‘Owen, I wonder, would you be after running a little errand for me?’
The day had got off to a bad start with Sean disappearing for an hour with no explanation, while Owen was hounded by a disgruntled shopper. Red-faced and livid, the man was clasping the bag his wife had bought the previous day. The buckle was broken, and the stitching on one of the straps had come away. Owen had to refund nearly double the money to appease him. Now, with Sean’s reappearance, he is hot and feeling cross. Naomi’s unpredictable behaviour is unnerving him. Another thing setting the worry beads clicking in his head, is the procession of unsavoury characters calling in to see his boss. Today the noise and the cheap showiness of the market is proving too much. ‘Yes, that would be fine,’ he readily agrees, without waiting to be told what the errand is.
‘We’re short-handed. We need Naomi back at work,’ Sean grumbles.
‘I don’t think she’s ready yet,’ Owen says, realigning a display of wallets.
‘She’s had nearly three weeks,’ Sean complains. ‘Surely that’s ample.’
Owen decides that he is looking gaunt lately. He has bruised half moons under his reddened eyes, and lines that he has not noticed before are criss-crossing his brow, and drawing his smiling mouth down. He has not mentioned Naomi’s suicide attempt. But now something in Sean’s resentful attitude acts as a catalyst. His head comes up. ‘She’s really not been well, Sean. The other night when I got back to the flat, I found her lying on the bathroom floor. She’d cut her wrists.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Sean exclaims softly, his eyes darkening with concern. But the emotion is fleeting. A second later and there is a glint of scepticism in his expression. ‘She went to the hospital?’
Owen hesitates before answering. ‘Well, no. I wanted her to go but she wouldn’t. She was frightened they’d lock her up, that they would think she was barmy because she’d tried to kill herself.’ Sean gives an ironic bark of laughter.
‘So . . . why didn’t she bleed to death?’ he asks steadily. Owen avoids his direct gaze. ‘She slashed her wrists. Isn’t that what you said?’
‘Yes, that’s what I said,’ he mutters, wishing that he’d never embarked on this course. ‘I stopped the bleeding and bandaged her wrists. I called a doctor. He came to the flat.’
‘Oh yes. And what did this doctor say?’ Owen presses his lips firmly together. ‘What did the doctor say?’ Sean repeats.
Then, ‘She was lucky. She missed the main artery,’ he reports tightly.
The Irish man’s eyes narrow shrewdly. ‘On . . . on both wrists she managed to avoid cutting into a main artery? That was lucky, wasn’t it, so?’ Owen sucks a breath in through his clenched teeth. Unfairly, he feels as foolish as a hysterical girl. ‘She did it for attention,’ Sean continues, more to himself than addressing Owen. ‘That’s how it was.’
‘You haven’t been with her. You don’t know how it’s affected her. I don’t think you can expect her just to come back to work. Maybe she needs a proper break. Look, I don’t know anything about this kind of thing, but my guess is that she should get right away for a bit, give herself a real chance to get over it.’
Sean shrugs. ‘If that’s what it takes, I’m not preventing her. A week in Majorca. Fine by me. Though frankly, Iceland’s more appealing at present. I’m not a brute. She wants a holiday. She can go with my blessing. You tell her so.’ Owen nods and screws his eyes shut. He feels the blood pulsing at his temple, the tick of it in his ears. ‘I want you to go and collect a package for me,’ Sean says now, seizing his advantage.
‘Where from?’
‘From my place in Hounslow. Catherine’s in. She knows you’re coming. She’ll have it ready.’
‘Why can’t you go?’
‘I’m meeting some people here, you know. One or two things to sort out.’
As if on cue, Owen notices two men heading towards the stall. He has seen them before. These are the scum that Enrico warned him to give a wide berth. They look like a comedy duo, one short and skeletal as a whippet, one tall and rock-solid, a great slab of a man. The whippet is boss, known as Blue. The features of his face are delicate, almost effeminate. A cupid mouth, a snub nose, blue eyes, fringed with pale lashes, a thick mop of butterscotch curls. The slab has a square flat face, pockmarked skin and heavy-lidded close-set eyes. His hair, dun coloured at the roots and carroty at the tips, is slicked back. Both are smart, dark trousers, short-sleeved shirts. Blue’s is open-necked, but the slab wears a dark tie. Seeing them approach, Sean rummages in his pocket and gives Owen a slip of paper.
‘The address in Hounslow. Off you go.’
Owen does not need to be told twice. The types Sean has been mixing with recently fill him with foreboding. He has no wish to be sucked into any dealings between them.
Tube travel is intolerable in the heat. As the train clatters out of central London and the carriage thins, he finds a seat. He stares bleakly at his reflection in the window, at the neglected back gardens of terraced houses, patches of grass that look as if they have been browned under a grill. It is fast becoming apparent that Sean is not the business entrepreneur he pretended to be. He is much closer to the rambling alcoholic, chasing rainbows. Really, he is doing little more than surviving. The stall is hardly a profit-making concern, more a juggling act to keep ahead of costs. Owen has noticed that he likes a flutter too, a flutter on the horses, or the dogs, or anything else he can bet on. His guess is that he is fast accumulating debts. However, it is not Sean who preoccupies his mind for most of the sweltering journey, but his wife, his baby. What an unlikely husband and father his Irish employer is. He is no rock to build a family on, more shifting sands. He is curious, wondering what the third member of this ménage à trois is like. Is she tall or short, or average height perhaps? What colour is her hair? What length? How does she wear it? Is she plump or thin? Her eyes – what shade are they? Does she know about Naomi? Does she mind? He stares at his own reflection in the tube train window, the terraced houses rushing by, and he ponders. Is she lonely? Is Catherine lonely – too?