FIFTEEN
‘You’ve got to trust him,’ Linda told my mother. ‘Stop questioning the poor guy all the time.’
We didn’t see Matty the whole of that December. He’d gone to visit his parents in Brownstone, he said, a small village in County Wicklow, Ireland.
It’s completely cut off. The sort of place you can go days without bumping into another living soul.
‘Sounds lovely,’ my mother answered when he mentioned he was going. ‘All that peace and quiet. What do you say, Soph?’
He didn’t take the hint.
From the little he told us about them, we figured Matty’s folks must be hard up. From the great deal my mother told Linda, that’s why he hadn’t asked us to join him.
She was over at our place again. She helped herself to another Walker’s shortbread, dunked it in her tea. Five years in the UK, and I still didn’t understand the British obsession with soggy cookies.
‘Could be Matty’s embarrassed about his family’s financial situation. Maybe that’s why he didn’t ask you to go with.’
‘He thinks I’d judge him?’ my mother replied, horrified.
Linda pulled a face that involved tucking her chin into her neck and scrunching up her nose. The sort of expression Nanna G would have warned would get stuck that way if the wind changed.
‘I’m sure he knows deep down you wouldn’t. But think how he dresses. The cufflinks, the jackets, the perfect hair. . .’
‘What are you saying?’
Linda shrugged.
‘That image is obviously important to him.’
‘So?’
‘So, he wants the world to view him a certain way. If you saw what he came from—’
‘I might think less of him?’
‘He might think so.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.’
My mother fiddled with her crucifix, worried at her lower lip.
‘Do you think that’s why he still hasn’t asked me to marry him?’
‘Goodness only knows what goes on inside a man’s head, Am.’
I sat staring out of the picture window, watching the snow fall; heard the click of Linda’s lighter, the long exhalation following her first drag.
I glanced at my mother, no doubt what she was thinking.
Grandad used to have a sixty-a-day habit. He only quit after part of his lung had to be removed. The operation mellowed him, she told me one time. You wouldn’t guess it now, but he had quite the temper on him back in the day.Lashed out like a whip if his pride was hurt. Bit like you. . .
The comparison wasn’t meant as a compliment.
‘Those things will kill you,’ she said, watching Linda through disapproving eyes.
‘We all got to go sometime, Am.’