Two Fridays in April (39 page)

Josh, five since last August, hasn’t been told of the pup’s existence, let alone its imminent arrival. Una can’t wait to see his face. She’s been his official babysitter since just after Christmas. Their bedtime routine never varies: she tucks him in and reads him three stories, and then they sing songs in turn until he falls asleep.

And now that she has her own car, and is doing the driving test the very second she can, George won’t have to drive her home for much longer.

She couldn’t believe it when Daphne gave her the keys on her eighteenth birthday, four weeks ago.
It’s too much
, she said.

Tom gave it to me for a good price
, Daphne replied. Una didn’t think people who were well on the way to forty could still blush.

You’re getting it on condition you take lessons with my father
, Daphne went on.
He’s giving you six as his present
– and that was fine by Una.

The car is so retro: none of her friends had seen a Morris Minor before, and everyone is mad about it. It belonged to some old relative of Tom’s, and even though it’s pretty ancient it’s in really good nick, and had less than forty thousand miles on the clock.

It stank of cigarettes when it arrived – the owner must have smoked like a chimney – but she and Theo scrubbed it and sprayed it until they banished the smell, and Una found a website that sold car stickers, and ordered four red flowers that look great against the black.
Hippie chic
, Theo said, when he saw them stuck on the left rear wing. He’s so goofy sometimes.

She had her fifth lesson with Jack on Wednesday – he says she’s got lightning reflexes – and Theo takes her out sometimes in his car. He brings her to the university campus where everyone goes to learn. He’s had a full licence since he was seventeen – Kevin taught him to drive – and he bought a car at Christmas for five hundred euro, an eighteen-year-old dark green Nissan Micra that will do them until Una passes the test and Daphne finally has to let her drive. The Morris Minor is
much
cooler than the Micra – but she keeps that thought to herself.

She’ll be finished school in two months, and she’s taking a couple of weeks off before starting full-time at The Blue Bicycle.
She and Isobel will split the week between them, overlapping now and again at the busy times.

She adores working in the shop on Saturdays. She annoys Isobel during the week too – can’t keep away from the place. She still feels Dad there, but it’s in a good way now, not so sad anymore. He was happy there, and so is she. Sometimes she gets frightened, thinking that all this happiness can’t last forever. And then she thinks,
Well, of course it can’t
, so she’s enjoying it while she can.

She doesn’t know if she and Theo will last forever either – they’re both young, they’re one another’s first love – but she hopes they will. She wants him to be her last love too.

She’s told her dad about him.
You’d like him
, she said.
He’s a good person, he’s like you
.

‘Here we go.’ Kevin reappears with a box. ‘Theo, get the scissors and poke a few holes in it.’

Judy removes her apron and sinks into a chair. ‘I’d sell my soul for a cup of tea. Charlotte, how’s that pot?’

‘Empty.’

‘I’ll make more,’ Una says, and brings the kettle to the sink. Perfectly at home she is here now, part of the family. For her birthday Judy baked a sponge cake, filled it with jam and whipped cream and wrote
Happy 18th
on the top in buttercream icing.
I wasn’t sure I’d fit ‘birthday’
, she explained. Seeing it, Una recalled the slices of chocolate cake she and Daphne had eaten the day after her seventeenth birthday. Banishing, with every sweet, delicious mouthful, the memory of the evening before.

The man who attacked her – Dave wasn’t his real name, surprise, surprise – was traced through his computer. And there
was
a wife, only her name wasn’t Jean or Joan, and she knew nothing of her husband’s online activity.

At first he tried to deny the attack, said he’d never met Una, only spoken on the Internet with her – but under questioning he broke down, said it was the only time he’d done anything like that, he didn’t know what had come over him, he was deeply sorry. The guards waited until he’d finished apologising and charged him with sexual assault.

Thankfully his guilty plea meant Una wasn’t needed as a witness in court: she wanted never to lay eyes on him again. He’s doing time now, and Louise has told them that he’ll be put on the sex offenders’ list when he gets out.
He’ll think twice before he looks at another young girl
, she said.

Una hasn’t told Theo, or any of his family, what happened. She told them she left Charlotte’s bag behind in the taxi, and she found a similar one to replace it. They didn’t need to know. Nobody needed to know the full story except Daphne and Isobel, and presumably Jack and Mo, who would have expected some kind of an explanation. She doesn’t know exactly what they were told – the subject wasn’t raised by either of them afterwards.

She doesn’t think about it now; she doesn’t let it into her head.

The pup is placed in the box, with a squeaky rubber bone and a bald tennis ball that he loves. When the lid is put on, Una pokes a finger through one of the holes, and immediately feels the small wet tongue lapping at it. She carries the box out through the front door – can’t let Dolly see her taking one of the babies away – and Theo brings his car around.

It’s half past six. The journey to Louise’s house – George and Louise’s house now – will take them a good forty minutes in the Friday traffic, still heavy at this hour. She sits in the passenger seat with the box on her lap. She slides her finger back into the hole, wiggles it and feels the baby teeth grab it.

‘We won’t stay too long, yeah?’ Theo asks. ‘After the dinner, I mean.’

He’s wary at the thought of spending time with them. The only one he’s met so far is Daphne, and only after Una practically forced him into it. This evening he’ll be introduced to the rest of her family, and she’s well aware that he’s dreading it. She wonders if he’ll ever feel at ease among them, if that will ever be possible for him. Even though he’s entirely blameless, he’ll always be the son of the man who drove the lorry that killed her dad.

‘It’ll be OK,’ she says, hoping to God it will. ‘We’ll go as soon as you want to. I’m dying to see Josh’s face,’ she adds, to take his mind off it, but she can see by the set of his jaw that he’s wishing they were going somewhere else. Anywhere else.

She slides a hand across, lays it palm up on his thigh. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she repeats, ‘honestly. They’re fine, they’re great’ – and he shifts gear as they approach a red light.

‘We could run away,’ he says. ‘We could go to Australia and never come back. We could go tonight – we could go right now.’

She laughs, loving the intimation that they’ll spend the rest of their lives together, even if he’s saying it in jest. ‘We have no passports,’ she says. ‘No money, no clothes. And what about this pup? We couldn’t bring him to Australia.’

‘Hmm.’ The light changes and they move off. ‘Passports might be a problem all right.’

‘And the pup.’

‘And the pup.’

She leans across and kisses his cheek. ‘They’ll love you,’ she says, ‘like I do,’ and he shoots her a soppy grin.

They carry on driving. It’s twenty to seven.

I
t’s ten o’clock. They’ve finally got as far as the cake.

‘Mostly wholewheat flour,’ Louise tells Daphne. ‘Just a small bit of white. And brown sugar, but not much, because the carrots are pretty sweet.’

Three small pink candles, recently blown out, sit on the plate next to the remainder of the cake. The six long white ones that Isobel brought have been dotted about the room – three on the table, one on a windowsill, two on the dresser, each pushed into a sand-filled terracotta flowerpot. Two floor lamps with twin deep-yellow shades provide the only other light in the room.

They’ve eaten Thai lamb curry and wild rice, and followed it with fruit salad and George’s special brown-bread ice-cream. Daphne has taken possession of earrings, half a dozen crystal wine glasses, two books, homemade truffles, bath oil and a pair of red gloves in soft, soft leather.

Josh’s head droops towards his largely uneaten finger of cake. Una gets to her feet. ‘I’ll put him to bed.’

She gathers him, unprotesting, into her arms. ‘Bob,’ he says drowsily against her shoulder, and Una glances towards the little pup, out for the count in the new pet bed beneath the radiator.

‘You’ll see him tomorrow,’ she whispers, ‘he’s fast asleep now’ – and Josh’s eyelids slide down as she carries him out of the room.

‘Go with her if you want,’ Louise tells Theo, and he makes his grateful exit.

The seven remaining guests sit on. Coffee cups are refilled, more cake cut and doled out. Conversation breaks into splinters around the table.

‘Daphne looks happy,’ her mother remarks.

‘She does,’ her father replies. A few seconds pass as they both observe their daughter, still in conversation with Louise. In their various pots the white candles flicker lazily, making shadows dance in corners.

‘And you?’ Jack asks then, turning to his ex-wife. ‘Are you happy?’

Isobel looks at him in astonishment.

He waits. Time passes. She tilts her head, thinking.

‘I am,’ she says finally. ‘Quite happy,’ she adds. ‘Probably more,’ she says, with a small laugh, ‘than I deserve to be.’ Another small silence, but an easy one, falls between them. ‘How about you, Jack?’

He smiles down into his coffee. ‘I’m doing all right,’ he replies eventually. ‘I’m glad we’ve got to this. The two of us, I mean. I’m glad we can get along like this now.’

‘Yes … me too.’

She threw away her life with him. She’s older and wiser now. It could have gone another way, it might have ended differently if she’d given them more of a chance. If she’d focused more on what she had, rather than what she didn’t have.

‘We might have a cup of tea sometime,’ he says. ‘Or lunch, maybe. Just us, I mean. For old times’ sake.’

‘I’d like that.’

Just us. He doesn’t mean anything by it. They’re parents together, they’ll always have that connection. He’s being friendly, keeping the door open between them. And for her part she enjoys his company; she likes being around him. That’s all there is to it.

All the same, she’ll wear her blue trouser suit. She always feels good in that.

‘My point,’ Louise says, ‘is that dogs and people’s beds don’t mix. All that shedding hair, not a bit hygienic.’

‘Your sister is very harsh,’ George tells Tom. ‘Did you have no pets growing up?’

‘We had a cat,’ Tom tells him. He turns to Louise. ‘Remember Sissy?’

‘God – Sissy. He killed anything that moved.’

‘Sissy was a he? A killer he-cat called Sissy?’

‘Short for Sisyphus,’ Tom says. ‘That cat was lethal – remember the baby hedgehogs, Lou?’

‘God, I’d forgotten them – and all the poor birds. Nothing was safe. And he terrorised that small dog up the road – poor thing would run a mile when he saw Sissy coming.’

George grins. ‘Maybe we should get a Sissy,’ he says to Louise. ‘Spice up the neighbourhood.’

She looks at him sternly. ‘No Sissy, just Bob.’

They turn in unison towards the sleeping little bundle that is Josh’s new pup.

‘Bob,’ Tom says thoughtfully – and all three laugh.