"That Irishman has been here again," Francesca said, sitting down at the kitchen table. "He has come to every house, but it's you he's looking for. I told him you would be home soon."
"What does he want?" Eilis asked.
"I did everything to make him tell me, but he wouldn't. He asked for you by name."
"He knows my name?"
Francesca's smile had an insinuating edge. Eilis appreciated her mother-in-law's intelligence, and also her sly sense of humor.
"Another man is the last thing I need," Eilis said.
"Who are you talking to?" Francesca replied.
They both laughed, as Francesca stood up to go. From the window, Eilis watched her walk carefully across the damp grass to her own house.
Soon, Larry would be in from school and then Rosella from after-school study and then she would hear Tony parking his car outside.
This would be a perfect time for a cigarette. But, having found Larry smoking, she had made a bargain with him that she would give up completely if he promised not to smoke again. She still had a packet upstairs.
When the doorbell rang, Eilis stood up lazily, presuming that it was one of Larry's cousins calling for him to come and play.
However, from the hallway, she made out the silhouette of a grown man through the frosted glass of the door. Until he called out her name, it did not occur to her that this was the man Francesca had mentioned. She opened the door.
“You are Eilis Fiorello?”
The accent was Irish, with a trace, she thought, of Donegal, like a teacher she had had in school. Also, the way the man stood there, as though waiting to be challenged, reminded her of home.
“I am,” she said.
“I have been looking for you.”
His tone was almost aggressive. She wondered if Tony’s business could owe him money.
“So I hear.”
“You are the wife of the plumber?”
Since the question sounded rude, she saw no reason to reply.
“He is good at his job, your husband. I’d say he’s in great demand.”
The man stopped for a second, looking behind him to check no one was listening.
“He fixed everything in our house,” he went on, pointing a finger at her. “He even did a bit more than was in the estimate. Indeed, he came back regularly when he knew that the woman of the house would be there and I would not. And his plumbing is so good that she is to have a baby in August.”
He stood back and smiled broadly at her expression of disbelief.
“That’s right. That’s why I’m here. And I can tell you for a fact that I am not the father. It had nothing to do with me. But I am married to the woman who is having this baby and if anyone thinks I am keeping an Italian plumber’s brat in my house and have my own children believe that it came into the world as decently as they did, they can have another think.”
He pointed a finger at her again.