Who is Alice?

by Miranda Manning

  Eliza had finished her radiotherapy and Hugo was insisting that she continue to take lots of rest.Easter was approaching and Lizzie and the boys were expected so Eliza and Hugo were full of anticipation.

  Chapter 42

  Tom had taken Nicola’s advice and informed his wife that he was entitled to see her bank statements and her credit-card accounts since he might be legally liable for them if she was not able to pay.She was not happy. She had shredded her statements, as if destroying the evidence even from herself, but eventually allowed him to see the demands. To his dismay there were more demands than he had seen before and she owed at least €37,000. And her bank account was empty. Her net salary was €1,500 per month. He was dumbstruck.

  “How did you spend €37,000 and have nothing to show for it?”he asked. “And how do you propose to pay it back?”

  “It just crept up and I can pay it back,” she replied in a small voice because both of them knew that paying it back would take years even if she didn’t spend her salary on another thing and there was no added interest.Tom didn’t know what to do. When he looked at their savings accounts he noted that there had been a €6,000 withdrawal about which he knew nothing from one of them.When he questioned his wife about it she said that one of the credit-card companies had threatened her with court.

  “It’s my money as well as yours,” she said and of course that was true but she hadn’t told him that she was withdrawing it and that was the problem.He found himself being glad that it was only €6,000 that she had withdrawn.Again he looked around the house.He loved his home and he knew that this was mainly due to Helen’s good taste and her attention to detail but try as he might he couldn’t see what had cost them more than €40,000, not to mention anything else for which she had paid. And Helen continued to maintain that she didn’t know how the situation had arisen.

  When next Tom spoke to Nicola she had some advice for him.

  “You should try and get her to consolidate the bills into one loan and arrange a payment plan with the bank.”

  “I could pay it all off from our savings,” he replied.“Wouldn’t that be wiser?”

  “Only if there is a real reason for her running up the bills in the first place but, if she has some sort of addiction, and I suspect she has though I have no idea what it is, paying her bills would only be facilitating it.”

  “I can’t think what sort of addiction it would be.If it is drink or drugs there would be some signs of it around the house and I honestly can’t see it.”

  “It’s really odd.” Nicola felt a gambling addiction was the most likely option. She could be gambling on the internet and there would be no evidence of it other than credit-card bills, which Helen had destroyed in any case.

  “Nicola, could I ask you a favour?”

  “Yes?” She was dreading what might come next.

  “Would you come to our house and have a look?Maybe you will see something that I haven’t.”

  “I don’t know, Tom.I’d feel I was invading your privacy and more particularly your wife’s.”

  “I’m asking you.I’m begging you.We could go some morning when Helen is at work.”

  “It’s not ethical.I really couldn’t.”

  “It’s not ethical to help out a friend?”He was beginning to sound desperate and didn’t realise that Nicola didn’t see him as a friend and fully expected to lose contact with him as soon as all this business with the apartments was over.

  “Okay – but I don’t like it.I feel like I am spying on your wife and I don’t even know her.”

  “Look, at this stage I feel I don’t know her either and I don’t know where else to turn.Maybe you will see something I haven’t been able to see. If I knew where the money was going maybe I would understand it.”

  They eventually agreed to meet at ten the following Tuesday and Tom would drive Nicola to his home.

  The following Tuesday was also the day Cassandra was to meet the apartment-clearing company.She decided that she would meet them in a café and give them the key.

  “I want you to clear up everything.Take everything including carpets and curtains.I believe that it is in an awful state and there is graffiti on the walls.So if you can’t wash that off, just paint over it. I don’t want to see it.”

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, you sound a bit paranoid.”The man had never got instructions such as these.

  “When you see the apartment you will understand.”

  “Will I?” he asked, bemused.

  She decided that the man needed some explanation for her behaviour but the whole truth wasn’t a good idea. “I had a stalker and he destroyed my apartment and assaulted me and I am now afraid to go back.”

  “Sorry.I shouldn’t have made that remark.”

  “Don’t worry.I will pay you half the agreed price now in cash and will pay the rest tomorrow when one of my friends has inspected the apartment for me.”

  “That’s fine,” the man said, thinking to himself that life gets stranger by the minute.

  Nicola and Tom drove out to Moycullen in near silence. Nicola wasn’t comfortable at all with what she was doing but she could see that Tom was desperate.The house was a bungalow on a site which looked to be about an acre. The gardens were beautifully kept.She could see that the McEvoys were very house-proud.

  Tom opened the door and stood aside to let her in. Nicola walked in without enthusiasm.In the hall the first thing she noticed was a Pauline Bewick painting. That by itself would explain a few thousand.She said nothing at first.She went into the sitting room.It was tastefully decorated with modern furnishings but it had a minimalist look.There was very little there that looked like it cost a lot though there were a few ornaments and a number of paintings which Nicola couldn’t value.There was potential there but she wasn’t sure.In the dining room there was a Louis le Broquay but she wasn’t sure if it was an original.

  When she went into the dining room she gasped.

  “What’s up?”Tom asked.

  “That painting over there – do you know who painted it?”

  “No, I think Helen got it about a year or so ago at some local exhibition.”

  “I know the artist,” Nicola said.“That painting cost about €1,500.”It was the last painting Jonathan had sold as far as she knew.

  “But that isn’t enough to explain €40,000.”

  “No, but if Helen is into good art that would go a fair way towards explaining it.”

  “This is the problem – I really don’t take much notice of what Helen buys.She is the one with the good taste.”

  “Very good, by the look of it.You said she claimed she spent it on clothes.Should I look in her wardrobe?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought there was much there, though we do have a walk-in wardrobe which is full.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  Nicola gasped audibly when she walked into the wardrobe.

  “What’s the matter?”Tom asked, puzzled.

  “Where does your wife shop?”

  “Everywhere.Galway, Dublin and very occasionally she goes to London with friends.”

  “Do you ever go with her?”

  “No.I hate shopping.Why do you ask?”

  “Because this explains everything! She likes expensive things.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”he grinned.

  “Yes, but most people on regular salaries wouldn’t have the money to buy as many designer items as are in this room.The paintings downstairs are also likely to have been very expensive, running into thousands per piece of work, but I’m no art expert so I’m not sure. But I do watch enough TV to know that most of your wife’s clothes are designer.There’s a Gucci bag, Miu Miu sandals, a Versace dress.”

  “And you’re saying that this explains the credit-card bills?”

  “Yes, given her salary, these clothes are way beyond her means as are the paintings downstairs. Now you have to decide what to do about it.”

  “What can I do?”

  �
�I think you have to confront her.Then you should come to an agreement regarding what to do about it.I can’t help you with that.”

  “Well, you’ve been a great help to me.I’m not sure how to proceed from here but it’s a start.”

  “Now you can do me a favour. Well, Cassandra actually!”

  “Okay. What do you want me to do?”

  “I said you and I would look at her apartment after the cleaner has finished tomorrow evening and that I will then pay him the second half of the fee.”

  “Okay. We’ll meet tomorrow at five.”

  Nicola was beginning to see why Tom McEvoy might regard her as a friend. Like herself, he had gone above and beyond the call of duty regarding this case.

  When they visited Cassandra’s apartment the following evening it had been completely stripped – even more so than Alice’s.The only evidence of the destruction that had occurred there was some fresh paint over the parts where obscenities had been painted. Nicola paid the man and they left.

  “All they have to do now is get the apartments redecorated and put them on the market,” Nicola said.

  “Tell me, do they have a decorator?”Tom asked.

  “I don’t know.Why do you ask?”

  “Because my daughter and son-in-law have just set up an interior-design business and I’d say they might be interested.”

  “I’ll tell Alice and Cassandra,” Nicola said.“They can get back to you.Have you spoken to Helen yet?”

  “No, I decided to wait till the weekend when we will both be home.”

  “Best of luck.I hope it works out well.”

  “Me too.”Tom McEvoy had never meant something so much in all his life.

  Alice and Cassandra talked into the night. Nicola had rung Cassandra as soon as she got home to report on the apartments. She also told her about Tom McEvoy’s daughter’s business.

  “It might save us a lot of time and trouble,” Cassandra mused. “To have someone on tap!”

  Alice had agreed.

  They decided, initially at least, to just paint the walls of the apartments, erect blinds and varnish and polish the newly exposed wood floors.

  “The buyers could then decide what they want to do regarding furnishings etc,” Cassandra said.

  “Should we put them up for sale together?I was thinking of putting them up on Daft.”

  “I don’t see why not.We could show them ourselves and if we only had one customer they could decide which one they want.”

  “Or, as I said, if we’re lucky we could get a corporate buyer who needed apartments for staff transferring overseas or just for visiting executives.”

  “Ever the optimist, Alice!” Cassandra grinned.“That’s what I love about you.”

  “We could start looking around for suitable places to buy.”

  “Are we talking about getting places close to each other? In the same estate maybe?”

  “I don’t know.Are we?”

  “I suppose we could see what happens.”

  “I would need a place with the potential for a commercial kitchen and planning permission to carry out a business.”

  “And I only need a small unit – but it would be great if we could live close together – after all, we got on great when we lived next door!”

  The women howled with laughter, given that hardly two words had passed between them in the twelve years they had lived in Lady Gregory Court.

  The next few weeks were spent in a whirl of activity for Alice and Cassandra. They employed Tom McEvoy’s daughter Sinéad and her husband Will to refurbish the apartments.They were delighted to get the work, not least because the clients were known to Sinéad’s father.

  “You can’t be too careful in a recession,” Will said.“We know so many tradespeople who have done the work and not got paid.”

  “You need have no fear of that here,” Alice assured him.“We need the work done fast and as long as you can stay within budget we will pay you on the spot.”

  They got to work immediately.They painted one apartment while they sanded and varnished the floors in the other and vice versa.Alice was thinking that if they were good she might use them to do her new place as well – in particular the kitchen area. But she would have to find it first.

  “If we sell them unfurnished you could offer your services to the buyers and, if not, we might need you to furnish them in order to make a sale.Either way, this may not be the end of it – hopefully,” Cassandra told them.

  “We’ll put the apartments up on Daft while they’re being decorated,” Alice said to Cassandra, “and see if we get any bites.If not, we can just give them to an auctioneer when the decoration is complete.”

  “I envy you,” Cassandra said one day.“You have a plan.I don’t know where I am going to go from here.”

  “It’s clear to me that I will need an assistant in order to set myself up as acaterer.Why don’t you work with me for while until you decide what you want to do for the rest of your life?”

  “Do you think you’d have the work?” Cassandra asked doubtfully.

  “We’ll just have to wait and see but I still have the hotel work and I could do with a hand at that if I take on anything else there.They want me to do some more speciality cooking for them for small functions but I have put them off until we are organised here.”

  Chapter 43

  Cassandra had heard from Luke. He could come to Galway the week before Easter. They decided on Wednesday. Cassandra said she would be delighted to meet him though in fact she was not looking forward to the end of the relationship.

  They met in the foyer of the Merrick and Cassandra was glad that all evidence of the assault had disappeared. They stood there awkwardly, just looking at each other.

  “It’s funny that we don’t seem to have much to say. We never had that problem before.” Cassandra leant towards him and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  “Oh, I have lots to say,” Luke replied. “I just don’t know where to start.”

  “Why don’t you fire away so? We can order tea – or would you rather go for a walk?”

  “We’ll have tea and we can walk later.”

  They sat and ordered.

  “How have you been?” he said. “I’m nearly afraid to ask.”

  “Well, it’s been strange but I’m fine now.”

  She told him as much as she could about what had happened and also told him that she would be selling her apartment and moving elsewhere. She noticed a look of alarm cross Luke’s face and wondered what that meant.

  “I’ll be staying in Galway and I’m hoping to find work. There is a possibility I’ll get some work helping a friend setting up a business but it’s early days yet so I’m not sure if it will work.”

  “Is there any possibility we could continue to meet?” Luke asked apprehensively. “As friends, even?”

  “I’d love that,” Cassandra said. “I need all the friends I can get and sure aren’t you literally my lifesaver?”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Luke grinned.

  “Oh, I have no doubt about it. If you hadn’t come in when you did I would be dead.”

  “Gosh, I never saw myself as a hero,” Luke grinned.

  “Well, you should, and not just because of saving me,” Cassandra answered.

  They finished their tea then walked down to the Claddagh and looked at the sea.

  In Easter week, just as things were particularly hectic, Alice got a letter from her mother asking her to come and visit with the girls on Easter Sunday.When she got the letter she had to sit down.She had really enjoyed her mother’s Christmas visit but she had expected more notice of an invitation to visit her whole family. This was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.At least she hadn’t any big function to prepare for but she was still cooking for Hugo and Eliza and fully expected to be cooking the meals for the Easter holiday.

  As she returned to The Coven, having taken the girls to school, she realised that even though she was still doing a lot of cooking, she an
d Hugo and Eliza had hardly sat down together since the decorating had begun at Lady Gregory Court. She and Cassandra had been too busy for any of the usual chatting.

  Hugo was making coffee when she went into the kitchen. She looked at Eliza carefully for the first time in weeks and noted that she was looking more like her old self.Her hair had started to grow and quite suited her short though it appeared to have a different quality than before her illness.Her eyebrows had grown again and her gorgeous eyelashes and she was no longer as pale as she had been.

  “Myself and the girls have been invited home to my parents’ place for Easter Sunday,” she said.

  “That’s wonderful,” Hugo said and Eliza nodded delightedly.

  “I am so scared. The girls really liked my mother and sister but my father is more austere and less approachable.”

  “Don’t worry. It will be fine.They are offering you an olive branch.Take it.”Eliza was thinking that it was not long ago when Lizzie probably had similar misgivings. “Families are meant to make up their differences and your parents must feel ready to do that now. Don’t worry. All girls love their granddads.”

  “I was going to do lunch here on Sunday,” Alice said.

  “Never mind that! We can do it ourselves and we’ll have Lizzie to help,”Hugo assured her.

  “I could do some soups and snacks and things for the freezer and you could do the main meal yourselves,” Alice suggested.

  “We can manage fine,” he said. “You should just concentrate on yourself and the girls and your family reunion.Don’t worry.It will work out.Look at how well it did for us.”

  “Could I borrow the car?” Alice asked. “It will be just for the day.I don’t think my mother had the courage to suggest longer for the first visit.I’d say she was right.”

  “Of course,” Hugo said.“We can use the jeep if needs be.”

  “Thanks a million,” Alice said and she wondered how she would tell the girls that they would be visiting their granddad for the very first time.