Chapter 18
18
‘Snow’s forecast,’ Chess said cheerfully as she breezed into the office an hour late the following day.
‘Is it? Oh, bugger.’ I folded up the ancient map I’d been scanning.
‘I’d have thought you’d watch the forecast like a hawk, being stuck out where you live.’ She folded up the copy of Cosmo that she’d been reading on the bus and tucked it away into her bag. ‘Coffee?’
‘Better not, I’ve had three already.’ I was still suffering from the lack of a night’s sleep, and the avoidance of Connor that had followed my Duck Doubts. Luckily, he’d been out for most of the working day, and I’d used getting an early night to excuse myself from his company in the evening. I’d got up to come into work extra early today and had left him making packing noises in his room.
‘Yes, supposed to be a white Christmas this year, apparently,’ Chess went on, making an extraordinarily long business of hanging up her coat. ‘I’ve got your present here, by the way. We are closing the office for Christmas today, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I replied testily, having forgotten completely when I’d said we’d have our Christmas holiday. Four days to go. Four days at home, Connor in Dublin and me trying my best to break out of my widow’s weeds and celebrate. ‘And I might well come and drop in at yours over Christmas, Chess, if that’s still all right.’
Chess stopped uncoiling the gigantic scarf she’d got wound around her neck, and stared at me. ‘Oh, good,’ she said. ‘No, that’s really good, Rowan. If you don’t get snowed in, of course.’
‘Is it supposed to be that much snow? It’s a bit early.’
She shrugged. ‘Take it up with the Met Office and don’t shoot the messenger.’
‘Yes, sorry. Bugger. I’d better do a quick food shop, then, just in case.’ I stood up and reached for my jacket. ‘I can pop round Sainsbury’s quickly and leave the stuff in the car.’
‘I’m glad you said that.’ Chess began rewinding the scarf again. ‘Only if you’re going out you can’t mind if I head into town and finish the last bits of present buying, can you?’
‘I suppose not. But back here by twelve. I’ve got a Zoom call with the grants people who want to know how the book is getting on, and I want you to be bustling around in the background looking busy.’
‘Oh, the usual.’ She sighed. ‘You want me to interrupt with a phone call from…’
‘Wales. Wales is good. No, outside the brief for the book. Um, how about Northallerton? That’s in my area, they might fall for that one.’
‘Okay, phone call from Northallerton, what, half an hour in?’
‘Please. We should have gone over everything by then, and I can offer to send them the manuscript so far, if they’re really desperate. But I should think they’ll all be wanting to go home for Christmas too, and it might all be over in ten minutes.’
I pulled my coat back on and grabbed my car keys, then Chess and I shared a smile of complicity and went off into York.
I was back within an hour, having elbowed my way around the hell that was a supermarket in the run-up to Christmas, leaving the food in the freezing confines of the car, where I reasoned nothing could possibly go off, as it was basically a metal box in sub-zero temperatures.
Chess hadn’t returned yet, and I still had time to kill before I had to appear frantically busy in front of the grants people, so I sat at my desk with another coffee, and flipped pages. Someone had written to me wanting some information on an old story that I’d covered. It was about a ghost at a well possibly being a hangover from tales of water spirits, and I had to reacquaint myself with the story before I replied. So, when I heard the outer door bang, I assumed Chess was back and called out to her to bring some coffee through.
A few minutes later, Connor put his head around the door, carrying two cups of hot chocolate from the market just down the road. ‘Thought these might be more appropriate.’
‘Thank you.’ I glanced at my screen, set up for the Zoom call and waiting for the other parties to join. ‘Are you off, then?’
‘Sorry? Off where?’
‘I thought you were flying tomorrow. I thought you’d be heading to the airport tonight, what with snow forecast and everything.’
He sipped his chocolate. ‘Ah, no. I’ll head over tomorrow, plenty of time. I’ve got a late afternoon flight – I’m not really up to spending more time than I have to surrounded by the budding sisters-in-law all asking when I’m going to get myself partnered up and start reproducing, and the brothers slapping my back and telling me that I don’t know how lucky I am not to be.’
‘And Eamonn, who presumably won’t be doing either.’
‘No, no, true. He’ll be asking me when I last went to confession.’
‘Tough crowd, then.’
‘Yep.’
‘Look, I have to do this Zoom thing, then I’ll wait for Chess to get back and tell her we’re closing the office early. Is that all right?’
‘Grand.’ Connor went and sat in the corner of the room, flipping casually through some notes, while I spoke to the grants people, who all seemed to be very happy and smiley today. I put it down to the proximity of Christmas, and, since they all seemed happy with the progress of the potential book, I finished the call without needing any intervention of the ‘emergency phone call’ kind.
When I’d disconnected, Connor stood up. ‘Well, they all seemed very jolly,’ I said.
‘Probably because you’ve got chocolate all over your mouth,’ he replied.
‘Shit, no, I haven’t, have I?’ My camera wasn’t particularly good and the lighting in the office was dreadful, and I hadn’t been looking at my own face, assessing the mood of the grant board. But when I checked, Connor was absolutely right and I had a noticeable ring of hot chocolate across my top lip. ‘Oh, bugger. Now they’re going to think I’ve got the mental acuity of a five-year-old.’
‘No, no, you sounded very professional.’ He grinned at me, and then Chess came banging in.
‘Sorry, sorry! Meant to be back earlier but there was a hell of a queue in Seasalt and – did you know you’ve got chocolate all over your face?’
She began unwinding the scarf again, raising her eyebrows at me under cover of the enormous woolly beanie hat she was wearing and jerking her head towards Connor in a ‘I see you’ve brought a friend’ kind of way.
‘Yes, thank you, Chess, twenty minutes ago that would have been great advice.’
‘Oh. Did I miss the Zoom?’
‘Yes, you did, but it was all right, I had Connor there squatting in the corner to make the office look occupied. Don’t take your scarf off, I’ve decided it’s home time.’
Chess made a moue of surprise, and the eyebrows went up again. ‘Really? Wow, Rowan, that’s decent. You’re really…’ Then she stopped and began making a huge performance out of rewinding the scarf and adjusting her hat.
‘What am I “really”, Chess?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice level. Connor was still grinning.
‘You’re really beginning to loosen up a bit,’ she said eventually, talking into the several layers of wool around her mouth. ‘Like, nicely, I mean. You’ve always been a bit keen on keeping the hours and all that.’ She glanced sideways at Connor. ‘Something is doing you good. You’re not nearly so much of a slave-driver these days.’
I felt a cringe of guilt begin. I’d had nothing else in my life, apart from work, so I’d made a habit of being here early and leaving late.
‘I mean, in a good way, obviously,’ she added quickly, although how one could be a slave-driver in a good way I quite failed to see. Maybe by using tea and cake as an incentive, rather than whips? ‘We’ve got an awful lot done in these past two years.’
I pretended not to be appalled, and handed over her Christmas present, before I dragged Connor out into the afternoon’s chill. He was still grinning.
‘So, you’re a fair slave-driver, then,’ he said. ‘But you’re loosening up. That’s a decent thing.’
‘Chess is overstating her case. She regards not being allowed to watch Loose Women at work as being oppressive.’
The puddles cracked ominously under our feet as we crossed the car park. I glanced up at the sky, which was grey, darkening to a yellow tinge around the edges. ‘Oh, bugger, it looks as though it really is going to snow. I was hoping we’d miss it.’
Connor settled into the passenger seat. ‘Nice though. Very seasonal. Festive.’
‘You won’t be saying that when you’ve been stuck in the cottage for three days and the cheese is running out.’
‘Come on, now, you’re exaggerating. Nobody gets snowed in these days. There’s the big snow ploughs and… and… well, they come and dig you out, don’t they?’
I gave a dark and sarcastic laugh. ‘Well, it might not be too bad. It’s too early for much snow – we usually get it all in January if it’s going to come. We’ll get a covering, that’s all. You had better book your taxi to pick you up for the airport though. There’ll be loads of Christmas parties going on and they might all end up too busy to fetch you. And I’m not driving all the way to Leeds Bradford to drop you off, not when I’m on holiday.’
‘I’ll do that.’ He settled into the seat in a way that irritated me slightly.
‘You need to learn to drive, Connor.’
He turned to watch me easing us out of the little car park and onto the road. ‘Why would that be, now?’
‘Well, it’s… I mean, I don’t always want to drive and… there’s no public transport around here.’
Connor crooked up an eyebrow and turned to look out of the window, but I thought I saw a smile beginning before he did so. ‘I’ll be back in Dublin by April, and we’ve all the buses. There’s no need. Anyway—’ now he turned back to me with a straight face again ‘—by the time I passed my test I’d be gone. I’ve seen me drive, Rowan, and it’s not something a couple of lessons and a bit of practice is going to sort.’
‘Of course,’ I said, feeling hot and stupid. Why would he need to drive? He was going back to Dublin. Out here in the wilds of Yorkshire, where buses were infrequent, the nearest railway station was fifteen miles away, the taxis had to come from the towns, people learned to drive early. Many a twelve-year-old could be found bombing around his dad’s fields in a clapped-out Fiat. They were on the road in tractors as soon as they were sixteen, test passed on their seventeenth birthday, and parents breathed a sigh of relief and opened a bottle of wine in the evenings.
‘What’s Dublin like?’ I asked, negotiating my way off the ring road and out into countryside.
‘It’s grand. Wonderful city. All-night bars, music and architecture and poetry and all that.’ I got another proper smile. ‘Buses too. Are you regretting saying you won’t come? You can change your mind, y’know. We’ll get you a ticket and we could be there for Christmas.’
Out of the corner of my eye I could see him sitting there, long legs bunched up and his ubiquitous big black coat wrapped around him, and I thought of Christmas in a house full of people. Company and shouting and children and coming and going at all hours; Eamonn, who had taken on a kind of Father Brown persona in my head, wandering about being kindly and a bit vague and possibly detecting crime in his spare time. Connor’s parents, who seemed to be a dichotomy between faith and high-flying, not quite knowing what to do with this odd, quiet friend of their son’s. And then there was Connor’s status as still being in disgrace for involving them all with a married woman who was being unfaithful.
‘I think I’ll stay at home this year,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just started to pick up my life where I left off when Elliot… well, I think I need to ease myself into things. I’ve spent three years basically being a hermit, so I think I ought to take it one person at a time.’
‘You’re finding life a bit better now, though? It’s getting easier?’ He was watching my face but I couldn’t return the look. This was a tricky bit where cars parked either side of a narrow road, there were no streetlights, and the road was slippery with the detritus of the long-gone autumn.
‘A bit,’ I admitted. ‘I think it’s having you around. It’s made me realise that I don’t like the quiet as much as I thought I did.’
‘Well, I’m glad I?—’
‘I’m thinking of getting a cat in the spring.’
He closed his mouth and raised his eyebrows. ‘Good that I can be replaced so easily.’
‘A big tom, all swagger and yowl, I thought.’
‘Is that me, or the cat?’
We lapsed into silence as we headed out across the dark countryside. A few flakes of snow dropped lazily into the headlights, and I concentrated ferociously on getting home before more arrived to join them. These narrow, twisty roads with a covering of snow over the ice that still crusted the puddles could be treacherous.
‘I’m not promiscuous,’ Connor said suddenly, making me jump, as we rose to the top of the hill before the cottage.
‘Er. That’s nice to know, although I’m not quite sure why it would come up,’ I replied, trying to remember whether I’d left the porch light on before I left.
‘Tomcat. Me. I’m drawing a parallel here, as I suspect you intended.’
‘Did I?’
‘Rowan.’ He shifted in his seat, and I nearly drove into the hedge. There was a patch of ice that had frozen right across the whole road – water that had poured from overflowing drains had formed a slick surface where the car had no grip. ‘Saoirse fooled me. If I’d known she was married, if I’d known that she was making it all up, do you think I would have gone near her?’
I muttered something and drew the car up into its usual parking spot. I went to open my door, but Connor put a hand out to stop me. ‘I know you think I’m a bit of a dick, and I hold my hands up to having been an idiot. But she was telling me what I wanted to hear and future-faking it all down the line. Now, tell me that if I were a woman and I came to you having been fooled by a married man who told me all the stories of how we’d get married and have a few children, live by the sea and all that – you wouldn’t be sympathetic? You wouldn’t call him a bastard and berate him for having lied?’ He moved a little more, so that he could see my face properly. ‘So why is it different because I’m a man?’
It wasn’t different. Of course it wasn’t. But I was so used to seeing Connor as breezily careless that it was hard to get my head around the idea that he had been fooled. He always seemed to know exactly what he was doing – like with his historical research. He was sure that there was something Roman up there on that moor so he was working hard to get to the bottom of what it was. He researched, he investigated. And yet, one pretty woman came along and told him what he wanted to hear and he’d fallen into believing her without any question.
‘You always seem to know what you’re doing,’ I said. ‘You’re always so sure of yourself. Like… like with the Fairy Stane. You research and you check all angles and you’re desperate to get to the bottom of it. I have the feeling that if I turn my back you’ll be up there with a crowbar, to give yourself the advantage over other historians. You’re single-minded. So that’s why it’s hard for me to see how Saoirse managed to fool you, because you could have blown her story open with a bit of research and a few questions – like “where are your photographs published?” – but you didn’t ask.’
His hand dropped away from me and I got out of the car. I was shaking slightly from the flare of adrenaline that was currently sending emergency signals to my entire body. Why did I care? Connor was just a man who was taking up my spare room and cooking great meals. He would, as he repeatedly reminded me, be gone in four months. Why should I care why he fell for Saoirse?
I went round to the boot of the car and began hauling out plastic bags of groceries. Connor had begun to stalk off towards the cottage, but, seeing me lifting out bag after bag, he came back and took a bag in each hand before he did the Indignant Stomp again.
I caught up with him as he used his key to open the door, and we stormed inside together, on a gust of wind-blown snowflakes and irritation.
‘Look.’ He put one bag on the worktop and began unpacking it, almost as though he wasn’t thinking about the actual shopping but needed something to do with his hands. ‘I can tell you think I’m a fool for going along with Saoirse.’
I was unpacking on the other side of the kitchen, with my back to him. ‘I don’t think you’re a fool, Connor. People can get caught up in situations. But I do think that you went into that relationship with your eyes closed. A photographer should have a portfolio of published work, a website. You’re a historian. You check everything. But with her, you never checked .’
I slammed the freezer door, having shoved in more bread than the drawer could really take, and there was a sharp crack of plastic breaking. The sound annoyed me.
‘Are you telling me that you check out every man you’re dating? You look them up? On the Internet?’ He sounded aghast.
‘Well, no, but only because I’ve been with Elliot since forever, and I didn’t date much before him.’ I’d used the present tense again, I noted. Elliot’s gone . ‘But it’s a sensible thing for a woman to do. We don’t know if a man has a criminal record, or pictures of himself with his wife all over Facebook, so we check.’
‘That’s… that’s weird .’
‘No.’ Beans into the cupboard. I’d bought an awful lot of beans. ‘It’s common sense. No one wants to go on a date with a bloke only to find out he was headline news in the Mirror for murdering his landlady or something.’
‘Right.’ Connor put the last packet of biscuits – I’d also bought a lot of biscuits, for some reason – into the cupboard and closed the door definitively. ‘Come on.’
‘What?’
I followed him through into the living room, where my computer blinked at us. Connor didn’t even turn on the light. He wiggled the mouse to wake the computer, and then typed ‘Connor William Patrick O’Keefe’ into the search bar.
‘Connor, what are you doing?’
He didn’t answer again. He stood back, waving a hand at the brightness of the screen, where his name was listed in blue above a whole host of sites.
‘There,’ he said at last. ‘That’s me. No secrets. No murders, no newspaper headlines. A load of research, some publications, a couple of awards and a mention when Mam got to be head of her department.’
‘Well, that’s…’ I started weakly.
‘I was lonely, Rowan. I was lonely and she was pretty and funny and bright – a touch brittle, but I thought she worked too hard. I told her what I was looking for and she echoed it all back to me, and when you’re living for your work and your family are all doing the good Catholic thing of marrying and producing children…’
‘Except Eamonn,’ I felt bound to add.
‘Ah, but Eamonn is exempt, he’s got his own trajectory, being a priest. So there was I feeling a failure and left behind, and all I can see is a future of being an academic, burying myself in the journals and reviews… Do you see how I fell for her?’
He was talking fast, pointing at the screen showing his name every now and then as though to punctuate his words. It felt a little as though the easy-going Connor I had got to know had been subsumed under this wild-eyed, gesticulating man, trying to make me see something when I didn’t know what I was meant to be looking at.
‘Connor, you don’t need to prove anything to me,’ I said softly. ‘It’s fine. I know you weren’t stupid. You took a woman at face value. You believed her because you had no reason not to. That’s not stupidity, that’s just good-natured optimism.’
He turned away from the screen, slumping his shoulders and with his head falling forwards, as though he’d received the biggest rejection in history. ‘But I,’ he said, and, in contrast to his previous tone, his voice was very quiet now, ‘ I feel stupid, Rowan. All the brothers now, they’ve managed to find someone to take them on, with their bloody daft Star Wars slippers and their addiction to Lego, two married and Finn engaged to that wee girl from Dungannon. While I find myself someone, the family all approve, it’s all going great – and then she turns out to be married with kids! I might be a professor and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Roman building techniques, but I’m still a fecking idiot where women are concerned.’
‘You’re not.’ I tried to keep my voice quiet too. ‘But are you telling me that this is all about sibling rivalry? That you want to find yourself a partner just to keep up with your brothers?’ There was something so intense about him right now that I felt a stab of pity. He really wanted me to understand why he’d fallen for Saoirse.
‘Of course,’ he said, but it sounded as though he might be smiling, only a little, but still.
‘So you were lonely and feeling left out, and Saoirse – well, she’s very pretty. Then she told you that she wanted exactly what you wanted… why wouldn’t you fall for that? You’re a man, you’re not in danger from being alone with someone, so you’d no need to do any searches, you believed her. That’s not stupidity, Connor, honestly. It’s wanting something so hard that you can’t help but go after it when it’s put in front of you.’
He took in a breath so deep that I worried in case he burst out of his coat, but then he blew it back in a sigh that told me how bad he felt more than any number of words.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s not sibling rivalry, not really. I mean, I’m a professor, and that’s ranked pretty highly in the family. It must be hard for you to understand as you’re an only child.’
He’d remembered, then. ‘Well, yes, but Chess has got two sisters, and I know far, far more about the Great Boyfriend War of 2022 than I could ever want to.’ I watched him now as he slumped onto the loveseat, his coat flopping as though it too were exhausted. ‘But how come you’re lonely? I mean, looking like you do, you can’t be short of female company, surely?’
He looked up at me for a moment too long. If this were a romantic movie, I thought, he’d stand up and kiss me now. Then, horrified at the thought, I took two steps back until my legs were against the desk.
He didn’t stand up. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘ I think I’m okay, women seem to differ on that point. Maybe I work too hard.’
‘You can be a bit single-minded about Romans,’ I said, not sure whether I felt relieved or not about his non-standing state.
‘I can that.’ He nodded gravely, staring at the floor. ‘And I’m getting a bit old for the partying and the running round town at two in the morning. It’s all very well for a while, but I’m more for the sitting in front of the fire with a well-crafted dinner, a good bottle of red and a conversation.’
‘About Romans,’ I put in helpfully.
‘I’ve got other pet topics.’ He glanced up and saw me, backed into the corner. ‘I’m not bad at medieval religion and I’ve a working knowledge of Viking incursions.’
‘Anything to say about Strictly, Cosmopolitan, or Tom Hardy?’
Another small smile. ‘Not notably.’
‘You’re no good for Chess, then. She likes her men to have popular culture at their fingertips. Being able to talk about popular culture two millennia ago probably won’t cut it.’
The air felt thick all of a sudden, as though it were setting, like jelly, or icing up. We’d already looked at one another for too long, freeze-framed into a moment, and the adrenaline fired another warning flare into my nervous system.
‘Rowan…’ Connor said, standing up now, and taking a small step towards me.
‘We’ve left the dairy out,’ I said suddenly. ‘On the side. We need to get it in the fridge.’ My voice sounded a bit breathless, as though I’d run round the room before speaking. ‘The… the butter and… things.’
With a swerve that any rugby fly half would have been proud of, I dashed around Connor and into the kitchen, where the fluorescent light buzzed like an extra layer of reality. I started to unpack the final couple of bags, trying not to think about what might have happened. Did I want it to happen? Did I want anything to happen with Connor?
No. No. He wasn’t Elliot. He wasn’t my lovely, sandy-haired, bristly cheeked husband, with his bad jokes, his calm accepting nature and his practicality. Connor was too lanky, too dark. Too sharp and bright and, besides, he was going back to Dublin. I didn’t know what he’d intended when he’d said my name and looked at me as though I were someone he’d never seen before, but whatever it was, I didn’t want it.
Tomorrow couldn’t come quickly enough.