought her here to London to confide in her sister and she was mad at herself for not keeping quiet.

‘So you have stopped sleeping with Con Abernethy. Is that what you are telling me?’ Ciara asked stubbornly, holding back the doubts that were making her head swim.

‘Yes, Con and I are finished. We have been for a while. Not that it’s any of your business who I sleep with, is it?’

‘It becomes my business when I have a nephew in Ireland that you have abandoned because you are such a selfish little git.’

‘Who do you think you are to lecture me on the right thing to do?’ Leda barked.

‘What do you mean? I’m not the one who has left my baby behind me like a piece of lost luggage. I wouldn’t do that.’

‘No, but you would try to shag your best friend’s boyfriend the night of his mother’s funeral. You always criticize me for sleeping with Con, when you couldn’t keep your hands off Dan Abernethy even if it meant losing your best friend in the whole world. Go and lecture someone else, Ciara, who doesn’t know the things that you have done.’

The offices of Reilly & Maitland quietened down quite suddenly once 5 p.m. came. The phones were switched to the answering service and all of the front-office staff departed immediately, pausing only to grab coats and a handful of groceries bought at lunchtime, the stock baggage of the city-centre worker. Colm waited until a decent amount of time had elapsed before he too legged it to the door and to his new life beyond. He had done his best to answer all his
colleagues’ questions about Tom as honestly as he could. They all knew Leda was the mother of his baby and they knew she wasn’t handling motherhood with any degree of ease. Only a handful of people knew that she was on a permanent discharge from her duty authorized by no one but herself.

He knew opinion in the office was firmly divided about the situation he had found himself in. There were those who made a fuss over the photo he had of Tom on his desk and asked regularly how he was doing and was he sleeping? How was Colm coping and did he need anything at all? They were the ones who pressed brightly coloured packages with vests and rattles and Babygros into his hands along with cards that said: ‘Congratulations, Colm and Leda.’ The others made polite enquiries but after the initial days stayed mostly silent. They made no fuss and if Colm was in any doubt about how they really felt, his best friend in the office, Rory McHugh, had put pictures to their thoughts admirably earlier on that afternoon.

‘They think, Colm, that it’s some achievement to be landed with a surprise pregnancy and end up losing the woman but keeping the baby.’

‘What do you think? Do you think I am mad?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be my choice, but I will tell you this much: that little lad there in that photo seems to have brought a smile to your face. You look knackered. You look, if you don’t mind me saying, like you have cycled a long distance behind a car with no exhaust, but despite that you look happier than I have ever seen you. So I think young Tom there is an all-round good thing.’

‘I think he is, yeah,’ Colm agreed with an appreciative smile, unable to take his eyes off the photo of his infant son.

‘Jesus, Lifford, I always knew you were soft in the head but you really have lost it now. And before you ask, no I do not want to check out the range of products at Mothercare after work, OK? Not unless they have started serving pints for men like me at sea amid the merchandise.’

He had given Colm a friendly thump on the shoulder. It was the most physical affection they had ever shown each other but today Colm appreciated it. It was enough to reassure him that he was doing the right thing. As Rory left Colm’s office he shook his head and said quietly to nobody in particular, ‘There but for the grace of God and the reliability of Durex go I.’

Colm looked at the list of phone numbers that he had jotted on his pad this morning. The first was Leda’s mobile number. What were the chances she was going to answer that all of a sudden when she had failed to do so over the last several weeks? He had the phone number of the last place that he knew Leda had spent time, her friend Siobhan’s house in Glasnevin. He had the contact name and phone number of the employment agency that had matched Leda’s skills with the temporary vacancy at Reilly & Maitland, where they had first met. She had made an attractive addition to the array of bored faces in the front office. The agency, he knew, was duty bound not to release personal details of their clients but Colm thought it would help to find out if her name was still on their books and if she was listed as available for work. Lastly he had trawled the phone directory and come up with a number for the only Clancy family in Leachlara. Ted and Agnes Clancy, Briartullog, Leachlara, Co. Tipperary, most likely Tom’s grandparents and they probably didn’t even know he existed. Leachlara would be the last pit stop and only if he drew a blank everywhere else. He doubted that she would take refuge there, and if they took their family ties more seriously than Leda did where would that leave Tom and himself?

Ciara hadn’t murdered Leda yet but then a bare twelve hours had passed since she had picked her up at the airport, so anything was possible. They hadn’t spoken all the way home from Georgia Baxter’s. Ciara was fuming that Leda had had the nerve to bring up Dan Abernethy when she herself had abandoned her child with a man whom she would not contemplate staying with herself. Ciara had long ago decided to put the heartbreak of losing Alison’s friendship behind her. She had made the mistake of thinking their friendship could survive anything, even her own
desperately bad judgement, but Alison had never allowed her to make amends. Perhaps Dan had insisted she break off contact. Maybe that was the only way that he could assuage his own guilt. If he had, Ciara was disappointed that her friend would have allowed herself to be dictated to in such a manner. She had subconsciously used it as a yardstick in the relationships she had had for the last decade: none had ever been worth jettisoning a friend for. Maybe Ciara had decided she wouldn’t let herself love someone that much.

Leda had been in the bath for an hour and the chicken stir-fry that Ciara had prepared for dinner was turning into a slow and watery stew on the hob. ‘Damn her anyway, she’ll eat it if she’s hungry,’ she said angrily as she reached into the bottom of the fridge for a mercifully cold bottle of beer. She was cursing her bottle-opener for being the most useless man-made implement in the whole wide and annoying world when Leda’s mobile phone started to ring. Its vibrating motion sent it spinning across the kitchen worktop in Ciara’s direction. The screen displayed its short message: ‘COLM calling’. Ciara didn’t waste any time. She would have to believe Leda when she said she was finished with Con and begin to unravel the complicated situation her sister had left behind her in Ireland.

‘Hello, Colm, this is Ciara Clancy, Leda’s sister, and I am very glad you called.’

‘I thought you didn’t travel Ryanair on principle. Mind you, principles come and go with you, don’t they?’ Leda was picking a fight with Ciara but her sister simply would not take the bait. She was pretty sure that up as far as last night Ciara was an absolute supporter of the right to privacy but all that had been cast aside when the chance to talk to Colm Lifford presented itself. Since that conversation Ciara had been a woman on a mission. When she finished talking to Colm she went on to her work laptop (it was absolutely the best thing about an otherwise boring job she had landed herself in at a language school in Islington) and booked airline tickets for herself and Leda out of Gatwick the next morning. She half expected her laptop to flash a ‘You are joking, Ms Clancy’ message on the screen when she entered her highly abused credit-card details but the booking went through without a hitch. She would worry about her mounting credit-card debt some day soon.

They would have to be at Victoria Station to get the train at about six thirty, but that shouldn’t be a problem, she decided as she made a mental note to put the louder of the two alarm clocks that she possessed under Leda’s bed. Getting up early in the morning was not a skill native to the Clancy family, but years away from Leachlara had made Ciara an expert in punctuality. Next she composed the most pity-inducing yet plausible email she could manage to her boss at the language school. She outlined a family crisis, not so tragic that it would require too much explanation when she came back from Ireland, but still grave enough that her presence was required at home urgently. She expressed regret at the short notice and disappointment at letting down her Spanish-language students and vowed to make up the lost tuition time when she returned. She ended the email with a promise to ring in the morning from the airport. She pressed the send button, more confident than she had ever been that she was doing the right thing.

The check-in queue at Gatwick was agonizingly long. When her baiting of Ciara had failed to garner a response Leda switched into her default uncommunicative mode, accompanied by her best surly expression, which came to her with the greatest of ease. She had come to London to escape the suffocation of home. Even her friend Siobhan, whom she had thought she could rely
on thoroughly, seemed appalled at her leaving Colm alone to care for Tom. It wouldn’t be fair if he had done it to her, Siobhan had argued, and it wasn’t fair the other way round either. She was her friend but she could not approve of what she had done. Leda had tried to fight her corner with Siobhan and now Ciara also but no one was listening to her – as usual. At the rate the queue was moving it looked as if they would be here for thirty minutes at least before boarding a plane back to a son she didn’t want to see. When she looked at Tom she saw something of her own needy and smaller self and that was what had made her want to run in the first place.