Her Husband's Mistake

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  ‘I’d like that,’ she says.

  ‘Roxy – Mrs McMenamin – I was wondering if you could lend me your services for a short while,’ says Ivo.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Mrs Preston gave my dad a holy relic when he had his stroke,’ he says. ‘She was wondering if I could return it to her. It’s in the house and it would be more convenient to collect it and give it to her now than have her call around for it at some other time.’

  ‘Too right,’ says Lizzy with a glance at the woman in blue. ‘If she gets in the door I’ll never get her out, nosy old bat that she is.’

  ‘Oh well, it was good of her to give it to him in the first place,’ says Ivo. ‘Maybe he got some comfort from it.’

  ‘Not that I believe for one second in all that mumbo-jumbo,’ he says to me a few minutes later when he’s in the passenger seat and we’re heading to Banville Terrace. ‘And I particularly doubt very much that a piece of some long-dead saint’s tunic has any powers other than infectious.’

  ‘You have a point. But,’ I add, ‘even though I don’t believe in relics and stuff, I have to admit that I sometimes feel my dad’s presence in the car. And that’s kind of comforting too.’

  Ivo looks around as though he expects to see Dad in the back seat.

  ‘Not like a ghost,’ I say. ‘Just . . . well, looking out for me.’

  ‘That must be a nice feeling,’ he says. ‘Maybe he can do the honours for me too whenever I’m in your car.’

  ‘He already did,’ I say as I pull up outside the house on Banville Terrace. ‘When we escaped the tractor tyres.’

  Ivo laughs. ‘In that case, thanks very much, Mr . . . oh, not McMenamin, obviously.’

  ‘Carpenter.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Carpenter, for keeping an eye out for us and passing down your great driving skills to your daughter. She saved my life.’ He smiles at me and opens the door. ‘You can wait here,’ he says. ‘I know where the relic should be.’

  I do as he says, but it’s a good five minutes before he emerges again, a folded card in his hand. When he gets into the car, he opens it to reveal a small scrap of fabric stuck inside. There’s a prayer opposite, asking the saint to intercede with God for the intentions of the supplicant.

  ‘Can you imagine?’ he asks as he fastens his seat belt. ‘All these saints clamouring to speak to God like lobbyists in Parliament so that he’ll intervene on behalf of a farmer in Kildare or a nurse in the Philippines or a business owner in Latin America. It’s utterly bonkers. But,’ he adds, and there’s humour as well as a touch of sincerity in his voice, ‘maybe sometimes we do need the comfort of believing in something. And I have to remember that your Dad is in the back seat.’

  I smile at him and we lapse into silence as I drive back to the pub. By the time I’m pulling into the car park, I can see him pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, something I do myself when I’m trying not to cry. That’s the thing about funerals. No matter how you feel about the deceased, they’re a reminder that our time here is finite, and that when people are gone, they’re gone forever.

  ‘There are tissues in the glove compartment if you need them.’ I keep my voice matter-of-fact.

  Ivo says nothing. He clears his throat, opens the glove compartment and finds the tissues. He takes one and then hesitates. I’m trying not to pay him any attention, to allow him his moment of grief in some privacy, but I’m suddenly aware that the glove compartment is still open and that he’s holding something else in his hand.

  ‘You have it.’ He turns to me and I see that it’s the photograph he’s holding. The photograph of the boy and the football. ‘You have it,’ he repeats.

  ‘It’s yours?’ I’m astonished. ‘ You left it behind?’

  ‘I didn’t realise . . .’ He’s looking at it again. ‘I thought it was caught up in one of my files. It never occurred to me that I could have dropped it in the car.’

  ‘It’s yours,’ I repeat as a million different thoughts swirl around in my head and I try to put them in some kind of order.

  The most important thing, the realisation that floods me with overwhelming relief, is that if the photo belongs to Ivo, then he dropped it the first time I picked him up and it has nothing at all to do with my dad. He wasn’t the one to leave it in the car. Estelle didn’t send it to him. He didn’t keep it hidden from Mum for all of their married life. He told her the truth about everything. He’s as good a man as I always believed he was.

  ‘It’s me.’ Ivo, unaware of the turmoil of my mind, gives me a rueful look.

  I wasn’t expecting that. Although perhaps I should have been, because of course he’s the right age for the boy in the photo. But there’s zero resemblance between young Ivo and Ivo now. Nobody would have recognised him.

  ‘I’ve had it for ages,’ I tell him. ‘I thought someone might have dropped it but I didn’t think to ask you because . . . well, I sort of assumed it must belong to a woman. And even if a man did leave it behind, there have been so many in the car that it was an impossible task to check with everyone. Besides,’ I add, a little defensively, ‘it looks nothing like you.’

  ‘Possibly a good thing.’ He looks at the picture again, then continues. ‘Lizzy gave it to me the first day I went home. She said that Dad had kept it in a book. She said it proved he loved me.’

  ‘Oh, Ivo.’

  ‘I wasn’t all that convinced, to be honest.’ He clears his throat again. ‘I reckoned she found it shoved in a drawer somewhere and spun that story to make me keep coming back. It didn’t bother me when I lost it. It’s not a great photo.’

  It is to me. Because of what it represents. Estelle’s child wasn’t Dad’s child. He told the truth all along. I can’t wait to let Mum know.

  ‘I remember it being taken, though,’ Ivo continues. ‘It was the day Ireland played Switzerland in the European Cup qualifiers. Dad bought the tracksuit for me and made me watch the game with him. I didn’t want to because he used to get so angry when we lost and he was awful to be around then. But we won that match and he was delighted.’

  I smile.

  ‘Then we lost away in Moscow and were hammered by the Danes at home,’ he adds. ‘Which wasn’t so great.’

  ‘You know a lot about football,’ I say.

  ‘It was the only thing I could talk to Dad about.’ He grimaces and looks at the photo again. ‘That day . . . that day he bought ice creams to celebrate.’

  I’m glad Ivo has a good memory of his father. I’m glad he found the photograph today.

  ‘Anyhow.’ He gives himself an almost imperceptible shake. ‘Best be getting back in and hand over the relic to Mrs Preston.’ He smiles at me. ‘Could be that it worked its miracle after all. It’s supposed to be from St Anthony, and he’s the one who finds lost things, isn’t he?’

  We share a laugh. That’s the thing about being raised an Irish Catholic. You might not believe a word of any of it and only go to mass for births, marriages and funerals, but you’ll still give credit to St Anthony when you find something you’ve lost, and you still have a vague hope that your departed relatives are looking out for you.

  ‘I should head off,’ I say. ‘There’s no need for me to go back inside.’

  ‘Say goodbye to Lizzy first,’ says Ivo. ‘She was really pleased you came. Me too. Thank you.’

  I follow him back inside, where he gives the relic to Mrs Preston, who blesses herself before putting it in her handbag. Meantime I go over to Lizzy, who’s now chatting to Annabel.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ I say. ‘But I’m heading home now. It was lovely to meet you, Lizzy. I hope everything goes well for you in the future.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘And thanks again for everything you did for Ivo.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘You helped both of us,’ she says.

  Annabel is looking at me from her sky-blue eyes.

  ‘You are more than a driver,’ she says. ‘You are a comp
lete friend of the family.’

  ‘Not really.’ I don’t want her to get the wrong impression.

  ‘But I think so,’ she says. ‘You are friends with everybody.’

  ‘It’s my job,’ I say. ‘It was lovely to meet you too, Annabel. I’ll see you tomorrow when I pick you up.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and moves away from us.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll meet again sometime,’ Lizzy says.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Although that’s highly unlikely.

  I walk towards the stairs and suddenly Ivo is behind me.

  ‘I’ll see you to the car,’ he says.

  We step out into the bright sunshine. It’s positively warm now after the hailstones earlier.

  ‘I’ll text you details of Annabel’s flight later,’ he says as I unlock the Mercedes.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I say. ‘And let me know when you’re going back yourself when you can.’

  ‘Annabel’s right. You’ve been way more than a driver to me,’ says Ivo. ‘You made me . . . Well, I can’t thank you enough.’ He gathers himself and gives me a half-smile. ‘If it hadn’t been for what you said when I made you have coffee with me, I would have broken off contact with Lizzy again. And that would’ve been wrong. Also,’ he adds, with slightly more of a smile this time, ‘you saved my life when we were attacked by mutant tractor tyres. So thank you for that too.’

  ‘All part of the service,’ I say.

  He’s about to say something else when Lizzy hurries into the car park, my green scarf in her hand.

  ‘This is yours, isn’t it?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, thank you! I’m hopeless with scarves.’ I drape it around my neck and smile at her. ‘I’m forever leaving them behind.’

  I open the car door. Ivo has stepped back a little, but Lizzy embraces me in another hug.

  ‘If you’re driving him back later in the week, you won’t say anything, will you?’ she murmurs. ‘About Dad and Stella? His mum? He doesn’t like talking about her and . . . well, he’d probably be a bit annoyed at me if he thought . . .’

  I tell her no, of course not, before I’ve even registered what she’s said.

  I switch on the engine and drive slowly out of the car park. I glance in my rear-view mirror. They’ve turned away and are walking back into the pub arm in arm. Brother and sister. Half-brother and half-sister. Same dad, different mother. Different mother, same dad.

  Ivo’s dad and Stella. My dad and Estelle.

  I’ve only gone about fifty yards, but I pull into a cutting at the side of the road.

  Stella. Ivo’s mum. A woman forced to marry a man she didn’t love because she was pregnant. A man who didn’t believe the child was his. Who treated her badly. Who didn’t love his son.

  Estelle. Dad’s first love. A woman forced to marry because she was pregnant. A woman who didn’t believe the child was her husband’s. Who ran away because he was violent. Who was afraid for her son.

  They can’t be the same woman, can they? Stella walked out of the house and was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Estelle came to Dublin and was given money to escape by my dad. But what if one of those stories is wrong? What if Estelle didn’t go to London after getting money from Dad, but returned to Kildare? What if she had another row with her husband over her son? What if she left the house and was hit by the truck? And what if that row was about the fact that Ivo wasn’t his son, but my own dad’s?

  What if Ivo is my half-brother, not Lizzy’s?

  My stomach is churning.

  ‘Get a grip, Roxy.’ I say the words out loud as I lean my head on the steering wheel. Ivo’s mum and Dad’s first love might have similar names, but they’re not the same woman. It would be a coincidence too far. Wouldn’t it?

  Yet I can’t help remembering how I felt a connection to the boy in that photograph, and how I felt a connection to Ivo Lehane too. I thought the boy in the photo might be related to me. I thought Ivo and I . . . Well . . .

  As I fight the nausea that’s overtaking me, I remind myself that Ivo and Lizzy look alike. Because they have the same father. The man who was buried today. Not my dad. Definitely not.

  I take a deep breath, restart the car and drive home.

  Chapter 30

  Mum knows there’s something wrong as soon as I walk in the door. She ushers me into the kitchen and puts the kettle on before asking me what’s happened. For once in my life I truly don’t know what to say to her.

  ‘Roxy, sweetheart, was it a very sad funeral?’ she asks when I’ve been sitting at the table for what seems like hours without speaking.

  ‘It’s not that at all,’ I eventually say. ‘It’s that I found out who owns the photo. The one of the boy in the car that I thought might be Dad’s son.’

  ‘You did? That’s good.’ She sounds pleased, but not as excited as I would have expected.

  ‘Don’t you care?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you found the owner,’ she replies. ‘But I already know it’s nothing to do with your dad.’

  I look at her in astonishment. How could she possibly know anything when I only found out a couple of hours ago myself?

  ‘I did some investigating too,’ she tells me. ‘I have to be honest with you, Roxy. When you first told me about it, I was more upset than I let on. Your dad spun his story, and I believed him all those years because I wanted to believe him. But I also knew that I couldn’t rest until I knew the truth.’

  ‘You said you wanted to leave it,’ I remind her.

  ‘It’s impossible, though, isn’t it?’ asks Mum. ‘Once there’s a doubt in your mind, you have to find out. So I did some research of my own.’

  ‘How? When?’ I can’t imagine that while she was manically crocheting octopussies she was also looking for the owner of the photograph. She’s been tracking down Ivo when all the time I’ve been driving him!

  She smiles. ‘Before he retired, Diarmuid was a senior official in the Department of Social Welfare,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know that when I first met him, of course. But when we were talking, sharing our stories, I told him about Estelle and your dad. And the baby. He knows a lot of people. He offered to help.’

  I’m gobsmacked. Both at the fact that she shared intimate details of her life with a man she’d only just met, and also because he happened to be the one man who was able to help her find out what she wanted to know.

  ‘He discovered enough to make me sure he was talking about the right person.’

  I swallow hard. She knows Ivo’s name. It’s not a common one. So she must surely have put two and two together and realised that he was the man I was driving.

  ‘He found Estelle’s son?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ says Mum. ‘Estelle herself.’

  Once again a million thoughts are colliding in my head. If Diarmuid has found Estelle, she can’t be Stella. Because Stella is dead. Unless Estelle is too. Unless he’s found her grave.

  ‘She’s living in Donegal.’ Mum seems totally unaware of my inner turmoil. ‘She’s married to a businessman. From what Diarmuid managed to learn, they moved there from London ten years ago.’

  Estelle is alive. Estelle isn’t Stella. Ivo isn’t Dad’s son. My head is properly spinning now. I truly can’t keep it all together. I can’t cope with the information overload.

  And I don’t.

  I faint.

  When I open my eyes again, I’m lying on the kitchen floor and my legs are propped up against a chair.

  ‘Don’t move,’ says Mum, who’s bending over me. ‘Take your time.’

  ‘I’m OK.’ I struggle into a sitting position and then pull myself onto the chair. ‘I’m fine, honestly. It was a shock, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s not the shock,’ says Mum. ‘Like I said before, you’re burning the candle at both ends. I thought you’d grown out of your habit of fainting when you’re upset but clearly you’re not able for anything out of the ordinary right now.’

  It was a childhood thing and of course I’ve grown out of it.
Otherwise I would have keeled over when I saw Dave and Julie together, wouldn’t I? But my body had finally rebelled after everything that had happened in the last few weeks.

  ‘It’s been a tricky day.’ I take the mug of sweetened tea that she’s handing me and grimace. I’d much rather have coffee. But she’s standing over me with a determined expression on her face.

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘Tell me everything,’ I say.

  ‘I’m not saying another word until you drink your tea and have a biscuit.’ She thrusts a Penguin in front of me. They used to be a staple in my cupboard until I cut out sugary snacks in the house. But I need the sugar now. I wolf down the Penguin, and begin to feel better.

  ‘There’s not much more to tell,’ says Mum. ‘Diarmuid’s contact found out that she spent a lot of her life in the UK, where she married an Irishman called David O’Shea. He’s involved in the textile industry and she’s a designer of sorts. They moved to Letterkenny about ten years ago and opened a factory. They’ve lived there ever since.’

  ‘And her son?’ I ask.

  ‘Peter,’ says Mum. ‘Works in the Department of Foreign Affairs. He’s a cultural attaché in Brazil.’

  She picks up her iPad and opens a website. It shows a photo of the current foreign affairs minister along with the ambassador and his team at an Irish promotional event in São Paulo. Peter O’Shea is standing at one end of the group. He’s a heavy-set man, his dark hair liberally sprinkled with grey. He’s wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a blue suit. He doesn’t look a bit like Dad. Or Aidan. Or me.

  ‘I can’t believe you found this out and didn’t tell me,’ I say.

  ‘Diarmuid only got the details last night,’ Mum tells me. ‘And you were in a hurry this morning so I planned to tell you when you got home. Which now I have. Though it’s funny that we should both have found out different things about the same situation at the same time.’

  Funny peculiar, I think. Not funny ha-ha. All the same, I feel a weight lift from my shoulders again.

  ‘So who is the boy in the photo?’ asks Mum.