‘It’s not you, it’s me. And I can’t even believe I said that.’
‘If it’s not about sex, what are you looking for?’ Maybe I could provide it.
He shut his eyes and opened them again. ‘Hope, I think. Something like hope, anyway. Excitement, maybe. Possibility.’
Right. I swallowed. Hope. Excitement. Possibility. I knew about them. ‘Newness?’ I said. ‘Freshness? The chance to be a different person, a better version of yourself?’
He looked a little surprised. ‘Yes. Them.’
Well, newness and freshness were things I couldn’t provide. ‘What about the girls?’ I asked.
‘I can tell them tomorrow.’
It was already tomorrow. ‘No.’ Telling the girls would make it real. For as long as only he and I and Carl knew about this, it left the door open for him to change his mind.
‘Kiara’s barely sixteen,’ I said. ‘Who’s going to mind her when I’m away?’ I stayed overnight in London every Tuesday.
‘She can mind herself,’ Hugh said. ‘She’s more grounded than you or me. Or Neeve can be in charge.’
I tried again. ‘Sixteen’s a tricky age for a girl’s dad to disappear for half a year.’
‘Kiara’s an old soul and the most well-adjusted kid you’ll meet.’
‘The thing is, though …’ I was going to say that Hugh’s disappearance might change all that, then realized it wouldn’t make any difference: Hugh was doing this no matter what I said. A wave of anguish rushed up in me. ‘Please don’t.’ I grasped his hand.
‘I’m sorry, Amy. I have to.’
‘What if I say no?’
He broke eye contact with me and his silence said it all: he’d go anyway.
4
I head for Mum and Pop’s in Shankill – when I was growing up, it was practically in the country, but now the south Dublin suburbs have spread out to swallow it and the Friday-evening traffic is heavy. Although it’s early September, the weather is shiny and bright, so people are probably heading for the coast, for the last few rays of summer.
As I inch along my phone rings. It’s Dominik, Pop’s part-time carer. For a long time Maura wouldn’t even hear of us getting a carer for Pop. But Mum has a very full schedule of hospital appointments with her own many ailments, and when Pop was left alone in the house, he was liable to flood the bathroom or to give away Mum’s jewellery to random callers to the door. One time Mum arrived home to discover three strange men – encouraged loudly by Pop, ‘Go on there, lads, now you have her’ – wrestling her washing-machine out of the house and into a van.
But dragging Pop along on Mum’s hospital visits was no longer working because he’d frequently address the nurse with ‘You’ve the look of a young Rosemary West. How many bodies have you buried in your basement?’
So about five months ago Mum displayed some rare gumption and signed up with Camellia Care.
‘Hi, Dominik.’ I wonder why he’s ringing. Maybe Pop had decided to fling his dinner at the wall again. But that hardly counts as news.
‘Amy, your mum is late home and I have next job to get to.’ Dominik is very in demand – very. In the dementia-carers universe, Dominik is Kate Moss.
The thing is that Pop – carrying on the habit of a lifetime – is a difficult patient and often accuses his carers of being serial killers. Even though these people are used to the bizarre insults of dementia patients, Pop wears them down in no time. In the last five months, we’ve gone through a long list. Dominik, who’d spent over twenty years in the Czech Army, is the only one robust enough to cope and we can’t get on the wrong side of him.
‘I’m sure she’ll be home in a few minutes.’ Mum is very reliable.
‘She is already two hours late.’
‘Two hours! Have you rung her mobile?’
‘Certainly I have rung, but it’s on kitchen dresser.’
‘But where’s she gone?’ Mum never goes out except to hospital appointments. ‘What time did she leave?’ I’ve horrible visions of her lying on a pavement, surrounded by concerned strangers trying to establish her identity, and of her, with so little sense of self, unable to tell them.
‘She go at midday.’
‘Whaaat? But that’s six hours ago!’
‘I can tell time, Amy. And your dad say I am worser than Yorkshire Ripper. Six hours I must listen to him.’
‘But, Dominik, which hospital did she go to? Where –’
‘No hospital today. She go to the fancy lunch –’
‘Wait, what, lunch?’
‘– in the fancy hotel. She say she is going on the piss.’
‘No, Dominik, she’d never say that!’
‘Are you calling me liar? She say to me, “Dominik, I am kicking up my heel and going on the piss.” Those very words.’
This is extremely unlikely, but I need to know more before I draw any conclusions.
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ It’ll be more like twenty-five. I’m a chronic liar about my ETA – there’s simply never enough time.
‘I must leave now,’ Dominik says.
‘Okay, I’ll get someone else over to you ASAP.’
Who should I ring? In the small likelihood that Dominik has his facts straight, I don’t want Mum getting into trouble, so Maura can’t be involved. Instead Derry gets the call.
‘Any chance you could get round to Mum and Pop’s in the next ten minutes?’ I ask. ‘Mum’s MIA and Dominik needs to leave.’
‘So you ring the unmarried daughter?’ Derry says. ‘Poor Derry the spinster. No man, no life, all she’s good for is taking care of elderly parents. Well, times have changed and –’
‘Can you do it or should I ring Joe?’
‘I’m going to Cape Town tomorrow. Good job I didn’t go today, right? I’ll rescue Dominik now, but don’t start thinking this is who I really am.’ She hangs up.
Half an hour later I turn off the main road to the cold, ramshackle Victorian house I grew up in. Once it had had lots of land, but by the time Dad bought it, it had all been sold off and a council estate built, so our abode loomed like a giant granite gravestone in a sea of three-bed semis.
My childhood had been spent fantasizing about living in a modest, pebble-dashed terrace with an electric cooker, instead of the Aga we had, which engendered untold suspicion from our neighbours.
The trees on either side of the driveway are so heavy that branches bang and slide on the roof of my car – maybe Hugh could come round to do some cutting over the weekend. But no. Hugh has other priorities now. Suddenly I realize that if he goes, all the practical household stuff becomes my responsibility: changing light bulbs, doing the weekly food shop and – yes, it might be a cliché but it’s still real – the bins. Even seeing a bin gives me the shudders.
The thoughts of Hugh’s extra-curricular riding have been so distressing that I haven’t appreciated how his absence is going to impact on my day-to-day life and, actually, I’m almost more upset about the bins.
Is there any handyman who could be commandeered? Neeve and Kiara don’t have boyfriends. Sofie’s beloved Jackson is a total sweetie, but he’s a wispy pixie-boy, who looks too frail to wheel the bins as far as the gate.
I park up tight behind Derry’s car, to leave enough space for whoever else is coming today, and by the time I’ve got a tower of pizzas out of my boot, Derry has opened the front door.
‘Is she home?’ I’m looking over Derry’s shoulder, hoping to see Mum’s small, apologetic figure in the gloomy hallway.
‘No.’
I step into the house and eye Derry over the stack of food. ‘I’m worried. Should we be worried? Listen, was Dominik all right?’ I live in terror of him leaving us because then I’d be roped in to babysit Pop and I’m already stretched way too thin.
‘He’s a narky feck.’ Derry closes the door behind me.
‘Should we ring the cops about Mum?’
‘Seriously, though, I can’t be the one who gets the call any time things go wrong with Mum and Pop,’ Derry says. ‘It’s bullshit the way single women are treated, as if we don’t have obligations.’
‘Derry!’ She’s always at this lark and usually it’s entertaining. Not so much today. I’ll have to tell her about Hugh soon – it’s weird that I haven’t already.