Eggshell Days (23 page)

But the box didn't exist anymore. They'd opened and shut it so frequently over the years that they hadn't noticed its hinges were shot, its lid was hanging off, and there was a bloody great hole in the bottom.

What he was thinking long and hard about now was that maybe Kat was the one who ought to be boxed up. But if he put Kat in a box there would be no need to open it again. The lid wouldn't keep flying open as it did with Emmy. He would shut it and more than likely lose the key. She wasn't the sort of love that wouldn't go away, she was more the sort that would sink without a trace.

He tried to loosen his swimming shorts but they were almost as old as Maya and the cord was already as loose as it got. His hairy tummy hung a little flabbily over the waistband as he padded into the pool area, and on his way he picked a bobble of Air Force blue fluff from his navel. He hated swimming. He was only doing it because Maya wanted to. He would go to the ends of the earth—or even into the deep end of the public baths—for her.

Maya's cubicle was caked with talcum powder and someone had written
Lauren loves James
in it on the bench. As she got undressed with a child's disregard for where she dropped her clothes, she wondered who Lauren was, and whether James loved Lauren too. She wanted to know what they looked like, how old they were, whether she would like Lauren best, or James.

She wanted to know if Lauren's enemy had written it, or Lauren's friend, or even Lauren herself. Or had it been James? Then she found herself thinking that James probably didn't love Lauren, and that the likelihood was he loved someone else who didn't love him. It seemed to be the way love worked, and not just at school. She hated that bit about Year Six. The I love him, no I don't, I've dumped her, she loves him now stuff. And yet she could see now how that got worse and worse the older you got. At least it was simple when you were in Year Six. At least no one cared.

She didn't want to put her clothes on the bench and rub the message out, just in case James or Lauren came back for a look, so she left them on the damp powdery floor. Her jeans, her fleece and her T-shirt were all filthy, anyway. Her mum wasn't doing any washing at the moment. In fact, she wasn't doing anything at the moment. She was locking herself away in her stupid sewing room, pretending to work, when everyone knew that all she was really doing in there was crying and smoking and getting herself into a state. Well, she was going to have to snap out of it soon.

She took her towel out of her bag and shook it to find her costume. Her goggles went flying and she had to retrieve them by kneeling on the floor and putting her hand into the next cubicle. She saw two feet jump, and then she heard a squeal.

“Is that you, Jade?”

“No,” Maya said. “I just need my goggles.”

“Who is it, then?”

“You don't know me.”

“Yes I do. I know everyone.”

“Well, you don't know me because I don't go to your school.”

“Which school do you go to, then? St. Mary's?”

“I don't go to school,” Maya lied. “I'm an orphan.”

The girl didn't reply, but the goggles came skimming back.

As she walked past all the children again, lining up against the wall in their matching red school sweatshirts and hair soaking into their backs, she could tell what they were thinking. What was she doing there? Why wasn't she at school? Where did she get those body transfers from? She smiled at them all, hoping the rumor would spread that she really was an orphan.

The pool was empty. Too late now for a new batch of school lessons, too early for private ones. She'd beaten Niall and she'd thought about getting in but decided to sit on one of the hinged blue seats and wait.

The water was almost glass-still and she wanted to break its surface with a dive. Except you weren't allowed to dive. When she was a grown-up, she was going to take a leaf out of her mother's book and do exactly as she wanted. Emmy never did anything she didn't want to do. She didn't even get up if she didn't want to.

“Hi, darlin',” Niall said. He thought she looked a little lost sitting there. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Ages,” she said, jumping to her feet and making a run for the pool. Niall ran too.

Dads, thought the lifeguard, blasting on his whistle from his high chair. Why don't they care what they look like?

*   *   *

When the phone rang that night and Emmy jumped to her feet, Maya did, too, pushing her chair back and sending it scraping across the slate floor.

“Leave it!” her mother shouted. She could have done with a lifeguard's whistle, too.

The sound of the phone surprised Emmy, even though she had been waiting for it to go all day. It was eleven days since Cathal had posted the letter.

“Hello?” Maya shouted happily into the Bakelite receiver. On non-eggshell days, she and her mum would race to be the first to answer and she was claiming a victory on this one. “Hold on.” She ran to the bottom of the stairs and Emmy waited.

“Niall? Niall, phone. Phone, Niall.”

Emmy's next sip of blackcurrant tea tasted of morning sickness, metal and aspartame. She got up from the table like a robot and programmed herself to retrieve her daughter. Maya was walking back to the phone, her thick socks sliding on the shiny floor. Her hand went to pick up the handset again.

“Maya,” Emmy shouted, freezing the frame in her head, “go back and finish your supper.”

But her daughter had already started talking happily into the mouthpiece. “He's just coming. I think he's in the shower. We went swimming and his hair has gone all funny.”

Emmy waited again. The voice on the other end was going to carry the conversation on. Of course he was. She could have written the script. And why shouldn't he? Cathal was an opportunist—he responded to combinations of circumstance. She of all people should know that. She swayed a little and felt warm blood whooshing round her brain.

“Yes,” Maya said. Then a pause. “Nearly eleven.”

Emmy's legs buckled. “Give it to me,” she demanded, so loudly that Cathal would certainly hear.

“What?” Maya asked. “Why?”

“Because I said so.” Emmy had her hand out. “Go and sit down.”

Maya made a face and then remembered. Eggshell day. She pushed her feet across the floor in a skating movement once more and made another face at Asha. Asha made one back.

“Can I help?” Emmy said into the receiver, her voice shaking. Every last ounce of energy she possessed had fallen away.

“Is that Emmy?” It was the soft Dublin lilt of Mrs. O'Connor. “I was just having a word with your daughter. Where does the time go? How are you, my love? Is my son behaving himself?”

“Oh, Mary, I thought…”

“Are you all right, dear?”

“Yes, yes, I think—oh, he's just here. Thank you Mary, it's good to…”

“Have I called at a bad time?”

“No, no. Here he is.”

She handed the phone to Niall, wet from another shower. Oh, someone help me, she pleaded silently. Sons, daughters, fathers, grandmothers, uncles, mothers-in-law. It was all too complicated.

His chat sounded normal, as if there was no family drama on the horizon, and that settled her. But the next thing she knew he was back in the kitchen, apparently talking to her in Swahili. “He says he wants to hear it from you, Emmy. God knows why. I've told him you're not the keeper of the key.”

“Who does?” Everyone was looking at her. “What?” She hadn't heard a word anyone had said for at least the last five minutes. Mouths had been opening and closing around her and people had been coming in and out of the kitchen talking excitedly, but she hadn't engaged with any of it.

“Cathal.”

“Sorry?”

“Cathal. Who did you think I meant?”

The blood drained from her face. She wondered if she was dreaming.

“He says he won't come unless you say he can.”

“What?”

“Emmy?”

There was a barely visible shake of her head.

“But it's your mum on the phone, not your brother,” she said. She could feel a stupid grin form on her lips. Was this all some kind of joke?

“Emmy? Are you okay?” Sita asked.

“Yes. I just don't understand what Niall means about Cathal. What does he want?”

“He wants to come and stay. He's doing a job on a house in Ireland of the same proportions and he wants to come and see Bodinnick.”

“Like hell!”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Like hell!' No.”

“Emmy?”

“He's on the phone. Go and have a word,” said Sita calmly. She was beginning to wonder if Emmy was clinically depressed again. There was an imbalance about her she hadn't seen for a long time.

“I mean … but it's his mum. I spoke to her myself.” Emmy spoke more slowly now.

“Yes, but Cathal's there, too. Are you sure you're okay?”

“He's offered to help replace the sitting room windows,” Niall said, “and have a look at the store. Go on, Emmy, it's our bill.”

“No, it isn't.” She found herself shouting again. “Mary rang here. Maya answered it. I'm not going mad. Stop making me feel as if I am.”

Niall couldn't be bothered to tell her that Cathal had walked into his mother's house mid-call and that when his mother had handed him the phone it had gone mysteriously dead, or that when Niall had rung back Cathal had sounded more depressed than he had ever heard him sound before. It wasn't worth it. She was clearly in no mood to listen.

“I'll tell him yes, then, shall I?”

“Tell him what you like. As you said, I'm not the keeper of the bloody key.” And she slammed out into the windy garden in her shirtsleeves.

“My fault,” Niall winked at Maya. “For sure.” And yet he wasn't so sure.

13

Cathal opened his suit jacket and took a sheet of paper from the inside pocket. His hands trembled a little and, what with that and his bloodshot eyes, an observer might think he was an alcoholic in serious need of a mid-morning drink. In fact it was dog tiredness. In the last few weeks, his body had forgotten how to relax and instead it was in a permanent state of vigilance. Emmy might get back to him at any time. Even with his limited knowledge of her, he knew she was just as likely to call at three in the morning as she was in the middle of the working day.

The paper was a copy of the letter he had sent her more than a week ago, the one that he had agonized over for so long, the one that had taken every ounce of steel to put into the postbox. It was also a letter that was having apparently no effect whatsoever.

“Peter, could I borrow you for a minute?”

One of his partners walked over to his desk. He was worried about the way Cathal had been looking lately. “Yes?”

“What do you think this means?”

Peter took the letter and read it in thirty seconds. “What are you asking me for? You wrote the thing, didn't you?”

“Yes, yes, but what would you think if you got it?”

“Well, that all depends on what's gone before.”

“But if you had been sent it, would you get back to me as a matter of some urgency?”

“That all depends, too,” his colleague told him carefully. “Hey, listen, are you okay?”

“Yes.” Cathal folded the letter again. “I'm fine. Just trying to second-guess a woman. Thanks.”

“Don't mention it. But you know what, don't you?”

“What?”

“It is a complete waste of time trying to second-guess any woman, but particularly one who affects you the way this one obviously does.”

“No, no, she's not, er, of course, yeah, right.”

As Peter turned away, Cathal read the letter one more time, just to be sure there really was no way anyone in their right mind could misread the gentle insistence. It was a question of whether or not Emmy was in her right mind, and from what he knew of her that was anyone's guess.

He had been sitting in his office all morning, his mobile phone right next to him. It hadn't rung, or bleeped, or lost its signal, but he kept picking it up and looking for the little envelope that would tell him he had a message. Then he would dial his home number, wait for his answer-machine message to kick in and press the hash key and his PIN number for access. Even before the computer-generated female voice began to speak, he knew what it was going to say: “You have no new messages.” It was becoming the sort of obsessive repetitive behavior he saw more usually in the office juniors and he knew it was time to stop, to do something.

A new secretary was standing in profile at the photocopier. Cathal had taken her on last month, on the strength of her breasts, mainly. Today she was wearing a tight gray skirt and an even tighter pink sweater, but where he might once have found the stretch of wool across such ample flesh a major distraction, now it was barely a momentary observation. As a girlfriend had told him at the weekend, when he'd declined a previously popular offer of hers, the light in his boxer shorts had gone out.

He'd taken the girl at the photocopier out to lunch twice in her first week and she was waiting for him to ask again. So was everybody else. Peter, back at his desk and on the phone, was wondering why Cathal wasn't absentmindedly sizing up her legs as he usually did. She was showing enough of them.

Their firm of architects had lost office junior after office junior because of Cathal and his easy appreciation of women. Not because they didn't enjoy his attentions, but because for some inexplicable reason they took him up on them, and then when it was all over they got upset and resigned. It always surprised Cathal when they left. He always thought he'd done everything possible to make them feel at home.

He stared out of the window at the optician's across the street.
We can help you see the world more clearly
, the poster on the door claimed. There was only one person who could do that. And no, it wasn't God, he felt like shouting at the priest crossing the road.