Politics ran on caffeine. Local politics certainly did.
As she waited for the kettle to boil, next door’s cat, a sleek Siamese with an Egyptian face and a howl that could wake the dead, appeared at the kitchen window.
Eden and Ralphie did not have children or pets. Eden didn’t want kids and Ralphie, who adored her so much that he went along with everything she said, agreed that neither did he.
‘I love children,’ she’d told him. ‘I just don’t think I’m mother material. Is that OK? A deal breaker?’
Ralphie loved her honesty. ‘You say it like it is,’ he said. ‘I’ve never thought about children.’
‘If you do, later, then tell me.’ Eden was adamant on this. ‘If you want to go off and find a mother-earth person, give me a warning.’
‘Deal,’ he agreed.
Pets were out because they were messy and needed much taking care of.
‘We’re out all the time,’ Eden had said.
But this cat, with her in-your-face screeching, had adopted them.
‘I am not feeding you,’ Eden said to it through the window.
The cat ignored her and kept up the waking-the-dead howl.
‘Is this how you became revered in Egypt?’ she asked it. ‘For actually waking the dead?’ For the sake of peace, she opened the window. ‘I don’t have anything for you,’ she told the cat as it stepped elegantly in like a supermodel on a catwalk. It sprang onto the floor, then indolently rubbed herself along Eden’s jeans. Next, it headed for the kitchen table, hopping up via a chair. It then positioned itself facing the larder cupboard and began grooming its back leg in a feat of hyper flexibility that made Eden stare.
‘You don’t listen to a word I say, do you?’ she said to the cat, en route to the cupboard where she kept the cat treats she’d bought. Not that she’d told Ralphie this. ‘This is a secret, cat,’ she told the cat, who deigned to eat all the duck and raspberry treats, her raspy pink tongue licking them off the table. ‘I suppose this is your natural, in-the-wild food? Duck and raspberry. Like duck à l’orange?’
The cat gazed inscrutably at her. She – it was a she: Eden had seen enough cats to know this – was very beautiful with that pale creamy fur and the dark Egyptian face, like a cat on an ancient tomb painting. ‘I wonder what your name is? Raspberry?’
Nobody would call this cat Raspberry. She’d be named after a goddess.
But then Eden had always been quirky.
Raspberry began grooming herself again, then stopped and made a plaintive, one-note miaow.
‘Raspberry,’ agreed Eden, thinking that she wouldn’t mention the cat to Ralphie just yet. His family home had contained a family dog and she wasn’t sure if she was ready for the commitment of any pet.
Another secret. She thought of the letters in her desk.
I know your secret, Mrs Tallisker.
I know what you did.
There had been three letters so far, both dropped in her home letterbox, written on an actual typewriter. Eden had mentioned them to nobody.
Because she had a secret – didn’t everyone? Except that secrets didn’t go down too well for elected representatives. Secrets could ruin careers.
Of all the weeks for this to happen. She absently rubbed the cat’s silky fur.
‘What am I going to do, Raspberry?’ she said.
2
Indy
Indy Ryan, née Lucinda Robicheaux, was dying for a pee. Dying. But she could no more leave the delivery room than she could fly to Mars. Peeing was for people in non-health care jobs where there was a very thin line between life and death and anything could happen while you were sighing with relief in the bathroom stall. People’s lives hung in the balance when you were answering the call of nature or grabbing a quick latte. Being a midwife meant learning how to control your bladder for very long periods of time and Indy had worked many shifts where she’d gone from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. without a sip of water, any food or a visit to the loo.
She was going to be late to the coffee-morning meeting in The Beach Hut with her mother and sisters. Very late, if she made it at all. She wasn’t supposed to be working this week but someone was sick and the next midwife on the rota couldn’t make it in till eleven because she was driving up from Kerry after a few days off.
