Past Secrets

‘Hard day?’ Christie took his briefcase and jacket, resisting the impulse to push him up to their room, tuck him into bed and make him stay there until the exhausted look had gone from his face.

‘Ah no, fine,’ he said, removing his shoes and pulling on the old leather slippers he kept on the second step of the stairs. ‘The trip takes it out of me, I don’t know why. I’m sitting on the train half the day, not driving, so I should be in fine fettle.’

‘Travelling is exhausting,’ Christie insisted. ‘There’s a difference between sitting in your own armchair at home and sitting on a train at the mercy of leaves on the track, worrying about missing your meeting.’

‘I’m hardly Donald Trump,’ he joked.

‘He has a limo, I’d say, so he’s not at the mercy of the leaves.’ Christie handed her husband a glass of iced tea. ‘And someone else to drag his briefcase around after him. How did the meeting about the emissions go?’

‘We’re getting there. But one of the people was sick today, so there’s a chance we’ll have to go through it all again.’

‘For heaven’s sake,’ exclaimed Christie. ‘Surely if they’re sick, they have to catch up with the rest of you, not the other way round.’

‘You know how it works, love,’ said James. ‘For some people, the more meetings there are, the better. Then nothing actually gets done, but lots of minutes are typed up and the department’s accounts’ people are kept busy printing out expenses cheques for tea and coffee. Global warming won’t kill the planet: bureaucracy will.’

He followed her into the kitchen and sat down on a low stool to pet the dogs, who’d been clamouring for love since he arrived.

He normally knelt on the floor to pet them, she knew. His hip must be bothering him again. Not that James would ever say so. Christie knew many women with husbands whose flu symptoms were always at least on a par with Ebola, if the patient was to be believed. She was the lone dissenting voice with a husband who never magnified his illness to the power of ten, which worried her because James could be having a heart attack in front of her and he’d probably say he had ‘a bit of an ache’ and that a moment sitting down would cure it. How could you look after a man like that?

‘Now, what was that all about this morning?’ he asked when Tilly’s inner ears had been rubbed to her satisfaction and Rocket had snuffled wetly all over his shoes to establish that no other dogs had been admired that day.

‘What was all what about this morning?’ said Christie, feigning innocence.

‘You know, the phone call when I’d only just left the house.’

‘I was having an anxious day, that’s all,’ she relented. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you but I had this awful feeling that something bad was going to happen to us.’

James pulled her over on to his knee and the dogs whimpered in outrage. This was their time for cuddling, not Christie’s. Tilly stormed off to her bed to sulk.

‘You can’t take my weight on your hip…’ Christie began. She knew it was stiff, she could see from the way he’d been walking that morning.

‘Oh, shut up about my bloody hip, woman,’ James said and held her tight. ‘I love you, you daft creature, d’you know that? I love that you still worry about me.’

‘Yes and I love you too, you daft man,’ she replied. ‘Even if your hip is aching and you won’t mention it.’

‘It’s only a twinge.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’d be in agony, and you’d still say it was only a twinge. You’re not impressing anybody with your stoicism,’ she said crossly.

‘It’s not agony.’

‘If your arthritis is playing up, it’s not good to have me on your lap,’ she said.

James laid his head against her cheek. ‘The day I can’t manage to have you on my lap,’ he said, ‘get them to shoot me.’

‘They couldn’t shoot you,’ Christie murmured, hugging him. ‘You’re an endangered species.’

‘Like the dodo?’

‘The poor dodo’s been and gone, sorry. You’re more of a white tiger: rare and special.’

‘You say the nicest things,’ he replied, his lips close to her cheek.

‘Impossible man,’ sighed Christie, kissing him on the forehead and getting up. ‘I made goulash.’

‘Lenkya’s recipe? Great, I love that.’ James sat down at the table expectantly. ‘Whatever happened to her? She hasn’t been in touch for years, not since Ana was involved with that artist fellow and they were all here for the big exhibition in Dawson Street. Remember that? How many years ago is it?’

Christie opened her mouth but no sound came out. Fortunately the phone blistered into the silence and she leaped to answer it.

It was Jane from the Summer Street Café, with news that poor Una Maguire had been carted off in an ambulance after a fall.

‘I knew you’d want to know,’ said Jane, ‘and that Dennis might not get round to telling people.’ Which was a kind way of saying dear Dennis would be too flustered to brush his teeth and might need some hand-holding. Christie was good at that: calm in a crisis.

‘I’ll pop a note through their door telling him I’ll drop in on Friday and to phone me if he needs anything before then,’ Christie said and Jane hung up, knowing it was all taken care of now that Christie Devlin knew.

‘Looks like your feeling of gloom was right after all,’ James said as they sat down to their goulash. He’d opened a bottle of lusty red wine to go with the stew, even though it was only midweek, and they stuck pretty much to the wine only at weekends rule.

‘Yes,’ said Christie, thinking of the Maguires and how Dennis would cope with being the carer instead of the cared for. ‘That must have been it, after all.’

But she wasn’t telling the truth. Whatever dark cloud had moved over her head was still there, looming, promising bad things to come.

And James had mentioned ‘that artist fellow’ of Ana’s, Carey Wolensky, who’d turned out to be one of the most famous painters of his generation. When James had carelessly referred to him, Christie had felt a shiver run right through her. She didn’t believe in coincidence. Everything happened for a reason. There were tiny signs of the future everywhere and only the watchful spotted them. First her anxiousness, now this mention of a man she wanted to forget. Christie was scared to think of what it might all mean: her past coming back to haunt her. Why now?

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_32f28287-1156-561c-9bf2-e586f9f8c0a9)

The next afternoon, Maggie’s suitcases arrived together on the carousel. They looked shabby among some of the classier travellers’ bags from the Galway to Dublin shuttle.

She hauled them off the belt with some difficulty, having murmured, ‘No thanks, I’m fine,’ to the man who’d leaped to offer to help the tall redhead in the trailing pale suede coat.

Her eyes were raw with crying and she kept her head down as she spoke, embarrassed by how she must look. The man probably felt sorry for her; thought she was one of those care in the community patients who rattled because of all the Xanax bottles in their pockets.

Maggie didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for her today. She felt sorry enough for herself.

The first piece of luggage was the heaviest, a wardrobe-on-wheels affair that was fit to burst, only a bright purple strap preventing its internal organs splurging out over the concourse. An orange ‘heavy item’ sticker hung from the handle. The second was a hard candy-pink case that was a dead weight even when empty.

Grey used to joke that it had been cursed by so many baggage people, it had probably developed magical powers itself.

‘If our plane ever goes down, the pink case will be the only survivor, you wait and see,’ he’d laugh.

Fresh misery assailed her at this thought of Grey and the fabulous holidays they had saved up for and shared before they’d bought the flat.

They’d never go away together again. Not when she’d be watching like a jailer every time he tipped a beautiful waitress or glanced at a woman on the beach. Only a fool would trust him again. Maggie was not going to be that fool. Last night she’d packed and said they’d talk later, trying to delay the inevitable argument in case she gave in.

‘Would you like me to sleep on the couch?’ Grey had asked, and she wanted to whisper: no, lie next to me and hold me. Tell me it’ll be all right, it was a mistake, that you’ll make it better.

‘Yes, sleep on the couch,’ she said, finding the strength from somewhere to say it.

We’ll try again, I know you love me, her heart bleated.