It Could Never Happen Here, page 9
Frances had given birth to five children, but it was only when they were grown and she had travelled to India and discovered tantra – specifically, in the middle of a vigorous shaking session just outside Mumbai – that Frances felt she had finally given birth to herself. She was a woman renewed, freed from cultural baggage and people pleasing and western expectations. She had achieved bliss. And she desperately, oh so desperately, wanted even a sliver of that for her daughter.
Of course, Beverley had no truck with tantra. She acted as if Frances had chosen this path in order to continue a lifetime of embarrassing her. (Now her mother wasn’t just fat – she was fat and she removed her clothes for a living!) But tantra wasn’t only about delayed orgasms and pleasing a sexual partner – although Beverley’s sex life didn’t bear thinking about; Frances doubted if her son-in-law found anyone as attractive as himself – it was a spiritual practice that helped people to heal. It healed the relationships we have with ourselves. After an adulthood marred by verbal abuse, Frances had learned to love her body. Her daughter was so thin, so afraid of ending up like her mother, and yet she didn’t love herself half as much.
Frances felt a faint tremor and took a deep breath, opening her channels and allowing the energy in.
Only it wasn’t her body vibrating. It was her phone.
Her granddaughter was calling.
‘Ella, my love, how wondrously cosmic to hear from you.’ Frances leaned back in her chair and watched the evening light reflect off her glass wind chime and explode across the ceiling. ‘You’ll have to speak slowly. It seems your dear old grandmother has accidentally scoffed an entire hash brownie.’
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Ella Belle Franklin had intended to go to Dublin for university. Her dad offered to pay for accommodation wherever she wound up, but Ella had planned to live with her grandmother. Her parents were surprised and delighted when, at the last minute, she swapped University College Dublin for University College Cork. They were even more delighted when she decided to live at home for her first year. Her father was rarely there, and her mother was perpetually disappointed in her: her hair, her clothes, the close bond she enjoyed with her grandmother. But her parents were controlling people, who liked to be in charge, and this way they knew where she was. Most of the time.
Ella had stayed in Cork, and Cooney, because of Arlo. Her parents would never have guessed that, and this fact delighted Ella. They could only see their daughter in their own image and so couldn’t even consider that she might fall for someone they would deem wholly unsuitable. Not that she was with Arlo because it would annoy her parents. That was only a bonus. She had loved Arlo since fifth-year religion, when they all had to write about someone important to them. Most of the boys had picked footballers or YouTubers, but Arlo wrote about his little brother. Sister Tracey read out his essay and Arlo went so red that Leo Patterson threw cold water on him. This only made the boys laugh more, but Ella had felt this ache in her chest, like she needed to know everything Arlo thought as soon as humanly possible. She made more of an effort with her friendship with Leo then, because she knew they were close.
Arlo had stayed in Cooney for Woody, and she had stayed for him. Now, though, she couldn’t wait to get out of the place.
On Thursdays her lectures were done by lunchtime, but she was reluctant to come straight home. Arlo worked long days so there was nothing to rush back for. Sometimes she went for lunch or coffee with classmates, but mostly she drove to the car park of the Lidl superstore just outside the town and sat and listened to music and watched as Cooney residents snuck into the chain outlet while pretending not to see each other. There was a very active Keep Cooney Independent campaign, and locals were supposed to shop at Connolly’s supermarket. But Connolly’s was extortionate, and their vegetables were shite.
Today she parked in front of a gigantic billboard advertising special offers on monkey nuts, skeletons and large, plastic cauldrons.
She had declined her parents’ offer of a new car in favour of her grandmother’s old Peugeot, even though the heater didn’t work – Ella was currently wearing gloves and a scarf – and it often leaked oil. She loved this car because it reminded her of good times. Frances Tandon was the only woman who could make driving over a pothole, at speed, fun. Ella, however, never drove at speed.
The last time she heard from Leo Patterson was April. She and Arlo had been trying to contact him since the crash but neither had got a response. Then, out of the blue, he sent her this long email. He called her a slut and a tease and told her about the fight he and Arlo had been having when the car left the road. They’d been fighting about her and this was what had distracted Charlie Whitehead. She was the reason they’d crashed. She, he wrote, was the reason Mike was dead.
Sometimes, when she was driving, she thought about this so much that she could no longer be sure she was in control of the car. So, she’d pull over and do something else. Today, sitting in the Lidl car park, she’d called her grandmother.
Then she sat back, listened to loud hip hop and watched as Lorna Farrell, one of her mother’s many frenemies, rolled a trolley laden with jumbo packs of toilet paper, shopping bags, several skeletons and a cauldron out of the supermarket in a pair of oversized sunglasses and a large floppy sunhat.
Ella gave an involuntary shiver. She checked the thermometer on the dashboard.
It was seven degrees outside.
12
••••••
Afew weeks ago, Maeve went to a sleepover at Amelia Franklin’s house. She was so excited to be asked, it didn’t matter that every girl in the class had got an invitation. Christine hadn’t slept properly that night. She kept waiting for the call telling her Maeve was homesick and sobbing in the Franklins’ bathroom or walk-in wardrobe and to come get her. But her phone never rang. Maeve had a great time and arrived home the following morning with a goodie bag for herself and some interior design suggestions for her parents. Their nice but not particularly remarkable semi-D could do with more. More marble, more rooms, more gym equipment, and definitely more chandeliers.
‘Even one would do. We could put it in the foyer,’ the eleven-yearold had said, not a hint of irony as she gestured to the tiny damp porch with the peeling paint where the Maguires kept umbrellas, mucky shoes and Porcupine’s kitty litter.
So, while Christine hadn’t been inside Beverley’s home since they were children, and she’d lived somewhere a lot less glamorous than this, she had an idea of what to expect.
The winding staircase, expansive foyer and entirely marble kitchen were all as to be expected from a neo-classical, nouveau riche home. Not that the Franklins were new to money – they’d made their fortune in printing two generations back and were as close to a dynasty as West Cork came – but Beverley was. The ostentatious light fixtures and shoe room – where Christine reluctantly left her ankle boots – were also predictable. Indeed, nothing in the vast pile took Christine by surprise until Beverley put her sitting at one of three marble breakfast bars and continued to yammer on about how her daughter had been wronged. As she glanced back across the floor, convinced her threadbare ankle socks had left sweat marks on the gleaming slabs, she spotted the fish.
An artificial pond, measuring about 3ft by 3ft and topped with a glass ceiling, had been built into the kitchen floor. Two colourful fish were swishing around the water feature, which had been made flush with the marble slabs. It was so decadent and so surprising – nothing about Beverley said ‘quirky’ – that all journalistic enquiries and representations on behalf of her daughter flew from her mind. All she wanted to ask was, Why?
‘Apologies,’ said Beverley, interrupting her own lengthy diatribe, the gist of which was: sexting is bad; Woody Whitehead is worse. ‘My mind is in a million places. Would you like a coffee?’
‘Sure, but I can make it.’ Christine slid down from her stool. ‘Where do you keep—’
‘Alexa,’ said Beverley, so sternly and decisively that Christine was sure the woman had forgotten her name despite being classmates for eight years, ‘make coffee.’
A flicking switch echoed through the uncluttered room and on the countertop (also marble) over beside the silver oven, a stainless-steel coffeemaker started to gurgle.
Beverley pressed a cupboard door that, up to this point, Christine had assumed was a wall. The thing popped open and she removed two mugs.
‘It’s not even really about Amelia. Well, it is, of course, but I’m not worried about her, not in any greater sense. She’s confident, you know, very talented, her own person. Have you seen her Instagram page? She’s going to go far. I’m more worried about what this says about Glass Lake and that Principal Patterson doesn’t seem to care. What might the Whitehead boy get some other young girl to do, someone more impressionable, with less attentive parents? Not everyone is as well-adjusted as Amelia. And we all know what the father was like. A drunk. You know about the crash, right? Out on Reilly’s Pass?’
Christine nodded. Everyone knew about the crash. She had reported on it. She’d also written about Mike Roche’s horrendously sad funeral and Charlie Whitehead’s sentencing. Derek was livid when he pleaded guilty immediately – ‘Do you know what a local manslaughter trial does for newspaper sales?!’ – but Christine was glad they’d been spared a court case. It had been a grim few months in Cooney as it was. The Southern Gazette received a lot of letters and emails from people calling for the Whiteheads to be run out of town. Christine had chosen not to publish them. Connie Whitehead was getting a hard enough time of it in the real world without having to see the hatred in print. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t been slightly concerned when Maeve was put sitting beside Woody Whitehead at the beginning of the school year. But Maeve liked Woody, and Charlie’s children were as much victims as anyone else. Plus, she’d googled it, and according to some study in Arizona, a criminal mind was not hereditary.
‘So,’ Beverley continued, ‘you wouldn’t exactly keel over from shock if his sons turned out not to be the greatest citizens either, would you? An expulsion would be the quickest, fairest and most discreet solution, but Principal Patterson just isn’t on the ball like she used to be. I think she needs it pointed out to her that Woody is not the kind of student we want at Glass Lake.’ She yapped on and on, her perfectly manicured feet stepping on the fishbowl’s glass cover as she crossed the kitchen, turned on the cold-water faucet and filled a jug. ‘I watched Woody at pick-up today – nobody there to collect him, quelle surprise – and you can tell, just by looking at him… It’s his expression, or the way he walks or something. It’s weird. He’s weird. You know when you can just tell?’
Christine half felt like sticking up for the boy. Maeve made Woody sound like a sweet if slightly peculiar kid. The peculiarity was probably why they got on so well. And who was to say Amelia hadn’t started the whole thing?
Still. Sexting.
Even the word was unpleasant. It was like something a snake might say before it lobbed its head forward and gave you a fatal bite. Ssss-exting. Kids would be kids; but she wasn’t so sure she wanted them ‘being kids’ while sitting beside her overly naïve daughter.
Beverley put a jug – complete with mint leaves and slices of cucumber – and a glass tumbler in front of Christine. ‘Nuala Patterson wouldn’t even entertain the notion of expelling him. She basically said if he went, Amelia was going too. She threatened me, essentially. You’d think the Whiteheads would be her least favourite Cooney residents, given what happened to her son, but I guess I still win out. And that’s it. It’s a fait accompli,’ she said, sounding out each syllable. ‘Who made her judge and jury of Glass Lake?’
The Department of Education, thought Christine, as the goldfish continued to whip their tails around the dimly lit rectangle. Was it soundproofed? Could fish even hear? And how did they get the food into them?
‘He is not the kind of student we want at Glass Lake,’ Beverley said for what must have been the fourth time now. ‘We don’t want a junior pornographer representing us on national television, for God’s sake. I don’t know if you’ve heard, Christine, but I’ve got this year’s musical onto The Big Children’s Talent Show.’
‘I did hear that, actually, at the Strand this morning,’ said Christine, pulling her attention away from the fishbowl and back to the rather tedious conversation. This was her chance. ‘Well done. Seriously. It’s such an impressive achievement. It’s great to have Glass Lake represented on the national broadcaster.’ Christine lifted the tumbler to her mouth and resisted the urge to blink. She needed to convey she was genuine – and not just a genuine suck-up.
‘You were at the Strand this morning?’
She nodded as she swallowed. ‘Mm-hmm.’
Beverley leaned forward. ‘How did Lorna break the news about the TV appearance? Did she make it clear I was the one who organised the whole thing? Because I was. Her only idea was to send the director general of RTÉ one of her weekly thank-you cards. Have you ever got one of those? Awful things. Now that her husband’s a councillor, she stamps the back of the envelopes with the Cork County Council crest. If you ever see one coming in the letterbox, bin it straight away. It doesn’t matter how good your cleaner is, she’ll never get the glitter out of your carpet.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘I was the one who—’
‘I was actually at the Strand to talk to you,’ Christine interrupted, unwilling to let the conversation move on. ‘About the musical, as it happens. Maeve wants to work on costumes. She’s very enthusiastic and she has loads of ideas already. I gave her name to Lorna Farrell but I’m not sure she heard me …’
‘Lorna Farrell is a lapdog,’ said Beverley dismissively. ‘That’s fine. Maeve Maguire for costumes. I’ll remember. Woody, though, Woody is a lead.’
Christine let her shoulders drop. ‘Great,’ she enthused.
‘Excuse me?’
‘No, I mean, about Maeve, great. Just about Maeve.’
Beverley put her hand to chest. ‘He’s playing the lion. My God, I hadn’t even thought about that. How does Nuala Patterson expect me to work with him now? No way. Absolutely no way.’ She lifted the coffee pot and poured. Even the Franklins’ technology could only do so much. ‘For the sake of everyone in Cooney, he needs to be named.’
If one of the fish died, was there a way of getting the carcass out? Or did it just lie there decomposing under the LED lights until construction professionals came and pulled the whole thing apart? The Franklins had this place built, so presumably the fishbowl was their idea. It was just so hard to imagine that when they were drawing up the designs for the kitchen – plug socket here, gas line there – they’d thought to draw a little rectangle and write ‘Fake Indoor Pond’.
‘Named publicly,’ clarified Beverley. ‘As in, in the Southern Gazette.’
‘We can’t name him,’ said Christine, as firmly as she could. ‘I can write the piece without names, as I think my editor explained. But Woody’s a minor. We’ve got to be careful around that. We wouldn’t name Amelia either.’
‘Well, of course you wouldn’t name Amelia. She didn’t do anything wrong.’
Christine took a slow sip of her coffee. ‘Delicious. Thank you.’
‘So, fine, no names. I don’t think it’ll take much for people to guess, anyway. Who else would it be?’
Beverley was deluded if she thought people would only be interested in the male party. Cooney was a small town. Christine ignored Derek’s voice screaming in her head – ‘Outrage Makes a Front Page! Outrage Makes a Front Page!’ – and said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this, Beverley? Children do silly things. Before she reaches adulthood, I’m sure Amelia will have done a lot worse.’
In her head, this sounded empathetic, comforting even, but from the expression on Beverley’s face, it was clear that was not how it came out.
‘Has your daughter done a lot worse than this?’
‘No,’ said Christine, before quickly adding, ‘Not that I know of. But I mean, possibly.’ She wanted to say that Maeve didn’t have a phone but thought it might sound like she was gloating, which she was a bit. ‘It’s a full-time job, worrying about kids,’ she said instead. ‘My eldest is a vegan who doesn’t like vegetables, so I have nightmares about her being diagnosed with scurvy and me having to explain myself to a team of doctors. And my youngest says everything that comes into his head. He goes up to complete strangers and asks why their face is so red or tells big burly truckers that his mom says tattoos are for criminals. I have disowned him in public more times than I care to admit. And Maeve’ – Christine chortled. She talked fast as she tried to coax Beverley around – ‘Maeve has to confess every bad thing that enters her head. She regularly tells me she worries she wouldn’t be sad if I died, and I just have to smile and say it’s fine. And then we’ve got this cat who abandoned us for a neighbour and …’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway, trust me, it’s a lot. My family, I mean. Not yours.’
Beverley’s bottom lip protruded, and her eyebrows lifted. (And they did go up, even though her forehead didn’t budge. Whoever did her Botox was very good.) ‘Thank you for the concern, but I know what I’m doing.’
When they were at school, Christine had been paired with Beverley for a project on the Titanic. They were meant to go to Christine’s house to work on it, but her mom got food poisoning, so they had to go to Beverley’s over in Aberstown instead. It had been nothing like this place. As Christine recalled, they’d been given big plates of chips for dinner, which Beverley insisted they eat in her room while the rest of her family ate together downstairs. Beverley had shared a bedroom with two older sisters who painted their nails and taped songs off the radio. Christine, who never had chips for dinner and was an only child, thought it was amazing, but when her dad came to collect her, Beverley made her promise not to tell anyone in school about her house. They’d got on well working on the project, but they never hung out again after that. As an adult, she got that Beverley had been embarrassed, but she’d never understood of what.
