a little.”
An hour later, Lucy was crabby and on the verge of tears. They had driven around the whole area twice, crisscrossing their path several times. They had called to the Garda station and reported Robbie missing; a laconic Guard had taken details but had failed to give any sense of alarm.
“We’ll let the cars know, Ma’am. They’ll be watching out. Did he not go with his father?”
“No, my husband left early this morning to do some business in Athlone.”
The Guard was calm, but not calming. It seemed Robbie was not missing long enough to cause worry and he thought half three in the afternoon was not dangerous. “Let us know, Ma’am, if he doesn’t come home for his tea. They mostly do,” was his encouraging suggestion. They had called back into the house three times to see if Robbie had arrived, but could tell each time by Fuzz’s ecstatic welcome and Susan’s casual “No, not yet,” that there was no good news. They came home again in silence to let Susan go home. Aisling’s grizzling about the discomfort of the whole episode was silenced by the seriousness of a visit to the police station. Once again, Fuzz greeted them, full of joy that her people were home.
“Trouble with you, Fuzz, is that you can’t count. There should be three of us,” said Lucy.
“Four,” said Aisling, “shouldn’t Dad be back? He sometimes is by now.”
“Should he? Even from Athlone? What time is it?”
“It’s nearly half six.” Aisling went over to the television and switched it on. “Let’s see if there’re any accidents on the news, then you can ring the hospital.”
Lucy sat down heavily. It was said that bad news travels fast and no news is good news, but supposing that was wrong and like her Dad said, the world had ended and no-one had remembered to tell her? I never hear anything unless I ask specifically, she thought. I wouldn’t make a reporter, I can’t ferret out gossip. And now I don’t even know where my own boy is. What sort of mother does that make me?
“I’m not going to ring hospitals just yet, I’m going to ring Jen. I need to talk to someone who’ll say something encouraging, not depress me worse.” She reached out to the phone and as she touched the receiver, it shrilled. Lucy grabbed for the phone, but it slipped and fell onto the carpet, where it squeaked “Mum? Mum?”
“Robbie? Where are you? Why didn’t you ring? Are you all right? Where are you?”
“We won, it was great, they were beating us at half time, but then we got a cool try and beat them by 3 points!”
“Who’s ‘we’ Robbie?” Lucy was trying to be calm, now that Robbie was obviously all right. Now he would have to be fetched and reprimanded.
“Old St Christopher’s of course. We were playing Howth College.”
A new anger began to grow in Lucy: “Are you with your Dad?”
“Yes. We’re in O’B s now having a jar. Well Dad is and I’m having a Coke and crisps. Dad sent me to ring you and say we’d be home later.”
“Get Dad to the phone please, Rob.”
“Okay.” Lucy heard a crash as the receiver at the other end was dropped and then just a distant hubbub. She waited, but no-one came. After a minute or two, the line went dead. Lucy hung up and stared at the phone. Thank God Robbie is okay.
“OK then Aisling, dinner to make.” Lucy was all business. They’d be home soon, explanations and apologies would be given, dinner eaten, normality restored. She got out an onion and started to peel it. She had no idea what dinner would be, but she’d get an idea while chopping.
At half-eight Robbie and Martin still weren’t home. Lucy and Aisling had finished dinner and left enough for microwaving later. Lucy was having a cup of coffee and trying to read an article in her professional journal, but she couldn’t concentrate. She read the words and each one made perfect sense, but she had no idea what the author was actually saying. It might as well be in Russian, she thought, Cyrillic wouldn’t be any less meaningful. She put the magazine down and looked into her coffee. There must be a reason, he’s met someone who can give business advice, that’s half the point of going to the club, to keep in touch and make new contacts. I haven’t many contacts, not business ones, just Jen and Gina. And the people at