Walking Back to Happiness (22 page)

Louise claimed to be agonised, but the feverish gleam in her eyes had given away a very different Louise to the calm, sensible wife and mother Juliet knew, and it had rattled her. She’d been the one who’d gone over
there
, worried about these cracks appearing in her so-called perfect marriage, but hearing Louise, who was supposed to advise her, say that sent her into fresh panic. What if all marriages self-destructed at a certain point, and that the raggedness she felt really was the beginning of the end?

If she hadn’t been distracted by the wine and her own problems, she might have been able to listen properly to what Louise was saying. Juliet wasn’t proud of her hormonal flouncing out, on reflection. Compared with the devastation that followed, what was a little crush?

There was a grumble from the nursery, which turned into a whinge. Juliet held her breath and pushed the door open, letting in a shaft of soft light as she peered round.

Toby was sitting up in his cot, staring out through the bars like a caged penguin. His hair was spiky against his pale face.

Juliet smiled, then hesitated, not sure what she should do. Was it better to leave him or pick him up? Would he sense her inexperience and bawl the house down if she tried to soothe him back to sleep?

She couldn’t get past it, because Louise was so lucky, she thought, a fierce sense of injustice piercing her chest. She had
everything
Juliet had lost – and she still thought she could gamble with it. It felt worse now than it had done when Louise had told her, because she didn’t even know whether Louise was still seeing this man who made her face glow like a teenager. Maybe she had that too.

Toby gazed at her through the bars, expecting some affection and attention.

Juliet went over to the cot and picked him out, feeling his sleepy weight against her chest. He nuzzled into her and she felt her heart contract.

What were you meant to say to babies? The same as you said to cats and dogs, presumably – anything that didn’t require a response. Juliet had plenty of that sort of conversation.

‘Hello,’ she murmured into his downy head. ‘Hello, Toby.’

That seemed to go down OK.

Juliet paused, feeling a bit stupid, then went on, ‘Do you know what Ben and I wanted to call your cousin, if they’d come along? Hmm? Lily, if she was a little girl. Isn’t that a pretty name? Lily Iris Falconer. Or Arthur Quentin for a boy. Don’t laugh at the Quentin; it was Ben’s granddad’s name. We thought Q would be a cool nickname. You’re the only person who knows that . . .’ She stopped. It felt strange saying it aloud; worse for hearing it, better for getting it out of her head and into the light.

‘That we thought we might have had a baby. It didn’t work out, though. Not that time. Then we didn’t really get our act together.’ She swallowed. Juliet had wept so bitterly in those bare winter months after Ben died, that thanks to their stupid arguing, she didn’t have a trace of him left after he’d gone. ‘We argued over the silliest things that didn’t matter in the end . . . Your mummy is very lucky.’

Toby said nothing. She didn’t know what he’d wanted her to do; he didn’t seem damp in the nappy area, or sick. So Juliet held him, stroking his head as she did with the cats and dogs, until his eyes drooped shut.

Then she laid him back in his warm cot and sat by his small white chest of drawers clutching the huge Peter Rabbit she and Ben had given him, thinking about how different her life might be, if she hadn’t put off conversations, or measured herself against other people, or waited for Ben to make a decision. But she only knew how pointless all those things were now, when it was too late, and it
still
didn’t stop her avoiding the big problems that swirled around her even now.

Juliet closed her eyes and listened to Toby’s snuffly breathing. It wasn’t too late for Louise to get herself together. She hoped with all her heart that Louise at least had managed to learn something from all this mess, even if she hadn’t.

It was something she was definitely going to teach Toby. Life was just a big game of Musical Chairs and no one tipped you the wink about when the music would stop.

Chapter 14

‘So how did it go with your old woman with the cats? She didn’t cop on about Boris’s shampoo and set?’

‘No.’ Juliet stuck the little plastic spacers next to her tile, trying to match Lorcan’s neat lines. ‘In fact, she asked me if I’d taken them to the groomer’s, they were looking so great.’

‘Ah. That means she did.’

Of course it meant she did. Mrs Cox had sent Juliet straight back to her piano-lesson days when she’d dropped round to pay her. ‘They look so delightfully glossy,’ she’d said. ‘Have you been giving them vitamins?’

It was the same as the ‘how long did you practise?’ question. It almost made Juliet confess on the spot. But Mrs Cox’s gimlet eye had had a twinkle in it that wasn’t entirely down to her luxury cruise, and Juliet had spent half the fee on a really good bottle of wine for Emer. She
owed
her.

‘I’m telling myself she didn’t,’ said Juliet. She glanced sideways to the other end of the bath, where Lorcan had already done three tiles. Two white, one glassy green. ‘Anyway, she’s off again in a few weeks’ time, so she’s asked me if I can repeat my excellent service.’

‘Off again?’

‘Again, yes. I had no idea retired people round here had such busy social lives. It’s a whole different world, let me tell you.’ Juliet was starting to revise her preconceptions about widows and cats. The cats were more likely to die alone than the owners, if this lot were anything to go by. ‘I’ve got another cat, opposite Mum’s, that I’ve got to nip in to see this weekend while its owner’s sunning herself in Nice. We used to call it the Witch’s House when we were kids. I’ve always wanted to see inside, and now I can. Which is nice.’

‘Isn’t it putting a bit of a downer on your own social life, all this pet-sitting?’ Lorcan glanced across the bath. ‘While the cat’s away . . . Juliet’s looking after it?’

‘Doesn’t bother me. It’s not like I go anywhere at weekends.’

Juliet focused on getting the next tile, a ‘feature’ green one, dead straight against the dowelling Lorcan had hammered in as a guide.

She liked the green tiles; they weren’t what she’d necessarily have chosen herself, but actually they were perfect. Under the glass was a fine layer of metallic paper, which shimmered like fish scales as the light caught it. And according to Lorcan, she’d have paid twice the price if she’d got them in a shop, instead of from his mate, who just happened to have them surplus.

‘You never go out ever?’

‘Ever.’

There was a pause and Juliet knew she should have made something up. That was the thing about Lorcan; she always forgot to make things up in the flow of talking to him, but he was the only person who made her feel that maybe her life of cats and dogs and Grief Hour and
Bargain Hunt
wasn’t normal.

It was because the
Kellys’
life wasn’t normal, she reminded herself. Most people didn’t schedule their summer holidays around European stadium tours and/or oyster festivals, or whatever Emer had had to get back to Galway for this weekend, leaving Lorcan in charge.

‘Well, if you ever want to come down to the pub with us . . .’ he offered.

‘You’re OK,’ she said, not wanting to intrude. She and Emer saw each other most days for coffee and a dose of gossip (Emer’s was better; Juliet’s was mostly about who was using budget dog food), but she still felt a bit shy about crashing their social life. Knowing Emer’s enthusiastic approach to noise and drink, she wasn’t sure she was ready for it yet. ‘I’m not into shillelaghs. And . . . and . . . green beer.’

‘Irish people don’t
just
go to Irish pubs,’ he said, huffily. ‘And eat champ and drink Guinness and fight each other.’

‘Joke.’

‘Oh. Sorry. I missed it there, in amongst the casual racism. You’re still welcome. You don’t have to Riverdance.’

‘No? Shame. Honestly, you’re OK.’ Juliet squashed her tile into the adhesive. Lorcan was making an effort to be friendly, she knew. She just hoped he didn’t think there was anything else in it. ‘I’d rather be here, stripping wallpaper. Didn’t you say the walls needed preparing for painting?’

‘Fair enough.’

There was another pause, filled by De Dannan. In a concession to the relatively early hour, Lorcan had brought a selection of folkier rock music to play while they tiled, instead of his usual lairy rock. It wasn’t anything Juliet had heard before, and she wasn’t even sure if they were singing in English, but she rather liked it.

‘Did you go out much at weekends when Ben was around?’ Lorcan asked. ‘Were you music fans? Foodies? Theatre-goers? Actually, scratch that.’

He didn’t use the hushed tone most people did when they asked about Ben, if indeed they ever did.

‘It depended,’ said Juliet, pleased to talk about him. ‘Saturdays were sometimes a bit tricky, if Kim and I had a wedding to cater in the evening, but we always went out on Sunday. Long walk with Minton, pub lunch in the countryside, or brunch in town, snooze. We were writing our own guide to local places you could take your dog to.’

‘Cool. You should get it published.’ Lorcan slid a couple of spacers in next to his tile with a practised hand.

Juliet smiled and reached for another tile. ‘Maybe I should,’ she said, but inside she didn’t even want to open the notebook and see Ben’s haphazard writing, his firm-but-fair marks out of ten, and her own appalled corrections.

‘Sounds like you both worked pretty hard,’ Lorcan went on. ‘Did you do much travelling in your time off?’

Juliet wanted to say yes, so they didn’t sound boring, but again she couldn’t. ‘It’s hard when you’re self-employed. We were supposed to be going on a long trip to Australia this year, to stay with my brother, Ian, and his wife.’ She paused, feeling the sharp edges of the glass along the tile. It felt strange, telling Lorcan about something that
was
meant to happen but now couldn’t. It was in the future and in the past at the same time, like so much of her life.

Juliet ploughed on. ‘We’d started saving up for the tickets. Ben wanted us to go club class, so he was doing extra gardening to pay for it. It was going to be a second-honeymoon kind of holiday. Our actual honeymoon was in New York,’ she added.

‘Cool place. But that’s sad about Australia. Did you get the tickets booked?’

‘No. We’d only just started saving up. And to be honest, we made the plans to go while Ian was over on a holiday here with his kids, and we were all feeling the family love. He offered to have us to stay with them to save money, because we only really had enough for flights, so we’d have been kipping on his floor.’ She paused, remembering the dinner. And the wine. And the slightly drunken offer of Ian’s summer house. ‘I mean, Ian’s great in small doses, but he’s a bit of a fitness freak these days. And Ben was never very tidy. It might have been awful.’

‘You’re right,’ said Lorcan, . ‘It might. And the plane might have crashed, and you might all have got food poisoning on the way over and then been eaten by koalas.’

‘What?’

‘You’re funny, Juliet. It’s like you’d rather it’d been crap. Why don’t you just go now?’

‘On my own?’ she replied.

‘Duh. Why not? You’re a big girl. Go. You’ll never get this time off again. It’d do you good. Fresh start. New experiences.’

Juliet stared at Lorcan, standing there with a green tile balanced in one long hand, the extra-strong adhesive dangling from his other as if it wasn’t about to glue his finger permanently to his leg. It was easy for him to say. He’d travelled all over the place. He’d been with rock bands. He didn’t feel like he’d suddenly been reborn, a nervous teenager in a thirty-year-old body, not like she did.

‘I need the money for my house,’ she said instead. ‘These tiles aren’t going to pay for themselves. Even if they are a bargain.’

‘That depends on how you look at it,’ said Lorcan, and turned back to his adhesive.

At half past twelve, Juliet stood up and stepped back from the bath to admire her handiwork. The pattern was emerging now they’d done four rows, and the sunlight flooding in from the open window made the glass tiles ripple like a swimming pool. It looked beautiful, and worked with the brass shower’s stately curve above it. The bathroom was coming back to life.

‘That looks really great, doesn’t it?’ she said, pleased. ‘Not like a complete beginner slapped it up.’

‘It looks grand,’ said Lorcan. ‘I’ll give you ten out of ten. ’Course, you need your grouting, but that’s another day.’ He sat back on his long skinny legs and let out a parched sigh. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea, now you’re on your feet?’

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got to get down to town for one, so you might have to make it yourself. I’m walking a new spaniel. Don’t want to be late for my new client.’

‘One?’ Lorcan checked his watch. ‘You’ve loads of time!’

‘I’m going to walk. I was looking on the map for new places to take the dogs and I’ve found this old footpath that goes all the way from behind the church right down into town. It should take me about half an hour, and saves on parking.’

It had surprised her, seeing the red line pop out of the map like that – the perfect link between her house and the park, via some fields and a small wood. How come I’ve never seen that before? she’d wondered.

Well, probably for the same reason she didn’t know where the fuse box was, or how to clip Minton’s claws. Because she never had to know, until now.

‘No tea?’ whined Lorcan. ‘Don’t make me go next door for my tea. Emer’s having one of her cleaning fits because there’s nits at the school and everything’s got bleach in it. It’s Russian coffee-mug roulette. It’s like being back on the road with The Bends. Don’t worry,’ he added, ‘you’re not meant to have heard of them. Even their mothers can’t pick out the bass player. Tea? Please?’

Juliet softened. It wasn’t like Damson would be there with a stopwatch, checking up on her. And Lorcan had worked pretty hard this morning.

‘Well, OK, quickly,’ she said and his broad smile lit up the bathroom.