Stand by Me (30 page)
Dominique, knowing that she was probably being overprotective but unable to help herself, asked Kelly to text her when they got back to Alicia’s anyway, and Kelly looked at her in amused exasperation and said that she was an adult now and didn’t need Dominique or Brendan worrying about her all the time. And Dominique said she knew, she was sorry, she couldn’t help it, but mothers always worried.
She read a book until she got the text from Kelly at just after midnight, and then she turned out the light. She still hadn’t heard from Brendan. This behaviour was typical of him when he was in the middle of a big project, but it always bothered her. She told herself that it was silly to expect him to call when he was preoccupied with work, but she wished he would all the same. Whenever he forgot about her like this, the memories of the Miss Valentine episode returned. He’d been busy and preoccupied then too, and she’d totally misread the situation. She didn’t want that to happen again. And so she always fretted when he was out of reach for too long, but told herself that this wasn’t obsessive behaviour and made herself refrain from ringing him to check up on him. It was hard, but worth it for him not to think of her as a nagging wife.
Nevertheless, she was still worrying as she lay in bed and heard the sound of the front door opening and Brendan’s footsteps on the stairs. Usually she would call out to him if she was awake when he came home, because otherwise he slept in the bedroom across the hallway so as not to wake her. But she was annoyed with him for stressing her out on a day that had been important to her, and for not turning up at the event when he’d almost promised to be there, so she stayed silent. When she heard him go into the other bedroom, she turned on to her side, pulled the sheet around her and fell asleep almost immediately.
Dominique had slept badly in the years after Kelly’s birth, but after moving to Atlantic View, she found that she slept much more soundly, even on the nights when Brendan wasn’t with her. It had surprised her at first - she’d been afraid that in an isolated house she wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. But the high walls and electronic gates, as well as their hi-tech security system, meant that she didn’t jump at every creaking floorboard or worry vaguely at things that went bump in the night. And Atlantic View itself had a calming effect on her, which meant that she was rarely stressed going to bed.
So she had no problem falling asleep after Brendan’s return but at about three in the morning she suddenly woke up with a start, her heart thumping in her chest. She had no idea what had woken her and she lay rigid in the bed for a few minutes. She thought of going in to Brendan’s room and cuddling in beside him, but she told herself that she was being silly and that he was probably snoring his head off, which was the one thing that did keep her awake. She made herself close her eyes again and eventually she drifted off. This time she didn’t wake until after eight o’clock, when she threw open the curtains and allowed the morning sun to flood into her bedroom.
She didn’t bother putting her head around the door of the bedroom opposite to check on Brendan, because she knew that would wake him and he could do with the sleep. He’d been on the go almost solidly for a fortnight. (She’d forgiven him now for his lack of communication the day before and was feeling guilty at her selfishness in wanting him to fall in with her plans when he was clearly so busy.)
She went downstairs and made herself tea and toast smothered in the fruity marmalade that she bought every month from Deirdre Sullivan’s organic farm a kilometre down the road. She brought her breakfast out to the patio behind the kitchen, thinking that it was going to be yet another spectacular day. She knew that she could happily spend all of it sitting in the garden doing nothing, but she couldn’t truly relax until she’d brought the money from yesterday’s event to the bank and called in to see the hospital administrator. Reluctantly, she made herself go inside and shower. She dressed in a slim-fitting white cotton dress, put her hair up so that her neck would be cool, and slid into a pair of bright pink sandals. Catching a glimpse of herself in the long bedroom mirror, she thought - if you didn’t look too closely - she might still be taken for a woman in her early thirties instead of someone pushing forty. Forty had sounded incredibly old and past it when she was in her teens. Evelyn had been both physically and mentally middle-aged at forty. Actually, Dominique thought, Evelyn had always been mentally middle-aged. At least I managed not to turn into my mother, she told her reflection cheerfully. That’s probably my biggest achievement in life!
She was picking up her keys from the hall table when the phone rang. She hesitated, wondering why it was that it always rang just as she was leaving the house, and thinking about not bothering to answer it. But if she left it ringing, then it would wake Brendan and he’d be in a foul mood, so in the end she picked up the handset.
‘Hi, Domino.’ It was Barry, her brother-in-law. ‘Is Brendan there?’
‘Still in bed,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t home until the early hours.’
‘I need to talk to him urgently,’ said Barry.
‘OK. Hold on.’ Brendan was going to be woken whether he liked it or not. She placed the handset on the hall table and called out to him from the bottom of the stairs. There was no answer. She sighed, ran lightly up the stairs and pushed open the bedroom door.
The room was empty and the bed hadn’t been slept in. She frowned slightly as she went inside and tapped at the door of the en suite bathroom. There was no answer, so she pushed that door open too. Brendan wasn’t in the bathroom either. Which meant that he hadn’t come home at all during the night.
She shivered slightly. She’d been sure that she’d heard him. Convinced, in fact. Certain that she’d heard his footsteps on the stairs and the sound of the bedroom door opening and closing. How had she been so utterly mistaken? She thought for a moment, and then walked down the hallway to Kelly’s room. But her daughter’s bed hadn’t been slept in either.
She went back downstairs slowly and thoughtfully.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Barry after she’d picked up the handset again. ‘He’s not home.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I was sure I heard him come home last night, but I must have been dreaming. So I suppose he’s still in Dublin.’
‘At the house?’
‘I guess so. I don’t know. What’s wrong?’
She could sense the hesitation in her brother-in-law’s voice.
‘There’s some stuff going on,’ he said eventually. ‘He was supposed to be here early this morning. I need to talk to him urgently.’
‘I’ll get him to call you as soon as I hear from him,’ said Dominique.
‘It’s really, really important,’ Barry told her.
‘I’ll make sure he rings you.’
She continued to hold the handset as she stood indecisively in the hallway. It wasn’t like Brendan to be so completely out of touch. Whether or not he told her of his whereabouts, he nearly always told Barry. She hit the speed-dial button on the phone and was almost immediately connected to Brendan’s voicemail.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked. ‘Call me.’
Then she rang the Mount Merrion house. The answering machine hadn’t been switched on, so the phone rang out. She replaced the handset on its stand and went into Brendan’s office, looking around as though something would give her a clue as to his whereabouts. She knew that her anxiety level was beginning to ratchet up a notch. She didn’t want to think irrational thoughts like the first one that had flashed through her mind as the phone rang fruitlessly in the Mount Merrion house. That he’d found another woman. That he was leaving. That this time it was different.
She told herself not to be so stupid. Miss Valentine had been years ago, and nothing, absolutely nothing, since then had given her a moment for thought as far as affairs, virtual or otherwise, were concerned. He hadn’t found anyone. He wasn’t leaving. She needed to get a grip.
She suddenly imagined a completely different scenario: him lying on the floor of the house, unable to move, victim of some kind of medical emergency – a heart attack maybe; or perhaps he’d fallen down the stairs and broken a leg. Maybe he could hear the phone but not get to it. But, she told herself, that wouldn’t happen to Brendan. Besides, he always had his mobile in his pocket. He’d be able to get in touch. Her thoughts turned to car crashes and fatal accidents. She was sure that she would have heard by now if he had been involved in a crash. Someone would already have been along to break that sort of news to her.
And so the thought that took root in her brain again was the one in which Brendan had found another woman, someone he wanted to be with so much that he was prepared to face not only her wrath when he eventually arrived home but the wrath of Barry Keane too. June’s husband was notoriously short-tempered, and he wouldn’t be at all amused if Brendan hadn’t turned up to the office because of a woman.
Dominique left her bag on the hall table and went upstairs again. More deliberately this time, thinking about what it would mean for her if Brendan had begun an affair and wondering why it was that she couldn’t rid herself of the idea. Did all women immediately suspect their husbands of infidelity if they couldn’t get in touch with them? Or was it just her?
She strode into their bedroom and looked around her. Then she opened his bedside cabinet.
Lena Doyle, one of her circle of friends, had once confessed to searching through her husband’s cabinet on a regular basis because he kept his private stuff there. Dominique had been horrified, thinking that everyone had to have somewhere to keep private stuff but then wondering what sort of things Brendan would keep hidden from her. He had better places than his cabinet, though, she thought as she opened it anyway. He had his office safe.
As she’d expected, the cherrywood cabinet was almost empty. All it contained was a packet of aspirin, a blister pack of the antacid tablets that Brendan occasionally needed to take, and a spare pair of the reading glasses he’d started wearing a couple of years earlier.
She went downstairs and back into his office. Perhaps, she thought, he’d left an itinerary on his desk with details of where he was going and what he was doing. He usually did this if he was going abroad, although he’d never before gone overseas without telling her. Over the last few years he’d dabbled in some foreign developments, such as the exclusive apartment resort near Biarritz, which had recently been completed. He’d brought her and Kelly to see the finished product, although, Dominique recalled, he’d said that it hadn’t been as profitable as he would have liked. She and Kelly had stayed in one of the apartments for a week after Brendan had returned to Dublin and had enjoyed themselves immensely. There was the Barbados project too, of course, but it was in the very early stages and she was absolutely certain that there was no way he’d have gone to the Caribbean island without telling her first.
Anyway, she thought now, he might not have headed off anywhere, but he hasn’t left me any information on where he is either, and it’s stupid of me to simply rely on being able to contact him by mobile phone and not know his actual whereabouts. He could ring me from the South Pole and say he was in Dublin and I wouldn’t know any different.
She sighed. Brendan would turn up in his own good time. He always did. She could depend on him for that.
She was just about to leave the house for the second time when her mobile rang. If this was Brendan at last, she thought as she fished it out of her bag, she’d give him a bollocking for not being in touch.
‘Are you in?’
‘Emma?’
‘Yes. Are you in?’
‘I’m on the way out.’
‘Don’t leave. I’m coming over.’
‘Why? What’s up?’
‘I’ll be there in fifteen. Talk then.’
Her sister-in-law hung up and Dominique stared at the mobile. By now she was feeling really uneasy. What was all that about? Emma wouldn’t normally keep her in suspense like that. Had they discovered Brendan’s whereabouts? Were they afraid to tell her? Was it a woman? Was it a heart attack? Was he dead?
She told herself not to be so melodramatic, then went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of filtered water, which she drank standing up and leaning against the kitchen wall. She was feeling far too edgy to sit down.
The gate buzzer sounded about ten minutes later. Emma certainly hadn’t wasted any time in getting to Atlantic View, thought Dominique, as she released the lock. She opened the front door just as Emma drew to a halt in front of the house.
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