The Restaurant Read online

She decides it will do. She folds the pages and pulls an envelope from the recycle bag, the one the gas company sent the last bill in. She’s not a letter-writer – what would she be doing with envelopes? Writing their address brings a mental image of the house where she grew up, like it does every time she sends them Christmas and birthday cards.

  She can see it, clear as anything – the white façade with its many windows, the blue shutters (are they still blue?) and wrought-iron balconies, the immaculate lawn in front – and all of it leaves her completely unmoved. It was, and undoubtedly still is, a beautiful house, but it never felt like a home, not in the way Gerry’s little house does, not in the way Josephine’s son’s house felt, all those years ago.

  She closes the envelope with the help of Lottie’s glue stick, and slips it into her bag. She’ll mail it on her way home from lunch at The Food of Love tomorrow – she’ll come home the long way, by the post office. Emily will be happy when she tells her. Heather, on the other hand, won’t be happy until – unless – she hears from her folks. Had to be done sometime, though. Had to lob that ball into their court and wait for them to lob it back, or walk away.

  When she goes into the restaurant the following day she finds Astrid already installed at the oval table. Heather slips into a chair next to her. ‘Hello, stranger. All better now?’

  ‘Yes, all better – and thank you for your help.’

  ‘I didn’t do much, a few phone calls. You sure you’re OK now?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Astrid replies – but she looks so fragile. She’s like the grandmother Heather never had – well, not that she didn’t have them: she had two, still has one, but growing up she rarely saw them. Her Dad’s mom spent more time in rehab than out of it, more interested in drinking the family wine than selling it, until it finally killed her before Heather’s tenth birthday. Her mom’s mom moved to Italy with her third husband while Heather was still a tot: Heather hasn’t set eyes on her in years.

  Her train of thought reminds her of the letter still in her bag. When Emily appears, Heather takes it out and shows it to her. ‘You’ll be pleased to hear I’m breaking the news to my folks.’

  ‘About Lottie?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  Heather looks at Astrid. ‘I never told them I had a kid.’

  Astrid stares at her. ‘You never told them? How old is Lottie?’

  ‘Eight on Friday.’

  ‘You’ve kept her from them for eight years,’ Astrid says wonderingly. No hint of judgement in her voice, but Heather suddenly hears how cruel it sounds.

  She returns the letter to her bag. ‘Listen, you guys don’t know them: they didn’t exactly win any parenting awards. I know I should have come clean at the start, but I had to get my own head around it. I was seventeen, far from home, deserted by the father.’ She pauses, remembering the high emotion of the time. ‘It was a hell of a thing to happen. And then, the longer I left it, the harder it got. At least now I’m making it right.’

  A beat passes.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be glad,’ Astrid says.

  ‘Wish I could be as sure. Fingers crossed.’

  Emily takes her order and disappears. Heather wonders if there’s been a follow-up to the meeting with her ex in the park. It went OK, Emily said, when she phoned Heather afterwards. We had a chat. He – explained a bit, and he apologised.

  Are you going to see him again?

  … I don’t know. Maybe. He’d like to be friends.

  And what would you like?

  I’m not sure.

  And that was nearly two weeks ago. She hasn’t mentioned him since, and Heather hasn’t pried. Playing with fire, Heather would call it, having anything at all to do with the man who left her at the altar. Still clearly feels something for him, or she’d have torn his letter into pieces, ignored his phone call when it came.

  Astrid leaves shortly afterwards, in a taxi that Emily phoned for. Heather passes the remainder of her time in conversation with the elderly man who takes Astrid’s place, and who tells her that his wife is visiting her sister in England.

  ‘She goes once a month,’ he says, ‘and spends a few days. I know it’s great for them to get together, but I miss her when she’s not around. The place is too quiet without her.’

  ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘Forty-seven years in November.’

  Forty-seven years. Almost half a century since he walked her down the aisle, and still he misses her when they’re apart. Heather wonders if Manfred missed her at all after he scooted back to Germany, or if he ever thinks of the child he fathered.

  ‘Heather.’

  She turns to see Emily’s brother taking a chair across the table. ‘Daniel, hi there.’

  They’d met on the restaurant’s opening night, and several times since then. He seems to like variety in his female companions, rarely appearing with the same one twice. She regards today’s, young and dark-haired.

  And familiar.

  ‘Nora,’ she says. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

  The girl offers a shy smile as she takes her seat. ‘Hi, Heather. How’s it going?’

  The last time Heather saw her – saw her properly, as opposed to catching an occasional glimpse of her outside the school gates – Nora was a child of eleven or twelve. The face has since become a little leaner, the chubbiness shed, the hair cut in a new style, tight to her head on one side, longer on the other – but the eyes, and the soft, hesitant smile, are precisely the same.

  Nora turns to Daniel, her hand moving to cover his on the table, as naturally as a wife might brush a piece of lint from her husband’s lapel. ‘Heather was my grandfather’s carer before he died,’ she tells him. ‘We used to visit him.’

  ‘Small world. You haven’t seen one another since?’

  ‘I’ve spotted you a couple of times,’ Heather says, directing this to Nora, ‘when you’ve collected Jack from school.’

  ‘Oh, really? I didn’t see you.’

  She didn’t see her because Heather took care to hang back, unwilling to engage. Not that Nora, an innocent child at the time, was to blame for any of it; she was just from the wrong family.

  ‘I’ve met Lottie,’ she says, ‘at Jack’s birthday parties. She’s very sweet.’

  ‘Thank you. I think so.’ Probably wondering why Heather never showed up to the parties.

  ‘I remember her as a tiny baby. You called her Charlotte then.’

  ‘I did.’ Heather recalls how enchanted the girl was with the new arrival. Can I hold her? she’d ask, and Heather would sit her on a kitchen chair and transfer Lottie carefully into her arms, as her parents sat upstairs with Gerry and pretended that Lottie didn’t exist.

  ‘I always loved Grandad’s house,’ Nora says. ‘I loved, I don’t know, the feel of it, or something. I used to imagine—’ She breaks off, gives a half-laugh. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘You know I bought it, don’t you?’ Heather asks.

  Nora stares at her. She appears genuinely astonished. ‘What? You bought it? No, I never knew that. I can’t believe it.’

  She wasn’t told. Of course she wasn’t told. That little nugget would have been omitted from the family history, along with the fact that Gerry had originally left the property to Heather. When it came up for sale, around the time her trust fund dropped into her bank account, it was like a sign that couldn’t be ignored. Heather could have afforded something a lot bigger, a lot grander, but that was the house Gerry had wanted her to have. That was where she and Lottie were meant to live.

  ‘I used to wonder who bought it,’ Nora says. ‘I’ve never gone back to the street – I was afraid the house would look different, and I didn’t want to see that. I’m so glad to hear it was you.’

  Heather remembers walking into the estate agent’s and pointing out the house on his list, and saying she was interested in buying it. You’d like a viewing? he asked, and Heather told him she would not. I know what it looks like, sh
e said. I want to buy it. How much will it cost to take it off the market?

  She waited while he made a phone call. She listened to his side of the conversation, which told her nothing at all. He hung up and told her that the owner would sell for ten thousand more than the asking price, which was still peanuts when she thought of how many zeros featured in her new financial bottom line. Fine, she said. How do you want to do it? He asked her for a deposit: she handed over her credit card. A week later, having expedited the legal pathway – money, she discovered, magically shortened waiting times – she paid the balance and signed the contract.

  Fastest house sale in history, the agent told her, giving her the keys. I hope you’ll be happy there.

  I will, she replied, and she was. She is.

  They must have been dumbfounded when her identity as the buyer was revealed. They must have been dying to know where she’d got the money. She imagined them trying to puzzle out how Gerry’s young carer, who’d had the audacity to get pregnant while in his employ, had come up with the funds. It used to give her a kick, imagining their curiosity, and knowing that it would never be satisfied.

  And of course Nora would likely have been unaware too that Heather and Lottie had been ordered from the house in the immediate aftermath of Gerry’s death. That information wouldn’t have been shared with the children. Nora would have assumed, if she’d considered it at all, that they’d left of their own accord.

  Heather is struck by a thought. ‘Jack is invited to Lottie’s birthday party on Friday.’ Only because not issuing an invitation to Lottie’s best buddy had been out of the question. ‘You could bring him – and you’d get to see the house again.’ And it would mean not having to face Yvonne – or worse, Shane. Heather had been bracing herself for an encounter, but maybe now it could be avoided. ‘Three o’clock, if you’re free.’

  The girl’s face lights up. ‘I am free. I don’t start work till six on Friday, and I’d love it – thanks so much!’

  The perfect solution. Heather should have thought of it sooner. ‘So where do you work?’

  ‘Well, I’m part time at the cinema, but I’m doing a correspondence course in journalism. Nearly finished, actually.’

  ‘Great. And you still live at home with your parents?’

  Her smile dims. ‘Well, not exactly. I’m still at home, but Mum and Dad split up last summer.’

  ‘Oh – gosh. I’m sorry to hear that.’

  Split up, which would explain why he was in The Food of Love on his own. So the happy couple – who never, now that she comes to think of it, seemed all that happy when she saw them together – have gone their separate ways.

  ‘They share custody of Jack,’ Nora says. ‘Eoin and I … well, we generally stay put with Dad.’

  Eoin, that was the name of the older boy. He’s been at the school gates too. Heather would hardly have recognised him if she hadn’t seen Jack running over to him, the small, freckly boy she remembered transformed now into a long-limbed teen in a leather jacket. Hair the same auburn shade, but longer and messier. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Good,’ she says, brightening. ‘He’s doing really well, just finished Transition Year. He’s had a paper round forever – he says he’s saving up for a sports car. Dad says over his dead body.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ Interesting that the older children have opted to live with their father. Interesting, but none of her business. She gets to her feet. ‘Well, time for me to disappear. See you Friday – tell Eoin I said hello.’

  ‘I will. Say hi to Lottie.’

  On the way home she posts the letter to her folks, and immediately puts it from her mind to focus on the party, just two days away. Roughly a dozen kids invited, along with whichever adult accompanies them. Judging by the parties she’s attended with Lottie, some of the grown-ups will be delighted to have a couple of hours off, but others will hang around. A few of the neighbours might show too – Heather has issued a general invite. The house will be bursting at the seams, but they’ll manage.

  They do manage. The sun comes out, allowing the younger guests to migrate to the small yard at the back, onto whose flagged surface Heather has chalked a wobbly hopscotch grid. ‘Here,’ she says, distributing more fat sticks of chalk. ‘Draw on the walls – knock yourselves out.’

  The adults spill between the tiny kitchen and marginally larger living room, on chairs and windowsills and radiators. Paper plates are passed around, followed by trays of catered fancy finger food that Heather in a million years couldn’t recreate, or come close to. The kettle boils and boils again; borrowed teapots and coffee pots fill borrowed cups. Conversations are loud, and interrupted by laughter.

  At four, they summon the children inside and light the eight candles in the centre of the giant chocolate cake. Lottie blows them out and closes her eyes – and her mother knows exactly what she’s wishing for, and smiles to imagine her face when Johnny Cotter up the street appears later with a small cardboard box that has holes poked into it.

  By five, most of the guests have taken off. ‘Let me help you clean up,’ Nora offers, Jack and Lottie having migrated back to the yard to cover the last square inches of wall with chalk.

  ‘Leave it – it’ll keep. Come and see the rest of the house.’ So they climb the narrow stairs, and Heather opens the door of the room where Gerry spent much of his time while she looked after him, and where she herself now sleeps.

  ‘It’s smaller than I remember,’ Nora says, standing in the doorway.

  ‘I think things usually are, when we grow up.’

  ‘He had yellow wallpaper, didn’t he? With green flowers, or leaves or something.’

  ‘He sure did. I left it up for a couple of years, but then it started to fall down.’

  ‘They were his curtains.’

  ‘They were. They’re still perfect.’

  She looks hesitantly at Heather. ‘Can I go in?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She steps into the room and crosses to the window, and takes a fold of the navy curtains between forefinger and thumb. She looks out, her back to Heather, who leans against the door jamb. Emotional for her maybe, to revisit where he lived.

  ‘He was such a sweet man, your grandpa,’ Heather says. ‘I loved looking after him. He was always so thankful for everything I did.’

  There’s a moment of silence before Nora speaks. ‘Heather, would it be OK if I told you something?’ she asks then, without looking around.

  ‘Sure thing.’

  Another brief silence. Heather waits.

  ‘Mum, she, em—’ She turns then, and Heather sees the shine of tears in her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she says, thumbing them quickly away before they can fall. ‘I’ve never told anyone this, not even Daniel.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me. Not if you don’t want to.’

  But out it comes. Out it pours. ‘She hit him,’ Nora says, her voice trembling and low. ‘Dad. She used to hit him. I didn’t know, not for – I mean, I knew she used to get mad at him, I’d hear her shouting – but I never knew about—’ She breaks off, the tears beginning now, rolling down her face, but she doesn’t stop. ‘I’d take Eoin away somewhere when she was in a mood – I didn’t want him seeing her like that, so for ages I didn’t know, I never knew, Dad never said – and then one day I – I saw—’ She comes to another halt and clamps a hand to her mouth; Heather moves swiftly to wrap her arms around her.

  ‘You poor love,’ she says, feeling the shudder of her sobs. ‘It’s OK.’ Palming circles on her back, comforting her like she comforts Lottie. ‘It’s OK, sweetheart.’

  ‘I saw her punch him,’ Nora says, weeping, her words muffled, but Heather hears. ‘She punched him with her fist, right in the face, and he – he put his hands up, just to keep her away, and she – she kneed him, in the – and he – just doubled over, and she – she – she just kept on hitting him, and hitting him—’

  ‘Shh.’

  What a thing for a child to witness. What a thing for a wife to do t
o her husband. However dysfunctional the relationship between Heather’s own parents, she’d never seen either of them strike the other. Their frequent rows, loud and angry, had certainly been hard to endure, and the hostile silences afterwards had filled the house with tension – but how much worse it would have been if violence, physical violence, had been part of it.

  Shane was perfectly civil to her, Heather thinks, when Yvonne wasn’t around – and even when she was there he was never mean, never made Heather feel like a servant the way Yvonne did. That carpet needs vacuuming, Yvonne would say, her face tight with disapproval. When was the bathroom sink cleaned? Gerry’s hair could do with a wash. There’s dust on that skirting board.

  Yvonne was the one who rounded on Heather when she told them she was pregnant. You can pack your bags, she said – until Gerry intervened, and in his halting, post-stroke speech, made it clear that Heather was going nowhere.

  Shane held back. He didn’t get involved.

  And when Gerry died it was Yvonne, not Shane, who called around with her ultimatum, knowing that there was nobody this time to defend Heather. And of course, Heather had assumed that Shane was behind it. She’d taken it for granted that he was in favour of her being evicted – but maybe she was wrong.

  Maybe she was wrong about more, about all of it.

  ‘I used to wish I lived here,’ Nora says, drawing back, blotting her eyes with her sleeve, and Heather remembers her saying, I used to imagine in the restaurant the other day, and not going further. ‘I wished Eoin and I lived with Granddad. I felt guilty wishing it, I felt I was being mean to Dad – but I hated what went on. I was always so scared, anytime Mum was in a bad mood.’

  Why didn’t he leave her? Why didn’t he take the kids and go? Maybe he was afraid she’d get custody if they split up – wasn’t the law often biased in favour of the mother? Wasn’t she generally considered the default main carer when marriages broke down?

  For whatever reason, instead of splitting up they had another child together. Yvonne was clearly pregnant by the time Gerry died. Nothing had been said to Heather, of course, but there was no mistaking that bump. Jack’s birthday is in November, five months after Lottie’s.