‘I love you so much, Maggie,’ Clementine said. ‘I can’t even put an amount on it or make a joke of it. And I’m so proud of you.’
‘Then we’re even. Because I’m proud of you and I love you too.’
They hugged for a long moment. Clementine was the one who eventually drew back, stroking her daughter’s hair. ‘And I’m sorry again about Gabriel.’
‘About me lying to you? I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said yes to Leo.’
‘Not that. You just seemed such a good match. Are you sure it’s not something you can work out?’
Maggie managed a laugh. ‘Explain to his girlfriend that he and I make a much better pair? I don’t think so. Besides, Miranda would kill me if I saw him again.’
‘Oh, don’t listen to her. Miranda’s just a drama queen.’ Clementine laughed at Maggie’s expression. ‘You think I don’t know my own sister? Of course she’s a drama queen. She always has been. She’s wonderful, but she needs constant melodrama to keep herself amused. And while we’re on the subject of my sisters, all of whom I promise you I do love dearly, I also know that Juliet mothers all of us too much. And yes, Eliza can be a dry old stick-in-the-mud and she terrifies the wits out of me sometimes as well.’
Maggie was laughing. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me those things before?’
‘I didn’t need to. You could see it for yourself, couldn’t you?’
Maggie nodded.
‘See, I don’t need to tell you everything.’
‘Just the big things. Like the truth about Sadie.’
‘Like Sadie.’ Clementine became serious. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry she’s not with us, and I’m sorry for not telling you.’
‘I am too.’
Clementine tucked Maggie’s hair over her ears. ‘I’m sorry most of all that I wasn’t the perfect mother to you. I’m not making excuses; I won’t say that I should be let off lightly because I don’t remember my own mother very well, even if I wish I could. But if you ever felt that you came second to my work, I need you to know that you didn’t.’
‘You’ve been the perfect mother for me. The best mother I could have had. And I should know, because I had five of you to choose from.’
This time it was Maggie who wiped away Clementine’s tears.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Throughout the six-hour flight from Ireland to New York, Maggie didn’t watch a film, read a newspaper or look at a magazine. She had her thoughts to keep her occupied.
She thought about her final day in the Donegal house. They had woken to find the weather had changed, the blue skies grey and rain thundering down. They lit the fire, pulled the curtains and played board games all day. They didn’t worry about cooking dinner. Miranda announced she’d got the hang of ‘this catering lark’ as she called it. She heated four frozen pizzas and opened two even more expensive bottles of Italian wine. For dessert, they ate nearly all of the chocolate that Maggie had sent Leo for his July Christmas present. They tried to cheat each other at the games, laughed a lot and drank too much, as the rain pelted against the windows and the wind howled outside.
The weather was still stormy the next day as they cleaned, washed and dried the linen and prepared the house for the next lot of holiday tenants. They stood outside afterwards, their cars packed, looking back at the house.
‘I wonder how long until we’re all here together again,’ Clementine said.
‘Next July, of course.’ Leo sounded surprised at her question.
‘But I won’t be able to come, Leo,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in Antarctica next July.’
‘Well, if she’s not coming, I’m not coming,’ Miranda said. ‘She’s the only one that keeps me sane.’
‘And if they’re not coming, I’m not coming,’ Maggie added.
Leo looked back and forth between them. ‘Well, if you’re all not coming, I’m not coming either.’
‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’ Miranda laughed, moving towards her car. ‘You know full well you’ll conjure up some trick to get us all here. A polar ice melt, for example, so Clementine has no choice but to leave the Antarctic and fly to Donegal.’
‘And if she comes, I’ll come,’ Maggie said.
Miranda grinned. ‘And if they both come, I’ll come.’
‘We don’t have to decide now,’ Leo said. ‘Besides, you all know I’d never make you do anything you didn’t want to do.’ He looked at them. ‘Why are you laughing? What’s so funny?’
The car journey from Donegal was followed by four sets of farewells at the airport in Belfast. Leo was going to London. He was hatching an idea for a new invention, he told them. He wanted to investigate a few museums for designs. Talk to a few people in the field. He wouldn’t tell them what it was.
‘Not the camera idea, I hope?’ Miranda asked.
He put his hands over his ears. ‘Don’t remind me. Haven’t I suffered enough humiliation already?’
Miranda was flying back to Greece. Another group of her friends had arrived at the villa. There was possibly a yacht involved. A week cruising in the Mediterranean was just what she needed to recover from the trauma of a family holiday, she told them.
Clementine was flying back to Tasmania. Before she left, she made Maggie promise her something. ‘If you want to come home to Hobart, and if you want your mother to be there to wait on you hand and foot, you only have to ask. My penguins have been there for hundreds of years and they’ll be there for hundreds of years yet.’
‘I thought they might not be. Isn’t that the whole point of your research, to find out if they’re becoming extinct?’
Clementine had just smiled. ‘I mean it, Maggie. In fact, you don’t even have to ask. I can tell you now my answer would be yes.’
Maggie was giving it serious thought. It would be such a contrast, to go from the crowds, smog, humidity and intensity of New York to the clean air, mountains, water and space of Hobart. She could go bushwalking. She could read all the books she hadn’t had time to read for years. She could see her schoolfriends. Or she could do nothing but laze around with Clementine. The last thing sounded the most attractive of all.
She did her best to distract herself with thoughts of family and Hobart, but it didn’t work for long. She kept coming back to one subject. One person. Gabriel. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about him.
Why hadn’t he ever mentioned his girlfriend? Why had he asked her when she was coming back to New York? And why had he kissed her that day by the lake? She kept remembering something he’d said during the confrontation with Miranda: ‘I was actually hoping to keep you both going.’ Could he have meant that? Did he seriously think that she – or this Susanna – would consider such an arrangement? Or did he just want to see her out of politeness? To apologise some more? It had to be that. He would think it only good manners to ring her and arrange to have a coffee together after all that had happened between them. A coffee would be nice, she thought.
No, it wouldn’t be nice. It would be terrible. Too hard. She didn’t want to see him for a quick cup of coffee knowing that he would probably be going on to meet Susanna. She didn’t want to meet him knowing he had probably just come back from seeing Susanna. She didn’t want to meet Susanna. She didn’t want to see Susanna and Gabriel together. She also decided that Susanna was a silly name.
She could always ring him first, she realised. Set the tone. Call him a day or two after she got back. She’d have to call him at the Rent-a-Grandchild Agency, she realised. She didn’t have his home number. Even better. Less personal. She’d ring and leave a message at the agency to say she was back, that she hoped he was well and that perhaps they’d catch up for a coffee some time. Perfect. Nice and casual.
She didn’t fool herself for a moment. She couldn’t ring him. She couldn’t go back to being just an acquaintance, just a friend, not feeling the way she felt about him. She would have to stay away from him. Stay away from him and Susanna. Leave the two of them to live happily ever after. Whi
le she did what? Stayed in New York for a few more months? Returned to London? Moved back to Hobart? See? she told herself firmly. She had plenty of options. Gabriel didn’t need to feature in any of them.
The sun was just setting as she stepped out of JFK Airport and joined the cab rank. She felt the humidity immediately, smelt the pollution and saw the haze of smog hanging over the city. As her cab drew closer to Manhattan, she found herself looking at the buildings in a different way. The last time she’d taken this cab ride she’d come from London, distressed, uncertain and scared. This time was different. She knew she had changed. She knew more about her family than she had ever imagined knowing. She also knew New York better too. Only tiny pockets of it: her area of Greenwich Village, Dolly’s area, and Central Park. But she’d had experiences there that no one else in this city of eight million people had had. Maybe she had noticed things that no one else had noticed. She could leave right now – go straight back to the airport – and the city wouldn’t even feel her absence. But she knew the memories would stay with her.
Ray the doorman greeted her as if she’d been gone for years, not less than a week. He asked after Leo. He was delighted with the can of shamrock-shaped chocolates she’d brought back for him.
Nothing had changed on the sixth floor. There was still the faint smell of cooking oil in the corridor. She heard the sound of the TV from the neighbour that she never saw. Everything inside her apartment was exactly as she had left it.
She unpacked. She showered. She wasn’t tired enough to go to bed. She sat out on the balcony, breathed in the humid air and listened to the sounds of late summer. She looked down at the garden below, noticing the faint tinge of autumnal yellow and orange beginning to appear on the trees. She decided to count them. It might make her feel better. It took her less than a minute. Forty-five. She counted them again.
She was counting them for the third time when the sound of the buzzer made her jump. It was Ray.
‘Hi, Maggie. That boy named Sue is here again.’ She heard Ray talk to someone, then a quick burst of laughter. ‘My little joke. I mean Gabriel.’
‘Gabriel? Gabriel’s downstairs?’
‘I told him you’ve only just arrived back. Want me to tell him to call by again later?’
She stood up. ‘No. No, I’ll be right down.’
She told herself it was the jet lag that was making her hands shake as she quickly changed into her favourite dress. She told herself it was only the humidity that had brought the sudden colour to her cheeks as she checked her appearance in the bathroom mirror. The lift seemed to take an hour to go down the six floors. She said the numbers aloud as each one was illuminated. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. It calmed her down, just a little. She nearly made it go up again so she could do some more counting.
He was waiting in the same spot he’d been waiting the first night she met him. He was watching the lift this time too. He was smiling. She wanted to smile back at him. She wanted to go over and hug him. She made herself be serious. She thought of Miranda’s advice. Be dignified.
‘Gabriel.’ She was almost funereal.
‘Welcome home, Maggie.’
She joined him at the window seat. So far, so good. She was cool, calm and collected. All those ‘c’s. Dolly would be proud of her.
‘How did you know I’d be here? I’m just in from the airport.’
‘I was up cleaning the windows of the Rockefeller Center and I saw your plane come in.’ He smiled. ‘I rang Leo and got your flight details. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there at the airport to meet you. I got called in at the last minute to do some dog-walking. I’m not too early, am I? I gave you a few hours to clear immigration, wait in the cab line, get stuck in traffic, try and find your key, get inside, put down your bags, and then I gave you an extra five minutes, just in case. Do you want me to go and walk around the block a few times?’
She was confused. Why was he talking in this normal kind of way? She thought of Miranda again. She knew her aunt would urge her to cut to the chase. ‘Gabriel, why are you here?’
‘To see you.’
‘But why?’
He seemed puzzled by her question. ‘Why do you think?’
‘I thought you’d be with Susanna.’
‘Susanna? Oh yes, Susanna.’ He smiled. ‘You should have heard the fight we had when I got back from Ireland, Maggie. She was furious with me. Threw everything of mine that was in her apartment out onto the street. Broke all my CDs. Smashed my guitar in two.’
‘She did?’ He seemed to think it was funny. ‘But you made up afterwards? After the fight?’
‘Oh, of course. She’s great like that. Hot-tempered, but it passes in an instant. I think it’s the Latin blood in her. Or is it Spanish blood? One of the two, anyway.’
Latin or Spanish, Maggie thought. She’d be beautiful as well as fiery, then.
‘I just wish she’d rung a day later, as we’d arranged,’ Gabriel said. ‘She told me she messed up the time zones. She thought Ireland was behind New York, not ahead of it. But I suppose it worked out well enough, didn’t it? I was able to go to the airport with Juliet, Myles and Eliza. Not that they spoke to me. You will tell them the truth, Maggie, won’t you? I was going to, but I didn’t know how much longer we needed to keep it up.’
Maggie stared at him. If this was jet lag, it was the strongest dose of it she’d ever had. ‘Gabriel, I’m sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.’
‘I’m so sorry. I forgot you’re just off a long flight. Why don’t we go outside and I’ll fill you in on the whole story?’
They walked through to the communal garden, taking a seat at a bench just inside the doorway. The air was warm and the sky hazy. They sat side by side.
Gabriel began. ‘Let me start at the beginning. We’d been in Dublin, and then we drove back to Donegal —’
She knew that much. ‘And then we got back to the house and everyone was sitting —’
He interrupted. ‘You missed out something.’
‘I did?’
‘When I finally got to kiss you. After wanting to kiss you since the first night I met you.’
She wished he hadn’t reminded her about that. She ignored it and continued. ‘And then we got back to the house and Miranda told us that your girlfriend had just rung.’
‘And you reacted perfectly. Especially the slap across the face. Well done.’
Well done? Was he being sarcastic? ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hit you.’
‘Don’t be sorry. It was the perfect touch. Even if we’d rehearsed it, I wouldn’t have thought to ask you to do it.’
‘The perfect touch?’ How could he be so light-hearted about this?
‘Even Leo looked shocked and he knew it was all make-believe. Maggie, I’m so sorry. I should have asked you before now. Did you get to talk to Leo about Sadie? About the diaries?’
She explained what had happened and answered his questions. She couldn’t understand why he was so interested. The job was over, after all.
‘And he was okay? He wasn’t upset?’
‘No, he was actually more upset by what happened later.’ She told him about Leo’s idea for a new camera and how he had somehow erased the film and replaced it with footage of floorboards.
Gabriel’s attention was instantly captured by the camera idea. ‘A swivelling tripod? That’s ingenious. What was he going to do with the connecting wires, though? That would be the tricky part —’
She needed to bring this strange meeting to an end. ‘Gabriel, why are you really here?’
‘I thought you might like to go out to dinner. I didn’t like to think of you in your apartment on your own, not after the week you’ve had. There’s a great Vietnamese restaurant a few streets from here. We could sit outside. I think you’d like it.’
‘Susanna doesn’t mind?’
He smiled. ‘Oh, she’s furious, but I told her she’ll just have to get used to you being around as well.’
&
nbsp; ‘I don’t think that’s very funny.’
Gabriel stopped smiling then. He stared at her as if he’d just realised something. ‘Maggie, do you think there really is a Susanna?’
‘Isn’t there?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘You don’t have a girlfriend called Susanna?’
‘Of course I don’t. Do you think I’d be kissing you if I had another girlfriend?’
‘Some men would.’
‘I’m not some men, Maggie.’
‘But what about that phone call? All the things you said in the house about her?’
‘My roommate’s sister Gina made the phone call. I asked her. Don’t you remember? I told you in Dublin I’d organised a way to end it, to make it easier for you in front of your family.’
‘You didn’t say anything about a girlfriend.’
‘I didn’t know that’s what it was going to be. I asked Gina to ring and say there was a crisis back here. She got carried away with the girlfriend story herself. So I made it up as I went along too. I can’t even remember what I said.’
‘You said you were hoping to keep us both going. Susanna and I.’
‘I did?’ He fought a smile. ‘No wonder you slapped me. But that probably worked in our favour too, because you looked genuinely shocked, as if I really was two-timing —’ He stopped there. His expression changed, as if he had just realised something else. ‘Is that why you slapped me? Because you actually believed that I had a girlfriend here in New York?’
She nodded.
‘Can I therefore assume that you weren’t happy about that?’
She nodded again. She could have pretended. She could have told him she’d been feeling shocked after all that had happened with Sadie. That the slap had been a reaction to all of that. She didn’t want to lie. She wanted him to know the truth. ‘I didn’t want you to have another girlfriend.’
‘Why not?’
‘I wanted to be your only girlfriend. Your only real girlfriend.’
‘You wanted? Past tense?’
‘Want. Present tense.’
He nodded. His face was solemn. ‘I see. So if that was the case – if you were my girlfriend – that would mean I would have to be your boyfriend. Is that right?’
Those Faraday Girls Page 54