Andy smiled. ‘That’s brave of you, Bronte. You must have gone through hell that night.’
‘You can’t know how much hell. It was—’ I stuttered to a halt.
‘I think I do know. I was there that night.’
‘You were?’ I tried to place him in the scenes of mayhem. Had he been one of the innocents, caught up in a maelstrom of someone else’s making and suckered into a role as pawn in a violent game, or one of the sinister, black-clad agitators with chaos in their minds and anarchy in their dark hearts?
‘Yes. I was up here protesting at the G8 last summer.’ He gave me a sidelong smile. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t be? You know I don’t believe in violence, but you also know I have to make my voice heard, and there was no better chance to speak directly to the leaders. That was the plan. So, yes. I was in St Andrew Square the night they tried to burn down the Caledonian Bank.’
His voice dropped to a whisper. Again, I heard the shouts of the crowd, the wail of the sirens, the scream of the injured, but this time it was different. I didn’t hear them alone.
‘I have to leave, Andy. I’ll resign. If I keep losing my nerve like this, I can’t do the job as well as you want me to.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He reproduced his broad, all-inclusive smile. ‘Of course you can’t resign. We depend on you too much. I can’t make this right for you, Bronte. No-one can do that. I can’t change the way you feel, but now that I understand it, I can do something about it. Shall I tell you what it is?’
‘Yes,’ I said, to put a stop to the theatrical pause.
‘I’m going to put my trust in you to do your job. Eventually, you’ll be able to put yours in me, and the beneficiaries will be all the people we’re trying to help. It won’t happen immediately, but we’ll get there.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s ten past four. Nip off early and have a good cry, or a gin and tonic, or whatever gets you through, and we’ll start again in the morning.’
*
As I approached my flat, I was still thinking about Andy, and about Eden, and about how one day I might learn to trust again. There was a thin blonde girl sitting on the wall of my front garden, staring into nowhere. When she realised I was turning up the path, she jumped up, as though she were trespassing, and scuttled off along the street in embarrassment, as if it mattered.
People, I thought, with more weariness than I liked to admit, could be very strange indeed.
Chapter 20
My mother had let me down.
I knew it the moment I walked into the house and she called out the briefest of greetings from the steaming depths of the kitchen, instead of erupting from its heat to wrap me in a welcoming hug. And I understood the full extent of that betrayal when Eilidh, my sister, smirked at me from the sofa where she sat too close to her fiancé for respectability. Unable or unwilling to broach the subject with my father, my mum must have confided in Eilidh instead.
‘Anything exciting happened to you this week, Bron?’ Eilidh nudged Joe in the ribs, her exaggerated wink implying a shared secret. ‘Anything you want to tell us?’
A rattle of glasses stopped her, and she and Joe broke apart. When Dad came in to distribute the pre-lunch drinks, they were sitting with a respectable six inches between them, and she’d recaptured her expression of innocence.
Dad knew nothing. That much was obvious, from the lack of suspicion in the smile he twinkled towards me. I lifted a glass from the tray and managed a smile that belied my sinking heart. ‘Nothing you don’t already know.’
She raised an eyebrow at me, and I looked away in the direction of my younger brothers, Liam and Finlay, who sprawled on the rug. They, thank heavens, showed no sign of being in on the secret, too busy shoving one another like a pair of six-year-olds. I would be patient. I would have to be. The stakes were too high.
Conversation moved smoothly over the pre-lunch glass of wine until Mum, unable to keep herself out of my presence any longer, bustled us all to the table. We assumed our usual places at the long table — my father at one end, my mother at the other. I sat, as always, next to Dad, with Eilidh on his other side. Joe, next to me, had the opportunity both to gaze at his gorgeous fiancée and, if he was feeling daring, risk a sly game of footsie with her. Liam and Finlay filled the gaps on either side of my mother. My other sister, Catriona, had made good her escape and was suffering Sunday lunch with her in-laws.
Well, she was going to miss a show, and no mistake.
‘Sorry. I’m running a bit behind.’ Mum looked pink and harassed, avoiding my eye. ‘Sean, do you want to carve?’
Dad always carved. Even he raised an eyebrow at so obvious a question.
Eilidh, passing me a plate with a healthy portion of vegetable tart, gave me a malicious look as we waited for Dad to carve the chicken. How long would it be before she couldn’t keep the secret to herself? I didn’t give it long — probably until the first opportunity offered by one of my brothers, the next in the family tradition of jokes about my single status. In the meantime, I waited, and she waited, watching me as the clock ticked.
The only devout one left in the family now that the rest of us had lapsed around her, one by one in age order, my mother dipped her head in a silent grace while the rest of us circulated the vegetables and the gravy and waited for my father to speak. He spooned a couple of potatoes onto his place and passed the dish to Eilidh, casting his eye around the table and deciding where to begin.
‘Joe.’ He controlled the conversation, as he controlled everything else in his household. ‘Work going well?’
Joe was an arts and antiquities dealer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Victorian painters — a fact which left my parents, neither of whom had been to university, somewhat in awe. ‘Pretty well. I made a couple of good sales this week.’ That was how you impressed my family — with success. ‘That’s a bit more in the kitty for the honeymoon.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ll be telling us where you’re going?’ My mother, this time, her voice pitched perceptibly higher than normal.
I’d been keeping my eyes on my plate like a novice nun in a Trappist foundation, but I sensed Eilidh’s eyes on me at the mention of the honeymoon, and allowed myself to scowl a warning at her.
‘Oh, I’ll be keeping that a secret.’ Joe, who always knew more than he let on, kicked Eilidh under the table, at the same time managing to turn all his charm on my mother. ‘I might whisper it in your ear, Margaret, when no-one’s listening. It can be a secret between us. But you have to promise not to tell.’
Normally a sucker for Joe’s charm, Mum looked perilously uncomfortable under the threat of such a confidence. She couldn’t be enjoying the burden of my secret, and was surely dreading the inevitable revelation. ‘It’s probably best not to tell anyone anything, Joe.’
‘Certainly best to say nothing about weddings,’ joined in Finlay from my right. ‘You don’t want poor old Bronte getting jealous.’
Here we go. I sliced a thin sliver off the edge of the tartlet and lifted it to my mouth, tilting my head towards him and trying to gauge how he might react to the impending shock. Fin and I got on well; he the younger son, and I the youngest daughter. Once upon a time, I’d have trusted him without a second thought, but I’d never before had a secret as important, as potentially disastrous, as Marcus. And the older both my brothers grew, the more they took on the sense of entitlement that my chauvinistic father bestowed upon them. This time, all Fin offered me was a roguish grin, bereft of any comfort. He wouldn’t stand up for me in this company. Nor would Liam.
I didn’t need them to. I could stand up for myself.
Liam, the other half of the double act, didn’t disappoint, trotting out his best Basil Fawlty impression. ‘Don’t mention the war, Fin. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.’
Eilidh’s wedding was too serious a matter to allow her to joke, let alone permit anyone else to laugh at it. ‘Don’t call it a war. I’ve told you. It’s not funny.’
�
�Scared Joe will run off?’
‘You can’t blame him.’
‘Boys!’ said my mother, as if she thought they’d take notice.
‘Maybe we’d better not mention it at all. But at least you’ll get a wedding. It’s Bronte I feel sorry for. Because no-one’s mad enough to marry her.’
‘Naturally not.’ I rolled my eyes at them, short on a sense of humour. ‘I don’t believe in marriage.’
Liam jabbed his fork in my direction. ‘That’s just a front. We all know the real reason. You’re on the shelf.’
I ate a potato. Let them squabble over me, if they wanted. I was almost past caring.
‘There’s no man brave enough to take on a wild woman like our Bronte.’
‘Oh?’ said Eilidh, picking her moment to stick in the knife, and doing so in her sweetest, most reasonable voice. ‘That’s not what I heard.’
I laid my knife and fork down on the plate and lifted my head. With the exception of my mother, who kept her eyes fixed on the tablecloth, everyone was looking at me. ‘Oh?’ I mimicked my sister. ‘And what have you heard?’
‘Only that you’ve been seen around town in the arms of a very handsome man.’ And she looked around the table at everyone else, her eyes wide with false innocence. ‘You mean you didn’t know?’
If Mum was regretting that ill-judged confidence, she didn’t show it. Maybe she’d calculated all the time that Eilidh was the best person to reveal it. She poured herself a glass of water and took refuge in briskness. ‘Bronte mentioned it to me last week, Sean. I was going to tell you about it. It never quite seemed the right time.’
‘The right time?’ He looked puzzled. He wasn’t always an unreasonable man — at least, not in his own estimation. So proud of Eilidh, Cat, and me, he found it inevitable that we’d attract male attention, even though the men could never be good enough. ‘Why would there be a wrong time?’
Unusually, she was flustered. A bad sign. ‘You know how it is. You’re so protective of the girls. Rightly so. After what happened to Bronte last year.’
He nodded in my direction. ‘You’ll have more sense than to pick up with someone as dangerous as you did the last time. So, tell us, Bella. What’s he like?’
He was in a good mood. There was hope. I glared at Eilidh as fiercely as I could, and it worked; she held her peace. ‘Trust me. He’s nothing like Eden.’ I took a larger-than-sensible slug of wine.
‘Have you met him?’ my father demanded of my mother, along the length of the table.
‘Only briefly.’ With a deep breath, she took refuge in a version of the truth. ‘I bumped into him at the station when I went to meet Bronte for afternoon tea. She introduced him. I thought he was very pleasant.’
‘But you didn’t mention it to me. You should have.’
She found her spirit. ‘It’s for Bronte to talk about her private life, not me. I prefer to mind my own business and let other people mind theirs.’
‘How long has this been going on?’ he demanded, turning on me. Under the shadow of a secret from which he was excluded, his better nature was already giving ground, and his grey eyes sparked with suspicion.
In the face of his building aggression, I, too, lost my patience. ‘What do you mean, going on? You make it sound like something illicit. He’s a good friend. Do I have to tell you all about my friends?’
‘Don’t take that tone with me. I asked you a civil question.’
‘Dad. Give me a break. It’s no wonder I don’t tell you things when you give me the third degree every time.’ I’d never been afraid of him. Yes, there were better ways than confrontation to get what you wanted, but his fury tantalised me, and I was too like him to sit and take it.
‘You’re very precious to me, Bronte, especially after we nearly lost you.’ He retreated to the safety of the moral high ground. ‘I have a right and a responsibility to look after you.’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘Like you did in the past?’
‘I’ve learned my lesson,’ I said, my words dry as ash in my mouth. ‘I’m rather a better judge of men now.’ I kept my eyes on him, but I heard Eilidh’s snigger. ‘Trust me.’
‘Then if he’s so good for you, you can tell us about him. Who is he? Where did you find him? What does he do?’
‘He works in an office,’ said my mother in some desperation. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, Bronte?’
‘Oh, does he?’ Eilidh couldn’t resist it any longer. ‘I thought he was a policeman.’
Silence. A febrile, frantic silence in which everyone’s mouths dropped open and everyone’s brain jumped to the same conclusion, and my father’s expression passed from interest, through suspicion, to horror.
‘Thanks.’ I pushed my plate away, but at least this time I had the good sense to lay off the wine. ‘Yes. All right. Since Eilidh’s said it, I’ll tell you. He’s a policeman. His name is Marcus Fleming. I met him last summer, and he was a friend of Eden’s.’
Dad crashed his clenched fist so hard on the table that the cutlery on my plate jumped as if in fear. ‘If any man involved—!’
I raised my voice as he raised his, determined to be heard above it. ‘I take responsibility for what I do. I’m twenty-six. I have a mind of my own.’
‘You have far too strong a will, and no judgement!’
‘And where did I get that from? I know exactly what I’m doing. No-one pushes me about. He doesn’t. You don’t. I live my own life. I choose my own friends. I’ll choose my own boyfriend. If that’s what I want Marcus to be, that’s what he’ll be.’
‘If he’s got any sense, he’ll run a mile.’ Liam, inevitably, misread the mood.
As always, Dad talked over him. ‘I will not have my daughter taken advantage of—’
‘Nobody’s taking advantage of me, whatever that means.’ I turned round in my chair to face him. ‘What exactly do you mean by that? What’s taking advantage? I’m not a Victorian virgin, under your protection until you find another man to look after me. I’m a modern young woman, and I’ll do what I want. Do you have a problem with that?’
He stood up, pushed too far. ‘Bronte O’Hara. Don’t you ever speak to me like that again! You may think you’re old enough—’
‘I’m old enough to do what I want!’ Undaunted, I, too, rose to my feet and turned towards him. ‘Don’t you dare think you can control me!’
‘You’ve caused your mother and me more trouble than either of your sisters.’ Hands flat on the table as he leaned forward, his colour rose. ‘Don’t you ever give a thought to how we feel?’
Eilidh’s smug smile pushed me too far. ‘Only because I’m the only one who’s honest with you. You think Cat went down the aisle a blushing virgin? You think when Eilidh and Joe go out on a Sunday they’re just going for long walks, and do nothing but hold hands of an evening at his place? Really? Are you that naive?’
‘Thanks a lot,’ muttered Eilidh, but even as she blushed scarlet, she nodded an acknowledgement, knowing that she’d deserved it.
Dad shot her a furious look, before his gaze came back to me. She’d face questions later. Serve her right. ‘Every father has a duty to protect his daughters.’
‘Don’t be so sexist! What about other people’s daughters? Do you think Liam doesn’t know what to do with a girl behind the bike sheds, if she’s unlucky enough to take a chance on him? And if Finlay could only get himself a girlfriend—’
‘Holy crap, Bronte.’ Liam, at least, had admiration in his voice, and the chaos around us was so great that my mother let his language go unreproved. ‘You go, girl! If you’re going to go down, take everyone else with you.’
‘Marcus and I are normal people,’ I stormed at Dad. ‘The thing that’s abnormal is you, interfering. And you.’ I turned on my mother. ‘Too scared to stand up for me. And you.’ Eilidh, this time. ‘All you do is cause trouble! I hope you enjoy it, because one day karma will come and bite you on the bum. You’ll deserve it.’
They erupted i
nto a cacophony of whining and shouting, which only Joe, his cheerful face flaming into embarrassment, had the sense to avoid.
‘Bronte, don’t you dare tell lies about me—’
‘For God’s sake, Bron, that was brutal—’
‘Who do you think you are—?
‘If that’s right, you can tell your policeman to expect a visit from your brothers—’
‘Bronte, don’t you understand that we all only have your interests at heart—?’
‘No!’ I shouted, to try and drown out the fury that surged in my heart. ‘That isn’t what it’s about. You think it is, but it isn’t. I’ve never done things that don’t feel right just because you think I should, and I’m not going to give up someone who matters to me. It’s my choice, and I’ll be the one to make it!’
They all stared back at me, a blank wall of fury and disapproval.
‘It’s time I went,’ I said to the silence. ‘The next person to think they can be civil and reasonable about this, is welcome to call me. I’ll be ready to talk about it when you’ve all calmed down.’ And I paused only to scoop up my coat and my bag before storming out of my own home, still starving. As I flounced along the path, I was already calling Marcus. See? See what I did for you?
I was glad, so glad that it was over.
Chapter 21
Marcus called at my door on the Monday evening, earlier than I expected and announcing his arrival with an impatient series of rings on the bell, as sharp and demanding as everyone else in my life. Our lengthy phone call of the evening before had been inconclusive, and all I’d been capable of was irrational ranting. I knew that. He knew that. Now the moment for calm thought had come upon us, and whatever my doubts about Marcus — doubts that kept recurring as my heart continued its war of attrition against my head, winning battle after battle but failing to make any real ground — the decision about my future with him, if there was to be one, was one I would make for myself.
In the meantime, the least I owed myself was the pleasure of his company.
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