Be Careful What You Wish For, page 27
I’m a slut, she thought. I had him all but dumped and then I decided to keep him after all. I can’t even remember if it was because he was good in bed or good in parts. Where’s the point in going to the bother of making your mind up if you turn around and change it again?
She stumbled out, swallowed down a couple of Feminax with a glass of water – smiling at the discarded Lanson bottle – and returned to bed. Instead of bringing a hot-water bottle with her for the spasms in her stomach she curled her body around Fionn’s roasting frame; may as well put a man to use when he turned up in her bed.
Fionn mumbled sleepily, rolled towards her and burrowed against her neck. The nuzzle turned into a clamber as first his leg and then his torso landed on her.
‘Permission to board, skipper?’ he murmured sleepily.
The man was insatiable – she couldn’t recall him being so amorous before he married the Scandinavian creature. Perhaps their cavorting was thin on the ground. She suspected yoghurt was definitely for eating with muesli in that household, not for smearing on bodies and licking off, which is what they’d ending up doing last night. She checked the sheets; yes, there was a definite Fruits of the Forest trail.
Meanwhile Fionn took her lack of response as acquiescence and was steaming ahead.
‘Steady, shipmate,’ said Molly. ‘My body’s still suffering sleep deprivation. Can we leave the heave-ho till the sun’s further up the yardarm?’
Fionn good-naturedly rolled off her while Molly mentally scolded herself for being too squeamish to admit she was menstrual.
‘You’re having sex with him, you’re even sleeping the night through with him, which is more intimate again, so why can’t you tell it like it is?’ went her interior dialogue.
After all he’d encountered periods before; in their previous life he thought nothing of buying her tampons occasionally.
‘That was different, we were in a relationship. I planned to marry him, for heaven’s sake,’ the internal sideshow continued.
Unconvincing, she knew. But she wasn’t obliged to tell him if she didn’t want to.
‘I just don’t feel like it,’ Molly burst out.
‘Hey, nobody’s forcing you,’ Fionn placated her. ‘Put your head on my shoulder and go back to sleep.’
Molly couldn’t settle. She rolled out of Fionn’s encircling arm to check the alarm clock: ten o’clock. Was it too early to ring Helen? She meant to call her last night to talk to her further but Fionn had proved something of a distraction. Ten o’clock would be unacceptable to most people on a Saturday morning but Helen’s unpredictability meant she wasn’t like most people – she’d be either dead to the world or dressed and on her second cup of coffee, having scanned the newspaper and compiled her plans for the day. Molly decided she’d let the phone ring just a few times and if it wasn’t answered she’d leave Helen in peace. She eased out of bed again, moving slowly so as not to disturb Fionn, who was snuffling into the pillow. She cast a backward glance at him. It wasn’t safe for that man to bed down alone. His modus operandi in the sleeping compartment meant he was in serious danger of suffocating.
Helen’s voice sounded muffled when she answered the phone.
‘No, it’s not your wake-up call, it’s Molly,’ she repeated twice before Helen grasped her meaning. And panicked.
‘It can’t be after ten,’ Helen wailed. ‘I’ve overslept. But I don’t see how I did. I set the alarm clock and ordered a phone call – maybe I overlooked it. That blasted tablet, when I took it I forgot about everything I was supposed to do. Molly, I can’t talk, I have to spring into action. Patrick’s flying in; for all I know he could be in a taxi and on his way here this minute.’
‘Helen, tell me you’re not taking sleeping tablets.’
‘I just took the one. I knew I’d never sleep otherwise,’ fretted Helen.
‘I can’t believe you’d be so stupid. You know you react badly to aspirin, let alone sleeping pills.’
‘That’s priceless coming from someone who sat their final exams on a chemically induced high,’ snapped Helen. ‘Look, I haven’t time for this. I don’t want to be in a flap when Patrick arrives. I was supposed to be stripped for action an hour and a half ago.’
‘Do you really mean stripped?’ Molly chipped at her toenail polish.
‘No, yes, go away, Molly. No don’t, wait.’ Desperation left Helen dithering. ‘I really appreciate your call – I’ll get back to you, all right?’
Molly felt reluctant to hang up; she sensed that Helen’s internal compass was spinning out of control.
‘Don’t do anything reckless,’ she cautioned. ‘Ring me as soon as you can, preferably not from Bolivia as a runaway bride.’
‘I haven’t a notion what I’m going to do.’ Helen’s voice was sombre. ‘Except to try and survive.’
The connection severed and Molly slouched out to the kitchen to make coffee, shrouded in anxiety and some free-floating guilt, although she wasn’t precisely sure what there was to feel culpable about. Had she been derelict in her duty as a friend? She turned on the central heating and tried to assuage her agitation. She should have made time to see Helen yesterday evening before her meeting with Patrick. She’d shied away from an unseemly subject. The truth was that a date with Fionn appealed to her infinitely more than addressing the gargantuan issue of Helen’s predilection towards her brother.
Molly reflected on what she remembered of Patrick as she sipped instant coffee, which she wasn’t overly fond of but she judged it unwise to subject her cramping stomach to the real McCoy.
Gorgeous: check
Charming: check
Intelligent: check
Well, he’d passed her evaluation with flying colours. Lived in London, was a couple or so years younger than Helen, worked in some financial field or other – did Helen say he was living with someone or had she simply assumed that on the basis someone so ornamental to a woman’s arm had to be snapped up? English girls weren’t stupid.
There was something mysterious about him all the same. Of course, now she knew what it was; he didn’t fit the mould. None of the Sharkey family did. In the cold light of day Molly was inclined to airbrush Helen’s version of events and decided she couldn’t actually mean she and her brother wanted a physical relationship. They must be extremely attached to one another to the extent of wanting to live together like, well, brother and sister.
Molly fed the Dualit with a couple of slices of bread and contemplated phoning Barry to brew up an alternative to the Make His Wife Jealous arrangement but hadn’t the heart for it; periods left her drained.
‘Periods leave me drained,’ she told the marmalade pot.
‘I take it this is your time of the month. Presumably you don’t normally have conversations with Golden Shred.’ Fionn rubbed his eyes blearily under the kitchen archway.
‘Um,’ said Molly, the best response she could dredge up.
He removed the toast from her hand, spread the butter to the corners instead of allowing it to blob in the middle, and returned it to her. ‘Well then, we’ll have to treat you like a queen, my Molly. Since it’s too late for breakfast in bed how about I take you shopping for a new pair of shoes?’
Molly gasped. ‘I thought I heard you volunteer to accompany me on a shopping expedition. I must need my ears syringed.’
‘I did.’ Complacency emanated from him. He scratched his head and rubbed butter into his hair.
‘What’s your ulterior motive?’ Hands on hips, she pretended to survey him suspiciously.
‘I’m wheedling my way into your good books so you can’t live without me and you invite me to move in,’ Fionn responded.
Out of the mouths of babes and pushy boyfriends, thought Molly. He was presenting it as a joke but that’s exactly what his strategy was. Still, forewarned was forearmed. And she fancied a shopping trip. A pair of mules patterned with a bamboo tree had caught her eye in the window of Don’t Walk On By in Wicklow Street the other day. She was fairly sure she’d end up with them but she’d need to try on at least a dozen other pairs first. In the interests of market research.
Molly invested a mainbeam smile in Fionn. ‘I’m going to dive into the shower. I’ll be washed and dressed in six-and-a-half minutes,’ she promised. ‘And that includes my coat on, ready to leave.’
Patrick felt edgy as he approached Helen’s doorbell. For all he knew she might not be in; she might have decided to bolt again. He fingered the spot where he’d cut himself shaving at seven o’clock. Miriam had insisted on rising with him to make his coffee before he’d set off; she’d thought it strange he was returning to Dublin so soon but he’d told her as one of the executors of his aunt’s will he was obliged to liaise with the others.
‘Will you come back tonight if you finish your business sooner than expected?’ Her face had been wistful.
‘Absolutely,’ he’d lied, smudging the tip of her nose with his thumb. ‘Go back to bed, honey-bunny. It’s too early to be pottering about on a Saturday.’
But Miriam had wound her arms round his neck and raised her mouth for the kiss he’d wanted to avoid giving her. ‘Perhaps you’ll take me to Ireland with you one day, Patrick.’ Her brown eyes had been pleading.
‘You can count on it, honey-bunny.’ His kiss had been cursory and he’d been unable to maintain eye contact. What in the name of God was he doing with this decent woman? He knew he should love her but he didn’t. Should and love don’t sit easily together.
The cut on his chin had opened up again. Patrick dabbed at it with a tissue and cursed beneath his breath. He tried to assess if Helen were at home but couldn’t decide. Only one way to find out: he stuffed the tissue into his pocket, ran a hand through his nearly black hair and leaned his finger briefly on the doorbell. Helen opened it almost immediately. He smiled instinctively when he saw her and she returned the smile tentatively. Relief coursed through him, even as trepidation inched its way down to the pit of her stomach.
‘I didn’t hear the taxi pull up.’ She stepped back to let him pass into the living room.
‘I jumped out a street or two away and walked. I needed to shake off some excess energy.’ Catching hold of her hand he curved towards her. ‘It’s wonderful to see you again,’ he whispered.
Helen forced herself to pull away. ‘I’m sure you’re ready for a coffee. I’ve just ground some beans. I only do it at weekends because I’m always in such a pre-work rush in the mornings.’
‘You look like you swish through life on castors, I can’t imagine you dashing.’ Patrick followed her through the living room and into the kitchen. ‘Although you left town in quite a hurry last week without saying goodbye. I formed an impression the departure was unplanned.’
Helen gazed levelly at him. ‘It was flight, as simple as that. For the purpose of survival. Body, soul and sanity.’
Patrick stroked a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘I only want the best for you, Helen. You make me sound like a malign influence.’
‘Please stop touching me,’ she entreated.
He stepped back, stung.
Patrick watched Helen’s slim figure move from fridge to kettle to table. Aware of his observation she felt clumsy, fingers plucking nervously at the lint on her clothes.
They pretended to drink coffee while he wondered how to play persuader – how to convince her to give living a chance instead of just existing. Patrick saw nothing wrong with their going away together; there was no shutdown switch inside him to suggest Helen was off limits. He saw her as a woman he loved, a woman he was physically attracted to, a woman who’d been part of his existence as far back as he could remember and whose life was inextricably bound up in his own. To Patrick, Helen wasn’t his sister; there was no duality in their relationship in his eyes. Geraldine was his sister: repugnance would set in instantly at the suggestion he should sleep with her. He’d never even considered it – in her case he was equipped with the default mechanism to veto it. But not in Helen’s. Quite simply he didn’t regard the two women in the same light.
Where Helen was concerned he had no moral qualms because to Patrick it wasn’t a moral issue. It was a question of love. In so far as he had considered it, love transcended good and evil. True, there had been a convulsion of shock the first time he and Helen had kissed; it had been in the woods, he remembered, when she’d tried to comfort him after a blazing row with his father that left him strung out and close to retching, although he couldn’t for the life of him bring to mind now what their argument had been about. However, the shock had been overtaken by certainty, an overwhelming conviction that he and Helen were meant to be together.
The intensity of his feelings on seeing her at their aunt’s funeral after a three-year absence was a revelation. It was as harrowing and as euphoric as falling in love for the first time, and he realised their strategy of distance was preordained to failure. He could be in London or Laos and Helen’s face would be with him. His fingertips knew the outline of her jaw and the sleek texture of hair that was the identical shade to his own. As for Miriam, he must have been deranged to imagine he could carve out a life with her. Patrick assumed he’d been sleepwalking these past three years but he wasn’t ready to become a zombie again; he was determined to convince Helen to be with him. He knew he could make her happy because she felt the same way about him as he did about her. That much was indisputable. She could articulate as many denials as her sense of propriety deemed fit but he read the truth in her eyes. Helen loved him as intensely as he loved her.
All this was passing through Patrick’s mind as he drank coffee facing her in the terracotta kitchen. It was an overcast morning – they needed the light on but neither moved to alleviate the gloom. Patrick could see the edge of his overnight bag where he’d dropped it in the living room. Miriam had packed it for him; she enjoyed such gestures although he imagined other women would find them demeaning. He wondered idly why he felt no guilt when he remembered Miriam and whether this made him a callous person. And then he drank some more coffee because it seemed to be what Helen wanted them to do.
Helen didn’t know what she wanted. But she was clear on what she didn’t want. She didn’t want to be sitting here stealing glances at this familiar stranger, she didn’t want to be churning with emotion while she did it; she didn’t want the ordered stability of her life splintering into chaos. She wanted Patrick but not the ensuing maelstrom.
‘I’m here because I love you.’
Patrick covered the hand that clung to a mug with his own larger one and then moved it away before she could flinch from his touch. He waited for Helen to marshal her thoughts. He’d drink coffee beside her from now until New Year’s Eve if that’s what was required. He’d wait for the coffee beans to grow, ripen and be picked. But he also knew Helen well enough to realise it was a balancing act between giving her space to still her vacillations and not allowing her so much time she’d dither their chances away.
Helen was incapable of seizing the wayward thoughts that sheered off from her brain and cannoned away in a multiplicity of directions. Fragments strayed into her mind: a memory of Patrick aged seven, kicking a football into the stream near their home and risking drowning as he dangled from a branch to retrieve it. A memory of Christmas morning with Patrick in a cowboy outfit shooting herself and Geraldine, and the acrid smell of the caps he discharged. A memory of Patrick, just a head shorter than their father at thirteen, standing up from the kitchen table and challenging the older man when he told Helen she wasn’t too grown up to feel the back of his hand.
‘She is too old,’ Patrick contradicted him. ‘And you’re too old to do it.’
His father slammed down his mug so hard a crack spidered out from top to bottom and their mother wailed that money didn’t grow on trees but that was the last time Helen’s father threatened her with physical violence.
Helen tilted her head, pushing back the hair, and Patrick noticed the narrow scar below her ear from a collision with a tree when she’d taken him riding on the bar of her bicycle, experimenting to see how well she could manage with her eyes shut. She’d sheltered Patrick with her body and taken the force of the impact on her shoulder and the side of her head. Her blood had trickled warmly onto his arm. Patrick felt a wave of belonging to Helen engulf him. And at that he arbitrarily jettisoned his intention to allow her time to consider the permutations and summon up all the reasons why they shouldn’t clutch at happiness and to hell with the consequences; he hadn’t come here to shake hands with defeat.
‘Helen, let’s go away. I don’t mean rush off to Ecuador – that’s an irrevocable step and I can see you’re not ready for that. But we should spend some time together. It’s been so long since we’ve mooched around enjoying each other’s company. Remember what great friends we were as kids? I miss you, Helen; I miss your companionship.’
She was infinitely touched by his plea and incapable of denying him. His spontaneity seized her. ‘I’d love to do it. But can we manage it without burning bridges?’
‘Of course, my love. We’ll go away just for a weekend. We can do it this weekend if you like.’
Helen recoiled. ‘That’s too soon. We need to get right away from here. We need to think about someplace to go where memories or acquaintances won’t intrude. Next weekend – we’ll leave it until then.’
Patrick laughed, willing to allow her latitude in the wake of her concession. ‘Whatever you like. And now I’m taking you out to lunch with a map, if you have one, so that we can plan where we go.’
‘A map of Ireland or of the world?’
‘Both. Let’s keep all options open.’
‘The worldwide options for a weekend away are self-limitation,’ Helen pointed out.
