‘I was having an anxious day, that’s all,’ she relented. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you but I had this awful feeling that something bad was going to happen to us.’
James pulled her over on to his knee and the dogs whimpered in outrage. This was their time for cuddling, not Christie’s. Tilly stormed off to her bed to sulk.
‘You can’t take my weight on your hip…’ Christie began. She knew it was stiff, she could see from the way he’d been walking that morning.
‘Oh, shut up about my bloody hip, woman,’ James said and held her tight. ‘I love you, you daft creature, d’you know that? I love that you still worry about me.’
‘Yes and I love you too, you daft man,’ she replied. ‘Even if your hip is aching and you won’t mention it.’
‘It’s only a twinge.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’d be in agony, and you’d still say it was only a twinge. You’re not impressing anybody with your stoicism,’ she said crossly.
‘It’s not agony.’
‘If your arthritis is playing up, it’s not good to have me on your lap,’ she said.
James laid his head against her cheek. ‘The day I can’t manage to have you on my lap,’ he said, ‘get them to shoot me.’
‘They couldn’t shoot you,’ Christie murmured, hugging him. ‘You’re an endangered species.’
‘Like the dodo?’
‘The poor dodo’s been and gone, sorry. You’re more of a white tiger: rare and special.’
‘You say the nicest things,’ he replied, his lips close to her cheek.
‘Impossible man,’ sighed Christie, kissing him on the forehead and getting up. ‘I made goulash.’
‘Lenkya’s recipe? Great, I love that.’ James sat down at the table expectantly. ‘Whatever happened to her? She hasn’t been in touch for years, not since Ana was involved with that artist fellow and they were all here for the big exhibition in Dawson Street. Remember that? How many years ago is it?’
Christie opened her mouth but no sound came out. Fortunately the phone blistered into the silence and she leaped to answer it.
It was Jane from the Summer Street Café, with news that poor Una Maguire had been carted off in an ambulance after a fall.
‘I knew you’d want to know,’ said Jane, ‘and that Dennis might not get round to telling people.’ Which was a kind way of saying dear Dennis would be too flustered to brush his teeth and might need some hand-holding. Christie was good at that: calm in a crisis.
‘I’ll pop a note through their door telling him I’ll drop in on Friday and to phone me if he needs anything before then,’ Christie said and Jane hung up, knowing it was all taken care of now that Christie Devlin knew.
‘Looks like your feeling of gloom was right after all,’ James said as they sat down to their goulash. He’d opened a bottle of lusty red wine to go with the stew, even though it was only midweek, and they stuck pretty much to the wine only at weekends rule.
‘Yes,’ said Christie, thinking of the Maguires and how Dennis would cope with being the carer instead of the cared for. ‘That must have been it, after all.’
But she wasn’t telling the truth. Whatever dark cloud had moved over her head was still there, looming, promising bad things to come.
And James had mentioned ‘that artist fellow’ of Ana’s, Carey Wolensky, who’d turned out to be one of the most famous painters of his generation. When James had carelessly referred to him, Christie had felt a shiver run right through her. She didn’t believe in coincidence. Everything happened for a reason. There were tiny signs of the future everywhere and only the watchful spotted them. First her anxiousness, now this mention of a man she wanted to forget. Christie was scared to think of what it might all mean: her past coming back to haunt her. Why now?
The next afternoon, Maggie’s suitcases arrived together on the carousel. They looked shabby among some of the classier travellers’ bags from the Galway to Dublin shuttle.
She hauled them off the belt with some difficulty, having murmured, ‘No thanks, I’m fine,’ to the man who’d leaped to offer to help the tall redhead in the trailing pale suede coat.
Her eyes were raw with crying and she kept her head down as she spoke, embarrassed by how she must look. The man probably felt sorry for her; thought she was one of those care in the community patients who rattled because of all the Xanax bottles in their pockets.
Maggie didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for her today. She felt sorry enough for herself.
The first piece of luggage was the heaviest, a wardrobe-on-wheels affair that was fit to burst, only a bright purple strap preventing its internal organs splurging out over the concourse. An orange ‘heavy item’ sticker hung from the handle. The second was a hard candy-pink case that was a dead weight even when empty.
Grey used to joke that it had been cursed by so many baggage people, it had probably developed magical powers itself.
‘If our plane ever goes down, the pink case will be the only survivor, you wait and see,’ he’d laugh.
Fresh misery assailed her at this thought of Grey and the fabulous holidays they had saved up for and shared before they’d bought the flat.
They’d never go away together again. Not when she’d be watching like a jailer every time he tipped a beautiful waitress or glanced at a woman on the beach. Only a fool would trust him again. Maggie was not going to be that fool. Last night she’d packed and said they’d talk later, trying to delay the inevitable argument in case she gave in.
‘Would you like me to sleep on the couch?’ Grey had asked, and she wanted to whisper: no, lie next to me and hold me. Tell me it’ll be all right, it was a mistake, that you’ll make it better.
‘Yes, sleep on the couch,’ she said, finding the strength from somewhere to say it.
We’ll try again, I know you love me, her heart bleated.
But her head had to do the talking. Leaving this way was easier, because if she stopped and thought about actually losing him, about not sharing her life with him, Maggie was afraid she’d relent. And her head told her that staying would destroy her, in the end.
Gulping back a fresh batch of tears, she grabbed Cursed Candy Pink and shoved it on to the luggage trolley behind Wardrobe, ignoring the interested gaze of the man who’d tried to help her. She wished he’d stop looking at her. Honestly, what was wrong with people? Couldn’t a person cry in public?
On top of the trolley, she dumped her handbag, a banana-shaped black leather thing that held everything, and cleverly deposited the most vital bits right at the bottom, thus deterring both purse-snatchers and Maggie from locating her money in shops.
She wheeled her trolley hopefully past the special mirrored section, holding her breath.
On those girls-only holidays to Greece, in the pre-Grey days, the others had always trooped through customs happily clinking contraband bottles of ouzo and Metaxa brandy, while she (the only one who’d actually read the customs bit of paper about only importing 200 fags and giving notice if they’d been loitering near goats) was the one to have to unpack her case in public.
Today, fortunately, the customs people behind their two-way mirrors resisted the impulse to go through Maggie’s blameless luggage.
Then she was out into arrivals, into the spotlight, where hundreds of eager people scrutinised and rejected her as