by Lulu Pratt
“See ya, Freya,” she called out as the taxi pulled away.
Effie looked at me and smiled. “I’m not on Clover House time…”
“I didn’t know you knew anyone here in Dublin,” I said, ignoring that the woman called Effie by her proper name.
“I didn’t, she sort of adopted me,” she smiled.
“Hmmm.” I must have sounded cynical because she rolled her eyes.
“She was just being friendly to someone on her own. She showed me around and introduced me to people. She bought the drinks, and I was supposed to buy us food after…”
“Are you hungry?” I asked suddenly, realizing that I was starving. “The hotel can sort something.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, and then brightening she pointed at a chip shop. “Can we get fries – I mean, chips?”
I laughed. “The cultural experience of late-night chips after a drinking session, that’s very Irish. I think I can approve that per diem.”
And so we bought huge steaming bags of freshly fried potatoes sprinkled with salt and vinegar and stopped by one of the many bridges over the River Liffey to eat them and look down into the inky black water, reflecting the lights of the city around us.
Chapter 27
FREYA
I DIDN’T KNOW what to think as we walked back to the hotel. Sitting on a bench, shivering in the cold air, I felt totally lost for words. I was glad we were eating; it meant there was less need for conversation. I wracked my brain for small talk, glancing along the elegant Georgian façade of the buildings, with their arched doors and elaborate door knockers.
“The… architecture is so beautiful,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“Yeah.” He looked up as if he had never seen the place before. “I suppose it is.”
“I guess it looks different when you’ve been away a while,” I added.
“You know,” he said, sitting up and looking around him, “I think cities are a lot like people; you never really know them. Or at least, the version you think you know can change into something completely different.”
I was glad he couldn’t see me blush. This was all a little close to home, and for a second I panicked that he had found me out and knew that I wasn’t who I said I was after all. I considered telling him the truth, and even tried to find a way to put it so that it didn’t sound so bad. But every way I framed it in my mind, it came down to the fact that I had lied to him, and snooped through his files, and that the whole reason for my being there was that I thought he had done something that I could never forgive. My heart was pounding, and I felt butterflies in my stomach, but now, they were a symptom of my growing anxiety.
“I guess it’s a case of perspective. It’s the same city, but you see it differently,” I suggested, not looking at him in case he could see the worry in my eyes.
“Maybe,” he nodded. “Cities and people, they’re never quite what they seem. I mean, I’m not quite the person everyone at Clover House thinks I am.”
I blinked. Wasn’t that my line? I couldn’t trust myself to speak, so I just sat and listened to him as he continued. He told me, quietly at first but then with increasing passion, what his life had been like before he had come to Boston to work at Clover House. He told me about growing up on the wealthy side of the city, and how he had rejected his expensive boys’ school and moved into a run-down apartment in the rougher end of the city with his two best friends – Mick and Kevin. Things had been good, and then things had gone bad. He didn’t go into details, but I knew from his tone that he had regrets. There was a long silence.
“It’s hard to look back at the past, but you’ve done well now, right?” I encouraged him.
“No, you don’t understand. Things went really bad. We started out fine, we had all kinds of plans, and we had a band that would play in pubs like the one we were in tonight, so we made enough money to just about get by. Mick’s parents loaned him some cash, always hoping he would come home. But my parents pretty much cut me off. It wasn’t their fault. I got into trouble, mainly because I was loyal to my friends. But they were angry and hurt.”
“And Kevin?” I had never heard of a Kevin, and I suspected that there was a good reason for it, for when Keegan said his name, there was pain in his voice.
“Kevin was the wildest of the three of us. He just hadn’t a care in the world, you know? Lived for the minute. His parents were abroad, he was a boarder at the school, and he just went AWOL. They didn’t come to look for him, thought he would see sense. He started dealing drugs to make some cash. But he was taking as much as he was selling. It wasn’t my scene, nor Mick’s.”
“So, you left?”
“Not right away. It was complicated. I’d get myself out then get pulled back in. My degree took twice as long as it should have as a result. Then there was Sarah, Kevin’s long-term girlfriend. She begged us to stay, begged us to help Kevin get out of the crowd he was in. To get him off the drugs. We tried.” At this point, Keegan put his hands up to his head, and then rested his head on them, looking down at the ground. I wanted to hug him, but I was wary.
“What happened?” I asked quietly.
“Things got bad, and we left. We couldn’t help him; he didn’t want our help. He told us to leave, said he never wanted to see our faces again. So, we went to leave, but there were six men waiting outside the door. He owed them money. They beat us all up, Sarah too, but they stabbed Kevin. He died on the floor in our arms.”
“Oh my god,” I breathed, placing my hand on his leg. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Nothing to say,” he said, sitting up and trying to adopt a matter-of-fact tone. “We were all placed under arrest and taken to the hospital. That’s when Sarah found out she was pregnant with Kevin’s baby. She was in hospital for months, and then there was an inquest. The neighbors knew we had all had an argument; they saw us go in. Nobody would come forward to identify any of the other men. It wasn’t worth the risk to them. So, my father put up a reward for any information that would lead to an arrest. Money was the thing that cleared our names, in the end.”
“And the baby?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“Little Declan,” he smiled, and pointed at his chin. “Well, do you see this scratch right here?”
“I looked closely and nodded. “Yeah?”
“That was courtesy of young Declan, who saw fit to throw a toy car at me the other day while you were chatting up the locals in Bray,” he laughed.
“That’s who you were visiting?” I flushed now in complete shame. When I had wondered where he was, I had imagined all kinds of dodgy business deals.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sarah got out of the city, and Declan’s parents are helping her with the lad. I hadn’t been to visit in a while. Kevin never knew he was going to be a father, but he would have loved the idea. Maybe it would have even turned things around for him, who knows? But I promised him the day of the funeral that I would stand by his son, make sure he didn’t make any of the mistakes we had.”
“He’s lucky to have you.”
“No, I haven’t been there for them like I should have. A bit like my own father, I threw money at the child but did little else. I didn’t call, didn’t visit. I couldn’t even say why, because I don’t know.”
I looked at him in disbelief. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? You’re hurting. You haven’t even started to get over what happened. Something stopped you dealing with all of it.”
He looked at me for a long time and then said, “Running away to America stopped me. I drew a line through everything that happened here and consigned it to the past. I couldn’t take that shit with me.”
“But that means you never dealt with it. And now you’re back, you are right back where you were when it happened,” I said, aching for how palpable his grief was.
“I had no choice. My parents bailed me out of trouble, but they made it clear that they own me now. I finished my degree, but I am tied to Clover House and Boston until I hit thirty-fi
ve. Then, if I have been a good boy, I can access my trust fund and live my own life.”
“Is this why you and your brother don’t…” I struggled to find the words to describe their relationship without causing offense.
“Why he can’t stand me?” he smiled ruefully. “Well, Sean got a bad deal. When they held my trust fund back, they did the same with his. My dad wanted to teach us the value of hard work. And that’s why Sean resents me. And I resent him for threatening to mess it all up for me by constantly criticizing everything I do. He wants to see me cut off completely.”
“What about Mick? How did he come to work at Clover House?” I asked, rapidly realizing that the ‘criminal past’ whispered about among the Design team was not the white collar crime that I had expected, and that using these rumors to confirm my suspicions about Keegan’s involvement in the theft from my parents’ company was entirely foolish.
“That was the one thing I got my way. I agreed to tow the company line so long as Mick got a job here in Dublin. The court case had been in all the papers; he was basically unemployable. My father has known Mick since he was a child, knew his family, knew that he is twice as smart as any of the rest of us, and he let him work his way up. And thankfully Mick was born to do the job he is doing, and he’s happy there.”
“But you aren’t,” I stated.
“I’m glad to be safe. I’m glad to be free of that life, scraping to make ends meet, trying scam after scam to try to make it, then drinking the profits. Being betrayed by other people trying to do the same thing. But I felt like a fraud then, and I still feel like a fraud now.”
“You don’t belong in either world,” I nodded.
“Exactly,” he said, and smiled at me sadly before adding dramatically, “So, that is the tragic story of poor Keegan, who is now forced to sit in his million-dollar condo and tap a keyboard with more money than he can spend, shackled by expensive tailored suits, tortured by beautiful gold-diggers and forced to endure endless Champagne receptions.”
“Those Champagne receptions are not all they’re cracked up to be,” I smiled.
He got up and offered me his arm, and we walked in silence along the deserted streets, with just the occasional couple or group of friends passing by with calls of hello. We hadn’t far to go, and soon we reached the hotel. He paused before we went in. We still hadn’t mentioned what had happened at the pub, and I hoped he wasn’t going to. I needed time to think. I was glad when we went inside and made our way silently up to our floor. A tiny seed of excited hope had come to life as he spoke of his past, hope that maybe he was innocent in all of this. But what hope was there, really? If he was entirely innocent, then I was the one in the wrong.
“I’m sorry,” he said when we reached the door to my hotel room, putting his fingers to my chin and lifting my face gently so I was looking up at him. “I’ve made you sad.”
I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t him who had made me sad, it was my own thoughts about what a mistake I had made ever going to Clover House. But I couldn’t, and so I reached up and kissed him. I told myself this was the last time. It was one last kiss. He returned it gently, and I pulled away as I felt him press harder against me, passion rising too quickly in both of us.
“Goodnight,” I whispered, fumbling for my room key and disappearing as quickly as possible into the room, where I let myself fall onto the bed, tears filling my eyes. But who I was crying for, I wasn’t sure.
Chapter 28
KEEGAN
I LAY ACROSS the couch in my room, staring unseeing out at the lights of the city spread out in front of me. I was arguing with myself. One minute I had made up my mind to go and knock on Effie’s door, and the next I had come to my senses and realized what a stupid move it would be. In the back of my mind, I wondered if she was playing me. One thing was for sure, she was hiding something. It might not be anything bad, but there was something that she was holding back. I could see it in her eyes, and tonight I was sure at one point that she was going to tell me what it was. But again, she had shut me out. It was incredibly frustrating. And the irony didn’t escape me that this must be what it was like to date me.
How many women had complained that I blew hot and cold? That I was emotionally unavailable? Nobody once considered that I was like that because I wasn’t going to unleash this shitshow of emotion onto them. Nobody wanted that baggage. I figured the fact that Effie clearly had her own baggage was what made it somehow easier to share the whole pathetic backstory with her. And she had seemed to genuinely care. She had listened and understood. I thought again about how close she was to me right now, just next door. But which Effie was in there? How many versions of her were there? One minute she was the efficient assistant, the next she was the caring confidante, and the next she was clinging to me, pulling me closer to her body and arching herself into me like she needed me inside her.
This last thought was the one I chose to focus on, and I closed my eyes in the delicious torture of the memory. I’d been hard since the moment she kissed me outside her door, kissed me so intensely that I felt sure I was going to be allowed to follow her into her room. My head flashed with a hundred images, fantasies, of how the night should have played out. And then I reluctantly pushed those thoughts away and went back to the view outside my window.
Effie had distracted me from the issue I had promised myself I would spend this time in Dublin thinking about. It was time to make a decision I had put off too long. I had to choose whether I was prepared to sit out my time at Clover House like some kind of automaton, or if I was going to refuse to let the fact that I was tied to it until I turned thirty-five stop me from pursuing what I really wanted. I had spent months weighing up my options. At first I planned to cut and run, leave Clover House, and forfeit the trust fund. But I knew that I would regret that in time. So, I had come up with another way. A plan to protect my own financial future, my way. But I had to be careful; nobody could find out what I was doing. It had kept me awake for many long nights, but now that I was back home, things seemed clearer.
I envied Mick his happiness with his life, his sense of accomplishment. Even when things went well at Clover House, I didn’t have that. It would have been so much easier if I had simply hated the company and hated the job, but the truth was I didn’t. I actually found the business interesting; I liked some of the work we did. I could think of plenty of different places that I would like to take it, if I had more freedom with the creative direction of the company. However, I was under the scrutiny of Sean, and his motive was always financial. Under his leadership, the company made money. It made more money that it ever had, and the shareholders were delighted. But that was all it did, and all it aimed to do.
When I had wanted to develop apps that would have some kind of benefit for people beyond keeping them distracted on the train, I had been laughed out of the boardroom. The thought of Sean made my temper rise. I had purposely not seen or spoken to him since I’d discovered him at Lucy’s place. I was ashamed that I hadn’t felt more deeply about the loss of my relationship with Lucy. My prevailing feeling was anger, but not even with her. We were never committed; she never gave me any indication that she took us seriously, and neither did I. I was angry that Sean could do that to me. And yet it confirmed what I had felt for a long time, that the distance between us had become something bigger, something more sinister than just brotherly rivalry or resentment.
I sat up. If I were so dissatisfied with my life, then why was I constantly letting myself be distracted from the decisions that could change it? I couldn’t possibly make a change because I had to have meaningless sex with Lucy, or a pointless war of words with Sean, or whatever the fuck was going on with Effie. There was always work to do, a new gadget to buy, a motorcycle upgrade to pursue, a bottle of whiskey to finish. Enough. I reached for my laptop where it sat on the side table, opened it up, took a deep breath and prayed for decent hotel Wi-Fi and then began to compose an email to Chris. I kept it short and sweet, knowing him t
o be a man of few words. Everything that needed to be said had been said already. He knew what to do, and I trusted him.
Chris,
Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I had some things to sort out before I could fully commit, but I’m on board and I want to get started. I will start to set things up at this end tomorrow, and when I am back in the country, I will get the paperwork to you. Like you said, let’s keep everything as simple as possible. And again, your absolute discretion is much appreciated.
Sincerely,
Keegan
I hit send and fought the wave of nervous energy. It was done; it had been inevitable. I was never going to sit back and follow my orders to the letter. Nobody would ever know, and I could still stick with Clover House until I hit thirty-five as I was expected to do. But I had the security of a back-up plan, a plan B that would offer me an escape if I needed it.
I got up and started to undress, pulling my clothes off, stretching, and washing my face at the bathroom sink. I looked in the mirror, at the dark circles under my eyes and the stubble on my chin, then dried my face and went back into the bedroom. On a whim, I ran and leapt onto the bed, landing sprawled out like I would have done as a child. The sheer ridiculousness of it made me laugh out loud. I rolled onto my back, looking up at the intricate light fitting hanging above me, and thought about how in one day, I had broken three of the rules I had set myself. First, not to do anything to jeopardize my position in the company business or earn my parents’ disappointment again. Second, not to let anyone get close. Third, not to get romantically involved with an employee. Out of those three rules, the most surprising was the last one. Because up until a few moments ago, I hadn’t even admitted to myself that it was happening.
Chapter 29