Lenny feels a tsunami of relief wash through him as the hall door closes and he finds himself outside. Never before has rain felt so good. Keating and Barry almost folded over with laughter as soon as Lenny called out Betsy’s name. Then the light switched on under the stairs. He was staring into a space a human could barely stand up in, let alone be held captive in.
He thought Barry was going to throw up, so heavy was his convulsion of laughter. He looked at both of them, then headed for the door.
He removes his phone from his pocket as he paces down Barry’s tiny garden path and then begins to jog down Carrow Road. He fidgets with his phone, is keen to ring Gordon back, ask him if getting into Barry’s home and concluding with absolute certainty that Betsy isn’t there constitutes triggering the gentlemen’s agreement they made earlier.
But he also knows Gordon heard the men laughing, that it was all a joke and he isn’t quite sure how he’s going to take it. Maybe it won’t constitute enough to activate the will.
He turns around to walk backwards, such is the force of the wind driving down the canal. When he reaches the junction that the old Black Horse pub used to sit on he squints into the distance, into the greyness of the day in hope of seeing a taxi light approach.
It doesn’t take long; just five minutes, though those five minutes felt a lot longer than five minutes to Lenny. He’s soaked by the time the taxi pulls up alongside him; his hat weighing heavy on his head. On numerous occasions during his short jog he had wished the phone call from Gloria Proudfoot at Excel Insurance had come before his phone call from Gordon Blake – that way he’d be most likely snug and warm in some gym taking sneaky pictures with his dated film camera instead of feeling like a drowned rat in the back of a taxi going in search of somebody he knew he couldn’t possibly find. But that house, that big old house on South Circular Road won’t leave his mind. What if Gordon Blake is telling the truth; what if he genuinely left it in his will to Lenny, Sally and the twins? Soaked to the bone or not, chasing a lost cause or not, Lenny had to admit to himself that this was one hell of an interesting morning.
‘Fuck the warmth of a gym,’ he mutters to himself in the back of the taxi. As the driver is turning on to the Naas Road, Lenny’s phone vibrates in his jacket pocket. He knows who it is; it’s midday.
‘Hey, sweetie,’ he says.
‘I know you rang me since our last call, but I still thought I should ring you at twelve.’
‘Of course.’
Lenny had made a pact with Sally that she would ring at ten a.m., midday and then again at two p.m. every day just so Lenny could rest assured that the day was going well for his wife. The story he’d shared with Keating and Barry was true. Every word of it. Sally is suicidal. Has suffered with high levels of depression ever since the twins were born. In fact, she’d shown signs of depression even in pregnancy; her levels of anxiety rising so much she had to be kept in hospital on occasions. Lenny assumed post natal depression was inevitable for Sally, yet he never quite knew how awful it would be. He found her one morning standing atop their toilet seat trying to put her neck in a noose she had tied using the belt of her woollen bathrobe. The twins were only eight weeks old then. On his first day back in work – three months later – he got a phone call from Sally who told him he had to get home quick before she started to slice at her wrists with a Stanley knife. She was sitting in a corner of their sitting room with the blade in her hand when he arrived home, the twins both crying upstairs. There were no cuts on her skin, but Lenny has never been entirely convinced of what would have happened had he not been fortunate enough to have his phone in his possession when she rang that day. As a police officer, he was supposed to have it turned off.
His station chief offered him six months leave after Sally’s second suicide attempt, but Lenny knew it wasn’t enough; that he could never return to a job in which he had no control over his time, over his phone. It was a shame; Lenny had always wanted to be a Garda, had ambitions to be a detective from quite a young age. Sally hasn’t made any suicide attempt since, but her moods have still not evened out or even become consistent day-to-day. Every morning he wakes up, he doesn’t know how Sally is going to be feeling.
‘Any more work today?’ Sally asks. She sounds okay, monotone but alert.
Lenny pauses; the hesitation even obvious to the taxi man.
‘Leonard,’ Sally says re-prompting her husband.
‘Sorry, love, phone is playing up a bit. Eh… yeah. I’ve to go to some gym in Coolock now; usual stuff. Got to take a photo of a girl who—’
‘Think you’ll be home to go meet the teacher today?’ Sally interrupts, clearly not interested in the answer to the initial question she’d asked. This wasn’t unusual. Their phone calls weren’t about anything, merely routine.
‘Yeah… yeah,’ Lenny says, his eyes blinking. It was unusual he’d blink when speaking to his wife. But that’s because it was also unusual he would lie to her. He didn’t want to tell her about the Betsy Blake case, didn’t want to raise her anxiousness levels in any way. ‘Yeah – I’ll be there if you can get a three o’clock meeting.’
‘Good. I’ll make an appointment so,’ Sally says.
Lenny thanks her and after the phone call ends he bites at the cover of his phone, disappointed with himself. He knows there’s a chance he won’t make that meeting; hates that he might let not only his wife down, but his sons too. Particularly Jared. He’s having an awful time of it at school. Not only is he being bullied, but he’s being drowned in the politics of the education system. The school don’t know what to do with him; so low is his comprehension. Lenny’s only concerned about the bullying, not bothered about the latter. He genuinely feels institutional education is vastly overrated. Though he is keen to stay on top of things if only for Sally’s sake. If she’s worried, then Lenny is worried too. He lets out a little sigh. The meeting he just agreed to attend is supposed to take place straight after the kids leave school at three p.m., exactly when his case with Gordon Blake is due for conclusion too.
Lenny shakes his head as the taxi man pulls into Peyton estates, ridding his mind of the worry.
‘If you can pull over at the orange car there please…’
Lenny almost tuts as he hands the taxi man a twenty euro note. He hates spending money, unless it’s on something that would cheer either his wife or the twins up.
He runs the five yards to his car door, wrestles with the lock and then jumps in. It was pointless trying to be quick; he really couldn’t get any wetter than he already is.
He starts the engine, begins to pull out of Peyton estate when he hears an unusual sound. His car slogs, even though he’s pressing hard on the accelerator. He squints at himself in the rear-view mirror, then his eyes widen. He begins to slap at the steering wheel; the penny finally dropping. He doesn’t stop slapping, not until the palms of his hands sting unbearably.
Then he gets out of his car and looks up and down the driver’s side, walks to the other side of the car and does the same thing. He clenches both fists, tilts his head back – eyes open, mouth open – and lets the rain shower down on his face.
‘Fuck sake!’ he roars into the sky.