Hidden

by Derick Parsons

  This time she did slam her front door before going into the bedroom and flinging herself face-down on the bed, wracked by memories and emotions she would have preferred to forget forever. God knows she had tried to wipe them from her mind but some memories will not go away; they lie just below the surface like great black jagged rocks, ready to shipwreck the unwary. Her father had destroyed her childhood, her innocence; she had finally and with difficulty come to realize that, years before. But had he really wrecked her adult life also? Was he the cause of her inability to sustain a relationship? Well yes, of course, she had always known that, on the surface levels of her mind; she just had never faced how deep the damage really went. She didn’t want to admit it now either but the relentless train of thought Trevor had set in motion told her it was so. Told her that whatever her ego might say she was just as vulnerable as any other human being. And just as needy.

  As ever her mind slid away from self-examination, concentrating on someone else’s problems rather than her own; it was Grainne she needed to focus on. Her tears ceased as she remembered her idea from earlier and, eager to seek a distraction from self-analysis, she got up and hunted through her handbag for her mobile. Returning to the bedroom she lay down again and keyed in Michael’s number, her eyes black holes in the dim light.

  He answered almost immediately and she said, ‘Michael? Hi, it’s Kate here.’

  ‘Kate! At last! How are you? You’re a hard woman to reach, you know that? I was trying to get hold of you last night, and today. Where have you been hiding yourself?’

  Kate forced herself to keep her tone light as she replied, ‘Well, I turned off my mobile last night to do some work, and I’ve been too busy today to take calls; I’ll have to remember to take if off silent. But I am a working woman, you know.’

  He barked out a short, disbelieving laugh, ‘Thanks very much! You really know how to make a man feel special, don’t you?’

  In her present mood this was the last thing she wanted to hear and she replied shortly, ‘Sorry, but I wasn’t put here on this earth to make you feel special. Now, I need some information from you. The name of Grainne’s ex-boyfriend, to be precise. The drug-pusher she was seeing. The police will know it but I doubt if they’ll give it to me. Do you know it, or can you use your influence to find it out for me?’

  There was a long silence and then he said in puzzlement, ‘Why would you want information like that?’

  ‘I told you before,’ she said coldly, ‘I don’t discuss my patients. With anyone. Now, it might be nothing but it just might be important. Are you willing to help me or not?’

  He replied in a tight, irritated voice, ‘I don’t know what school you went to but it clearly wasn’t one of the charm variety. And no, I’m not willing to help you. What you’re suggesting is illegal, for a start, quite apart from the fact that I don’t like the way you’re asking. Or do you think that being a politician I must be such a lowlife that I won’t mind breaking the law? Well, I do, and I’m not about to abuse my position to have privileged police information released to the general public. And yes, that means you. You aren’t Grainne’s doctor, you aren’t even her psychiatrist, yet you expect me to start pulling strings merely on your whim? Well, I won’t do it. Give me a good reason and I might help, but as things stand I cannot and will not.’

  ‘Fine,’ snapped Kate, ‘You obviously don’t want your daughter cured quite as badly as you claim!’ And with that she rang off. And then switched her phone off lest he ring her back. Lest anyone ring. She had had enough of the whole world for one day. To hell with all of them! Sooner or later everyone let you down. And Trevor blamed her for not being able to fully trust anyone? Small wonder! She’d be a fool to trust any man!

  She took her landline phone off the hook too and lay on the bed for a very long time; not moving, not thinking, not feeling. Just lying. She made no effort to get up, to shower or eat, or to watch television. She just lay there until it got dark, trying to focus on Grainne Riordan but with her mind constantly slipping away and drifting back to Trevor’s biting analysis. Until eventually -a long time later- she fell into an uneasy sleep that gave her no relief and little rest.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was a cold, dark morning, and the almost black November sky was flinging stinging needles of rain sideways at Kate, making her umbrella pretty well redundant. She did her best, aiming the umbrella in the direction of each gust, but before long she was soaked. But that was okay; the cold and damp fitted the occasion. Graveyards always seem bleak and grey, and it had rained at every one of the few funerals she had attended in her life. Including that of her own mother. Standing there in the graveyard of St. Luke’s Church, at the interment of a woman she had only met a handful of times over the years, Kate was inevitably reminded of the day her mother had been buried. That had actually been in the middle of summer but the sky had still been overcast, and a heavy rain had been falling. That was standard stuff for an Irish Summer, though on that occasion they had been spared the usual biting wind, and in any case the weather had suited Kate’s mood perfectly. Warmth and sunshine have no place at a funeral, and their presence would have seemed to be almost mocking the dead.

  There had been a palpable air of sorrow among the large crowd the day Kate had buried her mother, yet no tears had been shed. Even Kate had not wept; her crying had all been completed in private in the preceding days. And the child-Kate had been happy to appear dry-eyed and stone faced; her mother had been a deeply reserved, self-contained woman who had prided herself on her strength of character almost as much as she had abhorred public displays of emotion. For her pain and grief were, like all emotions, to be borne in silence and dealt with in privacy. Always.

  Things were not done so in the Howitt family. Not on the female side, anyway. The men, Maggie Howitt’s three big powerful sons, comported themselves with all the tight-lipped stoicism Kate would have expected from them, but her five daughters wept openly and unashamedly. Not loudly, but not fighting their grief either, and certainly without the slightest trace of embarrassment. And Kate thought that their open sorrow was preferable to the pale, tight, silent grief that had choked her, all those years ago. Their tears seemed healthier, more natural than her constraint, and a better compliment to their love for their mother. And the crying did not detract in any way from the dignity of the ceremony. Perhaps it even added to it; the touch of humanity providing a leavening contrast to the stiff formality of the service.

  Kate held herself dry-eyed and aloof, though she felt like crying herself. Not so much for Mrs. Howitt as for her own, still-missed mother. And perhaps for all children, all of whom are eventually forced to consign their parents to the finality of the cold, damp earth. But she did not give way. As she and Peter had lived in England the whole time they were together she had barely known Maggie Howitt, and would not cheapen the very real grief of her daughters with spurious tears. Besides, her habit of keeping her emotions under rigid control was so ingrained it was second nature by now, and she wasn’t sure if she could cry in public, even if she wanted to.

  She was standing on her own, well behind the fair-sized crowd, but even so she could see Peter looking steadily at her from the other side of the grave’s hungry maw. He was standing amongst his sisters but towered above them, allowing him to gaze directly at her. His face was pale and by contrast his eyes looked even darker than usual, and as she looked at him, clearly seeing the deep sorrow he was trying so hard to conceal, her heart threatened to break. He had been the youngest son, and his mother’s ewe lamb. His two brothers had been younger versions of their father but Peter was more like his mother, in temperament at least, and had been much closer to her. His father’s death the previous year had hurt him deeply, but she knew that his grief on that occasion would be as nothing to the pain he was feeling now. But he would cope with it. He would shoulder and carry his grief without her help or anyone else’s. And that knowledge made her feel small and mean. He had always been there for her,
no matter what; had she ever been there for him? Once she had thought so, but looking back now she was starting to have doubts. The distance of the past few months had given her a clearer perspective on herself, and her life, and she was not proud of much of what she now saw.

  The priest concluded the burial rites and the coffin was lowered into the empty earth. Kate lowered her eyes, thinking of the look that had appeared in Peter’s eyes earlier, when he had seen her at the back of the church. He had been standing up near the altar, shaking hands with commiserators, and his face had remained grim and immobile, but the naked emotion that had flashed in his eyes when he saw her enter had made it clear how much he valued her presence, invited or not, and she had been glad she had gone. She had so nearly not.

  She had awoken late, feeling heavy-headed and jaded in spite of her long sleep. She had showered and then, unable to eat, had begun rummaging through her wardrobes in search of something suitable to wear. The only black dresses she possessed were of the cocktail party variety so she had finally decided on one of the black trouser suits she wore to work. She tried it on but wasn’t at all happy with the result; it just didn’t look or feel formal enough. Somber enough. But as she had nothing more suitable it would just have to do. Besides, she had a long black overcoat with which to cover it, and as she had no intention of going to the wake afterwards she could remain covered up.

  She had been hunting for a pair of low-heeled black shoes when, catching sight of herself in the full-length mirror in her bedroom, she had suddenly paused and sat down on her bed. Almost collapsed onto the bed. Her heart had started hammering, she had broken into a cold sweat, and suddenly found it hard to breath. She felt shivery and frightened and confused all at once. Dizzy, even. What the hell?

  She had remained sitting like that for some time, feeling a dreadful sense of impending doom in the bottomless pit that her stomach had suddenly become. Eventually she had started to calm down and her brain had unfrozen, allowing her to think again, to rationalize what had happened. No doubt it had just been a mild panic attack, a flashback perhaps to the horror of her own mother’s funeral. Or perhaps going to a funeral simply made everyone more conscious of their own mortality, of the frailty and intransigence of all life. She had been so unnerved by this funny turn that she had considered not going at all; it was so tempting to think of just staying in bed for the day. But in the end she had simply stood up and finished dressing, and the mini-crisis had passed. The ringing of her mobile had restored her fully to normality and she looked at the caller id before answering; Michael Riordan. Again. She considered not answering but then thought she had perhaps been rude enough to him lately, and put as much warmth as she could into saying, ‘Michael, hi.’

  ‘Hi, Kate, it’s Michael. Er, I just rang to say I’m sorry about being so ratty last night. The government’s getting a real pounding about NAMA and I had a pretty bad day, but I still shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’

  Kate had her own views on the public disgrace hidden behind the acronym NAMA but had controlled herself; this really wasn’t the time to go into it. Instead she had replied, ‘I guess I wasn’t exactly nice to you either. I had a bad day too, and I guess I took it out on you as well.’

  ‘Well, I could have been more helpful,’ Riordan had replied in the light, whimsical tone she had found so attractive when they first met, ‘since I actually know the guy’s name. And really there’s no reason I shouldn’t give it to you. It’s Jimmy Shiels, by the way. It’s just that I got someone to pay him off last year and I thought I was finished with him for good. But you’re trying to help Grainne, and if you need to speak to that scumbag; well, so be it. I guess just the mention of him reminded me of her drug taking, and brought back those days in all their horror. What Therese and I went through with her… Jesus! I suppose I just didn’t want to be reminded of all that bad stuff.’ He sighed, ‘It reminded me of my wife’s death, too. I thought I had put all that behind me but I guess I’m not as tough as I thought.’

  Although preoccupied with thoughts of the impending funeral Kate’s heart had softened and she had replied sympathetically, ‘It takes time to recover from the death of a loved one. I know how hackneyed that sounds, but it’s become a cliché because it’s true. And every now and then something crops up to remind us of them and the pain returns, as strong as when they first died. Sometimes even stronger, because the finality of it all really hits home.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he had replied, not sounding convinced, ‘But I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t had time to think, and I guess I convinced myself that I was fully over it. Anyway, enough about me. I talked to Detective Sergeant Morrison, the Garda in charge of Grainne’s case, and he’s agreed to talk to you, and give you the rundown on any of Grainne’s associates you care to enquire about. Well, I say Grainne’s case but in reality she’ll never stand trial for Therese’s death. And if she ever did the charges would soon be dropped in view of her mental history.’

  This was outside Kate’s provenance, and didn’t interest her anyway, so she only said, ‘Well, thanks. I imagine Morrison will be able to give me the address of this Shiels guy, but whether or not Shiels will talk to me I don’t know. There’s no real reason why not, since I only want to know what drugs she was taking, but criminals tend to be pretty close-mouthed with anyone outside their own immediate circle.’

  ‘Well, be careful if you do speak to him,’ Michael had warned her, ‘Most of these drug-pushers are junkies themselves, and there’s nothing these scumbags won’t do for that next fix.’

  Kate thought he was being a bit melodramatic and had replied, fairly coolly, ‘Thanks for the warning but I only want a brief chat with him; it’s not like I intend to arrest him or something. Now, I don’t mean to be rude but I really have to go.’

  ‘Hang on a second,’ he had protested, ‘Listen, I’d like to see you tonight. Just for dinner or a few drinks; nothing heavy.’

  She had paused uncertainly caught in two minds; she had no real interest in a relationship but she was attracted to him, there was no denying it. Perhaps partly because she thought him a fairly superficial person, one who would never ask too much of her emotionally. Which, it seemed, was exactly what she needed, whether she liked that aspect of herself or not. And the last few months had been pretty lonely. Apart from her physical needs -which God knew were powerful enough- a bed can seem very empty when you’re used to having someone sharing it with you. Filling it, a part of her mind amended, and practically shoving you out onto the floor. But even to have someone to talk to, to have occasional dinner with, even just to ring her largely silent mobile now and then to say hi…she needed someone in her life.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she had said at last, confused and unsure, ‘Maybe. Can I ring you back later?’

  ‘Of course. And if not tonight, perhaps tomorrow or Sunday?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she had agreed, as much to get away from him as anything; his persistence was as annoying as it was flattering. ‘Talk to you later.’ After hanging up the phone she had felt better, more normal, and had abandoned any idea of not attending the funeral.

  She was roused from her reverie by movement in the crowd; the service was over and the priest was turning away, with the mourners on the outskirts of the crowd taking their cue from him and starting to leave. The immediate family, however, seemed reluctant to leave their mother and simply stood staring helplessly down into the wet, open earth. Kate decided to slip away, to try and avoid having to talk to any of them. It was bad form not to express her condolences but she didn’t know any of them well and would not be missed. Besides, his sisters were notoriously protective of Peter and she wanted to avert a possible confrontation about their break-up. They would probably be too grief-stricken to worry about her dumping their little brother but she knew only too well that grief could affect people in the strangest ways, and cause them to vent their feelings on the nearest person for any or no reason.

  If her real motive for slipping away
was to avoid Peter then it backfired, for as she started to walk away down the muddy, rain-sodden gravel path he called out her name and jogged slowly around to her. She stopped, hoping he just wanted to say hello; surely he wouldn’t cause a scene? She instantly dismissed the idea as ridiculous and gave him a sympathetic, heartfelt smile.

  He stopped a few feet away from her, clad in a dark pinstriped suit and a long olive raincoat, looking –wildly inappropriate though it was to think such a thing at such a time- incredibly handsome as well as forlorn. ‘Hi, Kate,’ he said at last, ‘Thanks for coming. How did you know?’

  ‘Trevor told me.’

  He nodded, ‘That figures. He always thinks he knows best and just can’t help interfering in other people’s lives. Goes with the job, I suppose.’ He shrugged, ‘You hardly knew my mother so I didn’t think you’d mind not being invited. And my sisters are pretty emotional at the best of times, and I wanted to avoid any unpleasantness.’

  He held out his hand and, in surprise and no little confusion, she shook it. All in all, a polite but cool handshake was possibly the last thing she had expected from him. Especially as she was fighting an urge to throw her arms around him protectively and never let him go; he looked so young and lost.

  ‘Thanks again for coming. I know you weren’t close to Mam but it means a lot to me that you came.’ And with that he was gone, simply turning and walking back through the rain to his family, who still would not abandon their mother to the earth.