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Part 1
Chapter 1
The bathroom door firmly locked, the whirr of the overhead fan cutting through the
humidity kept her grief private.
At the start of the year for 20 years now Cally had been carefully slipping the
photo into a secret pocket at the back of her new diary. Having left, how she did, in a
rush, unexpectedly, it was the only one she had of her daughter and son together.
She sneaked a peek nightly, imagining the changes in her little girl, struggling to
hold onto the memories of her giggles, the way she pushed her hair from her face - the
things an old photo of her two children on a slide could only hint at.
Today the urge overtook her at work; she had come in over the holidays to catch
up. Cally often thought of her own experience in her research area. She talked to
people about how emigration met their expectations and how it fitted in with people's
life expectations.
Walking out into the wide bright hall, she saw Tony, her department head.
Short, round and normally dressed in a sharp suit, today he was in a polo shirt, kneelength shorts and sandals. There was a hint of ginger in his beard, but she had no idea
if that matched whatever the original colour of his silver hair. The only change over
the past 15 years was that it had thinned slightly.
Cally greeted him with a smile. Tony had quietly pushed her through her paces
since her arrival in the late 1980s, to her senior position in the Humanities
department. She fitted that image of the immigrant who didn't expect their life to have
turned out like this.
As always there was a twinkle in his blue eyes.
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“What are you doing in today my dear?”
She was clearing the decks before the new semester started in case. In case the
rumoured overseas trip for her came up unexpectedly. The research included talking
to communities in Mediterranean countries with strong links to Australia, Italy,
Greece, Lebanon. She needed more time than most to prepare for departure.
“Oh, you know me”.
"Where did you go to see the fireworks? Set up camp beside Mrs McQuaries
Point again? Can you believe they nearly didn't happen.”
“I know. Bloody wind. We were close to under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Had dinner in the Rocks.”
“Your young fella is all grown up now, isn't he?"
"Oh he is, his own man".
The truth was he was a waster.
“The opportunity has come up, Cally.”
“Tony, I…”
“Now, I won't take no for an answer, we're sending you. There's people above
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me that want to make this happen more than you do. It’s a great way for the Uni
to make overseas business links.”
“Of course, I’d be delighted to.”
It was a dream assignment for Cally professionally. How did I end up here, she
asked herself. And how is it I’m being sent back there. Personally it was a different
story.
“No fella to check with that’s going to be giving me grief over this?”
“No, Tony, you’re safe enough.”
“A good looking woman like you Cally? We’ll have to watch you in Italy!”
He wasn’t the one that had to worry. But neither did Cally to be honest. Hiding
in the open was something she had become used to. In plain sight. She worried from
time to time, and as the years passed she knew that nothing could be worse than the
pain she endured daily.
Lately there had been media requests for interview and some international
interest in her research work. The heartbreak of migration. Post 2001 people were
looking for answers. Answers to everything.
Her worry with Greece was the attraction for young people from Ireland to work
there and holiday there. If connections, recognitions were made, if the whole facade
came tumbling down. Australia was no different of course, she moved in different
circles and the Irish name stuck out no more than the next person's.
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Her gut was saying no and she attributed it to leaving her son - a grown adult behind. He couldn't hold back her life.
Sometimes she blamed herself for his problems. Did he remember anything
from before? Had he found out anything along the way, had he researched anything
since? Or was it just genetics. Was he just difficult on purpose? She didn't know.
Leaving, she would have to prepare for never returning, she had done it this way
everywhere she was over the years. Leave nothing incriminating behind, and anything
you do leave, have it well looked after. Have a keeper of secrets as such or a safe
place from which you could retrieve what you wanted or needed.
Once, he had tried to blackmail her. He wasn't past trying it again, though the
next time, she knew he would be more careful.
She had no qualms pushing him down the tiled stairs.
He crawled home from hospital weeks later apologetic, his time alone and with
just his friends visiting enough to do some damage.
The damage was done for Cally and she wasn't entirely sure she could ever trust
him again. A spoilt, intelligent victim. The conniving he had earned from his father.
Maybe things would change again, his behaviour had changed drastically after
school, then again university and the latest was a broken relationship and suspension
from his job. Change was not something he took well to.
“Who are you?” “Where are you from?” “How has being torn from your family
and homestead shaped your life and those around you?” were the questions she asked
in her work. She didn’t need them at home too.
And with time on his hands she feared his quizzical nature and way of holding
things in. He still hadn't fully embraced the internet, and she feared he would start to
search for his own background and ask the questions she asked every day.
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In ways it was almost easier to indulge him with the money he needed to buy
drink and drugs and live in a very superficial world.
***
Barbara was in disbelief, and delighted. “I can’t believe it, this is great. You’ll finally
get to meet little Sebastian, this is so exciting.
Cally ignored the Sebastian comment. Barbara's incessant talk of her grandson
was a bit wearing. Of course she loved children, it just smarted that she would never
enjoy her own grandchildren. She'd be lucky if Stevie made it to 35, never mind about
fathering his own children. Well of course, that was entirely possible, being involved
in their lives was another thing.
She broke the comfortable silence between them down the phone line.
“I miss you Barbara
“Finally, I get you back on my territory for a little while.”
While Cally’s career was building, Barbara had left Australia to help her son set up
business back in Greece on his father’s island. Just for a few months. Then another
few months. The arrival of her first grandchild anchored her there more and more.
It made more sense for Barbara to visit Australia, to get a proper break from the
resort, rather than Cally travelling. It was not ideal, nothing had been ideal about
anything anyway. Ever. Cally had never met the girl. She'd seen photos. Having been
so used to Zander's ways as a young good looking man in Australia, with a new girl
on his arm every few months, she took no heed.
This one had trapped him, getting pregnant, trapping wasn't the right word, it's
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not as if Cally had deliberately entrapped anyone when she first got pregnant. She
didn't dare think what would have happened if she lived in a different country, a
different era. No, she would have kept the child, of course. There would still be pain
in her life, she thought.
There was no question with Sebastian. Zander had finally gotten stopped in his
tracks and stood up to his responsibilities, doing everything short of marrying the girl.
There had been quick to whisper in his ear on that front. There was too much at stake,
and the girl claimed to not want marriage. A free spirit.
Cally firmly believed she would be gone, disappeared overnight with or without
the child. But she stayed and the longer she stayed, the longer Cally had kept away.
After all the years, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy from time to time,
everything that Barbara had and she did not.
Something needed to change.
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Chapter 2
It was the smell of Barbara's perfume that Cally first got as she opened the hotel
bedroom door.
She was tired from jet lag and a day setting up an office to work at the local
university. She kicked off her heels just inside the bedroom door, letting the door
click gently. The air conditioning was off, the room heavy and dull.
Barbara's belongings were strewn across the room, evidence she had been there,
even if she was no longer. A chink of light broke through the heavy curtains, cutting
across the room.
They played a game of cat and mouse, roles changing, someone always chasing
the other, from their college days in Dublin.
Cally looked around the sides of the king sized bed, back out to the bathroom
near the front of the room, she flicked on the switch, no sign of Barbara hiding or
even luxuriating in the large tub in the middle of the bathroom.
There was a cough. Distant. Barbara's cough. Unmistakably.
The terrace. Cally went over to the wall beside the curtain and pressed a switch.
Slowly the curtains came back automatically showering the room in sunlight. Waiting
for her eyes to adjust, and through the dazzle, there was a familiar figure, still as slight
as ever, pressed against the balcony, a mobile phone to one ear, blonde hair tied back
in a chignon, taking in the buzzing city below.
Normally when they met - at airport arrivals halls, there was the nerves, the
scanning of the crowds the fear that something would stop them. The questions from
well meaning old men and women “who are you waiting for?” “My sister”. “Where is
she travelling from, what does she do there, does she have family, do you have
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family, where are you going next?” Too many questions.
There was the worry that the other person would walk the wrong way, not catch
your eye, not recognise you with the changes that the years had made - both the
ageing and anti ageing.
Rarely was there the opportunity to glimpse and observe her oldest friend
unawares, before body language, worry, expectation, and emotions froze up her nerve
endings.
Who was she talking to Cally wondered. Her husband? Her son? Maybe even
this new daughter in law. Another friend in Rome? She stiffened with jealousy
already. Jealousy was not something she was allowed to bring into this relationship.
Barbara was gregarious, she flirted with everybody and was absolutely charming.
Alone with Cally she was different, softened somehow, just herself, no shows. And
totally clear what they had was what they had, it was what it was.
There was nobody to be jealous of, as nobody had gone through what they had
together over the years.
For a split second, Cally wondered about leaving. Just turning her back and
leaving the room, checking into another hotel, continuing with her work, ignoring
calls and emails from Barbara, walking away from this, whatever it was they had
together or didn't have together. Going back to Australia, or starting afresh
somewhere without all this hanging over her.
No matter what she said, it was a constant reminder, what they had done, the
damage they had done, it was evident with Stevie.
But would he be worse anyway if they had stayed? She would have been worse.
An incapable mother, she would have died in any of many ways to save her children.
Barbara turned, her back to the railing now, laughing and gesticulating down the
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phone. She lifted her sunglasses and peered towards Cally who moved the voile
curtain, fiddling with the latch before opening the doors outwards onto the terrace.
Barbara's face opened up and she hurriedly said into the mobile phone: “I have
to go honey.” “Cally,” she screeched. It was the airport scene, on a rooftop of one of
the top hotels in Rome. Cally went forward to hug. Heels off, and with Barbara’s
heels on they were the same height. Oh how good the hug felt. She was home. Sun
had aged Barbara she felt, more than it had aged her, when not indoors in Sydney,
outdoors with a high sun factor on.
It was these moments she always wondered about and waited for, how good
would she feel again around Barbara, how long would it last and how bad would she
feel saying goodbye.
“You look great.”
“No you look great. Your hair is amazing, look at those curls.”
“Let me show you what I have for you.”
“I can't believe we are here in real life together.”
It wasn’t usually a line she heard from Barbara.
“Oh hold on my bags are still with the concierge.”
“Don't worry honey, I can't believe we are here face to face, it has been so long.
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“How long?”
This definitely wasn't Barbara. Barbara reached in for another hug. Holding
longer and longer. There was a knock on the door, Barbara wiped a tear from her
cheek.
“I'll get the door.”
She spoke rapidly in Italian, better than the Italian Cally had developed over her time
in her research. “I might need you as a translator,” she laughed.
“It's the only way to keep the Italians coming to the island,” explained Barbara.
“It helps an awful lot.”
“Let me get this out for you.” Cally started righting her suitcase to unlock it and
unzip it and take out the gifts she had for Barbara. It was a ritual that went back
decades. She didn't ever get the same back from Barbara, whose style was expensive
jewellery, nice hotels. It was what kept her going though, picking up a bit here or
there, from foreign trips or trips out of town. A collection of things she thought
Barbara would like. One of the pieces had broken. “I, I can't believe this has
happened,” her voice faltered, “I've had this for ages for you. And now…."
She sat down on the bed and the tears started to come. The conversation was
going to have to happen sometime. It had been avoided over the phone and had been
worked around with references to work and in a few months time and when this is
done and when that is done. Cally had wondered how long the charade would last.
“I can't do this any more Barbara, my life is too fragmented, I just can't split my
heart into so many pieces and places, strewn across the world, timezones, alone in a
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crowd in Sydney. I just can’t."
“I can't either honey,” Barbara said softly, “you've been in exile enough. Come
back to Greece with me.”
Apart from Stevie, Barbara was the only person that Cally had in her life for a
long time. There was the risk of losing everything. Her whole identity or half of it at
least. She wasn’t ready for that yet.
They sat, in an embrace with the sun setting over Rome, for a few minutes
before Barbara took out a photo of Sebastian. Cally had been bracing herself for it;
she couldn't say outright she didn't like the child. Now that Barbara had a grandchild
it brought home how Cally would never have that experience. Stevie, she expected,
would be dead in a few years.
Sebastian, would be the closest to a grandson she would have, except he would
be no blood relation, she struggled with how to deal with it. Zander was like a son;
she had reared him too alongside Stevie.
He was gorgeous. There was no denying it. She felt a rush of something she
couldn't put her finger on.
“There's such a familiarity about him. Who is he like?
“I see Zander, I see my father sometimes.”
“Do you see me in him? Joke.”
“I do, sometimes I think that's because I wish I could see you in him.”
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Their boys could not have been more different. They'd gone to the same Sydney
fee paying high school and had very different outcomes. Ditzy in his own way,
Zander had still managed a business degree. Stevie, more arty in nature, coasted from
one part-time, temporary job to the next. Cally had suspicions of some drug use, to
what level, she wasn't sure. He was on something.
They never spoke of what had happened. The advice at the time, cruel as it was
had been to forget and move on. Barbara's brother, a psychiatrist, had overseen Cally's
recovery after "the accident". She often wondered if this was what had damaged
Stevie. Those weeks or months she wasn't able to be there for him and Barbara cared
for him.
What hurt was Bill did nothing to chase after them. As much as she wanted to
escape him, and wanted Stevie to escape his violence, there was no chase. It showed
that he didn't care about Stevie in the way that he had promised to, obviously he didn't
the way he treated him; still she felt he would care somewhat about the boy.
Suddenly she felt a wall of tiredness crash on her. Jet lag.
“I have to sleep.”
Barbara looked at her, a flicker of sadness in here eyes, a confused look that
flickered again into understanding. “I'll be up a while more. I'll leave you sleep.”
Cally jumped into the shower, careful to keep her curly blow dry from getting
wet, she would her dark tresses in a bun. She was almost awake again by the time she
was ready to retire to bed. Barbara sat on the balcony, wine in one hand, cigarette in
the other, watching the lights of the city below.
Cally felt further away from her than she did when she would get a notion in the
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middle of the day to pick up the phone and say hello, realising that it would be the
middle of the night. She slipped the eye mask on and drifted to sleep.
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Chapter 3
It had been years since Barbara called Clodagh, probably not since the move to
Greece, five, six years now, she thought. Could she remember the phone number? She
decided to try from her mobile phone. The charges would be crazy, but no crazier
than the hotel phone charges.
She had remembered the address no problem recently when she sent off some
old photos she had found.
The voice of a young man answered. “Hullo.”
“Hello, is that the Murphy, I mean Balducci household?”
She couldn't believe she had said Murphy, Cally's husband's surname.
“Sorry, who's this? Who are you looking for?”
“I'm an old friend of Clodagh's. I haven't been in touch in years. I….”
“This is David Balducci.”
He was the youngest, if Barbara's memory served her right and hadn't a clue of
the history, how could he? How could anyone? She wanted to say I know everything
about you. But he would probably know nothing about her. Clodagh had probably
kept the contact discreet, being Clodagh. Clodagh kept secrets. More than was good
for her Barbara knew. And she was fiercely protective of her little sister, yet
comfortable with distance all these years. Knowing it was the right thing, was enough
for Clodagh to live with.
At the time it all kicked off Barbara recalled, Clodagh had a household of young
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boys and a husband tied up with his business and own leisure activities. Not having a
sister around with the woes of the world wasn't a bad thing.
Barbara reckoned Clodagh mustn't have had time to miss Cally. That's what she
told herself. In some ways, now and again, Barbara felt twinges of guilt, she owned
Cally, she had Cally beside her, ok, she had her when they were in the same country
which they had been for most of the years, just not the last few. She had nothing to do
with the two sisters decision to halt contact. It would be easier. She stayed in contact
with Clodagh from time to time and they shared the vaguest of information.
“Sorry I don't think we contacted you, how did you hear?”
A shot of shock went through Barbara.
“Has something happened Clodagh?”
“Sorry, she, she passed away, did you not know, jeez sorry... where are you
calling from?”
“Rome. I don't know what to say. What happened? And, really, I am so sorry
for your loss.”
“Sorry what did you say your name was?
“Barbara Miller – Clodagh’s college friend.
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“It's cancer. Runs in the family apparently, there's no girls left to get it, unless
any of us have daughters.”
“And your cousin, how is she?”
“You were a friend of Alison's too, so you mean Frances? I'm sorry to tell you,
she passed away too.”
Barbara almost dropped the phone with shock. How could she tell Cally her
sister and daughter were dead. Clodagh never said anything about Frances, when was
she talking to her last? Had she been trying to protect them all, she had contact
details, why hadn't she used them?
“I don't believe it. I don't believe it.”
“Suicide. At least she's with her mother now, mam used to say. We will be put
her on mam's headstone.”
Barbara didn't want to ask, didn't want to know the gory details. He stayed
silent, patient on the other end of the line.
“Oh so it wasn’t long ago?”
“Four years. I still go walking the shores in case any bones get washed up or
there's a shred of her clothes or anything, I'm doing it now for mum.”
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A shot tore through Barbara's heart. What had they done? Had they saved two
lives to sacrifice another? Her voice broke.
“It's just, I, you know, we, you won't remember me but we spent a lot of time
with you as kids and I am very upset to hear this. Tell me, what is Bill at now?”
“Bill...that bastard. He did a disappearing trick sure. Where are you calling from
Barbara?”
“I’m in Greece - well Rome now on vacation - and am helping my son run a
resort on his father’s island.”
Her voice trailed off, guilty about talking about doing things for her son to a
man who had no mother.
“Oh the place where we went one summer? I have very fond memories. It must
be overrun with tourists now is it?”
“We keep them at arm's length, it's not too different than how you remember it,
perhaps a few more modern boats and a bit more money floating round.”
She laughed. They shared a silence, they both remembered why she had rang.
“I'm sorry honey, I'm so sorry you lost your mum. Mind yourself David.”
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She hung up the phone. Some days she cursed the day she ever set eyes on the
Callaghan sisters, Alison and Clodagh. She had forgotten Frances’ face. She knew
Cally kept a photo hidden in the back of her diary, and went looking for it in the
handbag left on the chair.
To wake her now or leave her sleep? What to say. To berate her, too many years
too late. To be faced with tears or a blank face? Which would be worse? What you
don’t know can’t hurt you had been the motto. If there was no past there was no
present. This was going to be a double whammy. It was too big not to say. It would
change everything. It was a grief and guilt that Barbara could not cope with alone.
They had killed a girl. They had blood on their hands.
How Alison would cope she did not know. Back then was rarely referred to.
Their sons, their work, the minutiae of the day. Travel plans. Sebastian. Perplexed,
and shocked, yet reasoning Barbara had always stood by Alison’s decision to leave
her husband. The means and manner of it, no. Leaving a daughter behind yes. Staying
was not a possibility. She had gone through it many, many times.
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Chapter 4
Barbara thought back to the first day she had landed in Ireland, into her student
residences and met Clodagh Callaghan for the first time.
Her life, had since then, been defined by that chance placement of two names
next to each other in the alphabet. Around the building there was the chatter of
mothers and fathers, and their daughters, moving, settling in and worrying. Clodagh
had gotten the train up from Waterford that morning. Alone.
Barbara had arrived in on a flight from London that morning where she had
spent the summer with her brother. “You’re travelling light,” she remarked to her new
companion. There was just one suitcase and a smaller square box with a handle.
Clodagh was surveying the kitchenette. Two gas rings. Some chipped mugs, a
teapot. Statuesque with fair hair, she had a determined look in her large brown eyes.
“We’ll have to brighten this place up, won’t we, it’s a bit dead, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know what to expect.”
“We can make it ours, and it’s a good idea before we get stuck into study. Let’s
go shopping.”
She looked Barbara up and down, she was no scholarship student, blonde hair
styled immaculately, a very smart coat on her, polished nails. “Our parents would
want us to put money into good surroundings.”
They grabbed their handbags and went to the shops. A few hours later they were
drinking tea from a dainty tea set and a brightness, a warmth, a homeliness, put on the
place.
Clodagh was efficient. She made decisions quickly. She was not a student, she
was a woman, here in Dublin to live her life and be independent, starting with
spending her father’s money on making her surroundings as comfortable as the home
she had grown up in.
Clodagh was clever about keeping her parents happy – happy with her studies,
happy about being in the right company. Barbara knew Clodagh hadn’t made a
mistake when she said that she hadn’t realised the regatta was on the same weekend
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as her sister was visiting.
“Barbara would you mind terribly spending time with Alison, she won’t be too
much trouble. I absolutely have to be seen at the regatta.”
It was a way out of asking Barbara to be invited along to the regatta – Clodagh
was notorious for her segmentation.
When she met her off the train at Heuston Alison was obviously embarrassed.
Eighteen, yet young, innocent. “So Clodagh has landed you with me. Sorry about
this,” she said awkwardly, trying to balance her overnight bag on her shoulder.
“Should we really be surprised, though really,” Barbara joked.
“She’s written to me about this rower she’s interested in. Hopefully something
will come of it,” the younger girl volunteered.
“I know she keeps on going on about him. On an on.”
“How about you Barbara, do you have a boyfriend?”
Barbara just laughed off the question. “And how about you Miss?”
“Oh no, sure who would have me.”
“Surely there’s some boys in a nearby school writing to you, or you’ve met at
dances?”
“No, nobody special.”
“I don’t believe that for one minute, you’re so beautiful, what are the boys in
Waterford blind?”
She hadn’t meant to blurt it out. But she could see the shining admiration in the
shy younger girl’s eyes. She had Clodagh’s eyes, but there was something different.
Two totally different people, from personality to looks, the only resembling feature
was the eyes.
“Certified.”
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“Sorry?” Barbara didn’t get what the girl said.
“They’re certified blind. All of them.”
She burst out laughing in Alison’s face, who was holding her face trying not to smile,
a mischievous glint. They laughed in unison. The tones matching, the cackle, stopping
people in their tracks.
“Come on, Miss, let’s get thee to a comedy club.”
“Phew, thought you were going to quote Shakespeare and say ‘get thee to a
monastery’.”
They laughed again. Barbara liked this kid. Funny to think, how she just saw her
as a child then and how there were just three years between them, how in time, that
did not matter.
She’d been touched by the thank you card Alison had sent when she got home.
Clodagh seeing the familiar handwriting on the envelope had given a snort of
derision. “Oh no, not a teenage crush. You’re going to have to nip that in the bud,
Barbara.”
And so their correspondence began, with Barbara getting to the post before
Clodagh could see her little sister’s handwriting. Barbara told herself she needed more
Irish friends, and why not build up a friendship in advance of someone who would be
joining them in Dublin in just a few months.
The three found a flat with a triple room in Rathmines to move into that
September.
Alison was pretty, intelligent and had a strong will about her that attracted many
men. She refused dates on the grounds of study. But the study wasn’t what was taking
up her time. It was spending time with Clodagh and Barbara. Or just Barbara –
Clodagh had started seeing Barry Balducci and slowly over time she just wasn't there
much. And then before anyone knew it she was married and had moved to London
with him.
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Chapter 5
It was Barbara who noticed first something was up.
“Are we out of sync?”
“Huh?”
“You haven’t had your time of the month. At least it’s not as if you’re
pregnant.”
Alison’s face fell in shock. Barbara looked closely at her.
“You did, you didn’t. Oh my gosh. Who?”
Alison knew she couldn’t tell Barbara who it was so she gave the details of how
it happened, just not the who. “One of the medical students,” she said. “One of the
visiting ones. When he insisted, he knew, because he was a doctor, I assumed it was
okay… He said he’d pull out.”
Barbara buried her head in her hands. “Oh you stupid girl, oh sorry, oh no.”
So it was during the last term of college that Alison announced the decision she
would be concentrating on her studies, not entertaining and not seeing anybody, not
her parents. That had been Barbara's idea. To hide the swell of the pregnancy.
The day after the last exam, Alison took the boat to London where Clodagh and
Barry were, where Barry was trying to make a go of business in a bigger city.
While they tried to drag it out of her, there was no give from Alison as to who
her little son's father was.
Marriage was catching at that time and at one of the infamous parties the
Balduccis put on, filled with young and upcoming types, Barry introduced Barbara to
Nikolai, a Greek shipping tycoon.
Not long after Stevie’s arrival, Alison had finally let a man woo her, Barry’s
business partner Bill who she moved back to Ireland with when Barry and Bill
decided to try a new business venture together at home.
Within months Alison and Barbara had joined Clodagh in the married ranks,
with Zander arriving not long after Barbara moved to Greece with Nikolai.
What people thought when they came home married, was never said back to
Alison. People knew, people talked, people got on with it.
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Chapter 6
To give them a sense of adventure seemed to work as justification for Bill. It had
nothing to do with wanting to see a glow of health restored on his wife's face from a
few weeks in the sun.
He knew it wouldn't cost anything to keep them in Greece, as guests of Barbara
and Nikolai, and at the same time, he knew he couldn't be seen to talk about the
exorbitant travel fees.
“It will be a great cross Europe trip,” he said.
Alison was puzzled. Across Europe?
He smirked. “Across Europe. You can get the bus down through Europe to
Rome, onto Bari and across to Greece.”
“Of course,” she replied.
His face darkened, “what do you mean of course?”
“Of course you are going to send us the long way round, when we could easily
jump on a plane from London. Of course you are going to look like the benevolent
father and husband by sending us on such a loooong trip. Of course you are going to
make it as difficult for me as possible.”
Alison didn’t know what had taken her over. A bravery, a cheekiness, a
tiredness. She was worn down, but with the smell of freedom so close, she had gotten
the courage from somewhere inside her to tell him she knew what he was playing at.
Eight-year-old Stevie stood at the doorway. Bill’s face got redder and redder
with anger, his arm rose swiftly, and he slapped Alison across the face, the sting was
the first thing she felt. She didn't even spot Stevie in the doorway and turned clutching
her face....
“Of course you are a fucking whore who can't even provide me with a son.”
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Chapter 7
"Don't you ever....?
Cally threw her eyes in the direction of the two eighteen-year-old au pairs who
were running down the beach chasing their children. Modestly clad in bright coloured
swimsuits they were slim, toned, honey coloured.
Barbara glanced, her eyes following the group.
"Please! I don't think they're..."
"Worry. I meant Nikolai."
"I thought you were asking about the topic we don’t discuss, now that the men
we have chosen have broken the most sacred rules of marriage?"
“Barbara…”
"Why are you here Cally?"
"To see you."
"Just to see me?"
"A holiday."
"All this way?"
Barbara knew it was the wrong approach. She wasn't going to get anything out
of Cally, not the real truth. She'd let her stew, let her wonder what she meant, Clodagh
had told her. The shouting, the screaming, the bruises. It would take days, maybe even
weeks. And wine. Lots of trust. She'd have to give away her own trade secrets too.
She’d start with Nikolai. Cally knew it was a marriage of convenience, to cover both
their indiscretions.
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"We're not having any more children."
"How come?"
"This new virus, Nikolai knows some men who've died from it."
"I heard about that...."
"We only.... a couple of times. Enough to..."
"There's no break from Bill."
Bingo! She had opened up a bit.
"Relentless. I'm on the Pill. Secretly. I couldn't take it after the miscarriages, I
told him after this holiday... we can try again."
"Do you want more children?"
"Do you want more children?
"I love Zander. I've always wanted a daughter."
"You can have mine."
"She's gorgeous. So sweet, why would you want to giver her away?"
"She's his."
"No chance then of that ever happening. He'd let me have Stevie no problem."
"He's told Stevie he's adopted. He's worse than a child, Barbara, stirring for a
fight. Stevie is only a child and he is just awful to him. A pure bully."
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"What will you do?
"What can I do. I wouldn't be surprised if he sends him away, saying I'm not a
good mother or something."
"Are you a good mother?"
"Barbara!"
"Sorry..."
The thud of small feet on the sand came towards her. She kept her eyes closed.
A sandy arm and another reached around her.
"Mommy, you're a good mommy.”
The sweet little sandy-haired Frances had come over to give her mother a loving
hug.
"What did I say about sandy handies," Cally exploded.
The little girl's bottom lip visibly trembled, her eyes welling. She looked to
Barbara for comfort. And started bawling crying.
Cally got up and walked away. "I'm going for a swim."
"I miss my Daddy. My daddy stops my mommy being mean to me," she
sniveled as Barbara reached out to take her under her arm.
Resilient, the little girl had gone back to play with the boys on the beach and Clodagh
who enjoyed being kept busy rather than lounging around in the sun.
Cally came back out of the water, and sat again beside Barbara. She started
talking straight away.
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"I can't warm to her Barbara, I just can't. Clodagh has been great. I just am not
able for it. She's so like him in every way."
"She's a little girl who needs her mother though Cally."
"But she always cries for her dad...."
"I don't know if I can bear to see you break this little girl's heart in front of me
Cally, you need to do something about it. I just can't... I have an idea. Will you
talk to Christopher, he’s doing psych stuff now, he’s arriving later this evening.”
***
“And Barbara, what Barbara wanted Barbara got,” Christopher laughed.
The children and Clodagh were asleep in the house, soothed by the lap of the
sea, overlaid with the occasional strumming from Christopher’s guitar, the
storytelling and the jokes.
Nikolai was home for the weekend and Barbara snuggled into him, eyes glossy
taking a toke from the joint. There was love between them. She needed him and he
needed her and this need extended itself physical whether she truly acknowledged it
or not .
It was a strange set up. A couple that had a different kind of love rather than a
romantic love for each other. A brother and sister thousands of miles from where they
had grown up. Two friends brought together by chance at University. Barbara was the
linchpin. She connected all. Then there was the unspoken. The attractions that could
not be spoken of in the group. Each loved someone else. Nikolai, a boy probably,
somewhere, not a boy, but a younger man, a student, a deckhand, a tourist.
Christopher, a wife at home, pregnant with yet another child, had always held a
candle for Cally.
Nikolai had started to snore, so Barbara was nudging him, getting him to wake
up and go into his bed.
Christopher left down the guitar, and hummed. When he noticed Barbara and
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Nikolai were closer to the house, he directed his attention on Cally.
“Haven’t seen you in years Cally. I can’t believe you’re still looking so, so….
Mother of two.”
“Shut up.”
“I can’t believe you never told me,” he whispered.
Her eyes flashed, alarmed.
“It would have changed everything.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“What, stayed with your wife?”
“I wouldn’t have been with you if I knew you were married and expecting
Stevie.”
“I wasn’t Christopher. I met Bill after I had Stevie.”
His eyes narrowed, he sat up now, “what, what do you…” he started to say,
everything dawning on him. His eyes were all hurt and confused. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”
“You walked away. You walked back to your wife and children. What could I
do?”
Christopher had turned up on the front door step when Barbara was away and asked
Alison to show him Ireland.
“You blanked me after Christopher. I felt I had nowhere to turn with you.”
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“Does Barbara know?”
“Know you abandoned your flesh and blood? No. I kept your secret.”
“Why?”
“To protect us. I couldn’t be someone’s mistress, for Stevie to grow up under a
shadow. Then Bill came along and he was a nice man, at the time.”
“Is there anything I can.”
“Bill is being difficult, I might have to call on you.”
Even though she had urged Cally to talk to Christopher, Barbara was jealous of
the closeness she sometimes stumbled on between the two. It had started years back,
little jokes, falling behind walking, conversations and subjects changed when she
joined the group. She thought if anything would happen it would be this holiday. Both
spouses away, Nikolai around occupying her. She had to put a wedge between them
somehow.
She crouched behind Cally and whispered in her ear. Giggling, the two took off,
stripping down to underwear and into the sea. Christopher groaned. The sober doctor,
this was Barbara’s party trick. Skinny dipping under the influence was safe with him
around. She had tried it before earlier in the summer. He would avert his eyes. He
turned to the sky, strumming on the guitar again, drowning out the shrieks and
murmurs.
Barbara and Cally treaded water. Barbara brought her hand up to fix Cally’s
hair. A staring match ensued. Barbara felt daring yet held back, as she was used to.
Their eyes had adjusted to the moonlight and Barbara noticed Cally’s eyes move from
her eyes to her lips, back to her eyes. Some dynamic had shifted in their friendship.
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Chapter 8
Already the children were out playing, screeching, and laughing when Cally awoke.
Her memory was reaching, wondering, analysing. Her room was next to the kitchen.
“Barbara,” she croaked.
Barbara came in and leaned on the door. Looking. Cally hid her eyes in the
crook of her arm for a second and looked back up. Barbara was still looking.
“Christopher’s gone away. He left a note.”
“Oh, what time is it?”
Cally didn’t want to be the one to say it. Where do we go from here? “Is he mad, does
he know?” she ventured.
“He’s got a wife and children.”
“We’ve got husbands and children.”
“I’ve an arrangement that works. He has a real wife. High school sweethearts,
perfect family.”
“I feel I’m always being punished. Stevie. Bill. Now.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No, of course not. I love Stevie.”
“Bill?”
“I love Frances.”
“Last night?”
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“I don’t want to stay the wrong thing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Doing what I did.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m not sorry.”
“You’re not?”
“I’m not. What do we do about Christopher?”
“Christopher needs to go back to his wife and children and forget any
feelings/fantasies he has for you. I was thinking. You can’t get the bus back
home. We’ll organise flights.”
“You trying to get rid of me?”
“No I want more time with you.”
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Chapter 9
Waking up in a different bed was something that Cally had gotten used to, that quick
pang of memory accessing where she was and calming her quickly. There was one
thing, a gnawing emptiness every day. She slipped off her eye mask, and turned to the
clock radio. 10am, she had slept for a long time.
The room was stuffy, air conditioning off, and she sat up in the bed slowly, and
made a move towards the door onto the balcony. There was no evidence that Barbara
had ever been there.
Her handbag was on the back of the chair. Unclasped. Unusual. She wondered,
for a minute, no, was she so tired… it was always kept closed, she pulled it open and
looked inside. Everything was there, her purse, wallet passport, diary, she reached in
for the diary, what she had been looking for. And took it out. There was the smallest
crease in the edge of the photo, on the corner.
Barbara had to have gone through her bag. Why would Barbara do anything like
that? There had to be a simple explanation.
She took out the photo and looked at it, stared at it, indented it in her memory.
She had done the right thing, she knew she had. She had done the best for the children
as well as herself.
Cally didn't know why she just didn't stay in Greece that time. It was the
accepting flights that drove Bill over the edge. He was made seem mean and was
embarrassed that his being difficult was highlighted.
She was sure he was getting sex somewhere over the summer because when she
returned with the children he was staying out late and staying away from Cally. When
he was around, he got more and more vicious with Stevie… The boy was terrified and
started wetting his bed. For this, there was further abuse, physical. Not just a slap, but
a clatter.
Then the car was taken away for repairs, leaving her stranded in the village,
unable to go into town to her sister.
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One morning, running up to the shop to get milk, she took a ball of loose change
and made a call from the phone box to Greece.
The phone answered. “Barbara, Barbara, have you pen and paper, take down
this number. It’s the phone box, she blabbered into the phone.”
“It’s Christopher, calm down, what’s the number.”
The beeps started going quickly as she read out the number.
“Two minutes”.
“Oh Christopher,” she cried. “He’s beating Stevie. Stevie’s wetting his bed.
Bill’s just gone terrible, worse than ever since we got back. You need to take Stevie.”
“I can’t take Stevie.”
“Christopher, he’s your son. You have to help.”
“I’ll help, but I can’t risk my marriage, everything I have with Maria.”
“Christopher. You have to….”
“I’ll figure something, but I’m warning you, I’ll help all three of you, just don’t
single out Stevie.”
“I’ll go anywhere. We don’t have passports, he’s taken them.”
“And Alison, leave Barbara out of this. Give me your house phone number. I’ll
phone you when he’s gone out to work or something. When is good to take a
call?”
She scurried down the street, milk bottle under her arm. Back in the house, Bill
flew off the handle.
“Milk the cows yourself did you?”
“Bill, you can’t have me under house arrest. I need a break.”
He stared at her coldly, calculating his next move.
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“Sitting around the house and all the money I’ve put into that boat sitting up in
Dungarvan for you. Bloody waste of money.”
“And how am I going to get there, that the car is in the garage and you’re gone
for days on end, tell me?”
“I’ll drive you to the pier on my way to work, how about that? Whether you
decide to drown yourselves is your own problem.”
And so for a few weeks, Bill’s humour was easier to take, with Alison and the
children pottering on the boat daily, while Bill went to meetings in Cork. There were
no phone calls from Christopher; the phone was cut off. There was no loose change
for the phone box. Bill was keeping Alison on a very tight leash.
One day Stevie finds a note on the boat and nearly puts it in the water. Random
numbers. Co-ordinates and a time, and date Alison realises. She looks around,
looking for someone to be looking at her. But there’s nobody.
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Part 2
Chapter 10
DAVID
Somewhere in my dreams I heard a knock at the door, Ben whispering my name, and
when I did not answer I heard the rattle of the door of my hut. And when I did not stir,
I heard him running away, down towards the jetty and the distant sound of a motor
chugging across the Mekong River.
I could see him in my mind’s eye, a tanned lithe young man with a
fisherman’s hat and long sleeved t-shirt and khaki shorts and flip flops jumping into
the little wooden boat flirting with the pretty local girl driving the boat, watching in
wonder at the glow of the sunrise, at the start of another day in paradise. And that was
how the strong sun rose over a new day, a new chapter in my life. I often wonder
about the dawning of that day and how the last few years could have been so different
had I woken up, had I gone with Ben as planned that morning. I wonder how life
would have turned out if I wasn’t there at all, if instead I was sprawled out in my own
bed at home. With ignorance and bliss either side of me I pulled my sheet over me,
protecting myself from the outside world; perhaps subconsciously using that sheet as
a temporary veil between me and the rest of my life.
I stretched my arm around the girl beside me, her sleeping head resting gently
on the curly dark hair on my chest, our futures intertwined by the unconscious
decision to ignore Ben’s calls. Right at that comfortable sleepy moment I dreamily
recalled that embarking on my solo travels six months beforehand was the best move
I had ever made. Befriending Ben was the second best rash decision I had ever made.
For without a round the world ticket and the loan of a lighter that sparked myself and
Ben’s friendship, I would not have a beautiful German girl in my arms, with nowhere
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to go and nothing to do for another day on an idyllic island in the backwaters of the
Mekong in the south of Laos. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do except make an
important trip to the nearest town, Pakse. A journey that I didn’t make that would
have me racked with guilt for a long time.
Six months into my travels I had gotten bored with checking my email and
lazy with writing emails. Contact with the outside world was always rare and never
wonderful. I was in my own little travel bubble, unaware of space or time. Plus, after
India and China, I realised there are only so many details that friends and family can
take before the wonder that is the outside world becomes passé to them. I was
becoming predictable and boring in my emails; I was seeing places they would never
see and having experiences they would never fully be able to relate to. They did not
really want to hear from me, I believed. I was so over the super-pub scene and fed up
of hearing about who had failed their exams and how the study was going for the
repeats. It had been a month since I’d last made contact with home. For starters
nobody knew where Laos was, never mind about being able to pronounce it. I’d
checked my email just weeks before and groaned at the volume of forwards I’d
received, and the silly reply-all group mails between all my friends who were bored at
work or college. I quickly exited my email, without reading or typing a bit and left the
highly expensive internet café.
Still I kept my promise of sending the weekly postcard and fortnightly letter,
just to assure the folks that I was still alive. To my relief I hadn’t had to make a call
home in weeks; I squirmed at my father’s awkward words as he passed the phone to
my mother, who would have a barrage of questions, leaving me with seconds to say
“I’m safe” and nothing else before getting cut off, muttering “I love you” to a dead
phone line. My mother had been in great form last time we spoke, five weeks
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beforehand, with a week to go before her three-week Caribbean cruise. We agreed I’d
call her when she got home and that if there were any emergencies I could be
contacted on Ben’s mobile. But Ben had no mobile coverage on the island, and there
was no phone or internet access for miles, so she hadn’t called me and I hadn’t called
her, which is why Ben had been banging on my door at some seriously ungodly hour
– to ring home.
My new best mate was an English guy with the same priorities in life as me,
getting stoned, playing the guitar and lazing on the beach. We had clicked on some
military tour in Vietnam, when he asked me for a light and in return I got a seriously
strong spliff. We got talking, arranged to meet for a few beers later and after
commenting on the annoying backpackers we were surrounded by, we decided to
travel for a few weeks together, taking notions here and there of what mad direction
to take next on our trip through South East Asia.
The trip from my island hideout to the nearest town of any first world use to
us was planned for a Friday morning. I was to ring mum and Ben had to ring the
girlfriend and we both needed to check email (as much as I hated it) and access
money. It was also a chance for Ben to get mobile phone coverage and check if there
was any important texts from home. He was good that way, but then again if I had a
serious relationship and not just a mother to answer to, I would have been the same.
When he couldn’t wake me, Ben later told me, he decided to go ahead to
Pakse on his own, getting the meandering slow boat upriver to the nearest big town,
instead of a quicker, bumpier bus journey. He knew I’d follow or he’d see me back on
our island. He knew I could take care of myself and as much as we may rely on each
other as travel buddies, we were independent, we were on our own.
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I, having met the beautiful Hannah the night before, had been in a deep
slumber and could hold off for another few days before trekking back to Pakse. My
new soul mate would not appreciate me doing a runner before she woke. Ben’s
attempts to wake me had me drifting in and out of sleep for the next few hours. In my
waking moments, I just lay there on the thin mattress, watching Hannah sleep,
listening to the peacefulness of it all, local kids playing in the water, murmurs of other
travellers as they started their day, the sound of workmen building new huts in this
‘resort’. I watched the light dance on her skin as the sun rose higher and higher,
twinkling between the wicker, or whatever it was that was the walls and roof. It was
one of the most calming, still moments of my life. The calm before the storm.
I often wake up in a sweat, having dreamt about the sequences of that
morning. I hear Ben calling my name, hear my mother crying at the door, I have crazy
guilt-ridden dreams, I see Frances’s limp body bobbing in the sea, being battered by
waves, wind and rocks.
I wanted this to last. I treated Hannah to a banana pancake breakfast at my
favourite ‘café’. A café with no walls, and just a wooden roof and rough hand-made
tables and chairs. We spent the day on the tiny beach on our island, jumping into the
river to get away from the heat. We watched from under our shades as other travellers
landed on the island, on little chartered canoes, bored obviously with the other island
upstream. We chatted in English and in German but her English was better than my
German; she laughed at my attempts but taught me more German in that day than I
learned in a month at school. I learned the German words for black hair, dreadlocks,
blue eyes, beautiful smile, beanpole and tried to explain to her what scruffy fucker,
eyes the colour of shit, beer belly, farmer’s tan and glad my rocker hair has been
shaved off meant.
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Her friend joined us for a bit, but mainly stayed in the shade of one of the
cafés hiding her hangover from last night’s rice whisky and not ready yet, by
Hannah’s account to lie out in her bikini and show the island how she was tattooed in
love bites. When it came to evening time, the three of us walked miles in the pitch
black to one of the more remote restaurants – basically a few chairs and tables and a
multilingual menu at the front of one of the islanders homes, but with such a beautiful
waft of cooking and illuminated with night lights that it beat any restaurant at home
hands down for ambience. Anna told me that Ben would be back the next evening. He
had a lot to do in Pakse. A lot to do, my arse, I remember thinking, off ringing the
girlfriend with a new little mädchen waiting for him in paradise. In Ben’s absence, we
all stayed away from the bar and had a good rest, in preparation for an action-packed
day the following day. I decided to be a gentleman and to entertain Hannah for
another day and decided Saturday would be a good day to go to Khon Phapheng, the
largest waterfall in South East Asia. Anna had decided to spend time with some other
Germans exploring our little island, so that left me with Hannah all to myself. It was
magical. Just the two of us away from all the other crusty nosey backpackers (one of
which I had become). We explored for hours and then as the last colours of the day
were smouldering, we sat up high on the rocks, watching the thundering water. Then I
heard a familiar voice, Ben, shouting “David, David, mate, David, you gotta come
here, fuck how did you get up here. David.” I could see him near the car park, quite a
way over from us; he looked confused as how to clamber over the rocks and rivulets
to get to us. He was in a panic.
The first thing you think is someone’s dead, but I was thinking, his girlfriend’s
dead and then I was thinking nah, he would’ve been straight on a plane to Bangkok if
she was dead, he wouldn’t have come back for me and then I thought, maybe it’s
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Anna his little German girl and then well I didn’t know what to think. Hannah and I
bounced over the rocks to him. He looked knackered; he wouldn’t look me in the eye
and chewed his lip nervously, staying silent. He pushed his mobile into my hands, still
silent. I looked at it, not understanding, no reception. I looked at him quizzically.
“Inbox, text message, Irish number” he gasped turning to Hannah, “hey doll can I
have a swig of your water, Anna told me where you were.” I scrolled through the
phone. In the text message inbox was a message, from a +353 prefix, Ireland, a
message for me, presumably. I recognised it as my mother’s number. ‘Ben pls tel
David 2 ring home. Urgently. bad news. Frances missing for a week, presumed
drowned,’ it said. It had been sent a week beforehand, the day we had left mobile
coverage and civilisation behind us in Pakse and arrived at the island. My world had
fallen apart.
“Fucking hell,” was all I could muster. “Fuck I won’t be able to get to Pakse
till tomorrow, fucking hell.” The nearest phone was hours away.
Hannah didn’t know what to say or where to look as I sat on the ground and
stared at the message over and over. I showed the message to her. My best friend was
dead. I had been telling them all the night before about the person I thought the most
of in the whole world, an unconditional friend, the one who had urged me to travel,
the one who was always there for me. And now I realised, she would never be there
for me again. Hannah put her arms around me and pecked me on the cheek, “You’ll
get to Pakse, you’ll get home, everything will be ok.” I felt like fainting. I didn’t
know whether to smoke or puke, sit down, kick out at something. I paced. Ben spoke
up, his intense blue eyes glinting from under the shade of his fishing hat or festival hat
as he called it, which he rarely took off. “Mate, I got the message and took the liberty
of taking a bit more from the bank and rang the number there, I spoke to your mum,”
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he glanced over at Hannah, “I didn’t know whether Frances was your mother, a sister
a girlfriend an aunt or what, so I rang.”
I looked at Hannah, I could see the uncertainty in her eyes, Frances could be
my wife, my daughter, hell Hannah knew very little about me. Giving her thin frame a
reassuring hug I explained “Frances. You know my cousin, the one I was talking
about the other night. We share the same birthday and we’ve always been very close.
She’s my best friend. Was. Is. Oh fuck I don’t know.” Ben started again, I can still
hear that English, ‘I’m such a lad’ accent, breaking the worst news in the world to me,
him taking my hand and going, “Mate it’s bad, your mum sent this message a week
ago, your cousin jumped off a cliff about 10 days ago, it took them awhile to find the
note, and then they started looking for the body and then with the bad weather you
guys have been having they came up with nothing. Big storms either throw up the
bodies on beaches in a few days or on the coast of Wales or France in a few weeks.
So your mum says.” And mum would know, brought up by the sea and having lost
her sister to the sea, mum knows best, I thought. It was taking a while for all the news
to sink in. My little darling cousin Frances, was dead. She wrote a note. She jumped
off a cliff. What could have gone wrong? Could I have talked her out of it? But she’d
tried it before, she’d talked about it, jokingly albeit. But I had always thought the
people who talk about it won’t do it. My head was in a wreck.
The next few days were a whirl, with Ben and Hannah and her friend Anna
(who Ben decided to have a bit of a fling with, despite having his darling Susie back
in London) all at my side. I took every drug possible for the full moon party, packed
everything up, said my goodbyes to Don Det and the lovely friends I’d made and got
to Pakse, where I rung home. I was coming home that was that. My mother told me
there was no point, everyone else said it was up to me, Ben would miss me, Hannah
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would miss me and Anna would eventually get dumped by a restless Ben who was
already somebody else’s boyfriend. Still, I was going home and as good friends do,
Ben, Hannah and Anna made the journey to Bangkok with me.
And it was there, in a top class hotel enjoying the comforts of room service,
Jacuzzis and massages that I remembered to check my email. There amongst the
spam, messages from my mother with the subject lines ‘please call home’ and along
with messages from friends with the subject lines like ‘helloo’, ‘have you dropped off
the face of this earth’, etc I saw the name Frances Murphy and the subject line ‘sorry’.
It said that she was writing this just before going out the door in case I was
online at the time somewhere across the other side of the world and was going to try
and stop her. It said that she was unhappy with life and although she had brilliant
memories with me and although I gave her great support, nothing had been right since
the family holiday in 1985. That was her way of saying since her mother died, since
her sister died, since she had a family last. She was sorry to upset me and to be a
disappointment but she was doing this for her own good.
She begged me not to be silly by coming home to the funeral that she’d look
horrible in a box and I had so much travelling and fun ahead. She said if I needed
closure, she’d left money in the top drawer for the funeral to be videoed and couriered
over to me. Even in the last hours of her life she was full of wit. Except there was no
body, I would never find closure, what was I doing by going home? I’d planned to be
away for two years, with my mum visiting me after a year in Australia. I was only
gone six months, had Ben, Hannah and Anna, I had life and sun and happiness, I had
what Frances didn’t have. Plus I was starting to look fit, gone was the long dark
messy hair, the goatee, the beer belly and the pale complexion. I had a tan, short hair
naturally highlighted by the sun, and I was fitter than I’d ever been. I’m not saying
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that was my real reason for staying, but regardless I rang British Airways and changed
my flights.
I was going nowhere again. But this time it was nowhere near home, I had
countries to see and people to do. I had Hannah, Ben and Anna to keep me going; my
friends at home would be too wrapped up in college, work, cars, overdrafts and
ridiculous mobile phone bills to be there for me. There would be nothing at home,
nothing but bleak wintry days wrapped up to the last looking out over the cliffs,
straining my eyes for a body that had decided to resurface from the depths.
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Chapter 11
“Everything alright darling?”
Samantha looked up from her newspaper, eyes wide, her skin pale, inside her
heart was rattling around. She was startled not by Cian’s question, but what she had
just read. Cian, her new boyfriend, was standing in the bedroom door, looking intently
at her.
He stood there, his tightly shaved red hair just a few inches short of the door
frame, a piece of toast in one hand, a mug containing steaming tea in the other,
smiling kindly. His dark green eyes were filled with worry, though. It was probably
the first time he had witnessed this normally lively and chatty woman quiet, shocked,
subdued. “You look like you've seen a ghost darling, here's your brekkie anyway, get
those blood sugars up before we hit the park.”
He manoeuvred gently through the clothes strewn from the bedroom floor, his
muscular frame a good camouflage for the softer side of him.
Samantha smiled, weakly, warmly, glad of his kindness and love, glad to have
found faith in men again. Glad she wasn't sitting opposite Graham, her ex. She’d been
happy to leave the past behind, all that happened a couple of years back, and the
memories of Graham – Graham and Frances to be more precise – behind. She never
wanted to hear from either of them again, nevermind see them.
He left the cup on the bedside locker and placed the lone slice of toast on it
and looked at Samantha expectantly. He leaned over and ruffled her light brown hair,
poker straight, not messed even after a night rolling around the bed, true to her
personality reliable and straight down the line.
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“Everything alright darling?” he asked again, moving his hand gently under
her chin.
She just sat still, gazing at him. She reached up to kiss him, scratching her lips
off his stubble. Her head was reeling. She gathered herself together, no need to be
worrying Cian with stuff from the past, she thought.
“Sorry Cian, just reading some Godawful story here, gutterpress, you know,”
she said and reached in to kiss him again.
His eyes brightened and he stood up straight again. “Grand, I’ll be back in a
minute then, sure I’ll bring up my own breakfast,” he said, turning around to tread
carefully through the clothes discarded the previous night on the bedroom floor.
Samantha watched him go down the hall and once she heard him padding
down the stairs, she buried her head in the newspaper again.
A search was underway, the newspaper said, for the body of Frances Murphy,
in the stormy Atlantic seas off the coast of County Waterford.
Frances Murphy, dead. The papers didn't say anymore whether it was suicide
– death not suspicious, nobody else involved, all these phrases that suggested legs
dangling in a hallway, an empty box of pills at a bedside or blood everywhere with a
gun in a mouth, or sharp knife by someone's wrists. Or someone last seen on a
riverbank or cliff edge.
Samantha recalled her last memory of Frances in Dublin. A huddled,
snivelling outline, cowering in the damp long grass in the middle of Dublin's Phoenix
Park. There was probably blood dripping from some part of Frances’s body, nothing
too serious. All Samantha had done was give her a fright. She was capable of more,
but this was a light warning.
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Going for walks in the Phoenix Park had been a relatively new thing for
Frances, compared to the more athletic Samantha. The two girls would walk up to the
park together, Frances togged out in whatever she had been wearing that day and a
pair of regular fashion trainers, Samantha in her branded sports leggings and tight
tops. The park was just a five-minute stroll from the redbrick 1950s house they had
been sharing for just a few weeks now on a quiet cul de sac. Once inside the nearby
gates of the park the two girls would say their goodbyes. Frances would walking a
half an hour into the park, she told Samantha, taking her time, and then would turn
around and walk back while Samantha jogged different routes around the park.
At first, Samantha was surprised that Frances had asked to join her, well at
least to join her in walking up to and home from the park. But she’d said it was to
walk off the calories from the plenty of recent alcohol-fuelled late nights. Frances
insisted that Samantha needn’t walk with her, and she didn’t like jogging. So
Samantha had just headed off on her various routes, away from the busy main
thoroughfare, concentrating on her breathing, her feet pounding on the ground, other
joggers running up behind her, cars passing her by, the screams of children playing in
the distance and roar of men kicking about footballs.
It was her safe haven from the pressures this important year in college was
about to throw at her and gave her time to think about herself and Graham. They’d
been together two years, classmates, flatmates, now lovers. It was good to get a bit of
space.
And space from her flatmates. She didn’t mind Frances, they were the closest
of friends, but it was good to get a breather from the two other guys they shared with.
Since they had moved into the new house, off the North Circular Road, the
lads had been staying up late, playing video games and she felt she hardly got to see
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Graham anymore. If he wasn’t working, in a bar in town, he was playing those stupid
shoot ’em up games with the lads. If she was honest with herself, things hadn’t been
great since she got home from a summer on a student working visa in the States. She
didn’t have anyone to discuss it with, not her family or friends in case they thought
bad of Graham, thought he was mistreating her or something.
One evening, after waving goodbye to Frances at the gates of the park, on a
night she planned to run inside the perimeter walls as close as possible, she decided to
do something completely different and run outside the perimeter. As she darted out a
pedestrian gate, she was stopped in her tracks. There was Graham’s banger of a car,
pulled in near the main entrance. Getting into it was Frances.
She went to wave at them, but shrunk back against the wall, as without a doubt
there was Frances and Graham kissing. Panic. She felt sick. She didn’t know what to
do, tears welled up. She turned around, back in the gate and pounded across the park,
running as fast as she could, running away.
Maybe she was wrong, she thought. Maybe she didn’t see what she thought
she saw. Maybe it wasn’t Graham’s car, or Graham or Frances. But it was, deep down
she knew it was.
At about ten minutes to go before the hour was up she decided to head back to
where she usually met Frances. No sign of her. She peered into the dusk. No sign of
her coming along the road either. She did some stretches, waiting, and sure enough,
there from the middle of the park she saw Frances striding along, barely breaking a
sweat. She’d a grin on her face. “I think I got a bit further than usual tonight, nearly
up to the monument,” she smiled. “How was your run Samantha?”
Got a bit further, did she, Samantha thought, glowering at her. “Fine, I got on
fine. Really, you should start jogging with me, even the odd night.”
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A strange look flickered over Frances’s face. “Yeah, of course I should. But I
just don’t know if I’d be able to keep up with you.”
Samantha’s face broke out in a smile. “I’ll look after you. Come on let’s get
back to the house, it’s nearly dark. God these evenings are getting shorter. Aren’t
they?”
Normally Frances skipped up to the bathroom first for a shower, while
Samantha did her stretches and stuff. They pushed the front door open, on the latch
again, when Samantha said, “I’m bursting to go to the loo, can I go ahead of you”.
Frances didn’t get a chance to answer. Samantha ran up to the bathroom at the
top of the stairs and locked herself in. There were traces of steam on the mirror. Just
enough to give the impression somebody had a shower in the last 20 minutes or so.
She sniffed the air, girly smelling shower gel rather than the one the boys used, and a
pink towel, still damp, drying on the radiator.
She had cleaned the bathroom herself earlier before going out, the boys were
never there on a Thursday, Graham started work early. She checked the bin beside the
toilet. Some toilet paper, and wait for it, no a ball of toilet paper. She reached in,
unwrapped it to find a condom. A used one and full. She threw it back in and
wretched. And wretched.
She heard a light tap on the door and a whisper. “Are you alright?”
She picked herself up, shouted yeah and turned on the shower. She balled and
balled for 15 minutes, easily. There was nothing for her to think only that her best
friend was shagging her boyfriend, or she thought was it her boyfriend was shagging
her best friend?
Samantha tried to figure out when she first had an inkling Frances and Graham
were having an affair. She was annoyed at the two of them moving into the house
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together whilst she was in the States, she wished she was the one to be able to spend
time with him on her own there for a few weeks. But she knew that was her own
doing, well being away for a month after Graham had come home. She knew Frances
had a soft spot for him, had probably fancied him all these years they’d known each
other. She knew Frances didn’t have many other friends. She had their friends, their
flatmates’ friends, but only a couple of friends from her hometown,
She started to feel sorry for Frances, but the darts of anger and suspicion
started hitting Samantha regularly until she knew she had to do something and words
would not be enough.
Thump, thump, thump, Samantha could hear Cian taking the steps on the stairs
two at a time. She put the paper down, toast in one hand, tea in the other when he got
back into the room, a large bowl of porridge in his arms. He looked at her worried
face, misreading it, he laughed. “And no, I did not spill the porridge, there’s not a
drop on your Prada carpet and Gucci kitchen tiles.”
She managed a smile. Putting Frances to the back of her mind until she had
time alone. She did not need to freak out Cian this early in the relationship. Did not
want him to know what darkness she was capable of.
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Chapter 12
Dear David,
I would like to be able to say I dream about my mother; I don’t. The years have
passed and her face is too faint in my memory to be imprinted on my dreams.
Amnesiacs tell of poring over photographs filled with the faces of strangers, when I
go through the dusty family albums of my formative years the faces of mum and
Stevie, may God rest their souls, mean little to me. They are familiar faces in that they
have watched over me like guardian angels from their perch on the wall in my
bedroom. From different perches around the house their eyes looked down on me,
making my first dinner or scrambled eggs from the frame above the microwave,
making sure I didn’t burn the house when trying to heat the house with briquettes and
sticks and coal from where they smiled down on me from photos taken on those hot
beachy summer’s days when we all went on holidays together as kids. Do you
remember?
I don’t know how you remember her, but in my mind’s eye, my mother is a
blur of warm cuddles, a high pitched laugh chasing through the dunes near the house
or across beaches in warmer climes, the strong voice behind me as I cycled down the
road for the first time on my own, without stabilisers or her reassuring grip. Her face,
though has lost its imprint on my memory, and only occasionally I am given the
chance to recall her deep brown eyes, wide smile, and high cheekbones, her brown
hair scooped back into a pony tail – how she really was before photos prompted my
memory offering varying images of her.
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Others see her face in mine: “You’re the image of your mother.” Nuns in
school, old women in the corner shop, my mum’s old college mates, your mum, they
all say it with that look of sadness in their eyes. Dad must have seen something too,
something though that created a divide between us, the older I got, the more like her I
looked, the closer I became to the woman he had fallen in love with, but had little to
say about with out some strange sharp flicker crossing his face, gulping deeply has he
recounted, with somewhat forced smiles the good ol’ days.
But not knowing her really, and only relying on a few images, many black and
white and blurry, I didn’t understand the likeness. A likeness that extended past hair
and eye colour, but to actions and words, strange ways of saying things and different
ways of doing things. When I die, I wonder, will I haunt other peoples dreams, will I
haunt your dreams? Or like my mother, will I be a mere shadow in the background of
people’s memories, faceless except for when they drag out the old photo albums once
a year.
I’ve walked in on your mum, poor Auntie Clodagh, head down, studying
photos of when they were young, when I was young, when you were young, trying to
understand mum and what tragedy struck on the boat the day herself and Stevie were
lost to the ocean.
When I die, I wonder will people do the same, stare for hours at old pictures:
old school friends I’d fallen out of touch with, old boyfriends thinking I was the one
that got away, my father, wondering what did he do wrong. (He should know what he
did wrong!) I know you will – but be assured you did nothing wrong – you were
always my friend, my replacement big brother, once Stevie was gone.
I wonder will I enter their dreams or memories, as the 10-year-old school girl,
the 17-year-old debutante or the depressed 20-odd-year-old. I imagine them looking
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for hours for clues as to who I was, what had gone wrong, whether they were
somehow to blame for whatever crackedness was going through my head to lead me
to my imminent death, my last walk up that rocky cliff road, we used to traverse as
kids. You’ve read my emails, you know what’s driving me to do this. As the saying
goes you can run but you can’t hide from yourself. My addendum to that would be:
unless you jump off a cliff.
At least I have no children, no one be cursed with the ‘poor you, tragic really,
but aren’t you the image of your mother’ treatment, I’ve suffered. I am leaving
nothing and no one that can be tainted by my actions. Except you, dear cousin, and
for that I am sorry, and to your mother too, she’s been so good, but sometimes,
unfortunately the bad outweighs the good.
David, my cousin, my friend, my ally, the one I am betraying, the point of this
letter is that someday you will cease to think of me. We all get over death eventually,
even if we won’t admit it to ourselves.
Yours, with Tears in Heaven,
Frances.
Because of the day that was in it I had re-read Frances’s last letter to me. I’d found it
when I returned from my travels and started looking through her stuff. I hadn’t
forgotten her. Friends can move away and you erase a part of them to save your own
feelings, but Frances I hadn’t forgotten. Cousins born on the same day, we also shared
the same deep brown eyes we were the best of friends from an early age and ever
since her brother Stevie and her mum died, I’d made that extra special effort to look
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after her. Even in her death I looked after her, thought about her, thought about what
lead her to her death and how weird and lonely the circumstances were.
I thought back to that Zen saying if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there
to hear it, does it still make a sound.
Growing up near the sea I was familiar with the concentration of all eyes on
the shore on the sea, waiting for it to spit back up its prey. People committed suicide
every day, people drowned every day, and in both of these scenarios the bodies are
usually found. Initially, with each day that passed that no body was recovered I felt a
growing sense of relief, maybe she wasn’t dead. But as weeks, months and finally
years passed without even the tiniest clue, I had come to accept that she was dead. I
was also relieved that neither myself nor my mother would be called to identify a
bloated sea ravaged body that was somehow to equate the bright eyed and smiling girl
we had once known.
Her face stared out at me, plump and smiling, her poker straight mousey
brown hair framing mud brown eyes. I looked up from her photo, which accompanied
the newspaper article I had been reading on the growing rate of suicide in the area. I
wasn’t entirely happy that the journalist had brought up Frances’s death, four years
had passed; it was time to move on.
“A Corona, mate, when you’re ready,” twanged Maaka, a hand across his eyes
pushing the dark mop of hair out of the way as he strained to read the paper.
“Terrible, innit, all these kids, topping themselves.”
I nodded in agreement at Maaka, saying nothing as I turned to the cooler and
grabbed a bottle of his favourite tipple. In fact, Corona is his favourite tipple after
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Jack Daniels on the rocks, which I had refused to serve anymore of two hours ago. He
was getting drunk and I needed to sober him up with beer.
“Lime?” I asked, ready to squash a segment into the top of the bottle.
He was engrossed in the newspaper article I’d been reading. “Lying, that’s
right. She was lying alright. I’d bet you a hundred dollars she’s still alive.” He said,
raising his voice. “Alive, I tell, you off topless sunbathing on some beach, while her
mother and father are worried sick about her.”
Maaka was one of my regulars at the Southern Cross bar and one of the ones
who was sitting on the fence separating friend and customer. He was a Kiwi and
married to a local Waterford girl. Every Thursday he arrived in, sat down at the bar
and we talked about our times in Australia. He’d left New Zealand as soon as he was
out of college and went to Australia to find his fortune, instead he found Ciara and
after living together for a year in Sydney he followed her over to Ireland on the
Working Holiday Visa. Like me, meeting Hannah in Laos, he’d found it amazing that
he’d to travel to find true love. We had funny conversations, myself and Maaka and
he showed me to do the Hakka. It helped too, having someone from the southern
hemisphere to assure me that opening up a backpacker-themed bar in Waterford was a
good idea.
I was now doing my time with the family rejuvenating the old man’s pub, and
before I knew it, it was Frances’s four-year anniversary. I’d come to terms with her
death to a certain extent but often wished she was there to brighten up the dreary days
at home.
My dad had made his money a long time ago, setting up chippers, cafés and
restaurants. His bar had been the less successful. It was old and dowdy, had its
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reliable clientele but was certainly not pulling in as many euros as the rest of the bars
around town.
I told him that if I was managing the bar, it was going to change. He had the
money, I had the determination and, with Frances looking down on me, maybe it
would work.
And so the Southern Cross was born. So many young Irish people go off to so
many corners of the world and especially Australia, and so many tourists and
backpackers pass through Waterford, I figured an Australasia themed bar would work.
Students would love it, everyone would love it. It was split in two halves, the smaller
part, was old and dusty to make the older guys comfortable still for their lunchtime
pint, the other side was for the weekend and lunchtimes, bright, airy colourful, with
sections themed to different countries. I put my own photographs up and filled the
fridges with beers from all over the world. Simply, it was a success. It also became
popular for going-away dos to Australia, there was one a week anyway.
Maaka worked in an internet café in town. I was trying to get him in on a deal
for putting a few terminals dotted around the pub. Instead he was drunk and going on
about the article about suicide in the local rag; another body had been found in sea
near where Frances had jumped.
He pointed at the dated picture of Frances. “Now, my man, that’s one funny story,” he
said. He’d had a few drinks, didn’t seem to realise my unease.
“There’s nothing funny about suicide Maaka.”
“No not funny that way,” he continued. “That girl was up to something and I
don’t think it was dying.”
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What the hell are you trying to say Maaka? She’s bloody dead and I’m still not
bloody over it,” I growled.
He looked at me quizzically, “You know her? Jeez I didn’t know. I’m sorry David, ex
girlfriend?”
“She’s my cousin, we used to be close. I found in bloody Laos of all places.”
I slammed down his bottle in front of him, the severity of the bang catching
his attention. His bleary eyes looked up at me in surprise. He didn’t know, I realised.
He didn’t know me all that time ago when Frances died. Trying to contain my anger
and upset, I spoke as evenly as I could.
“First of all, mate, that’s four euro for the beer. Second of all, what the hell do
you think you know about Frances Murphy, and third of all her mother isn’t worrying
about her, because her mother is bloody dead 20 years. For the record, her only
brother died 20 years ago too, both in the same accident. And I tell you her father isn’t
sitting at home crying his eyes out about any of them, he’s the fucker sitting in the sun
in the Caribbean or God knows where with Interpol looking for him. And I know all
this because she’s my fucking cousin and she was my best friend. So Maaka be
careful what you say here.”
I noticed the bar had gone quiet. My little outburst was not so little at all. A
few people were shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Any mention of my uncle Bill
made people uncomfortable, and it was hard to know which local families were still
suffering from his evil ways. It could be any amount of my customers. I restrained
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myself from going all gung-ho Hollywood style and shouting out “What the hell are
you all looking at, come on everyone out.”
Instead I took a deep breath, turned to the cooler and got another beer.
Snapping off the cap, I turned to Maaka, who was sitting sheepishly with his head
down. I tipped the edge of my bottle off his. “So here’s to Frances.”
He looked up at me. “To Frances.”
It was the only outburst I’d really had in four years. Nobody had ever really
challenged the fact she may not be dead. Well of course the Gardaí had followed that
line of enquiry, the media had speculated, the gossips chased their tails with what may
have happened, but the fact was there were a trail of suicide notes, including one to
me, there was a trail of footprints in the mud found leading from her car on the cliff
top to the cliff edge. There was the devastation in her personal life, mother and
brother dying when she was four, loss of friends and boyfriend in previous months
through a massive row, and she had been hated by many of the townspeople after her
father did a runner.
“I’m sorry, anyway, look moving swiftly on…” Maaka continued.
“No not that fast, I know you have a few drinks in you so you’ve blurted out
something you wouldn’t normally say, what were you saying?”
“Look, never mind me I’m full of shit…”
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I was working away behind the bar, there were a few punters around, I nodded
at my barman Sean to look after the place, I was going to sit down and have a drink
with Maaka. I was curious. Damn it I’d take the night off. I poured a double JD for
both of us with a Toohey’s New, an Aussie beer on the side. Maaka seemed reluctant
to continue whatever he was going to say before he found out I knew Frances. I sat
and looked at him.
“Frances committed suicide, she left a note, she wrote to her father who she
hates and she was very alone, that’s all we have to go on Maaka, and if you
think there was something funny, like she was pushed or something, please
tell me.”
“My substantiated theory my dear man is that she wasn’t pushed, and she
didn’t fall. And she certainly did not jump.”
“What do ya mean?”
“Look, every now and again people want to run away, and I think that’s
exactly what Frances did, she ran away. A well executed plan maybe, but
there’s a few loose ends. No body.”
I thought through what Maaka had said, trying to make sense, I reached for his box of
Marlborough Lights and Zippo and lit a cigarette, I hadn’t smoked in ages.
“Substantiated?”
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“I knew your cousin, she always came into the internet café.”
“Are you sure it was her? She had internet at the house, she used to email me
about looking out at the sea view”
“She was in every week, David, and being bored, I’d check now and again
what people were looking at. And she wasn’t looking at 101 ways to commit
suicide. She was checking out Greece.”
I’m a believer that different people come into your life for different reasons,
and maybe they’ll disappear again with out a trace, but if they give you one glimmer
of hope, one instant of happiness, or they turn the way you’ve understood the world,
on its head, it’s worth it to have known them just for a little while. That’s how I’d felt
about and dealt with Frances. She was my cousin, but also like a sister and my friend,
but that was in our pre-adult lives. If I could live the rest of my adult life with happy
childhood and teenage memories, I could live with her absence. But now Maaka had
come into my life, had become another glimmer of hope, for a reason and the reason
was to pass on a message.
My mobile beeped on the table in front of me and I excused myself. It was
Dad – Mum was not the best. I shook hands with Maaka, said I’d talk to him again
about Greece, to say nothing and to fire ahead with the computers for my bar. I drove
out to the hospital, not caring whether the cops were on the road.
Mum didn’t die that night. She just wouldn’t go and myself and dad and the
two older brothers Michael and Liam and their two miserable wives took turns to sit
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with her for the next weeks. The doctors said she was hanging by a thread, but
something was keeping her.
I brought in some of her favourite books and read extracts to her, brought my
video player from home and rented half of Xtravision and put on some of her
favourite films, even the sad ones and I brought old video footage of when we were
young. Now and again she was good and asked me about my day. It was when I took
out the video of the holiday in Greece as kids, that Frances had once given me a copy
of, that she groaned slightly and grasped my hand, tears fell down her face.
“Mum, its okay, Alison and Stevie and Frances are looking after you.” She
grabbed my hand again. “I shouldn’t have let her go. Bring her back,” she whispered.
“Your sister.” And then she fell asleep.
I pressed rewind about 20 times that night as she slept. Going over those
images of me and Frances, Stevie and Auntie Alison. We were running practically
naked around beaches in the sun, jumping off yachts with little life jackets on us, and
going wild generally. There were some adults – friends of Alison’s who had treated us
to the holiday. I was allowed to come along because Frances was awkward with food
and sometimes only ate if I ate with her. Her mother was worried she would not take
to Greek food so brought me along too. What could mum have meant “sister”? She
married at 18, 19 or 20, something ridiculously young and had Michael and Liam
early and then me years later, the same date as Auntie Alison had Frances. So there
was no chance of an adopted out ancient sister, or was there? It’s not something you
can really bring up with your dad, is it? And there couldn’t have been an affair, or
could there? No, it’s only men that can hide babies, isn’t it? They just say that it isn’t
theirs. Could mum be my aunt, could Frances be my twin? Could Alison have had me
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and given me to mum or mum had me and Frances and given Alison a girl. My head
was wrecked.
It was a few days again before mum was awake and I was in sole charge of her
again.
“What did you mean mum, about a sister, why haven’t you told me this
before?”
She smiled weakly, her hand grasping mine feebly. “It wasn’t my fault,” she
said. “And I love you very much,” she continued.
“You read the diaries, and don’t open the box till you meet the right person to
give it to.”
I was dumbfounded.
“Put on the holiday video again,” she asked, smiling feebly at me.
The old video started showing again, I watched myself and Stevie and Frances
playing sandcastles. I wondered whether there was an afterlife and whether watching
this video would help draw their spirits close by to receive her at the end of the
tunnel. I wondered what the talk of a sister, the diary, the box were for.
She pointed at the screen, “She was always a feisty one, like her mother, could
never trust her, don’t know what she’d do next.”
It was Frances trampling all over a sandcastle in a four-year-old tantrum.
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It was a teamwork exercise Samantha despised: tell us something about yourself that
would surprise us.
I killed my best friend, Samantha would think, chewing on the end of a blue
biro. Her brow would furrow as that saying drove other negative thoughts into her
brain. "I can't trust men since my boyfriend went off with my best friend". Or beating
someone up when they deserve it and don't try and fight back has a very satisfying
feeling.
Instead she would write I'm a competent scuba diver or I've never lived
anywhere but Dublin.
The guilt was consuming Samantha, It did every year as the anniversary of
Frances's death came round. Especially as she hadn't gone to the memorial service.
She made her way up the steps of the church, paused at the holy water fount no
It was hunger, she would say later, that drover her from the bed at 6 a.m. he
seemed to accept it. Unaware it was a blatant lie and that she had sat with a cup of
coffee in one hand, his cigarettes in the other, watching the taxis pass the window, the
dawn break and eventually a smattering of pedestrians pass along the street.
Occasionally a couple passed on the way home from a partyy, she surmised. A
pink light broke free from the lightening darkness that had enveloped the sky. The
couples, she wondered, how long were they together, were they still in love, had they
just met that night, were they dalliances, did they have partners lying at home,
watching the night turn into morning, hearing finally the click of the front door, the
padding up carpeted stairs or across parqueted floors, the spill of the tap in the sink as
they brushed their teeth of alcohol, perhaps the creak of the bedroom door, a sigh as
their clothes quitely dropped off them onto the bedroom floor. The cool air touching
every hair on their body as the duvet was lifted and they dropped into the bed. And
soon after the gentle breathing of sleep.
She wondered if she would ever get over the betrayal of many years earlier. She
wondered how safe it was ever to believe "I love you".
It was like this every year, the sleepless nights, the guilt racking her for a few
weeks. She was no longer close friends with anyone that knew what had gone on. She
actually wasn't sure if anyone had known what had actually 'gone on'. People had an
idea - guys mostly, maybe their now more than likely ex girlfriend. He had probably
told them he got caught cheating. He had been thoroughly shocked by her reaction.
No, no one she knew now knew. Of course her close friends there was an ex in
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college that was a shit, a friend who she'd fallen out with, But that was it, Her family
knew, but not for a while after. Stupidly - her silence had saved him from a beating
her brothers had promised he'd get if he ever hurt her. It wasn't even him that had hurt
her though. It was her best friend. It was Frances.
The summer away, serving up drinks to rich Americans, the serving up of sex to
randy Irish boys had been a panacea of sorts,
A year on a college exchange on her return put enough distance between her
and the past to be able to wallow in misery and miss her best friend when she got the
news she was dead.
He, of course, had tried writing and ringing. It didn't work - not when she found
them out and not when the date for the memorial service was announced.
Another anniversary had passed. Nothing. Work. This. That the other. Any
excuse, She felt bad for the dad, wherever he was. And the auntie. She'd been so good
picking them up from the train late one winter's evening when Frances's dad hadn't
turned up, putting them up in her house when they'd arrived at the house to find it
cold, messy, damp.
The auntie had been a ... something famous... once and now she was dead –
famous enough at one stage to merit a write up. Samantha wondered how appropriate
it would be - to turn up at a funeral of someone she didn't really know, to pay her
respects.
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Chapter 13
One of the mourners stood out. She wasn't from around. Immaculately dressed, a
sense of elegant style that not many of the women I know have. She carried herself in
such a way, I wondered if she had been to a finishing school. Rich, I thought. But who
was she?
I know the say death makes people have sex, something about wanting to feel alive,
but with my girlfriend beside me, my mother’s coffin on the verge of being buried, I
was not supposed to be eyeing up mourners.
I concentrated on my cufflinks, fixed my tie, coughed, squeezed Hannah’s
hand, I did everything to stop looking over at her. I tried to concentrate on the coffin,
slipping into the grave, the line of mourners who were shaking hands with me,
Michael, Liam, Dad. And there she was, the most beautiful woman in the world. And
she was reaching in to peck me on the cheek. “Fran's friend,” she whispered. “Your
mother was like her mother. Sorry for your troubles.”
“We'll see you at the hotel?” I blurted, confused, wanting to know more about
this tall pale, fair haired woman I was certain I did not know. “Please come along,” I
added, looking beseechingly into her eyes.
She nodded, moving on. I remembered who she was. One of Frances's college
friends in Dublin. There were a few of them. And they had fallen out which is why
Frances had left college and moved home in the first place when I was away.
I noticed the flash of blonde hair back at the hotel, and left the brothers to tend
to the relations and neighbours, and made my way over. “I'm David, thank you for
coming along today...” he paused, “ehmm, sorry I don't...”
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“Samantha, sorry, it's Samantha. I used to be very close to Frances... and
we....”
“You fell out.”
“Yeah, it was a long time ago David, a long time. Coming here was about
saying goodbye to Fran, and to the woman who was there for her when no one
else was, your mother.”
“Are you around for the day, Samantha?” I asked, looking around the foyer
and seeing a few old people and relations I had to chat to. “I'd love to catch up with
someone who knows, sorry I mean knew, Frances. Mam wouldn't really talk about her
time down here much. No one around had time for her – you know her father's
daughter and all that.”
“Oh yeah, I read about that in the papers,” she said. “Well, um, my boyfriend
is down tomorrow, I'm actually going to stay in the hotel here tonight. We were going
away for the weekend anyway so he said he'd just travel down here after work
tomorrow. So I am around.” She reached into her handbag and took out a business
card. “Here's my card. I better leave you back to your family.”
I took the card, shook hands again and went over to some of Mam’s friends
from the charity shop.
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Chapter 14
Samantha dived into the hotel pool. It was empty and quickly she gathered speed,
torpoeding up and down the pool, trying to sort out her thoughts.
Why was she here? Why was she here at the hotel, in the pool, her keycard
and complimentary towelled robe lying on a bench, her suitcase neatly unpacked in a
comfortable double room with a view of the sea, her boyfriend working late tonight in
Dublin so he could make an early train and be with her for the weekend.
Five years had passed since she’d dealt with Frances, absolutely thrashed the
shit out of her and warned that there would be more and it would be worse if she told
anybody anything, she was just to disappear.
It was just over four years since her death. She didn’t let on to Cian at the
time. It was too messy, she didn’t want to break down in front of him, to scare him
off, for him to think she still had a thing for Graham or anything. It paid off, they
were still together now. Very settled, very comfortable and very together. Still,
without attending the ceremony they had for Frances there was no closure. She’d even
ignored the phone calls from the aunt, Clodagh, who had left voicemails asking for
her to call, did she know anything. What was she going to say to the distraught
woman? “Well actually Mrs Balducci, I kicked the absolute fucking shite out of your
niece who was a two timing bad friend, who has fucked things up for me and I’m glad
she’s dead.”
But seeing an obituary in the paper about Clodagh having passed away, she
thought going to the funeral might just help get over the betrayal of a few years back.
She had made the excuse that herself and Cian needed a break, that the hotel in the
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town where the funeral she had to go to was part of the same hotel group they had
vouchers for, the same vouchers that had been gathering dust in a drawer for months.
Cian had fallen for it. Busy with work, he didn't bat an eyelid or ask too many
questions about why she had to go to the funeral. She hadn't mentioned Frances to
him much in the last four years. Not even when the guards had called to the door.
There was something about David, not that he was the reason she had made
her way three hours out of the capital – she had barely recognised David. His age was
the only thing that gave him away as to who he was. The younger by far of three
brothers, she had remembered, which is why himself and Fran had been so close. It
was hard to believe in the six years since she had seen him – then a man in his early
20s stuck in his late teens – he would have come on so well in looks, that he would
look as slick, as soave, as sophisticated. Attractive.
The long messy hair, possibly dreadlocked, she thought, and the wild beard,
beer belly and black t-shirts would be a feature that he would have let last long into
his 30s, 40s even. But the man she had met today, who had remembered her, she
shivered, was a far different beast.
She reached the wall at the deep end of the pool again, and came up for air.
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Chapter 15
The dull pulsating tone of the hotel room phone woke Samantha. Reception, the
screen said. Fancy, she thought. She picked it up, cleared her throat and said hello,
tentatively, trying to clear the sleep from her voice.
“Samantha,” a male voice said. “You coming down for a drink?” She paused,
the voice, whose was it? “Ehhm…” she began.
“David,” he said realising he hadn’t introduced himself properly. “Frances's
cousin.”
“Of course, David.” Yes of course David. Cian wasn't here yet. “Sorry David I
was asleep.” Shoot, she thought she shouldn't have said that.
“Ah well sorry, Jesus, sorry Samantha, sorry for bothering ya. Look sure I'll
catch ya again.”
She sat up, afraid he was going to put down the phone. “What time is it? I'll be
down in a few minutes.”
“One,” he said. Just as she hung up the phone.
She sat up from the bed, stood up, straightened her skirt and walked over to
the mirror. The cream dress, just above the knee was demure enough the dark brown
boots, stylish, not slutty she hoped. God know what they would think in this little
town. Hotel room hooker? She looked in her purse, looking for some lipgloss. But
stopped herself. It was 1am. She was not a hotel room hooker.
She checked her mobile. Three missed calls. Cian and two from another
number. David? She texted Cian back. ‘Asleep hon. chat 2m’, pulled the key card
from the wall and pulled the hotel room door open.
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Chapter 16
The sun was streaming in through the blinds, uncharacteristically nearly I thought, for
a cold January morning. Or maybe characteristically was the word, I never thought
about it much. Hannah arrived in with a mug of tea to me.
“Thanks darling.” Reaching in to kiss her as she handed it to me, leaning
across the bed.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Headache, can’t find the paracetamol. Anyone else up?”
The house was as quiet as any normal day, not just deathly quiet in the wake
of a burial.
“They’re gone out to mass, you’ve been asleep hours.”
“Can’t believe I didn’t hear them, what time is it?”
“1. The kids were quiet, under orders that it was a time of sadness and all that.
“Oh.”
I looked out the window and took a good mouthful of the milky sugary tea.
Thinking back to the day before, the burial, the tears, the food, the drink, the
handshakes, the stories about mum. Thinking back to everything that had happened in
the hotel.
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“There was a good turnout anyway, wasn’t there David?”
“Unbelievable, mum would be proud.”
I almost choked saying it. When would these bloody tears stop.
I blinked back the tears and looked up at Hannah.
“You know who I saw? This girl, I hadn’t seen in years – not an ex now or
anything,” I explained. “This girl who was one of Frances’s best friends….”
She wasn’t listening… “Any of mum’s morphine around? I could do with
that,” I shouted down the stairs after her.
I wished I was dead too. Hannah hadn’t asked where I’d been, why I had
stumbled in at 4am. I remembered, trying to make love. Failing, failing because when
Samantha had opened her bedroom door, I’d been standing there, with a bottle of
champers, something I figured a posh girl like her would like. She’d come on to me,
taken advantage of my drunkenness. I hadn’t retaliated, hadn’t pushed her off. I felt
bad. I had never cheated on Hannah ever and Samantha had said she’d never cheated
either. In fact, she seemed quite cut up about it. We’d had some long chat, of which I
don’t remember much and she’d thrown me out after a while and I went and got a
taxi.
What to do from here, I thought. Leave it, ring her? I recalled a line from a
Friel play in school. “It’s all over and it’s only just begun.”
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Chapter 17
My father and brothers didn’t seem to have any interest in clearing out mum’s
belongings.
Michael lived the big corporate life in Dublin and as soon as the funeral was
over he was gone. Liam, the golden middle child, had taken over the family restaurant
business. Because he was busy with that I only saw him when he occasionally
dropped in for a jar into the pub. We had little to say. I don’t think he ever liked me
either having been the baby of the family for a few years, 10 or so, before I arrived
along.
As neither were making any apparent effort with dad myself and Hannah took
it upon ourselves to – she cooked him dinner and talked to him while I just pottered
around, cutting grass and pruning bushes in the gardens, cleaning the many large
windows staring out over the lawn, painting skirting boards, sitting in the living room
watching the movie channels while he sat smoking cigars on the patio out the back.
Some evenings though the lights in the house were on and my car in the drive
he would walk straight in without acknowledging my presence. I would see his heavy
figure trudging past the glass-panelled living room door, without even a glance in. In
recent years his athletic frame had filled out, and not tall enough to carry the weight
evenly, he had become a short, fat and balding man, with a temper. His sallow skin
was becoming to look grey these days too with the stress of losing mum. His hazel
eyes would narrow now and again at the mention of her name, especially if I
mentioned her.
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While myself and Hannah mostly slept in our own place above the pub it was
consoling to come to the comfort of a spacious home and offer some company to my
lonely father; even if he didn’t have much time for me I knew he was somewhat glad
of the company.
A number of harrowing months had passed, with neighbours and relations
dropping in on them for tea and chats and stories of how Mum had filled their lives
with companionship and good deeds. At times like this dad would brighten up, even
engaging me in conversation when there was company. After the month’s mind all of
the visits and condolences seemed to come to an end; everyone got back to their
normal lives and forgot about the Balducci boys.
But still cards and sometimes even flowers arrived from people who had heard
of her death too late to make it to the funeral or months mind or who were too far
away to make the journey. Father seemed to have little interest in these notes. He
spent his days down in the bookies or out playing golf.
One day a card arrived from Greece. As usual I was the one that met the
postman at the front door and noticed the foreign postmark and took the liberty of
tearing it open. He tended to ignore anything handwritten these days, preferring to go
for the bills and bank statements. “To hell with sympathy,” I heard him shouting one
day as he opened another mass card.
There was a card with a yacht on blue waters on it and a handwritten poem I
had seen before something about death being just another ship on the horizon and
some day you could embark a ship that would bring you straight there. Addressed to
my mother, it was signed Barbara. Also in the envelope were reprints of black and
white photos with handwritten notes on the back. One was taken on the steps of the
church in Trinity College Dublin. Immediately I recognised my mother, auntie
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Alison, who had drowned a few years earlier, and a svelte blonde who according to
the caption on the back was Barbara. Another photo was what looked like at a party in
a flat, featuring my mother and uncle Bill, my dad’s ex best friend who auntie Alison
married.
He hadn’t even turned up for the funeral, so I heard. In another photo were
mum and dad looking very happy with a very young Michael and Liam in what
looked like St Stephen’s Green in Dublin’s city centre. A few more photos were in
colour, and then I spotted one of my young self and my mother waving from a small
rowing boat on the sea on a sunny day with a big white cliff in the background. On
the back was the name of the place, Arhondikó Zander.
It brought back memories, memories of showing her the video of the same
holiday in the days before she died. As far as I could recall Barbara was Alison’s
friend from Trinity College Dublin, an American woman who had a penchant for Irish
writers and thought there was no better place to study literature than in the land of
saint and scholars where she befriended Alison, a first year there, where my mum was
a final year student, and on the road for marriage. Barbara and Alison had been
intrepid travellers and made their way around the Mediterranean on their summer
holidays from university. It was on one of these trips she met Nikolai, some shipping
tycoon and it was to his private island we went when we were four.
I had to stop saying we, I thought, Frances had been dead four years and in the
absence of a live sibling in her case and siblings who had any interest in me other than
as a punch bag, in my case, we had become siblings in our own right. Blood brother
type cousins, causing mischief as children, setting each other up with friends as
teenagers and drifting slightly apart as we turned 20, e-mail buddies then when I was
away, before she topped herself. Anyway, that was past, the pain of my mother’s
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passing away was still fresh, still in the present. The reminders wouldn’t stop
chiming.
I decided to say nothing to dad, who was permanently gruff, about the card
from Greece; he just wouldn’t care. He had forgotten she had a life before they
married before she had us. It was only when I was talking about quitting college when
I was 19 that she confided in me that she too had quit college, months before
graduation apparently: to get married. “It was my biggest regret,” I clearly
remembered her whispering, “but never tell your father.”
I never knew whether it was the regret of marrying my father, who she seemed
to get on with, well at least still lived with, or whether it was the regret of settling
down to married life so soon she regretted. At 24, she was married three years with
two sons, and didn’t get to see as much of her business-obsessed husband as she
hoped to. Dad had come from a poor family in Italy and achieved what he intended to
within 10 years of moving to Ireland – having his own chain of eateries with his
family name stamped all over them: Balducci’s. He also had fluent English, a
beautiful wife and two healthy sons, and a wide group of friends including Bill, a bit
of a wheeler dealer but with enough of a business edge to bring Balducci’s further
afield than Waterford.
At 25, mum was an orphan – granny and granddad dead within months of each
other – illness and a broken heart - and then off the rails Auntie Alison got pregnant to
some visiting student or a sailor or something and mum found herself looking after
not just her own two boys but a fretful Alison – a degree in the classics from Trinity
College Dublin but with an illegitimate child hampering any chance of ever finding a
rich husband. That was until Bill came along and wooed her. Marriage and Frances
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followed and Ally was back on the social ladder, sailing, horse riding and foreign
holidays.
That was all I knew, the superficial stuff. The outline story of their lives but
little more. Recalling what I knew of mum’s life was like looking at a recipe in a
cookbook. You see the images, you know what the ingredients are and how they mix
together, but taste is beyond you.
I took the steps two at a time up the stairs to her bedroom – it was no secret
my parents had slept in separate rooms for a number of years. Peeking into her room,
at the top of the stairs, I realised it had been undisturbed since she had gone into
hospital. I wondered if the last time she was in her bedroom she had looked around
and realised she would never see it again. It was by far the biggest bedroom in the
house; enough room for two old free standing wardrobes, an antique dresser and a
large ornate double bed. She had even managed to dress the bed before last leaving
the room, I realised. The old photographs had brought on a desire to find out who my
mother was before I was born, before my brothers were born, before she had met and
married my father and moved to a house on its own out the country, a rambling house
now surrounded on each side by new housing estates as far as the eye could see.
I didn’t know where to start. I sat at the dressing table, left neatly with her
hairbrush still in place to the right hand side next to expensive moisturisers, body
lotions and bottles upon bottles of perfume that they bought her every Christmas,
birthday and Mother’s Day. Now I realised her graciousness in receiving each bottle
with a smile and a kiss on the cheek and a hug, before putting it carefully away; how
thoughtless and lazy we all were to give her perfumes she would never get to wear if
she lived to be a hundred, there were so many of them.
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Despite all the perfumes her scent lingered in the room, smelling all the bottles
I found which one it was – Chanel No5 – and put a bottle aside to remind me of her.
Staring into the mirror I tried to imagine his mother’s daily routine, getting up out of
bed, dressing it, maybe taking a shower, coming back to sit here at the dressing table
next to the window which had looked out at countryside and oak trees, and was
gradually taken over by developers. I looked hard at the mirror searching for
similarity, searching for her likeness in my reflection. Out of any of my brother’s I
looked the most like her, they had our Italian father’s sallow skin, hazel eyes and
angry look. I looked more Irish and definitely had my mother’s eyes.
Beside the window was a leather armchair she used to always sit and read on,
like a proper lady of leisure, glancing up from her newspaper or novel every now and
again to keep an eye on her raucous boys playing in the garden more. I remembered
her knocking on the window whenever the older two got too rowdy and rough with
me. Sitting on the windowsill was a beautiful fountain pen. For crosswords, I thought,
remembering then her protestations that while she would always win at Scrabble, The
Irish Times crossword was beyond her. I wondered if she kept a diary and what would
it say. Would it detail, as I had suspected that she knew about her illness long before
she told any of her boys?
Picking up the pen, I decided to perch on the windowsill, which she always
berated me for attempting to do. If she was looking down from heaven or wherever, I
thought, she would laugh and wag her finger, pleased that I had finally got the better
of her.
However, the wood started to crack under my weight. Standing up quickly I
realised it had cracked in two halves. When I put my hands on it the outer half came
away easily in my hands and I noticed the wooden panel under the windowsill was in
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fact a recess, a hiding place, a black gaping hole that seemed to be filled with
notebooks and so on. Before I got a chance to investigate further, I heard a car coming
up the drive, the heavy engine sounded like dad’s car. I decided to place the pieces of
wood back and come back another day when he couldn’t get angry with me for
rooting through her bedroom.
Slipping out of the room, I remembered what she had said in the days before
she died about a box and all that. Maybe this was it.
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Chapter 18
The house was my mother’s, we had always known that. My maternal grandfather
seeing that dad was trying to invest everything he could back into his restaurant
empire decided to buy the house as a present; Alison would be left the family home;
which she had willed to Frances who had in turn willed to me.
My mother, painfully aware of my father’s disdain for me, decided to leave
the house to me and not my father. I realised he must have heard this already from the
solicitor, as I crept out of her room with my father arriving in cursing and kicking the
wall.
“I paid for this house 10 times over; the bills; the furniture; the
refurbishments; the toys for you children; the dinner parties and birthday parties and
you you little bastard, she leaves it to you,” he shouted up at me from the end of the
stairs. I was at the top a pile of laundry in my hands, my mother’s bedroom door
closed and my cover far from blown.
He glared up at me, banging his hand loudly on the banister.
“And now you’re stealing my socks too as well as my home from under my
feet. You little bastard.”
“Dad, just trying to help you out with some clothes washing, I know you hate
it.”
He looked up at me even more contemptuously, his eyes burning right through
me with anger. He landed a letter on the hall table.
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“Your fucking mother’s will is here. I met the solicitor on my way home. The
fucking whore’s will is here, do you hear me. You got the house, you can have
the fucking lot. I’m going to Italy for a few weeks. Throw the fucking socks
out the window. I don’t care.”
****
“I mean really you shouldn’t worry David, I helped him pack his bags and we were
just chatting normally, no curses or bad feeling; no ‘thanks you girlfriend of a
bastard!’” Hannah laughed, looking up at me with her head turned in an awkward
position and squashed against the window, her right hand swallowed by the
windowsill.
I needed the help of Hannah’s small hands to reach into the small crevices
below the window sill, her long slender body and slim arms perfect for reaching down
into the recess below where the window seat had been before I broke it, searching
every last crevice for any scrap of paper hidden deliberately, hiding my mother’s
words and our family history. Everything I had already emptied lay neatly piled on
the nearby bed.
Only a few hours had passed since Dad’s outburst and already he had left the
city; I knew there was no point approaching him for a few days so when he sped off
in the car, I rang Hannah in the restaurant of the bar, where she cooked up a storm. He
had a soft spot for her. I don’t know if it was because of his 100pc Italian blood, but
he definitely loved to have women fussing about him.
Hannah insisted on talking her way through the exercise, as if chatter made it
easier to concentrate on the unknown she was reaching into.
“I made sure I was sitting casually at the table near the office, having a
break when he stormed in past me. ‘Barry, I’ve put on some fresh coffee,’ I
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called after him. I knew it would work, he says no one else can make it as
authentically Italian as me. He stuck his head out the door and beckoned me
in. “David will explain, I have to go to Italy and sort out some things. You any
good at this internet?” So I went in with a big worried face, all the time
actually being annoyed with myself for being so nice to him when he had been
so rotten to you. I just asked where he wanted to fly in and out of and what
dates and told him to just sit down and ring the local travel agent. So he got
out his credit card, did just that, booked the flight. Then he rang Liam and of
course he had very little on and was only delighted to have an excuse to drive
to Dublin and go out to some high brow club or bar. Then he rang Michael at
work and said to him himself and Liam would be up and to book a good
restaurant. And that was it. Him being my employer I said I’d to get back to
the kitchen for a couple of hours. ‘Will you be alright packing?’ I asked and of
course he needed a hand, so I came back here after and did that. Michael will
drop him to the airport to his Alitalia flight. ‘You know I was just
disappointed,’ he said to me; ‘I haven’t mentioned it to the older boys yet; I’ll
say it to them together in Dublin later. Then I’ll talk to my old schoolteacher
friend in Italy, Ricardo.’ I gave him a hug and said that a few weeks in the sun
would sort everything out. Then I asked him to bring me home some nice bits
and pieces for the kitchen and he gave me a big smile and said something in
Italian with a wink; something like ah his little Italian kitchen girl. And that
was it, a kiss on both cheeks and he was waiting out the front for Liam. Maybe
it’s a case of he loves you but doesn’t like you, maybe you remind him too
much of your mother?”
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“He always hated me.”
“Ah don’t be like that David!”
Her dark blue eyes flashed up at me and I reached in to give her a peck on the head. I
loved her dark glossy hair. I’d loved the dreadlock when we met, but the shine from
her hair was beautiful.
“Hold on, hold on, I think there’s something else here, hold onto me.”
Her other hand and then her head disappeared down under the windowsill, as
if she was diving into the past, I thought. Next thing she reappeared coughing but
clutching a little notebook.
“Voila!”
I gave her a big hug of thanks, thanks for what I wasn’t sure. Now I had a
collection of newspaper clippings, a stash of photos, some letters, a notebook and a
locked steel box, the type you’d use for petty cash, basic but impenetrable. More than
anything I wanted to start with the box but I knew the time wasn’t right. I had a
feeling that old family heirlooms, jewellery etc was in it and that she was referring to
proposing to Hannah with a ring from the box or something.
“Where do I start? I asked looking into her eyes for support.
“What are you looking for? That will help you start.”
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Always pragmatic; the organised German, I smiled.
“I want to bring my mother alive again. Well, you know what I mean,
understand who she was/is. Do you think I’m being nosey, that she wouldn’t like it?”
I asked in a worried tone.
Hannah walked across the room, placing all the bits and pieces on the bed.
“I think that people write personal diaries and hoard information – you know
sayings and quotes and newspaper cuttings and birthday cards and letters, of
course for themselves, so they have something to look back on in their old
age, memory prompts of how they were one day. But she knew she was dying,
and I would say she knew for a long time. She could have put all of those
things in a bin or on a bonfire, or maybe she thought they would rot away
without anybody seeing them. Ja go ahead.”
“How long is dad gone for?”
“Three weeks.”
“Right when he comes back how about we take a long holiday, that way
avoiding him. We can take the stuff with us, get a nice hotel or something and
chill out and read though this stuff?”
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“We could just get out of the country for the summer?”
Travel had been our thing and after our initial meeting in Laos all those years
ago and subsequent travels together we had gone and done a season in a ski resort in
Austria, followed by a summer on a yacht in the Mediterranean. I realised now I had
kept her here in Waterford for too long. Too long in the one country, the one place,
just wasn’t her.
“Right, I’m sending you home to Germany first, see your mutter und vater,
and then we can meet in…”
“Greece. It has to be Greece. You haven’t been there since you were a child.
You could meet the woman who sent you those photos of when you were
there as a kid. She might tell you about your mum?”
My mind was somewhere else altogether.
“Hannah, you know I’m delighted to be left the house; but she knew I had her
homeplace which Frances left to me, so why give me two homes. I’ll sell
neither. Do you think mum thought if she died first dad would will nothing to
me? I wonder what she left the two lads. I know I was her baby but she loved
us all madly. So why give me something more?”
“Would any of her friends know?”
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“God I wouldn’t bring family business like this into the open. Waterford
women are awful gossips you know. That’s awful, that’s like saying my
mother was an insatiable gossip. But you know the way it is down here. You
tell someone to say nothing to no one and then you hear it back from the
parish priest’s housekeeper who overheard someone in confession or some
bullshit.”
“The solicitor?”
“He’s a wanker, down from Dublin. I’m surprised he didn’t try and change it
to my dad’s favour. Anyway, will just have to live with it. I mean I’m only
one of many employees in dad’s place, I’m renting the apartment, I suppose I
have nothing, the lads have a lot and knowing dad he’d leave the house to the
three of us and me who has nothing would have to buy the other two filthy
rich fuckers out of my own home, so I suppose yeah it makes sense…”
“Here it’s getting late darling, do you mind if I go to bed. I’ll leave you sort
out your mum’s stuff, okay.”
Hannah had a funny way sometimes of being bored but disguising it with tiredness
and cutting off something – the middle of a sentence, a DVD, a dinner, anything. She
just goes, off to bed and that’s it. No intended rudeness. She just gets to it. I decided
to leave mum’s stuff for the moment and headed to the downstairs study to check email.
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While I was online I decided maybe I should check into job opportunities in
Greece. With our yachting experience, my bar and life saving experience, Hannah’s
cheffing experience we probably had a good chance of getting some sort of work. The
key was to aim high class, not to the towns visited by the budget holiday tourist. We’d
both managed to work in top class places over the years. That was when her dreads
had to go in the first instance to get a job in a five star Sydney hotel. They said
hygiene but we knew it was because the diners had a full view of the kitchen and
wouldn’t like to be horrified with a big head of Medusa-like locks.
Tapping away on the internet brought Maaka’s words back to me from a few
months back in the bar, the night of Frances’s anniversary: “She wasn’t looking at
101 ways to commit suicide. She was checking out Greece.”
If it was anyone else but Maaka or even anyone else other than Frances I
would have dismissed his comments. They had been sitting there at the back of my
mind. Thinking she wasn’t dead wasn’t possible, I could be loony by 30 if I was to
hold onto something like that. I’d end up in St Otteran’s with the rest of the city’s
psychiatric patients, Hannah would leave me and the guys in the bar would refer to
me as the Sixth Sense or something equally as smart ‘he can see dead people’ in
reference to the Bruce Willis film. But what if? I wondered. What if? I reached for the
phone and tapped in the number of the bar.
“Sean, how’s it going? David here, yeah, no not checking up. No he’s gone to
Italy, yeah Liam drove him to Michael’s. Many around down there Sean? No sign of
my mates, no worries, I wasn’t looking for them… Just after 10 Sean. Yeah. Tell me
is my mate the Kiwi guy there, you know the guy from New Zealand? Yeah put a
drink in front of him, a beer mind you, not a short, he’s a mad fucker. Sean tell him
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I’ll be down in a bit, haven’t caught up with him in a bit, time to start living again
man. See you in 10.”
I sneaked upstairs, where Hannah was curled up in my old bedroom, which we
stayed in occasionally at the house. I climbed in to give her a quick cuddle and
whispered I was going down to the pub, did she want to come with me?
I heard a mutter that sounded like no, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek,
slipped out of the bed, turned off the lamp, and left the room quietly. I set the house
alarm and walked over to the car and made my way into the city.
My social life over the last few months had been chatting over the bar,
drinking cups of tea in the kitchen with friends and relations of mums and the odd
night out with the lads who I had grown up with. A few were still around the area,
married and with big houses while a few, the single ones were scattered around the
country. Maaka was one of my friends who I’d just chatted to over the bar, we hadn’t
had a proper chat since the night he’d been hammered and I got the call my mother
was sick.
The bar was thronged for a Thursday night – students are great, they’ll drink
any night of the week and leave you alone and in peace for the summer. There was
just enough space for me to squeeze in beside Maaka at the bar. I spoke first. I
grinned at him and got a big manly hug.
“Enjoying the pint? So do I have much catching up to do, you been in here
long this evening? Where’s the wife?”
“Well the wife is gone off on some girlie holiday, the Canaries, somewhere
like that. Pure shite, I’d say they’ll be getting drunk for the week so I thought I
may as well too.”
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“Man great to see you in good form, any holidays planned yourself, off to
Germany with your little Dutch girlfriend?” he said, patting me on the back.
“Deutsch. It’s the German for German.” I corrected him. “Dutch is if she was
from the Netherlands. You know roll a Dutchie?”
He nodded, laughing the reference to Amsterdam. “You fucking Europeans.
Now Amsterdam is somewhere I might go. Yeah, so you going to Germany?”
“No, coping with her folks is tough enough once a year. Hannah might go
though, I’ll get some cover organised here – you know dad’s off in Italy for a
few weeks. We might take off for six months Maaka, you know working and
travelling.”
“I thought only Aussies and Kiwis did that in Europe,” he laughed. “Nice.”
“Hannah suggested Greece.”
“To find your cousin?”
“What, well. Well no Maaka, you know dead is dead, can’t be having any high
hopes. Plus if she is alive sure I don’t have a right to that Strand House
anymore that she left me.”
“Yeah that’s some house man, do you reckon I could stay out there sometime,
you know a cheap break? Might look at putting internet terminals there
somewhere in the village, suss out how much surfing goes on you know? You
know she is alive.”
Once he got an idea in his head there was no way of getting it out of it.
“Fuckit Maaka, how, how, how and why, why, why?”
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“How is easy man. Every week I have some of the local gangsters in trying to
sell off fake identities. Ok some are photocopied and laminated at home, but
you know others aren’t bad. Also there’s no body.”
“You know that happens loads, every couple of years a fisherman or a diver or
a swimmer out of their death isn’t recovered, that’s the way of the seas around
here.”
Maaka seemed oblivious to my words and just continued.
“Why, who knows. You know her dad was a prick and all. But it’s your
Indiana Jones moment not mine. I just think it’s interesting, but she’s your
family. If you cared you’d try. It’s like with homeless people. They move out
for one reason but their way of thinking might change and then they mightn’t
want to go back to the family, mightn’t think they’d be accepted back into the
fold for all the hurt they’ve caused.”
“Can we change the subject?” I ventured. We had a few more and drove back
out home, flopping into bed beside Hannah, but she wasn’t there. I snoozed off, still
in my clothes only to be woken in the bright morning by her getting back into the bed.
“I’m calling in sick today,” she murmured. “I’ve been up all night.”
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“Were you, where were you?” I asked confused, rubbing the sleep out of my
eyes and feeling the carpet that was my tongue, uuch, too much to drink on a school
night.
She pulled the duvet off me, curling up under it, eyes starting to flutter already
with tiredness. “In your mum’s room, I got started on the project and couldn’t stop.
When I heard you come in I came back into the room to get you but I couldn’t wake
you…” she said, her voice fading as she got closer to the realm of sleep.
“What time was that?”
“A few drinks later than it’s okay to drive.”
The Notebook
October 31, 1980
When I see this beautiful baby smiling up from the cot I can’t understand how he
came from darkness. There is not an ounce of Barry in him. If Barry has noticed, and
he has had to have noticed he hasn’t said anything. His mood hasn’t changed. And he
greeted Bill this morning with a big hug and a grin. “So compadre, are you ready to
conquer the empire with me? England here we come,” he laughed. Bill looked over at
me, nodding hello. I gave him a stern stare back, and managed a slight smile around
the lips, refusing to smile with my eyes. He tried to apologise one time before, shortly
after it happened. “Clodagh, we’ve always had something. But we both have our
families, it was a drunken thing, it can’t happen again. You know sorry about it all, if
we went too far and all that.” He was the first person I told I was pregnant, 11
months ago. “I’m telling Barry later,” I said, looking him in the eyes. “I’m six weeks
pregnant, the doctor confirmed it today. It’s not yours. Lay a hand on me again and
Barry will have you killed, even if my sister is in love with you.” I couldn’t believe I’d
the guts to say that. But it worked. He oohed and aahed and stayed well away, Alison
oblivious, Barry oblivious to what he had done to me the night of the Halloween party
in Dublin. I’m still scared the older David gets, the more different Barry will realise
David is. He’s got my looks, not an ounce of Italian in him, but luckily he doesn’t look
like Bill, whereas little Frances does. I couldn’t believe the cheek of him, asking
Barry to be Godfather Barry was delighted to become a father again, we hadn’t taken
any precautions for months so news I was due was like song to his ears. Those months
were horrendous, not knowing whether I was carrying my lover’s baby or my
rapist’s! I still don’t know, but this little three month hold looking up from his cot as I
lie on the chaise longue writing the note, is definitely different to his surly brothers.
Alison, so caught up in baby Frances while trying to give little Stevie the attention his
stepfather won’t give him, hasn’t noticed either. She’s still amazed that we both gave
birth on the same day. I’m not. The week after he violated me they took off to Venice
on a romantic getaway while I minded fatherless Stevie. It was bound to happen.
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I’ll never forget that night; how I nearly didn’t join the old college crowd for the
party in Dublin. I knew Bill was only going to chaperone Alison in case Stevie’s
mystery father was one of the men in the group. Barry, knowing they would be talking
college and careers, both of which he had whisked me from, offered to look after the
boys and leave me off, warning me to watch the drink, just in case, you know, there
was a baby growing. I knew there wasn’t a baby. I had known immediately with the
other two and there had definitely been anything stirring before that night.
Champagne all round, until I started getting dizzy, Alison holding back my hair as I
vomited in the bathroom in the luxurious flat on St Stephen’s Green the get together
was held in. I blame her but I know I shouldn’t.
My hair still in one of her hands, the other hand rubbing my back as I ashamedly kept
my head in the toilet bowl I heard her calling her new husband. “Bill, Bill, darling
husband Bill, can you call a taxi. I want to bring Clodagh home.”
“No,” I gasped, “they are your friends, you can’t some with me. I’ll get a basin at the
B&B and leave it by the bed. Honestly don’t let me ruin your night.”
I could see she was torn, to stay with her friends who had come back from all over the
world for a reunion or sit watching over her drunken sister.
“I’ll get Bill to go in the taxi with you and make sure you get in the front door, can’t
trust these taxi drivers. Remember the time one tried to slip his hand up my dress.
Horrific. We’ll get you home safe. Bill, will you bring Clodagh home?” she winked at
him, and said “I’m all yours when you come back I’ll get some of the chatting out of
the way.”
Married just a few months and having raised little Stevie, with no father she would
mention to anyone, single-handedly for nearly two years, I could see, even in my
drunken state how this was her last night of fun before getting knocked up again.
“Barry will sever all ties with me as a business partner,” he joked, “if I don’t get his
fine wife home.”
He was a schmoozing gentleman, who was fine as my husband’s business partner, he
talked the talk, he walked the walk, but some of his business practices were slightly
dubious. Seeing him take an interest in my sister had been worrying, but when she got
pregnant by a mystery man he took a step back, when no man was on the scene, he
moved in on his prey again. Single mother, finding it tough, looking for love, I could
see it all, she was the prime candidate for his whisperings of love. Plus she was
absolutely stunning. Other women could see through his sheen, but Alison fell for it.
And I could see his desire to sire a son. “How about Balducci Murphy and sons,” he
had said to Barry on more than one occasion. With me having two sons and Alison
one son, I could sense he thought he’d have a son within a year of marriage. His
pride and joy, there to carry on the Murphy name, take on the business in time and all
that.
On the way home, his arm linking mine, trying to keep me walk in a straight line, he
suggested walking.
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“It’s not that far to the B&B, we’ll walk. Can’t have you getting sick in a taxi, now
can we, plus the fresh air will do you good, won’t it?”
I agreed, I hate myself for it, but then I think, I wouldn’t have this beautiful son if I
had agreed. I would have an altogether different child, a real Balducci. I remember
stumbling, just as we passed an alleyway. He righted me and his hands brushed my
knees as he was helping me up.
“Just checking for grazes, don’t want your stockings ruined, love.”
He said love to everybody. I didn’t realise that was his first come on to me. I really
didn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t have believed him about the alleyway, a short cut, how I
would be safe with him. I held close on to him, afraid, but stumbled again, clutching
him. The he was whispering about my beautiful legs, arms around me, kissing and I
fell into, out of drunkenness, out of I don’t know what and the rest I will not write
here, only just as it was coming to an end, to young men passing the end of the
alleyway, laughing, “businessmen and prostitutes” I heard.
His grip loosened, and I pushed him away, storming up the alleyway, perhaps into
danger, but away from the darkness of his soul. A year ago today and nobody knows
dear diary except you. With us all playing happy families, I cannot say it, splitting two
families, losing the man I love and the love and respect of my sister.
A spindoctor in business and his personal life, I knew Bill would blame it on me. I
flagged a taxi, sobbing, and spent the night crying, my skin wrinkling in the bath as I
tried to wash the smell of him away. I heard them come into the B&B later, laughing
and I could hear them making love through the thin walls.
Instead of sitting behind him in the car the next day for the few hours drive back down
the country I got up with the light and slipped a note under their door, saying I was
getting the train home, fearing I would be carsick. No one knows and no one has
suspected anything. I couldn’t believe when he tried to turn it back on me, but as the
nuns may have said in school, if you look like a slut a man will say you’re asking for
it.
David is starting to whimper now, time to close the book on this and feed the most
gorgeous of all my babies.
Clodagh Balducci
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Chapter 19
The letter had been in Hannah’s hand. I’m guessing I wasn’t supposed to read it, and I
never saw it again. She was trying to protect me. Protect me from finally figuring out
why my father had no time for me.
Hannah had finally woken up around noon, made up a few sandwiches, and
then we headed back up to my mother’s room, where she had all the treasures spread
across the bed.
“You know my family has its history, the war in Germany and everything that
went with it. You know I told you before. But by the looks of things, your
family has a history too. There’s a notebook here with the family tree, there’s
a notebook on your parent’s courtship.”
“Uggh, if it’s soppy, I can’t read it.”
“Maybe someone else would like to in time, you know send it to the National
Library: Courtship in the 1970s, they could do an exhibition around it,” she
grinned. “And I’ve kept a diary of our relationship, you know in the hope
you’ll become famous and you know I could sell it.”
“Sell, it, exploit it, would you?” I wrestled her playfully onto the bed.
“Watch it, watch the artefacts,” she cried, laughter in her voice.
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We kissed for a few moments, and fixing the pillows when I was getting up I
noticed a notebook. 1980, it said, sticking out under the pillow.
She caught me looking at it.
“Oh you don’t want that one: it’s very little in it – well all about labour and
breastfeeding and baby poo. I know it’s the year of your birth, but no, seriously
nothing of major historical interest in it, but as for some of these,” she said, pointing
to a pile of notebooks on the floor beside beside the bed.
I played along.
“There’s some around the time your auntie died and a load of unopened
letters, addressed to the post office, and some general ones and stuff on Greece, she
wrote a lot around then oh and there’s all the newspaper cuttings.”
Immediately my interest was taken away from the 1980 notebook Hannah had
put aside from the rest of the ‘artefacts’. How does baby poo compared to the story
that stumped a nation. Auntie Alison’s death was like the Marie Celeste really, from
what I heard, but that was the 80s.
“I know I’ve only told you the story as I’ve heard it second hand, do you want
to read the clippings?”
“Sure, I just flicked through them. I was too tired to read them after trying to
decipher your mother’s handwriting.
“She writes beautifully. I mean she wrote beautifully, they were beat by the
nuns if they hadn’t mastered the art of beautiful handwriting.”
She gave me a look at derision. “We have different writing in Germany,
okay?”
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I flicked through the worn newspaper cuttings, which were all in order. The
first few were just general newspaper clippings: Woman and son missing; Search
parties despatched; Divers hampered by rough seas; Mystery of seasoned sailor’s
mishap; Local businessman distraught; Six year old loses mother and brother; Rescue
services give up search. Then I found what I was looking for, a long feature from one
of the national papers.
Mystery of woman and child lost at sea
It was the calm before the storm. As seasoned sailor Mrs Alison Murphy, wife of
restaurateur Mr Bill Murphy set to sail from Dungarvan yacht club she faced a bright
morning and calm seas, with enough of wind behind her to pick speed and disappear
from view of the club quickly.
“Alison spent many of her years at the yacht club and on the sea,” said yacht club
owner, Mr Charlie Power. “Hail rain or snow she was down here at least once a week,
I remember when the young chap Stevie was only a toddler she managed to bring him
and the baby, Frances, out to sea for a few days single-handedly.”
According to club records, Mrs Murphy, as she usually did, departed from the club at
10.30 with plans to sail down to Tramore and back, possibly berthing in Bonmahon
on her return if darkness descended too quickly, where she lived in her ancestral home
with her husband and children. According to Mr Power, the alarm was not raised by
him as often she did not return with the boat to the club for a few days if it was
docked in Bonmahon bay.
No life jackets
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It is believed that the mother and son may have drowned because they were not
wearing life jackets. “Life jackets were something she would always put on as they
were sailing off into the distance but in this occasion I remember the young lad going
below deck, so I didn’t see the red speck of the jacket on deck as they sailed off out of
sight. To be honest, Mrs Murphy would remind you of a fisherman, thought there was
no need for a lifejacket herself, that it would hinder her on deck, so that would explain
why she wasn’t wearing on herself, and I’m not one to be giving out to grown adults
what they do on their own property. I don’t know what happened out there.”
Whether Mrs Murphy’s boat was dragged off course by the rising winds it is not sure,
while some farmers and motorists along the coast have told the Gardaí and rescue
services that a boat matching the description of Mrs Murphy’s yacht, Elia, was seen to
be following the coast in her reported direction until Stradbally, a few miles west of
her home, it seems at this stage the boat went out towards open sea.
Suicide discounted
“She said the young lad wanted to bring home fish for Mr Murphy’s tea and they
went off with a load of rods, maybe she went out to sea with the hope of finding
bigger fish to fry, so to speak.”
There have been reports that Mrs Murphy suffered from depression and for the last
year hadn’t been seen socially apart from her weekly visits to the yacht club with four
year old Frances and eight year old Stevie. Mr Murphy has strongly denied any
suggestions of suicide, saying everything was fine with Mrs Murphy – she was not
very social as she wanted to devote her time to her two children. Her youngest child,
Frances’s life was saved by the onset of a flu two days earlier. “She wanted to go
fishing with them,” he recalled. “I put down my foot. Sea air is good, but out to sea
with flu could kill a child. I didn’t realise how right I was.”
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When Mrs Murphy didn’t arrive home by 10 that night he raised the alarm and the
following day a search party came across the overturned yacht 20 miles out to sea. All
of the lifejackets were in the cupboards in the boat and despite being a strong
swimmer it is believed Mrs Murphy and her young son had little chance of surviving
in the cold sea.
“The fishing rods weren’t found at all. I believe there was a freak wave while they
were fishing on deck. The fishermen around here will tell you the further you go out
the stranger the sea is,” continues Mr Power.
Vessels in area questioned
“We have the best of search and rescue men around here. They’ve come up with
nothing. They’ve checked the shore and the sea in a wide radius and notified
coastguards around the country and in Wales and France, should remains wash
ashore.”
“A number in the vessels in the area were interviewed as to whether they saw a flare,
got a may day call or noticed any unusual weather. Some reported seeing the vessel in
the area but it was upright at the time. It wasn’t far enough out to be knocked over by
any freight ships in the area at the time,” a local garda spokesman commented.
An American, Mr Christopher Miller, sailing around Ireland and who notified Gardaí
he was in the area, reported seeing the boat in the distance on calm enough seas.
Gardaí, rescue services, the local seafaring community and indeed family and friends
of Mrs Murphy are stumped as to what happened.
“It’s a modern day Marie Celeste alright,” said Mr Power. “We’ll miss Mrs Murphy
and young Stevie around the club. She’s a loss to the sailing community.”
Hannah had tears in her eyes as I finished reading it out to her.
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“It was awful sad. I do remember my mother roaring her head off crying for a
long time. It really tore her apart. And the thing was we couldn’t really have a
funeral. So there was a mass in the local church. I don’t remember much of
that. But we went down to the sea afterwards. The whole village, everyone
that knew her, Gardaí, rescue services, schoolchildren, strangers, people from
all over the world and everything and we dropped petals upon petals on the
sea. I remember Frances was the first to do it and was too shy, you know by
the crowds, so in our wellies we held hands and went down together to do it. I
was at her side ever after that. You know a replacement Stevie. The twin
brother thing.”
She held my hand carefully, and leant in to embrace me. “The twin thing, you
poor thing, losing your sister.”
“Ah no, we were different to brother and sister – friends more than anything.”
I was lying now to cover her lie to me.
The Diary
April 1985
I called Barry this evening after we had settled ourselves in at Barbara and Nikolai’s
house. The boys are alright and not missing me too much, they even got themselves off
to school alright. I’m glad I brought David with me, he wouldn’t be able to cope
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without me, I think, for a few weeks. Of course the other boys miss me but they have
the structure of school and sports to keep them occupied.
The house here is fabulous. The long journey – the ferry and train to London,
flight to Athens, and ferry to the nearby island where they met us to bring us over to
Nikolai’s private island.
Frances and David were very good for the whole journey, playing, sleeping,
having stories read to them, David was so excited to be on the ferry and when the
plane took off, nothing, no fear, or tears, his eyes just wide in wonder. We were right
to bring him; Frances has been eating alright, picking at her food mind you, but
copying everything that he does. Without me and him I think Alison would have a
tough time. Stevie was good too, glad to be out of school. This afternoon he was very
happy playing in the sand with young Zander, Barbara’s only child. This holiday,
already on its first day, has done wonders for him. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t
have Bill breathing down his neck the whole time.
I know we’ve all done well for ourselves but Barbara has completely fallen on
her feet. I hadn’t realised to what extent Nikolai was wealthy, being heir to the
Zander Zander shipping empire. I still can’t believe they’ve called their son Zander
Zander, it’s worse than Brian O’Brien or Donald McDonald. But he’s the cutest little
boy, deep brown eyes, longish hair, very thin though but completely proficient in
Greek and English.
More of the party is arriving tomorrow. I have a funny feeling Barbara has
something up her sleeve, even Alison is on edge but in a good way, slightly nervous.
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I’ve been given my own room, as has she – except mine has two twin beds, hers a
double. The children are sleeping soundly in little cots put up in Zander’s room. If
David gets scared at least he can come down the stone hall to my room.
At dinner Barbara was telling us how she has little interest in having more
children – Nikolai has his heir in Zander and she likes the thought of being a lady of
leisure. “But I get bored,” she said. “When he starts school, I don’t know what I’ll
do, maybe I should have more children, I don’t know. Nikolai is in Athens so much,
apart from having friends visiting and keeping up with the painting, it can get lonely.
We have so much staff, there’s no need to cook, clean, or anything. And we’re a
kilometre away from the main island for me to make many friends.”
I pity her, she has everything and nothing, but we all know that there’s
nothing for her in the States – nothing like the life she has now anyway, she’s been
away for so long. Her extended family are coming over soon, she said. I did pity her
until she mentioned turning the house and the land around it into a holiday resort.
“Tourism is the way forward, I know as a shipping tycoon’s wife I should be expected
to be a lady of leisure, but I need to do something, build a life for myself here. We
own some land over at the main island; I have plans for that too. Nikolai is fine. If we
lived in Athens, I would be expected to mix with all the other rich women, the
ambassador’s wife and so on, but here, there’s nothing, he wants me to do what I
want to be happy.”
It would be a nice place to come back to with the boys I think, if she does get it
off the ground.
She was asking after the boys and Barry, and admiring young David, with his
big fair head of hair on him. Beautiful eyes, she said. “Himself and Frances are like
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twins aren’t they she said”, her eyes narrowing slightly. “I know, surprising really
considering myself and Alison look so different, isn’t that right hon,” I said patting
my sister’s arm.
Not long after we retired to our rooms and here I am now. When I went back
down to get a drink of water, I overheard Alison and Barbara whispering. I heard
Alison saying “very tough on Stevie”, “living hell”, “adores Frances” “I don’t love
him anymore” “can’t tell anyone” “feel like killing myself”. I knew they were having
problems but I don’t know if it’s because she didn’t want to come across as weak or
because she was afraid I’d tell Barry who might say something to Bill, that she
wouldn’t tell me.
It hurt me so much. Despite taking her in when Stevie was born, Alison has
definitely distanced herself in ways from me. We were always so close, and the first
betrayal of the sisterly trust we had was when she wouldn’t tell me who Stevie’s father
was. She was insistent she wasn’t raped, but wouldn’t even reveal if she doesn’t know
who the father is or if he was a married man. At least Stevie has had some father
figure even if it is Bill.
Of course Bill's parents and brothers weren't too impressed initially with his
choice of bride. Then when they found out over occasional meetings over the first
year of marriage she was from good stock, even if I say so myself, had an education,
had studied in Paris, and was very pretty, they warmed to her and tolerated Stevie.
When a year had passed after they got married and they weren't yet with child
they were confident she hadn't trapped him. And maybe even privately they nodded to
the good business links.
In Dublin everyone assumed Stevie was Bill's and he left it at that. Publicly, he
supported Alison and her illegitimate son. Privately things were different.
Bill was hitching on the road when we came across him the day they first met.
Wearing a dark blue suit with the thinnest stripe, he leaned in at the window, his
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breath smelling of whiskey. "I don't suppose you'd give us a lift in a few miles, lost a
ton on some nag," he said.
He didn't recognise the car I looked over at Barry, a smile breaking out on his
face, "It'll cost you friend," he roared across me/
Bill harrumphed, and shuffled back from the car.
"I lost all me money at the races. I could give you a tip," he slurred. "Don't run
with scissors." Lifting his hand to his head in a salute. Something must have clicked
with him and he peered in again.
"A yis feckers. What are you doing in these partas. here let me in will ya. "
Barry laughed loudly.
"I got Murphy. I got Murphy."
Bill stood back as I opened the door, got out and moved the front passenger seat
forward. I got in the back, moving over the presents we had for my sister in the back.
Bill got in the front beside Barry and told us about his problems. We said we'd bring
him as far as Portobello, to my sister's and he could go from there.
Alison was standing at the front gate of her garden flat when we arrived. baby
over her shoulder, showing him the world. I waved out the back windows at her.
- decsription of her here Barry parked the car and jumped out and around the car to her. A quick kiss on
each cheek (is this Italian style?) and a kiss on the baby's head. Bill took his time
getting out, slow with drink but sobering up.
"This is your sister?" he asked after nodding at her, before opening the door.
"Yes" I said. "That's my little sister Alison and Stevie her five-week-old.
" Another Italiano husband in the family?"
"No, God, no." I said. "She's not married, Bill. Some visiting medical student
who skipped off to England. Poor Ally is all alone in the world."
Barry was all about Ally and the baby. He loved children. We'd three boys
already and he was only dying for another.
Bill on the other hand had turned sober while he jumped out of the car, seat up
for me to get out, door open in a gentlemanly way. He turned slightly to Alison.
"Miss Callaghan," he smiled - and young Stevie, I hope you're doing well?"
Alison's eyes lit up.
"Fine, fine. Thank you."
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“ Alison this is Bill Murphy my business partner extraordinaire, back from a
day at the races.”
Pretending to gather the few bags in the back seat, I watched Alison and Bill.
Something was bothering me. I couldn't put my finger on it. Watching Bill shake hand
with Alison, I had it. Drunk or sobering at least as he was Bill wasn't doing his usual
suave, sophisticated, lecherous, rich man act when he met any woman, old, young,
single, married, widowed, unattractive or attractive. Ally was very attractive. I
wondered was it the baby or was it that he liked her? Or our money?
Businesswise Bill was always on the road. Cork, London, anywhere. With me
having living in the house in the city Dad bought us, it made sense for Alison and Bill
to take the one beside the beach.
Bill took it on with gusto. And the potential he could see as a blow in to the
seaside village Mahonville. It was like he was going for election, and maybe he would
have gotten somewhere…
I think I’ll turn in for an early sleep now. Apparently we’ve just tomorrow
lounging around here before going sailing the next day as soon as the rest of the
party arrives.
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Chapter 20
Hannah and I were sitting in the bar poring over a map of Greece, trying to figure out
where to go. Looking at names on a map meant nothing, all islands looked the same,
varying sizes, of course, but still, they all seemed to have coastline, a few towns and
be near large expanses of sea.
We knew what we wanted though – tourists of a certain type to cater for.
However, we knew it might be a word of mouth thing to figure out once we got there.
“I think you should visit your mum’s friend, or your auntie’s friend. I bet she
doesn’t know that Frances is dead. You know would your mother have said or would
she have heard on the grapevine. Bit tragic really, out of your holiday when you were
a kid, you’re the only survivor. Maybe going working on a yacht in the Med again
wouldn’t be the safest of careers.”
I said nothing in reply to Hannah and just went up to the bar from our table in
the corner out of anybody’s earshot, namely the barman’s.
“Sean, do we have ouzo?”
The bar was quiet so Sean, a tall greying local in his early 40s, took his time
going through the bottles on the shelf. I knew what he was thinking. If someone came
in and asked for something fairly run of the mill and it was quiet he would take his
time searching the fridges or the counter for something else.
“Have you ever tried Stolichnya?” he might say to someone looking for a
vodka. The foreign beers would come out of the fridge for someone looking for a run
of the mill lager. “I’ll give you another one of what you asked for for free if you don’t
like it,” he’d promise. But I’d say he rarely had to follow through with the promise.
The punters fell for the higher quality, more boutique beers and spirits, which in the
longer run brought in a bit more money for the bar and a higher quality clientele. I’d
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miss it all now, off travelling again. But if Hannah wasn’t happy, it was time for us
both to go before she’d go on her own and leave me and boring ‘sunny south east’ of
Ireland. Sean was still searching along the shelves for something better, As far as I
knew we just had one bottle of ouzo so I tried to stop him.
“Sean two ouzos please, actually put them in the one glass. On the house
account.”
“You’ll have nothing left of your wages man before you go on this holiday,”
he nodded, carefully measuring two shots of ouzo into a glass. I knocked it back in
one and went and sat down again on the large leather couch beside my beautiful
girlfriend.
She was still engrossed in the map and I decided to finally giver her an
answer, the ouzo burning up inside me.
“Mam died of a terminal illness, Alison and Stevie died because of her
stupidity and Frances died because she was plain selfish. I’m perfectly well, not
stupid, and not selfish, so don’t worry love.”
She laughed back at me. “Stupid. I was only messing. So do you want to go to
visit that woman in Greece?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You know some wrinkly old woman, probably addicted to ouzo, sitting
outside sunning herself, it’d be like talking to an American-made satchel
dipped in alcohol!”
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“That’s so mean.” She pinched me. “Look at the island, it’s near. It’s got a lot going
for it, I reckon we’d get some work. How about we go there and then decide. The
description of the place from your mum’s diary sounds fab.”
“That was 20 years ago.”
“And she was going to develop it.”
“I don’t like nepotism.”
“David, I’m not suggesting we go and say ‘you used to know my boyfriend’s
dead aunt and dead mother, can I’ve a job please?’”
“Well okay, maybe. But can we do our own thing for a while? What if I still
have to find out that woman is a raving lunatic, we still have more of mum’s
diary to read. And it’s not as if I can ask dad.”
“Oh your dad rang earlier, he’s getting on grand in Italy.”
I hated this, dad ringing Hannah before me, even if he wasn’t talking to me it just
wasn’t really on.
I spoke, without meeting her eyes. “Oh did he.”
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“David, don’t be mad at me, it’s not my fault. David, look into my eyes. Look
at me.”
I looked up and nodded, knowing I was slightly out of line. It was nothing new, my
dad not ringing me or anything.
“You know, my dad’s got a bit of money. Why didn’t mum go back to
Barbara’s like she wrote in the letter? Do you think they fell out? Or maybe
Barbara doesn’t live there?”
“We can find that out when we get there love,” she answered. “I better go
upstairs and finish packing.”
Hannah was going to Germany for a few weeks and then meeting me in Athens.
I hadn’t booked my flights yet, they were going to be awkward and via London or
somewhere else so I was holding off.
I felt in my pocket for my credit card. Why not now? I could try the internet, maybe
go through somewhere a little bit more interesting than London. I beckoned at Sean
for a pint and set myself down at one of Maaka’s internet kiosks over in the corner
and started browsing.
I knew she had only booked her own flights and not mine to teach me a lesson –
nearly like she didn’t want me to be there in Athens when she arrived. Well I knew
she did want me to be there but she wanted me to fail miserably, as I always did in
getting myself from A to B. Even Frances had booked my last itinerary with me. And
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creamed, or borrowed, she said, some money from some business account her father
had to pay for it for me, until I got the cash together myself from the bank.
I didn’t know where to start. I tried a few different sites I’d heard people talk about
and saw what looked like a very good deal, via Prague, and booked it. The price
wasn’t bad, I felt. For the two of us.
I didn’t use the internet much and was trying to figure how to use up my remaining
time on it. Before I knew it, I had typed Samantha’s name in, nothing came up. I felt a
shred of disappointment. Then I had a brainwave of checking the phonebook online,
we only had the local one and not the Dublin one at home. Sure enough there she was.
I entered the number into my phone, just in case I got lonely or needed to talk or
something while Hannah was away.
We weren’t used to being apart, so seeing her off at the airport the following Saturday
morning was sad. It would be a few weeks before we saw each other, but things just
hadn’t been spot on recently and I knew it was something that had to be done, to save
our relationship.
I made use of my time after seeing her through the security gates and nipped over to
the airline I’d booked my flights through, to check how long of a stopover time I had.
I handed over my driving licence as identification to the girl on the desk. Heavily
made up, definitely Eastern European, her face didn’t crack one smile as I tried on my
charm.
Following a few minutes of looking at her screen she finally looked up to meet my
gaze. “Ok the two of you will have…” she started. I interrupted. “Two? Sorry just me
flying on my own.”
She checked her screen again and my driving licence. “Sir you booked for two. You
and a Ms Hannah….”
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This was news to me. Then I remembered the ouzos, the beer, thinking about Hannah.
It was quite obvious, I’d just added in her name too.
“Oh yes, actually I made a mistake. Can I get a refund on that?”
She shook her head. “No refunds. Just name changes.”
“Ok, how much?”
Suddenly, the sullenness in her face broke, her expression softening. She looked
around conspiratorially and leaned in to me, whispering. “I can do it here for free.
What name?”
Who the hell could I bring I thought… It was time to make a few phonecalls.
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Chapter 21
I was flying out to Athens the morning my dad was due back. Maaka was driving and
we’d gotten on the road early to avoid him. We pulled into the short-term car park and
stayed silent, the two of us getting out and banging our doors at the same time, then
me moving towards the boot of the car, to take out my large suitcase – the days of
rucksacks were well behind me, grown up as I was. He reached into the back seat and
pulled out a straw cowboy hat.
“I got ya a present. Not much, but I hear it’s hot in Greece, need to look after that
balding head of yours,” he grinned, plopping it on my head. “Enjoy. Oh and I’ve a
few quid sewn into the top of it, you know just in case, you know, you end up going
night swimming and someone steals your clothes. At least you have the hat to cover
your privates and the money to get you clothes or a taxi or something.”
We laughed and Maaka locked up his car, me popping the hat on my head,
slipping on my sunglasses. “Do I look the part?” I asked, catching my reflection is the
car window.
“Every bit my man,” he nodded. “Every bit.”
I took a second look at myself, slipping my passport out of my back pocket.
The photo taken weeks before I’d applied for a new passport to go on my world tour
some five years before. “Have I ever shown you my passport?” I asked.
“C’mere give it to me,” he said, grabbing it, a large guffaw coming from him
as he opened it. “Fuck, you look like an extra from Metallica, what the fuck was
going on with you man.”
I shrugged, taking it back from him. I couldn’t have changed any more: from
overweight, black metal band t-shirt wearing, scraggy long brown hair to a gym
fanatic, with a shaved head, big sun glasses, and a straw hat, more like an extra from a
reality television show.
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“Here, let’s head in an avoid some queues,” he suggested.
We made it to the right airline desk, joining the queue and I checked in for my flight
to Athens, via Prague. Then we went and had a big fry up in the airport restaurant. I
was constantly looking around, so much that even Maaka noticed. “What’s up bud?
Looking for someone?
Swallowing a mouthful of toast, I shook my head, and tried to say the word dad
through my breakfast.
He just nodded, sipping on his coffee, pensive.
“So man, I might get to visit you, yeah would that be alright?” he finally blurted out.
“I should have a few extra quid together if I can help that old guy turn that old pub
into a hostel. I’ll tell him he needs to give me say 10 grand to set it up and I’ll feck off
with say a grand and hook up with you guys. Things could be turning for me thanks to
you, thanks for letting me stay in your gaff, Frances’s gaff.”
He looked over at me mischievously, “she is alive” he whispered. They say four years
is what it takes to get over a death of a friend or family. I was over it, and Maaka’s
incessant ribbing about Frances being alive was a running joke now. I put no pass on
his theory.
“You’re only saying that so that you don’t piss yourself in the middle of the night
when you hear a noise in that big old house and wonder if it’s her ghost,” I joked.
We walked over to the security gate and said our goodbyes, a slap on the back, a
knock of our fists together and Maaka walked off, out of the airport. I paused,
pretending to stuff a newspaper into my daypack.
Instead of joining the queue of holiday ready travellers already in their shorts, t-shirts
and sandals and the odd businessman, I went and sat at a bank of seats near the
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security entrance to airside. Alone for the first time in a while, with just my thoughts,
I wondered if I was doing the wrong thing. Or the right thing.
In a satchel I had some of the notebooks and stuff belonging to my mum. I was
looking forward to reading them sitting out in the sun and just taking everything in.
I would meet Hannah in a hotel in Athens where we planned to stay for a few days
and see the sights like the Acropolis. She was flying in two weeks after me. From
there the plan was to talk to the hotel and found out where rich people went on
holidays.
It was simple, but there was no point going the official routes for the right jobs.
But first, I had a date, I looked up and standing in front of me was Samantha. A dirty
smirk on her face. “Fancy meeting you here, Mr Balducci.”
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Chapter 22
“We want to go to Barbara Beach Hotel,” I repeated, enunciating the words very
slowly, my left hand to my forehead sheltering my eyes from the searing sun, that
global warming or not we were not expecting this early in the season. I tapped the
map I had laid out on the taxi driver’s bonnet with my right index finger to get the
point across. I thought these guys would have good English. He looked down at it,
finally understanding “No sir, no booking, no go,” the taxi driver sighed lifting is
arms in the air. “I bring you to a very good hotel. You come?” He gestured to Hannah
who was waning after our rough ferry ride to the island. She moved to sit down on her
suitcase, pulling her baseball cap over her eyes. “It has a pool, beautiful view, very
romantic,” he grinned.
Hannah had come across an article about a top class resort run by the wife of
some shipping magnate, Barbara Bay Hotel and insisted we go there. I knew there
was little point in trying to tell her we couldn’t go there after she had so persuaded me
to at least thank Barbara for her card.
We had been sitting under a large umbrella at a coffee shop across from the
port for a couple of hours, wanting to enjoy the busyness of the harbour before
making our way to the other side of the island. We’d tried a number of different local
dishes from stuffed vine leaves and stuffed tomatoes to moussaka. After numerous
glasses of water and cups of coffee we finally summoned the energy to go to where
we wanted – the taxi rank 15 feet away.
“Is it because it’s Ascension week,” I ventured. “Is Barbara Bay full because
it’s the bank holiday next week?” “No, no. Barbara Bay take bookings only. They
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collect from airport and here. Private bus. No taxis. Mrs Zander’s orders. My cousin, I
will ring?”
Hannah had said nothing so far; “let’s make a bloody booking then,” she
hissed, a sour look on her face. I knew that look well, best to humour her or she’d sulk
and I may as well be on holidays on my own for a week. I reached into the side
pocket on my combat shorts for my mobile, which I’d put a Greek sim card in. I made
to hand it to the driver, who started shaking his head. “There is no phone number.
You have to book on internet. Okay I bring you to Little Zander’s – their other hotel.
You stay there tonight, see if you can book in with Mrs Zander. Okay?”
I nodded and moved my arm around my silent little madchen. Kissing her on
the cheek, I whispered, “come on honey, you just hop into the taxi and I’ll look after
everything else.” Silently she reached for the back door of the silver merc beside us
and got in. The driver waved me away when I tried to help him with the bags. He
winked, nodding his head towards the back of Hannah’s head. “Women,” he grinned.
With the engine running and air conditioning on, Hannah immediately perked up,
chattering away about what we could do. When we arrived at our destination – at the
other end of the town from the ferry, Yannis was handing me some cards – his taxi
card, his cousin’s hotel, his friend’s restaurant while Hannah meandered up towards
reception.
Just as I was rolling the suitcases towards reception Hannah came skipping
down the flagstones towards me, a key in her hand. She spoke excitedly in German,
her eyes gleaming, rejuvenated. They spoke German here, she had gotten a good rate
and booked us in, leaving her credit card behind reception. I tipped my straw hat at
the middle-aged woman at reception and followed Hannah’s lead under archways past
a pool, to a stone flight of stairs.
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I managed the bags up the steps as Hannah went to find our room.
There was absolutely no harm in us having a decent break before falling into a
contract that would allow no time for ourselves. Our reunion in Athens had been
wonderful, refreshing, back to the good ol’ times.
Samantha and I had a laugh in Prague, but that was it. Once in Greece on my
own and waiting for Hannah to arrive, I’d had a change of feeling. Plus she had
become a phone stalker, so much so that I had to switch off the phone, and buy a
Greek sim and give that out to all my friends. She was dangerous. Worse, I had told
nobody and could tell nobody now.
I let Hannah chat at reception. Talking about the delayed honeymoon. It was
true. How they worked in hospitality, not long off the slopes, she was German.
I nodded and kept in the background. It felt weird to say hello. She had been
shocked to the core at Fran’s death.
Barbara had nodded, bemused, used to quiet men perhaps. It’s just the way it
happened.
She took a picture from behind reception to show Hannah, her grandson.
I spoke in quick German to Hannah, saying come on, and the woman looked up and
smiled and handed her the keys.
Coming back down for the last suit case I noticed another woman check in and
give a kiss on the cheek, a slightly melodic Australian accent.
“And can you believe work are paying for this one? Which means I didn’t have
bloody Stevie travelling along.”
She turned, sensing my stare and Barbara looked up.
“Guten Tag”
“Tschuss,” I mustered and saw my mother’s eyes staring back out at me. I was
frozen.
Barbara asked was I okay and I put my hand to my mouth gesturing a yawn.
Tired from all the travelling.
The woman turned back and I went and waited for the lift. Their voiced lilted,
familiar, close, two people who knew each other well.
“And you’ve missed my grandson again. Alison Callaghan what are you like?
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Not the child’s Godmother anyway.”
“You know me and children she quipped. Can’t stand them.”
Less than an hour here and my head was melted. Who knew my mother’s sister
and my cousin Stevie was still alive? Not dead, that the grief and dark cloud that grew
up around us was based on a lie. Or was it?
What did my mother say? Alison was in a better place. That’s all she said. Sure, she
cried. I remember the big hawks out of her.
And I did nothing. Nothing at all. Perhaps where she had come from Fran was
too?
I knew not to approach. But I didn’t know what to do.
She had a relationship with Barbara, a friendship my mother had been jealous
of.
The woman I knew to be my aunt looked blankly at me. There was no sign of
recognition.
I watched her eyes dart over to Hannah and Barbara, cooing with the baby,
Sebastian.
She clocked the rock on Hannah’s hand, glanced at me and smiled.
“Getting lucky? On honeymoon?
I nodded and cleared my throat. “In time.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Irish?”
“You’ve a good ear, and you?”
“
I work in diaspora studies in Sydney. I speak to a lot of immigrants”.
She looked back over at the others, deft and experienced in moving on
conversations, I thought.
“She’s just cracked about that child. I’ll doubt I’ll ever see that day myself.”
She caught herself unawares.
“I can’t see my son settling, too into the bum culture in Sydney.”
I looked quizzically.
She laughed.
“Wasters, beach bums, not the Oxford Street set, she said. Unless of course he
got someone pregnant already and she doesn’t know who he is.” she trailed off.
“
What will you follow in the Olympics?” l asked.
“Sailing. My favourite sport. Amazing. The changes here are great. What do
you think of the new airport?”
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“I haven’t been here….”
“The old one was tiny. Oh it was great flying in this time. All those years and it
was awful.
“Will it impact much on here?”
“Oh Barbara has it all sewn up. It will attract regulars, people who’ve been
coming since there were just a few of us sitting around a bonfire.”
Hannah turned back to me. Panic in her eyes and spoke rapidly in German about
how beautiful the baby was.
I made a joke about too early, give us some time and noticed my dead aunty’s
mouth break into a smile. She understood German.
I smile.
“Sie verstehen.”
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Chapter 23
Relaxation was wonderful. No dad, no bar to mind, no crazy bits on the side looking
for reassurance. Like most days, I lay out in the sun lounger, my hand tapping the beat
to the music I was ensconced in on my increasingly brown, increasingly washboard
stomach; my real skintone hinted at from the pale line of skin peeking above the band
of my mid thigh length black swim shorts. Having gone straight to the poolside from
my hotel room without spending time on grooming, a hint of dark stubble also
betrayed the real colour of my now bleached short hair which was fashioned into an
ultra modern subtle mohican.
I sat up and taking out my earphones, had a look around, taking in the whole
scene under the security blanket of large sunglasses; it was getting hot and the
morning swimmers in the infinity pool, which looked over a sparkling blue stretch of
the Mediterranean, had disappeared. There were a few die-hard toasters, as I called
them, deepening their tans. The resters, as I referred to them, were already under the
smart cream canvas umbrellas reading, or eyes closed with earphones plugged in.
I raised my shades from my eyes and left them sitting on my head. It was
bright. I’d dried off quickly from my dip in the pool, so it was time for a little more
sun cream.
A phone rang shrilly, piercing the quiet pool area. It was mine, rubbing the
suncream from my hands onto the towel so as not to ruin the phone, I picked it up.
“Ja,” was all I said. Hoping to screen out psycho girl if she ever called.
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“David, it’s Garda Sweeney here,” a thick west of Ireland accent said into my
ear. The tone was serious. I thought I felt my heart stop for a second. He paused.
“How’d ya get this number, Donie?”
“Am I disturbing you,” my golfing buddy Donie Sweeney asked politely.
“Donie, give us just one second, alright?”
Usually Donie rang messing with me, pretending he was going to arrest me on
various charges. But I could hear the seriousness in his voice. I sat up from my
comfortable lounger. I held my phone in place between my hear and shoulder and
started tidying up around me, picking up my beach towel, magazine, Discman and
suncream. I quickly shoved my feet into my flip flops and started the walk along the
marble flagstones and bougainvillea arches back to the coolness of our hotel bedroom.
I walked through the maze of loungers surrounding the pool, into the shade and put
the phone up to my ear once more.
“Donie, I’m back with you, how can I help?”
Standing in under the shade of the wicker verandah with a fan whirring above
me I felt better able to deal with a call from a Garda.
I imagined Donie, a six foot, fair skinned and fair haired giant of a man, an
honour to the image of the force, but softly spoken and without a bit of menace in
him, at home in the back room of the Garda Station, a mug of tea in front of him and a
load of paperwork to get through for the evening before heading home to his new wife
and baby girl.
“Look David, I’m ringing you for business reasons. But don’t worry you’re
not in trouble. I got an interesting thing on my desk today and before we proceed with
it, I thought you might like to know.”
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In explaining himself, I thought, Donie was like he was on the golf course,
taking ages to line up a shot. Get on with it, like. I signalled to a member of staff that I
wanted to take a table and sat down at the one furthest away from any other diners.
“I’m listening Donie,” I said, while pointing at a fruit juice on the menu to the
waiter, a thin dark-haired man I’d seen a lot around the complex. I smiled and
shrugged my shoulders, gesturing apologies for being on the mobile at the same time
as ordering.
“Well we had a girl come in about a passport, her first passport actually, and it
turns out that someone had applied for one before under her name, using her birth
cert.”
“What has this to do with me?”
“It might be your cousin. The dead one. Frances.”
“And…”
“And I’m keeping it quiet man. If this blows up right now, you know you
won’t inherit that house in three years. In three years she’ll be declared officially
dead. If I pursue this, you won’t see nothing.”
“Thanks Donie.
“Anyway. I’ve persuaded her to hold off on this passport thing.”
“Is it not a matter for the passport office?”
“She hasn’t sent it yet. The minute I saw the name I recalled the same name
and details were on the first passport documents I ever did when I was just out of
Templemore. I’m afraid I’ll lose my job.”
“What do you want me to do, Donie? This phonecall isn’t really about
inheritance, is it?”
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“A few things have come to light. If your cousin is still alive and using this
false passport, she will be found. There could be charges, you know. You need to find
her first.”
“What sort of charges? Can you still be done for suicide? I thought that case
was closed. She’s dead. I don’t need shit at the moment, it’s not long since mum…”
“There are files upon files here, related to that whole embezzlement case. You
have got to find her or she will be locked up for a very long time.”
“Donie, how long can you shelve this for?”
“A month, max. I’ve had an informal chat with this girl that came in and I’ve
made it clear to her that due to ongoing investigations she cannot get a passport. She’s
not to discuss this with anyone, and if she does, she’ll be up on a few different
charges we could have brought against her before. She’ll stay quiet.”
“I’m on holiday man.”
“I know sorry. Maaka gave me your number under duress. When are you back
and we can talk about this over golf?”
“A few weeks. I’ll ring you. Go dig out that file, you’ll see, she is dead.”
Like hell, I’d be back in a few weeks, but I’d say anything to get Donie off my
case. Maaka must’ve been opening his mouth to the wrong people with his theories.
There probably was no girl looking for a passport.
“See ya then David, I’ll be practicing my backswing so don’t take it too easy
there, or I’ll make mince meat of you,” he laughed.
I flipped the mobile closed and placed it on the wooden table. A dark hand
placed a glass of juice in front of me.
I looked up at the waiter, “Thanks, man. Cheers.”
The waiter was looking at me, strangely.
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I looked down at my own bare chest with only hair to cover it and then looked
around at other diners, all fairly well clothed. “Sorry do I need a shirt on to eat here,”
I asked.
The waiter smiled. “No worries, it’s day time. I was just looking at your
tattoo. I have seen one like it before. It’s very unusual.”
“Ah a misspent youth,” I grinned. “Everyone has them now. Do you have any
yourself?”
“No, I’m a business man,” he grinned broadly. “My mother would kill me!”
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