Chapter 51
Susan
Tuesday
To my relief, Bella’s already in bed when Jon finally gets home from work on Tuesday evening, so I don’t have to explain the redness.
I feel sick every time I think about it—there aren’t many hallmarks of negligent parenting worse than a sunburnt baby.
I stayed indoors all afternoon, watching and waiting for the redness to fade, googling solutions.
Cold compresses, the internet advised, and pain relief if she’s in pain.
She didn’t seem to be in pain, she was in reassuringly good form, but I need air after a long afternoon fretting indoors, so as soon as Jon arrives into the hall I leave for a walk.
A long walk. Don’t wait up, I tell him, putting my earbuds in and pulling the door after me.
· · ·
It’s a beautiful sunny evening and Dún Laoghaire pier is full of walkers enjoying the weather, but nothing can lift my mood; not the sea view, not the Oreo-dipped ice cream, not the promise of a glorious orange sunset.
My eventual walk home takes me past Bar Four, its beer garden full of Tuesday-night drinkers enjoying the unusually warm weather.
People without a care in the world. I slow, looking in, envying them in their carefree lives.
“Thinking of going inside?” says a familiar voice from behind me.
I turn to find Felipe, Venetia’s husband.
Tonight he’s in a bright tropical-print shirt, the kind you can only get away with if you’re under thirty-five and good-looking (he is both).
I wonder what age he is. Thirty-one or -two, I reckon.
Venetia is slightly older, closer to my age, I’d say.
It would be interesting to know what brought them together—this soft-at-the-edges guy and his sharp-angled partner.
“Oh, no, I wasn’t going to the pub. I’m just on my way home from a walk on the pier.”
“I’m going in for a quick glass of wine. Will you join me?”
I should say no. But something—the open look on his face, the knowledge that Jon probably wasn’t really “working late” all those nights in recent weeks—makes me say yes.
We grab a small wrought-iron table near the main door to the pub, and Felipe is back from the bar two minutes later with a bottle of Pinot Grigio in an ice bucket and two glasses.
I’m not convinced this will be the “quick” drink Felipe suggested, and I’ll be later home than Jon expects, but actually, I don’t care.
“So, I was wondering,” Felipe says as he pours a glass for me, “have you seen Venetia?”
He doesn’t look at me as he asks and there’s a forced casualness about his tone, his entire demeanor.
“Gosh, no, of course not. I said I won’t call again, and I won’t.”
“Good…good. Well, salud. Cheers.” He clinks my glass with his, looking a little less than cheerful.
“It must be hard at home right now,” I say gently, wondering if that’s why he’s here.
“Yes.” A heavy sigh. “Venetia doesn’t want to talk, and I respect that. Personally, I think it would help to open up, to talk about Aimee, but—” He lifts his hands, his deep brown eyes huge and sad.
He’s clearly desperate for someone to talk to; it’s emanating from every pore.
“Well,” I say, “why don’t you tell me about Aimee?”
That does the trick. He tells me about meeting her for the first time, how vivacious she was, how close the sisters were.
How in love Aimee was. Her perfect wedding.
Her busy career. Her energy. Her love of life.
His voice cracks with emotion once or twice, though he doesn’t seem self-conscious.
He pours more wine, and I drink more wine, wondering if this is a terrible idea.
But my heart goes out to this almost-stranger and his bottled-up grief.
“You obviously knew her very well,” I say.
He shakes his head. “That’s the problem. I realize now I didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“This thing with Warren Geary. It’s not like her. And—” He shakes his head.
“Go on?”
“Nothing, it’s nothing.” He takes a deep swallow of wine, and we sit in silence for a bit.
“Felipe, the thing with Aimee and Warren—look, even the most unlikely people will stray. These things happen more often than you’d think.” Don’t I know…
He twists the wine glass between his fingers, studying it. “Yes, but to be quite honest, if you knew Aimee, knew what her marriage was like, I…I don’t know why she did it.”
“And I guess that’s adding to Venetia’s grief and shock? She’s lost her sister but feels like she didn’t know her as well as she thought she did?”
“Yes,” he says, but I get the distinct impression that’s not it at all.
Felipe stands and says he’ll get another bottle. I gesture for him to sit and say I’ll go, it’s my round. There’s no way I’m getting us another whole bottle though.
I return with two glasses and we talk about other things for a while: his childhood in Bolivia and his move to Ireland—more of a backpacking stop-off that became a permanent home than any long-held plan to live here.
“I stayed for the weather. I could not resist your very attractive gray skies,” he says, and I laugh.
“In defense of my country, we’re sitting outside at ten at night in short sleeves,” I point out.
It’s true. It’s unnaturally warm for this time of evening and the beer garden is thronged with midweek drinkers making the most of it.
The heatwave has a way of dissolving any thoughts of early mornings and alarm clocks.
I wonder if Felipe has an early start and ask about his job.
He’s a software engineer for HP, he says, doing contract work, though he’s taken leave this week to be there for Venetia.
It was through work that he met her, he tells me, taking another swallow of wine.
He’d gone to a wedding as a colleague’s plus one and gone home with Venetia.
He never really left, it turns out. He moved in permanently to the cottage in Coal Place soon after.
“As a paying tenant of Venetia and Aimee,” he adds with a grin, “in case you think I’m a kind of gold-digger. ”
The sisters co-owned the cottage, he explained, having inherited it from their grandmother. They’d grown up there. Their grandmother had raised them since their mother walked out when they were eight and six. Jesus. Poor Venetia and Aimee.
“And when did you get married?” I ask.
A sheepish look crosses his face. “Soon after we moved in together.” He looks at me under hangdog lashes.
“Don’t judge me, but Venetia suggested we marry so I could stay here.
My holiday working visa had run out.” A shrug and a grin.
“I am Gérard Depardieu in this story. You know, from the movie Green Card?”
My eyes widen. “Wait, a sham marriage?”
“Oh, we were really dating. But we would not have married if not for the visa problem.”
Were dating. And now?
“Wow,” I say, instead of asking the questions that are in my head.
“Yes. She needed someone who could pay her good rent for the house—her wages bartending are not as much as she would like.” He clears his throat.
“She doesn’t settle easily in jobs; she moves a lot.
She’s had some problems…And I try to look out for her, to take care of her.
I was grateful to her for the visa, but also, she reminds me of someone who used to—”
He stops. “Anyway, I wanted to stay here in your beautiful gray-sky country. So, it was convenient, a win-win for both of us. But also good,” he adds. “We did get on well.”
That seems a muted way to put it, but who am I to judge, all things considered?
“We still do, mostly,” he continues. “The version of Venetia you met on Saturday, she’s not always like that. Though it’s true she can be difficult, she is not so…soft.”
I think of the person I met at the bar, however briefly. Cool, terse, spiky in her body language, and I nod.
He takes a sip of wine then sets his glass carefully back on the table, using both hands to line it up perfectly in the center of his beer mat. It’s as though he’s using the glass to steady himself.
“But she can be kind too. Especially with Aimee.” His eyes brim. “It was Aimee’s wedding. That’s where we met.”
Instinctively, I reach for his hand.
“Oh, Felipe, I’m so sorry.”
He whispers something then, something I can’t hear.
“What was that?” I ask.
He looks up, eyes damp.
“It’s my fault. I can’t tell you why, but it’s my fault Aimee’s dead.”