‘He wants a few days on his own, that’s all,’ she reasoned, squeezing her teabag: Aidan had a phobia about squeezing other people’s – ‘It just feels so wrong,’ he’d once explained. Teabag removed, she handed him her mug so that he could pour in the milk and pass it back to her.
‘Excuse me, Harri, but this is your nightmare, not his. Okay, your parents lied to you both and his real twin is dead but, boo-hoo-hoo, get over it already. You’re the one who is the outsider in your own family. You’re the one who doesn’t know who she is or where she belongs. You, my friend, are the square peg in the round hole.’
‘Thanks for reminding me and putting it so beautifully.’
Aidan always could make her laugh, most especially when he was at his inconsiderate best.
‘I’m only saying it like it is,’ he said, and drank some tea. ‘Christ, the milk’s off!’ He made a gagging sound and poured both mugfuls into the sink. He opened the fridge and took out two cans of beer. ‘How’s work?’
‘Busy. We’ve a few projects going. Susan’s in Howth working on a penthouse and I’m in Dalkey, fixing up a really nice little café for a couple from Cork. I hope it does well for them.’
‘Any work going?’ he asked.
‘Susan will need you in Howth next week. I think the client wants the place painted top to bottom. They’re still at the decision-making stage but give her a call.’
‘Will do,’ he said. ‘And you? Still avoiding your parents?’
‘As much as possible. I’ve seen Mum but I’m keeping clear of Dad for a while.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not ready.’
‘Are you angry?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want to punish him?’
‘No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. Mostly I just want to be left alone.’
‘And why wouldn’t you? People are bastards.’
They sat back and contemplated that fact.
‘Still, what a shock. It’s all so fucking shocking,’ he said, after a minute.
Harri took a large gulp of beer. ‘If I grew a mini-mickey I’d be less shocked,’ she said contemplatively, making her pal laugh.
‘Interesting,’ he mused, and was relieved that the pre-wedding Harri was making a return. Shock and grief had all but stolen her away and one month on he was really missing his friend. Harri was in freefall and it was hard to do anything but hold your hands out, yell and hope for the best while you were freefalling. Hitting the ground would hurt but he counted on her to do so running. Come back, Miss Harri, we miss you down here.
‘Aidan?’
‘What?’
‘I think I do want him to suffer.’
‘Your dad?’
‘Yeah – and Mum too.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘I feel sick about it.’
‘Don’t be. You can wallow a while longer but soon, my friend, you’ll have to change that gloomy tune and return to us the effervescent little do-gooder that you are.’
One beer later he was leaving to meet a friend for a pint. ‘What’s the point in getting a tan if you can’t go out and sicken a freckled white Paddy or two?’ he said. Then he kissed her cheek and headed for the door. ‘You’ll be all right. Everyone thinks George is the strong one, but they’re wrong.’
He had a point because the very next day she was on a plane heading to Italy to bring her battered brother home.
Susan cornered her in the office whenever she could. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sometimes it’s best to just let it all out.’
‘Sometimes it’s best not to.’
‘You’re having a really, really terrible time. First ending it with James and now this unbelievable revelation.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Of course you’re not. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do.’
‘You can shut up.’
‘Say no more,’ Susan said, and zipped her lip.
Melissa would phone five times a day. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Working.’
‘I hear noise.’
‘I’m in an antiques shop.’
‘Anything nice?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘I didn’t ask, smartarse!’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Any news?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to your parents for dinner any time soon?’
‘No.’
‘You have to go some time.’
‘So you’ve said.’
‘Well, I’m right.’
‘Is that it? Can I go now?’
‘Fine. Go.’
Two or three hours would pass.
Melissa again. ‘Jacob is being kicked out of his playschool for biting some kid with big ears.’
‘Oh, my God, what are you going to do?’
‘Sit him on the bold step, threaten his life and then find another nursery.’
‘Why did he bite the kid?’
‘Apparently it was a mission of mercy. He thought if he bit the tops off the kid would have normal-sized ears.’
Harri laughed.
‘It’s not funny.’
‘I know, I’m sorry.’ It bloody is funny.
‘I was in a meeting with a new client and now I’m on my way to collect him because fucking Gerry is too busy. And didn’t you know his job is far more important than mine?’
‘I wish I could help but I’m in a traffic jam on the M50.’
‘It’s fine. Don’t worry. So, have you spoken to your parents?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to?’
‘Not today.’
‘Right. I’ll call you later.’
Another few hours would pass.
‘Jacob and Gerry had a screaming match. I swear the man is as bad as the child. Jacob threw the tantrum to end all tantrums and eventually cried himself to sleep. Gerry’s in the bath in a sulk. They woke Carrie, who now thinks it’s first thing in the morning and wants to play. Don’t eat that, darling. No, darling. Please do not put that in your mouth. Just a second. Carrie, ta ta! Right, where was I?’
‘Jacob cried himself to sleep, Gerry’s in the bath and Carrie thinks it’s morning,’ Harri summarized.
‘I hate my life.’ Melissa sighed.
Harri laughed. ‘I’m watching my third CSI in a row and I saw this particular episode yesterday and possibly the day before too.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Have you talked to your parents?’
‘You’re relentless.’
When Harri returned from Italy with George in tow and summoned the courage to face her parents, it was a relief to all.
6 July 1975 – Sunday
I was sitting by the Eliana and just staring out to sea thinking about nothing. I didn’t notice HIM sit beside me. I suppose I was daydreaming and far away. It was early. Nine or maybe nine thirty. I felt his arm on my shoulders. I moved, but too slowly. He held me in place. He must have been out drinking all night. I could smell the drink on his breath and when he leaned in for a kiss I stamped on his foot. He cried out and let go a little. I ran. I could hear him shouting that I was waiting for him and I wanted it.
I don’t know how I didn’t see him. I don’t know how I managed to let him get so close. I don’t know if he was right. He was so drunk he couldn’t have been quiet in his approach – he would have been stumbling. And the smell of him alone! Where was I in my head that I didn’t see or hear? What’s wrong with me? I can’t tell Matthew because he’ll do something and then we’ll end up in trouble and it doesn’t make sense that HE can get away with it but he can. HE can do what he wants because he has a marriage licence and that’s a lice
nce to do anything. I didn’t want to come home so I walked and walked, past the castle and the Strand and on to the head and around by the lighthouses and down to the cliffs. I sat at the edge and I’m not saying I would ever kill myself but for the first time ever I thought how easy it would be. It was only fleeting and I could never leave Matthew, but that’s it. I realized that he is the only one I have to stay around for.
Coming back here was hard. Putting my key in the door and turning it was harder. I used to love this little house on Castle Street. I loved that we were in town and beside the pier. I loved my little room that looked on to Mam’s well-kept garden and the way the light streamed into the sitting room on a sunny day. I loved the smell of cooking that hit you the second you opened the door. Mam used to cook all the time. She would start the dinner at one to serve it at six. She loved to bake apple tarts, rhubarb tarts, fairy and queen cakes. She doesn’t do that any more. The house doesn’t smell of cooking any more. The sitting room seems duller, older, and tatty, even. The garden is overgrown and my room isn’t my room any more. He’s taken everything – and every day he makes me a little more scared.
13. It’s been a month but it feels like a year
The trip up the stairs to the study seemed to take longer than ever before. Three floors plus the converted attic made four flights, and the combination of expectation, fear, silence and creeping dread encouraged Harri to believe that she might never reach her destination. I might have a heart attack. I could easily have one – it’s beating too fast. Don’t panic, Harri. Don’t be My Left Foot about it and, for Christ’s sake, don’t die on the stairs. At the top, her father turned to her and took the key from his pocket.
Duncan had aged ten years in one month. When Harri had pulled up in her parents’ driveway she had found her father sitting on Nana’s bench, and when her eyes met his, the anger she had felt all but disappeared. He was old now, his face lined, his brow furrowed, and when he stood up, unsure and eyes watering, he seemed smaller. The hulking gravel-voiced hero of her youth had turned into a stranger. He was lonely, scared and at sea in uncharted waters. I know how that feels. Resentment trickled away and pity filled her. His head hung low, and although he met her eyes, the man she knew wasn’t looking back at her. She couldn’t bear his pain, so she smiled and hugging him tightly.
‘I just needed time, Dad.’
He wrapped his arms around her and, by Nana’s bench, her dad the warrior had cried for the love of his daughter Harri.
Gloria was waiting by the stove, having just checked on the shepherd’s pie. She was wringing her hands so that they wouldn’t flutter. ‘There you are, darling,’ she said, clearly happy that her daughter was arm in arm with her broken husband.
It seemed so odd that, in the Ryan household, it had been Gloria’s mental state that had long been cause for concern. Gloria had been upset by the events that had led them to this appalling place. She had worried for her daughter and son, for how the truth had affected them and how it would affect them in the future. She worried that she would lose them and specifically Harri. Will she run off now? Will she find a family somewhere else? Will she no longer need or want us? But deep down there was a calm she couldn’t explain. We’ll be okay. We have each other and we’ll be okay. She had felt sad and had cried because deeply buried memories had been exhumed: she had seen once more the face of the baby girl she had lost as vividly as though she was pictured on the wall before her. She recalled the contours of her little button nose and her discoloured rosebud lips. She had had floppy dark hair like her twin brother’s. Her nails were so long they needed cutting and the thumb on her left hand curled towards the palm while the fingers were stretched out. When Gloria had held her that one and only time thirty years before she had decided that her daughter might have been a concert pianist – her elegant fingers looked like those of a piano player. She knew, too, that she would have been athletic – as her twin had turned out to be. That night, when the doctor and nurses had all but pulled her little girl out of her arms, something inside her had broken. It had healed long ago, and although the scars remained, she had always known she would never break like that again.
Gloria had been the strong one and Duncan had fallen apart.
His kids hated him. He was full of regret, and for the first time self-doubt had seeped in, threatening to fill the unseen fissure that had begun to creep through him the day his lost daughter was born. Thirty years ago his wife had leaned on him and now he would lean on her.
‘You see? She’s texting,’ she had said, when his daughter couldn’t bring herself to talk to her father but still couldn’t be unkind enough to ignore him. ‘Don’t mind George – we both know he’s a selfish sod.’ She had smiled and squeezed his hand tight before pulling him out of his bed and into a standing position. ‘We’ve had thirty years to get used to this – surely you can give them thirty days.’
‘It’ll never be the same,’ he had mumbled, head in hands.
‘No, darling, it won’t,’ she had said, stroking his hair. ‘But that’s okay.’
He had kissed her hand. ‘What would I do without you, Glory?’
‘Well, darling, right now you’d probably lose ten pounds and smell.’
He had laughed.
‘Now get in the shower and I’ll make you a breakfast fit for a lord!’ She had left him to sit on the side of his bed but his mind was already elsewhere.
He was back in that Wicklow wood, pulling his brother’s coat away from a dead teenage girl’s face. His brother was standing beside him. ‘I knew her,’ he’d said. ‘I know her mother.’
‘Where’s the baby?’ Duncan had asked.
‘She’s with the local GP,’ Father Ryan replied, still staring at the dead girl.
‘She has a black eye,’ Duncan had said.
‘It’s not related.’
‘Have you contacted her family?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I want you to come back with me to the GP’s house,’ he had said. ‘Now and before it’s too late.’
Did we do the right thing? What did we do?
During the last month, Duncan reflected now, he had relied on his wife more than he would ever have thought possible. A change of balance had occurred in the Ryan household.
The key turned in the lock and the door swung open, revealing Harri’s dad’s office. It always looked the same, dark and dusty, even though Mrs Gallo cleaned it along with the rest of the house once a week on a Tuesday. The floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with endless books and papers gave the place its dusty feel and the dark wooden bookcases, floorboards and office furniture lent themselves to gloom, despite the large triangular roof window, which seemed to be designed to stream light into a corner of the room where a large locked cabinet stood. It held copies of all her father’s case files. It was the Ryan household’s Holy Grail.
Duncan switched on his desk lamp and slumped into his chair.
Harri sat opposite him.
He didn’t need to go to his cabinet: the file was in the drawer beside him. He opened it, pulled out a thick cream file and placed it on the desk before them. The edges were frayed and yellowing. He looked up at her. ‘Move around,’ he said, as though she was once more a child and he was about to read a story.
She pushed her chair around and sat next to her father. A moment or two passed while they settled themselves.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
He put his arm around her shoulders.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes, love.’
‘Why don’t you just tell me?’
He told her about the morning of 11 July 1976. He had just been escorted from the psychiatric wing of the hospital that temporarily housed his wife. She had been listless, medicated and a world away from him. He had attempted to discuss her depression with a doctor who didn’t seem famili
ar with her case. An argument had broken out and regrettably he had threatened to break the man’s nose.
‘It was a very stressful time,’ he remembered ruefully.
Nana had been charged with caring for George, who was ten weeks old and suffering from colic. ‘Poor Nana! We really landed her in it. George had lost his twin and his mother in a matter of moments.’ Duncan sighed. ‘And if I’m honest he had lost me too.’
Duncan had returned to work immediately, only taking two days off to attend his brother’s Mass for his dead daughter and to bury her.
One week later he took another day off to section his wife, but otherwise he worked longer hours than ever before. ‘It kept me going.’
Later that day he returned to the office – he was working on an arson case in West Dublin. A farmer had burned down a shed he couldn’t afford to fix in the hopes of an insurance payout. He had no idea that a drunk had taken refuge there and was fast asleep inside. ‘That fella did five years for that,’ he said. ‘We never did identify the corpse and nobody ever came looking.’
Harri felt sorry for the man who had burned to death and for the arsonist, who had become an unwilling murderer. ‘That’s awful,’ she said, and her dad couldn’t help but smile.
‘Don’t you take that home with you, Harri Ryan,’ he said, tipping the top of her head. ‘It was only an aside and not meant to upset you.’
‘I’m not sure I’ve room, Dad,’ she said.
‘I remember when you were twelve and you found a bird, almost dead, and took him home. You sang to it and it died in your hands.’
‘George says it was my singing that killed it.’
‘You cried for that bird. Such a big heart for such a little girl.’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘I am.’ He proceeded from where he’d left off.
He was back in July 1976 late one night, eating at his desk, which he was doing often at the time. The station was quiet so his feet were up and, exhausted, he fell asleep. The phone woke him.
The Truth Will Out Page 14