The Secrets of Primrose Square

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ Josh said, just as Melissa caught his eye.

  He’s in bits, she thought. He looks just as upset as we do. For a split second, somehow, she blanked out the horrible pain that was cutting her like a knife and, instead, she was left feeling puzzled.

  Don’t do drugs, her parents were always telling her. Just say no. Never get involved with anyone who’s trying to get you to try out some cool new drug, even if everyone else you know is doing it – just come to us instead.

  And above all, her mum was always saying, you must have absolutely nothing to do with Josh Andrews or anyone who knows him. If Ella had only stayed away from him, she might still be alive today.

  ‘But I don’t understand!’ Melissa kept wanting to say, only no one was listening to her. ‘Ella was smart and sassy and she never did stupid things. Why did this happen to her?’

  But no one, not even her parents, would give her a proper, grown-up answer. ‘Melissa’s just a child,’ everyone kept saying, ‘we have to protect her.’

  ‘Ella made a terrible mistake,’ her Auntie Betty told her. ‘She fell in with that eejit Josh Andrews and that awful gang of his. They were the ones who did this to her and look at the price the poor girl paid! So you have to promise always to be a good girl for your mum and dad. They’re broken-hearted and you’re all they have now.’

  But what on earth had Josh done to make her mum hate him so much? Was he really responsible for what happened to Ella?

  I know Mum and Dad are only trying to protect me, Melissa thought sadly, but don’t they realise that I’d much prefer it if they told me the truth?

  DUBLIN AIRPORT

  As Nancy and Melissa talked on the sofa, a portly, fifty-something businessman was striding through Arrivals at Dublin Airport’s busy Terminal Two. His flight had been delayed on the transfer from Abu Dhabi and he was feeling exhausted, grumpy and jetlagged.

  First-class service on long-haul routes, this gentleman thought sniffily, simply wasn’t what it used to be. Time was it used to be quite a chic affair, with a welcoming glass of champagne and a soothing, cold towel to cool down with on boarding. The in-flight menu would be the kind of cuisine you’d expect at one of the Michelin-starred restaurants this gentleman so regularly entertained clients in. All on expenses, naturally.

  But lately, he had noticed an alarming number of what could only be described as ‘the backpacker brigade’ disturbing the haven of his first-class cabin and behaving like a bunch of lager louts en route to some kind of stag do. Not only that, but there had been a marked rise in the number of small children travelling in first class too, whose parents seemed to think it the air crew’s sole responsibility to babysit for the duration of the nine-hour journey.

  He himself had needed to catch up on work during the flight, before the markets in Tokyo closed trading for the day, but how the hell was he supposed to concentrate with toddlers screaming raucously, running up and down the aisles and banging off his seat?

  It was an utter disgrace, this particular gentleman thought, collecting his neat, black leather suit bag and matching case from the luggage carousel. When his own children were small, he would never have dreamt of inflicting them on other first- class travellers. No one paying premium prices to sit up front undisturbed deserved to have that inflicted on them. Instead, his own children travelled in economy with their mother, naturally, while he sat up in first, able to focus on his work undistracted.

  Mind you, Ingrid had made such a fuss about this during their divorce, and had the cheek to cite this as an example of his so-called meanness. What kind of man, she’d asked, via the plethora of lawyers she’d gone through, travels in first class and lumps his wife and family back into steerage?

  But I have to work, had been his response, again, via the medium of a bloody extortionate solicitor, who’d charged thousands for the privilege of writing a letter, when a simple text message between the warring couple would have served perfectly well. You know how demanding my job is, he’d stressed. And you certainly never complained when you were enjoying the lifestyle of a pampered, corporate wife all those years, did you?

  But you barely know your own children, had been Ingrid’s tart comeback. They’re grown adults now and you have virtually no relationship with either of them. Utter nonsense, he thought. Hadn’t he paid upfront Junior’s college fees? Hadn’t he bought him a brand new car for his twenty-first birthday? Hadn’t he bailed his son out of just about every entrepreneurial start-up he’d tried and failed at? And now that Charlotte was getting married, she’d doubtless come banging on his door in the full expectation that he’d fork out for the lavish wedding she was planning.

  It’s not about money, Ingrid had retorted. That’s the mistake you’ve made throughout your whole life and it’ll be the rock you perish on when you live out your days alone. Mark my words, that’s the road you’re headed down and it’s a lonely, miserable one if you’ve no family to share it with.

  Delightful, he’d thought then, and continued to think now. Hell hath no fury, etc.

  Ingrid. Now that he was back in Ireland, his thoughts filtered back to her. She’d bought herself a mews house in upmarket Foxrock since the divorce, with his money, of course, but apparently she was thriving and happy in her new life without him. At least, that’s what his son and daughter had told him the last time he’d seen them, which seemed like almost a year ago now. Since long before this last business trip, which had extended far longer than he’d intended.

  ‘Welcome back to Ireland, sir,’ said the friendly Garda at passport control. ‘Bet it feels good to be home, doesn’t it?’

  Did it feel good to be back, this gentleman asked himself, thanking the guard and putting his passport carefully back into his jacket pocket as he made his way out of the arrivals hall and on towards the taxi rank. Would anyone actually be glad now that he was back? Happy to see him, even? I doubt it very much, he thought, walking past a few little kids waiting at arrivals with a big banner that read, ‘Welcome Home, Dad! We Missed You!’

  What must it feel like, he wondered, to come through the arrivals hall and see a huge big banner with your name on it, written by your kids for no other reason than that they loved you and had driven all the way out to the airport to greet you?

  How would I possibly know? he shrugged.

  Anyway, this brief little Dublin stopover was just a flying visit, nothing more. He wouldn’t have time for any of his golfing buddies, and would be hard pressed to squeeze in what was laughably called ‘quality time’ with either Junior or Charlotte during his brief stay. Junior had long since made it perfectly clear that his loyalties lay with his mother and, on the rare occasions when the two of them did meet up, he more or less ignored his father and spent most of his time glued to his phone.

  And Charlotte? All she could chat about these days was her upcoming wedding, and frankly it was starting to give him a headache. Three thousand euros just for bridesmaids’ flowers? Did she honestly think that he’d just pay up, shut up and have done with it? If so, she most certainly had another think coming.

  He had a busy few days ahead of him, with conference calls from the Dublin offices, and the last thing he needed were family headaches. Then, by the end of the week, he’d be off on another work trip, this time jetting to New York to crack the whip at his US office.

  But right now it was late, he was bone-tired, and frankly, all he wanted to do was crawl back to the pied à terre he’d bought before he went away, run a hot bath, then catch up on the day’s closing figures with a comforting glass of whiskey before bed.

  ‘Where to?’ the taxi driver asked him, obligingly loading up the boot with the luggage.

  ‘City centre, please,’ the gentleman answered, climbing into the back seat in the hope that would discourage all conversation. Nothing worse than a chatty Dublin taxi driver when you were exhausted after a trip, and all they wanted to yak on about was the latest results from the Premiership.

  ‘Yea
h, but whereabouts in the city centre?’ asked the driver. ‘I need an address for me sat-nav.’

  ‘Primrose Square,’ he answered curtly. ‘Number twenty-four Primrose Square, please.’

  Nancy

  24 PRIMROSE SQUARE

  ‘Would you like to see a photo of Ella?’ Melissa asked, and of course Nancy automatically said yes, she’d love to. Because sitting there, on Sam Williams’ plush leather sofa, it really felt like a privilege to hear Melissa slowly open up to her.

  ‘I always carry Ella’s phone with me everywhere I go,’ Melissa said, taking out an iPhone and scrolling down through it till she found just what she was looking for. ‘So I can look at all her photos, that’s all. I’ve backed them all up,’ she went on, ‘and I’ll never, ever delete them. This is Ella . . . look! Doesn’t she look funny?’

  She shoved the phone under Nancy’s nose and there, right enough, was a photo of a teenage girl of about sixteen standing at a kitchen table, painting a placard with bright pink paint that said, ‘HANDS OFF MY OVARIES!’ In the photo, Ella had somehow managed to get most of the paint on herself and it was everywhere: in her hair, on her face, and all over the denim dungarees she was wearing. But she was roaring with laughter, throwing her head back and guffawing right into the camera.

  ‘It’s a glorious shot,’ Nancy told Melissa, as she looked fondly down at the photo. ‘Ella looks so vibrant. I swear, I can almost hear her laughing from here.’

  ‘She was on her way to a rally in town that day,’ Melissa explained, ‘to repeal the Eighth Amendment. She wanted to take me along with her, but Mum said I wasn’t old enough. I hadn’t a clue what the Eighth Amendment even meant, but Ella explained it all to me. Ella was so great like that – she never treated me like a child, she never talked down to me. She told me that it was about abortion rights and that it was a woman’s right to choose.’

  ‘Ella sounds like such a fighter,’ Nancy said, as Melissa smiled in agreement.

  ‘Oh, you’ve no idea! Look – here she is out on Primrose Square, when she was meant to be studying, but she was really sunbathing instead.’

  Another photo was shoved under Nancy’s nose, this time of Ella stretched out on the square, all long limbs and shorts, with cropped strawberry blonde hair that looked like she’d taken scissors to it herself, and wearing a black T-shirt that said ‘Fuck the Patriarchy’. There was even a copy of The Female Eunuch lying on the ground beside her, which made Nancy smile.

  ‘Ella looks so cool,’ she said to Melissa, who nodded along. ‘She looks like the kind of girl you’d want to be your friend.’

  ‘She really was,’ said Melissa sadly. ‘I never used to have girlie conversations with Ella, like about hair or clothes or make-up, the way my pal Hayley has with her older sisters. But Ella would talk to me for ages about what was happening in North Korea or else about how women had no rights under the Taliban. She cared about things like that so much, she really did.’

  ‘She was politically motivated,’ Nancy said. ‘I love it.’

  ‘Hanging out with her was my favourite thing ever.’ Melissa beamed, looking happy just to be able to talk about her sister and resuscitate happy memories. ‘Even sitting in the back of the car with Ella on a long journey always felt like an adventure.’

  Nancy noticed her pal glowing a bit, remembering.

  ‘You must miss her so much,’ she said, after a brief pause.

  At that, Melissa’s pale, serious little face screwed up.

  ‘Well, the thing is . . . I miss the old Ella,’ she eventually said, hugging a cushion close to her. ‘I miss that Ella every single day. The big sister who’d scream at the TV every time Donald Trump came on, or who’d lecture me about why Starbucks was all well and good, but that it was a global corporation, so we needed to support small, independent coffee shops to keep them in business. That’s the Ella I like to remember whenever I’m a bit sad.’

  ‘Why do you say “the old Ella”?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘Because she changed.’ Melissa frowned, playing distractedly with a strand of her hair. ‘Everyone said so. In the last year of her life, she got . . . different, somehow, if that makes sense. Mum and Dad were both so worried about her. That’s around the same time she started, to fall in with Josh Andrews and his gang, so Mum blamed him for what happened. She still does – every single day.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying,’ Nancy began, picking and choosing her words very, very carefully, ‘Ella sounds like a very special girl. Conscientious and driven, and just one of life’s good people. But the way you describe Josh . . . well, he sounds more the laddish type, doesn’t he?’

  Melissa nodded quietly and stared into the fireplace, but said nothing.

  ‘So what I’m trying to say is that someone like Ella and Josh Andrews seem like the unlikeliest of friends. Don’t they?’

  Nancy broke off as a text pinged through from her own phone, which she completely ignored.

  ‘I know,’ Melissa said. ‘That’s what I thought too. I mean, that’s what surprised everyone so much.’

  ‘Josh sounds so sporty and rugby-obsessed,’ Nancy went on, ‘and that doesn’t quite fit with the picture I have of Ella as this fearless, brave, warrior princess.’

  ‘It was all because of the school social science club,’ Melissa said, hugging the overstuffed cushion even closer to her, and looking so little, Nancy had the strongest maternal urge to keep her there forever.

  ‘Social science?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Ella was auditor of the social science club and she took it really seriously. Just like she took everything seriously.’

  ‘And I’m guessing that Josh joined up too, and that’s how they became friends in the first place?’

  ‘Well, he was made to do it, apparently. His grades were really low, but you got extra credits if you volunteered to help out with a charity. And at the time, Ella was working on a project to help the homeless. She couldn’t believe it when Josh turned up at one of their meetings – they’d next to nothing in common and she didn’t know what to do with him in the beginning. But then she changed her mind.’

  ‘Why was that, would you say?’

  ‘Well, back then, Ella was organising this big charity drive where volunteers from her class would spend a night on the streets and get sponsorship money to do it. It was coming up to Christmas and they were hoping to make lots of money for Help the Homeless. I remember Ella saying that at least Josh would be useful there. “He’s so physically big and intimidating,” she told me, “if any druggies come threatening us, then at least he’ll be useful for protection”.’

  ‘If you’re going to spend a night on the street,’ Nancy said wisely, ‘then no harm to do it with a strapping six-footer close to hand.’

  Annoyingly, her phone pinged again with another text message, which yet again, Nancy ignored.

  ‘Do you need to get that?’ Melissa asked her. ‘It could be important. It might be work?’

  ‘You’re far more important to me than any annoying text messages,’ Nancy replied firmly. ‘So go on, love. I’m guessing that once Josh got involved with the social science club, he and Ella became buddies?’

  ‘Me and my mum thought maybe he might be her boyfriend in the beginning. Turned out we were both wrong, though. Ella and Josh started spending so much time together that my mum asked her if there was something going on. But Ella just snapped at both of us and told us to mind our own beeswax.’

  ‘I see.’ Nancy nodded along.

  ‘Except Ella used ruder words than that. And the f-word too. A lot.’

  ‘Oh-kaaay.’

  ‘Mum used to go bananas whenever Ella used the f-word, but she still did it anyway.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘But then, out of nowhere . . . ’

  Melissa broke off there, though, as, infuriatingly, yet another text pinged through on Nancy’s phone.

  ‘Right, that’s it, I’m turning the bloody thing o
ff,’ she said, picking up the phone from where she’d left it on the coffee table between them. Automatically, she went to punch in her password and realised that all the missed texts were from Sam. Again. She was just switching her phone off when she caught a glimpse of one of them.

  Hello from Shanghai, where it’s the wee small hours of the morning and I can’t sleep. Any chance you’re awake back in Dublin and fancy a chat? Am feeling jetlagged. Lonely. Plus now that I’ve got the idea you and me might meet up for dinner when I’m home, I can’t get it out of my head.

  ‘Him again?’ Melissa asked, looking up at Nancy with big round eyes. ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yes, but this time the phone stays off,’ she replied. ‘Sorry for all the interruptions – please go on with your story.’

  ‘Gosh, he’s a bit keen, isn’t he?’ Melissa said, just as the front doorbell rang. For a second, they looked blankly at each other.

  ‘Who could that be?’ Nancy asked. ‘We didn’t order any more food, did we?’

  ‘No,’ said Melissa, getting to her feet. ‘Unless it’s Jayne, come to collect me?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Nancy said. ‘I’m enjoying our chat so much.’

  She headed out into the tiny hallway, with Melissa hot on her heels, but just as she switched on the lights, she heard the scratchy, metallic sound of someone trying to put a key into the lock. Then whoever was outside tried twisting the door handle over and over, but they still couldn’t get in. More fumbling about with the key from the outside, but it was no use. Whoever this was, their key wouldn’t work. Someone with the wrong address, Nancy wondered?

  ‘Who’s there?’ she called through the door, fumbling around the hall table for her own key. ‘Who is it?’

  No answer, though, and this time whoever was outside began to push heavily against the door and hammer against it, almost like they were trying to force it open.