Because there is more to life than vile deception and anger. Remember beauty, Andrew? How it feels to be touched gently? To be loved?
“I wanted to cheer up the house. You know I hate winter. Dinner will be about twenty minutes.” Speaking as calmly as I can, I go to the fridge and pour a glass of white wine. But he’s already storming through to the living room. Seconds later he comes back, slamming something down on the counter behind me; I hear the splintering of glass.
“Can’t we have one fucking room without fucking flowers?” As he marches out, I turn to see a vase that used to belong to my grandmother, its crystal dulled by age. There’s a jagged crack down one side, from which water’s seeping, pooling on the counter, then dripping onto the floor.
Ripping out the flowers I arranged only a little while ago, I drop them on the worktop, then empty the vase and throw it away. The flowers are still scattered there when Niamh comes downstairs, her cool eyes skimming over them before settling on me. Her gaze is impenetrable. I wonder if she heard the way Andrew spoke to me just now, or the shattering of glass, before telling myself, of course she did. How could she possibly not have?
“Can you lay the table, honey?” My tone is light.
Without speaking, Niamh sets three places at the kitchen table, then fetches the peppermill and water glasses.
“Do you have much homework?”
“Not really.” Niamh’s voice is expressionless, as she comes over and peers into the pan I’m stirring.
“Pork,” I tell her, suddenly aching for connection, for a joking aside, an affectionate exchange, but Niamh and I are not like that. What we share can only be described as a detached coldness. “Would you like to tell him it’s ready?”
Without speaking, Niamh wanders out and I start serving food onto plates. I wonder what’s going through her mind, but then she comes back, followed by Andrew. After pouring himself a glass of wine, he picks up a plate and a fork and goes back to the sitting room.
It’s a pattern I’ve grown used to, but today, rage flares inside me at his deliberate contempt. Stifling the urge to tell him what I think, I take the two remaining plates over to the table as Niamh joins me. Sitting there, I watch her eat, picking at my food, filled with resentment that Andrew’s behavior overrides everything else in this house—including Niamh. He doesn’t care what she hears. He doesn’t care about either of us.
For too long, I’ve forced myself to tolerate his behavior, while I hold our marriage together, no matter what, for Niamh’s sake, ignoring the truth—that Andrew and I are toxic. He’s bullied away what love there was and shattered my trust. There is no honesty between us. Whatever his reasons for wanting me here, he doesn’t care about our marriage any more than I do.
After we’ve eaten, I wait for Niamh to go up to her bedroom, for the sound of her TV filtering through her cracked-open door, before I go to find Andrew in the living room. It’s a large, high-ceilinged room, with a plush carpet and a pair of expensive leather sofas, behind which a series of tall sash windows look out onto the garden. Slouched on one of the sofas, his empty plate is on the coffee table, his shoes kicked off, his attention focused on his phone. In the home we share, having eaten the meal I cooked for him, he’s blatantly texting her.
Pushing the door closed behind me, I walk over and stand in front of him.
“Not now,” he says sharply.
“Yes, now.” I don’t budge. “For fuck’s sake, Andrew. Why are we doing this?”
As he laughs cynically, I stare at him, trying to discern even the faintest trace of the man I fell in love with eighteen years ago. But he doesn’t exist anymore. “Oh, I think you know the answer to that.”
Leaning down, I snatch his phone away. “The very least you could do is show me some respect,” I hiss, keeping my voice low to prevent Niamh from hearing. “I know you don’t care about me, but Niamh sees the way you treat me. She sees everything. You could make an effort for once, instead of texting one of your sluts.”
The word is unfamiliar on my tongue, but I’m driven by a need to confront him. Standing up, he twists his phone out of my hand, but not before I glimpse the screen, taking in the image on it, frozen with shock as it registers. Then my stomach lurches, and I feel my heart race out of control as I realize what this means. “You disgust me,” I say with all the contempt I can muster.
Turning around, I walk back out to the kitchen, glimpsing a movement at the top of the stairs. Looking up, I catch the back of Niamh’s head before she closes her bedroom door. If there was any closeness between us, I would go up there and talk to her, reassure her that everything’s fine, that Andrew’s still cross about what happened to the car tires this morning. Laugh about it—a shared moment between a mother and her daughter. You know what he’s like.
But I can’t lie to her; can’t tell her platitudes that neither of us believes, because Niamh would see through it. She knows what’s going on, but we’re too distanced to talk about it. Far easier for both of us to say nothing.
Niamh
My parents’ marriage falls another step toward ruin, and I wonder why they stay together; but as always, it’s easier for my mother to say nothing.
I don’t see Hollie until the following weekend. She comes over while my mother is working and my father’s playing golf. Her eyes hold mine, open yet closed; making contact yet telling me nothing.
“I don’t know what to do.” For once, she isn’t theatrical. “Too many things are wrong.”
Not sure what to say, I watch her.
“Do you really know your dad?” Her eyes are huge. “Or your mum? Do you ever think like they’re this person with stuff in their life you know nothing about?”
I frown at her, not sure what she’s getting at. I know my parents aren’t happy, but only because it’s obvious. They don’t ever tell me anything. “Like what?”
“If I tell you...” Her bottom lip wobbles. “You have to swear, Niamh. On your life. You can’t tell anyone. Not ever.”
“I swear.”
Hollie’s eyes dart around, and then she blurts out, “I’ve found something out about my dad.”
Hollie’s dad wrote a couple of books a few years ago. For a moment, I imagine one of them being made into a movie. But Hollie would be excited about that, not upset. “What about him?”
“He’s into something. He knows bad people, Niamh.” Then she breaks off. “I can’t talk about it.”
“But you’ve started. You have to tell me.” It’s typical of Hollie to do this.
She jumps up. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Hollie, it’s raining. And there isn’t anywhere.”
“I know somewhere.” As she pulls on her jacket and does up her boots, I know she’s crazy, because there isn’t anywhere around here, just scattered big houses behind garden walls and a village church. But under her spell, I follow her.
There’s a rawness in the air as we step outside, where Hollie’s introspective mood is replaced by recklessness as she runs across the garden into the lane.
“Wait . . .” Zipping up my jacket, I run after her. “Where are we going?”
“Deeprose House.”
Deeprose House has high hedges and heavy locked gates. “We can’t, Hollie. It belongs to someone.”
“Of course we can. We can do whatever we like. It’s empty—it’s been empty for weeks. The Penns are away. They’re not back until March.”