Joe had gone out. After I said I didn’t want to celebrate the scan results he got the hump and we exchanged words in the hospital car park. He said he was only trying to cheer me up and called me a doom-and-gloom merchant.
He yanked the lock off his bike and shook his head. “You used to be such a laugh.”
“So did you.” I clutched my car keys tight. “Until you became one of the dull-as-fuck Lycra lads.”
He hopped on his bike and rode off in anger, narrowly missing a bollard on his way out.
When I got in, he’d left a note saying he was going out for a drink with a crowd from the cycling club. The other day he’d mentioned that one of them had recently become a dad and they were planning a pub crawl to wet the baby’s head.
Dusk was falling. Despite the squally weather earlier, there were signs of spring in the garden. I could just about make out the milky-white snowdrops by the apple tree and a bunch of flame-coloured tulips had appeared in the flower bed. I’d also spotted a swallow on the telegraph wire earlier and the daffodils Karen had helped me plant the previous year were in full bloom.
I hadn’t heard from her since my visit that morning after the fundraiser. Though I was reluctant to tell Joe about Dad’s letter, I was desperate to tell her. Not that long ago I’d have simply turned up on her doorstep waving the letter in the air like an excited child. She’d have pulled me through the door and we’d have examined every word for hours over glasses of wine. She’d never tell me to leave well alone like Joe would. But something held me back from sharing my news with her. Fear of her indifference, mainly. I was scared she would feign interest and I’d come away feeling I was wasting her time. It saddened me to think that after all our years of friendship things should come to this.
I clicked my nails impatiently on my wineglass. Despite Joe working in IT we had the world’s slowest internet connection. I finished the last of my wine then headed to the fridge for more. Our gigantic American fridge that Joe had insisted on buying was half the size of the galley kitchen in our last house in Old Trafford. I closed the door of the fridge and surveyed the room. The glass-box kitchen extension, the sprawling Habitat corner sofa, granite worktop and underfloor heating. I constantly had to pinch myself. Did I, Carmel Doherty, who was raised with no central heating and a pay-as-you-go meter, really live here? In a three-storey town house with a loft conversion and wine cellar on one of the most desirable roads in Chorlton?
Our last house in Cranley Road in Old Trafford was a two-up two-down new build. It had damp, paper-thin walls and noisy Geordie bikers for neighbours. Alan and Shelley were large and hirsute with matching dragon tattoos. They were pleasant enough but they revved their Harley Davidsons at all hours and had lots of loud theatrical sex. Times were tough for me and Joe back then. He’d not long been made redundant from his IT job with a banking firm after the 2008 crash. Interest rates were rocketing so I had to teach evenings and days at three different colleges for a low hourly wage to pay the mortgage. Joe hated being at home and got very down about it all. But the one good thing about living in Old Trafford was Karen. She was a five-minute walk away and came round a lot. I got to spend time with my gorgeous goddaughter but not enough to make me want kids of my own. Karen’s positivity was a ray of sunshine back then. I don’t know what I’d have done without her. Then one June morning in 2009 when Joe got a phone call from his dad in London and everything changed.
For half a century Joe’s parents, Peggy and Paddy, lived a quiet existence in an unremarkable street in Greenwich. Peggy was a retired midwife who busied herself making pottery in her shed and working with South London Irish Community Care. Paddy was a large florid-faced and gently spoken man with a mischievous sense of humour and his own building firm. They visited us regularly and we visited them. I loved them dearly. They were simply a joy to be around.
It was a sunny June afternoon when Peggy got off the bus in Greenwich High Road after visiting her friend Marjorie in Lewisham hospital. As she stepped out into the road, she was hit by a speeding car driven by teenage joy riders. She died of serious head wounds the next day. A month later Paddy died of a massive cardiac arrest. Many attributed it to a broken heart, such was his devotion to Peggy. A few months later Joe and I scattered their ashes in Skibbereen in County Cork, where they used to go courting before they came to England. Joe sat on a nearby rock and wept for a long time, one of the few times in our marriage I’d ever seen him cry.
Peggy and Paddy bought their Edwardian terrace in 1972. Paddy built upwards and backwards, hoping to fill it with children. But they were blessed with just one. A year after they died, it sold for just over a million. Joe was hammered for inheritance tax but there was still enough left for us to leave Cranley Close and buy our dream home in Chorlton outright. I couldn’t believe it was happening. I’d never had any money in my life. Shortly after we moved in, Joe got a job
