After Gemma had gone home, Aidan moved around the kitchen clearing off the dirty plates. He put them in a pile on top of the dishwasher, then began unloading the clean dishes. He was still trying to get his head around everything that had happened that morning. Every time he thought about it, he felt the anger rise within him again. The audacity of that pair coming into his house! He never would have thought them capable of doing something like that. How could they live with themselves? Even though deep down he knew what James was saying wasn’t true, it had put doubts in his head and he felt completely rattled. Milly had just turned three, so it was nearly four years since she was conceived, and when he thought back to that time in their lives, when James claimed to have slept with his wife, all he could remember was a hazy blur of busy family life. He had been commuting to and from Seattle at the time and they had had the two boys; they were leading busy lives, but he couldn't pinpoint anything wrong or something that in hindsight might have been a sign. There had been nothing to suggest that Rowan was feeling vulnerable and lonely, like James had suggested, and Aidan certainly had no idea that she had sought solace in the arms of her old friend. How had he missed the signs, or maybe he didn’t know his wife at all.
‘I thought we were going on a cycle?’ Jack said, coming into the kitchen and disrupting his thoughts.
‘Sorry, it’s been a weird day,’ Aidan said. ‘Weird’ didn’t even begin to describe it.
Aidan had just finished unloading the clean dishes and was ready to load up the dirty ones when the doorbell went again.
‘It’s like Grand Central Station here today,’ Aidan muttered. ‘Can you get it, Jack?’
Jack did as he was told and went down the hallway.
‘Dad,’ Jack called to him a few moments later. ‘You need to come here.’
Who the hell is it now? Aidan thought as he made his way down the hallway. If it was some door-to-door salesman trying to sell him cheaper electricity, he wouldn’t be held accountable for his actions… As he neared the door, he was shocked to see two uniformed Gardaí standing on his front step and in between both of them, suddenly looking so small, was his son.
‘Callum?’ Aidan said, searching the boy’s face, hoping there was a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why his son was in the company of An Garda Síochána.
Milly appeared beside them, her face agog at the uniformed Gardaí.
‘Dad, what’s going on?’ Jack asked, his face full of concern.
‘Jack, can you and Milly go into the kitchen please.’
‘But I want to know what’s going on?’ he protested.
‘Just go back inside,’ Aidan said more sharply than he had intended.
‘I’m Garda Frank Maguire from Donnybrook Garda station and this is Garda Flood the Juvenile Liaison Officer.’ The male Garda gestured at his female colleague. ‘Are you Aidan Whelan, father of Callum Whelan?’
Aidan nodded. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Can we come inside?’ Garda Flood asked.
‘Sure,’ Aidan said, standing to the side to let them into the house. He led them into the living room, that was originally a drawing room in times gone by. They put their Christmas tree here every year, but other than that they never used the room because it was so cold and dark. He had arrived home from work a few months ago to find Rowan had taken a figary and painted it kingfisher blue, but it just served to add to the gloomy feel of the room.
‘Mr Whelan, we received a call from BetterValu supermarket earlier – your son was caught shoplifting in their store. He had a can of Coca-Cola and a packet of crisps concealed in his jacket.’
Aidan turned to Callum in disbelief. ‘Is this true, Callum?’ Aidan searched his son’s face, hoping it wasn’t true, but one look confirmed it all.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Callum protested, his face creased with anger, but they all knew it was a lie.
‘We have CCTV footage,’ Garda Maguire continued.
‘Why did you do it, Callum? I put money on your Revolut card at the weekend! If you needed more, you just had to ask.’
Callum remained stubbornly silent.
‘Perhaps Callum you could leave us to talk to your dad alone for a few minutes,’ Garda Flood suggested.
‘Go upstairs to your room,’ Aidan ordered. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’
Callum trudged out of the room.
‘Mr Whelan,’ she continued once Callum had left, ‘we often find that when children of this age shoplift it can be for one of two reasons: sometimes it’s simply boredom, it’s something to do for a bit of a thrill with their friends, or other times there can be an underlying reason – a cry for help so to speak. In this case, Callum acted alone, which makes me think that it might be the latter. Has anything happened to Callum lately?’
Aidan took a deep breath. Where would he even begin? ‘His mother passed away recently – you might have heard about it – the car crash on the Coast Road?’ He still hadn’t got used to saying these words out loud – he still couldn’t believe it had happened.
Garda Maguire nodded his head. ‘I remember it; some of our colleagues in the station attended the scene, you have my condolences, Mr Whelan. It sounds like young Callum has been through a lot in recent weeks.’ His tone softened. ‘Look, I’m pretty sure that because we have recovered the stolen items and as it is his first offence, if you could get Callum to apologise to the store owner, he might be willing not to press charges,’ he suggested.
Aidan nodded. ‘Of course. I’ll make sure he does that.’
‘Today is an informal caution, but I have to warn you that if something like this happens in the future, it will be treated very seriously,’ Garda Flood spoke. ‘Shoplifting is a crime – it’s a scourge for small businesses and that’s why we treat it seriously. We need to give Callum a strong message here today that this behaviour will not be tolerated. Hopefully this will be enough of a deterrent and we won’t need to get involved again.’
‘I’ll talk to him,’ Aidan said gratefully. ‘And thank you.’
They stood up and Aidan led them out to the hallway.
‘We wish you all the best and we’re sorry again for the loss of your wife,’ Garda Flood said as they went back through the front door.
‘Thanks,’ Aidan mumbled after them. He closed the door behind them and drew his hands down his face, wondering when this day was going to end. He almost wished he had never woken up that morning. It had gone from bad to worse. First there had been James and Helena’s outrageous claim and now it felt as though he was losing his son too. He climbed the stairs, feeling as though he was being assailed from every angle. He walked down the landing and knocked on Callum’s door. There was no answer, so he pushed the handle.
‘Get out,’ Callum shouted at him before he had even stepped inside.
‘I need to talk to you,’ Aidan said, entering the room.
‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
Aidan ignored him and sat down on the side of his bed. ‘Look, Callum, what happened today? Why did you do it?’ he tried.
Callum remained infuriatingly silent. This wasn’t Callum – this wasn’t the boy he knew. He seemed so far out of reach and Aidan didn’t know how to get through to him. Aidan would never have believed a child of his would be capable of doing something like this. He and Rowan had always instilled healthy values in their children – once when Callum was two, he had taken a packet of sweets from the supermarket, but Rowan had brought him straight back as soon as she realised and made him hand them over.
‘I’m worried about you, I know you miss your mam, I miss her too.’ Aidan placed a hand on his shoulder, but Callum shrugged it off. There was a time when Callum had idolised him, he would follow him around with his toy lawnmower when he was cutting the grass, or the two of them would watch the rugby together, shouting at the TV as Rowan rolled her eyes. Those days seemed so far away now. When had they lost that connection? Had it been the crash or had it happened before then and Aidan had just never noticed?
‘Shut up, Dad,’ he roared with angry tears brimming in his eyes. ‘Stop talking about her!’
Aidan had never felt more useless in his life. He couldn’t think of anything else to say or do to fix this, so he decided to give Callum what he wanted and left him alone in his room. He returned downstairs, where Jack was spreading a thick layer of Nutella onto two slices of toast.
‘We were hungry,’ he said by way of explanation.
Aidan realised with a pang of guilt that he had forgotten to give them lunch. They hadn’t eaten anything since their pancakes at breakfast time and it was now late afternoon.
‘Dad?’ Jack asked nervously, handing a slice of toast to Milly. ‘Why were the Guards here?’
‘They just wanted to talk to me about something.’
‘But why was Callum with them?’ he went on. His forehead was furrowed anxiously and Aidan knew that he was scared.
‘Because he just happened to come home at the same time, you don’t need to worry, Jack, everything is okay.’ Aidan forced a smile on his face and he saw his son’s face begin to relax too.
Jack and Milly sat down on the sofa with their toast and watched some YouTuber on the TV, their plans for a cycle forgotten about.
Aidan surveyed the messy kitchen, which he still hadn’t got around to cleaning. He was exhausted and couldn’t face doing it now. He just wanted this day to be over and the next one and the one after that too. Everyone said that time helped, but even if he could skip forward into the future, he wasn’t sure if things would ever be okay again.
Aidan was exhausted by the time he was going to bed that night. His head was tormented, and a pounding headache rattled his brain.
He entered Milly’s room to check on her as he did every night. She had the blankets kicked off as usual, so he pulled them up around her and tucked her up. He looked down at his daughter who was sleeping peacefully, clutching Mousey in the crook of her arm. Her mouth was open slightly and her hair falling down over her face. She looked angelic, illuminated by the fairy lights that Rowan had strewn all along her toddler bed.
He stared at her for a moment as he tried to look at her objectively. Was there any resemblance to him at all? Anything? She looked so like Rowan, whereas the boys were like him, with paler skin, fair hair and blue eyes, but when you put Milly and the boys side by side, you would know that they were brother and sister – they shared many common features. There was definitely a resemblance there. He was sure of it.