Putting Out the Stars (28 page)

‘Poor Polly.’ Ruth went back to her armchair and sat down abruptly, still looking subdued. A little champagne sloshed over the rim of her glass and landed on her skirt.
‘Oops.’ She brushed at it absently.

Andrew took a CD from its case and bent to insert it. ‘They don’t last long though, do they? Temperatures in kids, I mean.’ He slotted in the CD and pressed the
‘play’ button.

Laura looked over at him in mild surprise. ‘Since when are you an expert in children’s medicine?’ Her tongue got tangled slightly in the last phrase – she probably
shouldn’t have any more to drink. Then again, it wasn’t as if she was pregnant. And it was New Year’s Eve.

Andrew shrugged. ‘I’m not claiming to be an expert – I’m just saying, aren’t kids always getting fevers?’ He looked from Ruth, who wasn’t looking back
at him, to Laura. ‘What’s so strange about me showing an interest?’ Lyle Lovett started to sing about a long tall Texan.

Laura tipped back her glass and drained it. ‘You’re right actually – Polly often gets a temperature, and it usually disappears very quickly. Pity it had to be today,
though.’

She walked to the table and picked up the champagne bottle. ‘Ruth?’

Ruth immediately held out her glass. ‘Yes please.’

‘Happy New Year, darling.’ Breffni dropped a kiss on Polly’s head. ‘Now, are you ever going to go to sleep for us tonight?’

Polly blinked, droopy-eyed, from her nest of sheets and duvet. ‘Night night, Mama,’ she said, yawning, thumb wandering towards her mouth. Her cheeks were still lightly flushed, but
her temperature had dropped a couple of degrees since dinner. Breffni held her breath as Polly’s eyes closed gently. Her rapid little breaths came softly and evenly; Breffni could smell the
strawberry-flavoured toothpaste Polly insisted on using.

She tiptoed from the room, leaving the door ajar, and went downstairs to the sitting room.

Cian was just putting a tray with a bottle and three glasses on the table in front of the fire. ‘Great – you managed to escape; I was going to relieve you if you weren’t down
when I brought this in. I take it she’s gone off?’

Breffni nodded. ‘Just about, thank God.’ She slumped into the couch beside Mary. ‘I could murder a glass of anything right now. How long to go?’

‘Three minutes, just about.’ Cian pulled the foil from the sparkling wine and began to ease the cork off. Breffni picked up the remote control and raised the volume a little.

They watched the countdown on RTÉ and exchanged hugs, and toasted absent friends, and shortly afterwards Mary disappeared off to bed. Cian put an arm around Breffni ‘You’re
exhausted.’

She nodded. ‘Wrecked. I’ll sleep like a log.’ As she tipped back her head and drank the last of her wine, Cian watched the muscles in her throat move, saw her hair fall back in
a dark sheet behind her. If he lived to a hundred, he would never get tired of looking at her, of marvelling at the fact that this perfect creature had chosen to be with him, out of all the men she
could have had.

Could still have.

She lowered her empty glass and he filled it again. ‘Thanks. Oh, by the way, I might take a quick run into Limerick tomorrow afternoon.’

He looked at her. ‘New Year’s Day? Isn’t everyplace shut?’

She shook her head. ‘Not to shop – I thought I’d run in and see Mam and Dad for a couple of hours, and maybe meet Laura for a quick chat; they invited us in tonight, you
know.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, you mentioned it.’

‘I’ve a casserole in the freezer that’ll just need to be heated up when I get back, so you can forget about it. And you’ll have Mary to help you look after Poll – I
invited her to stay for the day and have dinner with us tomorrow night.’

She put her glass on the table and leant back against the couch and closed her eyes.

He nodded again. ‘OK.’ He’d been quietly relieved when they couldn’t go to Laura and Donal’s tonight. Chances were the other two were going to be there too, and he
really didn’t relish another night in the company of Laura’s brother – for whatever reason, he hadn’t taken to Andrew when they met. Just one of those things, he supposed,
although he’d rarely experienced it in the past; found most people no bother to get on with. But Laura’s brother wasn’t someone who left you feeling good after meeting them. And
Ruth seemed very pleasant; funny that she should have gone for him . . . amazing how some couples ended up together, ones you’d never have said were suited. Like himself and Breffni.

He thought back, as he often did, to the first time he laid eyes on Breffni, almost eight years ago now. He’d been where he always was on Friday nights: sitting on a stool on the small
stage of the slightly seedy Irish bar at the corner of Sixteenth and Valencia. His repertoire didn’t vary much – mostly Christy Moore and Paul Brady, with a bit of the Beatles thrown in
for fun – but he always went down well with the regulars, a mix of Irish and Scottish immigrants mainly. Cian enjoyed the few hours at Flaherty’s on a Friday night: a nice change from
the formality of his junior accountant’s job in a downtown firm, where everyone wore suits, even in the hottest weather, and no one took longer than twenty minutes for lunch.

This particular Friday night was just like any other, until he lifted his head at the end of ‘The Island’ and saw what he thought was probably the most exquisite woman he would ever
lay eyes on. And swiftly following on from that thought was another: she would never look twice at someone like him. Slightly overweight from sitting around in an office all day and going home to
his mother’s dinners; nothing to look at, with his round face and brown hair that, no matter how short he kept it, still stuck up just over his left eye – a cow’s lick, someone
told him it was called. All Cian McDaid had to recommend him was the fact that he was a half-decent guitar player; but so far that hadn’t worked any miracles as far as the opposite sex was
concerned.

And Breffni hadn’t looked twice at him – not that night, or any of the four Friday nights that followed, until he screwed up his courage, in great form the night of his birthday, and
stood beside her at the counter and offered to buy her a drink. And it had taken seven more Friday nights of him hovering at the edge of her group when he went on a break, and grabbing the chance,
whenever it presented itself, to talk to her, before she’d asked him when he was going to take her out to dinner. And six months after that before they didn’t end the night in separate
beds.

And after hundreds of nights together, when she’d come home from her waitressing job one day to their small apartment and told him that she was pregnant, he’d felt such tenderness
and love, and gratitude, that it was all he could do not to burst into loud, messy tears. He blessed the mischance that had created Polly, the precious miracle that he still couldn’t believe
was his, the answers to his secret prayers. What had he ever done to deserve her – this golden baby-child who eclipsed even his love for Breffni? Who caused his heart to stop with joy –
he could feel the missed beat – when she smiled up at him, when he held her in his arms, felt her soft baby breath on his cheek, heard her gleeful chuckle.

Breffni had been adamant about contraception, insisted on a condom every time. Kept saying, whenever he brought up the subject, that they didn’t want to complicate things with a baby.

‘Am I not enough for you?’ And every time she asked that, he thought
but it’s the other way around.
When she trailed her fingers across his chest, looked up at him
with the deep blue eyes he adored, he almost told her why he ached so much for a child with her: because he was terrified, since the day they’d moved in together, that she’d come home
one day and say that she was leaving, that this had been a big silly mistake – look at her, for God’s sake, and look at him. Cian clung to the hope that a child, their child, would
somehow weld them together, keep Breffni from wanting more than good old reliable Cian McDaid – because how on earth could he possibly be enough for her?

And now that they had Polly, he realised that of course there was nothing – not an army of babies – that could guarantee that Breffni would stay. But now he also knew that he’d
survive if she left him – because Polly would be his child forever.

He picked up the bottle, lifted it to the light to check the level. Breffni stirred beside him, opened her eyes, yawned.

‘Hardly worth putting the cork back.’ He divided what was left between their two glasses before lifting his. ‘To Polly.’

She smiled, touched his glass briefly with hers. ‘To Polly.’

Laura slid over and ran her fingers lightly down Donal’s back. He could feel her nails as they tapped softly along his spine and he shivered pleasantly, half-awake. She
lifted her head and put her mouth to the top of his neck, just below his hair, then kissed her way across to a shoulder blade. He could feel the heat of her breath on his skin. His body began to
respond, and he turned to face her.

‘Good morning.’ His voice was croaky with sleep.

‘Morning.’ She touched his lips briefly, then moved her mouth slowly down along his throat and chest, biting gently when she reached a nipple. He drew in his breath, put a hand on
her waist and pulled her in close.

Afterwards, he twined his fingers through her tousled curls and tasted salt on her face, and saw the desperate hope in her eyes, and his heart cracked, like it always did.

She was there before him; she never arrived this early. He parked right beside her car and practically ran into the hotel. She sat in an armchair by the window, watching without
smiling as he approached. He dropped into the chair beside her and took one of her hands – cold – and brought it to his lips. ‘Hey.’

She glanced quickly towards the reception desk, then back at him. ‘I don’t know if I can do this any more.’

It was like being blasted with a shower of icy water, just after stepping out of a steamy bath, all pink and puckered. He felt the shock flash through his body, something thumping down to land
heavily at the bottom of his stomach. ‘What?’

‘It’s too hard, I can’t . . . we can’t do it to . . . it’s not right.’ Her head drooped, hiding her expression from him. She pulled her hand from his and
covered her face. ‘I can’t, I just can’t . . . it’s too hard. It makes me feel . . . we’re hurting people . . .’

‘No.’ His head spun – whatever he said now could change everything. ‘Listen . . . listen. Come to the room and we’ll talk.’ He spoke quickly and quietly; he
marvelled that his voice didn’t shake. He reached across and took one of her hands again, pulled it away gently from her face.

She shook her head, raised her eyes to his. ‘If we go to the room . . . you know I can’t resist you.’ Her hand was trying feebly to pull away from his.

It was going to be all right. He held tightly to her hand. ‘We’re meant for each other; we need each other. I would die without you.’ He watched her face soften, saw her
exquisite eyes fill with tears. He wanted to put out a finger and catch one as it trembled on her lower lashes, bring it to his mouth and taste it.

He had to keep speaking, had to convince her to stay. ‘It can’t be wrong, what we’re doing. It feels so right; you know it does. We belong together.’ With each word, he
could feel her drawing towards him. She blinked, and a single tear slid quickly down her face. Her hand rested in his, stopped pulling away. ‘No one will ever know, I promise. No one will
ever find out; no one will ever get hurt – we’ll make sure of that.’ He stood, pulling her gently with him. ‘Come on.’