Dolores stood there blinking at her.
‘Is something wrong?’ Colette asked.
‘Your husband’s on the phone,’ she said, and disappeared into the house.
Colette stepped into the hall and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello, Shaun?’
‘Don’t come to the house tomorrow,’ he said.
She looked down at the black and white tiles of the hallway and they seemed to swim away from her, to melt into a grey blur.
‘What are you talking about, Shaun?’ She tried to laugh but it came out breathless with desperation. She wrapped the cord of the telephone around her finger. ‘Has something happened?’
‘I think . . . given the circumstances . . . it would not be appropriate for you to come to the house tomorrow.’
Colette looked around her and saw Dolores standing in the living room doorway with her back to her, bouncing the baby on her hip. Every doorframe in the hallway and every picture frame she could see was fringed in gold tinsel, including the wedding photo of Donal and Dolores that hung above the hallstand. Colette turned to the wall. She gripped the receiver with both hands and pressed it close to her mouth. ‘Jesus Christ, Shaun, please have the decency to tell me what’s going on,’ she whispered.
‘I didn’t think it possible . . . I didn’t think . . . of all the things you’ve done, to ask our son to lie to me . . .’
Cartoon gunfire rang out from the television in the living room.
‘Shaun, please, just let me bring the presents out to the house in the morning, we can talk about all of this.’
‘If you had seen how upset he was . . . asking a child to keep a secret like that. What were you thinking?’ He was spitting the words out. ‘Shopping trips, and walks on the beach – you were having a right old time, weren’t you?’
‘I am not going to defend myself for needing to spend time with my—’
‘You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’
‘Shaun . . .’
‘I will thank you to stay away from the house tomorrow and not go spoiling Christmas for the boys.’
‘Shaun, you can’t keep—’ She was shouting but the line was dead and Donal was standing at the end of the hallway staring directly at her. He was half in shadow, half in the light from the kitchen. He gave one slow nod. She looked at the receiver in her hand, still so close to her face she could hear the dead tone ringing off. She hung up and turned around and Dolores was facing her now, but she was not looking at her. She was staring at the tiles where Colette saw that she’d left muddy footprints all the way from the door to the phone.
‘I’m sorry, Dolores,’ she said, and she hated the sound of her voice, smothered in its own soft obsequiousness. She walked slowly to the door, her feet making a squelching noise in her sopping plimsolls. She looked up at the cottage and saw the roof of her car just visible above the wall, and she thought about grabbing her keys and driving out to Shaun. She would confront him. They would have this out. A wind caught the cord of her dressing gown and lifted it and she looked down at her wet feet. She remembered then that she’d been drinking. How much she could not say, but too much to get in a car and arrive on the doorstep for a fight with her husband that would likely frighten their eleven-year-old son.
But none of this made sense to her. When she had last seen Carl in Enniskillen, he had seemed so happy and content, and he would have been looking forward to her coming the next day.
‘Will you close that door, you’re letting the heat out,’ Dolores said.
‘Dolores, I need to make a phone call.’
Colette heard her tut – the gall of the woman.
‘You’re making a wild lot of phone calls recently. I might have to start charging you for that,’ Dolores said.
Colette ignored her and lifted the receiver. She knew the number off by heart.
‘31470 – who’s speaking, please?’ Izzy answered in that pretentious way of hers, the shrill little uplift at the end of the question.
‘Did you tell him?’ Colette demanded.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Did you tell him?’ Each word was fired from her mouth.
‘What are you going on about, Colette?’
‘Shaun knows. He knows about all of it. He said it was Carl who told him but somebody else must have said something. We were supposed to see each other tomorrow, why would he go blabbing to his father now?’
‘Oh, Colette,’ Izzy said.
‘Was it you who told him?’
Izzy sighed. ‘Well, as God is my witness, I never said a word to him, and what desire would I have to go bringing trouble into someone’s house on Christmas Eve?’
‘Well, all I know is that I was supposed to be spending tomorrow with my sons and now I’m banned from my own house.’
‘But you knew the child was going to say something eventually.’
‘I knew no such thing.’
‘Colette – I don’t know what to say to you. Go home and sober up.’
Her throat felt hot then, so many words trying to crowd their way into her mouth.
‘Colette, I’m not an idiot – anyone would know from talking to you that you have drink taken. Get some rest. Have you enough food in the house for tomorrow?’
