January 9 – Friday
As Amanda came down the steps outside, a splash of colour from the square’s garden opposite caught her eye. There were young mothers sitting on the benches chatting. Their small children made fun in the mini maze she had designed for her own children years earlier. The sunny morning, like a pied piper, had charmed them from the little streets that bled onto the square. They rocked designer prams laden down with all the paraphernalia of young motherhood. At the far end, Amanda noticed that two gardeners were hard at work. They were clearing back the remains of winter foliage around a large spring shrub decorated with huge wooden hearts painted in red and deep pink. With a sense of purpose, she made her way towards them.
‘Hello?’ Amanda called up to a young man who was busy cutting back ivy in its march along an ancient chestnut tree.
‘Hi!’ he said, turning to look at her.
‘What’s all this for?’ she asked, a little put out because she had put so much work into the garden over the years and it had left her feeling quite possessive of it.
‘Oh, the city council. Apparently, this has been named the most romantic spot in Dublin this year and it’s on the map for the “Love Dublin festival,”’ he said, smiling at her and she couldn’t help but notice he really had the most enigmatic smile. It was broad and full, showing off perfect white teeth and it was somewhat contagious.
‘Never heard a word of it,’ Amanda said, not moving, but noticing the man’s strong arms and shoulders as he leant towards a branch to hang the last of the hearts. She found herself unable to look away while he climbed down the ladder. When he stood opposite, he smiled as though he knew she’d been watching him, which only made her blush.
‘Were we supposed to notify you, Miss…’ he held out a hand and winked at her.
‘Amanda,’ she said, shaking his hand. ‘And, no, I suppose not. But I’ve put a lot of work in here, so I keep an eye on it and I just like to know what’s going on.’ She felt foolish now.
‘Amanda? Amanda King?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Oh, God, had the younger mothers been talking about her? There was a time, not so long ago, when she used to march over to them and make their kids put back any tufts of grass that they’d kicked up. She wanted to die now at the embarrassment of what she’d let herself become. ‘And you are?’ She looked into his eyes which creased at the corners from hours spent in the sun.
‘I’m Carlos. Carlos Giordano. My dad did some of the work with you?’
‘Oh, God, yes of course, Antonio. How is he these days?’
‘Retired. I’m running the business now, but you know, he still likes to keep his hand in. This,’ he cast his hand about in the same dramatic fashion as his father might have done, ‘he was very proud of the work you both did here. He wanted to come along with me this morning, but he’s at a doctor’s appointment for his knee.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Is he all right?’
‘Old age and gardener’s knees, it’s going to come to us all with a bit of luck.’ He laughed then, because of course the alternative to getting old was not so attractive. ‘It looks as if he has arthritis, but he doesn’t want to have the operation, he can be a stubborn old goat when he wants to be.’
‘Yes, I remember, he certainly had spirit.’ Amanda smiled thinking of the old Italian, they’d had some fantastic spats, but she had to admit, he knew his stuff, so she just had to concede when it came to plants.
‘He liked you,’ Carlos said softly and for a moment they stood shyly looking at each other. Then he smiled a rakish grin that made her feel giddy and a little scared all at once. ‘And I can see why.’ His voice dipped and Amanda wondered if he was flirting with her. His father had been the very same, incorrigible, she’d seen him with the older ladies and the younger ones, a charmer when he wasn’t at loggerheads over the herbaceous border.
‘Well, I’ll have to look up this Love Dublin Festival, see if we can’t be involved in it, here on the square,’ she said, taking a step away from him. ‘Are you finished here today?’
‘For now, but we’ll be back again. The council have contracted us to carry out repairs to the paths, benches and any of the beds that might be in need of it. Then, we’ll take care of the spring planting. It’ll be a sea of red and pink for the fourteenth.’ He winked at her now.
‘Well, then, I suppose I’ll be seeing you again, Carlos,’ Amanda said and even if she knew he was just flirting with her out of habit, she felt a little better as she headed back to real life once more. It was coffee morning with the girls again. God, it seemed to come round more quickly these days than ever before. Was it because she dreaded it for the six days beforehand, she wondered.
*
She had taken to doing an evening walk, just a quick stroll around the square before dinner and maybe to avoid Tess too, if she was honest. She wasn’t exactly power-walking, but she was out of breath by the time she got back most days. She wasn’t sure that being fit, or being thin, would win Richard back for her, she wasn’t sure of anything much at all these days. The one thing she was certain of was that he would not have been so tempted away if, somehow, she’d just been a slightly better version of herself. Perhaps it was just once, a slip. If she convinced herself of that, maybe she could live with it? Did she want to live with it? With him? Would she always want to check his phone? Not that she was quite sure how she could. Yes, of course, she’d already tried, but it was password-protected and that in itself had made her stop. Maybe she’d think up a way of getting her hands on it, with plenty of time to spare, and figure out the password.
She was having conversations in her head all the time now. There were so many questions that she wanted to ask, but the truth was, she was frozen rigid by fear. She knew, she should find out if he had a mistress, or if this was a one-night stand. She just didn’t know what to do next. It’s not as though she expected him to tell the truth and, if he did, then where were they? At the end, that’s where, she was sure of that much.
No, she wasn’t proud of it, but she was too afraid to know the gory details yet. Too weak to face it head on, she wanted an easy way to find out, but she hadn’t a living soul to confide in, so what was there to do? Try to pretend everything was normal and wait for one more slip. It was a cowardly approach but somehow better than seeing him leave her for some newer, thinner, maybe cleverer model. She couldn’t blot out the girls he’d dated before they’d married. They’d all been the same: leggy, elegant blondes. He’d always gone for a ‘type’, until he’d met her. ‘Gold-diggers,’ Megan had said as though she’d married just for love.
It was funny, but back then, the girl he fell in love with – that girl she used to know – wouldn’t have dithered for one second. That was probably more galling than anything else. Amanda had allowed herself to become weak and, in that altering of her very self, Richard had lost all interest in her. It was ironic and tragic all at once.
Either way, for now, she knew enough to put her off her food – and that was as much as she could handle. Into another day of starvation and it seemed like there was no more clarity than there was that day she had started calling condom-gate. Time would tell if she could hold onto him, she knew that.
The exercise was meant to make her feel better and maybe it was doing her head some good, but her body was ready to give in before she started. She wondered what people got out of getting sweaty, sore and breathless just for kicks. She couldn’t see it herself. Funny though, perhaps it was the walking, more likely, it was the worry, but she’d all but gone off cake and biscuits – how had that happened? She always thought she’d eat her way through any crises. It turned out that the worst crises killed her appetite better than any gastric band. Tonight, most of the other buildings were in darkness. The office workers departed for the weekend, the only lights shone from houses that were still used as homes.
Amanda climbed the steps to her house, doing her best to ignore the little porch light that shone up from the flat below. Tess Cuffe had started walking too, she’d never thought of her as someone who might enjoy physical exercise. She really wasn’t sure what to make of Tess these days. One minute she was smiling at her, the next she was sounding off as if she was some kind of corny fascist self-help guru. If she was trying to be funny, she certainly wasn’t. Perhaps it was her idea of motivating. Really, it didn’t bear thinking about, just something else to sap her energy, as if she hadn’t enough already to worry about.
She would not think about Tess Cuffe now or her grotty little flat that Amanda had earmarked all those years ago as her state-of-the-art kitchen. She’d imagined a room that ran the length of the house and opened out into the garden, a place she could entertain with dining areas both inside and out. After all the trouble between Richard and Tess, she couldn’t imagine having her dinner down there now. Instead, she admired the old glass in the Georgian windows of her lovely home that curved and wobbled so the lights inside seemed to glitter with more sparkle than they should.
In the hall, the kids had left their coats across the newel post. Amanda was starving and still she couldn’t think of a single thing that wouldn’t make her sick. According to the app on her phone, she’d covered almost eight thousand steps. Usually, at this hour, she’d open a bottle of red and keep herself topped up while she prepared dinner. Tonight, she threw some salad in a bowl. Took out a lasagne she’d prepared and frozen a week earlier and popped it in the oven. There was smoked salmon and a selection of cheeses. She piled them all on a board and filled a jug of water. Then she called the kids down for dinner.
‘What the… Lasagne?’ Casper said when he looked at his plate. ‘Reheated…’ he shook his head and, for a moment, Amanda thought he would push the plate away. Time was he loved her home-cooked lasagne, but these days it seemed nothing was good enough. Her children were used to freshly cooked and it seemed that everything was worthy of complaint to Casper, well, everything his mother did at any rate.
‘Casper, if you don’t like it, you can simply lump it,’ Amanda said, feeling her temper flaring. ‘It’s home-cooked and it’s healthy, up to you.’ She kept her eyes on him, a silent ultimatum passing between them.
‘Huh, well, Dad would have something to say about it,’ he huffed, but picked up his knife and fork all the same. ‘Aren’t you having some?’ He looked disdainfully at her plate.
‘She’s on a new diet,’ Robyn said as she chewed her salad slowly.
‘Seriously?’ Casper said. He sneered at the jug of iced water, but it felt as though his attitude had ebbed. Amanda watched him, he really was the product of all around him. There was no doubting that there was a lot of Richard in him, but she had to take some of the blame for his sulkiness. She had pandered to his every whim over the years and, looking at him now, she knew it was time to stop. She took a deep breath, sat up a little straighter in her chair and forked some green salad thoughtfully onto her plate.
Eating salad and ignoring the lasagne was easier than she’d expected. She loaded her plate with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber, and draped a little of the salmon across the top. Amanda had a feeling that whatever was on her plate would have tasted the same anyway – it seemed as if Richard had taken not just her spirit but her carb cravings too.
‘When’s Dad home?’ Casper asked, as though Richard would have any interest in the power struggle at play across the kitchen table.
‘I’m not sure. Ring him, if you want.’ Amanda chewed her food without making eye contact and then she began to wonder. When had Casper become the new Richard in her mind? When had he morphed into a voice that constantly criticised and made her feel that whatever she did it would never be quite good enough? And then another question occurred to her: when had Richard stopped coming home for dinner? It had never been a thing. Not a real thing she’d noticed. Had it happened after the takeover? Or his last promotion? Amanda couldn’t remember, but now she thought about it, it had been a long time since they all sat down to dinner together on a weekday. ‘Yes. You should do that. Ring him. See what time he’s due back,’ she said.
Suddenly her lacklustre interest in her salad subsided and she sat back in her chair watching her two children. God, but she loved them so much. They had been delightful toddlers. Robyn had been such a sunny child, Casper serious but possessing a dry wit, he’d been too young to fully realise. Looking at them now, she wondered where those children had gone. These days she was lucky if they spoke two words to her, apart from when they wanted something of course. Mostly, she was lucky if Casper answered her with anything more than a grunt. Robyn was still sweet, if a little odd. She seemed to spend all her time hanging about the garden these days. Was that normal? Was it how other families lived around Dublin? Sharing houses with each other, but the only sound between them the blaring music or that strange silent world stifled by expensive Bluetooth earbuds. It seemed to Amanda that her family spent their time avoiding each other. Even car journeys now were an opportunity to make her feel as though she was somehow taking up their precious time. Invading the lives that not so long ago she’d been so totally central to. It struck her too, as she watched them flick fingers across screens while they chewed their food distractedly, that she didn’t really know them anymore. Her own children and it felt as though they were living in completely different worlds.
‘Anyone fancy coming to the cinema tonight?’ she said more brightly than she felt. The cinema had always been a popular destination.
‘Seriously, Mum?’ Casper didn’t take his eyes from the screen in front of him, but she had a feeling that if he looked at her it would be with the blankness of a stranger. Robyn just sighed and smiled as though she knew her mother was making an effort, but really she was a little sad. Sometimes, Amanda felt she had turned into a ‘Line-dancing Linda’, without the sparkly shoes or the adoring husband. So, she sat there, willing herself not to cry, because she had a feeling if she let one tear drop now, she might never be able to stop.