The Truth Will Out
ANNA McPARTLIN
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in Ireland by Poolbeg 2008
This edition published in Penguin Books 2011
Copyright © Anna McPartlin, 2008, 2011
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978–0–241–95214–6
In memory of Ciara Collins
Dedicated to Caroline, Ger and Ashling Collins
Table of Contents
1. The wedding: take two
2. A&E
3. Broken
4. Crabs
5. Ms Know-it-all
6. I’m not scared
7. Gone
8. All to forget
9. Every time we say goodbye
10. Tension Towers
11. I am I and you are you
12. Limbo’s just a stopgap
13. It’s been a month but it feels like a year
14. I’m Melissa and I Google
15. If only
16. Something old, something new
17. A secret shared
18. I knew I knew you
19. One day at a time
20. Men will be men
21. I know what I said before but this time it’s true
22. If I could change …
23. No, no, no, no and no
24. Reality bites
25. It’s my trip to Seville and I’ll cry if I want to
26. The treasure in Castle Street
27. The wedding – take three
Acknowledgements
1. The wedding: take two
The date was 1 May 2006. It was Harri’s thirtieth birthday and the day she was set to marry.
She’d woken up only once the night before, humming ‘Get Me To The Church On Time’. I’m getting married in a few hours. Holy crap, I think I’m going to cry. La-la-lala-la. I wish I wasn’t losing my mind. She wasn’t awake for long, just time enough for a mini freak-out, to indulge in a tear or two, blow her nose and hit her head on the Edwardian mahogany headboard with its checked stringing. Bastard – the bed, not the fiancé: she loved her fiancé. Harri was just nervous. When she got nervous she got confused – or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, nervousness and confusion usually ended up in minor injury. Don’t be all My Left Foot about it, Harri. It’ll go beautifully. Everything will be fine. You will not mess this day up. Go back to sleep. She obeyed herself and, despite a slightly sore head, managed to return to the Land of Nod within minutes, no real harm done.
‘Big day.’ Her dad greeted her with a wink on the landing.
‘Big day, Dad,’ she agreed sheepishly, rubbing a particularly stubborn piece of crap from the darkest and deepest corner of her right eye.
‘Don’t pull your eye out, love,’ he warned.
‘I’ll try not to,’ she said, kissing his hairy cheek as he passed with his paper heading towards his en-suite bathroom, where he would spend what he often described as a well-earned hour on the loo.
When she emerged from a pounding shower, her mother was waiting in her bedroom with a full Irish breakfast, including toast, tea, coffee, croissants and cheese.
‘Morning, my darling,’ she said, with a smiling sigh, placing the breakfast tray on the table by the window. It looked down onto a pretty stone patio and across to an ancient oak tree.
‘Morning, Mum.’ She held a cloth against the eye she’d all but pulled out despite her earlier promise.
When she took it away from her face, her mother gasped. ‘Holy hell, darling, how’d you manage that?’
‘Sleep crap.’
‘Ah,’ her mother beamed, ‘so you slept.’ She nodded approvingly. ‘Good girl. Don’t worry, darling. Mona will sort it out. Mona could conceal a baboon’s arse stuck out of a white Fiat Uno.’
‘Oh, Mum!’
Her mum was laughing. Gloria didn’t often curse or engage in conversation she deemed lewd, but when she did she made sure the verbal misdemeanour was for comic effect. Harri, giggling, went to sit on the chair beside the table at the window. The sun shone a bright yellow against a light blue cloudless sky. ‘It’s a nice day,’ she commented, hugging herself in the towelling dressing-gown her mother had given her six years before, when she’d moved twenty minutes down the road to the UCD campus – ‘Always buy quality, darling,’ Gloria had said, ‘anything else is simply false economy.’
Gloria was all about quality. She had expensive taste and found it difficult to tolerate anything but the finer things in life. She had grown up as the only child of a wealthy landowner, and her parents had once owned a quarter of South Dublin. Harri’s granddad had died in his late forties, leaving the house to her nana and mum. Nana suffered from epilepsy and because of this Gloria would never leave her. She had met Harri’s dad when the house was broken into in the early seventies and he had come to investigate the crime. They had fallen in love quickly and were married within a year.
Harri’s dad, Duncan, originated from North Dublin and initially he was uncomfortable with his new wealthy lifestyle. Gloria said he was like a duck in a desert, but his work kept him rooted in the familiar gritty reality that his new-found home life shielded him from so he retained a balance. Also, he was fond of Nana. She was a lady, but she was also as tough as old boots and a whizz at chess – together they played games that lasted up to a month.
Duncan had joined the guards straight out of school. He was the third generation of his family to do so and moved up the ranks quickly, making detective in his early twenties. He had worked on some of the most tragic cases Ireland had seen. Harri often wondered how he managed not to bring all that terror home. Her mum said he wiped his feet on the mat and there he’d leave his day.
Harri only ever witnessed her dad cry once. She was nine, maybe ten, and he was sitting at his desk in his attic office. She was holding a tray with his lunch and didn’t knock before she went in. He was looking at a photograph with his hand held up to his face and tears flowing. He shoved it into the file that lay open on hi
s desk, closed it quickly and spun towards the window, wiping his eyes. In Harri’s house they didn’t talk about anything that made anyone feel uncomfortable. Duncan’s job meant that he had to keep quiet about many things, while Gloria was far too ladylike and – unlike Nana – too fragile for confrontation. Nana didn’t believe in discussing anything that verged on boring. Feelings, she had once decreed, were dull. Harri and her twin brother George had grown up in a house that was all about being lovely. Crying had no place in their home so Harri pretended she hadn’t seen her father weeping on that day – but years later, if she closed her eyes, she could still see those fat tears splashing on white paper.
‘It’s a fabulous morning.’ Gloria kissed the top of her daughter’s head.
‘I’m never going to be able to eat all this.’ Harri surveyed the ridiculous amount of food before her.
‘I know.’ Gloria moved to the end of the bed and bent over to pull out a blue box from under it. ‘For you,’ she said. ‘Happy birthday, darling!’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ Harri grinned. She was thirty but still got giddy around presents. She opened the box to reveal a beautiful art-deco pendant. Gloria loved art deco and Harri did too – Duncan liked to say they were two peas in a pod. She held it up against the window. It was beautiful, gleaming in the light with stones that glistened. ‘I love it!’ she said.
George came in then and dropped on to the bed. ‘So, Mum, where’s my present?’
‘Under your bed.’
‘Aah!’ he said.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘That’s two floors down.’
‘Don’t be so lazy, darling. It’s a staircase, not blooming Everest.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m not telling you,’ Gloria said, smiling.
‘And how come I didn’t get breakfast in bed?’ he queried, while examining a strand of his hair.
‘Because you’re not getting married. Happy birthday, Nuisance. Now, please be an adult.’ She often called George ‘Nuisance’ and was smiling as she said it – she liked it when he acted like a child. It made her feel needed. ‘My twins. Both so grown-up, but deep down and where it counts, you’ll always be my babies.’
George jumped up and kissed his sister. ‘Happy birthday, Harri!’
‘Happy birthday, George!’ Harri idolized her brother. He was everything she wasn’t. George could stand centre stage and hold any room while Harri could only ever be found in its corner. He was adventurous, having travelled around the world, spending summers in the snow and winters in the sun. He surfed, skied and dived. He loved to paraglide and was considering helicopter lessons. Harri was not much of an explorer. Hot sun brought her out in a heat rash and the one time she’d skied she’d broken her wrist. He was athletic; she was bookish. He was loud; she was quiet. He was a playboy; she was a worker. He was gay; she was straight. They didn’t even really look alike, except for their thick wavy dark hair. He was tall; she was average. He was broad; she was petite. He had a square face while hers was oval. They were so different in so many ways, yet they didn’t need words to communicate. They understood each other. They knew one another. George would have jumped any bridge for his sister. The Ryan twins had always been extremely close.
‘Time to let go, little sister,’ George said, pulling away from her.
‘I’m older.’ She smiled.
‘You’re smaller!’ He grinned.
And, really, with the sunny morning, the shiny new jewellery, the big breakfast, Gloria’s tasteful décor, her warmth and kindness, that moment depicted a picture-perfect family. The only thing spoiling it in Harri’s mind was the impending nuptials.
Stay calm, Harri. Don’t mess this up.
But, unbeknown to her, a far greater menace underlay that ideal family on that ideal day.
The dress was slightly too tight and Mona’s perfectly coiffed up-style was bringing on a headache but even Harri was forced to admit that she had done a fantastic job, despite a broken finger.
‘What happened?’
‘Desmond happened.’
‘I need more.’
‘I had a child who turned into a teenager who turned into an arsehole who thinks nothing of leaving a skateboard at the top of a staircase.’
‘You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.’
‘He’s lucky I didn’t break his neck! Seriously, Harri, think before you copulate.’
Harri enjoyed Mona. She was named well for she loved to moan but did so with likeable verve. George called her Moaning, which she seemed not to mind.
‘Wow, Moaning, you make breeding sound so romantic!’ he chimed in from the doorway.
‘Tell me you’re going to let me do something with that hair of yours.’ Mona was accustomed to ignoring his witticisms.
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Nothing – if you’re emulating a fop.’
‘Well, I was going for Hugh Grant circa Four Weddings.’ He stood behind her, examining himself in the mirror.
‘Well, then, dear, you’ve achieved the look beautifully.’
‘Moaning, you’re such a bitch but I love it.’
He sighed and sat in the corner of the sitting room, where Harri was standing in her slightly too-tight wedding dress, with pretty but headache-inducing hair.
Duncan coughed outside, knocked and crept into the room with a camera. ‘Oh, now. What?’ Duncan often said ‘what’ out of context as though someone unseen had whispered a query into his ear. He mostly did it when he was happy. ‘Fantastic. Fantastic!’ He was also given to repeating himself in a tone that suggested childish delight. ‘Jaysus, you’re smashing. Isn’t she smashing?’ George and Mona smiled and nodded. The dress made up for in wow-factor what it lacked in comfort, its sheer splendour bringing a tear to Duncan’s usually dry eyes. At that point George joked that his father’s tears had more to do with cost than visual appeal, and the awkward moment was averted.
Melissa rang. Mona handed Harri the phone with a warning. ‘Two minutes.’
‘Hi, Melissa.’
‘Still with us?’
‘I am.’
‘Excellent.’
‘Where are you?’ Harri asked, confused by the sound of passing traffic.
‘I’m in the church car park, changing a nappy.’
‘You’re at the church already?’ Harri squeaked, panic in her voice.
‘Stop. Breathe. I’m just checking the flowers. You still have an hour.’
‘Okay.’ She exhaled as much as the dress would allow.
‘Jacob, get in the car. Jacob, get in the car. Jacob …’
‘Melissa?’
‘Sorry. Get in the bloody car!’
Shuffling ensued and Harri heard Jacob say something about wanting a sandwich from the car boot. ‘You keep sandwiches in the boot?’
‘Sandwiches, yogurts, nappies, towels, cheese strings, formula, a six-pack of Capri-Sun, Play-Doh, knickers. You name it, I have it.’
‘Get off the phone!’ Mona said.
‘I have to get off the phone.’
‘Okay. Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘I know.’
‘Oh, James is here.’
Harri’s stomach turned. James was at the church. She hung up.
Mona dragged her to the dining-table near the big window that overlooked Nana’s favourite rickety old bench and let in lots of light. She’d pulled an eye pencil out of her bulging bag of tricks. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine,’ Harri agreed.
Mona pushed her into the chair. ‘Look up!’ she ordered. Harri looked up. ‘Are you sure you’re okay? Suddenly you seem pale.’
Harri gave her the thumbs-up, afraid that if she spoke she’d throw up.
Duncan chose that moment to leave the room: he had to pick up Gloria from Shoe World in Sandycove where she’d insisted on goin
g half an hour earlier because the strap of her brand-new sandals had snapped.
‘Holy hell, I can’t believe it!’ she’d cried. ‘These shoes cost five hundred euro!’
‘What?’ Duncan had roared. ‘Five hundred euro? Have you lost your mind, woman?’
Gloria hadn’t realized he was in earshot and she was in no mood for a price war. ‘Darling, we both know you weren’t meant to hear that so let’s just pretend that you didn’t.’
Duncan had grumbled something about five hundred Jaysusing euro but he could see sense in her suggestion so he let it go. They lived a stone’s throw from Sandycove so he had dropped her off, returning home with just enough time to take photos before returning to the village to fetch her. He had made his way to the car mumbling about the cost of everything and wondering how much money had been wasted on these new bloody toe-curlers.
Harri didn’t feel like moving or sitting or drinking or even like taking the Valium Mona offered, with the advice that it had worked wonders on her neighbour’s daughter, Cliona. Apparently Cliona often suffered with her nerves but, according to Mona, that was because she was a self-centred, ungrateful brat who didn’t give a stuff about her hard-working mother, or her father, who often smelt of the chip fat from which he had apparently built an empire. George laughed, and Harri feigned amusement but inside she felt numb.
‘Do you feel sick?’ George asked, from his mother’s favourite antique rocking chair.
‘A little,’ she admitted. There was no point in lying to him.
‘You’ll be okay,’ Mona said, applying a second coat of ruby-red lipstick. ‘Now smack your lips.’
‘And breathe!’ George instructed, before returning to an article he had been reading on a new species of Sri Lankan tree frog. ‘Take a look at those weird staring red eyes. If frogs could kill …’
Harri’s fiancé James liked frogs, believing them necessary to a well-balanced ecosystem. He had a strange fixation with all amphibians and reptiles; where most saw ick, he saw wonder.
‘Did you know that when snakes strike they have a near hundred per cent success rate?’ he’d mentioned on their first date.
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