January 28 – Wednesday
Did Nicola know? Amanda wondered, not because of what she said, but rather what she didn’t say. Nicola never rang to talk about nothing, her every move had motive stacked behind it. The call on her mobile came when Amanda was out walking, ostensibly to ask how she was.
‘Just thought I’d check in with you, darling,’ Nicola breezed. ‘You didn’t seem yourself at all the other day.’
‘Really?’ Amanda almost squeaked. ‘Well, I’m fine, just busy, you know. I’ve really taken to this exercise lark and I’m up to my eyes with committee work, but it’s all good. Actually, it’s great,’ she managed.
‘Oh, well, that’s super,’ Nicola drawled and Amanda expected her to add something about her ‘bearing it all well’, but thankfully she didn’t. Nicola hung up the call with nothing confirmed but with Amanda being a little wiser than she was before. Like Jenga blocks, it began to add up; she realised, they’d been watching her. The last time they met, there had been no great bitching session and, from experience, Amanda had a feeling that meant they were gossiping about her.
Far from depressing her, the realisation was a release, as though, she was no longer tied to them in the same way. They’d cast her out, but maybe they would set her free. She realised that Nicola, Clarissa and Megan were not her friends and she wondered if perhaps she might have the making of better friendships much closer to home. She cut her walk short and raced quickly back to her house, there was something she needed to do.
Amanda searched the cabinet in Richard’s study. It was where he kept the whiskey, too many bottles received over the years for them to get through. Richard pretended to drink whiskey, but he was a lightweight when it came to alcohol. Amanda peered into the hoard of unopened boxes and bottles. They stood to attention, sober soldiers in uniforms from around the world, gold seals and banners betrayed their fulsomeness. It was a shame to have these ridiculously covetous bottles held prisoner here when there was a malt enthusiast downstairs who might enjoy them. Amanda smiled, Richard hadn’t noticed his golf trophies were missing until she mentioned that they were being cleaned, he’d hardly register a missing whisky bottle.
Amanda selected a Scotch, reserve, oak aged and sealed with a black wax impress. She needed to thank Tess Cuffe and she had a feeling it was now or never. Something about her, when they met each evening on their opposite circuits of the square, had softened. Amanda couldn’t go so far as to say the woman liked her, but it was as though much of the venom had been released between them. Perhaps it was time to make some kind of move towards a truce. Long gone was the hope that they might ever be friends, much less that Tess might step in as some kind of surrogate grandmother to her children. God, she’d been so naïve when she came here first.
She had a feeling the bottle of whisky probably cost more than Tess Cuffe earned in a week. She smiled at the notion that Tess would enjoy it at Richards’ expense, then tucked it under her arm and headed for the flat beneath.
‘Oh,’ Tess said by way of welcome, ‘what do you want?’
‘I come bearing gifts,’ Amanda said, producing the bottle from beneath her jacket. ‘Well a “thank you” bottle at any rate.’
‘If I said I was all gifted out, you probably wouldn’t believe me,’ Tess said wearily and Amanda thought she looked tired, as though she’d emptied half her fight out and stored it in a jar for another day.
‘It’s late, I’m sorry, I just wanted to say thanks, really for… you know, taking me in that night…’ Amanda smiled, it was strange to be standing here, holding, what was, essentially a peace offering. ‘It’s whiskey,’ she pushed the bottle into Tess Cuffe’s hands. ‘One of Richard’s, he never drinks them. Honestly, I could probably make a year’s grocery money if I flogged the lot on eBay.’ Her voice strung out between them, a nervous link chain she hoped Tess would grab hold of.
‘Well,’ Tess considered the bottle for a moment, then took it in her hands. ‘You really didn’t need to. I have plenty, it’s not as if I…’ her voice tapered off, as though she knew she might end up saying too much. ‘Would you like to come in?’ She stood back in the porch.
Amanda wasn’t sure if she was asking because she’d like her to visit or because it was polite and they’d been standing looking at each other for so long she didn’t really have much of a choice. ‘Are you sure? I mean, I wouldn’t want to impose.’
‘Come on. We can open this and have a nightcap.’ Tess’s smile was just a little wicked, as though she might realise just how much more resistance she had to the stuff than Amanda could muster. In the light of her living room, Tess held the bottle from her to inspect it properly. ‘It certainly looks expensive,’ she said, then narrowed her eyes. ‘It doesn’t mean it’s any good of course.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ Amanda flopped into the velvet couch again, noticed the sleeping cat on the end. A month ago, that cat would have been something else to get up her nose. After all, she would have reasoned, poor Richard couldn’t stand them. Funny, but now she looked at the cat, it suited here, as though it had always been hanging about the place.
‘Oh, he’s not mine,’ Tess said quickly as though reading her thoughts. She placed two glasses down before them, pulled hard on the cork, but it wasn’t budging.
‘Here, let me.’ Amanda yanked it off with the ferociousness of one committed to liberating the contents, if not because she needed it, but rather, like a maître d’, she wanted to gauge its reception with an expert. She watched as Tess poured the costly liquid into their glasses and then inhaled the contents for a moment. She looked different today, her hair somehow softened, her face held serenity at odds with her papery reddened hands. She closed her eyes as though she might fathom all its secrets from its aroma.
‘That is good.’ Tess smiled mischievously at Amanda. ‘Taste it.’ She pushed the glass forward and Amanda sipped slowly. This time, warmth radiated through her gently, pleasantly, as though it might smooth away the chill from her core.
They sat for a little while in silence, Tess broke it when she asked. ‘How have you been?’ There was an honesty to her words and the concern that lingered in her eyes struck Amanda as genuine.
‘I could say I’ve been fine, but…’
‘I saw you working in the Square, remember,’ Tess said. ‘How are you really?’
‘I did something. Something, I hadn’t planned to, but I just sorted of ended up there.’
‘Where?’ Tess leaned forward now.
‘I went to see an investigator.’
‘That might be the wisest thing you’ve ever done,’ Tess said quietly and studied her glass intently.
Amanda could hardly believe she had struck out and it had taken until she sat in this little flat before she told anyone about her impulsiveness. And that was what it was. A spur of the moment, not properly thinking decision to meet with a professional investigator and spill her guts out about her marriage. ‘It’s not to find out anything…’
‘No. I mean, of course not.’ Tess cleared her throat. ‘You already know,’ she said softly.
‘Yes.’ Amanda looked at this woman who she’d hated for so long and suddenly the penny dropped. ‘You knew?’
‘I…’ Tess studied the glass in her hands. ‘I came on them, pure chance, the kind of fluke encounter that could only happen in this claustrophobic city.’ She shook her head and then looked at Amanda. ‘What is it about Ireland, everyone knows everyone and if they don’t then they’re probably related?’
Amanda couldn’t think straight, but she sipped her drink, sat for a moment trying to pull it all together. ‘When?’ she whispered.
‘Just a few days before you ended up sobbing on your naughty step. I suppose, I was still in shock myself, I didn’t know how to say it. I knew the last person you’d want to hear it from was me,’ Tess said in a voice tinged with disquiet that made it unfamiliar. ‘I just… I’m sorry, it was too hard and too convoluted. You and I, we’ve been so…’
‘Horrible?’ Amanda breathed. ‘We have, truly. I’ve been the worst, just backing him up for a quiet life when I knew it was wrong.’ She looked around the little flat, ‘I couldn’t understand how this place could mean so much to you.’ She laughed now, a hysterical sound in her own throat. ‘And yet, I wanted it so much – how could I have been so…’
‘I thought you were an awful bitch. I didn’t sleep properly here for months, afraid of what you both might do next to get me out,’ Tess said and, for a moment, Amanda thought she might cry.
‘Oh, God.’ Amanda felt a shock of pain rise within her. ‘Does he know you know?’ It emptied her out, the idea that his disloyalty had almost come full circle. At the same time it all made sense. Why else would he have agreed to refurbish her bathroom? ‘Of course he does.’ The words tripped from her. ‘He knows you know and he’s… the work on the flat, he’s trying to buy your silence. I’ve been such a fool.’ Amanda shook her head and this time she thought the tears would never stop, because this was an even greater betrayal in some ways.
‘No, Amanda,’ Tess said and she reached her arm around Amanda’s back until her sobbing ended. ‘The real fool here is Richard; he’s the one throwing away so much more than he knows.’
*
Amanda’s love affair with spring began when she moved to Swift Square. Perhaps it was because she had given up work and she had time to watch the seasons, and while much of her day was taken up with renovating the house, it was the garden that drew her towards the end of each day. Back then, the Square seemed as if it might be a project too large to take on. Rust-eaten railings, once painted black, chased about its perimeter. Then, it was little more than a shortcut, a maze of uneven broken paths through unofficial discarded allotments. Years of neglect and misuse rendered it a wilderness within the elegant if neglected square.
Amanda could clearly remember the first afternoon she’d walked into it. It was the day they’d finally re-hung her front door. Inside their home was still a ramshackle building site slowly mining into the derelict edifice she’d set her heart on. She had needed to get out. It was not yet a home, although she’d convinced Richard to move in to the two rooms that were just about sealed off from the cold Dublin air. Each morning she woke to a procession of plumbers, electricians, tilers and carpenters weaving through her grand plan.
The Square garden, when she entered it, felt like paradise, a wonderland she discovered through the rabbit hole of the broken railings. It turned out to be far bigger than she thought at first. It stretched out as far as a football field, but it was so overgrown, the weeds dwarfed out the space. If she’d known before she started work on it, she might have been more daunted. Woody lavender, lemongrass and honeysuckle shook off their scent after a summer shower and she sat, gingerly, on the edge of a huge curved rock within the perfume, listening to a city grumbling and losing itself in its own frenzy. The garden bit into some essential part of her, so she ached to bring it back to what it could be again. It was a chance to be creative, she only realised it after she had finished.
Over the years, she could honestly say that sitting on her much-loved bench on a spring morning, before the city rumbled into life, with a mug of tea in her hand, was as if she was sitting in heaven. For all the money they’d spent on their home, this little corner, surrounded by the bees in summer and the robins in winter, was her favourite place on earth. Richard ploughed a fortune into their own back garden, with an exterior designer on speed dial for every possible aesthetic emergency, but this remained a nirvana when she most needed to get away.
She had been happy here, with the old Italian, digging out beds, selecting shrubs, pulling in sponsorship from needy causes that hadn’t stood the test of time like this place. They spent about nine months from start to finish. It took a full-term pregnancy to get it right. Of course, it wasn’t perfect, not like the garden Richard paid so much for, but perhaps it was why she loved it so greatly. Every single plant here, she’d put her hand on at some point, either to save it or to set it. She and Antonio had tea and sandwiches on her rock each day, before the picnic tables arrived and they’d squabbled, laughed and watched the sun go down together, satisfied with a day well spent.
‘You are smiling too much for it to be honest.’ A deep voice penetrated her thoughts, Carlos Giordano regarded her with a smirk.
‘I was thinking about your father and when we worked together here,’ she said, shading her eyes from the morning sun intent on seeking out cracks in the heavy clouds overhanging the square.
‘He will be glad to know he can make you smile like that.’ He dropped down on the bench next to her, a little closer than perhaps he should, but the proximity only made her tingle unexpectedly.
‘It was just a very happy time, doing this garden, I was thinking how much I enjoyed it all.’ She found herself smiling at him and assumed he probably had the same effect on every woman he met. He was obscenely handsome and, more than that, unpretentiously charismatic.
‘Well, you are welcome to start again.’ He smiled at her. ‘I can’t guarantee the same charm as my father had for you, but there’s certainly plenty of work planned if you think you’re up for it.’
‘I…’ Amanda regarded him for a moment, was he insinuating that she was too old to take on the garden again? ‘Of course I’m up for it. What is it that you’re planning on doing to it?’
‘Oh, the council have big plans,’ he said, laughing at her and she couldn’t help but notice how his dark eyes crinkled so you knew that there was warmth behind his smile.
‘Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?’ They wouldn’t be messing with her garden unless she was happy with it. ‘When can I see the plans?’ The last thing she wanted was some council official deciding they were going to pull her lovely garden apart only to come out and get their picture taken before applying for a promotion.
‘How about if I call round to you later with the drawings?’ He nodded across towards her house and she wondered for a moment if it wasn’t some kind of crazy chat-up line.
‘Well, I…’ She could feel herself blushing, her new thing, damn it, on top of everything else. ‘I’ll meet you here, okay?’ she said, getting up as quickly as she could before her face was completely scarlet. ‘Three o’clock suit you?’
‘Fine,’ he said, getting up and calling after her, ‘I’ll look forward to it.’