Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [47]
“Obviously,” Lisa said, her hand shaking as she reached for the front door.
“Who is she?” the girl in the green satin slip asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
And Lisa realized that it didn’t. It had never mattered to him who she was or Katie either.
“Well, who am I to say what you should do with your own money.…” The woman called Bella shrugged in her green satin underwear and went back into the bedroom.
Lisa and her father looked at each other for a long minute; then he followed Bella back into the bedroom as, unsteadily, Lisa left the house again.
Noel allowed himself to think that Stella would have been pleased with how he was coping with their daughter. He had been without an alcoholic drink for almost two months. He attended an AA meeting at least five times a week and telephoned his friend Malachy on the days he couldn’t make it.
He had brought Frankie to Chestnut Court and was making a home for her. True, he was walking round like a zombie from tiredness, but he had kept her alive, and what’s more, the visiting nurses seemed to think she was doing well. She slept in a small crib beside him and when she cried he woke and walked around the room with her. He sterilized all the bottles and nipples, made up her formula and changed her. He bathed her and burped her and rocked her to sleep.
He sang songs to her as he paced up and down the bedroom every night, every song he could think of, even if some of them were mad and inappropriate. “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” … “I Don’t Like Mondays” … “Let Me Entertain You” … “Fairytale of New York” … Any snippet of any song he could remember. Why didn’t he know the words to proper lullabies?
He had conducted three satisfactory meetings with the social worker Moira Tierney and five with Imelda, the visiting nurse.
His leave was over and he was about to go back to work at Hall’s; he wasn’t looking forward to it, but babies were expensive and he really needed the money. He would wait a while and then ask for a bit of a raise in salary. He was catching up with his lectures from the college—Lisa had been as good as her word—and was back on track again there.
He was tired all the time, but then so was every young mother whom he passed on the street or at the supermarket. He was certainly too tired to pause and wonder was he happy with it all himself. The little baby needed him and he would be there. That’s all there was to it. And his life was certainly much better than it had been eight weeks ago.
He put his books away in the silent apartment. His cousin Emily was asleep in her room, little Frankie was sleeping in the crib beside his own bed. He looked out of his window in Chestnut Court. It was late, dark, drizzly and very quiet.
He saw a taxi draw up and a young woman get out. What strange lives people led! Then, two seconds later, he heard his doorbell ring. Whoever it was was coming to see him—Noel Lynch—at this time of night!
“Lisa?!” Noel was puzzled to see her on the entry-phone screen at this time of night.
“Can I come in for a moment, Noel? I want to ask you something.”
“Yes … well … I mean … the baby’s asleep … but, sure, come in.” He pressed the buzzer to release the door.
She looked very woebegone. “I don’t suppose you have a drink? No, sorry, of course you don’t. I’m sorry. Forgive me.” She had forgotten with that casual, uncaring, shruggy attitude of someone who had never been addicted to drink.
Malachy had told Noel that it was this laid-back attitude that really got to him. His friends saying they could take it or leave it, bypassing the terrible urgency that the addicted felt all the time.
“I can offer tea or chocolate,” he said, forcing back his annoyance. She didn’t know. She would never know what it felt like. He would not lose his temper, but what was she doing here at this time of night?
“Tea would be lovely,” she said.
He put on the kettle and waited.
“I can’t go home, Noel.”
“No?”
“No.”
“So what do you want to do, Lisa?”
“Can I sleep on your sofa here, please? Please, Noel. Just for