The Living (18 page)

Matthew finished his hot chocolate, put the mug down and sat back. I still had almost half of mine to go, cooling now. I slid my hand out from behind his neck and looked at him. The apprehension must have shone from my face.

‘I'm finding it difficult,' said Matthew. ‘I'm having difficulty.'

‘Yes?' I allowed myself a quizzical note.

‘It's just …' he went on, then faltered again. ‘It's just not easy.'

‘We've established that,' I reminded him.

‘Oh, hell,' he said. ‘Wait there. I'll be back.' He got up and headed towards the bathroom.

My stomach was full of moths' wings. I couldn't finish my
drink; I put the mug down, leaned back and closed my eyes. I had to stop him from telling me. I didn't want to know. I wanted to continue swimming in my sea of ignorance, even if it meant losing him, never again undressing him in the dark, laughing with him over an old film and a bottle of wine. I'd been here before; it was survivable. I'd give him the easy way out.

I heard the toilet flush and tried to compose my face. Matthew came back in and sat down.

‘Look.' I plunged straight in. ‘What I think you're trying to say is that this isn't working.'

Matthew's head snapped round, and he stared at me in horror. ‘No! That's precisely
not
what I'm trying to say. Oh, Cate! You don't think – are you – do
you
think it's not working?'

‘Well … no,' I said slowly. ‘Most of the time I think it's really good.'

‘Really?'

Hesitantly, I nodded. ‘Yeah. But then we have these weird disagreements, and … disconnections, and now you're telling me there's a problem … but you won't say what it is.' I could barely speak against the blaze of his confusion.

He passed his hand over his eyes. ‘I know. I'm being a total nut, aren't I?'

‘Yes, you are,' I said, and suddenly we were kissing, and his fingers were in my hair, and I could taste the chocolate on his fresh, sweet tongue, feel his warm breath on my face.

He drew back his head. ‘You know, that's more like it.'

I laughed, riding a surge of relief, and Matthew laughed with me, and we kissed again.

We cuddled up together in the corner of the sofa, my head on his chest, he stroking my hair with a gentle rhythm that began to send me to sleep. Time enough to find out all his secrets when he was ready to tell me. This was good enough for now.

‘You going home, then?' I asked, but he knew I was joking. We stretched ourselves upright and headed for the bedroom.

I
T WAS
T
HURSDAY
evening, and I was packing for Belfast: bustling around my flat, gathering my belongings, ironing my concert dress, ticking off my mental list of what I'd need.

It had been a good day. Paula had arrived back at work in great form from her holidays, bearing airport chocolate from Gran Canaria. Between her and George, all seemed to be forgiven.

Our last rehearsal before the trip had gone rather well. Everybody had worked hard, and Diane had been pleased with us. We'd finished with a rousing run-through of John White's ‘Rocky Road to Dublin', and Diane had sent us home to get a good night's sleep.

We were catching the train to Belfast tomorrow afternoon. I'd bring my suitcase to work in the morning and leave early to go and meet the others at Connolly Station.

I had the radio on, a soothing sea of well-modulated talk in the background. Ten o'clock news. And after the reports of the latest government pronouncement, ongoing trade union unrest, the freshest economic outrage, came an item about the Belfast peace
summit. Tensions were running high, it appeared. Language had become heated; the subcutaneous enmities were being unwrapped, flaunted like feather boas around old ladies' wattly necks.

And all of a sudden, I realized: this was
us
. This was
our
summit – Carmina Urbana would be singing on Saturday to these warring delegates.

I paused, iron in hand. Denise used to slag me in school for never knowing anything about what was going on in the world. ‘Who's the US president?' she'd ask, and I'd say ‘George … Washington?' to annoy her.

The reporter in Belfast was declaiming earnestly about how tight the security was around the meeting, how there had been some trouble already with protests, threats, an incident in which one of the catering staff, suspected of having connections with Republican dissidents, had had to be fired.

And I began to weave a little story about how the choir would be the perfect way for a terrorist to get in – who would suspect the entertainers, after all? Something Shakespearean in that. You would join up, attend rehearsals, go to the gig, and there you would … I stopped. I wasn't quite sure what you would do after that. Plant a bomb, I supposed. Or would that be just
too
last century?

I shivered a bit and looked around the dusky room. Nobody lurked in the corners.

G
EORGE CAUGHT ME
just as I was leaving work the next day. My first thought was that he had misunderstood my request for
permission to leave early, and I felt the beginnings of a leaping panic as I tried to think of ways to persuade him to let me go.

‘Come in here a minute, Cate,' he said, beckoning me into his office. ‘Now, you're off up to Belfast, I believe you said.' He stood with his back to the door and spoke at about half his normal volume.

‘Yes, we're all going up together on the
Enterprise
.'

‘I won't keep you long, so.' He paused, eyes beady. ‘I want to ask you something. Are your … ehh, admirers still on the scene?'

I frowned at him.

‘I mean the men in that car.'

‘Oh!' I said, and tried to stop my eyes widening in horror. I'd never told him about the laptop.

‘Are they still around?' George asked.

I'd never told him any of it – about the break-in, about my midnight escape, about Matthew going through the Bell Books company laptop with a fine-toothed comb …

Well, I couldn't get into it all now. There wasn't time. ‘No,' I said firmly. ‘I haven't seen them in a while.' Why, of all things, did it suddenly feel like I was covering for Matthew?

‘Grand job,' George said. ‘They must've moved on to fresh fields and pastures new.' He rubbed his chin and took a breath. ‘Right, then. I want to ask you a favour. Now. Say no if it's a nuisance, but it's just, something's come up, and it would be a huge convenience to me if you could help me out. I have a friend in Belfast – Nicky Fay – he's a county councillor. He has a document
for me and he doesn't want to trust it to the e-mail. He's a bit funny that way, like some others we could mention. It's … well. It's a document he wants me to have, as corroboration for part of the MacDevitt book, funnily enough. He thinks it'll change my mind about something. So, would you be willing to meet him and bring it back with you?'

‘I … well … I don't know…' I started to stumble, trying to think of a reasonable way to extricate myself. George watched me intently. ‘Yeah, sure, I suppose,' I heard myself saying. ‘How do I get in touch with him?'

‘I have his phone number. How are you on numbers? Do you think you could learn it by heart? I'd rather not write it down, just in case.'

‘Should be OK,' I said, at sea.

‘All right.' He recited the number, twice.

I repeated it back to him, then hummed it in my head. Nothing I recognized, but I was fairly sure I'd remember it.

‘Find a public phone, if you can at all,' George said. ‘Try not to use your mobile.'

‘OK.' I was well out of my depth.

W
HEN
I
GOT
to Connolly Station I found the choir assembling beside a large pile of bags. I positioned myself with a clump of other altos and made small talk. The train wasn't for half an hour, and the queue hadn't yet begun to form. Joan handed me my token for our group ticket.

Matthew wasn't there yet. I went and bought a coffee.

Shortly, without announcement, a queue began to coalesce at the sign saying
Enterprise
. We finished up our drinks and headed over to join it.

Matthew still hadn't shown up, which was driving Diane mad, because on our group ticket we all needed to go through the barrier together.

‘Where's your bit of trouser, Ms Houlihan?' Here was Tom, ever tactful.

‘I'll just give him a call,' I said, blushing – but when I tried, my call went to voicemail. I left a message that I hoped sounded jaunty rather than snappy.

Diane spoke to the guard, who said we could all go through, and she could wait for Matthew. He was the only one of us who wasn't there.

By now I was a-jangle. I hadn't heard from Matthew all day, and although I knew I was indulging my annoyance, my thoughts turned to a list of nasty, worrying things that might have happened to him. My conversation with George hadn't helped – it had brought all the sinister stuff back into the foreground. What if someone were trying to prevent Matthew from getting to the concert?

Silly. I could think of no earthly reason why that would benefit anyone.

I walked down the platform with the others, glancing every few seconds over my shoulder to where Diane still stood waiting
at the ticket point. We found our carriage and piled in. Joan and Val nabbed one side of a four-seat group and nodded to me to come and join them. I put my bag up on the overhead shelf and sat down, dithering over saving the fourth seat for Matthew.

‘Did you manage to contact himself?' Tom asked, leaning over from the other side of the aisle.

‘No, his phone's off.' I was irritated now at my jitters. He'd show up. He wouldn't just let us go off without him. ‘If he misses this train there's another one later on,' I said.

I had my coat on the empty seat. Nobody asked to sit there.

Everyone chatted about their days at work, their journeys to the train station. I didn't join in. I was still looking out the window, back along the platform, to where Diane was waiting for Matthew.

And then there they were, the two of them, Matthew loping towards the train with Diane maintaining a dignified trot beside him. She wore a big, tight smile.

They were looking in the windows of the carriages they passed, and eventually Matthew caught sight of me. He and Diane shuffled down the aisle of the carriage. Anja had saved a seat for Diane. Matthew arrived at our group of seats as the guard's whistle sounded outside, and leaned down on the table, puffing with weariness that seemed unfeigned. The train began to move.

‘What happened to you?' I said, as kindly as I could.

Matthew gestured for time to catch his breath, and levered himself into his seat. Settled, he heaved a short, rasping sigh. ‘I was supposed to meet my supervisor at twelve, and he never showed
up,' he said. ‘Then at two o'clock I get a call to say he's in his office, and I didn't feel I could say no, because we really needed to meet. So by the time I left I was dead late.' He sounded as though he'd run all the way from the bus stop.

The train began to move, and we all continued to bat a selection of standard topics back and forth. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me. I was happy to be getting out of Dublin for a couple of days. Matthew squeezed my hand under the table. I returned the pressure.

We got to talking about stage magic. Tom had an uncle who used to do children's parties. ‘He did mine a few times,' said Tom, ‘and there was always this older girl with gimlet eyes shouting out the secret before the trick was over.'

‘It must take some nerve, though,' said Joan.

‘It's a performance,' Val said. ‘Like a lot of things.'

‘You'd need such dexterity,' said Joan.

Matthew said, ‘Well, a lot of it is just deception. Putting people off the scent.'

I looked at him, eyebrows raised. ‘Speaks the expert?'

‘Well, no, obviously not,' said Matthew. ‘But from what I've seen, it's all about distracting people at the crucial moment. Like the three-card trick. I saw a man doing it in London a few years ago – only it was eggcups and a pea, not three cards.'

‘But that is just about dexterity,' I said. ‘They flick the pea under a different cup at the last second.'

Matthew shook his head. ‘Not this man. I watched him for ages.'

‘I take it you weren't had,' Tom said.

‘Oh no,' said Matthew. ‘I was just watching. He was getting people to bet. And after I'd seen him win a few times I worked out how he did it. And it wasn't about flicking anything,' he added, turning to me. He was animated, edging forward in his seat the better to command our attention, gesturing to illustrate his story.

‘OK. He starts off slowly, shows you the movements, shows you the pea, shows you how easy it all is. Then he speeds it up a bit, and you guess where the pea is, and you're right. And by this stage he's got your interest, and then he talks you into betting. Say five quid, or two if you're not so sure.

‘So you agree to the bet, and he does the trick – and he moves a lot quicker this time – and then he asks you to say where the pea is. And you're pretty sure, because you haven't taken your eyes off him for a second. So you pick a cup, and he slaps a five-pound note out on the table. And of course, you think you've won. But then he gets all stroppy and asks where your money is. And he refuses to lift up the cup you've chosen until all the money's on the table.'

‘Aha,' Val murmured, nodding.

‘And of course, now he's winning, because he's confused you. He's accused you of wanting to cheat him, and you feel bad, because that's what you were thinking about him. It was amazing – you could practically see it happening in people's faces. So you take out your wallet and you find a fiver and you put it on the table. And you've pretty much got to take your eyes off the cups in order to do that – and that's when he makes the switch.'