Second Hand Jane (34 page)

“Aye, your
instructions weren’t hard to follow. There is only one River Liffey
and one Guinness factory in Dublin, after all.”

Jess’s
shoulders relaxed as she spied that familiar twinkle in his eyes
and they began walking toward the apartment building’s entrance.
“What about parking—did you get one alright?”

“Aye, I got one
round the back, no problem, thanks. You could have warned me about
the mad pigeons, though.” He indicated a white and brown stain on
his shoulder. The pigeons that congregated daily around the side
streets behind the Quays were a mangy-looking lot, always
scrounging a crumb. They had a vindictive streak, too, if you
didn’t produce the goods, hence the poop.

Jess wrinkled
her nose, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tremor in her hand as she
pushed open the main doors. “They are a bit of a nuisance. I’ll get
a cloth to sponge it off when we get up to mine.”

Owen followed
her through the foyer out into the quad and the first thing they
saw was Jimmy flat on his back. Gemma was standing over him with
one foot firmly planted on his stomach again.

“Come on, you
great big lump—sit up! You’ve another twenty-five before you’re
finished.” Her ponytail swished back and forth as she shook her
head. “If I don’t talk tough, he doesn’t even try. How’s it going,
Jess?” Then, spotting Owen, her face lit up. “Well, hello there.
You must be Jess’s mystery man?”

Jessica could have kicked her and would
have but the other girl was quite obviously stronger than her.
“Gemma, this is my
friend
Owen;
Owen, Gemma. Gemma is acting as Jimmy here’s personal trainer while
he tries to quit smoking.”

“Howrya.” Jimmy
wheezed pulling himself up.

“Twenty-four to
go—get on with it, lard ass!”

Gemma grinned
at them both, looking like butter wouldn’t melt. “I’m really
enjoying this and there’s good money to be made in personal
training so I might go solo—you know, quit the gym.”

“Good for you,
Gem. Catch you later.” Jess was eager to be away before she tried
to recruit her.

“She’d do a
roaring trade if she wore a leather mask and cracked a whip,” Owen
muttered and Jess laughed as she pushed the lift button.

“She is a bit
scary, isn’t she?”

“Fecking
terrifying!” They grinned at each other and as the lift door slid
open, the ice between them thawed.

Flicking her
gaze round the living room a moment later, Jess was glad she’d
tidied up a bit before she’d headed out with Nora that morning.
There was no underwear drying on the clothes rack or dirty dishes
piled up on the bench. Yes, all in all, the place was looking
respectable. Owen had glanced around the room with curiosity etched
on his face before being drawn to the windows with their view of
the smoking stacks of the Guinness factory. Flicking on the kettle,
Jess busied herself by fossicking under the sink for an old cloth
he could use to clean himself up with. She didn’t see him crouch
down to flick through her collection of old books.

“Janice
Bohan.”

She looked up
startled, rag in hand. “Pardon me?”

He held out a battered copy of
Rapunzel
.
“This book once belonged to a lass by the name of Janice Bohan.
Seeing all these here brings home the randomness of you deciding to
find out about our Amy.”

“I suppose it
does when you look at it like that.” Jess frowned at the suitcase
stuffed full of all the other names she could have chosen to trace.
At the fleeting memory of a dark-haired girl she thought she’d seen
watching her and Owen, she wondered, “You know
Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs
was the last book
I needed for my collection, so maybe it was just meant to
be.”

“Aye, maybe it
was.” Putting the book back, he wandered over to inspect her
shelves full of treasures before turning around to face her. “It’s
just what I pictured. All this—it’s you.”

“Is that a good
thing or a bad thing?” Jess handed him the cloth and waited for an
answer while he rubbed at his shoulder. She looked around the room,
trying to see the apartment through his eyes.

Placing the rag
down on the bench, he finally answered. “Oh, it’s definitely a good
thing.”

He pulled her
toward him then and lowered his mouth to hers. For someone as gruff
as Owen, his lips were incredibly soft and his caresses were so
gentle, too gentle. Jess pushed her body up against his, trying to
convey the urgency she felt for them to be closer. Pulling away,
she took him by the hand and led him through to the bedroom.

Afterwards, she
lay exhausted with her head on his shoulders. Her hand rested
lightly on his chest, feeling the sweat their lovemaking had left
behind cooling beneath her palm. She had read somewhere once that
happiness was in those perfect moments captured briefly, fleetingly
throughout life. This was happiness, she decided, as Owen stroked
her hair rhythmically. As the anaemic rays of autumnal sunlight
faded from the room, he did what she wished he had done from the
start. He began to talk and this time, he let the complicated
layers that manifested themselves in that hard shell he’d let grow
around him peel away.

“I know I have
behaved like a schizophrenic shite but I wasn’t sure I could open
myself up to feeling anything romantic for anyone again.”

Jess lay
listening as he confided his fears of being unable to put the past
to rest and of wearing his sister’s untimely death like an
oversized suit for the rest of his days.

“What made you
come today then? What is it that has changed?” she asked, leaning
up on her elbow and tracing a line down his cheek. He needed to
shave but she liked the roughness of the prickles beneath her
fingertips.

“
I missed you, and I knew I would have to
step up to the mark or I would lose my chance with you for good.
That’s mostly why I came but I also realised that at some point
since I met you, I
have
moved on.
Maybe it was all the talking about what happened and seeing it
type-written so I could read it objectively for the first time. You
know, take a step back and put it in the past or maybe it was
simply time that did it? It’s supposed to be a great healer, isn’t
it?”

Jess nodded.
She didn’t have firsthand experience with the grieving process but
as a writer, she was familiar with that and all the other wise old
adages.

“Whatever it
was, I feel now that she’s at peace up there.” He raised his eyes
to the ceiling and Jess’s green eyes followed suit, unsure what she
expected to see other than the smattering of fly poo that adorned
it. “I feel like I have done right by her, and I know that she
wouldn’t have wanted me making a pig’s ear of the rest of my life
because of what happened to her.” He smiled at his little joke
meant to lighten the weight behind his words and Jess punched him
playfully on the arm.

“That’s the
second truly terrible pig joke I’ve heard you drop now.”

“Aye, sorry; it
goes with the territory and I couldn’t resist.” He cuddled her
closer to him, breathing in the scent of her hair for a moment.
“You know, reaching that thirty-year marker and re-reading our
family’s little bit of history yesterday—well, it was like a
chapter in my life that has coloured things for far too long
finally closed. Talking to me Da yesterday, I realised it’s
different for him. He’s given up and accepted that he will always
live with it. Amy was his girl and he won’t get over Ma’s passing,
either, but I have to move on. Neither Ma or Amy would have wanted
me to bury myself in the past.” He paused to wipe a tear that had
escaped from the corner of Jess’s eye away.

“Don’t cry.
It’s a good thing you’ve done, coming into my life the way you did.
I’ll always remember them both, of course I will, but for the good
stuff from now on. Not the one bad thing that came to pass and
shaped everything else that came after it. That would be nothing
but an insult to the people they were. I can see that now.” He
sighed and if he had been wearing them, it would have come from the
bottom of his boots before exhaling slowly. “You know, I hope that
reading how Amy was killed might just make someone—whoever—think
before they go down a road they’ve no business going down.”

Jess took his
metaphoric meaning to be that if one person took on board that no
good came from fighting a fight no one could really win, then it
had been worth sharing his family’s pain. It was her sentiment,
too.

She lay there
listening to him breathing, thinking over what he had just told
her. He had said everything that she thought she needed to hear him
say but there was still something bothering her. “What about
Sarah?” She referred to his ex-wife. “Is she still part of that
oversized suit you’ve been wearing all these years?”

Owen turned to
look at her in surprise. “Did you think that?”

“I don’t know;
you haven’t exactly been an open book.”

“Neither have
you.”

“What do you
mean?”

“You were
seeing someone, weren’t you?”

So he had
registered her call from Nick the day she’d done her mercy dash to
see Wilbur. “Is that why you turned cold on me after we’d kissed at
the barn?”

He looked a
little shamefaced at that. “Aye, I suppose. I was jealous and like
I said, I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I might be
exposed but then I decided you were worth getting burnt by.”

“I am not going
to hurt you, Owen, not ever.” She kissed the tip of his nose.
“Believe me, he wasn’t worth getting jealous over and it was over
before anything really got started. It’s been you all along.” She’d
fill him in one day on what had happened with Nick but not now.

“I’m glad.” He
kissed her and then pulled away to look at her, his expression
serious. “The way I have been was never anything to do with Sarah.
When that was finished, it was over and I walked away from her and
our marriage, that life, without a backward glance and so did she.”
Owen shook his head. “We were just a bad fit, Sarah and I. I think
we both knew we had made a mistake the moment we said ‘I do’ but it
was too late then. The problem all along has been that from the
moment I picked you up at the station and watched you being
harangued by Mad Bridie, I knew you were going to be a very good
fit.”

Jess had never
known the kind of certainty where it is instinctive that you have
met the right person before either. It was overwhelming but as she
lay in the darkened room enjoying the contentedness it had brought
with it, a thought sprang to mind unbidden. Bugger! She had
forgotten about the oversized suit problem of her own that was
heading her way—her mother. It was only two days until she set foot
on Irish soil.

***

On Tuesday
evening at seven, the tin can that was part of the fleet belonging
to the budget Cheap-Cheap Airline her mother had been forced to
fly, thanks to what she termed her husband’s tightfisted tyranny,
touched down. Its wheels, as they skidded down the damp Dublin
tarmac, sent a spray of water up in the air and the airline’s
bright yellow canary logo was just visible in the gloom of the
evening. Marian Baré was officially in the country.

As Jess hopped
from foot to foot in the Arrivals hall waiting for her to clear
Irish Customs, she let her mind drift back over the last couple of
days.

Owen had stayed
that night and they’d only dragged themselves out of bed to order
pizza. When it arrived, they’d taken the box straight back to bed
with them. Propped up on pillows, feeding each other slices, they’d
marvelled over the fact, like new lovers do, that pepperoni supreme
was both their favourite. What other things would they find out
they had in common over the course of time? The sense of a new
beginning was tangible and it had been heavenly. The being with
Owen, not the pizza obviously, Jess reiterated to herself. Although
now, as her tummy grumbled at having been given no dinner, the
pizza took on a divine status too.

Wrapping her
arms around her stomach in an effort to shut it up, she remembered
with a frisson of excitement how they’d made love again. “We need
to work off all those cheesy calories.” She’d laughed, nuzzling
into his neck. Despite the need to burn off the carbs, it had been
slower this time. The urgency of before was in the past and they
took the time to explore each other’s body.

Afterwards, as
they’d talked into the small hours, Jess had taken a deep breath
and come clean about her mother’s impending visit. “I love her but
honestly if she’d had her way, I would have had an arranged
marriage years ago to a lawyer or a doctor even an accountant so
long as he was a chartered one.”

Owen listened
to her with an amused expression as his fingertips played an
imaginary tune on her shoulder.

For her part,
Jess realised how she must sound. “I’m sorry, Owen. I shouldn’t
moan to you of all people about her but I’m dreading Tuesday, I
really am.”

Owen would have
none of it, though. “Ah, she can’t be as bad as all that? Not if
she made you.” He smoothed her hair away before kissing her on her
forehead. “When will I meet her?”

“You don’t want
to meet her; she’s a right old snob.” Jess shook her head. The
prospect of her mother and Owen in the same room together filled
her with alarm. The feelings she had for him were far too new and
precious to let her mother stomp all over them with a few
thoughtless remarks.

“Aye, I do;
she’s your Mammy, and I want to prove my intentions toward her
eldest daughter are honourable. I can turn the charm on when I need
to, you know.”

Jess raised an
eyebrow. “You—charming? Not an analogy I’d have used.”