‘I’m surprised you haven’t collapsed already,’ said Ryan. ‘You had to deal with a lot of stuff.’
‘And there’ll be a lot more when I meet the Fitzpatricks again,’ she said. ‘They’re not happy about me and I don’t blame them.’
‘Well obviously today’s weren’t the ideal circumstances for them to find out about you, but they’ll come round,’ said Ryan.
‘I admire your optimism.’ Abbey said. ‘But I’m not expecting a warm welcome when we meet again.’
‘These things take time,’ Ryan told her. ‘Have you eaten anything since this morning? Would you like something now?’
‘I think I’ll have some coffee in my room,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much for everything. You must be shattered too – I woke you up this afternoon, didn’t I?’
‘All part of the job.’ He smiled. ‘If there’s anything else you need, let me know, OK?’
‘OK.’
He gave her a brief hug and she went up the stairs to her room. Despite not having eaten, she wasn’t very hungry and she was perfectly happy to make herself some coffee and eat the small pre-packed slice of fruit cake that she’d seen on the tray earlier.
After she’d kicked off her shoes and poured herself the coffee, she picked up her phone and called Pete.
‘Well whaddya know!’ Pete was gobsmacked when she related everything. ‘So what happens now?’
She explained that there would be a further meeting with the Fitzpatrick family, depending on how the schedule for Fred’s funeral turned out.
‘You need representation when you meet them,’ said Pete. ‘They can’t imply that your actions hastened the old man’s death. I can come over, honey. Stall them till I get there.’
‘It’s OK, Pete,’ she said. ‘The doctor certified the cause of death as a heart attack. He said there was nothing more I could have done. So did the paramedics. There’s no problem.’
‘People can say and do stupid things,’ said Pete. ‘My job is to stop that. Or to make sure that if they do cross a line, they pay the penalty.’
‘I’m sure everything will be all right,’ she said. ‘If there’s a problem, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, though, the Irish lawyers are taking good care of me.’
‘That Ryan Gilligan guy seemed to have his head screwed on the right way,’ conceded Pete. ‘But he was working for Mr Fitzpatrick, not you. So don’t let him push you around either.’
‘He didn’t push me around,’ said Abbey. ‘He was nice.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t let his niceness fool you,’ warned Pete.
‘Pete, Pete, I’ve got to trust someone!’ cried Abbey. ‘And the doctor and the lawyers have been on my side. Not that there should be sides. The family was upset, is all. I understand that. I’d be upset too.’
‘You were a hero,’ said Pete. ‘You tried to save him and you called for help and they should’ve been thanking you.’
‘Maybe they will when we meet again,’ said Abbey. ‘They had too much to process this time.’
‘Given that they freaked out when they met you, do I gather that you haven’t had time to talk to them about your mom?’ Pete asked the question warily.
‘No,’ said Abbey.
‘That might be another shock,’ he observed. ‘You sure you don’t want me over? Because it’s no trouble.’
‘Moral support would be nice,’ Abbey admitted. ‘But I think it would worry them even more if you turned up all sharp suits and lawyerly on my behalf.’
‘Maybe,’ conceded Pete.
‘I’ll talk to them,’ Abbey said. ‘Tell them everything. What difference does it make anyway? I doubt very much that after that conversation I’ll be hearing from any of them ever again.’
‘Which in some ways would be a pity,’ said Pete. ‘They’re your family, after all.’
‘No,’ said Abbey. ‘You and Claudia are. Even if I’m a bit of a cuckoo in the nest.’
‘You’re a very welcome part of our family and you know it,’ said Pete. ‘If you think you can manage without me, that’s fine. But any sign of trouble, you call. No matter what time it is.’
‘You’re my Alcatraz,’ said Abbey. ‘My rock.’
And he was, she thought, as she ended the call. Always there for her. Even though he didn’t need to be.
Suzanne Fitzpatrick arrived in Dublin at midday the following day. Although Gareth and Lisette had asked her to stay with them, she’d elected to book in to the Harbour Hotel instead. Gareth might be her brother, but she hadn’t seen him in years and she didn’t want to stay in his home.
Abbey, who’d slept late and had decided to go for a long walk to clear her head, noticed the tall, slim woman checking in as she herself crossed the reception area. A vague sense of recognition nagged at her mind, but as she’d only glanced in Suzanne’s direction it didn’t really take hold, and she walked out of the hotel without a further thought. Suzanne didn’t see Abbey at all; she was too busy filling in the registration card and thinking that the Harbour Hotel wasn’t a million miles away from what she wanted the Mirador to be. Chic and exclusive, but friendly.
Like Abbey, Suzanne told the receptionist that she was perfectly able to carry her own bag to her room. She took the lift rather than the stairs to the top floor, thinking that the art deco one in the Mirador was a million times nicer. The style of the reception area would be dictated by that lift, she thought, as she reached her room and opened it with the card key. It would be the Mirador’s signature feature. Always provided that she somehow managed to raise the money she needed.
She walked into the room and put her bag on the bed, still thinking about the Mirador. Having got over the shock of her father’s sudden death, she couldn’t help feeling frustrated at being in Ireland when she needed to be in Spain, raising finance. Typical of Fred that even in death he interfered with her plans. She felt a surge of guilt at the thought, but she couldn’t help herself. Just because the old man was dead didn’t mean he hadn’t caused anything but trouble for her when he’d been alive. And what additional trouble had he intended to cause, she wondered, by asking this hitherto unknown granddaughter to meet him?
She exhaled slowly. Donald had been overwrought when he’d called the previous night, but she knew that he was both upset and angry about the discovery of another Fitzpatrick. Although she was an Andersen, Suzanne remembered. And what about the mother? Her father’s first child. Well, the first they knew of. God knows what other surprises Fred might have had up his sleeve.
She unpacked her things from her cabin bag and freshened up before ringing Gareth.
‘Come to the house when you’re ready,’ he said. ‘We’re having the removal to the church this evening; the funeral will go ahead tomorrow.’
Suzanne thought about having something to eat at the hotel before going to her brother’s, but she knew that was only to put off the inevitable, so she changed from the jeans and T-shirt she’d travelled in into a navy dress which would be suitable for wearing in the church later. Then she slipped into a pair of mid-height shoes and left the hotel.
Gareth and Lisette’s house was only a twenty-minute walk. Suzanne had never been in it before and was impressed by its location. Not bad, she thought, for a couple of teachers. Of course they’d got into property a number of years back, hadn’t they? She vaguely remembered her father cackling about it one Christmas when she’d made her obligatory phone call home. ‘Think they’re property modules,’ he’d said, and she’d corrected him, telling him he surely meant ‘moguls’, and he’d retorted that whatever his second son and his wife were, moguls certainly didn’t describe them. He’d never given Gareth much support, Suzanne thought. He’d fought with her and wanted to mould her into a certain type of person, but he’d simply dismissed her older brother, scornful of his more sensitive nature. Donald was the favourite, she reckoned. But even Donald had never been good enough for him.
She rang the bell and the double gates swung open. Gareth was standing on the fro
nt step, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. (Suzanne had been surprised by its warmth when she’d walked out of the terminal building in Dublin and had immediately taken off the heavy jacket she’d dug out of the back of her wardrobe specifically for the Irish weather.)
‘Hi,’ he said as she walked up the path. ‘Welcome home.’ He gave her a perfunctory hug.
‘Thanks. Although obviously the circumstances …’
‘Yes, well, we all knew it would happen sooner or later. But it’s been a shock all the same.’
Suzanne followed her brother into the house, and along the hallway to the large kitchen at the back.
‘Suzanne, chérie, it’s nice to see you again? Did you have a good flight?’ Lisette got up from the table where she’d been sitting with the children.
‘There was a time when it was worth asking that question,’ said Suzanne. ‘But these days there’s no such thing as a good flight. All you can hope for is that it won’t be too awful. And it wasn’t.’
‘True,’ agreed Lisette. ‘Jerome, Fleur, say hello to your Tante Suzanne.’
‘Hello, Tante Suzanne.’ Fleur briefly looked up from her colouring book while Jerome, engrossed in his iPad, muttered a greeting.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lisette. ‘I am trying to teach them manners but I think I’m failing.’
‘They’re fine,’ said Suzanne.
‘Would you like coffee?’ asked Lisette.
‘That’d be great.’
Lisette got up and poured hot water into a cafetière, releasing an aromatic hit of ground beans.
‘So – all the drama,’ said Suzanne as her sister-in-law poured the coffee. ‘The way Donald talked last night, I thought he was convinced that this American girl had a part in Dad’s heart attack.’
‘Was Gran’père killed?’ Jerome looked up from the iPad, his eyes wide. ‘That would be so cool.’
‘Of course he wasn’t,’ said Lisette. ‘I told you, he hadn’t been well.’
‘He died because he was ancient,’ said Fleur. ‘I heard you say it to Papa. You said, “It’s time that ancient old man did us all a favour and died.”’
‘Fleur!’ Lisette’s face flamed red. ‘You shouldn’t have been listening to our conversation. Anyway, I’m sure you didn’t hear me properly.’
‘I did.’ Fleur put her crayon on the table. ‘And I heard you say that you thought a man with a dicky ticker shouldn’t be so healthy.’
‘What I meant …’ Lisette’s voice was filled with forced patience, ‘was that your gran’père was a very active man for his age.’
‘A cranky man, you usually say,’ remarked Jerome.
Suzanne tried to keep a straight face. She understood perfectly the conversations her brother and Lisette might have had with each other, but it was amusing to hear it rehashed by their children.
‘Why are you both inside anyway?’ demanded their father. ‘It’s too nice to be indoors.’
‘Maman said we should stay in and say hello to Tante Suzanne.’
‘Well, you’ve said hello,’ said Gareth. ‘Now go outside and play.’
He watched as the two of them scrambled down from the table and went into the garden.
‘Why did we keep them off school today?’ he asked Lisette.
‘Out of respect for your father. And because it would have been awkward to pick them up from school and then go to the removal,’ she said.
‘Less awkward than having them spout nonsense in front of our guest.’
‘Your sister,’ Suzanne reminded him. ‘Not just a guest.’
‘Sorry,’ said Gareth.
‘So tell me about this woman,’ said Suzanne. ‘This long-lost relative who conveniently happened to show up as Dad dropped dead.’
‘I’m glad you think that’s suspicious,’ said Gareth, who filled her in with more detail than Donald had on the previous day’s events.
‘So why didn’t the mother come too?’ asked Suzanne.
Gareth shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. We only barely got to talk to her and the next thing that sidekick of Alex’s ushered her out of the house. I don’t like it, though.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s something not right about it all,’ said Gareth. ‘Why now? And, like you said, where’s the mother? What do they want? What did Dad want with them?’
‘He was very upset about the Magdalene laundries,’ said Lisette. ‘I suppose he wanted to find out that they were OK.’
‘A bit strange,’ remarked Suzanne, ‘given that he never gave a toss about whether the rest of us were OK or not.’
Gareth shot her an understanding look.
‘Maybe he’d mellowed in his old age,’ said Lisette.
Gareth grunted. ‘As if.’
‘So we’re meeting her after the funeral,’ said Suzanne. ‘That makes today a right barrel of laughs, doesn’t it?’
Gareth said nothing. Lisette got up from the table and fetched some biscuits. Suzanne sipped her coffee.
Home, sweet home, she thought.
It was nine o’clock by the time Suzanne arrived back at the hotel. The removal service, where Fred’s coffin had been taken to the church in readiness for the funeral the following day, had been lengthy, with a steady stream of friends turning up to console the Fitzpatricks on the death of their father. People she hadn’t seen for years had queued to shake her hand and murmur words of sympathy, but the truth was that she’d felt a fraud for thanking them. And she’d felt a fraud too for the sudden feeling of loss that had engulfed her after they’d left the church. It was ridiculous to feel anything, she thought, for a man who’d been nothing but a thorn in her side and who’d carried the secret of his … well, she supposed love child would be the term that was used now … anyway, the man who’d kept his other child a secret from them all.
Don and Gareth were still furious about it, although Suzanne got the impression that they were more angry about him having invited the American granddaughter to see him than the fact that she existed in the first place. Lisette had been remarkably quiet, but Zoey had remarked that these things happened and they should all get over it because wasn’t the girl going to go back to the States immediately the funeral was over? So what was the point in stressing about it all? Forget it, was Zoey’s mantra. Forget it, forget her.
Suzanne was quite impressed by the attitude of Donald’s second wife. It was perfectly clear to her that Zoey had married Donald for position and security – a kind of Jane Austen combination that shouldn’t have been relevant in the modern world but obviously still was. Whatever her reasons, though, Suzanne thought that Zoey was good for her brother. There was no doubt that she looked sensational, and she managed him well too, saying the right thing at the right time and deferring to him when it seemed important to him.
But then, Suzanne mused as she accepted yet more condolences from someone she didn’t even know, Zoey had her eye on another prize. She knew this because she’d heard her sister-in-law murmuring to her husband about Fred’s will and the fact that Alex was going to talk about it after the funeral, which was all very Agatha Christie-ish, and did Donald think there was the slightest possibility that Fred’s exit had been hastened in some way by seeing Abbey Andersen? Had he been so shocked by her appearance that he’d just keeled over? Suzanne had eavesdropped shamelessly as her brother reminded his wife that there was no evidence of that and that Dr Casey had said that Abbey had done a good job on the CPR, but Zoey had sniffed and muttered that old men were total fools and it was easy to give them a heart attack. At which Suzanne herself had had to turn away because she’d wondered if Zoey was talking about Donald himself.
Anyway, they’d gone back to Gareth and Lisette’s after the removal. There’d been an awkward moment when Deirdre, Donald’s ex-wife, had asked if she was invited and then said that she didn’t want to go anyway, before flouncing off with her two daughters in tow, leaving the rest of the family to continue thrashing out the whole situation about the American girl. But Suz
anne had no interest in going over and over things with them. So she’d told them that she was very tired and wanted to go back to the hotel, and even though Gareth had offered to drive her, she’d said that she was perfectly happy walking.
She was deep in thought as she strode across the reception area to the lift. As she waited for it to descend, she glanced towards the bar. It had been a long day and the idea of a drink was suddenly appealing. She left the reception area and walked up to the bar counter instead, where she ordered a Jameson and ice.
She took the glass and looked for somewhere comfortable to sit. Somewhere she wouldn’t be disturbed. And then she saw the woman sitting at the table near the window. She was wearing jeans and a light knitted top. Her blond hair was carelessly scrunched around her face and one leg was crossed lazily over the other. She had a glass of rosé in front of her and was engrossed in a red-covered Kindle.
Oh my God, thought Suzanne. That’s her. It has to be. I recognise the way she’s sitting. I recognise her. She’s Dad. She’s me. She’s the American.
She hesitated for a moment, and then crossed the room.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I think I know you.’
Abbey Andersen looked up from the book she’d downloaded that day. And her eyes widened in shock.
‘I see you know me too,’ said Suzanne.
‘You’re Mr Fitzpatrick’s daughter, aren’t you?’
Suzanne nodded. ‘Suzanne.’
‘You remind me of my mother,’ said Abbey. ‘Although you’re a lot younger,’ she added hastily. ‘More my age, I guess.’
Suzanne smiled slightly. ‘I suppose I’m your aunt. I should be older and wiser than you.’
‘Half-aunt,’ said Abbey. ‘Though that sounds kind of weird.’
‘The whole situation is weird. Mind if I sit down?’
‘Of course not.’ Abbey was pleased to have the chance to talk to one of her newly discovered relatives in a less emotionally charged atmosphere than before.
‘It was a shock, finding out about you,’ said Suzanne.
Things We Never Say Page 18