The People Next Door Read online

  So she’d taken the plunge one evening when Clara was out with Barry. She’d entered her details, called herself Deirdre (her second name, so not completely made up), paid her three-month subscription (much cheaper than she’d been expecting) and sat back nervously to see what would happen.

  Nothing had, for the first few days. She felt a bit put out when she logged on, entered her password and saw ‘no new messages’ coming up on the screen. Was she expected to make the first move? No, that was definitely beyond her – she’d die rather than send an email to a complete stranger and risk him ignoring it. If anyone was expecting her to take the initiative, he’d have a long wait.

  And then, four days after she’d joined, she got her first message. It was from Easyrider, and it came right to the point.

  ‘I like doing older women.’

  She checked his profile and discovered he was twenty-two – a year younger than Clara. She deleted his message and wondered if she’d get her money back if she contacted the site management.

  But the next night there was a message from Peter39.

  ‘Hello there. I read your profile and I was wondering if you’d like to chat.’

  According to his information, he was a year younger than her. He put ‘professional’ as his occupation. He enjoyed good wine and old films. He had no children, had never been married. He lived in the country. For his ideal first date, he had written: I would like the lady to choose so that she would be relaxed.

  Yvonne’s reply took her twenty minutes.

  ‘Hello, Peter. Nice to hear from you. Yes, I’d enjoy a chat. Tell me a little more about yourself.’

  Not too eager. Friendly and casual. Giving him the opportunity to talk about himself – weren’t men supposed to like that?

  He replied the following night. He told her he was from abroad and that he’d come to Ireland a few years ago to pursue a personal relationship that hadn’t worked out, but had stayed on afterwards because he liked the Irish way of life.

  Yvonne told him she was widowed with one daughter. She said she was sorry his relationship had failed and felt slightly guilty for the lie.

  He sympathised with her about her husband’s death. He told her he regretted not having children. He said he enjoyed being with his nieces and nephew whenever he got a chance to see them, which wasn’t often. He added that he was interested in hill walking and sailing.

  She told him she’d done some hill walking a few years ago, but hadn’t found it very enjoyable because of the bad weather. She didn’t add that she’d joined the hill walking club in the hope of meeting new men and had left when it became clear that all the remotely interesting ones were married.

  He told her he was a Capricorn.

  She told him she was a Pisces.

  He told her he couldn’t cook, but that he liked spicy food.

  She sent him a very simple recipe for stir-fried beef with ginger.

  He said—

  ‘Yvonne?’

  She whirled around, feeling like a guilty schoolgirl. Pawel stood in his doorway. ‘Just to let you know that Mr Doherty called while you were out to cancel his Thursday appointment. He’ll ring again to reschedule.’

  ‘Right – I’ll make a note.’ Yvonne pulled the appointments book towards her. The surgery door closed behind her with a soft click. Pawel didn’t believe in making unnecessary noise. Just as well he didn’t believe in reading minds either.

  The front door of the clinic was pushed open as she was rubbing out Mr Doherty’s name and Yvonne looked up with a bright smile on her face for Mrs Nugent.

  NUMBER EIGHT

  The hat was home. It hung, as usual, on the left handlebar of Kieran’s dark blue bicycle, which leaned against the wall in the hall. Dan pulled his front door key out of the lock and listened. From the kitchen he heard the soft murmur of music – Lyric FM, when Kieran had any say – and the subdued little rustling that meant someone was moving around. He smelled fish and frying onions. Was there ever a more appetising smell than frying onions?

  His mouth watered as he draped his jacket over the bicycle’s saddle and rested his umbrella on the carrier. Handy, having someplace to put everything.

  He’d meant, ever since he and Ali had moved in, to attach a row of hooks to the wall, something to take the jackets and keys, but typically he’d never got around to it, had been happy to drape his jacket over the banisters, to drop his keys on the bottom stair, much to Ali’s annoyance. But now there was the bicycle, which Kieran used much more than his car, and it did the job perfectly. Dan tried to imagine Ali’s face if she saw a slightly battered (but still perfectly serviceable) bike propped against the wall in her hall.

  Not her hall now, of course. He opened the kitchen door.

  ‘Ah, there you are.’ Kieran’s face was lightly flushed. He wore a yellow and blue striped apron over his usual corduroys and rumpled T-shirt. His hair was rumpled too – he got considerably more dishevelled when he cooked. Picasso lifted his head and eyed Dan from the kitchen chair. Dan eyed him back. A truce, he supposed you’d call it, what he and Picasso had now. Dan turned a blind eye to the cat in the kitchen and Picasso didn’t venture any further into the house – at least, not while Dan was around.

  ‘It’ll be fifteen minutes.’ Kieran adjusted the oven temperature. The kitchen was filled with the most appetising aromas and the sink was piled high with saucepans, wooden spoons of various sizes, and bowls.

  ‘Grand.’ Dan considered tackling the saucepans, then decided they could wait. ‘I’ll have a shower so.’

  Nothing had been agreed between them. No official arrangement had been made or even suggested, but almost three weeks into his tenancy, Kieran was most definitely the cook, and Dan had no objection.

  He’d never eaten so well. He couldn’t cook to save his life and Ali hadn’t been much better. Between them, they’d lived off a combination of frozen meals and takeaways, with the occasional leathery chicken or charred steak if one of them had taken a notion to attempt a meal.

  Since Ali’s disappearance, Dan had avoided the takeaways where they were both so well known, and had lost his appetite for the frozen pizzas and chicken kormas. His evening meals had settled into a pattern, usually involving something out of a tin and either eggs or sausages. Nothing that had to be peeled or chopped, nothing that took more than five minutes to cook. A small saucepan and a frying pan were all he needed.

  On his first evening in the house, Kieran had poached a salmon steak, boiled new potatoes and steamed spinach; he had whisked flour, milk and dill into melted butter to make a creamy sauce that he drizzled over his fish. In fifteen minutes he had produced a meal that would have taken Dan forever and probably still would not have been edible.

  Dan had wrapped a slice of white bread around two sausages. ‘That looks good.’ He tried not to stare at the plate opposite him. He loved salmon, hadn’t had it in ages.

  Kieran cut into the pale orange flesh. ‘I like to cook, always have.’ He loaded his fork with spinach. ‘Just taught myself as I went along, really.’ He dipped the fork into a puddle of sauce.

  Dan’s sausage sandwich could have done with some of that sauce. ‘I don’t go in much for cooking.’

  ‘No?’ Kieran speared a little potato. ‘It’s not for everyone, I suppose.’

  Dan unrolled his bread, slathered ketchup in and took another bite. It tasted slightly better. ‘Good skill to have, though.’

  ‘It is.’ Kieran cut another chunk of fish. ‘It’s handy alright.’

  Dan chewed and swallowed. Against such competition, his sausages had completely lost their appeal. Maybe they should eat dinner at different times. Maybe they could set up a rota for the kitchen so Dan wouldn’t be tormented.

  The following evening, Kieran grilled a pork chop, boiled some baby sweetcorn and sugarsnap peas and gently stewed a chopped Bramley apple.

  Dan fried two eggs, opened a tin of beans and made a mug of tea. Kieran drank water.

  The tantalising smell
of perfectly cooked pork wafted around the kitchen. Dan needed a distraction. ‘Are your parents still alive?’ Might as well find out a bit about the man he’d taken into his house.

  ‘Both gone.’ Kieran cut into his chop and added a helping of apple sauce. ‘Father died of TB when he was young, I don’t remember him at all, and Mother got a stroke that killed her eventually. I looked after her as long as I could, but I had to put her in a home at the end.’

  ‘You were an only child?’

  ‘I was. Father died before they had a chance to have any more, and Mother never remarried.’

  The night after that, Kieran told Dan he’d sold the family home to finance the nursing home fees for his mother. ‘I didn’t need a big house to myself. Took a lease on a little flat above a hardware shop. It hardly felt like a move – I was less than a mile from the house. Mother only lasted two years in the home, though.’

  Dan tried hard to keep his eyes off the plump chicken breast on Kieran’s plate. The golden wedges of potato, the carrot batons shiny with butter. ‘You never bought another house after she died?’ He lifted his tuna and onion sandwich. A blob of salad cream slid out and plopped onto the table.

  Kieran shook his head. ‘I could have, but … I don’t know, I’d got used to the flat by then, it suited me fine. Although I did miss a garden – it’s nice to have it here.’ He took a sip of water. ‘I find something appealing about not being tied to a property. I like having my options open.’

  He cut into the chicken. Dan’s eyes flicked down to the succulent flesh.

  Also, I figured that since I’ve got no dependants, what was the point of leaving anything behind me? I’d have no one to leave it to.’

  While that made perfect sense to Dan, he found the notion unsettling. Would he be thinking like that in twenty years’ time? Would he decide to sell this house at some stage, find a little flat to rent and live off the money because there was no one to leave anything to when he died? He scooped up the salad cream blob and transferred it to his plate.

  Kieran eyed the half-eaten sandwich. ‘I’m thinking of doing a fish pie tomorrow night, but it’s as easy to do it for two as for one. Would you be bothered at all?’

  Dan did his best to look only mildly interested. ‘That sounds good, as long as you let me get the ingredients. What would you need?’

  From then on, Kieran had produced most of the evening meals and Dan kept the fridge stocked. Dan didn’t offer to cook and Kieran didn’t suggest it. After dinner Dan did the washing up and Kieran went out to the patio to smoke his one cigar of the day. It was the perfect arrangement.

  Over the course of a few more dinner conversations – the only time, really, that they were together – it emerged that Kieran had worked as a reporter for years in various parts of the country. ‘I wrote for a number of different provincial papers, everything from obits to sports results. I moved around a fair bit.’

  ‘But you grew up in Castlebar.’

  ‘That’s right, and Mother still lived there, so I used to go home as often as I could to keep her company. And when she got the stroke, I gave up the job I had then, which was in Athlone, and moved back to Castlebar.’ Kieran shook a wok of chopped vegetables, sprinkled soy sauce in, and everything sizzled loudly.

  ‘Back to the home place.’ Dan was sitting at the table, a can of beer in his hand. Picasso was sprawled on the floor in a square of sunlight.

  ‘That’s right. Mother needed someone with her and I didn’t like the idea of paying a stranger to do it.’

  ‘So you got another job.’

  ‘Well, I did and I didn’t. As long as I was making a move, I decided to try my hand at being my own boss. I made contact with the publications I’d worked for in the past and offered my services as a freelance contributor. I told them I’d do anything as long as I could work from home – review books, write a cookery or gardening slot, make up crosswords, that kind of thing.’ He added strips of beef to the wok and splashed in more soy.

  The salty, savoury smell wafted around the kitchen. Dan’s stomach rumbled loudly in response. He drained what was left in the can.

  Kieran shook the wok again. ‘So that’s what I’m still doing. I write a cookery column for one and review books for a few others, and in the summer I do the occasional gardening feature.’

  Book reviewer – that would explain the scatter of paperbacks in the sitting room, the bundle perched on the side of the bath, the collection on top of the fridge.

  Another evening, Dan took cutlery from a drawer, filled a jug with water. ‘You said your mother died eight years ago.’

  Kieran was whisking a sauce for their roast lamb. ‘Right. Eight years in August.’

  ‘So … you were ten years in the flat altogether?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What made you move?’ Dan took two glasses from a shelf. And why did you choose this place?’

  Kieran’s story intrigued him, as much for what wasn’t being said as for what was. There had been no mention of his ever being married or attached to anyone. And what had prompted his move to Belford, eighty miles from Castlebar? His work hadn’t changed. He hadn’t mentioned friends or family here.

  Kieran shrugged and stirred the sauce. His back was to Dan. Ah, it was just time for a change, I don’t know. And why Belford … no idea, it could have been anywhere.’ He lowered the heat under the broccoli and bent to take the lamb from the oven.

  And that was it. Not very informative, but Dan could hardly demand a fuller explanation.

  Perhaps inevitably, Dan was becoming more interested in food. In the supermarket he picked up a loaf of bread called ‘garlic and rosemary foccaccia’ and brought it home. The crust was hard, but inside it was the colour of avocado, soft and holey as a sponge, and it tasted interesting. He explored the salad section and came home with radicchio and Chinese leaves, leaving the butterhead lettuce alone. For the first time in his life he bought potted mussels and goat’s cheese.

  And then, one night, it was Kieran’s turn to ask the questions. He sprinkled salt on a baked potato and said, ‘I’m guessing you haven’t always lived on your own.’

  Dan had assumed it would come up eventually. ‘No. My marriage broke up a couple of months ago.’

  Kieran nodded. ‘Sorry to hear that. Must have been tough.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Dan dug his fork into the floury potato. ‘We were married two years.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Picasso is really her cat. She left him here.’

  ‘I see.’ Kieran looked at the cat, perched in his usual chair. ‘I gathered you’re not big on cats.’

  Dan had to smile at that. ‘Not really.’ After a while, he said, ‘It was my wife who persuaded me to go freelance. Up until we met I was working for a publisher, earning about two-thirds of what I do now.’ He’d already told Kieran about the proofreading and copyediting.

  ‘And you have the office in town.’

  ‘Yeah – gets me out of the house.’ Although calling it an office was pushing it. ‘Cubicle’ would have been more apt, or even ‘broom cupboard’.

  Every weekday morning, Dan left the house around nine and walked the short distance through Miller’s Lane to the main street. He turned left at Kennedy’s Shoe Repairs and Key Cutting, passed Clery’s newsagents, the Daisy Belle boutique, Sullivan’s pub and the Lotus Blossom restaurant. Then, less than seven minutes after leaving his house, he opened a green door and climbed two and a half flights of stairs, past the homeopath and the beauty therapist on the first floor, past the little toilet on the next half-landing, past the accountant on the second floor, past the point where the serviceable brown stair carpet ended, till all that lay ahead of him was an unpainted plywood door.

  His office was a lot smaller than his bathroom at home, with one small window that barely allowed enough daylight in, a fan heater that turned the room from freezing to tropical in under ten minutes, a table that just about held his laptop, a single chair and a phone line. It su
ited Dan perfectly.

  In theory, he could have worked at home – all he really needed was a computer and internet access – but when a friend had mentioned the little room that was going for next to nothing above his girlfriend’s cousin’s homeopathy business, just about the time Dan was thinking of going freelance, the idea had appealed to him.

  He liked the notion of going to the office like everyone else, and he was under no illusions about his lack of focus. So easy at home to wander into the kitchen for coffee, to while away half an hour over the hedge with a neighbour. The more he thought about it, the more he realised how much he needed an office.

  Ali thought the idea was ridiculous. ‘You’re paying good money for this’ – she stretched out an arm and almost made contact with the opposite wall – ‘when you can work at home for nothing?’

  Uncharacteristically, Dan had stood his ground. ‘It’s plenty big enough for what I need, and the weekly rent is less than I can earn in half a day.’

  Ali was unimpressed. ‘That’s not the point.’

  He put a hand to the back of her neck and squeezed gently. ‘I want to get out of the house, just like you.’

  ‘So go for a walk at lunchtime.’ But she didn’t pull away.

  And I’ll get a lot more work done than if I was at home.’ He tapped the pads of his fingers along the top of her spine. ‘I’ll make sure I’m home before you in the evening. I’ll pretend I was there all day.’

  Ali shared rooms with two other solicitors in Charleton, about thirty-five miles from Belford. Her commute, on a good day, was forty minutes each way. Considering that she rarely left work before six in the evening, Dan felt quite safe in making this promise.

  ‘It’s still money down the drain.’ She wasn’t happy. ‘I suppose you’ve got to sign some kind of a lease so you’ll be stuck with paying for this, even when you discover I’m right.’