Always You (8 page)

‘And let’s see if we can find you some cough medicine, young lady,’ she smiled and taking a reluctant, wide-awake daughter by the hand, led her into the bathroom.

Cahal typed ‘Ballyfergus’ on the keyboard, hit the return button, and stared at the computer screen, unable to get Sarah in that red dress and high heels out of his mind. So she had married Ian Aitken. How could she? She’d had little to no time for Ian at university, even though the poor bugger was clearly in love with her. So what had changed? Or had she married him just to please her family? The thought repelled him.

She’d hurt him so deeply the pain had never really gone away and seeing her had only re-opened the old wound. She’d refused to go to Australia with him and she’d not responded to a single one of the dozens of letters he’d sent her from there, nor the phone call either. She’d effectively ended the relationship without the courtesy of an explanation, though he guessed what had happened after he’d left. Ian would’ve been waiting in the wings, all too ready to offer tea and sympathy.

But maybe she wasn’t what she’d pretended to be. What if he’d never known the real Sarah? Maybe his going to Australia was the opportunity she’d been waiting for? An opportunity to end a relationship she was too cowardly to finish face-to-face.

He brought his closed fist down quietly on the table. She was here, somewhere, in this very building, Laganside Tower, going about her business along with the twelve hundred other staff. And these questions were driving him mad.

He had not known she worked for VTS, and when he saw her at the Europa Hotel two days ago, shimmering like a star amongst the drab suits and dreary conversation, he’d not, at first, believed his eyes.

He had not imagined that her appearance would be so largely unchanged from when he’d last seen her, twenty years ago. There were fine wrinkles on her skin, yes, but she had the same pretty face framed by that blonde hair, cut into a shorter, neater style than the one she’d worn at uni. The same big, grey doe eyes and slim, boyish figure that had entranced him from the first moment he’d set eyes on her folding her knickers with intense focus in the uni laundry … he swallowed and shook his head to dispel that particular image.

He was a little ashamed of the way he’d flirted with Jody in front of Sarah – but he’d been angry when he heard the name Aitken and he took a mean sort of satisfaction in her response. She’d gone red and stomped off in a huff almost as if she cared. And the idea that his tiny act of revenge might have made her jealous, might have hurt her, pleased him. She’d taught him that it wasn’t what people said that mattered, but what they did. She’d talked of nothing but how much she loved him, but in the end, her actions spoke more loudly than any words she’d ever uttered. Her lack of courage had disappointed him almost as much as his heart hurt. He’d always thought her better than that.

Even now, thinking of it all these years later, he was angry. He’d come here to Northern Ireland for work, that was true, but he’d also come for answers. He put a closed fist to his lips and stared out the twelfth-floor window across a cityscape recognisable to him only by the mammoth yellow cranes of the shipyard and the Belfast Hills – Cavehill, Divis, Black Mountain and the rest – that surrounded the city on three sides, behind which the late afternoon sun was setting. Closer up, he barely recognised this vibrant, optimistic place as the grey, barricaded Belfast he’d known as a young man. Brand new buildings had sprouted up all over the place like saplings reaching for the sun, and everywhere he went he met bright young people full of energy.

A lock of blonde hair fell into his line of vision and he started.

‘Hey, what’re you up to, sunshine?’ said Jody in his right ear, her cloying perfume filling his nostrils. Then she perched on the edge of his desk, crossed her long tanned legs, encased in nylons, and glanced at the computer screen. ‘Oh, you’re looking at rentals. In …’ She peered closer. ‘Bally-what?’

‘Ballyfergus,’ he said, wishing she would go away. It wasn’t personal – he’d worked with Jody, fifteen years his junior, for two years and they’d always got on well. But right now he’d rather be alone with his thoughts. ‘It’s a little town, a port actually, twenty-five miles north of Belfast.’ She looked a little puzzled and he added, remembering that she’d been raised in metric Australia, ‘That’s about forty kilometres.’

Leaning over, she stared more closely at the picture of a rather drab terrace house on the computer screen and frowned. ‘Why would you want to rent a place there? I thought we’d all stay in Belfast for the six months.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s where I grew up.’

‘Oh, I see, so you can be near your family. I’d love to meet them sometime,’ she said, putting special emphasis on ‘love’ and leaning in even closer to peer at the screen.

He cleared his throat. Hell would freeze over before he’d introduce anyone on the team to his family. He never talked about his background at work. He clicked a button and the terrace house disappeared from the screen.

‘I’ve been offered a room in a flat owned by one of the girls in admin,’ she went on in the face of his silence.

‘Take it. It’ll be much nicer than living out of a suitcase in a hotel. You’ll get to know the place better that way. Might even pick yourself up a Belfast man.’ He winked at her and she pouted, then pulled her suit jacket tight round her slim frame and said, ‘Hmm. Well, I don’t know how anyone can live here. How they can stand the cold. Isn’t this supposed to be spring?’

He smiled. ‘Wait till it rains for days on end. Then you’ll have something to complain about.’

She laughed more than the joke merited, then said, in that peculiarly animated way of hers, her blue eyes wide like saucers, ‘Some of the locals have invited us out for drinks and dinner after work at a place called Cayenne. It’s owned by some celebrity chef and the food’s supposed to be fantastic. Fancy it?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve got other plans for tonight.’

‘Oh?’ She picked up a pencil and twirled it between her fingers like a miniature cheerleader’s baton.

‘I’m going to Ballyfergus.’

‘To see family?’

He shrugged non-committally. Something about the gleam in her eye and the way the baton stilled in her hand, made him even more cautious than normal.

‘You wouldn’t be going out on a date, would you, and not telling me?’ The corners of her mouth twitched, though the big toothy smile remained in place.

He laughed falsely. ‘No. What makes you ask that?’

She threw her head back and laughed, the sinews on her neck standing out, her long blonde hair like a mane. A man, walking by on his way to the photocopier, was so busy watching her he nearly walked into a filing cabinet and swerved to avoid it just in time. She was, he supposed, a fine-looking woman and it was surprising that she was still single. She brought her gaze to bear on him once more. ‘Oh, it’s just a feeling I have.’

‘What feeling?’ he said idly, hitting keys on the keyboard.

‘About you and Sarah Aitken. I sensed there was a kind of …’ She raised her eyebrows questioningly, '… tension between you two.’

He felt himself go hot under the collar. Heat rose up his neck. ‘She’s an old friend.’

‘That all?’

He cleared his throat. ‘We used to go out together. But that ended a long time ago. It’s history.’

The pencil stilled and Jody’s eyes narrowed with sly understanding. ‘Well, if you hadn’t told me that, I would’ve said there was some unfinished business there. You could have cut the atmosphere between you with a knife.’ She gave him a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes and set the pencil down carefully beside her on the table. ‘But what do I know? Have a nice time tonight.’

Cahal parked self-consciously outside the grim block of flats, wishing that he’d chosen a much less ostentatious rental car than the shiny new Vauxhall Insignia. Here on the Drumalis estate where he’d grown up, where car ownership still appeared to be the exception rather than the rule, it stuck out like a sore thumb.

He stepped out of the car, pulled the edges of his coat together and shivered in the cold March wind blowing in off the Irish Sea. In his smart suit, open-necked shirt and overcoat he looked as out of place here as the car. Bright street lighting did little to dispel the despair that hung in the air like a fog. The mesh fence that surrounded the building was all rusted and the area of green space behind it, meant to be a garden of sorts, was a tangle of weeds. He wondered where Sarah lived – it could only be a few miles away – Ballyfergus was not a big town – but it would be nothing like this place, of that he was certain.

To his left, a group of hooded teenagers loitered on the street corner under a lamp post. The biggest, a muscular lad of about sixteen or seventeen, two diamond studs in his right ear and a familiar look about his large hooked nose and weak chin, stared hard at Cahal. He stared back, emotionless, until the boy broke eye contact, spat contemptuously on the pavement and looked away. Cahal would not be so easily intimidated. Once a Drumalis boy, always a Drumalis boy.

He walked heavily up the short flight of steps to the front door of the building. Movement on his left caught his eye. The boys, led by the big one, ambled slowly along the cracked pavement, hands stuffed in pockets, the hoods on their sweatshirts their only protection from the elements. Kids here learnt to do without from an early age. But their eyes weren’t on him, they were on the car. Cahal turned, retraced his steps and approached the group on the pavement. The big one took his red-knuckled hands out of his pockets and curled them into fists. The rest of the lads watched their boss with hardened eyes, like wolves.

‘How about ye?’ said Cahal which elicited no response, nor did he expect one. He put his left hand in his back pocket and the boy tensed. Cahal froze, raised his right hand in the air and said, ‘Easy.’ Then he pulled out his wallet, opened it and extracted a crisp new tenner. He slipped the wallet back in his pocket and proceeded to fold the note up, slowly and methodically.

‘How about you keep an eye on my wheels?’ he said in his strongest Ballyfergus accent, his eyes fixed on his busy hands. ‘When I come out, it’d be grand if the car was just the way I left it.’

The boy snorted derisively. ‘How ’bout you hand over yer wallet?’ he spat out, finishing the sentence with a choice selection of swear words.

Cahal looked up and then down the deserted street. In a second-floor window, curtains twitched, emitting a shaft of light, then stilled. No one would come to his aid here.

‘You don’t want to do that,’ he said calmly and taking a gamble, he looked the boy straight in the eye and added, ‘Yer da wouldn’t be too pleased to hear you’d done over his best mate from school.’

The boy’s face twitched and his thick brows furrowed slightly. Seeing his opportunity, Cahal slipped the note, now folded into eight, into the front pocket of the boy’s hoodie. ‘Tell yer da that Cahal Mulvenna was asking after him.’ And with that he turned and walked inside.

The communal hallway was badly lit and the smell of stale cigarette smoke was the pleasanter of odours. On the top floor, he paused outside the red door of his childhood home and the feeling of dread that had been building on the drive here peaked. The doorbell hung off the door frame, severed wires exposed. Drumalis was a million miles from the middle-class, leafy suburb of Melbourne that was now his home. Taking a deep breath, he rapped the door three times with his knuckles.

‘Oh there you are, son. Come on in out of the cold,’ said his mother Bridget, dressed in brown polyester trousers with a crease like a knife down the front of each leg, and a beige nylon jumper. She shuffled backwards on black-velvet-slippered feet and he stepped into the cramped hallway which ran down the middle of the flat, each of the five small rooms opening off it. ‘I’ve got the tea on already. There’s some dinner if you want it. I made a bit of stew.’

‘A cup of tea will be fine, Ma.’

Inside, it was overly warm and a fug of cigarette smoke hung in the air. The hall and the kitchen, which he could glimpse over her shoulder, hadn’t been decorated in twenty years. The sound of the TV blared out of the open door to the lounge. He closed the front door, took off his coat and hung it on a peg behind the door.

Bridget cupped her cold hands on his cheeks and blinked up into his face, tears pooling in her rheumy eyes. ‘You’re looking good, son, so you are.’ She let go of his face and tugged the sleeve of his fine merino wool jacket and took a step back to admire his figure. ‘Look at you. Imagine a son of mine a business executive.’

He smiled, a little embarrassed, noticing that her hair was white now, all the grey gone, and her face looked more sunken. At fifty she’d looked like an old woman. Now seventy, she looked more like eighty plus.

‘How are you, ma?’ he said, swallowing hard.

‘Oh, you know what he’s like. Nothing changes round here. Your Da’s in the lounge. Grainne too.’ His heart sank at this news. She turned her head and shouted, ‘Malachy, he’s here.’ Then to Cahal, ‘I’ll get the tea. Still milk, no sugar, son?’

‘That’s right, Ma,’ he smiled kindly. She’d done her best to be a good mother, considering the circumstances.

She disappeared into the kitchen and Cahal went into the lounge where his father was lying on a big red leather reclining seat with a lit cigarette in one hand and a pen in the other. As soon as he saw him, Cahal’s stomach muscles tightened. A paper, open at the crossword, lay on his father’s lap and a grey metal walking stick rested against the side of the chair.

Grainne got up off the sofa and smiled, revealing yellow teeth. She looked desperately thin in faded blue jeans and white trainers. Her greasy hair was streaked with grey and tied back in a fierce ponytail and her sallow face was bare of make-up. Though only a few years older than him, she looked ancient.

‘How ’bout you, Cahal?’ she said. He gave her a hug in response. She smelt of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. She stiffened in his embrace, and he stepped away.

‘How are the boys?’ She had one grown-up son and two younger ones, now fifteen and thirteen. All were by different men, none of whom had stayed around long enough to see their sons start school.

She looked at the floor. ‘Pain in the arse. You know what boys are like.’ She shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and bit the inside of her mouth, a little habit from childhood that meant she was stressed or worried. He looked away, barely able to reconcile this haggard creature with the blonde-haired sister he’d loved. Why had she become trapped here? Why hadn’t she the wherewithal to break free, to escape? He realised with horror that now he pitied her more than he loved her.