I pretend to be asleep as Frank gets ready for work. I slow my breathing, mouth slightly open just for effect. The bedroom door creaks, and the light from the hallway bathes everything lemon yellow for a moment, before darkness swings back. I hear the flush of a toilet, taps cranking on, and a few minutes later, the shuffle of shoes. The front door of the apartment closes, echoing slightly, then the entire place is dawn silent.
I flop onto my back, starfish across the double bed.
The familiar heaviness creeps around me, pressing against my skin, pushing me back down.
What the hell am I doing?
Even for me, this whole thing with Frank is pretty messed up. Squinting at the time on my phone, I relish the unadulterated stillness of the pale six a.m. light to simply think. I’ve always found it easier to process life in the mornings – to sort and file all the flittery moments of the previous days or weeks. Brain admin, I call it.
Frank calls it lazy.
The baby pedals sharply against what feels like my kidney and I’m forced out from under the duvet to the chilly bathroom. I shower quickly, wincing at the sting of the hot water against stretched skin, and try to shake the gnawing anxiety that starts to grip. I know I’ve been putting off the decision for far too long.
The jacket buttons of my suit won’t do up any more, but I shouldn’t complain. I think of my little sister, Sammy, and how happy she seemed when I told her about this baby – delighted her big sister was finally going to experience the joys of motherhood. I smile when I imagine her finally being an auntie. But down at the station, I’ve spent the past few months trying to conceal my budding bump – mortified at the obviousness of my biology among a sea of dudes. As I waddle around the squad room, it is as if my giant belly is screaming, Hey look lads, Ally Fields had sexual intercourse.
In fairness, the crew at the precinct are as stereotypically male as you can imagine. Major Crime Unit is even more laddish. Not that anyone would dare say anything about Detective Sergeant Ally Fields, now I’m at this level. Well, not to my face, anyway.
Another jab. This time to the bladder. I gulp my prenatal vitamins with full-fat milk straight from the carton, scramble some eggs and eat them standing up. Then, predictably late, I rush-plait my hair in the lift. Frank scolds me for barely making time to eat from one day to the next, and yet since I’ve been pregnant, I’ve been meticulous about my diet, even stopped smoking. Maybe subconsciously I’m making up for the failures in circumstance that gave way to this baby’s fledging life. Sometimes I have to remind myself to be grateful. Because pregnancy had never been on my radar – but despite everything, it is beginning to feel surprisingly right.
But there is no glow. Not yet anyway.
The mirror in the elevator is nobody’s friend, but I look particularly washed out this morning as the lift lurches down into the basement car park of my apartment block. Pulling faces, I fluff my dark, straggly fringe a little, to distract from the bags under my eyes. A slather of burgundy lip gloss disappoints. Nobody warns you that being pregnant at forty-two drains the life from you. The glow people talk about is reserved for twenty-six-year-olds with perky tits and their mothers on speed-dial, devoted partners, and time to shop for Transformer-esque buggies. Not a single book describes bulging veins down there, or the fear of wiping every single time you use the bathroom. Or spotting – godawful word. Everyone keeps telling me how lucky I am that this finally happened. Especially at my age, they always add, like I’m some kind of medical miracle.
I am grateful, of course I am. The problem is that this isn’t how I imagined it would be. It wasn’t supposed to be this… complicated.
The car park is grey-quiet as I walk slowly towards my old black Discovery, my flats slip-slapping the concrete, the pressure of a migraine threatening behind my eyes. The space where Frank usually parks is empty and will remain empty for the next three days, giving me time to think about what I really want. If I can somehow define what exactly it is that we have between us, it might help me come to terms with this new chapter in my life. Besides, it’s my turn to think.
He’s the type to always get exactly what he wants. Admittedly, it’s what drew me to him in the first place. He said he fell for my pale complexion and inky black hair. I got that from my Cork-born dad. My mother was once a cool ice blonde. But what few know is that personality-wise, I’m all County Kerry. In fact, I got my temper from my grandmother I’d been told – a Currolough girl through and through. My own mother’s face flashes into my mind, and I blink her away. She haunts me in a way I find hard to explain.
Weaving through the empty roads, not yet rammed with morning traffic, I concentrate on controlling the nausea. But I’m still not sure if it’s the baby or the decision I realise I’m probably going to have to make.
I think of Frank’s face – the confidence, the swagger, the unobtainability of a guy like him. Six foot two, surprisingly blond, elegant – poised, as if ready to pounce. All part of the attraction, no doubt. Plus, his hands on my lower back were burning hot, even through the pink velvet ballgown the night we met. Later, after that first flash of lust, I realised it was perhaps the complications that saw me coming back to Frank time and time again. That familiarity of chaos, the whisper of mayhem that I always seem to run towards.
But is that a world where I want to raise my baby?
I dismiss the creeping dread. I can’t think about that right now.
The migraine descends as it usually does – not pain, as such, but a texture against the back of my eyes like the relentless crashing of waves. I pull on my sunglasses despite the dullness of the early morning light. The radio news buzzes, but I deliberately don’t tune in. My day will be peppered with other people’s bad news. It is my job to sort it and break it to the wide-eyed, trying to correct the wrong by making the outcome as right as I possibly can.
But these mornings, they are just for me.
I switch to Sunshine FM. Dua Lipa serenades. Dublin city yawns awake too. The morning air is laced with the usual city scents: fast-food, smog, early morning tide. I take the coast road, overtaking the rattling bin trucks and admiring the dazzle of Howth in the distance, a sliver of land wrapped around Dublin Bay like a Christmas bow. Twin shadows of the red-and-white-striped Poolbeg stacks shimmer against the water’s reflection. Early morning dog walkers silhouette against a silver horizon. I breathe it all in, every quiver and stir. Sammy thinks I love this part of Dublin because it reminds me of home. But the truth is that the loud vibrancy of this city is everything the house we grew up in wasn’t.
The baby kicks hello as I arrive at my building – a six-storey buttermilk monstrosity, all concrete and too-small PVC windows. This is Precinct 12, the docks of Dublin city, where the Garda Major Crime Unit and drug squad live. Upgrade imminent, they’d promised, every year since 2011, but nobody was holding their breath. Major Crime took over the entire sixth floor. The penthouse, we joked, but smoke breaks on the fire escape overlooking Dublin city weren’t half as bad as we made out. Better than traffic guys stuck in the basement breathing in fumes from the arterial road that ran past the River Liffey, through the heart of the city.
I root in my handbag for my key fob and the barrier to the adjacent car park creaks upwards slowly. There are only three other cars here, of which I recognise two.
Wincing from the tiny baby gymnastics low in my belly, I leave my usual offering by the sad humps of the doorway sleepers each side of the precinct steps and zap myself into the building.
In just three weeks, I’ll be out of here.
Maternity leave is an alien concept to me. All that time staring at a tiny human. In truth, the idea of not having work as a distraction makes me uncomfortable. ‘Having a baby is life-changing, Ally,’ my sister reminds me at least once a day, but the reality is that I never expected it to be this confronting.
Predictably, Clarke Casey is in already. I see the skim of his dark brown hair behind his computer in the desk space next to mine.
‘Morning, DS Fields.’
Clarke, my anxious-to-please newbie, jumps up to make me coffee as I walk past his extremely neat desk towards my own scattered mess. Not a bad cop, I’ve told the boss – but needs to toughen up if he’s to handle bigger cases, lose the Daddy’s-boy expression, quit smiling so damn much. Not that we’d be getting anything too big for a bit, unfortunately. HR had been in touch – ‘a winding down period’ they called it. They’d probably never know I’d tweaked my dates slightly to make sure I wasn’t sitting at home with too much time to think before the baby came.
Boss doesn’t know that either. But he’s promised not to let me wither out here in the few weeks before I’m chained to a baby.
Half an hour later, the boss – Inspector Nolan – spots me and gestures me into his glass-fronted office at the other end of the open-plan room. I heave myself out of my seat, swigging my decaf Americano, and hoping for something good this week.
The migraine pulses painfully as I edge open the stiff glass door with my hip. Nolan glances up. He’s sitting behind his desk, leaning his elbows on the table, sandy hair across cool blue eyes.
He motions to close the door.
‘I’ve something for you, Fields,’ he says, using one hand to brush back his too-long fringe, and I try to blame the knots in my stomach on the baby.
I nod, avoiding those eyes, and shut the door tightly behind me, manoeuvring my unfamiliar bulk. I can feel Garda Detective Clarke Casey watching from the other end of the open-plan office. Nobody misses a thing around here.
Nolan hands me the case file that’s come in overnight, which I quickly scan. Apartment fire, suspected arson. But it’s the location of the incident that makes me hesitate. I focus on not letting my hands shake in front of him as I read on, my mouth suddenly dry.
‘Fields?’ He leans back in his chair and trains his eyes on me. ‘Tell me if you’d prefer something else – I can give it to Cummins.’
No way I’m letting Cummins have this one, even if I have to go back to Curro-bloody-lough, County Kerry.
‘Fatalities?’
‘One dead and a twelve-year-old kid in hospital.’
‘Can’t local cops deal with it?’ I try to adjust my voice, not to sound shrill and defensive. We are only ever called in if there is something specific, something unusual that stands out. Otherwise, we risk looking like we are stepping on the toes of the local police. Nolan gets up and walks to the window, everything about him constantly in motion.
‘There’s talk that one of the local cops is involved.’ He stares across the city, and I stare at his back, trying to keep my tone steady.
‘They suspect a local Garda might have started the fire?’
‘Localish. Currolough serves a much wider area now after the other station closures. It’s a cop from one of the towns an hour away who used to work out of there.’
I think of County Kerry – its vast wild coastline, small, scattered villages between valleys, all those tiny police stations shuttered and streamlined to one central policing hub in the biggest town in the area.
‘Several witnesses saw him at the scene, moments before the fire,’ Nolan explains. ‘Say he was acting suspiciously. It’s a matter of ruling it in or out, finding our guy, keeping it on the down low if it is a cop.’
He turns and stares at me. The pain is building behind my eyes. Spirals of static dance at the corners of my vision.
‘Mightn’t it complicate things to have a Dublin cop head down to a country station?’ My voice is smaller suddenly because honestly, I don’t know if I can go back there. I’m picturing a little cottage reflected against a silver-grey lake, three bikes thrown haphazardly in the front driveway. I’m picturing BallinÓg – just ten minutes from Currolough, the place that haunts me.
‘You’re from around there, aren’t you?’
But I don’t trust myself to answer.
‘Fields? I hope all this pregnancy stuff isn’t getting to you.’
Nolan gives an almost involuntary flick of a hand, as if the tiny life inside me is something that could be swatted away.
I shake my head, the swish of my long plait against my back comforting.
‘It’s fine. I’ll be fine.’
‘I need you to keep this low-key, Fields,’ he says, eyes narrow. ‘I need this wrapped up quickly and quietly. You’ll be briefed by Inspector Ken Mulligan down there. He’s the one who called it in. Good guy, I’ve known him since forever. I’ve told him you’re coming. Bring Casey.’
The coffee on the table in front of him hasn’t been touched. A pale, milky crescent puckers on its surface. Files are piled in mismatched stacks across his desk. A crumpled bag, stained buttery dark, balances on top of one paper tower. For someone so sure of himself – so stern and well-presented – Nolan’s messy office always surprises me.
‘It’s all there on the call sheet.’
I mumble something in the affirmative and turn. I’m addled, and I don’t want to lose my cool here in front of him.
‘DS Fields,’ he says, sharply.
I freeze, my back to him. Inspector Frank Nolan drops his voice.
‘You were asleep when I left, Ally. I didn’t want to wake you.’
I turn slowly but cover my mouth with the coffee cup so he can’t see my expression. I feel eyes from the open-plan desks on me. On us both.
A few minutes later, I make my way straight to the ladies’ bathroom, lock the thin cubicle door and drop my head into my hands. In the distance, male voices echo in the corridor – loud and confident. There’s the usual crackle of a police radio. A lift door cranks shut somewhere in the bowels of the building. I massage my ribs, just below the elasticated band of my maternity pants where it’s most tender from what happened last summer.
You see, this baby, this pregnancy – it wasn’t supposed to be with my boss.
And it certainly wasn’t supposed to be with someone else’s husband.