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  ‘Sometimes you fancy a change, d’you know what I mean?’

  ‘It’s confusing,’ said Marianne. ‘For your customers.’

  ‘Fair point,’ the man said. ‘Let’s start again, shall we? Just press redial when I hang up.’

  ‘No, wait, I—’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Hello?’ said Marianne. ‘Hel …? Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ She pressed redial. This time, there was no need to count down from a thousand in multiples of fifty-nine and a quarter. The phone was answered on the first ring.

  ‘Tried and Tested Taxicabs, good afternoon, Hugh McLeod speaking. How can I be of assistance?’

  ‘Hugh McLeod?’

  ‘At your service,’ he said. Marianne could tell he was smiling. Also that he had put on a telephone voice.

  ‘You said you were a hairdresser,’ said Marianne stiffly.

  ‘I like to keep busy,’ he said. ‘Is that I Capture the Castle?’

  ‘It’s Marianne Cross,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Which bit are you at?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘My favourite bit is when they swim in the moat at night.’

  That was Marianne’s favourite bit too, but she wasn’t going to admit that. ‘I need a taxi,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place,’ the man replied, ignoring Marianne’s nettled tone. ‘Is it for yourself?’

  ‘No.’

  Hugh waited.

  ‘It’s for Pearl.’

  ‘Ah, how is Miss Havisham?’

  ‘That’s a bit rude,’ said Marianne, who was glad she was not ‘eyeballing’ Hugh, which would allow him to see the grin that had forced its way onto her face.

  ‘She knows I call her that,’ said Hugh.

  ‘You call her Miss Havisham to her face?’

  ‘Pearl agrees with me that Miss Havisham is undoubtedly one of Dickens’s finest literary achievements,’ said Hugh.

  ‘I suppose what you call your clients is your own business,’ said Marianne.

  She cleared her throat.

  ‘When can the taxi be here? Pearl is going to Swords.’

  ‘Halfords?’

  ‘Yes.’ Marianne wondered how he knew but didn’t ask, not wanting to encourage him.

  ‘That woman really knows her way around an engine,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Are you impressed just because she’s a woman?’ said Marianne huffily.

  ‘I’m just impressed in general,’ said Hugh. ‘She helps out with the cabs sometimes, you know. No one does a pre-NCT inspection as thoroughly as Pearl.’

  ‘So,’ said Marianne, determined to steer the conversation back to a more businesslike footing. ‘What time did you say you’ll be here?’

  ‘Will five minutes do?’

  ‘I suppose it will have to.’

  She hung up.

  Chapter 11

  By the time Marianne had dropped the Get-Well-Sooners home, there was still most of the afternoon to go. Even after she’d lost her job, she’d maintained something of a routine, keeping the house in order, re-reading her collection of Accounting Weekly and updating the spreadsheet she used to keep abreast of her finances. A fairly redundant exercise in the end, she had to concede. Still, it filled the space.

  Here, at Ancaire, she felt the length of the afternoon hours stretch out before her, empty and endless.

  Rita had not returned from wherever she was and, from the sporadic and random words coming from the sitting room, Marianne deduced that Pearl was in there, watching The Chase, which she denied being addicted to.

  There was no sound other than the erratic spluttering of the grandfather clock in the hall. Even the kitchen seemed cavernous and echoey, without the mess Rita generated when she cooked and baked, using all the surfaces and most of the bowls and cutlery in the process.

  Through the windows, the usual roil of the sea and rattle of wind against the glass panes, interspersed with the occasional braying of Donal, the threadbare donkey, whenever Declan perched on his back or Gerard sheltered between his legs.

  Everything was so alien yet it felt horribly familiar. She had been gone for twenty-five years but here, at Ancaire, she was fifteen years old all over again, suspended somewhere between the past and the future.

  She had to get out. Marianne pulled on her anorak and clamped a woollen hat on her head, doing her best to get as much of her hair inside it as she could manage. She opened the door of the back kitchen and was assailed by the sharp tang of the sea and the nearly sweet smell of various animal droppings and pelts. She stuffed her hands into her pockets as she passed the animals. If she let her arms swing, they often formed the – false – impression that she had brought something for them. A mint, perhaps. Or a carrot stick. She did not make eye contact with any of them, giving them a wide berth as she picked her way through the long grass at the top of the kitchen garden. Through the glasshouse, she could see Patrick’s workshop, the doors wide open as usual, and Patrick sawing through a sheet of wood.

  Instead of taking the steps down to the beach, Marianne struggled through the small but dense forest at the edge of Ancaire on the other side of which was a trail that led along the coast towards Rush. She was nearly warm when she stumbled out of the forest. When she took her hat off, the wind lifted her hair away from her face and she could see for miles; the trail winding its way along the crooked coastline and the sea below, always moving, stretching out to the horizon where she could make out the outline of boats. One was a ferry, she thought. It was too far away for her to tell if it was coming or going.

  She hadn’t meant to walk as far as the graveyard. She hadn’t realised that’s where she was until she arrived, as if the wind had borne her there like a dandelion seed. It was a mostly overgrown and forgotten affair now, crouched behind the ruin of an ancient church.

  The latch on the gate made a clicking sound as Marianne opened it. She hadn’t been here since the funeral, which she barely remembered. She had no idea where the grave was. It wasn’t beside her grandparents’ one, which was near the entrance, their names barely visible under clumps of lichen that had spread across the stone over the years. Maybe it wasn’t here at all? Maybe it was in a different graveyard? But something about the sycamore tree at the stile snagged on a memory in her head. The tree was bigger now. Taller. Twenty-five years will do that to a tree. Twenty-five years on the thirtieth of April. Rita’s careless, childish drawing in her diary, marking Shirley’s eviction. As if she didn’t remember it was Flo’s anniversary. Or as if she did. And didn’t give a damn.

  Usually Marianne marked the day on her own. Did something she thought Flo might have liked. Ate a banana split at an ice-cream parlour in town. Went to see a Disney film in the cinema. Traipsed around the zoo. She hated the smell of the zoo and the weather could be harsh at that time of the year but she mostly had the zoo to herself, the last time she had gone there, so that had made it more bearable.

  Now, this year, she would be here.

  At Ancaire.

  Because she had nowhere else to go.

  She leaned against the trunk of the sycamore, letting her eyes travel from one side of the graveyard to the other. When she saw it, she wondered how she hadn’t seen it before. A slab of sandstone, with William’s name at the top and below it, Flo.

  Flo Cross

  1982–1992

  In front of the stone, a rectangle of grass and, around the edges, rose bushes, thorny and bare. No weeds strangled the bushes and the grass was a vibrant, lush affair. In a glass vase at the base of the stone, fresh-cut pansies.

  The overall effect was one of colour: the brownish-red of the sandstone, the soft green of the grass, the purple and yellow of the petals.

  The overall effect was one of care: the patch of ground was tended by somebody.

  Marianne suspected Patrick. It would be typical of him. To take such an interest in something that had nothing to do with him. She crouched down and put her hand on the stone – on the F of Flo – a
nd waited to feel something.

  She felt foolish.

  And cold.

  She didn’t know why she had come. She didn’t feel close to Flo. She felt the same way she always felt. Guilty. Anxious. And yes, she was ashamed to say, sorry for herself. For what she had done without, all these years. For what had become of her. Flo had looked up to her. Marianne had taken it for granted. And now look at the state of her.

  She wiped her face with her hands, wiped her hands in the grass. It was icy cold, the ground. Marianne snatched her hand away. More than anything, she wanted to unfeel it. To have never touched it. The hard cold of the ground.

  She rubbed her hand up and down the leg of her tracksuit, trying to warm it. Behind her, a clicking sound. It was the sound of the latch on the gate. Marianne turned and saw Rita, turning to close the gate behind her, bending to pick up a canvas bag from the ground, arranging the straps over her shoulder. Marianne bent low and ran to the next grave, then the one after that, using the headstones to conceal her. The thought of speaking to Rita, here, was impossible. Because what else would they talk about but Flo? And they had never talked about Flo afterwards.

  Marianne hid behind the grave of someone called Thomas Dunne, who had died in 1876.

  Rita made her way through the graveyard, her cerise-pink trench coat unbuttoned and billowing behind her, revealing her dress, which was a more subdued shade of pink. The canvas bag hung off her shoulder now, clanking against her body as she walked. When she got to Flo’s grave, she sat down as if the ground wasn’t cold. And hard. From the bag, she lifted a fresh bunch of flowers. Marianne craned her neck but couldn’t make out what type they were. Bright orange ones. She removed the pansies from the vase and replaced them with the fresh ones. Marianne could hear her talking out loud. Then laughing. Her comic book laugh. Hee hee hee. Now she seemed to be cutting the grass with a … Marianne squinted … was that a pair of nail scissors?

  Marianne’s back ached now from the bending and crouching. She needed to get out of there. She peered again round the edge of Thomas Dunne’s grave just as her phone rang. Rita stopped talking and looked around. Marianne ducked behind the stone and dug in the pocket of her anorak for her phone, stabbing furiously at the button to disconnect the call but not before she saw that the caller was Brian.

  She slumped against the stone, trying to get her breath under control, straining to hear Rita. She could hear her high heels, clip-clop-clipping against the cobbled path. She could hear the chime of Rita’s earrings – slender lengths of bamboo – tapping against each other, and her mother’s voice, frailer than usual, not as sure of itself as it normally was, struggling to be heard over the wind. ‘Hello? Is anybody there?’

  Marianne shut her eyes tight. She knew she should stand up. Reveal herself. Put her mother’s mind at ease.

  Instead, she set off on her hands and knees towards the gate, concentrating on the pain of sharp pebbles cutting into her skin. It distracted her from thinking about Brian. Imagining that he could see her now. Crawling through a graveyard. Trying not to be seen or heard by her mother.

  Maybe he wouldn’t be surprised.

  She crawled on until she got to the gate. She opened it and scrambled to her feet, bent low as she ran through the gate, not stopping to close it. She kept going, not knowing if Rita was looking her way, if she could see her, running away like some sort of thief in the night.

  Hugh’s car was parked on the road. At first it looked empty but, as Marianne approached, she saw him, reclined in the driver’s seat, a beanie pulled down over his eyes and a copy of I Capture the Castle open across his chest.

  Marianne was backing away when he sat up, pushed his hat off his face and grinned at her, his eyes disappearing into slits with the intensity of it. He rolled down the window.

  ‘Hello, Marnie.’

  ‘It’s Marianne,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘I was close,’ he said. He picked up the book, put a gigantic dog-ear on the page he’d been on and tossed it onto the passenger seat. He saw Marianne looking at it. ‘You reminded me of that book the other day,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d re-read it. It’s a cracking story.’

  ‘Do you not have a bookmark?’ she said.

  ‘Would you be more kindly disposed towards me if I did?’ He leaned out the window and regarded her with a tilt of his head that prompted his hair to fall across one side of his face. In the failing wintry light, it was the colour of conkers, shiny and in shockingly good condition. Marianne pulled her hat out of her pocket and wrestled it onto her head.

  ‘No,’ she said, frostily.

  ‘I’ll get one anyway,’ he said, ‘just in case.’

  ‘Are you waiting for Rita?’ asked Marianne then.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I told her not to come today on account of her not feeling the best, but she insists every day, rain or shine. You know what she’s like.’

  Marianne didn’t know what her mother was like. Nor did she know Rita wasn’t feeling the best. She didn’t know anything.

  ‘I would be obliged if you didn’t tell Rita that I was here.’

  ‘No bother,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Do you promise?’ Marianne couldn’t help adding.

  Hugh drew a cross on his heart with his forefinger. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ he said. ‘That do you?’

  ‘I suppose it will have to,’ said Marianne, straightening.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Oh. Thank you,’ said Marianne, hurrying away.

  Chapter 12

  Marianne was acutely aware of the weight of the phone in her pocket. It beeped as she walked away from Hugh’s taxi, which meant that Brian had left a message.

  She would not listen to it.

  But she found it impossible to stop thinking about it.

  About the message.

  What he might have said.

  She hadn’t spoken to him since the day he left. He had emailed her in work that day.

  Marianne,

  Are you available for a meeting in the house tonight at six thirty?

  Regards,

  Brian

  While the wording of the email was pretty standard, Marianne noted Brian’s reference to ‘the house’ instead of the more usual ‘home’.

  Alarm bells sounded.

  She stopped in Arnotts on the way home and stole a tube of moisturiser. On Liffey Street, she handed the cream to a woman sitting in a doorway on a sleeping bag, shaking a worn-out paper cup at passers-by.

  ‘What’s that for?’ the woman asked suspiciously.

  Marianne examined the box. ‘It says it locks in moisture, plumps your skin, and wards off the appearance of fine lines.’

  ‘Do you think there’s something wrong with my face?’ The woman glared at Marianne.

  ‘Do you want it or not?’ said Marianne.

  ‘It’s Crème de la Mer,’ the woman said. ‘Of course I want it.’

  At home, Marianne put on a blue T-shirt that Brian had once admired. ‘It’s the same colour as your eyes,’ he had said.

  Afterwards, when she revisited the scene in her brain, she would flinch at her preparations. Inspecting her teeth in the bathroom mirror. Pouring serum into her hair. As if finally succeeding in calming it would make him leave her less.

  Because, from the moment she read his email, that’s what she’d assumed.

  Expect the worse.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Brian said, when he arrived. It was almost an accusation, the way he said it. Like she had taken some unfair advantage. She shouldn’t have used so much of the bloody serum.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ she asked. ‘Before we start?’

  Brian sat down suddenly as if the muscles in his legs had given way. Put his hands flat on the table, like he was bracing himself. The breath he took then. The deep, long breath. Deep enough and long enough to say all the things he had to say. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. Was that love? Or just familiarity?

 
Either way, it was over.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ he asked, when he had finished.

  She couldn’t think of a thing.

  Brian dragged his hands down his face. He looked tired. It was true that he hadn’t been sleeping well lately. Marianne had put it down to work. An upcoming audit of one of Brian’s major clients. There wasn’t an accountant in the world who slept well before an audit.

  ‘You’ve got to admit, Marianne, this is more like a business arrangement than a relationship.’

  Marianne was stung with the unfairness of the statement.

  ‘We agreed,’ she finally said. ‘No drama. An ordinary, quiet life. That’s what you said you wanted, too.’

  Brian shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Marianne,’ he finally managed.

  Since then, he had emailed her twice. Once with his new address and the name of his new girlfriend. Although he didn’t use that word. ‘Girlfriend’. He called Helen his ‘partner’, which sounded more ominous.

  The second time, he wrote with the news that ‘they’ were expecting a baby.

  Two babies, in fact.

  Twins.

  When she read that email, Marianne could not detect anything other than a huge sense of relief. That Brian had not managed to change Marianne’s mind in this regard. That the burden of responsibility for these babies was his alone. His and Helen’s. She remembered being horrified at the idea of Flo’s fontanelle. Aunt Pearl had explained it to five-year-old Marianne in lurid detail. Marianne imagined a gaping hole in her sister’s skull through which Flo’s small baby brain could be seen, pulsing like a jellyfish.

  She remembered thinking that Brian now had two fontanelles to worry about.

  He went on to express his uncertainty, emailing her. He imagined that she had long ago moved on with her life. But he didn’t want her to hear it from anybody else.

  In her head, Marianne drafted many responses. In the end, she deleted the drafts and left his email unanswered.

  Now, here he was on her voicemail. Back at Ancaire, she decided the easiest thing to do would be to destroy her phone. She went into the garden shed and hunted about for a suitable tool. Because the shed was mostly Patrick’s domain, it was meticulously neat. Drawers had labels telling you what they contained. Seeds and bulbs in the main. Items like shears and rakes and trowels hung from a line of hooks, and a dustsheet had been arranged over the lawnmower, defunct now since the arrival of Gerard the goat.