The People Next Door (12 page)

Nothing except thirty-five euro and twenty-five minutes.

‘Right, I think that’s it.’ Caroline stood back again and examined Yvonne’s face. ‘Here.’ She handed Yvonne a mirror and waited. ‘See what you think.’

How on earth was she going to pretend she liked it? Full of dread, Yvonne took a deep breath, lifted the mirror to her face – and said softly, after a few seconds, ‘Good God.’

Her eyes were dramatic, all dark-edged and green-lidded, framed with eyelashes that she could have sworn were longer and thicker than they had been twenty minutes ago. Her cheekbones – she had cheekbones! – were defined with subtle colour, a healthy glow, and her skin was clearer than she ever remembered it, not a single broken vein to be seen. Her lips seemed fuller, in a much paler colour than the one she usually wore, a kind of pinky-beige with a slight gloss to it. Much more flattering, she had to admit.

She really did look better, but in a beautifully natural way. She looked as if she’d been born with that face.

‘Wow – it’s great. I love it.’ Yvonne tilted her chin, turned her head. From every angle she had improved.

‘You should love it. You look ten years younger than when you came in.’

Yvonne laughed into the mirror. ‘Really? Well, that can’t be bad.’ Caroline might be lacking in the niceties of conversation, but she more than made up for it with her talent. ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘Enjoy your evening.’ The barest hint of a smile crossed Caroline’s face and vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Probably avoiding crow’s feet.

Driving the thirty-five miles or so to Charleton – thank goodness she’d thought to tell Peter she lived there, where there was little chance of bumping into
anyone she knew – Yvonne wondered if Kathryn’s turquoise top was a little too low cut; she wasn’t used to having such an impressive cleavage.

‘I don’t want him to think I’m sluttish.’

But Kathryn had insisted. ‘You don’t want to come across all prim and proper either. No harm to tease him a little, let him know what may be on offer – eventually.’

A truck roared past, surely much too fast. What time was it? She checked the dashboard clock: ten to eight. Another fifteen minutes’ driving ahead of her – just enough to be slightly late. She turned on the radio and Sean Keane was singing ‘Blackbird’ by the Beatles.

Brian had been a big Beatles fan; his favourite song was ‘Something’. They’d chosen it as their first dance after they were married.

What had their first date been like? She tried to remember. They were both seventeen when they’d met at the tennis-club disco. She still wore the awful brace on her teeth that her mother had insisted on getting her at twelve. Brian had been standing nearby with a few of his friends and there was the usual pushing and jostling and sniggering. Eventually he’d come over and asked the girl standing beside Yvonne if she’d like to dance.

The girl took one look at Brian. ‘No, thanks.’

His face flooded with colour. Yvonne was mortified for him. Without thinking, she grabbed his arm and pulled him onto the dance floor. ‘C’mon – I’m dying for a dance.’

She’d rescued him, and he’d fallen in love with her.
He was her first real boyfriend. When they’d finally slept together a few months later, in his narrow rented bed, it was the first time for both of them. Yvonne found it terribly disappointing. Why had nobody told her it would hurt so much and be so messy and be over so quickly? Where was the magic? Where was the ecstasy she was supposed to be feeling?

And why hadn’t she had an orgasm? Shouldn’t that have been part of it, making up for the pain? She’d given herself orgasms plenty of times – why hadn’t it happened with Brian? She thought of the beautiful women in the films, moaning with pleasure, arching into their partners’ bodies. No mess there – not even smudged lipstick.

She had to brace herself when they tried again, a few nights later, and it wasn’t much better. And just as they were beginning to get the hang of it, they’d got drunk on the night of her Leaving Cert results, forgotten about the condom, and she’d got pregnant.

She hoped Clara’s first time had been better. She wondered which of the boyfriends it had happened with – because, of course, at twenty-three, Clara was bound to have had sex with at least some of them. Not that Yvonne was ever likely to find out. On the one occasion she’d attempted, clumsily, to talk about contraception, fifteen-year-old Clara had cut her off. ‘It’s OK, Mum, we learned about that at school, years ago. I know all that stuff.’

‘Oh …’ How times had changed. At fifteen, Yvonne hadn’t had a clue. The closest her school had come to explaining about sex was their religious
education teacher, Sister Montgomery, telling them that their bodies were temples of the Lord and should be treated accordingly, that boys had no willpower so it was up to the girls not to be tempting them because once boys were tempted that was it – they had no control over their vile urges.

The subject of sex or contraception had never come up again between Clara and Yvonne. Maybe most daughters felt embarrassed to be having those kinds of conversations with their mothers. Yvonne would just have to hope that Clara was behaving responsibly, particularly as she herself hadn’t exactly been the ideal role model.

But so far, so good. Apart from changing boyfriends with alarming regularity, Clara seemed to be coping with that part of her life. She’d never, as far as Yvonne knew, been broken-hearted when a boyfriend had disappeared – if Yvonne commented on the absence of the latest, Clara usually shrugged and said, ‘Oh, that’s finished. It didn’t work out.’

But actually, was her apparent lack of regret such a good thing? Shouldn’t Clara be investing a bit more emotion in relationships? Maybe she just hadn’t found the right man yet. No harm in that, she had plenty of time.

Yvonne sighed. So much guesswork, so many questions to which only Clara knew the answers. And they’d been so close, once upon a time. For several years after Brian’s death, Clara had clung to Yvonne, reluctant, at the start, to let her mother out of her sight. They’d done so much together – from the
minute Yvonne picked Clara up from her parents’ house after work, they were hardly apart until Clara’s bedtime. They went shopping or to the pictures, they cooked dinner together or they curled up on the couch and watched television. Of course, Clara had her own friends too, but more often than not she seemed just as happy to spend time with her mother.

And then, somewhere along the way, Clara had changed. She couldn’t say exactly when, but Yvonne had become aware of a withdrawal, of Clara pulling away from her. Perfectly natural, of course, when she was growing up, to want her independence; to be honest, they’d probably been a little too close before that. But still, Yvonne had found this new distance difficult to take.

‘She’ll get over it,’ Yvonne’s mother assured her. ‘In a few years she’ll be your pal again. Every girl goes through it.’ So Yvonne had waited, had held her tongue when Clara made another excuse not to go shopping, disappeared to a friend’s house or up to her room for the evening, leaving Yvonne alone. It’ll pass, she told herself. I can wait.

But it hadn’t passed. Clara had never come back, or not in the same way. Of course they got on fine. Nobody seeing them together would have said there was a problem, but Yvonne sensed a lack of closeness, an invisible boundary between them, that try as she might, she couldn’t penetrate.

Kathryn told her to count her blessings. ‘She could have broken your heart – look at all the girls who go totally off the rails after they hit their teens.
She could have gone on drugs, got pregnant, anything. I’d say keeping things to herself is a very minor offence. And I know she doesn’t tell you about the boyfriends, but eventually they put in an appearance, don’t they?’

Working in the hardware section of Belford’s only department store, Clara had plenty of opportunities to meet men – and with her looks, she was rarely without a willing escort on a night out. But if it weren’t for her opening the door to them now and again, Yvonne would never have known they existed.

She sighed again. Clara was who she was, just not given to confidences – or not with her mother at any rate – and Yvonne would have to live with it. She turned up the radio and switched her mind to the evening ahead.

She’d been to the restaurant twice before – once for dinner with Clara for her nineteenth birthday, shortly after it opened and everyone was talking about it, and last year for lunch with Bernie, an old friend, between trawling through the end of the summer sales in Charleton’s various boutiques.

The menu was nicely imaginative, using local ingredients wherever possible. Yvonne hoped they still served the goat’s cheese and berry roulade that she and Bernie had discovered there last time.

Thinking about food made her realise how starving she was. Normally she and Clara ate around half six. Hopefully Peter wouldn’t object to a woman with a healthy appetite.

She passed the sign that told her she’d reached
Charleton and drove slowly through the narrow streets to the restaurant. She pulled into a parking space and turned off the engine.

What time was it? She pushed up the sleeve of Kathryn’s top and checked her watch. Ten past eight. She felt a skitter of nervousness. What if he wasn’t there yet? She’d have to sit and wait for him without even a gin and tonic to give her a bit of courage – she daren’t, not on an empty stomach, not with that drive home.

She hoped he wouldn’t mind that she hadn’t used her real name. She’d meant to tell him before they met, but hadn’t been able to figure out how to put it without sounding ridiculously paranoid. She’d just have to come clean tonight. Hopefully Peter wasn’t his proper name either.

She studied her reflection in the rear-view mirror – no lipstick on her teeth, face still looking good. She should buy that shade of lipstick and maybe that green eyeshadow and the mascara too, it made such a difference. Clara would show her how to put them on properly, and she’d pay attention this time.

She checked her neckline – show him what’s on offer – and ran her fingers through her hair. Had that last cut been a bit short? She smiled at the woman in the mirror.

You look ten years younger. You’re a confident, sexy woman. He’s lucky to have your company for the evening.

She wondered if she had a flirtatious smile. She practised batting her eyelashes, then stopped in case she messed the mascara.

She slung her bag over her shoulder and opened the car door. Nobody on the street – hopefully he was sitting inside, feeling just as nervous. She locked the car and started walking towards the restaurant door.

The evening was cooler than recent ones. She should have brought a shawl or a jacket. But it would be warm inside and she’d probably be going straight home afterwards.

Unless they hit it off. Unless, right from the start, they clicked and they went for a drink afterwards and sat in some cosy bar for hours because neither of them wanted the date to end. Unless they ended up booking a room in one of Charleton’s hotels. She pushed open the door of the restaurant, tingling with anticipation.

And there, at a little corner table, looking every bit as nervous as Yvonne felt, wearing a navy suit she’d never seen on him and the yellow buttonhole rose they’d agreed on in their last email, sat Pawel Tylak. Her boss.

When Yvonne’s daughter Clara was ten, she had gone on a school tour with her twenty-six classmates, their teacher, the special needs assistant for Mark, who had ADHD, and three parents. They got the bus to a smallish city, fifty-three miles from Belford.

Part of the tour involved a visit to a museum, which was full of skeletons of animals, ancient weapons and dummies dressed in musty-smelling clothes from years ago. When they went in, they were met by a man with no hair, a red face and a wide bottom that made the girls elbow each other.
He wore grey trousers and a navy blazer with gold buttons, and led them around the main room, telling them about the exhibits. Clara was soon bored.

She edged away from the main group, pretending to be fascinated with whatever was under the glass cases she was passing – dirty arrowheads, rows of dusty medals, yellowing pictures of old people in black clothes, tattered pages covered with scratchy, blotched writing that she couldn’t read.

She reached an open doorway. Nobody called her name, nobody put a hand on her sleeve and told her she had to come back. There was no one else in the main room with them, apart from one man in a dark green coat and a brown hat, who was studying one of the dummies and didn’t seem to notice her.

She slipped through the doorway and found herself in another room with no glass cases, just lots of paintings on the walls and wooden benches in front of them. She snorted at the thought of sitting on a bench staring at a painting. How dumb was that? Like pausing a DVD and watching the still screen.

She moved on, through a second doorway that led out into a corridor. She passed a door with ‘Toilets’ written on it, thought about whether she needed to go and decided she didn’t. Just past the toilets was another doorway to her left. She turned in.

It was smaller and more dimly lit than the previous rooms, with a big screen on the far wall. She stood behind the benches – more benches, three rows of them – and watched what was happening on the screen.

A head-and-shoulders picture of a man appeared
with floppy black hair, a pale face and round glasses. That was replaced, a few seconds later, with another. Same glasses, more black hair and a small, tidy moustache. Both men were vaguely familiar to Clara. Everything was in black and white. A woman appeared on the screen then, in an old-fashioned dress with a wide lace collar and hair that looked as if it had been folded up, like an accordion, then released. A string of pearls hung around her neck, resting on the lace collar.

Just as Clara was about to turn away – this was almost as boring as watching a painting – a bit of moving film came on, a man carrying a briefcase, walking down a street in quick motion. It reminded Clara of the old Charlie Chaplin films they sometimes showed on TV on Sunday mornings and she giggled.