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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781838951870 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atlantic Books |
| Publication date: | 09/05/2023 |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.90(w) x 7.00(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The front door opened, and Christine Maguire leapt from the sitting room into the hallway, knitting needles and almost-completed teddy bear left languishing on the sofa.
She held her index finger to her lips and gestured up the stairs. 'Well?' she whispered. ‘Did you find him?’
Her husband removed the thick thermal gloves the kids had bought him for his birthday. ‘I’ve got four pieces of news,’ he said. ‘Three pieces of good news and one piece of bad news.’
‘Jesus, Conor. Did you find the cat or not?’
Christine was the only member of the family who hadn’t wanted a cat. Hers was the one vote, out of the five of them, for a dog. (Brian wrote ‘porcupine’ on his piece of paper, but given the options were ‘dog’ or ‘cat’, her son’s ballot had been registered as spoiled.) The animal had sensed Christine’s outlier position from day one and returned the disdain ten-fold. And yet here she was, unable to go to bed until she knew the damn creature was safe.
‘I found him,’ said her husband, undoing his jacket. ‘Porcupine is alive and well.’ (Such was Brian’s aggrievement at being excluded from the democratic process that they’d allowed the seven-year-old to choose the pet’s name.)
‘Thank God.’ Christine leaned back against the wall and glanced up the stairs. ‘Maybe now Maeve will go to sleep.’
‘They’re the first two pieces of good news.’
She watched him jostle with the coat rack. ‘What’s the third?’ ‘He’s being very well cared for in Mrs Rodgers’ house.’
‘Mrs Rodgers, of course! Why didn’t we think of that?’
Rita Rodgers was an older lady who lived at the end of their street and spent a lot of time tending to her rose bushes – a real jewel in Cooney’s Tidy Towns crown. The local pets were known to stop by and keep her company while their owners were out. She’d lived a fascinating life – literally ran away with the circus – and she exuded a worldly calm. Christine often said they were lucky to have Mrs Rodgers on their street; she was a reminder to stop and smell the (prize-winning) roses.
‘Good old Mrs Rodgers, ay?’ she said. ‘We should drop her down a box of chocolates, to say thank you. I can pick something up tomorrow. I’ll go tell Maeve that all is well.’
Their middle child had added Porcupine’s disappearance to her ever-expanding list of things to lose sleep over. Other items included the teddy bear she was supposed to have finished knitting for school tomorrow (hence Christine currently committing late- night forgery) and a sudden, strong fear that she would not be involved in the Glass Lake musical.
Maeve didn’t want to act in the production, which was a pity; she was the only one of Christine’s children with the looks for stardom. (She wasn’t a bad mother for thinking that. Maeve was her prettiest child, but Caroline was the most intelligent, and Brian the most likeable. Everyone went home with a prize.) Maeve wanted to work on costumes, but some other girl was already signed up to do that.
Christine didn’t see the problem. It was a school show staged by a bunch of pre-teens. Surely the attitude should be: the more the merrier.
‘Hang on,’ she said, as Conor continued to mess around with the coat rack. It did not take that long to hang up a jacket, even if you approached things with as much precision as her husband. ‘What’s the bad news?’
‘Hmm? Oh.’ Conor frowned at the woollen collar as he attached it to a hook. ‘She doesn’t want to give him back.’
‘What?’
‘Mrs Rodgers, yes. I was surprised too. But she was quite firm about it. I always thought she was dithery, but I guess that was ageism. She’s actually impressively sharp. She knows we’re gone from the house for at least seven hours every day and that Porcupine is left on his own. She did this bit where she opened the front door wide and told Porcupine that he was free to go. Go on now if you’re going, she said. And Porcupine looked up at her and meowed. Now I know he meows all the time, especially when he’s hungry or when it’s early and—’
‘Yes, Conor, I’m familiar with the cat’s meow.’
‘Right. But this was different. This meow sounded like a word.’ ‘Excuse me?’
‘A human word, I mean.’
Christine squinted at her husband, who was supposed to be the brains of the family. He raised his hands in a wait-for-it gesture.
She waited.
‘And it sounded … like, "No".’ Christine smacked her lips.
Conor nodded.
‘What?’
‘I know,’ he said, still nodding. ‘Crazy. Porcupine did not budge. I took off my hat, so he’d recognise me, but nothing. He just stood at her feet, loyal as you like. I have to say, it was very impressive.’
‘What did you do?’
‘What could I do? She was very nice about it. She explained that we were very busy – which is true, you said the same thing when we first talked about getting a cat – and probably didn’t have a lot of time. But she has plenty of time and lots of space. She’s an animal person, and she’d really cherish the company. I could almost hear her rattling around in the place, the poor woman. You know her husband died?’
‘Yes, forty years ago, Conor! And they were separated. She left the man for a tightrope walker!’
‘If we were separated and you died, I’d still be sad.’ ‘What? Conor, no! She stole our cat!’
Now it was her husband’s turn to put his finger to his lips and gesture towards the stairs. ‘Porcupine looked happy. I know it’s only been a couple of days, but he looked fatter.’
‘That cat couldn’t get any fatter.’
‘I don’t know why you’re so annoyed, Christine. You never liked him anyway.’
‘She stole our cat! She cannot just steal our cat!’ Christine caught her voice before it escalated to a full-on roar. That woman, their nice, old, butter-wouldn’t-melt neighbour, had abducted their pet. How many times had Mrs Rodgers called out ‘Busy today?’ as Christine hurried past her house? When Christine called back ‘Up to my eyes, Mrs Rodgers’, she’d assumed she was making polite chitchat, not fashioning the noose for her own hanging. ‘I should have known,’ she raged. ‘I should have known she wasn’t the person she said she was. The Tidy Towns committee asked everyone on the street to leave some grass and dandelions in their gardens, but she just eviscerated it all. Animal person, my foot! She doesn’t give a damn about the bees!’
‘To be fair now, Christine, we’re not too worried about the bees ourselves. I just haven’t got around to fixing the lawnmower.’
‘And how, exactly, could Porcupine look happy? That animal has one expression and it is smug.’
‘Well,’ Conor conceded, ‘he looked sort of smugly happy.’ ‘Doesn’t she already have a cat? A white and ginger thing?’
‘I have a memory of seeing her with a brown one,’ said Conor, ‘but maybe not. That was a while ago.’
To think how many times Christine had stopped to compliment Mrs Rodgers on her ‘organic’ roses, knowing full well the charlatan was using chemical fertilisers. The Maguires lived on the same street, they had the same soil, and they could barely grow grass. But Christine never said a word. And when Mrs Rodgers won the intercounty garden prize, she’d written an article about it – she’d even pushed to get a picture of the old bat and her performance- enhanced bushes on to the front page.
‘So, what? We leave him there? And then what? What are we going to tell the kids? What are you going to tell Maeve?’
‘We’ll just explain that Porcupine is an individual,’ said Conor. ‘He was a kitten but now he’s a cat and he’s decided to move out, like the three of them will one day …’
Christine threw her head back and hooted.
She prided herself on being able to see her children for who they were. In Maeve’s case, that was an anxious, conscientious little oddball. Dr Flynn had diagnosed her constant worries as ‘intrusive thoughts’ and said some children found comfort in prayer. But Conor was resolutely atheist – except when it came to ensuring their children got into Glass Lake Primary: then he was all for standing beside a baptismal fountain and shouting ‘Get behind me, Satan’ – so he bought her a set of worry dolls instead. Christine could have sworn their sewn-on smiles were already starting to droop.
Then, right on cue, their eleven-year-old daughter appeared at the top of the stairs.
‘Why aren’t you asleep, Maevey?’ Conor called up.
‘I was saying prayers for Porcupine. Did they work? Has he come home?’
‘I’ve found Porcupine,’ said Conor, ignoring the first portion of the question. ‘And he’s alive and well.’
Maeve gasped and started to run down the stairs.
‘No, hang on, hang on. He’s not here. He’s at Mrs Rodgers’ house.’ ‘Why is he at Mrs Rodgers’ house?’ Maeve directed this question towards her mother but, with a swing of the head, Christine lobbed it on to Conor.
‘He’s, well …’ Conor looked to his wife, then down at their daughter, his lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. That was his first mistake. Kids could spot a ‘bad news’ smile a mile away. ‘When we got Porcupine, he was a kitten. But now, now he’s all grown up. He’s graduated from kitten college. He’s passed his feline driving test. He’s an adult, he’s a cat ...’
Maeve’s face shifted involuntarily.
‘… and when people, and animals, grow up, they move out of home. When I was a child, I lived with your granny and grandad, but then I grew up and now I live here with you …’
There it was again, a spasm just under the left eye. Christine winced in sympathy. A twitch. Wonderful. Just what the girl needed.
‘… and when you grow up, you’ll move out of this house too.’ ‘But I don’t want to move out.’
‘It won’t happen for a long time.’
‘I don’t want to move out,’ repeated Maeve, her voice creeping higher. ‘I want to stay here. Mom? Do I have to move out? What if a baddie broke in or the house went on fire and I didn’t know because I was asleep and there was nobody there to wake me or what if—’
‘This is way, way in the future, Maevey,’ explained Conor as the child’s breathing grew louder. ‘By then you’ll be big, and you’ll want to go. Caroline will move out first—’
‘Caroline’s moving out?’ Conor flinched. ‘No, she’s—’
‘Why is Caroline moving out?!’
‘I just meant because Caroline’s older, she’s fourteen and you’re only—’
‘Shush now, Maeve, breathe normally. It’s all right. Caroline’s not going anywhere,’ said Christine, deciding her daughter’s mental well- being should probably trump a learning opportunity for her husband. ‘None of you are. We’re all staying here, until we’re old and grey and roaming around the house with walking sticks. All right? Okay?’
‘And Porcupine is staying too? Until he’s old and grey?’ ‘I’m not sure … Conor?’
‘Dad?’
‘He’s …’ Conor suddenly looked very tired. ‘Yes. Porcupine is staying too. He’s just having a sleepover at Mrs Rodgers’ house.’
‘A sleepover.’ Maeve rolled the word around, deciding whether to believe it.
‘Exactly. Like when you stayed at Amelia’s house for her birthday and slept in sleeping bags and ordered pizza. I’d say Porcupine will have pepperoni, what do you reckon?’
Maeve smiled. ‘He does like meat.’
‘He loves meat,’ said Conor, taking the reprieve and running with it. ‘I’d say he’ll ask them to bring a couple of portions of garlic sauce too, for dipping. Does that sound like Porcupine?’
‘Cats can’t dip, Dad.’ ‘No,’ he agreed.
‘He’s having a sleepover?’ ‘Yes.’
‘And he’ll be home tomorrow?’ ‘Absolutely.’
‘That’s great news,’ Christine chimed in, parodying her husband’s enthusiasm. ‘I look forward to seeing him then. Now, Maeve, back to bed.’
She followed her daughter up the stairs and into her room, which had the same animal wallpaper and curtains as when she’d first moved into it. Maeve had always been young for her age. She had an innocence that even Brian, four years her junior, was starting to shed.
The bedroom’s centrepiece was a large noticeboard covered in drawings. Currently, it was dedicated to costume ideas for the Glass Lake musical and multiple, very similar pencil sketches of Porcupine. She’d done a good job of capturing his sly, soulless eyes. The noticeboard was always so singular in focus, and the artwork so concentrated, that it gave her daughter the air of an obsessive stalker. Maeve had got her single-mindedness (and her peculiarity) from her father. When Christine first met Conor – at a party in a squat in what felt like another lifetime – she couldn’t believe anyone grew up wanting to be a dentist. Yet by all accounts her husband’s childhood bedroom had been much like this, only his noticeboard had been a shrine to teeth.
‘Thank you for helping me with the teddy bear,’ said Maeve as she climbed into bed. She took a tissue from the nightstand, wiped her nose, and pushed it under her pyjamas’ sleeve.
‘No problem.’
‘And thank you for going to meet the Lakers tomorrow.’ Christine smiled tightly. ‘No problem.’
The Lakers were the mothers, mainly alumni, who ran Glass Lake Primary from the shadows. The most ridiculous thing about the Lakers was that this was also how they referred to themselves. ‘You can’t be late, okay? The Lakers are never late, so I don’t think that would go down well. If you’re going to be late, you probably just shouldn’t go at all.’
‘I won’t be late, Maeve.’
‘And I was thinking maybe you could wear some legging things and a puffed waistcoat, maybe with fur on the collar …’
‘Like the ones Amelia’s mom wears?’ ‘Yeah, kind of like that.’
Amelia’s mom was Beverley Franklin, a prominent Laker and director of this year’s school musical. She used to work at a pharmaceutical company but now she sold jellies that were 70 per cent vegetables on Facebook and spent too much time on the sixth- class parents’ WhatsApp group.
‘I’m not sure I have one of those jackets,’ said Christine diplomatically. ‘But it’ll be fine, I promise you. I’m going to charm the pants off those other mothers, and I’m going to get you a position working on costumes.’
Maeve didn’t look wholly convinced. ‘You do know Amelia’s mom, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I told you,’ said Christine, tucking the duvet in around her daughter. ‘I was in her class at Glass Lake – just like how Amelia is in yours.’ I just don’t pin my entire identity on it, she added silently. ‘Me and Beverley go back years. Okay?’
Maeve gave a small nod. ‘That’s my girl.’
The Lakers organised annual golf outings and reunions (For a primary school!) and lucrative fundraisers. They had no say in the academics, thankfully – going on some of the stuff sent into the parents’ WhatsApp groups, there were a few anti-vaxxers in their midst – but they had a regrettable amount of input into extracurricular activities. They met at the Strand café on Cooney Pier every Thursday morning, and if you wanted your child to make the swim team or get a solo in the choir or to work on costumes for the annual sixth-class musical, you better believe you were pulling up a chair and ordering a flat white.
Conor couldn’t understand this because Conor was a blow-in – meaning he’d only been living in Cooney for sixteen years as opposed to being born, bred and, crucially, educated here.
‘It seems insane that you have to take a whole morning off work to meet some women in a coffee shop just so Maeve can maybe be involved in the school play,’ he said as they climbed into bed that night. ‘Surely the teachers decide who gets to work on it.’
‘It is insane. But that’s Glass Lake. The parents are far too involved; they were even when I went there. But if it eases Maeve’s mind, I can put up with them for an hour or two.’
‘And where will Derek think you are?’
Derek was her boss at the Southern Gazette. He’d been editor of a national tabloid in Dublin until a heart attack, and his wife, forced him into a slower pace of life.
‘I’ve told him I’m meeting a source.’
Derek regularly talked about tip-offs and whistle-blowers and sources. Christine, who specialised in hundredth birthdays and local council disputes, found it best to just play along.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you’ve got your own morning to worry about.’ ‘My Thursday’s looking pretty relaxed,’ said Conor, sleep making its way into his voice as he nuzzled into her. ‘Nothing but routine check-ups until a root canal at noon.’
‘I’m talking about the morning-morning, dear husband, and what exactly you’re going to say when Porcupine doesn’t turn up for breakfast.’
Maeve Maguire didn’t like getting out of bed in the middle of the night. The house was scarier and colder and sadder when the lights were off and everyone else was asleep. And she didn’t like leaving her worry dolls unguarded. She lined them up under her pillow every night, and without her head to hold them in place, she worried they’d get up and run away.
In the daylight, Maeve knew they were only dolls and that dolls couldn’t walk, let alone run. But at night, things were different. This was when the four tiny women in their bright dresses and dark pigtails would make a break for it. They would escape and tell everyone her secrets. She pictured them skipping along the streets of Cooney, avoiding the glow of the streetlamps and jumping over any deep cracks in the footpath (they were only teeny after all; shorter than Maeve’s middle finger) before they slipped into people’s letterboxes, under their front doors and through any windows left ajar. She imagined them hopping up the stairs of these homes, sliding under doors and scaling the beds of Cooney’s residents as they squeezed around pillows and climbed beside ears so they could whisper all the bad things that Maeve Maguire of Sixth Class, Glass Lake Primary, had done.
Maeve’s biggest worry was that the dolls would achieve all this in the time it took her to get downstairs, do what needed to be done, and return to bed again. If Santa Claus could get around the world in a night, one little coastal town wasn’t going to be much of an ask, especially when they could split it between four. If Maeve never knew they’d been gone, then she’d still go into school the next morning, where everyone would know her bad thoughts and bad deeds, and it would be too late to pretend to be sick.
She lifted her pillow and was comforted to see the dolls just as she’d left them. She looked away, then turned back extra quickly. They didn’t move. She returned the pillow and slowly swung her legs out of bed. She crept out of her room and closed the door behind her. She grabbed a towel from the landing and pushed it against the gap under the door. She pulled the used tissue from under her pyjamas sleeve and squeezed it into the keyhole. Just in case.
Then, quick as she was able, and without making a sound, she snuck downstairs and did what she had promised to do.