Second Hand Jane (9 page)

“If you say so,
dear, but in my opinion that’s just gobbledegook for old. Take it
from your mother, the voice of experience: you can’t go wrong with
a little black dress.”

“Well, I do
have an Anne Klein black wool dress I was thinking of wearing.”

“I’m not sure
about wool sending the right message and for goodness’ sake, don’t
you go wearing any of those awful big knickers that come in packs
of six I found in your drawer that time. Decent knickers with lots
of lace, my girl, if you want to land yourself a decent man. I
could get some couriered over express if you don’t have any.”

“
Mum!
”

“
Marian!
” She heard her father protest in the
background.

It was no good,
though; she was not suitably chastised. “I’m not naïve, Jessica
Jane. I know what you girls get up to these days but whatever you
do, don’t let him hit a home run. Are you listening to me? First
base maybe but a home run so early on in the piece is a no-no.”

She had made
the excuse she was desperate for the loo after that and had gotten
off the phone quick smart, determined not to listen to any more of
her mother’s sex education class.

***

Peering into
the darkness to where the red digits of her alarm clock glowed,
Jess saw that it was gone three a.m. and she was still wide awake.
Talking to her Mum always gave her a good dose of insomnia and left
her feeling wound tighter than a pair of knickers two sizes too
small. She gave a long, drawn-out sigh because she knew she was
wasting her time tossing and turning in bed when she could be doing
some work. She’d managed to finish the piece she’d been working on
earlier and despite the interruption halfway through thanks to her
mother, she was pleased with the way it had turned out. It would
definitely get her into Niall’s good books, she thought, stretching
with satisfaction.

Whenever she
wrote something, though, she liked to leave it at least twenty-four
hours before going back over it. It was amazing the mistakes that
jumped out glaringly when she cast a fresh eye over her work. So
there was no point working on her brief brush with celebrity life
anymore tonight. She could get ahead of her game, though, she
thought, tossing the duvet aside and sitting up, by making a start
on tracking little Amy Aherne down.

Dragging the
duvet into the lounge behind her, she dumped it on the couch and
switched her laptop on before padding into the kitchen to make a
cuppa.

The problem was, she mused, setting the
steaming mug of tea down on the coffee table next to her
computer,
Little
Amy—as she had begun thinking of her—wouldn’t
be so little now. In fact, she’d be a middle-aged woman of
forty-six and had probably been married for years. Plonking down on
the couch, she flexed her fingers and then let them hover over the
keys as she pondered what she should begin to search under. Unless
she had decided to become a nun, keep her own surname or hyphenated
it, it would be a waste of time searching under Amy Aherne. Still,
she had to start somewhere.

As she’d
expected, she got no hits—just a whole lot of stuff to do with the
Troubles, as the sectarian fighting spanning the late 60s to the
mid-1990s in Northern Ireland was referred to. She didn’t want a
gloomy history lesson, so maybe she would be better off doing a
Google search for the brother Owen and seeing where that got her.
A moment later, something about
W.B. Yeats cropped up, as did a genealogy website with Ahern listed
minus the
e
on the end and
oh dear, she thought, as her eyes scanned the list and settled on a
death notice. She double clicked and closer inspection revealed
that this poor soul had lived in Tipperary—opposite ends of the
country. Just like the song, Ballymcguinness was a long way from
Tipperary, so the odds of this being her Owen Aherne were
slim.

Picking up the
mug, she blew on it and thought for a moment before taking a sip.
She’d try good ole Facebook and see what that threw back at her.
Settling back to wait for the onslaught she’d have to trawl
through, she could hardly believe her eyes when the search told her
there were no Owen or Amy Aherne registered. Unbelievable in this
day and age of social networking!

Right, well, Ballymcguinness sounded like
a mere dot of a place; surely this search would yield the result
she was after. A website welcoming her to Ballymcguinness filled
her screen with a grainy black-and-white photo of a small town. It
kind of looked like the start of
Coronation Street
with all the roofs of the houses—not very
inspirational and not very helpful either. She didn’t want to know
how many grocery stores or hairdressers the town had. She wanted to
know where she could find Amy blinkin Aherne, she thought in
frustration.

Flopping back
onto the couch, Jess closed her eyes for a second and racked her
brains. Sometimes having all this technology at your fingertips was
a waste of time. Then, it came to her. Duh-uh! Still, it was the
middle of the night; she was entitled to be a little bit thick.
This time, she searched the white pages and lo and behold after
narrowing her search down, up popped two listings for Aherne. The
first was for an M J Aherne, who was registered at a retirement
home in the village of Dundrum and the second was for an O M
Aherne, Glenariff Farm, Pyke Road, followed by a phone number. She
had her man and unbelievably he still lived at his childhood
address.

Jess’s eyes
strayed over to the telephone but then she shook her head. She
might be up and about but she was fairly sure Mr Aherne would not
appreciate being on the receiving end of her dulcet tones at this
hour of the morning nor would his wife appreciate a strange woman
telephoning her husband in the middle of the night. Besides, she
was beginning to feel sleepy, she thought, yawning as she saved her
search. Switching the laptop off, she took herself and her duvet
back to bed.

***

When she woke
it was gone nine a.m. and her head felt heavy after her disturbed
night’s sleep. She’d gone off quickly enough when she had got back
into bed but had still slept lightly as she dreamt about an
imaginary Owen Aherne serenading her with “It’s a Long Way from
Tipperary” while her mother clapped along in the background. Still,
she thought, pouring her morning coffee, it was nothing a
paracetamol wouldn’t fix. As she poured out her cornflakes, her
mobile broke into song, causing her to cringe mid-pour. “Barracuda”
by Heart was belting out from where her phone lay atop the
microwave. Bloody Nora had programmed the song as her ringtone in
punishment for their having lost a pub quiz due to her lack of
knowledge about all-women hard rock groups throughout the ages.

Granted, Nora
had had a few drinks under her belt and they’d all thought it was a
great joke at the time but now she had no idea how to change it
back. It wasn’t a good look when one was enjoying a civilised latte
or riding on public transport. Picking it up, she squinted at the
inbox.

C tht u rng
lst nite was out Ewan hot wot u wnt?

Speak of the
devil! It was Nora; her texting shorthand was always so bloody
cryptic and she never included any social niceties like a x or luv
Nora, Jess grouched, deciphering the curt message out loud: See
that you rang last night—was out—Ewan hot—what you want?

Nick phd me we
have a date this thurs nite -did you have sex last nite?

A reply that
didn’t require a code breaker this time bounced back almost
immediately.

Told u so!MYOB
PS:kncking off erly to jmp ot plne.

Jess stared at the glowing screen; if she
didn’t know better, she’d have read that last bit as
knocking off early
to jump out of a plane
.
No, that couldn’t be right; it was more likely she was planning on
knocking off early to jump Ewan’s bones again. She’d phone Nora for
the lowdown this evening. She knew from experience it was useless
trying to hold a conversation with her when she was at work. With
that decided, she raised her spoon to tuck into her
cornflakes.

“
OOOOH Barracuda”
pounded out again. It made her
drop her spoon. “Piss off, Nora!” she said out loud, aware that
talking to herself was a side effect of living alone, but this time
the message was from Brianna.

Morning Jess
sorry missed your call was having sex - what did you want
sweety?

Jess had to
smile. Nora and Brie might have hailed from different planets but
she loved them both the same, though at this moment in time she
probably loved Brianna a teensy bit more. She was nicer, after
all.

After a series
of frantic texts bounced back and forth about her upcoming date
with Nick and thankfully not about Brianna’s Sunday night delight,
she finally managed to finish her breakfast. Dumping the bowl in
the sink, Jess glanced at the phone. She might try to contact Amy’s
brother before jumping in the shower.

As she punched
in the code for Northern Ireland followed by his phone number, she
decided it was probably a pointless exercise. It was ten o’clock on
a Monday morning, after all. This Owen chap would probably be hard
at work, toiling in the fields or whatever it was that farmers did
on a Monday morning. As it connected and began to ring, though, she
decided to hang on—she could always leave a message on his
answerphone as to what she was calling about.

To her
surprise, the phone was picked up on the fourth ring. It wasn’t a
good line but she did manage to detect a gruff male voice as it was
answered.

“Hello?”

“Oh, hello, is
that Mr Aherne?” she inquired, putting on her best journalistic
tone.

“Aye.” He
sounded wary.

“
Er, right, well.” So much for consummate
professional, she thought. “My name’s Jessica Baré and I write a
weekly column for the
Dublin Express
.”

“Aye.” He
sounded even more suspicious.

“Well, what I
am ringing about, Mr Aherne, is your sister, Amy?”

There was a
static-filled silence.

“Are you still
there, Mr Aherne?”

“What are you
wanting, dragging all that up again?” His voice, despite the
gruffness, had the sing-song quality of the North to it.

What was he on
about? she wondered. Maybe he and Amy weren’t on good terms or
perhaps she’d done something illegal? Her nose twitched the way it
always did when she sensed she was onto something and whatever it
was that had happened, she was sensing there was definitely a story
to be told here.

“
It’s just that I’ve got her book, you see.
It’s a children’s storybook that you gave her for Christmas back in
1973. She wrote her name inside the cover; that’s how I know it was
hers.” She rushed on and he didn’t interrupt her—he probably
thought she was mad, so in for a penny, in for a pound, she
ploughed on. “It’s a bit of a long story but I collect old Ladybird
books—Series 606D to be exact. The stories are all the classic
children’s fairy tales but it’s the illustrations I love and well…”
She paused momentarily, wondering whether he would interrupt and
tell her she was mad but he remained silent. “Nearly all of the
books in my collection are pre-loved, with other children’s names
scribbled inside them. It devalues the book for most collectors but
I like it—you know, the thought that another child has loved that
book.” There was still no response. Jess twirled her hair round her
index finger with her free hand. She couldn’t blame him—not really,
because her brilliant idea was beginning to sound pottier by the
minute. She inhaled deeply before telling herself to just cut to
the chase before he hung up, writing her off as a crackpot caller.
“Anyway, Mr Aherne, to get to the point, as I mentioned before, I
recently acquired Amy’s old copy of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
from an eBid auction and that’s
when the idea came to me. Where is she now—the child who used to
own that book? And that’s it—really, that’s what I’d like to write
about.”

If she expected
him to begin filling her in with enthusiasm as to what it was his
sister had been doing for the last thirty-odd years, she was out of
luck. “The thing is, Mr Aherne…” she said, filling in the crackling
static that was, if she were to be honest, getting a tad creepy,
“I’d love to get in touch with Amy to see whether she’d be open to
my idea.” Christ, she thought, he really wasn’t making this easy.
“Erm, so that’s why I have rung you, to ask whether you could give
me your sister’s contact details? I couldn’t find a listing
anywhere for her, and I tracked you down easily enough because Amy
had scribbled the name of your farm inside the cover of her book
too.”

At last he
broke his silence, clearing his throat before answering her. “Ah,
well now, it’s the sorta ting she might have been open to for sure
but you could find it a bit hard getting in touch with her seeing
as our Amy’s been dead for the past twenty-nine years.”

He’d hung up on
her after dropping that bombshell and Jess sat for an age staring
at the phone, which was now dead. Dead, just like little Amy from
her storybook was. Whatever she had been expecting Owen Aherne to
tell her about his sister, it certainly hadn’t been that.

She was too
numb right at that moment in time to feel awful but she was angry.
Angry with herself for being so naïve and caught up in her own big
idea to have never even considered the possibility in the first
place. What an earth could have happened to her?

Jess mentally
worked out the years. Owen Aherne had said she’d died twenty-nine
years ago, so that would make her around sixteen years old when she
passed away. God, that was so young. She’d have had her whole life
in front of her. Maybe she got hit by a car or perhaps she’d been
ill? Whatever it was that had happened, she’d never know now and
all her big idea had served in doing was raking up a whole lot of
remembered grief for a man she had never met. Thank goodness she
hadn’t inadvertently contacted the poor girl’s parents.