It Could Never Happen Here, page 2
‘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.
3
••••••
Beverley Franklin never wasted time. She did squats while brushing her teeth and jumping jacks when waiting for the kettle to boil. If suppliers placed her on hold, she put her phone on loudspeaker and cleaned a shelf of the fridge. She left floss beside her laptop and worked a thread of it around her mouth as she waited for the machine to load. And in the mornings, between shouting ‘Rise and shine’ and ‘Let’s go, let’s go’ at her two daughters, she did whatever household tasks could fit into the short window.
The first task this morning was to take delivery of the teddy bear. However, the taxi she’d ordered to collect the stuffed animal from Cooney Nursing Home had ignored either her precise timing instructions or the local speed limit and the driver was knocking on her door, package in hand, before she’d had a chance to deliver the first wake-up call.
‘Twenty-six eighty,’ said the driver, as she took the bag and removed the bear she’d commissioned several days ago. She’d read about the knitter in the Southern Gazette: an illustrious textiles career in Paris then London, where she made garments for the royal family. The article read like an obituary, but it had actually been to mark the woman’s hundredth birthday. The centenarian played hard to get at first – retirement this, arthritis that, partial blindness the other – but Beverley kept phoning the nursing home and upping the fee until she relented. And, credit where it was due, the woman had delivered. The bear was navy blue with button eyes, a large white belly and a right arm an inch longer than its left. It was perfect, but not too perfect – just as Beverley had requested. She carried the thing through the foyer up the main flight of stairs to Amelia’s bedroom and knocked on the door, ready to rouse her.
‘Rise and shine, ma chérie,’ she said, pushing the door open to reveal the pleasant surprise of her youngest daughter already up and dressed and sitting at her vanity table.
Amelia turned from the mirror. ‘He’s so cute!’ she exclaimed, arms stretched out towards the bear. ‘Thanks, Mum. I didn’t even know you could knit.’
‘If you have a problem, I have the solution. Now. Are you ready to wish your grandmother a happy birthday?’ A lifetime of grafting had taught Beverley that when making morning to-do lists you should start with the task you most want to put off. ‘I’ll stand by the window. The light is better.’
She crossed the room to the bay window and pulled her phone from the pocket of her next-season Moncler diamond quilted gilet. (Shona Martin’s mother was a buyer for Brown Thomas, and she’d gifted it to Beverley when she was announced as director of this year’s Glass Lake musical.) She scrolled to video.
‘Do you want to wish her a happy birthday, and I’ll record it?’
‘That’s all right, chérie. She’d much rather see your lovely face.’
Amelia, thankfully, understood nothing of difficult mother-daughter relationships.
The girl gave her ponytail a firm tug and stood poker straight by her pale pink wardrobe. Beverley nodded and Amelia flew into action.
‘Happy birthday, Granny, I love you so much!’ she gushed. ‘I can’t wait to see you again. Thank you for being the best grandmother in the world! You’re amazing!’ Most people’s eyes would be engulfed by a smile that wide, but Amelia’s exaggerated features could take it. ‘Happy birthday,’ she sang, then she blew three gorgeous kisses to the camera and it was all Beverley could do not to reach out to catch them.
‘Parfait!’ she enthused, pressing stop on the video. ‘Absolutely perfect. That could have come straight from the account of an A-list influencer.’
Amelia smiled modestly. She had more than 2,000 followers on Instagram – double that of any other child in her class. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
Amelia had inherited more from her mother than high cheekbones and excellent hair. She was driven and hard-working. She wanted to be an influencer and she had what it took to make it. That wasn’t Beverley being a deluded parent, either. She wasn’t like Lorna Farrell, who was convinced the school choirmaster had said Marnie was a ‘pre-Madonna’ and now believed her daughter was destined for world domination. Beverley actually had experience of the entertainment industry.
‘I promised my followers I’d post my everyday make-up routine,’ said Amelia, switching on the ring light they’d bought for her recent birthday. ‘It’s more authentic if I do it in the morning.’
‘Authenticity is very important,’ agreed Beverley, who had read a lot about social media strategies before launching Sneaky Sweets, the health food start-up she ran online. ‘Don’t forget to take off the make-up when you’re finished. Glass Lake rules. Ten minutes, then downstairs for breakfast. You don’t want me coming back in and ruining your shot.’
Although actually, wouldn’t it be kind of cute to feature some candid bloopers? Beverley had toyed with suggesting she take a cameo role in Amelia’s socials. Followers responded well to glimpses into family life. Amelia could post occasional clips from her acting days and then Beverley could talk about what a fun time it had been but how family was more important.
If only all this technology had been around when she was younger, her career could have been so different. Magazines and newspapers had been obsessed with Beverley – and what were they, if not the social media of their time? (Ella was forever telling her she was obsessed with things – herself, Amelia, cleanliness, Glass Lake – but this had been real obsession. There was a two-month period where she’d appeared in the Sunday Independent every single week.) More people had heard of Beverley Tandon (as she was then) than Pauline Quinn, the young temptress she’d played on Cork Life. Beverley remembered her agent telling her this like it was a bad thing: ‘You’re not Julia Roberts, Bev. You’re a soap actress.’ Now, though, self-promotion was an asset. She ran Sneaky Sweets almost entirely through Facebook and it was doing well. There were a lot of desperate parents frantically searching the internet for ways to feed their fussy eaters. But however good Beverley might be at selling jellies made from vegetables, she’d have been so much better at selling herself.
‘Mum!’ chided Amelia.
‘Nine minutes,’ she said, stepping back out on to the landing.
Phone still in hand, she opened the last recorded video. She wrote ‘Happy birthday’ and deleted it. Then she wrote ‘Happy birthday, Mam.’ ‘Happy birthday, Frances.’ ‘On your special day!’ ‘HB, Mama.’ ‘Peace and light x.’ The last one was definitely the most Her Mother. She deleted it too and just clicked send. The video was self-explanatory.
Mentally ticking the task from her list, she strode along the landing. This was usually when she delivered Ella’s wake-up call. However, last night she had politely asked her eighteen-year-old daughter if she had any plans for the weekend – she wasn’t even that interested; she was just waiting for the Duolingo update to load – and Ella had responded by asking why she was so obsessed with her. (If anyone was obsessed it was Ella; and she was obsessed with the word ‘obsessed’. Beverley should have said that last night. She always thought of retorts hours too late.)
She paused at the bottom of the stairs that led to the next floor. Ella’s first lecture was at 10 a.m. – Beverley had her university timetable linked to the Alexa family calendar, along with Malachy’s work schedule, Amelia’s after-school activities, and her own myriad appointments – and if she didn’t get up soon, she’d be late. But Beverley kept walking. If that was how she was going to speak to her mother, she could sing for a wake-up call.
Next up was the toilet bowl in the main first-floor bathroom. There were, as Malachy had so eloquently described it a few hours earlier, ‘stringy particles’ stuck to the edges. She ran the hot tap and pulled the bleach and a pair of rubber gloves from the box of cleaning supplies Greta kept in the bathroom cupboard.
Ella accused her of ‘Catholic guilt’ for cleaning before Greta came, and ‘white privilege’ for having a cleaner in the first place. Whatever about being white (everyone she knew was white!), the Catholic guilt accusation was untrue. Greta worked for all the Glass Lake mothers, and Beverley cleaned before she came for the same reason the Franklins did their banking in Cork City rather than Cooney and Beverley went all the way to Dublin to see her dermatologist. Because people talked. And she’d rather not give them anything interesting to discuss.
Pulling on the Marigolds, she grabbed the toilet brush firmly in both hands and applied brute force to the rim of the bowl until the debris came loose.
‘It looks like bits of food,’ her husband had said, as he stood at the foot of their bed at 5.30 that morning, stretching his glutes in preparation for his daily pre-dawn run. Malachy did not share Beverley’s inherent drive – he’d been born wealthy instead – but when it came to his appearance, he found the motivation. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Ella has an eating disorder.’
‘I doubt it,’ Beverley had replied, as he placed his palms flat against the wall that separated their room from the second guest bedroom. ‘It’s probably just hard water build-up. I’ll take a look.’ Then, because he still wasn’t appeased, she added: ‘You look well toned.’
Flattery always settled her husband.
She carried the toilet brush over to the sink now and rinsed it under the flowing tap. It was important people thought she’d never dream of cleaning her own toilet, but the actual act of it was nothing. Hard graft and an eye on the future. That was how she’d secured such an enviable life.
Tick, tick.
The final item on Thursday’s to-do list was admin. There were seventy-two unread WhatsApp messages. Being a Glass Lake mother was a full-time job and Beverley already had a full-time job, no matter what Ella thought. (It was hard to be a girl-boss role model for a daughter who dismissed your crusade to revolutionise the food industry as ‘refreshing your Facebook page’.) Beverley was sometimes tempted to let elements of school life slide, but there were parents and children counting on her, not to mention the reputation of Glass Lake itself. She skipped the Sixth-Class Parents group, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz group, the School Trip to Dublin group and opened the Lakers thread.
