A Gift to You (18 page)

I sat for twenty minutes at the kitchen table before calling the paramedics.

Martin was dead when they wheeled him into the ambulance.

I had him cremated, just as he wanted. No hymns, eulogy or flowers. I drew the line at scattering his ashes in the back garden. The girls and myself surreptitiously scattered them in the Rose
Garden in the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin.

I have nightmares sometimes but I don’t dwell on the way of Martin’s passing. The way I see it, it was him or me. He would have seen me under if he had come home to live with me.

My life is back to its calm, peaceful rhythm. I’m enjoying my widowhood, apart from the nightmares and the occasional pang of guilt when I wonder, Am I, or am I not a murderer.

‘The McHughs were a bit frosty tonight,’ Mike Stuart said.

‘That’s an understatement if ever I heard one,’ his wife, Kathy murmured out of the side of her mouth. ‘They’d have been at home in the Arctic.’

‘What’s new?’ Mike asked glumly. They stood at the front door, waving goodbye to their guests.

They were caught in the wide beam of the car’s headlights as Garry McHugh reversed down the drive. He gave a toot on his horn. Beside him, his wife Alison looked utterly pissed off. Kathy
knew that the tight smile she gave them would be gone in seconds as soon as the car headed towards the main road.

Kathy gave a sigh of relief as the Audi’s rear lights disappeared into the night. Tonight had been a disaster. Alison had sniped at Garry constantly. At times he’d ignored her
completely. This had been like a red rag to a bull. As her rage and antipathy, fuelled by several large G&Ts, overflowed, she’d turned to her friends and said angrily, ‘I’m
married to the biggest bastard you could meet.’

‘Either take your go now, Alison, or forfeit it. You’ve been holding up the game for the last five minutes,’ Garry said coldly. His eyes were like flints behind his glasses as
he glowered at her.

‘Get lost. I’ll go when I’m ready. Just because you think you’re
Mister Intelligence.
Well, you’re not. You’re just a cheat. I mean, who else would
try and get away with putting Monaco down and say it was a font? It’s not in the dictionary. It shouldn’t be allowed. And you shouldn’t get a triple word score.’

‘Well, if you weren’t so
thick
, you’d know that it
was
a font. I’ll show it to you on the computer when we get home.’

‘Oh, stick your bloody computer. You should have married one, you spend so much time on that one in the office,’ Alison snapped. She slapped down her letters.

‘Is that the best you can do?
Rat!
Pathetic!’ Garry’s brown eyes flashed with scorn.

‘Well, I’m married to one, aren’t I?’ Alison riposted coldly. ‘Don’t forget it’s a double word score.’

‘The first one you’ve managed so far,’ Garry jeered, as he wrote down the score.

They’d all been playing their usual Saturday-night game of Scrabble, a tradition that went back to the carefree giddy days of their early twenties. They’d all been newly-weds then
with not a lot of money to spend. The future had looked rosy. Now, fourteen years later Garry and Alison weren’t getting on too well, much to Mike and Kathy’s dismay.

Over the last few months, things had got so bad that the weekly game of Scrabble that they’d always looked forward to, after a few drinks and a Chinese takeaway, was becoming a bit of an
ordeal.

‘I’ve never seen them as bad as they were tonight,’ Kathy reflected, as she collected the dirty glasses and emptied the cold, congealed remains of the meal into the bin.

‘Why they ever married each other, I’ll never know. They’re like chalk and cheese. They always were. I mean, Alison is always gadding about and Garry hates going
anywhere.’ Mike picked the bones of a cold spare rib.

‘Put that in the bin, you glutton.’ Kathy grimaced. ‘They say opposites attract. Maybe it worked at the start but it’s not working now.’

‘Yeah, well, Alison made the big mistake of thinking that she was going to change Garry. He’ll never change. He’s not even making the effort now. I don’t think he wants
to come over to us on Saturday night any more. All he wants to do is go to his football matches. Or bury himself in his work. He lives in that office.’

‘Would you say that Garry’s got another woman?’ Kathy asked her husband. ‘He can’t be spending all those nights at work.’

‘Garry! Garry McHugh! Don’t be daft, woman,’ Mike scoffed as he licked his fingers. ‘He’d run a mile if a woman came near him. Imagine Garry sitting down and having
a conversation with a woman. It’s hard enough for him to have a conversation with us. And he’s known us for years.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’ Kathy poured Fairy Liquid into a basin of hot water. ‘He’s great fun, though, when he’s in form. He’s got a real dry sense of
humour. I feel sorry for him sometimes. Alison is always nagging him.’

‘Garry likes being nagged. He likes being told what to do. He never makes decisions. Alison makes them all. Did you hear her telling him he was to get his hair cut next week? And telling
him that she’d told Brenda Johnston that he’d tile her bathroom. Without even
asking
him! What is he, a man or a mouse?’ Mike picked up the towel and started to dry the
dishes. ‘It’s like he’s the child and she’s the mother. It’s always been like that with them. That would drive me nuts. If I came home and found out that you’d
told Brenda Johnston that I’d tile her crappy bathroom, you know what your answer would be.’ He grinned.

‘Well, Alison always was a bossy boots. And I wouldn’t inflict Poison Dwarf Johnston on you. I’d know better.’ Kathy giggled. Brenda Johnston was Alison McHugh’s
best friend. Kathy didn’t like her. She thought she was sly. She was always flirting with other women’s husbands. Brenda who was unmarried and in her early forties, had recently bought
a house that needed a lot of renovation. Brenda was an expert at the Poor-Little-Me-I’m-A-Helpless-Female act. Every man she knew was being roped in to help decorate. Garry was doing the
lion’s share.

‘
Poison Dwarf! . . .
Miaow! Brenda’s not in the good books. What’s she done now?’

‘She had the nerve to say that I didn’t know what stress was. She said that I had you to provide for me. She said that I could come and go as I pleased because I’m a
housewife.
She thinks that I have very little to do.’

‘Well I
do
provide for you. You
can
come and go as you please,’ Mike said innocently.

‘You know what I mean.’ Kathy flicked frothy suds at her husband. He flicked back and drenched her.

‘Stop it,’ she squealed.

‘Shush, you’ll wake the kids,’ Mike warned.

‘Well, if the baby wakes up
you
won’t be getting any nooky tonight because it’s your turn to get up to her. And
I
intend to sleep my brains out . . . in the
spare room if necessary,’ Kathy said smugly.

‘Well, see about that.’ Mike dropped the towel, grabbed his wife and gave her a long smoochy kiss.

‘Let’s leave the rest of the washing-up and the
two
of us can sleep in the spare room.’ He nuzzled her ear.

Kathy giggled. Even after ten years of marriage and three children, Mike still turned her on and she loved him passionately. Hand in hand, they crept upstairs into the spare bedroom and
thoroughly enjoyed themselves for the next hour.

Later, nestled in the curve of Mike’s arm, Kathy said sleepily, ‘Would you say that Garry and Brenda are having a fling?’

‘Who in their right mind would want to have an affair with Bug-eyes Johnston? Are you mad? She wouldn’t shut up long enough to let someone kiss her. She loves the sound of her own
voice too much. She’s such a bloody know-all. Who’d want to listen to that one yakin’ in that squeaky voice of hers and watch her flicking that lank greasy brown hair of hers over
her shoulders the way she does?’ Mike snorted.

‘Well, Garry didn’t say he wouldn’t tile her bathroom for her. He’s always doing bits and pieces for her. Maybe
he
likes her.’

‘She’s bossy enough for him, anyway. She’s even more of a dictator than Alison.’

‘Ah, Alison’s not that bad,’ Kathy defended her friend. ‘If she didn’t nag Garry he’d never do anything except watch soccer and play with his
computers.’

‘If I lived in their house that’s all I’d want to do. It’s like a pigsty. Alison is not good at housekeeping. You don’t know how lucky you are. I never watch
soccer. I don’t have a computer,’ Mike murmured into her hair.

‘And I don’t have a job, like Alison. I’m always here to cook your dinner. I have your shirts ironed every morning.
You
don’t know how lucky
you
are,
buster!’

‘I know how lucky I am,’ Mike whispered. His arms tightened around her.

‘Poor Garry and Alison, it’s horrible, isn’t it? Kathy said sadly.

‘I couldn’t stick a marriage like that. All that bitterness and anger and resentment. It’s almost as if they hate each other now. Maybe they’d be better off
divorced.’

‘Oh, don’t say that, Mike!’ Kathy exclaimed.

‘Well, it’s true. What kind of a life have they got now? No life. The trouble with Alison and Garry, and I don’t say this lightly, they’re very dear to me, we’ve
been friends a long time, but the two of them in their own way are very selfish people. There’s very little give and take there. Garry should never have got married. He should never have had
a child either. He’s not prepared to make the effort. Poor Ciara’s a nuisance to him. He thinks once he provides financially for her, that’s his responsibility over. He’s
not prepared to give any more. It’s like our friendship. If we didn’t have them over and keep in touch he wouldn’t bother. It’s too much effort. He’s a strange
chap.’

‘I wonder, does our friendship mean anything to him? Or is it just habit with him?’ Kathy mused.

‘You never know with Garry. You never know what’s really in his mind. Garry’s very . . . how would I describe it . . .? Sort of calculating, I suppose. He always was. Says
nothing much, but takes it all in.’

‘He’s very good-natured, though. He’d never see you stuck. Maybe it’s just a bad patch. Maybe they’ll work things out.’

‘I hope so, because if they don’t, I don’t really want to go away for a long weekend with them. I don’t want to have to sit listening to that for three days.’

‘Me neither,’ Kathy agreed glumly. ‘But I always looked forward to that weekend away without the kids. It wouldn’t be the same going on our own. Remember the time we went
to West Cork and we found out that the hotel was an-out-and-out kip and Garry told the mad one behind the desk that he was from Bord Failte and there was no way he and his party were going to spend
one minute there, let alone a night and she’d better hand over his deposit fast. And he waved his Union card under her nose and she believed him and gave him back the money. God, we legged it
out of there so fast.’

‘Remember the time we were camping and Alison set the tent on fire?’

‘Yeah, and remember the time we went on the Shannon cruiser and Garry caught a pike and chased you along the quay wall at Dromod with it and you tripped over a rope.’

‘I nearly broke my neck.’ Kathy grinned in the dark at the memory. ‘We did have fun, though, didn’t we?’

‘Ah, maybe they’ll get over it. Maybe a weekend away would do them all the good in the world,’ Mike, ever the optimist, declared.

‘Maybe,’ Kathy agreed but she wondered if they’d all ever have such good times again. The way things were going, it didn’t look like it. Alison had told her in the
kitchen that she’d got off with a fella she’d met at a dance and she’d enjoyed a mighty good snog with him too for good measure. If she met someone, she was off, and Garry could
like it or lump it.

That didn’t sound like someone who was prepared to try and make a go of things. Poor little Ciara. Kathy’s motherly heart went out to her goddaughter. She felt very angry as she lay
in the dark listening to Mike’s volcanic snores beside her. Couldn’t either of them see what they were doing to the child? Couldn’t they see how insecure she was? Always fighting
in front of her. Ciara had told Hannah, Kathy’s eldest, that Garry had told Ciara that her mother was an imbecile. Imagine saying that to a child? Mike was right, they were bloody selfish and
neither of them was taking any responsibility for what they were doing to their daughter. Kathy didn’t like the crowd Ciara hung out with. Imagine letting a twelve-year-old go to a mixed
slumber party? Hannah had been asked and was in a monumental huff with her parents at the moment because she wasn’t allowed to go. She could stay in her huffs, because no way was she going to
any mixed slumber parties. It was very awkward, though; Ciara was allowed to do so much. She was on Facebook and Twitter, she was allowed to watch films Kathy considered totally unsuitable for her
age and she wore way too much make-up. In Hannah’s eyes, Mike and Kathy were very strict and it was starting to cause terrible hassle.

Her eldest daughter did have the Olly Murs concert to look forward to, Kathy reminded herself. Bringing up kids was no joke. Where did you draw the line between being over-protective and letting
them grow up safely? At least she and Mike were trying. Garry and Alison didn’t seem to have any such concerns. But then Ciara was very ‘responsible’ for her age, according to
Alison, when Kathy had asked her how in the name of God had she agreed to let her go to this goddamned slumber party. Of course, it suited Alison to think that. It let her off the hook when hard
decisions had to be made. ‘Responsible’ was not the way Kathy would describe Garry and Alison right now, she thought crossly as she gave Mike a dig in the ribs to stop him snoring
before drifting off to sleep herself.

I think I’ll have a lazy day today, Imelda McHugh decided, as she snuggled under the duvet and pulled it up over her ears. The bed was lovely and warm and she could hear
hailstones clattering against the window. Imelda smiled. What bliss! She could stay in bed
all
day if she wanted to. At seventy years of age, she was a liberated woman! ‘Thank you,
God, for making me a widow.’ It was a heartfelt prayer. Since her husband Ben had died two years ago, her life had changed completely. She’d discovered a whole new lease of life. She
didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn any more to cook a breakfast for a cantankerous, mean-spirited old man that she hated. And she hated Ben McHugh to whom she’d been married for
forty years. He’d made her life a misery with his moods and his meanness and his vicious temper. Ben had been a most thoroughly selfish man. He’d courted her for three years, married
her and she like a fool had believed that life would be happy ever after. The relief of having a ring on her finger, saving her from spinsterhood, and the excitement of having a home of her own,
helped her overlook her disenchantment with her husband. Once the honeymoon was over and they’d started living in the small terraced house they’d bought in Fairview, her dreams of happy
ever after had quickly turned to ashes. Ben wasn’t the slightest bit interested in doing anything other than going to work, reading his sports news, watching TV and going to his football
matches. He expected his breakfast on the table at 7.30 a.m. Sharp. His dinner had to be on the table when he came home from work in the evening. They had sex every Friday night and that was over
almost before it started. After a few grunts and groans and rough fumblings, Ben would roll over and fall asleep.