earth’s core. Boredom is seeing your salary go into your bank account month after month, year after year, without any significant increase. Boredom is having a boss who never ever listens to a word you say. Boredom is not progressing in your job because all the promotions go to graduates, even inept ones like Katie. This is why I take a great interest in Isla’s schoolwork. We read together every night, and do simple maths using apples and oranges and cutlery. When she’s older, we’ll watch documentaries together and take tours of historic parts of the city, the aim being to extend her well beyond the constraints of the school curriculum, to light the fire of learning early, so that it keeps smouldering through those self-destructive teenage years. And if she ever protests that she’s bored, I’ll tell her what boredom truly is.
For fuck’s sake, Isla! You don’t want to end up like Mammy, d’you?
Except I won’t use the F word. Not around Isla.
I glance at the clock on my laptop: 3pm. Right about now, Eddie should be picking up my little girl from school. They’ll walk home together, her small soft hand ensconced in his big calloused one. At home he’ll make a snack for her, some fruit and biscuits. She’s allowed two biscuits only, but I know he gives her more if she asks. Eddie is kind to Isla, like another father to her, just like Louise is another mother.
This is what I’m worried about. Louise meeting someone in Sydney, settling down. I can’t bear the thought that she might not return, and that I’ll be left behind here forever. But it’s a possibility, isn’t it? She’s young, passionate about what she does — which is a point of attractiveness in its own right — and she’s got one of those faces that makes you turn for a second look. Louise isn’t pretty. Neither am I. Our faces have a hint of toughness that can’t be disguised by any amount of make-up or blusher, and our bodies seem to have angles that can’t be softened with fashion or accessories.
‘We’re interesting,’ Louise has maintained. ‘I’d have that any day rather than prettiness.’
Of course the art world values ‘interesting’ above ‘beautiful’. But in the real world, I’d choose beauty, prettiness, in a heartbeat. This shallow attitude would disappoint Louise, but it wouldn’t surprise her. If she were here, she’d roll her eyes and tut at me. If she were here, she would call around to my place tonight, and we’d eat dinner with Eddie before he leaves for his shift, and then we’d put Isla to bed, Louise reading with her instead of me, and finally we’d station ourselves on the couch for a night of feel-good-by-comparison reality TV.
‘Twelve months will fly,’ she assured me before she left.
It hasn’t even been twelve days, and already it feels like forever. It sounds melodramatic, needy — and there was I, only moments ago, accusing Katie of being hopelessly clingy! — but this time I feel I have truly lost Louise.
Needy, sad, abandoned, aimless.
It strikes me that this is how Louise must have felt — and still feels — about her mother.
Chapter 3
Louise
By the time I get to the last property on my list, my expectations are pretty low. I’ve learned that ‘perfectly located’ and ‘neat and tidy’ are the most blatantly abused terms in the shared accommodation ads on the internet, and I’ve established that many of the bedrooms advertised barely qualify as such, because surely fitting a bed that one has enough room to actually walk around is a basic requirement. Even more irritating is the fact that I’ve been scrutinised from head to toe every time, with possible flatmates assessing if I’m worthy of their tiny, badly located, less-than-clean abodes.
According to the ad, this apartment comes with a resident thirty-year-old male. To be honest, sharing with a man isn’t my preference. I only made this appointment as a backup if all the others failed to deliver, which they have, so here I am.
A few minutes later, I have been buzzed in, taken the stairs to the second floor, and am being greeted by Joe, the thirty-year-old male in question. He’s average height, and his gaze is open and friendly, a nice change from the critical and frankly suspicious receptions I’ve had so far today.
‘Hi. I’m Louise.’
‘Dublin?’ he enquires.
Despite myself I’m impressed. ‘That didn’t take you long.’
He grins. ‘My mother’s from Howth. She’s been in Australia more than thirty years, but she sounds like she arrived yesterday. I have cousins and aunts and uncles there — the Flynns. Don’t suppose you know them?’
‘Err … No.’
I’m smiling, a welcome surprise at the end of such a frustrating afternoon. I like Joe in that certain way that comes purely from instinct and is rarely wrong. Something about him feels familiar, as though he’s someone I already know, not someone I’m meeting for the first time. Maybe it’s the Irish in him, that classic combination of dark hair, clear skin and warm eyes he must have inherited from his mother.
‘Let me show you around.’
The apartment, from what I can see, appears to be genuinely ‘neat and tidy’, and the bedroom he leads me to, while not large, is big enough, and has a generous rectangular window framing an outlook of red rooftops and gum trees.
‘I can remove the bed if you have your own,’ he offers.
‘I don’t. I have no furniture at all, so this is great.’
‘The lease is a minimum six months.’
‘That’s fine …’
‘You work in the city?’
‘At the Sydney City Art Gallery.’ My chin rises of its own accord. ‘I’m a conservator.’
Despite my best efforts, the defensiveness is always there; it seems I can’t adopt a nonchalant tone, like everyone else does, when I say what I do for a living. It’s as though my brain doesn’t believe I’ve managed to get this far.
His smile is wry. ‘A conservator and a writer. Interesting combination.’
So he’s a writer. What kind? Novelist? Journalist? Copywriter?
He moves on before I can ask.
The kitchen is small but clean and renovated, the balcony is surprisingly spacious — I can see myself spending time out here — and the living area has two beige sofas, a flat-screen TV, a bookshelf that covers an entire wall yet still overflows, and a square dining table with four matching chairs. The bathroom, like the kitchen, is small and freshly renovated. Would it be awkward sharing this bathroom, putting my toiletries next to his, waiting for my turn to shower in the mornings?
‘I don’t take long showers,’ he supplies, reading my mind as proficiently as he read my accent earlier on.
We leave the bathroom and hover where we started off, in the small hallway. The tour is evidently complete.
He smiles a crooked smile. ‘So, are you interested?’
‘Yes, yes I am.’
I already know that I can live here with him, that we’re compatible, and that we won’t grate on each other. And this is really jumping ahead, but I am quite sure that if I move in here, Joe and I will become friends.
‘Would you like an application form?’ he asks.
‘Yes, please.’
I leave clutching the form. Outside, a bus swings by, proving that there is indeed public transport on hand. I pause to look up at the building, with its clean blonde brick, and my eyes pick out Joe’s apartment on the second floor. There’s the balcony, the outdoor table and chairs, some healthy plants, and a slice of the hot late afternoon sun. It’s perfect. And Joe seems like the perfect flatmate.
‘Just email me a copy of the completed form and I’ll ring you to confirm when you can move in,’ he said before I left.
He