Chapter Four
The house waits for her to leave. Julie Chambers senses its impatience. Perfection is a fine balance and she insists on disturbing it. She buffs the already gleaming kitchen counters, straightens the canisters, clangs her index fingernail off the hanging mugs. Homemade soup and apple crumble have been prepared for her sons’ return from school and the hot press is stacked with their freshly ironed clothes. Everything she can do to ensure the smooth running of her home, family and business has been done, and she is anxious to leave before she remembers that she is indispensable.
The taxi is already twenty minutes late and panic is setting in. On a weekend morning the drive from her house to the airport is less than fifteen minutes. On a weekday, it is impossible to calculate. She checks the road. Rain clouds hover over the rooftops and the crows, perched like exclamation marks on the telegraph wires, have a damp, bedraggled appearance. The daffodils will be out when she returns, the cherry blossom coming into bloom.
The taxi driver, arriving ten minutes later, is in no mood for tolerance. ‘Make no mistake about it, missus, this ’ucking city is a bottleneck to hell.’ His omission of the letter F is an obvious contribution to the clean-up-language campaign being imposed on taxi drivers, and Julie smiles to show she appreciates his restraint. As she settles into the back seat, he stows her suitcase and her mandolin in the boot. She is cheating slightly by bringing along her mandolin but life without music, as far as Julie is concerned, is not worth living.
The driver grumbles loudly as he bumps over the speed control ramps leading from Baymark Estate. He is a stubby, red-faced man with a tight mouth made for complaining. His querulous voice hardly registers with Julie. Every mile that separates her from home, her demons shout louder for attention. What if Jonathan has another asthmatic attack and the ambulance doesn’t make it through the traffic on time? What if Philip is carried from the rugby pitch with a fractured neck? What if Aidan raids the cocktail cabinet and takes to the fields with his friends? Where will she be while all this horror is going on? In a camper van in the Antipodes, playing at being a bush woman.
‘Going far?’ The driver glances at her through the rear-view mirror.
‘Far enough,’ she replies, hoping to end their conversation and, for a few minutes, he drives in silence through Swords village. The back of his neck turns red as the early morning traffic shudders forward inch by inch.
‘’Ucking traffic,’ he mutters. ‘They build one ’ucking motorway after another and what do we get? Ulsters! Nothing but ’ucking stomach ulsters. Where’d you say you’re going, missus?’
‘New Zealand,’ Julie replies. ‘To my sister’s wedding.’
‘That’s a long way to go for a wedding. You planning on taking in the sights while you’re there?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Stopping off on the way?’
‘Two nights in Bangkok.’
‘Sex capital of the world, so I’m told.’ He brakes at traffic lights and leans despairingly over the steering wheel. ‘If you ask my opinion, this ’ucking country’s heading the same way, what with lap-dancing clubs and sex shops springing up like ’ucking mushrooms. The sights I see in this taxi…Things have changed for the worst since my young days, I’ll tell you that for nothing. As for the ’ucking recession…’
She texts Rebecca: ‘Hold that plane! I’m at the mercy of a taxi driver in the advanced stages of Tourettes…the abbreviated version,’ and hopes her sisters will appreciate her attempt at humour.
Paul was supposed to drive her to the airport but an early morning emergency call from the office put paid to that plan. His worried expression and hassled apologies as he hurried towards his car, his mobile phone already ringing, had added to her sense of guilt.
Since Cathy’s unexpected phone call, Julie has dithered over her decision to attend the wedding. Paul declared that it was a ‘preposterous’ decision to make. He used his end-of-this-discussion voice and made it sound as if Julie’s being reunited with her long-lost sister was of far less importance than the smooth running of Chambers Software Solutions. Since he established the company from a redundancy package he received during the dot com collapse, Julie has looked after the finances. If she had a business card it would have read ‘Financial Controller’. But she has no business card to flash at meetings and her work environment is a laptop on the kitchen table, which competes with the dishwasher for attention.
They argued bitterly over her decision to take time off work. The row lasted a week. In the evenings they hid their anger under a veneer of normality, carrying on conversations at two levels: one audible and polite, so as not to upset their sons, the other inaudible but loaded. Finally, Paul arrived home early from work one evening and presented her with a bunch of flowers and a guidebook called Traversing New Zealand.
‘I suppose you’ve made up.’ Jonathan, her eldest son, dropped his sports kit in the hall and eyed the flowers she was arranging in a vase.
‘Made up what?’ she asked, the pleasure of their reconciliation still warm on her skin.
‘Give me a break,’ her son sighed. ‘We could scrape our nails off the atmosphere for the past week. Are you going to the wedding or not?’
‘Going.’ She plunged the irises into water.
‘Good for you,’ he replied. ‘We’ll look after Dad while you’re gone. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.’
On reaching the departure terminal, her sisters greet her with relief and hurry her towards the check-in desk. Lauren has ignored Rebecca’s instructions about luggage and the expandable lids on her matching suitcases are strained to the limit. Steve looks in danger of a ruptured hernia as he heaves them onto the weighing scales. The excess fee will be exorbitant but he will pay it without a quibble.
‘What’s with the wardrobe?’ Julie demands as they await his return from the excess baggage counter. ‘We’ll be living in the bush, not the Ritz.’
Lauren is unrepentant. ‘I barely managed to fit my knickers into the first suitcase.’
‘How come I managed with a rucksack?’ Rebecca asks.
‘I don’t do rucksacks,’ replies Lauren, and Julie has to smile at the idea of Lauren bent under the weight of an enormous multi-purpose rucksack.
Steve, returning and overhearing their conversation, says, ‘Call me when the going gets rough. My offer still stands.’
‘Thank you, Steve.’ Julie leads the way towards the departure gate and turns away when he embraces his wife. Spring and autumn conjoined. She has never grown used to their marriage, never will.
‘I’ll phone as soon as we reach Bangkok.’ Lauren hands her boarding pass to the attendant and glides beyond his reach.
An hour later they are airborne. The plane rises from the runway and crosses the Broadmeadow Estuary. Housing estates, surrounded by swatches of green, slant into view. White-capped waves ride towards the viaduct. Yachts and cruisers are moored in the marina, a new addition since their Heron Cove days. Julie strains her neck and is able to pinpoint the house where they spent their childhood. The old chestnut tree still grows in the garden, its bare branches forming a black filigree against the sky. The next house, where Lydia Mulvaney lived until her death, is also briefly visible.
Is Cathy sleeping now, Julie wonders as she settles back in her seat. Or is she lying awake, aware that the day of departure has finally arrived? Is she nervous? She has much to explain and Rebecca will demand answers.
‘How come you changed your mind about visiting Cathy?’ Julie asked Rebecca one afternoon when she called into the sanctuary to collect her sons, who had been volunteering during