How Cold Is Too Cold?

Eoin Connolly

The morning of her son’s twelfth birthday began with two polite rejections that landed one after the other in Siobhan Carolan’s inbox. By the time she managed to drag herself out of bed, Reilly had gone to pick up the cake. He hadn’t left her any coffee. While she made a fresh pot, she rang him.

“It’s a no-go,” she said when he answered.

“Both of them?”

“Both of them.”

“Sorry, love.” His voice was tinny against the backdrop of traffic and car horns.

“Don’t forget the balloons,” she told him, as Shane crept downstairs and assumed his position in front of the television. “I’m grand. I wanted to tell you, is all. But please God, don’t forget the balloons.”

In the living room, Shane was already dressed, already staring at the blank screen. Siobhan retrieved the remote from the coffee table and switched it on for him.

“How’s my big man? Do you feel any older?”

He shrugged.

“Not long to go. Da’ll be back soon. We’ll have everything ready in plenty of time.”

She remembered the emails and found she couldn’t bear to stay with him any longer. He didn’t look up as she rose and made her way out to the garden, where she drank her coffee as slowly as she could manage, sitting on the bench by their oak tree. When she heard the car pull up in their driveway, she returned inside.

Reilly was standing next to the couch, beaming. “The lads should be here soon,” he was saying to Shane, glancing up as Siobhan drifted towards them. “Are you psyched?”

“We’re psyched,” Siobhan confirmed, beaming back at him. “Aren’t we, big man?”

She shone the headlights of her grin on Shane, who winced and changed channels.

Back in the kitchen, Reilly directed her attention to the cake, which sat in a white cardboard box. They stood on opposite sides of the table and peered down at it. Through the box’s clear plastic window, Siobhan could see the number twelve decorated in thin green lines on the chocolate frosting.

Reilly went over and removed three paper sacks from the shopping bag on the counter. Into each one, he placed candy, an orange, a notebook, and a mechanical pencil. He tied off each goodie bag by twisting its handles together and then rejoined her.

Siobhan felt his hand rest on the nape of her neck and scratch at the wispy black hairs that lay there, having escaped her ponytail. Ghostly sitcom laughter floated in from the other room. Reilly smelled of sweat and tobacco. His breath was hot against her cheek. She leaned into him and half-turned to gaze out the window as a gust whipped up outside, shaking their tree like an umbrella and rattling droplets of rainwater onto the dewy grass.

Later, when she came out back with the day’s fourth mug of tea, Reilly said, “I’ll kill them. I’m not joking. I’ll wring their scrawny necks.”

“They might be late.”

“They’re not late.”

“I’m only saying.”

“You think I’m joking.” He fished a fresh pack from his pocket and extracted a cigarette with his teeth. “I’m deadly serious. I couldn’t be more serious if I tried. How’s he doing, anyway?”

“He’s grand. I’ve Top Gear on. He’s away with the fairies.”

“Wish I was away with the fairies.” Reilly shook back the sleeve of his windbreaker and checked his watch. “I’m calling time of death on this one. The little fuckers. I’ll wring their fucking necks.”

“Please don’t talk like that.”

“They must’ve known. They’re there with him in school, all day long. They must know he hasn’t anybody else to invite. Do you not think?”

“They’re probably just late,” she said again, but he was turning away.

Back inside, he clomped on through to the living room while she rinsed out his mug. Three sets of disposable cutlery lay beside the toaster. The balloons had lost their buoyancy and were hugging the floor. She closed her eyes against the shame of it all but couldn’t stop seeing. From the other room, Reilly cracked a joke and laughed at it on his own until he broke into a coughing fit. By the time it subsided, the commercials had come on. Wrenching her eyelids apart, she went in and joined them.

They binged Top Gear reruns for the rest of the afternoon. Reilly excused himself to smoke every half hour on the dot. Shane focused on the television, said nothing at all, now and again leaned forward to take a sip of Fanta. Each time he finished his glass, Siobhan hurried to the fridge for a refill.

When she was returning with the last of it, she stumbled, spilling the drink everywhere, and something inside of her burst. She mopped up the sticky liquid, called out to Reilly that she was going for a stroll, and left through the back door.

She spent the walk over thinking up withering openers and auditioning expletives with stage whispers. It only took her ten minutes to make it to the Murtaghs’ cul-de-sac. The doorbell played a xylophone fragment of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as the enormous shape of Deirdre Murtagh appeared in the frosted glass, a can of lager clutched in one meaty hand.

For all her rehearsing, the only thing that came to Siobhan’s lips was a lame, “I hope you’re happy.”

Deirdre tilted her head to one side. “I’m alright, I suppose. Do you need sugar?”

“Sugar?”

“We’ve plenty. For the cake, is it? Flour, maybe?”

Siobhan straightened her back and narrowed her eyes. “The cake is perfectly fine,” she said icily. “No sugar required.”

“Right.” Deirdre looked over her shoulder. “Would you like to come in?”

The living room sofa was groaning under the weight of the man Siobhan recognized as Gavin, the boys’ father. He raised a hand in greeting as Deirdre gave him a fresh beer.

“You’re looking well, Siobhan.” He popped the tab and took a long sip that snarled his unkempt ginger beard with sea-spray foam. “Didn’t reckon we’d see you today, I must say. Is everything alright? Are you out of sugar?” 

“They didn’t show up. Colin and Ciarán. Your lads.”

The pair of them stared at her, dull-eyed, bovine; she wondered had they even heard her. The cracks between the sofa cushions were inundated with Quality Street chocolate wrappers. Siobhan had never been prouder of her collarbones, her ankles, her threadbare fingers.

“He didn’t once ask,” she went on. “He’s been sat on the couch since nine in the morning, dressed and ready, and he didn’t once ask where his pals might be. On his twelfth birthday. While they’re ten and have no idea what it’s like to not have a friend. While they’re half the size of him if that.”

“He’s autistic, though,” said Gavin, throwing a sidelong glance at his wife. “I mean, come on. I’m sure it can’t be easy for the lad. But they’re only young. It’s not straightforward, hanging out with him. I’m sorry if they weren’t the most enthusiastic. They just don’t know how to go about it. Surely you get that.”

“He’s not autistic. He has autism. There’s a difference.” Each breath came harder than the last. “All fun and games, isn’t it? Great craic altogether. To fuck off and leave him to it. Knowing full well nobody else was coming.”

“Wait,” he said. “Hang on a minute.”

“They’re the only people he wanted to invite. His only mates. Twins. Two for the price of one, we thought. More the fool us. And they fucked off away and left him.”

“Are the lads not there, Siobhan?” Deirdre’s voice started out small and shrank further with each syllable. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Did they not tell you?” Siobhan faltered as her blood settled and she noticed how pale their faces had gone. “Where are they, then?”

Gavin took out his phone, punched in a series of digits, shook his head as it went straight to voicemail. He tried another number, and then he dialled the first one again, and then Deirdre pried the device from his hand. They bent their heads, turned inwards towards the fireplace, and Siobhan stepped outside.

She had only intended to give them some privacy but soon found her feet carrying her home. Grey house after grey terraced house; she counted her steps as she walked and estimated the trip would’ve taken them three minutes on their bikes. Not accounting for the frantic energy of ten-year-olds, nor for their understandable reluctance, but close enough all the same. Half an hour with Shane, for politeness’ sake — that was all she or Reilly or anybody else could ask — and another five minutes to get back, allowing for post-cake fatigue.

The sky hung low over the estate, as purple as an old bruise. Thirty-eight minutes of their time, all told. Call it forty-five, she thought bitterly, for it’s a nice, round number. Call it an hour, for that matter. Was that asking too much?

On the porch, she took a moment to steel herself before unlocking their front door. Reilly shouted down from the living room, welcoming her back much too cheerfully to be credible, and her keys clattered on the hall table as she set them down, and the television was blaring — but the only thing she heard was her son’s silence, and she heard it as clearly as if it had a voice of its own.

 The search started a short while after sundown, in the woods around Glendalough.

She got the call halfway through the Vietnam Special, sitting on the couch with Reilly and Shane. The boys told a mate they were cycling over there to blow off some steam ahead of the party, Gavin explained. “Which mate?” she wanted to ask, and: “Would it have killed them to ask him to come too?” But all she said was that she and Reilly would be there in a bit to help out, as soon as they could find someone for Shane, of course they would, and that no, it wasn’t any bother, it was what one did in times like this.

When the babysitter arrived, the Top Gear presenters were waxing lyrical about Ha Long Bay, which they were preparing to cross on their specially modified motorbikes.

“Shanezer, my man, my dude, how’re we keeping?” Emily sang out as she glided into the living room. She spotted the few remaining balloons and widened her eyes in mock reproach. “Where was my invite, man?”

The corners of Shane’s mouth twitched. Siobhan kissed him on the forehead and went to join her husband by the door.

“You’re a dear,” Reilly said as he tugged on his coat, and Siobhan felt a twinge in her abdomen. “Can’t thank you enough.”

“No trouble.” Emily winked at her. “Must be a lovely wee treat this one has planned for you. Jetting off all of a sudden like this. Wouldn’t say no myself.”

“He has to be in bed by ten,” Siobhan began through gritted teeth, but the teenager cut across her.

“Sure, don’t I know the drill by now? Enjoy yourselves. All’s well here.”

They waved goodbye to Shane and trudged out to the weather-beaten Toyota. Reilly lit a cigarette and wrestled the car into gear while Siobhan sat on her hands, shivering. Neither said a word as they crunched out of the driveway and crawled through the labyrinthine estate.

“Have you fucked her?” she asked once they were on the main road.

“Who? Emily?”

She wondered whether any honest people posed rhetorical questions at the wrong moments and got lumped in with the liars. “No, Anna Karenina. Antoinette Cosway.”

“Of all the times.” Reilly exhaled through his nose, sending smoke billowing across the faux-leather dashboard. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

She went back to looking out the window. “You don’t need to go biting my head off. Pretty young thing. Christ knows you’ve had plenty of chances.”

They made the turn for Glendalough, drove on through the dense woodland in silence. At the parking lot, they found Gavin standing by his car, clad in a hi-vis vest and carrying an armful of flashlights.

“You’re good to come out like this,” he said as they joined him. “Deirdre’s gone up ahead. We reckon we’ll do better if we split up, take a quarter each, start here and work outwards. Cover more ground that way.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Reilly blew on his hands, nodded in approval. “Have you called the Guards?”

“They’ll be out when they can.” Gavin’s drinker’s face was blotchy in the orange streetlights. “Understaffed at the moment. But they’ll come when they can. They said the lads will be home soon enough, most likely. Deirdre’s mother’s back there now, in case they show up.”

“Well. Best get on with it, I suppose. We’ll meet back here, is it?”

“In an hour, we were thinking. Two hours. Something like that. But look, it’s your lad’s birthday. And they’re fine, we know they are. They’re grand.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Siobhan said hoarsely and her husband nodded again.

Gavin handed them a flashlight each. “Deirdre went that way,” he said, pointing first towards one corner of the parking lot and then another. “I’m going this way. Go however you like, I suppose.”

He smiled, or tried to, and set off for the woods.

“Well,” Reilly said to Siobhan. “Be careful, yeah?”

There was something she had wanted to ask him, but before she could recall what it was, he wheeled around and vanished into the forest. Alone in the gloom, Siobhan chose the only direction left to her and began to walk.

She had been picking a path through the underbrush for an hour or so when she heard it: a keening, or a whimpering, a sound so fragile it died off in the air as soon as it was made. She followed the noise until she came across a short, steep slope and found its source.

There was a boy nestled against a fallen tree trunk at the bottom. When she got down to him, she realized it was Colin, the shorter of the two. He was wearing a mud-splattered t-shirt and a pair of worn jeans. The gooseflesh of his upper arms was so pale it seemed to glow.

“I’ve done something to my ankle,” he said in a high whine. “He thought I was messing and went on. Don’t know where he’s gone.”

She knelt beside him. “I’m here now. What’ve you done to it?”

“We were running around. I don’t remember. I tripped, maybe.”

Siobhan reached forward and probed the ankle. “Does this hurt?” she asked, making a ring with her fingers and squeezing it.

“A little.” He blinked, stiffened. “Hurts a little.”

“What were you playing at?”

“We were just playing.”

“But why were you playing, is what I mean.” She didn’t let go of his foot. “Whose idea was it? Yours or his?”

“We wanted to see the woods,” he said, and she knew he was lying. “Before the party. We didn’t want to be the first.”

“Nobody else was coming. You two were the only ones he invited. Did you not know that?”

“Please,” he said. “Please. I want my Mum.”

“She’ll find you. They’re out looking for you. They’ve been out here for hours.” Matching his lie with one of her own made her feel strong. “Called the Guards and everything. You’ve an entire search party on your case.”

As she gazed down at him, she thought again about the goodie bags, the balloons, the unopened packages of plastic cutlery on the kitchen counter. Colin was shaking so violently she could hear his teeth chattering. The edges of his lips had turned a delicate shade of mottled blue.

Siobhan went to unzip her jacket, intending to wrap it around him and help him to his feet, but found herself standing up on her own instead, watching her hands as if from afar as they pointed her torch at the boy’s terrified face. “We need to get you warm,” she told him as he squinted in the harsh light, listening to herself speak with mounting horror. “But I don’t think you can walk, and I’m not sure I can carry you. I’ll go and fetch somebody, right? I’ll get your Da. We’ll carry you back.”

“Where’s Ciarán? Do they have him?”

“They found him out by the entrance. He’s grand, don’t worry. Worried sick about you, he is.” They came easily to her, those words, fell from her mouth like they were no heavier than air.

“We didn’t want to be the first. We got lost.” From the way his voice quivered, she could tell he was lying again. “He gets it, doesn’t he? Shane, I mean. He gets it?”

“You’re good lads. I’ll be back soon with your Da, right?”

“Wait,” he called out. “Wait, please. Please wait with me. Can’t you call them? My phone’s dead.”

“I’ve no reception out here,” she said. “I won’t be long, though. You’ll be okay. Everything’s going to be alright.”

She didn’t look back. The boy’s cries got fainter the deeper into the woods she went. It wasn’t long before she stopped hearing them altogether.

She got lost on the way and needed her phone’s GPS to find the others. Gavin and Deirdre were standing together, talking in low voices. Reilly was sitting on the curb. Two red-and-yellow bicycles lay on the tarmac beside him. As she approached, Siobhan could tell from their faces that no progress had been made.

“No,” she replied to the unasked question. “I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry.”

“In a way, it’s a good sign. If we’d found them so close to where they came in, they’d probably have been hurt. Wouldn’t have gotten far.” Reilly got to his feet and went to stand by Siobhan, commenced kneading the back of her neck as if to console her. “They come here a lot, didn’t you say?”

“All the time.” Gavin had his arm around Deirdre, who was staring at the ground. “They’re forever coming out here. Cycling around, fucking about. You know how boys are.”

“Sure, look.” Reilly lit another cigarette, bending away from the group to shelter the flame. Siobhan thought she saw his hands trembling, but when he straightened and faced them again, he was as stoic as ever. “There you go. It’s familiar territory. Backs of their hands, no doubt. Bet they could sketch it out for you on a napkin.”

“Ciarán knows what he’s about. Colin, though. Colin’s gentler. More sensitive. But as long as they’re together. I just hope to fuck they’re together.”

The breeze was spinning one of the bicycles’ wheels, making it tick like a wristwatch. There was a playing card wedged into its spokes; Siobhan recalled with a start how her brother had done the same, back when they were kids.

“Can I call you later?” Deirdre asked suddenly, looking up and straight at her.

“Of course,” she said, fighting to keep her voice level. “But of course. You can call me anytime.”

“Once we find them, like.” The night had daubed over the woman’s eyes, blackened them, excavated something flinty from deep within and ushered it to the surface. “To let you know. Since you’re after coming out here with us.”

“Please do. Whenever. I’ll leave my phone on.” She turned to Gavin, trying to ignore the searing bile that had surged into the back of her mouth. “Are you headed back yourselves, or what’s the plan?”

“We’ve a thermos in the car. Sandwiches. Until her mother calls us, you know. Until we’re sure.”

“Did you ring the Guards again?”

Gavin nodded. “They reckon it’s starting to get serious. They reckon they’ll be out here soon enough. It’s getting cold, is all. That’s all we’re worried about. They’ll be grand, we know they will, but when it gets cold…”

The sentence condensed like breath in the frosty air.

As they were leaving, she saw them wheeling the bicycles towards their station wagon. Neither one noticed the playing card slip from the smaller bike’s spokes. Siobhan was about to roll down her window and call out when another wave of nausea forced her back into her seat. By the time she could open her eyes again, they had rounded a bend and left the parking lot far behind.

Emily was asleep in an armchair when they made it back. Siobhan woke her, inquired about the evening, waited as she slipped into her shoes and shrugged on her coat. At the door, she pressed a fifty-Euro note into the girl’s hand and refused her offer to make change.

Reilly had switched off the television and collapsed onto the couch. “I wanted to kill them,” he said, speaking to his reflection in the black screen. “I wanted to kill them earlier, and then I was scared, and then I wanted us to find them so I could kill them again.”

“Don’t. It’s not fair to think like that.”

“Awful, I know. Terrible. But it’s what I wanted.” He got up and went over to the counter. “Will you have a piece of cake?”

“I’ll have a drink,” she said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

Reilly cut himself a generous helping of birthday cake and retrieved the bottle of Jameson from their liquor cabinet. He carried everything to the table and then returned for two crystal tumblers. Siobhan poured them a finger each. They raised their glasses and drank.

“I don’t know anything about hypothermia,” Reilly said, a few minutes later. He looked up from his untouched plate and she saw that his eyes had gone red around the edges. “Do you?”

She shook her head.

He picked up his phone, swiped left, scrolled down. “Says it’s almost freezing. Three degrees. How cold is too cold?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and drained her glass.

His pale forearms lay beside his plate like cuts of raw fish. She remembered how he had found her at the book launch, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal the same expanse of skin. How they had spent the night in her old agent’s spare room. And then there were the early days: tins of paint and white plastic tarps; the sapling she surprised him with on their first anniversary, laughing off his jibes about her addiction to symbolism and planting it later that day in the spring rain; the stench of sex rising off the bed in the morning, most mornings, more mornings than not. And then there was the first, an accident that was in any case untenably small by week nine. And then came the second and the third, both deliberate, both miscarried.

And then there was Shane.

“Do you ever think about how things would be different?” she asked quietly.

He studied his tumbler, rotated it first one way and then the other in his hands.

“Was it not selfish to keep trying?” She shifted forward as something hard and hot welled up inside of her. “Were they not hints? Warnings?”

“We should’ve stopped, then,” he said. “According to you, the thing to do would’ve been to give up. That’s what you’re saying.”

All those days she could’ve been writing. All those nights she could’ve been writing. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“You can’t think like that. You just can’t. There’s nothing at the end of that road you’d want to find.”

“You get like that too. Don’t you? You’ve times when you want to ask. Want to wonder. Tell me you do.” Siobhan felt a stinging behind her eyelids and tried to remember how long it had been since she last cried. “You never pictured it, no? Wondered where we’d be? Would we still be here, d’you think? Would we have lasted?”

Reilly looked up and gazed at her for a long while before disfiguring his handsome mouth with a sad smile. “I’ll go up and check on him,” he said gently. “Did you leave the present by his bed?”

“Fuck.” She could picture it, the collector’s edition of the Top Gear box set, wrapped in brown paper and waiting on the floor of their closet. “No, I forgot. Fuck.”

As he got up from the table, she was struck by how grey the hair at his temples was, how pronounced the paunch above his belt had become. Once his footsteps sounded on the staircase, she reached across and unlocked his phone by typing in her own birthday.

Reilly was right, she saw when she checked the temperature. Three degrees and set to plummet further.

His phone was back where he had left it when he reappeared.

“Sleeping like a log,” he said as he sat back down. “Didn’t even hear me come in.”

“I’m glad,” she whispered, making an effort to smile.

He crossed his arms and buried his head between them. Siobhan emptied the rest of the Jameson into her glass, watching his back rise and fall behind the pristine slice of cake.

The night was colder now and promised to get colder still. According to Reilly’s weather app, it would dip below zero at around three in the morning. She took another sip, and as the warmth of the whiskey seeped into her bloodstream, she decided to tell him about all of it — to let him know what he had married, with what he shared a bed, what precisely it was that he had inflicted upon his child all those years ago. This is me, she’d say, shouting without raising her voice the way Shane had taught her. This is me, this vile thing in front of you. This ugly, skinny, endlessly breathing apparatus. Look! You call this a wife? This is your idea of a mother? Don’t make me laugh!

The wind creaked through their tree’s branches, blustered against the kitchen window. Siobhan finished what was left of her drink in a single gulp and stretched towards her husband. Nudging him awake, she saw the kindly moss of his eyes as he blinked at her, tasted sodium as she opened her mouth — and then her phone rang.

Buzzed between them: a terrible insect. Stupefied her parted lips, stilled him beneath her hand. Shook their worn-out table, threatening to unscrew every bolt, unmake every joint, unsettle the varnish until it flaked away like dead skin.

Rang for a full forty seconds.

Stopped. Rang again.