A Daughter's Secret (33 page)

‘Do you think she’s the reason you got beaten up, or is it . . . do you think there are people on your team sending information back to Wright?’

I feel a shudder run through me as the words leave my lips. I can’t give way to the fear. I have to believe it’s no more than a warning, trust that the cheerful policeman stationed outside our house for the next forty-eight hours is no more than a precaution. None of the lead detective’s calm, professional patter reassured Mum: she’s given in to the fear wholesale. I need to go back soon. The fact I came here in a police car only gave her a crumb of comfort.

‘Hard to say. Don’t worry about the guys taking care of you. No one’s gonna come after you, I’m sure of that, but they’ll look after you.’ He looks at me, rueful. ‘I’m so sorry. We shouldn’t have got here, but we had to try it. Last bullet.’

‘Don’t say that. You can’t let them scare you off now.’

Patrick raises the hand that’s not in a sling and draws a shaky circle around his mashed-up features. Both of us start laughing, and once I do I actually can’t stop, the release of tension so unexpectedly delicious. ‘I’m sorry . . .’ I say, but he just smiles back, eyes soft.

‘Look, I’ll be there for Gemma’s questioning next week and, trust me, it won’t be easy for her. But we’re running out of time and there’s no sign of Daddy Dearest. It’s costing hundreds of thousands of pounds. We’ll probably have to accept the trial’s doomed to collapse and start investigating again.’ He shrugs. ‘If they’ll even let me.’

In that second I feel a surge of hatred for Christopher Vine that’s so pure, so molten, it frightens me.

‘You can’t just let him win this.’

‘Sweetheart, you of all people should not be saying that.’ He shakes his head, his look dark. ‘You say you feel guilty. How do you think I feel about them threatening you? That’s on me.’

‘But, Patrick, you’re right! If you didn’t have them on the rack they wouldn’t be . . .’ I can’t think too hard about what they’re doing. What they’re – what he – is thinking. ‘You’ve got to follow it through, whatever it takes.’

‘You’ve changed your tune.’

‘Yeah, well. It turns out I was tone deaf.’

Patrick tries to pull himself upwards. He hooks his feeble arm around my neck, and pulls me into him.

‘Kiss me properly,’ he mutters.

‘I’ll hurt you. And in case you haven’t noticed, that nurse has got a touch of the Nurse Ratcheds about her.’

‘Kiss me,’ he insists, and I do.

I know I don’t have long. I sit next to him, clutching his hand, hoping Nurse Ratched never comes back. Joy keeps creeping up on me, before fear gets it in a headlock. Did I really misjudge Gemma so badly? Was my sense that I understood her, that I was the one person who could scale the castle walls, nothing more than a self-serving cocktail of arrogance and projection?

‘I don’t want to go back out there,’ I say, my voice low. ‘I screwed this up so badly. I can’t see the wood for the trees any more. I feel like I AM a tree.’

‘In which case you’re a very elegant willow,’ he says, gently stroking my cheek.

‘I mean it . . .’ I say, very gently pressing myself towards his touch.

‘You’re an amazing therapist,’ he says, his voice low. ‘I’ve always got that about you. And I’ve seen you with her. It’s real, she trusts you. But think about the soil SHE’S grown up in. What kind of tree are you going to be? A pretty warped, rotten one.’

‘We’re more than that, aren’t we?’ I say. It’s too loaded. ‘We’re not equations. We’re not just the sum of our past.’

Patrick gives me a long look. He hasn’t forgotten.

‘Of course not.’

I sit there without speaking, listening to the hum of medical equipment and the ranged voices of the other visitors, whole families crowded close around their loved ones’ beds. I’d barely been aware of the sounds, squashed inside this tiny cubicle, my focus pin-tight on Patrick.

‘There he is!’ someone says in a loud Irish brogue. ‘I know I’ve only five minutes, but, trust me, I’ll make them count.’ The cubicle curtains open with a loud whoosh, revealing a stout woman with a determined expression on her red-veined face, a large Tupperware box in her hand. ‘Pat! The bus took an age.’ Her gaze swivels to me, and I move backwards in my plastic chair, my hands coiling back into my lap. ‘Are you a friend of my son’s?’

‘I am,’ I say, standing up and extending a hand. No shrinking. ‘I’m Mia.’

‘A work friend, I’m imagining.’ She grips my hand firmly, her smile tight. She’s looking at my outfit: a pleated silk skirt, above the knee, with a scoop-necked T-shirt and a pair of pink Converse. She doesn’t approve, this much is clear. She’s wearing a plain, dark cotton dress, Catholicly cut to mid-calf, with a modest V of red flesh visible at the top and a gold cross suspended over her impressive mountain range of a bosom. Her hands, gnarled and swollen, grip the Tupperware box like it’s a treasure chest. I look to Patrick. His dark eyes have got that woodland-creature quality to them, darting rapidly between the two of us.

‘Yes, sort of,’ I say.

He smiles at me, expression still nervy, and I grin back.

‘Mum, Mia’s more than a work friend.’

‘Oh?’

He looks at me, and my smile stretches wider.

‘She’s my girlfriend.’

A rush of fear jumps out of my chest,
Alien
style, but then it springs back in on itself with equal force. God, when I think of the Cold War between Marcus and me when we first started dating – neither of wanting to lose face and be the one to declare it a relationship. I look at him.
We haven’t even
. . . and he valiantly tries to smile back, mostly with his eyes.

‘I am,’ I say impetuously. ‘It’s lovely to finally meet you.’

‘Likewise,’ she says, voice clipped, narrowed eyes trained on me with the precision of a sniper’s rifle.

‘But I should leave you to it.’ I look at Patrick. ‘Call me later, if you’re up to it.’ He nods, gaze soft. ‘Or text me.’

I do an odd little Mexican wave of a goodbye with my fingers, far too intimidated to risk breaching the gap between me and the bed. Mrs O’Leary’s taken charge of the territory, a tank planted squarely on the battlefield.

‘Bye, Mia,’ he says.

I freeze for a long second, unable to force myself through the blue plastic curtain. I don’t want to go back out there without him, into a real world that doesn’t feel real any more. The loud chime from my phone startles all of us. I look down at it.

I didn’t lie to you, Mia. It’s the truth!! I need your help. Gemma xxx

That swaying, wobbling feeling, my legs barely holding me up. I peel my eyes away from the glowing screen.

‘What is it?’ he asks.

‘Nothing. It’s nothing for you to worry about.’ I give him a flash of a smile. ‘Just my mum.’

Delete. Delete, delete, delete.

Chapter Twenty-One

I sit in the Starbucks downstairs for a while, nursing a latte until it’s lukewarm, waiting for the aftershock of Gemma’s text to stop vibrating through me. I shouldn’t have deleted it of course, should have forwarded it to the police, but it was instinctive. Who am I to hector him, tell him he has to plunge back into the woods, when every bit of me wants to run in the opposite direction, chop it – chop her – from my memory?

I fiddle around with my phone, Googling things that don’t matter, aware of how big and gaping a hole work’s left in my life. My life was big and noisy, but it was big and noisy like a circus tent, primed for a sudden disappearance. Eventually I give up, accept my curfew. I ring Mum from the back of the car. She snatches it up on the first ring.

‘Mum, don’t panic, I’m on my way.’

‘Are you all right?’ It’s not the words, it’s the sound of the words. She hasn’t climbed back inside herself yet.

‘I’m fine,’ I lie. When is it that we start lying to protect them? I’m not sure I can remember a time when I didn’t know how to do this, like I sucked it in when I first drew breath. It was Lorcan’s gift to me, my own special Spidey skill.

‘Mia, there’s something . . .’ She pauses, her breathing hoarse. ‘Just come home.’

‘That’s what I’m doing, Mum!’

Let me be normal, and then I’ll feel safe. Perhaps.

‘OK, darling. I’ll see you soon. Soon soon.’

‘Soon soon.’

The lights are blazing when the car draws up. I thank the boyish PC a little too effusively, hoping he doesn’t think I’m stuck up. I couldn’t chat during the drive, didn’t have it in me.

It takes a second before I believe my eyes. He’s there in the hallway, almost as if he’d always been there and we’d somehow been blind to his presence. He’s still tall and bony, but his outline has softened. He’s stooped, his shoulders pushing forwards like an upside-down ladle. His hair is streaked with slivers of silver like Mum’s, but they seem shocking to me, robbed of the chance to watch them creep into being.

‘Why are you here?’ I say, the words almost wedged in my throat. I turn to Mum, raging. ‘Why did you do this?’

She’s crying, hands held out in supplication.

‘What if something happens? What if something had happened? If one of you was gone – he’s your father, Mia.’

Then I see it, the burnished gold around his long, skinny wedding finger. The thing he never gave us.

‘No. Get out. I don’t want you in my life. I meant it.’ I whip back towards Mum. ‘Don’t you think I’ve had enough – enough shit rain down on me, without you ambushing me with him?’

Lorcan steps towards me, and my hands fly up, pushing him backwards through the air between us.

‘Mia, please, can’t we all sit down and talk about it? As a family?’

‘Are you mad? You are mad, I know that. Do you honestly think you can just walk back in here after twenty years and use a phrase like that?’

Little ice cube
– that phrase haunted me for years. It would jump out at me at the most unexpected moments – job interviews, blind dates, my finals. Sometimes it would spur me on – righteous fury like rocket fuel – and sometimes it would paralyse me. Freeze me, just like it was designed to do.

‘I’m sorry, Mia, you’ve every right to say that . . .’ His voice, it’s so long since I’ve heard his voice. Tears fill my eyes and I jerk my face away. I don’t want him to see them, to think he’s got any kind of purchase on me. ‘What I did was unforgivable. But please will you at least let me speak to you?’

‘No.’ I look at Mum, making sure she knows she’s got blood on her hands, bringing him here. ‘My baby died because of you. I might never . . .’ I stop, the stream of words running dry. ‘No. I won’t speak to you. Not now, not ever. You lost the job.’ Those blue eyes, so familiar to me, now surrounded by a deep network of lines. They’re landing, my missiles, they’re reaching their target. ‘You never even wanted the job. Don’t try and pretend now, when it’s all got a bit exciting.’

‘That’s not true,’ he says, his voice breaking. ‘It’s not true, Mia.’ But by now my hand’s on the latch. ‘I understand why you’re leaving, but please – you think I didn’t get in touch because I didn’t love you? It was the opposite. I was a coward. I couldn’t face it, knowing there was no way back.’ His voice is almost a whisper now. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I turn towards him, the movement almost involuntary, something inside those broken syllables that punctures me. The ‘sorry’s back then were different, like a figure skater gliding across ice, the move perfectly executed and utterly superficial. No. Don’t get sucked in, don’t hear what some lost part of you longs to hear. I push against the door.

‘Mia, don’t go,’ says Mum, yanking at my arm. ‘He always knew, I always made sure he knew you were all right.’

I shake her off, my body bucking; I’m revolted by her touch in a way I’ve never been in my life.

I plaster a smile on my face as I pass the policeman, hating the feeling of being under house arrest. I’m not, I’ve got every right to get into my car, and I pull off quickly before he’s got time to dart down the drive and start asking me questions.

I’m blinded by tears, no idea where I’m headed. I pull up outside a rundown strip of shops to put my phone on silent – anything to stem Mum’s incessant calling. As soon as I’ve parked my head whips round, my heart racing. No one’s following me. I bash my hands on the steering wheel so hard they’ll bruise, fury boiling over. How did I get here? I’m no better than the man who made me, all those smug little signifiers of a successful life swept away in one fell swoop.
Patrick.
His name flashes once, twice, three times before I pick up.

‘Hi.’

‘Mia, hey. Has something happened?’

He can read me. One syllable and he knew there was something wrong. Just for a second it feels like a straitjacket.

‘What, other than the obvious?’

Why am I being like this? It all seems so pointless suddenly, this afternoon no more than a bubble formed by those ugly blue plastic curtains.
You little ice cube
. I look into the lit-up mouth of the convenience shop outside the car, watch a woman buying a packet of ten. Is she kidding herself she won’t eventually smoke twenty, or is it all she can stretch to?

‘I was fretting about how you seemed when you left. Though to be fair my mum can have that effect on women. She’s not the sex police, despite first impressions.’ I don’t laugh. ‘I mean when your mum called.’

‘I thought your mum seemed nice.’

It’s got one step worse than obsessing about Gemma: now I’m behaving like her too.

‘Well . . . that’s good,’ he says, a note of hesitation creeping into his voice.

I wish I could find the strength to pour out the contents of the last hour, purge myself of it, but I’m too frightened – frightened that I’m worse than cracked, that I’m broken. It’s too much of a risk, to both of us.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask him, deliberately softening my voice. ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Getting better by the second. I’ll be out of here tomorrow, no problem. In fact – and this is your fault for getting me riled up about Christopher, so don’t start giving me gyp for working – I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough. Well, maybe.’

‘What?’

‘The piano teacher. She’s got the same name as a cot-death baby from the ’70s. Might be a coincidence, but could be something way darker than that.’