Page 12 of The Elements

Brendan worked. The girls grew. I kept busy with the trappings of being an affluent, middle-class woman in South Dublin.

I arranged spa days with my friends, had regular appointments with my hairdresser, became—for a time—obsessed with Bikram yoga.

I spent at least an hour every morning working on my appearance, choosing what to wear, coordinating and curating my jewelry and fragrances.

I maintained an Instagram account, wanting to advertise my perfect life to the world.

I forced Brendan to come to the Gate or the Abbey with me whenever there was a new show on.

I made reservations for dinner in well-reviewed restaurants.

I was very involved with the girls’ school, participating in fundraising drives for whatever social problem grabbed our attention.

I kept a small champagne fridge in our outside seomra , always well stocked.

I thought about building a lifestyle blog and made inquiries of website designers.

I was a regular visitor at the National Gallery.

I did all the things I felt I was supposed to do to live the perfect life, one that could not have been more different from the one I live now.

We might have lived in Terenure, but the National Swimming Federation, which was based only a few miles from our front door, was my husband’s real home.

He spent six days out of seven there and, more often than not, found himself invited to some evening event that meant he wouldn’t be home until late.

When he finally returned, he’d ignore the meal I’d left for him in the fridge, and wander around the house into the small hours, moving between the living room, his office, and the girls’ bedrooms, even though they’d be asleep by then.

Sometimes I felt as if he was avoiding me entirely, for an hour or more could pass before he came to bed.

Soon after she turned fourteen, I found Emma hovering nearby one morning and turned to look at her.

She seemed nervous and jittery, unable to meet my eye.

I’d been expecting this for a year or so, and, in preparation for it, had read some articles online on how best to speak to your daughter when the moment came, something my own mother had never done for me, instead simply leaving a few old towels, cut to size, on my bed and instructing me to use them every month, to wash them myself, and never to tell anyone what they were for.

“Are you all right?” I asked, and she nodded, then shook her head. I decided there was no point prevaricating. “Have you started, is that it?”

Now she looked appalled, even insulted.

“No,” she said, rolling her eyes. “God, I started that last Christmas.”

I was surprised to hear this, even a little wounded that she hadn’t confided in me at the time.

“Oh,” I said. “And it’s going all right, is it?”

“It is what it is.”

“You haven’t asked me to buy you any tampons.”

“They give them out free at school.”

I nearly fell off the seat at this, but then I had gone to the nuns, and they would have no more discussed the natural functions of the body than they would have done cartwheels across the assembly hall.

I’d heard they gave out free condoms to the older students too these days but had avoided telling Brendan this, knowing how he’d react.

“Can you do something for me?” she asked after a pause.

“Of course. What is it?”

“Can you put a lock on my door?”

“Why?” I asked, for it wasn’t as if I didn’t knock before entering her room and she and Rebecca never argued over taking each other’s things, which often seemed like community property between them.

“Because I want one,” she said.

“No, I don’t like locks,” I told her, shaking my head. “What if there was a fire?”

“Then I’d unlock it. Or jump out the window.”

I thought this through. Of course, she was getting older.

Perhaps she just needed the illusion of privacy, and I would be wrong to deny her that.

Another idea went through my mind, a horrible idea, one that shamed me even to imagine it, and, may God forgive me, I pushed it away.

I pushed it far, far away. Why did I not listen to what she was trying to tell me?

“I keep getting woken in the middle of the night,” she said finally.

“By what?” I asked.

“By Dad. When he comes home late.”

“He likes to say goodnight, that’s all.”

“But he wakes me up.”

“Well, what if I ask him not to?”

“I’d prefer a lock,” she said, but I still said no. In a year or two, perhaps, I told her. When she was older.

And then, not long after, Brendan returned home to announce that he’d decided to take a sabbatical from his job.

He’d left in the morning at the usual time, driven the girls to school, and a few hours later, when I was preparing my lunch, there he was, standing in the kitchen demanding a sandwich.

I’d never known him to take so much as a sick day in his life.

“A sabbatical?” I asked. “I thought that was only something university professors took?”

“Anyone can,” he said. “I need a break from that place.” He took a bottle of beer from the fridge, which was also out of character as he was never much of a drinker, let alone at lunchtime.

“All the chatter and the politics, it’d drive you to distraction.

I’ve told them I’m taking a few weeks off for myself, to clear my head. ”

“But the Olympics,” I began, for the Games were only eighteen months off now and preparations for team selection were in full swing.

“The Olympics will still be there when I get back.”

I stared at him in bewilderment. He’d never so much as suggested to me that he found work stressful. If anything, I’d always thought it was homelife that he didn’t enjoy.

“I work too hard,” he said, seeing how puzzled I was. “Sure don’t you always say that yourself?”

“Yes, but—”

“But what? I’ll still be getting paid, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That’s not it at all,” I said, annoyed by the suggestion. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

“Am I messing up your day by being here, is that it?” he asked, growing angry now. “Would you prefer I went and sat in the library for a few hours or took myself off into town to see a film?”

“Of course not,” I replied, trying to lessen the tension. “No, I’m just—”

“I’ve said I’ll give them a shout when I’m ready to go back.”

“And they won’t give your job away in the meantime?”

“How could they? Sure amn’t I too well known for that?”

“Are you depressed?” I asked, sitting down next to him. “Is that it? Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

“What I’d like, Vanessa, is not to talk about it,” he replied.

“And what will we tell the girls?”

“That I’ve taken some holiday time that was owing to me. Sure they’re too self-involved to care anyway.”

He was right about that at least. By now, Emma and Rebecca were far too involved with the drama of their respective social circles to pay the slightest attention to anything that went on at home.

When they realized that their father wasn’t going to work, they barely asked any questions, but despite his repeated insistences that I had nothing to worry about, I continued to find the whole thing peculiar.

My confusion was only piqued when I found myself in Dunnes Stores in Cornelscourt a week or so later and ran into Peggy Hartman, whose husband, Seán, was director of the National Athletics Foundation, a sister organization to Brendan’s.

I didn’t know Peggy well, but our paths had crossed a few times over the years at fundraising benefits and our husbands reported to the same minister, often joining forces when it came to funding applications.

“Peggy,” I said, stopping my trolley halfway along the frozen-food aisle when I saw her coming toward me. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in the longest time.”

I was startled by the expression that crossed her face, which blended embarrassment with anxiety. It was as if I was the very last person she wanted to encounter.

“Vanessa,” she said. “There you are.”

Peggy and Seán had a son with Down syndrome, and when I asked after him, she told me that he was spending a week with his grandparents in Leitrim, a place he adored.

“That’ll give you a break,” I said, perhaps not choosing my words as judiciously as I might have.

“I don’t need a break,” she said, surprisingly quick to take offense. “Why would I?”

“No, of course not,” I replied. “I only meant that it’s hard work, that’s all. You must be glad that your parents are happy to take him for a while.”

“He’s not a charity case, Vanessa,” she said, and I was startled by her reaction, which was, I thought, unnecessarily defensive.

“No, of course not,” I said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any harm. You’re well yourself anyway?”

“I’m fine.”

“And Seán?”

“He’s fine too.”

She looked at me coldly, and I got the distinct impression that whatever was going on here had nothing to do with what I had just said about her son.

“Is everything all right, Peggy?” I asked. “If you don’t mind me saying, you seem a bit out of sorts.”

She looked around, then shook her head as if she couldn’t believe that I’d even have the gall to ask.

“I just don’t know what to think,” she said finally.

“About what?”

“Well, there’s no smoke without fire, is there?”

I stared at her in bewilderment. She might have been speaking a foreign language for all the sense she was making to me.

“What smoke?” I asked. “What fire?”

“I think it’s best we don’t discuss it,” she said. “Seán has made it clear that I should say nothing.”

“Say nothing about what?”

She shook her head and made to move on, but before she wheeled her trolley away she turned back with a look of sympathy on her face.

“Look, I know none of this is your fault,” she said. “And, of course, it could be nothing more than malicious gossip. I’m just worried that, if it’s not, then whatever they discover will be brushed under the carpet.”

“Peggy, I don’t—”