Once they had ordered, Esmée took her well-considered list from her bag.
“Here,” she said, placing it proudly on the tablemat in front of Fin. “Read that.” Crossing her arms she leaned back into her chair to await the verdict. She watched Fin pick it up and smile with curious eyes before reading through the short inventory.
“Who’s been a busy little bee then?” she quipped, rereading it. “I’m impressed and particularly interested in item number five.” She pointed at the word Solicitor, throwing a challenging stare across the table.
“I knew you would be,” Esmée stated calmly, folding her masterpiece in halves and then quarters. “I know you all are. That’s why it’s there!” Placing the list back in her bag, she faced Fin’s challenge with a grin, happy that it had achieved its desired effect.
Their meal, filled with caffeine and conversation, passed all too quickly.
“Are you coming round for dinner tonight?” Esmée asked as together they strolled back to her car.
“What’s the occasion?” Fin asked.
“Have you forgotten? Tom is flying in tonight. And I promised the kids we’d order in pizza.”
With no plans, for once, on a Friday evening, Fin happily accepted the invitation, glad that Esmée, despite her circumstances, seemed to be getting on with things. They arranged for her to call round at about eight, and with Lizzie and Penny both having said they would be over to greet their brother it was guaranteed to be a full, if somewhat squashed, house and Esmée was looking forward to it immensely.
That afternoon, after collecting Amy from the schoolyard, politely side-stepping the other eager-to-chat mums, Esmée made her way back into the village. First she stopped at the bank, which she left mere minutes later, armed with a statement showing her balance. Then she and her young daughter returned to the café, this time for ice-cream, where she scanned the statement while waiting the remaining half hour before collecting Matthew. Satisfied not only that there was enough there to survive for some time to come, it was also one item on her list that was proudly in hand.
Heading home with the children she decided to ask Tom to help her with the sums; he was great at that sort of thing. Lizzie was the one to ask about the solicitor, hoping she could recommend one of her colleagues, someone with experience in the area. Someone separate from her family unit. All in all it looked like it might all come together nicely.
* * *
Promptly at seven she turned into the airport car park. Déjà vu. The welling nauseous sensation in the pit of her stomach reminded her, with mortifying discomfort, about the last time she was there. Was it less than a week ago? she asked herself as together her little family made their way into the arrivals hall. It felt so much longer than that.
When his London flight landed and Tom finally emerged through those awful opaque security doors, she didn’t have to point him out – the children recognised him immediately as he walked to the end of the barrier. She, forgetting they weren’t talking, hugged him with every ounce of her body, really glad to see him. Holding her at arm’s length, he scrutinised the fading marks on her face.
“Christ, Esmée!” he exclaimed in disbelief, half under his breath.
Matthew and Amy stood back until, encouraged, they greeted him shyly. They hadn’t spent much time with him, and so for them he was as good as new!
“Come on!” Esmée turned, breaking up the reunion and, pulling him by the hand towards the exit, avoided the look of pity in his eyes while, mesmerised, the kids walked beside him, looking up in awe at their tall, handsome Uncle Tom.
“How long can you stay?” she asked as they made their way to the car.
“As long as I need to,” he replied, unable to stop looking at her face “That’s the beauty of being a software developer.” Then he sang with a cheesy showman grin: “Any time, any place, anywhere!”
There were welcome diversions in the form of hugs and kisses from her awaiting sisters when they got back to the house. She was glad not to be the centre of attention for once and let them chat and play in the lounge while she ordered the pizzas, pottering around the kitchen gathering plates and glasses. The sound of excited and boisterous chitchat made her feel the happiest she had in a long time. They would eat in the lounge by the fire, she decided. It was cosy and informal and this was, after all, supposed to be a treat. She placed a bottle of red wine along with a corkscrew beside Tom, inviting him to do the honours. He caught her eye and smiled up at her from his cross-legged position on the floor where he was showing Matthew how to fix his Lego Stormtrooper carrier.
“There!” he announced, raising the now fully working model up for his nephew to examine.
“Wow!” was all Matthew could say as quickly, seizing the moment, he dashed upstairs to fetch an armful of toys that needed the same attention.
Watching the interaction with interest Esmée noticed that Matthew didn’t know what to say to his smart uncle who had just opened up a whole new world of promise to him. His father had never sat with him like that, to play, exploring the endless possibilities and new beginnings for a multitude of broken Lego models. They hadn’t shared even a moment’s closeness like that, asking simple tasks of each other – should they put it back together or make something new entirely? Rather than fix it and, by the looks of it, it wasn’t that hard, Philip would have just replaced it. Opening the box was about as creative as he ever got and it was heartbreaking to watch Matthew discover this for himself. She wondered if he knew exactly what he was missing out on? Was he even aware of the void that only his father could truly fill? Would he grow up to be as emotionally ignorant, inept and unattached as Philip? Thankfully, at that moment Fin and pizza arrived together so they gathered round the small coffee table to devour the contents of the oil and tomato-stained boxes.
Esmée forgot her poignant thoughts as the cottage filled with laughter in the swaddling golden light and the rest of the evening slowly slipped by. The animosity between Esmée and her brother was forgotten, as the warmth, solidarity and energy of the group lifted her spirits.
It was after eleven before the children gave in to exhaustion and agreed to go to bed.
She was reading them a bedtime story when she heard the doorbell ring.
“I’ll get it,” Lizzie whispered from the bedroom door where she had been standing, listening to the story.
Satisfied that they were both asleep anyway, Esmée crept out of their room and, placing the unfinished book on the shelf by the door, tiptoed nimbly down the stairs after Lizzie while cursing the instigator of the shrill ring. She rounded the corner of the last stair only to come face to face, for the second time that week, with the two familiar figures of the local constabulary, cowboy boots and all.
Chapter 11
He knew he’d see her again, but he hadn’t banked on it being for this reason. If he’d had to guess the next step, it wouldn’t have been this. Something kicked as he saw her face visibly turn when she came down the stairs. Sometimes he really hated his job.
She certainly didn’t conceal her annoyance.
“Detective Sergeant Maloney! It’s a little bit late to be calling, don’t you think?” she said, glaring at him. “And I have guests.”
“Apologies, Mrs Myers, this won’t take long,” he said politely.
Casting her eyes impatiently towards heaven, she nodded and stepped aside to let her unwanted visitors make their way into the living room. They murmured greetings to the others, nodding in recognition to Penny and Lizzie.
Someone turned up the lights in the room, changing the atmosphere instantly; even the flames of the fire seemed subjugated and dull.
“Mrs Myers,” Maloney began formally, his tone different from the way Esmée remembered from earlier, uncomfortable almost.
He seemed unquestionably stiff and inhibited as he shifted his weight from one brown boot to the other whereas his token sidekick, Garda Burke, like before, remained quiet, letting her superior do the talking.
&nb
sp; Taking his hands out of his pockets he gestured to the sofas. “Do you mind if we sit down?”
“Actually I do! It’s late!” she needlessly pointed out for a second time, not quite sure why she was being so brusque.
“Esmée,” he continued awkwardly, “this is fairly important and I think you should sit down.”
She didn’t like his tone, it made her uneasy, and she liked even less the familiar use of her name even though she had asked that he use it during his last visit.
“Please, may we have a word in private?” He looked suggestively left and right at her family.
Esmée watched in disgust as Lizzie and Penny bounded out of their seats like their butts were on fire and immediately set about clearing the empty boxes and wineglasses from the floor and table before scuttling off to the kitchen. Traitors!
Fin, shrugging her shoulders, stood up from her cross-legged position on the floor beside the fire and, gathering the remaining debris, she too left the room. Tom, however, stayed put.
Nodding to the police officers to take a seat, Esmée again registered the absence of the cocky attitude Maloney had displayed earlier in the week. They each sat on the edge, literally, of their seats, leaning towards her as Esmée once again sat opposite. Déjà vu.
“Now . . .” she invited impatiently, prompting them to speak.
Maloney eyed Tom with distrust.
“This is my brother, Tom,” she offered, noting his glance. “Whatever this is about you can speak freely in front of him.”
Maloney cleared his throat and, focusing once again on Esmée, hesitated briefly before saying quietly, “Esmée, it’s about Philip.”
“Look,” she interjected impatiently, “I told you on Tuesday I had nothing to say to you about him – it is a private matter and I –”
“I’m sorry, Esmée, but this isn’t about that,” he interrupted.
Instinctively Esmée knew something was very wrong.
Garda Burke lowered her head to study her clasped hands while her colleague, clearing his throat, spoke.
“Esmée, we found his car parked at Cliff Walk this evening.”
Her stomach turned and her heart began to beat a little faster. She looked Maloney in the eye, concentrating on his words, trying to plot them in her head as he continued.
“Whose car?” she asked, knowing full well exactly who he meant.
“Philip’s car. We were called to the scene by a passing hill walker.”
“The scene?” she echoed, baffled by his terminology. What the hell was he talking about? A contorted look of confusion crossed her face as she looked from one police officer to the other, with Burke giving away her novice status by refusing to even look at her.
“The car appears to have been abandoned. There is no sign of him.”
“Stolen!” Esmée exclaimed. “Jesus, thank God for that!” The relief was audible in her voice as smiling she placed a reassuring hand over her own heart. “I thought you were going to tell me something dreadful had happened!” She felt Tom’s hand rest on her shoulder as he, on impulse, moved closer into the circle of the group.
“No, Esmée, you see, that’s it,” said Maloney. “We don’t actually think it was stolen.”
“What then?” she asked, irritated by her stirring panic and annoyed by their refusal to just spit out whatever it was they were on about.
Again, Maloney cleared his throat and putting all his experience into action leaned closer towards her, with compassion and sympathy in his eyes.
“We found this on the dashboard.”
He took a small blue-tinted envelope from his inside breast pocket and handed it to her.
Esmée: her name was scrawled untidily across its front.
Looking at him while shaking her head in bewilderment, she took it slowly from his outstretched hand.
Pushing up the fold at the back of the envelope she extracted a single sheet of matching blue-lined writing paper, the kind she hadn’t seen in years and was surprised that they still made it – not the kind she would have guessed Philip to possess. It was folded sharply once across its middle. She opened it out, doubling back on the crease. Her hand covered her mouth while, drawing her eyes together in absolute confusion, she read, reread and tried to understand the words written in Philip’s familiar scrawl:
Esmée, I love you so much. I never meant to hurt you. I did it for us, for Matthew and my lovely Amy. Please remember that and forgive me. Philip.
She read it and reread it, wishing it to make some kind of sense. Looking first at Maloney, then Burke, then finally at her brother she sought some kind of mental assistance in understanding what exactly it was she was reading. Her head felt heavy, too heavy for her shoulders, with little black spots forming in front of her eyes, rotating faster and faster, randomly darting, blurring her vision, a snowstorm of confused thoughts, getting thicker and thicker, bouncing off her retina. Questions she couldn’t answer filled her consciousness.
Did it really mean what she thought it meant? The words pierced the backs of her eyes while the paper on which they were written scorched her hands, sweat formed under her arms, beading on her brow . . . and what was that smell? The blinds came down and then there was black.
Chapter 12
They took her to the car, parked just as they described, in the car park at the beginning of Cliff Walk, where she and Philip had walked many times before. The sky was almost cloudless and the moon almost full, shining bright over the bay, providing a light glow over the night which was unusually cold for the time of year. A bitter wind chased through the exposed area to tussle with the small crowd that had gathered, like moths, attracted by the bright flashing lights of police cars. She wished she’d worn a jacket and fought hard to keep her hair in check.
The audience watched the unexpected side show with curiosity, as the exit of this pale and stunned woman through the rear door of the police car opened the next scene in the real-time drama. Usually these people came after dark for the spectacle of Dublin Bay’s dazzling illuminations. Some would kiss and cuddle, others just sit on the low wall to watch the amber lights of the city reflect and glisten against the pitch-black sea in the bay. A few of them now stared as the rumours and mumblings of a suicide filtered through, while others offered their opinion to anyone who would listen: urban myths belonging to the area accompanied by tales of bodies never found, the regularity of “this sort of thing” and the last poor soul to “go”.
Do what? Go where? What on earth were they talking about? What was Philip doing here anyway? Esmée asked herself, doing her best to ignore the intrusive, inquisitive spectators. There must be, had to be, some reasonable, logical, explanation. Things like this didn’t happen to normal people, normal people like her. A corridor of whispers formed in front of her, parting like the Red Sea to allow her to pass through to the end, a destination that loomed at the finish of the unofficial guard of honour. Her field of vision focused in on the car, gleaming, polished bright and silver. In the surrounding darkness the surreal spotlit vision intensified as she approached. The door was opened for her by some insignificant other. Pausing to swallow, she peered inside with Maloney by her side while Tom stood back, watching, hands clenched in the pockets of his suede jacket, willing his sister to be strong.
On the floor beneath the steering wheel and in front of the pedals Philip’s shoes lay perfectly positioned, side by side, with the artificial light from a reflected torch echoing back off their perfectly polished black leather. They looked as good as new but she knew they weren’t. As with his every other possession he always took great care of his shoes, polishing them before every use. And tucked neatly inside the left shoe were his black-and-grey Pringle socks. That meant, she deduced absurdly, as she looked around the pristine interior, that he must have been wearing either his black or grey woollen Ted Baker trousers. He was quite predictable that way, always coordinated: certain shoes with certain socks with certain trousers with certain shirts. He hated not “matching”
and had often thrown tantrums when the right piece of his ensemble wasn’t fit for wearing. Esmée knew every item of his wardrobe and from these small clues could picture vividly how he might have looked as he had parked, exited and locked the car.
In the middle compartment of the walnut-veneered dashboard sat his wallet and keys. Esmée turned to Maloney who nodded, indicating it was okay to pick them up. She sat into the charcoal-grey leather seat, and picking up the wallet flicked the catch and opened it out. On the left side were his credit cards – Visa, American Express and MasterCard, they were all there. His bankcard was there too and inside the slim black pouch was stuffed a bundle, probably about three hundred euro-worth, of crisp, new, fresh-out-of-the-bank notes.
The keys were as they should be, on his personalised BMW key chain. She plucked each, one by one: the car key, the two front-door keys, the key to his study, the back-door key and one other she didn’t recognise – smaller than the rest it was more like the key to a bicycle lock or a petty-cash box. Reflectively she toyed with them, soothed by their jingle while she scanned the car’s interior.
“Where was the letter?” she asked, handing up both the full wallet and the keys to Maloney.
“It was sitting on the dashboard, just there.” He indicated with his finger to a point behind the steering wheel. Her eyes followed the trajectory and stared at the spot where she assumed it had sat and thought about what he had written. “I love you so much,” he had said but there was no goodbye.
“What do we do now?” she asked solemnly, extracting herself from the ‘scene’, finally ready to co-operate. “What happens next?”
Together they turned and walked back to the police car, blanking the news-hungry audience. She got into the back seat, supported by Tom who took hold of her hand and returned her weak grin with a concerned but encouraging smile.
Dark Mirrors Page 11