Offcomer (24 page)

Claire climbed the sloping path out of the park, through the narrow arched gateway, onto Colenso Parade.

Everything would be blown sky-high. Everything would shatter. She would have to pick up all the sharp little bits and try and piece them back together again. She would have to find a new place to live. She would have to find a new job. Gareth would sack her. Of course he would sack her. If she told Grainne, that was it. It would be public knowledge. She would be on her own.

She turned the corner.

If she told Grainne it would hurt her, that was obvious. It would hurt Grainne and it would solve nothing except for the aching muddle in Claire’s mind. And it wasn’t worth it. When it came down to it, she could live with the ache. It would be better, it would be more responsible, really, to live with it: confession would only pass the pain along, increase it.

She climbed the concrete steps to the front door, rummaged in her pocket for her key. She hesitated.

What day was it? Monday? Grainne would be at work. If it wasn’t July. The school holidays must have started. Claire stood, hand in pocket, listening. Nothing. No TV, no radio, no music playing. Maybe she was round at Paul’s. Maybe she was out shopping. Maybe she was curled up on the sofa with her
Elle Decoration
and a cup of tea. From where she stood, Claire couldn’t see past the dusty slats of the venetian blinds, but she wouldn’t move any closer to the window. Grainne might be in there, looking out. Claire glanced down at the tiny front garden. At her feet the silver-grey sage bush was wilting, the leaves curling up, going powdery. Unwatered. So perhaps she was away. Perhaps she had gone on holiday. Perhaps she had gone off travelling for a month or two. Or perhaps she had just forgotten to water it. She did sometimes.

It was never meant to be a permanent thing, her living at Grainne’s house. It was only supposed to be until she got herself sorted out, until she got herself settled. So the obvious thing was to sort herself out. If she got a new job, if she started looking for a room, it wouldn’t be long before she could move. Simple as that. No big deal, no questions asked. Just gone.

And if she bumped into Grainne in the street afterwards, they would be all hi and hugs and how are you, and Claire
would apologise for not calling, and they’d talk for a while, and agree they should go out for a drink sometime, and Claire would promise to phone. But she would, somehow, never get round to it. It would slip her mind: she would lose the number, or always manage to phone while Grainne was out. And after a while, it wouldn’t take too long, Grainne would stop telling herself she must get in touch, stop expecting to hear from Claire altogether, stop thinking about her entirely. No big deal. That kind of thing happened all the time. People lost touch. They drifted apart.

Claire exhaled, felt her shoulders loosen. It was the best thing to do, she was sure of it. It was the best thing for everybody. After a while, no one would really notice she was gone. It wouldn’t be fun, but it would be okay. It would be better than anything else she could think of.

She reached up, slipped her key into the lock, prepared a smile. It would be okay. It would be okay. It would take a couple of weeks to get things sorted out, then she would be out of there. For good. She could handle that. Just a couple of weeks. No need for explanations, no need for arguments, no more harm done. It was for the best. Eventually, it would all work out right. She turned the key.

It didn’t move.

Puzzled, she twisted it the other way. It still wouldn’t budge. She pulled it out, stood looking at it. Chrome-plated, copied from Grainne’s original. It couldn’t be the wrong key. It was, in fact, the only key she possessed. And it was smooth, straight, undamaged.

She glanced back up at the door. Number 12 in dull brass italic numerals, blue paint, stained glass. A brass handle and a Yale lock. It was the right door. But, she realised, it was the
wrong lock. The keyplate was bright, undulled by weather. Grainne had changed the lock.

She knew.

And she might, at any moment, come back from wherever she’d been. Her car might pull round the corner, slide up to the door, and she would slip out, come slinking up towards her—or she still might be sitting quietly inside, waiting, waiting for the sound of the wrong key in the lock, waiting to—

—to what?

Claire was halfway across the park, still going fast, when the thought occurred to her. Exactly what did she expect Grainne to do?

Hit her?
Kill
her?

There were girls at school who, when they got their shoes dirty or tore their skirts, would say, my mum’ll kill me, but they were always back at school the next day, alive and well, with freshly shined shoes and sewn-up tears.

She slowed down, dug her nails into her arm. She had come back to sort it all out, and there she was, running away again. And running out of places to run to.

Glossy leaves reflected back the sun. Bushes heavy with blossom. A solitary magpie stalking across the grass. The park was silent, deserted. The woman and her dog had gone. Claire rubbed a hand through her hair, walked slowly on. If Grainne knew, who else knew? Desperately, Claire tried to trace the pattern of infection, to work out who might still be ignorant.

The cat was still sitting in the sun, paws tucked up, eyes squeezed shut. Claire walked out through the wrought-iron gates, past the graffiti-scribbled walls, back down Botanic Avenue. Her bag bumped against her back, dragging on her shoulder as she walked, the rhythm of its movement beginning
to subdue her skitterish thoughts. Toothbrush, pyjamas, make-up, clothes. Toothbrush, pyjamas, make-up, clothes. Things. Her things. Her things in her backpack. All that she had got left, thumping against her as she walked. Toothbrush, pyjamas, make-up, clothes. She’d abandoned everything else, leaving it behind her, deposited in different places. Little pockets of possessions. Pinned to her old bedroom wall. Pushed into the corner of Alan’s bedroom. Piled around the edges of Grainne’s spare room. Books and clothes and just the one photograph. Mum and Dad on the doorstep, she pregnant and miniskirted, Dad with a cheroot clamped between his teeth, reaching out to grab the dog, to turn its attention to the camera. Faded to a pinky-orange now, the glass dusty and fingerprinted. On the dresser in Grainne’s spare room. And now, now that probably everybody knew, there wasn’t anywhere left in the city, there wasn’t anywhere to go. Just the loops and tangles of streets, endless, knotted, twisting back on themselves.

They locked the park gates at night, but she could climb them. There would be darkness underneath the rhododendrons. She could crawl under the branches, lie down on the damp earth, on the dead leaves, her eyes open in the dark. Distant voices getting closer, a movement that might be the cat, a sigh that might be a breeze or might be breath. City dark was not like dark at home. City dark was inhabited.

But it was still day, and the city seemed strangely empty. She saw one car, a little red car, briskly turn the corner onto Botanic Avenue, and accelerate away. Rushing home. She realised she had seen hardly anyone since she left the Seacat terminal. Just that woman in the park with her dog, and that was it. Where were they all, the passers-by, the danderers?
Worse than the crowded city dark, this empty daylit city. Unnatural. She looked around her, unsure of what she was looking for, unsure of where she should be going.

She was past the door before she noticed that Vincent’s was open. Windows gaped onto the dark and smoky interior. A handful of customers lingered in the dim room. People, at last. She found herself melting with relief. She turned on her heel and went back. She pushed in through the door. She found herself smiling. She would sit for a while. She would drink a cup of coffee. She would let the cigarette smoke and coffee fumes and voices wash over her. Human scents, human sounds. She would let herself be enveloped. Just for a while. Then, later, she would work out what to do.

There was an empty table near the counter. As she walked over towards it, Claire picked through a handful of change, counting. One pound fifty. Should be enough for a coffee. She sat down.

“Would you like to order?” The waitress’s voice was careful, heavily accented: French. She didn’t smile.

“Just a coffee, please,” Claire said.

“A coffee.”

As she watched the young woman walk away, she wondered briefly if she could ask if she knew why the streets were so empty, then, if there was any work going. The sentence formed in her head, but she abandoned it unfinished. Vincent’s was too close for her to work there. It was too close to Alan’s, too close to Grainne’s. Grainne was in there all the time.

What if she walked in now?

The waitress put a cup of coffee down in front of her. Claire smiled uneasily, watched the waitress walk away. She turned
the cup round and round on the saucer, waiting as the coffee cooled. The surface of the coffee was iridescent, glazed with oil. She gazed down at it, mesmerised.

“Well, what if I did?”

Grainne. Poised, cool, and completely imaginary. Claire could almost see her scrape back a chair and sit down. Behind her would stand a shady, inexplicit version of Paul. He would lean against the counter. Claire couldn’t work out what his expression would be. She had, she realised, no idea what he would be thinking.

“Well?” she could almost hear Grainne saying. “What if I did walk in now? What would you say?”

Claire shook her head slowly.

“I don’t know.” She spoke quietly, under her breath.

“That’s pretty fucking feeble.”

“Yeah but—”

“I thought you’d come up with something more impressive than that. I thought you’d at least have
some
kind of excuse worked out. You with all your GCSEs and your A levels and your fancy Oxbridge degree and everything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry! Sorry? That’s supposed to do the trick, is it? Jesus, Claire you’re really not getting this, are you? We’re not messing around here. This is serious stuff. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill let down or disappointment. This is full-scale full-on betrayal we’re talking here.”

“I know—”

“When I took you in you were completely fucked. You really were. You had nowhere to go, nowhere to live, you had no one. And I gave you a roof over your head. A really nice roof at that. And I took care of you. I thought we were friends.”

“I know.”

“And what did you do? After all I did for you? You fucked my boyfriend. You fucked my boyfriend and all you can say is, I don’t know, I’m sorry? That’s bollocks, Claire. Bullshit. And you know it. You betrayed me. Big time.”

Claire hunched over her cup.

“Did you think I’d forgive you?”

“I—”

“You didn’t even think about it, did you? It didn’t even occur to you, how I’d feel. You just carry on in your own sweet way, doing exactly what you want, and never once thinking how it affects other people. You just expect to get away with it. And then when you don’t, when suddenly it all blows up in your face, you just run away. And you leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces. You’re just completely selfish. When are you going to fucking
grow up
, Claire?”

Paul’s face seemed to be getting clearer. He would be frowning slightly, nodding, agreeing with Grainne. That made sense. Of course he would.

“Yeah, well,” Claire hissed silently. “It was you who changed the locks. That’s not exactly adult is it?”

“What did you expect? A welcoming party? A ticker-tape parade?
Ferrero Rochers?
”

“No, but, I did pay the rent. It’s not unreasonable to expect—”

“Would you listen to her! This is the next of it—”

“No, but, I’m just saying. It suited you well enough, didn’t it, a great wodge of cash off me every month and don’t tell the tax man. You don’t mention that now, do you? But you were happy enough taking the money off me. You’re no fucking saint yourself, Grainne.”

“Oh, so
I’m
the bad guy now. Well thank you very much.”

“That’s not what I’m saying—”

“So now it’s all
my
fault you fucked my boyfriend. Jesus Christ you’re some woman.”

“I—”

“And now you’re going to tell me what a tough time you have, aren’t you. With Daddy disabled, and you cutting yourself up, bleeding all over my nice clean bathroom, never had a decent shag in your life—until Paul, of course—”

Claire dug her nails into the tabletop.

“Just shut up. Just shut your mouth. I don’t have to take this from you. You know nothing about me. You have no fucking idea what it’s like being me.”

“I know plenty.”

“I never told you about Dad. I never told you about the cutting. I didn’t tell you anything. You never gave me the chance.”

Grainne would shrug, perhaps.

“But you wanted me to know, didn’t you. You wanted
everyone
to know. You still do. You know you do. Anyway, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t make any difference. You’ll just carry on in your own sweet way and don’t mind me. Or Jen. Or your mum or dad.”

“Why don’t you give me a hard time about Alan while you’re at it?”

“Alan? No. No point. He’s better off without you. He’s happier without you.”

“And what about Paul? Why’d you think he wanted to be with me?”

“
Be
with you?” Claire could almost hear the laughter. “
Be
with you? He didn’t want to
be
with you, love, he just wanted to fuck you.”

Claire flinched, squeezed her cup tight between her palms.

“How did you find out, anyway?” she wondered. “Who told you?”

“Who do you think?” Fading, translucent, she tilted her head back. “He did. At least he had the balls to.”

Claire brought a hand to her face, wiped her tired skin.

“You’re on your own now, honey.”

Claire glanced up, around. Dark figures hunched over tables. Cigarette smoke, coffee scent, voices. No one seemed to be looking at her. If she had spoken out loud, they had chosen to ignore it. She was on her own. She picked up her coffee cup and drained it. She counted out her coins.

ELEVEN