With All My Love (5 page)

‘No, Briony, this is home now and we’re not going back there. Don’t ask me again!’ Valerie had said sharply. Her mother rarely used that tone with her. She’d never asked to go back to Rockland’s again. Soon her life had filled up with playschool and then she had started school and made friends with other children and gradually the memories of those early years had slipped away to the back of her mind.

Briony stood up, slid open the doors to the terrace and stepped out into the clement evening, upset at the painful recollections that she had buried deep for all these years. The more she thought about it the more devastated she felt. How could a mother do that to a child? She could never do something like that to Katie. Even the beauty of the scene that she gazed out on could not soothe her. Flamboyant orange and purple slashes streaked the sky and she looked over to the west to where the sun was sinking behind the high sierras, their jagged outlines silhouetted sharply against the multihued firmament. Venus glimmered in the indigo sky south towards Gibraltar, and out on the inky sea, small lights were beginning to flicker in the deepening dusk from the fishing boats that had sailed earlier from various villages along the coast. Cicadas chattered, breaking the stillness of the night, and the perfume of the flowering shrubs scented the air around her. Africa materialized, enigmatic and alluring on the horizon, the high Atlas Mountains darkly engraved against the dusky sky. It was the best time to see the coast of that neighbouring continent and the sight usually thrilled her, but tonight Briony could see nothing of the beauty laid out before her.

She had sat on the terrace the previous evening and felt she was in heaven as she’d sipped chilled wine and nibbled on olives and cheeses and a selection of crackers, while catching up with all her mother’s news. Tonight, though, she felt she was in hell knowing that she was going to have to confront Valerie and hear things that would grieve her sorely. She couldn’t stay after today’s events. Her mother’s betrayal was unforgivable. She’d have to book a flight home. If Valerie’s internet had been set up she would have gone online immediately and booked a flight. She’d deal with it tomorrow, she thought wearily, making her way along the terrace to the wide open doors that led to Valerie’s elegantly designed lounge. Her mother was seated on one of the pastel-covered sofas, flicking through a photo album.

‘Is Katie asleep?’ Valerie raised her head and Briony could see she had been crying.

‘Yes!’ she replied curtly. ‘Why, Mum? Why did you lie to me? I want to know. I want to know how you could have done that to Gramma and me? Because there is
nothing
in my mind that could justify such cruelty and I will never forgive you for it,’ she added heatedly, her anger overflowing.

Valerie raised her hand as if to ward off an attack. ‘Please, Briony, not tonight. I just can’t deal with it right now. You don’t know because I’ve never told you, but today is your dad’s anniversary. If you want to rake up the past and hear the story I’ll tell you my side, because there are always two sides to any story.
Then
you can judge me! But tonight is not the night for it. So please, let me be.’

‘Another thing you never told me: the date of my dad’s anniversary. Did you never think I would have liked to mark it? It wasn’t all about
you
, Mother, no matter what you think,’ Briony retorted. ‘I’m going for a walk. And don’t worry, we’ll be gone as soon as I can get a flight home and that will give you all the peace and quiet you want.’ She turned on her heel and left the room, then slipped into Katie’s bedroom to retrieve her tote bag. She let herself out of the villa and walked down the back garden to the steps that led to a wrought-iron gate and through it, a narrow path. She walked briskly, fuelled by rage, along the winding track that led to the beach. The lights of the coast shimmered and twinkled on either side of her. To her left, along the beach, she could hear the faint sound of the music playing in Max’s, the waterside restaurant they had often dined in on previous visits. To her right, the lights of the apartments that lined the resort of Calahonda.

She pulled her phone out of her bag, She needed to talk to Finn, to tell him what had happened, to pour out her fury and frustration, to have him comfort and console her, but just as she was scrolling down her contacts it beeped and the battery died and she cursed herself for not charging it earlier. She flung it back into her bag and turned right, head down, finding her stride along the damp, hard sand near the water’s edge. There were a few people out walking their dogs but mostly she had the beach to herself. But neither the welcome breeze that blew her hair away from her flushed angry face, nor the moon preparing to shine silver on the sea, nor the lullaby of sounds from the waves and the sighing pine trees that fringed the beach could act as an unguent to her aching spirit.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

‘Oh God! God! God! Could you not give me a break? Just when things were going well. Why do you
always
pick on me?’ Valerie berated the Almighty as from the end of the garden she watched Briony rummaging for her phone before throwing it back into her bag and striding off along the beach, disappearing around a bend into the dusk. She’ll walk to Marbella, the humour she’s in, Valerie thought glumly, making her way back up the garden to the terracotta terrace.

She would have liked to pour herself a big glass of fruity red wine and get smashed but she wouldn’t drink knowing that her granddaughter was asleep inside, and Briony was scorching along the beach in a temper, having given Valerie no indication as to what time she’d be back.

That damn letter. She’d forgotten all about it. Tessa had given it to Valerie’s mother, Carmel, some time after Valerie had moved to Dublin, and Carmel had asked her if she wanted her to forward it on.

‘Absolutely not!’ Valerie had declared emphatically. ‘Don’t post that to me.’

Carmel had shoved it into one of Valerie’s photo albums where it had lain forgotten about for years. It was only when Valerie was clearing out her parents’ house in Rockland’s that she’d found the albums. She’d thrown them in a cardboard box and put them under the stairs at home in Dublin, along with some other personal effects she’d taken from her mother’s bedroom, and forgotten all about them.

Valerie had sold her own house at the height of the boom, soon after Briony had got married, and had bought a smaller town house for herself. When the banks had gone belly up a few years later and she’d been worried about her nest egg, she had decided that she could take advantage of the property crash in Spain and buy a small villa on the southern coast, a place where she had spent many happy holidays.

When she’d bought the villa in Riviera, she’d taken six months’ unpaid leave from her job as a senior staff officer at Dublin City Council to move in and get the place sorted. She’d packed up some belongings in cardboard boxes, taken the Cork-Roscoff ferry, and driven down through France and Spain. Briony had flown out a week later.

There were boxes everywhere, some from Valerie’s own home, others from her mother’s house in Rockland’s. She had been glad Briony had arrived to help sort the place out. It had been a nightmare clearing out her childhood home, she remembered with a pang. When Terence had phoned her to tell her that her mother was ‘going doolally’, as he’d put it, Valerie had finally accepted what she’d being doing her best to disregard. Her mother’s increasing forgetfulness and bizarre behaviour could no longer be ignored. Carmel had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and, as her condition rapidly deteriorated, father and daughter were in agreement for once: Carmel needed to be in a nursing home.

The house had got shabby and untidy after Carmel had gone into the home some years back. Terence had been too mean to get in a cleaner once a week, even though he could well afford it. And then he’d gone and died and she’d had to deal with everything whether she liked it or not.

Typical of Terence to piss off and leave her with the responsibility of her mother, Valerie thought, heading for the kitchen to make a spritzer for herself. She’d cried no tears at
his
funeral. In fact, she couldn’t get away from the grave quick enough after the priest had said the last prayer and the soil had been thrown on the inexpensive wooden coffin she’d selected for him. She was damned if she was going to spend any of her mother’s money on an extravagant coffin just to impress the neighbours.

Valerie threw a couple of ice cubes into a long glass, poured a measure of Chardonnay and topped it up with a can of slimline tonic. Her father would have been furious with the send-off she’d given him because if there was one thing Terence Harris liked to do, it was to impress his neighbours. She hadn’t paid a singer to sing at his funeral Mass, she’d used taped music. She hadn’t paid a fortune for an expensive wreath, just a basic red and white carnation cross. There had been no book of condolence. There had been no eulogy, something that her father would have very much aspired to, especially for all his good deeds in Rockland’s. She had left it to the priest to do the readings, determined not to do one herself and be a hypocrite. She certainly hadn’t paid for a black car to follow the hearse. She’d driven her mother’s old banger behind it. Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, her friend Lizzie had called it. Lizzie had been by her side throughout. Secretly aghast, Valerie felt, but like the true friend she was, she had said nothing, a witness to the long years of antipathy between father and daughter.

Valerie hadn’t let Briony come to the funeral despite her daughter’s heated protests. ‘I don’t want you standing at his grave, Briony. He had no time for you when you were alive; you aren’t going to waste one second of your life on him now that he’s dead.’ She’d been unequivocal. Briony was not to know that Valerie had no wish for her daughter to be anywhere near Rockland’s for fear that she would encounter Tessa and Lorcan, and the past would rear its ugly head.

‘But I want to support you, I want to be with you,’ Briony had argued.

‘Believe me, it won’t be a hardship for me, Briony,’ Valerie said grimly. ‘As soon as Terence has been prayed over I’ll be off. I’m not playing the part of a grieving daughter and the neighbours won’t be getting soup and sandwiches for their trouble. I’ve never been a hypocrite and I’m not going to start now.’

‘But what about Granny? Would you not do it properly for her?’ Briony couldn’t hide her dismay. ‘Are you not going to have a removal?’

‘He can go straight to the church. Lots of people are doing that now. Granny doesn’t know what day it is, let alone who’s going to be at Da’s funeral. There’s no point in taking her out of the nursing home to go. She’d only get agitated and confused. She’s better off where she is. Don’t you miss a day’s work going to the funeral of someone who couldn’t care less about us. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,’ Valerie had insisted.

‘Are Dad’s parents still living in Rockland’s? Should we try and make contact with them and—’

‘Briony, let’s leave them in the past where they belong. We’ve managed very well without them. I have no desire whatsoever to make contact with them now or in the future, and besides, I don’t even know if they still live in Rockland’s,’ Valerie had interrupted sternly. Briony had said no more, knowing from experience that it was pointless arguing with her mother when she got a bee in her bonnet about something.

Now Valerie frowned as she carried her glass out to the terrace, kicked off her espadrilles and sat on a thick-cushioned lounger. That had been a close shave. For one awful moment she’d thought her daughter was going to insist on trying to find her paternal grandparents. Briony knew that Terence hadn’t wanted her in his life and that was just the way he was. Because she was used to the situation it didn’t bother her unduly. But Valerie could never forgive him for it. She would love to have told all the old dears in the parish who were under the impression that he was a kind person just how mistaken they were.

He had always been involved in the Meals on Wheels, and the bingo, in Rockland’s, but Valerie knew that Terence hadn’t done it out of the goodness of his heart. Her father had always had an ulterior motive for doing any perceived act of kindness. The old dears were always slipping him a twenty here and a twenty there for doing their shopping and weeding their gardens. And Terence always took it.

He’d slipped on ice putting a bag of rubbish into a neighbour’s bin under cover of darkness, because he was too mean to pay the bin charges. He’d hit his head on the footpath and had lain in the freezing cold, unconscious, unmissed by his befuddled wife in her nursing home, until he’d been found suffering from hypothermia, early the following morning when a neighbour had been going to work. Valerie had been visiting Lizzie in London, when she’d got the phone call from a neighbour telling her to go to the hospital immediately if she wanted to see her father to say goodbye. She said it would be later in the week before she got home, weather permitting. Flights had been cancelled because of the Big Freeze, as everyone was calling it. Typical of Terence to pick the worst time of the year to die and make life awkward for everyone. She earnestly hoped that she wouldn’t end up doing a death vigil at her father’s bedside and that he would do them all a favour and not drag it out, that he’d shuffle off this mortal coil a.s.a.p so she could get things sorted. Carmel’s future was her priority. Valerie wanted to do the best for her. She’d told the nursing home staff to say nothing to her mother about Terence’s imminent demise. There was no point in agitating her.

Terence had, for once in his life, obliged his daughter and had died the following morning. She’d made the arrangements, by phone and email, and had flown into Dublin the next day when flight restrictions had been lifted, and driven to Rockland’s. After spending time with Carmel, who hadn’t recognized her on this visit, though she sometimes did, Valerie had driven to the funeral parlour in Wicklow. She had told the undertakers she didn’t want to see her father in his coffin and to have it closed when she got there. She had no intention of kissing his corpse.