Aftermath (19 page)

“Did you bring your marriage certificate as I requested?” Isabel asked Hope, getting straight to the point. She couldn’t be bothered making an effort with pleasantries at this stage and clearly Hope wasn’t interested either.

“Yes,” she rummaged about in her bag for a moment and slammed it down on the table in front of the police woman. “I’m not insane, you know. My marriage isn’t jus
t a figment of my imagination. B
el
ieve it or not
Niall and I are legally married.”

“I haven’t accused you
of anything,” Isabel said
as she carefully studied the marriage certificate. “I see your witnesses were Chantale Decoursiere and Rosanna Maloney.”

“Yes, my mother and my chief bridesmaid.”

“I see. Were any of Niall’s family there?”

Hope shook her head. “No, he was in and out of foster homes throughout his childhood so he didn’t have any family at our wedding.”

Isabel sighed. Sometimes she hated her job and having to tell people things they didn’t want to hear, especially when those people usually blamed her for the bad news. “I interviewed Kerry Darcy earlier and she has a marriage certificate too,” Isabel delivered her bombshell.

Hope’s eyes glittered fire. “I don’t care if she does or does not have a certificate. It must be
a
fake.”

“It looked very authentic to me,” Isabel replied. “It seems very likely that they are legally married.”

“Maybe they’r
e recently divorced and she
kept the old marriage certificate,” Hope retaliated, desperately clutching at straws. “I know my husband loves me. We have a wonderful life together and there’s no way that he can possibly be married to someone else. He wouldn’t have done that to me. It would mean that he’s been living a double life and lying to me for th
e past few years, which is
not true! I’d know about it if he was. I’d have sensed it.”

“Was he ever away from home for long periods of time?” Isabel asked gently. She could see how distressed Hope was becoming. “Maybe he cancelled your plans together at the last minute?”

Hope remained tight-lipped.

“I know it seems preposterous,” continued Isabel, “but we have to break down his movements so we can try to work out the truth of the situation.”

“What does it matter?” Hope sighed.

“Lots of things matter,” Isabel replied. “
We need to establish y
our legal rights and entitlements as a married woman for one thing. Why, if he was married to Kerry, did he decide to marry you too? What were his ulterior motives?”

“He didn’t have any ulterior mot
ives!” Hope cried. “I’m not rich or about to come into a
huge inheritance. He married me
for me.” She covered her face with
her hands.

Isabel watched her, wishing for her old, sleepy work life. She said a silent prayer that there weren’t any
mo
re wives waiting in the wings as s
he really didn’t know if she
could handle the stress of it.

“I’m having hi
s baby for crying out loud!” Hope
cried. “He wanted a baby for ages but I wasn’t ready and then I found out I was pregnant the day he went missing. Why would he have longed for a baby so much if he already had two daughters with another woman?” She wiped her tears away with the palm of her hand.

“I’m very sorry, Hope,” Isabel’s heart went out to the poor woman sitting crying in front of her. She seemed so forlorn and utterly desolate. “I really don’t understand why he would treat someone he loves in such a manner.”

“He
stay
s
away from home a lot,” Hope said quietly. “He has to travel quite a bit for work, so yes, in answe
r to your question, there were many times when he wasn’t at
home with me and he could have been with her.”

“What about Christmas and holidays, was he around much for those?” Isabel continued.

“We spent our first Christmas together in Barbados,” Hope answered, with a faraway expression on her face “It was absolutely amazing. We had dinner on the beach by firelight. It was magical. The second Christmas he asked me to marry him. We spent the holidays with his family in Switzerland. Well he calls them his family but really they’re a group of his closest friends from college. He likes to say that he didn’t get to choose his family growing up, so he chose his friends very carefully and he regards them as his spiritual family.”

Hope glanced up from her notebook where she was furiously scribbling her notes. “Can you tell me their n
ames?”

“Edward and Sylvia O’
Callaghan,” Hope replied. “They’ve known each other since their school days.
Ed and Sylvia were married short
ly
after college.”

“What about last Christmas?” Isabel prompted gently.

“Well, that wasn’t so good,” Hope reluctantly admitted.

Isabel raised her eyebrows enquiringly.

“We’d been arguing a lot in the weeks before Christmas. I was very busy with work. I’d
just gotten the role of a life
-
time acting in Dublin and he wasn’t very impressed with the amount of time I’d be spending away from home. I thought that he
,
of all people
,
would understand but he didn’t.
He was away on business for most of December and we hardly even spoke on the telephone the ent
ire time he was gone
. When we did
eventually
speak he seemed very distracted.”

Isabel nodded thoughtfully. “He seems to have spent weeks at a time away from home.”

“It’s the nature of his work,” Hope jumped to her husband’s defence. “T
here’s always some conference or meeting to attend.” She
blink
ed, realisation beginning to dawn
on her. “Are you trying to say that he may not have been at business meetings? That he was with her and her brats instead?” Her voice was becoming more and more high-pitched. “What are you saying to me?”

“I’m not saying anything,” Isabel held her hands up. “I realise this must be extremely stressful for you. It’s obvious that you l
ove your husband but it’s becoming
more and more likely that he was still married to Kerry when he married you.”

“Why would he do that to me?” Hope cried. She slammed her fist on the table. “He had no reason to get involved with me. Nobody forced him to love me.
He
asked
me
to marry him, for God’s sake! I was reluctant about getting married again after the disaster of my first marriage. If he wasn’t in a position to marry me then why on earth was he so persistent? How could he have married me knowing that he had a wife and two children at home already? How could he tell me that he couldn’t wait to start a family with me?
He said that all he ever wanted in his whole life was to be part of a real family.”

“I don’t
know the answers. I wish I did,
” Isabel said gently. “I really don’t understand the man. It’s not something that I’ve ever come across before. I’ve never heard of a case where a man has married two women without any apparent reason. Usually there’s money involved or some sort of immigration issues.”

“There was an apparent reason!
” Hope shouted in disgust. “He loved me and that’s why he married me!”

Isabel didn’t know what to say. Chantale sat quietly beside her daughter and reached for her hand. Hope stared miserably out the window.

“If it’s true, if he married me when he was already married to her then I have no legal entitlements do I?” she said eventually.

Isabel remained silent.

“I mean, if she’s his first wife, then she’s the one that everyone will talk to. I’ll just be seen as his cheap bit on the side. What happens the day we eventually find him? What if he can’t remember me? She’ll be the one who makes all the decisions and that’s just not fair!”

“Maybe you and Kerry will be able to reach a mutual agreement,” Isabel said tentatively.

“What planet are you on?” Hope glared at her in undisguised anger. “She’s fully convinced that I’m his mi
stress, nothing more. I’m not. I
t was never like that between us. I would never go near a married man. I love him and I’d do anythin
g for him. I’m the one who stayed
up la
te at night with him when he couldn
’t
sleep. I’m the one who massaged
his aching shoulders. I’m the one who showed him how to Skype and become more technological. What’s she ever done for him? Nothing much if you ask me. Everyone will take her side, just because she married him first.
It’s so unfair! If she was that wonderful why did he marry me?”

“I have no idea what the man’s reasons were for acting the way he did,” Isabel replied, trying to be as tactful as possible. What I need to investigate are his reasons for marrying you?”

“I already told you. He married me because he loved me.”

“Like I said before, what would he have to gain by marrying you? I’m sorry to have to ask you this, Hope, is your family wealthy? Were you expecting to come into an inheritance in the future?”

Hope laughed a bitter laugh. “Quite the opposite in fact, whatever money I have I’ve earned and as far as I know there aren’t any unexpected windfalls lurking in my future.”

“The only reason that I can think of for his behaviour is that he must have been after money,” Isabel continued apologetically.

“How many more times do I have to tell you?” Hope shouted. “I’m not rich! Sure
,
I live in a nice apartment but my husband pays most of the mortgage and bills. My parents aren’t wealthy either. Is it so difficu
lt to believe that he might
have married me
simply
because he genuinely loved
me?”

“I have to ask these questions,” Isabel sai
d
. “I don’t like asking but finding out the truth is
part of my job.”

Hope turned very pale. “You don’t think Niall had a life insurance policy on me, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Isabel replied. “We have to consider everything. Did he ever suggest it to you?”

“
Well, yes, h
e did mention something once but I was quite shocked by the suggestion. I laughed it off and he never bro
ught it up again. Are you trying to imply he was planning and plotting to murder me and pocket the insurance money?” Her voice was full of contempt. “This isn’t television. It’s real life,
my
life.”

“Anything could be possible,” Isabel said. “I mean, you never had an
y
inkling that he could have been married to someone else.”

“Yeah, well Niall was never short of money. He was a very successful businessman and reaped the financial rewards of his hard work.
It’s ludicrous to even consider for a moment that he’d have married me just for the insurance money.”

“I’m sorry, I realise my questions are upsetting, but I have to ask.”

“Did you ask
her
?” Hope demanded. “Have you asked her why he married someone else?”

“I’ve spoken with Mrs. Darcy, yes,” Isabel replied carefully.

“She’s so smug and self-assured I suppose she thinks everything’s fine and she’s the poor, disgruntled wife.”

“The situation is far from fine. Whatever about the legal side, you’ve shared an intimate relationship with her husband and you seriously consider yourself to be his wife. None of this is easy for her either.”

“I couldn’t care less about her and her precious feel
ings,” Hope snapped. “
I know she couldn’t care less about me.”

“But you both love the same man.”

“I love someone,” Hope said quietly. The fight had suddenly evaporated from her. “If Niall really is married to her too, then I don’t know him. I never knew him. How can he be the man I love?”

Chapter
1
2

Saoirse glanced at
her watch and reluctantly
untangled herself from Milo’s strong arms.
“I have to go,” she yawned
, stretching her long legs out in front of her. “Mom will go mental if I’m home late and I don’t really want to upset her. She’s going through a very hard time at the moment; as if she didn’t have enough on her plate and then that stupid woman shows up claiming to be married to my dad. Someone should ship her off to the loony bin pronto!”

Milo was still trying to get his head around the fact that Saoirse’s father had another wife. He’d listened in stunned silence as she’d told him the whole sorry story of Hope turning up unannounced at their house, claiming to be married to Mr. Darcy. He’d tried his best to be sympathetic, even though part of him was shocked that the old guy had it in him. A small part of him thought “
well done
” but even
he
wondered, at his tender, inexperienced age, how the man could have coped with having
two women in his life. Milo
was the only boy in a family of four children and he found his sisters and mother to be very irritating most of the time. They were such high maintenance, always complaining and giving out to him about something.