Dark Mirrors (27 page)

“Me and Fionnuala, we’re pals!”

“Really?”

“Yesh,” he slurred. “She’s my Mrs Crimson an’ I’m her bit o’ rough,” he managed before sliding off the seat and passing out cold at her feet.

* * *

Esmée’s fumbled for her house keys, still sniggering childishly at the memory of Fin and her new-found suitor.

“Bit of rough!” she repeated aloud, prompting a thump from her equally intoxicated friend.

“Ahh, stop!” Fin pleaded. “He didn’t mean it like that!”

“Yes, he did and you know it! Christ, Fin, I’m not sure you quite know how good that felt!” Her face was still pulsing deep red. “I haven’t felt that alive in years. And, I can still dance!” She sashayed across the kitchen, finishing with a not-so-graceful spin, knocking over the milk with a graceless swing of her arm.

“Easy, tiger!” Fin warned, catching the carton before it reached the floor.

“No, seriously, thanks, Fin, I wouldn’t have done it without you.”

“No problem – what are friends for?”

“God, I’m starving,” Esmée declared with her head stuck in the fridge. “What do you fancy? There’s a bit of trifle left.”

“Just toast for me,” Fin announced, popping two slices in the toaster. “Want some tea?”

“Yeah, go on then,” Esmée replied, propping herself up against the kitchen counter, complete with spoon and trifle bowl. “Jesus, that Lara one hasn’t changed a bit, has she?” She giggled between mouthfuls. “She’s still great craic, isn’t she?”

“Yep. She’s off the wall,” Fin concurred. “And you know, whenever I see her she always asks after you.”

“She does?”

Fin nodded and smiled at her drunken pal, taking a seat at the table.

“Ahh, Fin,” Esmée sighed with a pensive smirk. “You know, it felt almost normal tonight.”

“Well, look at it as the way of the future,” Fin munched, taking a ravenous bite of her hot buttered toast.

* * *

Her head hurt like hell the next morning – the morning-after downside of her antics the night before. Esmée couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this rotten. Her head still resonated with the pounding beat of the nightclub and her patience was seriously depleted. The kids sensed her weakness and like predatory animals they pounced, demanding her attention. When they were settled with toast smothered in Nutella, anything for a quiet life, she slumped on the chair and nursed her throbbing head.

She felt rather than heard her phone vibrate in her bag beside her and dug in deep to retrieve it. A message from a number she didn’t recognise.

EI605 09:20 12/6/27 ref HJ7895A

At first glance it appeared to be nothing more than gibberish, but on further examination it was patently clear.

This was a flight reference and, after everything that had happened during the last few weeks, she instinctively knew who it was from and why.

She went immediately to wake Fin.

“What do you mean he’s sent you a message?” a very drowsy Fin asked, thick with the alcohol still very much evident in her body and none too pleased at being woken like this.

“Read it for yourself,” Esmée instructed, passing her the phone.

“I need my glasses . . .” Fin fumbled, feeling the bedside table for her specs. “This isn’t anything,” she complained when she read it. “Now go away and let me sleep.”

“Fin. Seriously!” But it was pointless: the girl was still drunk.

Returning to the kitchen she dialled directory enquires and got the number for the airline.

“I’d like to confirm a flight booking,” she said.

“Sure!” came the politely trained, if a little overly cheerful, male voice at the other end of the telephone. “Do you have your reference number handy?”

“Yes. Yes, I do,” she affirmed, fumbling with the mobile in her hand, and she called out the digits and letters as presented to her on the screen.

“And your name?”

“Esmée Myers,” she stated clearly, adding, “Mrs Esmée Myers – M. Y. E. R. S.” for good measure and could hear, somewhere in the background, his fingertips zealously banging on a keyboard.

She pictured the cold sterile call centre where this man probably sat, in his symmetrical partitioned cubicle with his little earpiece extending over his mouth and instruction manuals for every possible eventuality close to hand.

“Yes, Mrs Myers, I can confirm your booking, leaving Dublin at 9.20 a.m., this Wednesday, twenty-seventh of June, arriving Málaga 11.30 a.m., local time.”

“Is there a return journey with that?” she enquired quietly, trying to figure out what was going on, her Holmesian super-sleuth mind swinging into action.

“No, ma’am,” he replied, “it’s an open ticket. Would you like me to book a return journey for you now?”

“No. That’s fine, thanks.” And with that she hung up.

There was no doubt in her mind as to who had sent this text or, as the case might be, who had organised for it to be sent to her.

Spain! Bloody Hell! He had gone to Spain! What an unimaginative and clichéd place to hide out: there in the Spanish hills, with all the other fugitives that went before him, probably drinking sangria and eating paella. She could just see him fitting in with his hair slicked back, manicured feet and over-bronzed complexion. What a nasty little picture!

By the time Tom arrived, Esmée was pacing the floor, her hangover long since forgotten.

“What’s up, sis?” he asked, throwing his coat over the back of a chair and sitting down.

“This,” she said, handing him the phone.

“A ticket?” he asked, looking baffled. “Are you going somewhere?”

“No, well, I didn’t plan to, but someone wants me to.”

“Someone wants you to? Sorry, Es, but I’m not getting it. Who is ‘someone’?” But she didn’t need to answer, seeing the lights of realisation switch on in his head before he’d even finished the sentence.

“No – way,” he whispered, shaking his head in disbelief at his own assumption. “You don’t think . . .”

“I do.”

“No way!” he repeated, staring back at the phone.

“Well, who else would anonymously book me on a flight to Spain? Of all places! It has to be him! Isn’t that where they all go, these criminal types?”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s him and you’re not getting on that plane to find out!”

“Of course I am, I have to,” she shrugged, matter of factly.

“No. No, you don’t,” he reasoned emphatically. “You hand this one over to the police, let them sort it and if it is a joke or a hoax or whatever, then great – and if not, well, then they’ve got him.”

“I can’t do that!” she interjected, horrified and appalled at his suggestion. “They’ll arrest him!”

“And? Isn’t that what you want? Justice and all that? I know it’s what I want.” He handed her back the offending phone.

“Yes! Of course it is. And I will tell them, but not yet. I want to see him on my own first. I want to know why. Why he’s done this to me.”

“Well, let the cops go get him and then you can ask him.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Tom! Get real. Do you really think he’ll tell me anything after I’ve got him arrested? No. I’ll go to him. And then we’ll see.”

Collapsing heavily into a chair, she threw her head back and stared blankly at the ceiling. And here she was, thinking she had reached some glimmer of normality!

“It might not be him, you know,” Tom said. “Maybe it’s Brady? Maybe it’s a trap of some kind? But . . . I have to say I think you’re right.”

“Christ, Tom, this is such a mess!”

“And assuming it is Philip, what then?”

“Feck sake, Tom! Don’t ask me questions like that! I don’t know!”

“Well, you’d better start thinking about it!”

“I know, I know,” she replied, exasperated, running her hands through her hair for the millionth time. “You’re supposed to be helping me out here, not complicating things even more!”

“I am helping, just not in the way you imagined.”

She cast a sceptical sideways glance at her brother and laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. “How exactly do you figure that?” she asked sarcastically.

“All right then.” He leaned forward in his chair. “What are you going to do when you get there?”

It was a reasonable question, he thought, intended to provoke further consideration, to make her think the whole thing through and, hopefully, change her mind or at least make her see how ludicrous her approach was.

“I’ll just have to see when I get there, won’t I?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he shot at her.

“Tom, it’s Málaga, not outer Mongolia! I’ll book myself into a hotel and see what happens.”

“Do you not think you’re being just a little irresponsible?”

He sounded just like their mother – he even looked like her as he folded his arms and furrowed his brow.

“So!” she threw back. “What do you think I should do? Hand it over to Maloney and his cronies, let them bring him home? Sit back and do nothing? And what about yer man Brady? What if he gets him first?” She stopped as if waiting for him to reply but knew he wouldn’t. “And yes, you’re right,” she conceded. “I probably am being a little reckless, and it could be something engineered by Brady, but I can’t ignore it. I’m taking that flight and I’m going to see who booked me on it and why. I have to see if it is him, Tom,” she implored, begging him to understand, “and if it is, then I need to see him by myself. I need to ask him why. There must be, has to be, an explanation for all this crap. But I’m not doing that in that horrible interview room because that’s where we’d end up and you know it.”

“Well, let me come with you!”

“No way! Absolutely not! And land you in the middle of this mess? No way! Besides,” she continued with a smile, “someone will need to look after the kids for me.” Her eyes were suppliant, pleading with him not to object further.

And he didn’t. Shaking his head in silence, his face spoke volumes about his trepidation but inwardly acknowledged, knowing her as he did, that to protest would be a fruitless exercise.

“And please don’t tell anyone. Promise?” she pleaded.

“Promise,” he lied.

“Tell anyone what? What did I miss?” a dishevelled Fin asked, lolloping into the kitchen wearing Esmée’s dressing-gown.

Chapter 19

The cottage had become stifling. Feeling increasingly claustrophobic, with too much time to think, she needed to get out, get some air and expunge her head of the tumultuous thoughts of Philip.

The sunny Sunday morning called for a trip to the park, a jaunt on the merry-go-round and ice cream served with fresh air and sprinkles. Gathering her little family together, she walked while the kids cycled the short distance, totally oblivious to the mélange of thoughts that were running amuck inside their mother’s head.

Not an hour went by without his mental invasion. A passing Honda Prelude reminded her of when they first met. He was so grown-up. She remembered their first kiss in the hallway at Joan Hunter’s twenty-first birthday party. Why he was there she never got to find out but he spent most of the night in the kitchen with Joan’s older brother, mocking the hormonal college-going revellers. She remembered how he had picked her out of the crowd and offered to take her home in his beautiful white car. He was so much older than she, so sophisticated with his own apartment to boot, how could she resist?

“A big ride!” Joan had proclaimed the next day during the obligatory after-party post mortem.

And he swept her off her feet, wooed her with wine and whispers that touched her heart and when they made love for the first time he was gentle and giving. So different to her previous inept fumblings on the floor of a grotty student bed-sit. So grown up. She remembered the impetuous delight at his glance, the ecstatic ardour of his lips, the chaotic flutter at his touch and the overwhelming rapture of him, just him, that ultimately carried her on the heady wave to marriage. He made it that way, made it so easy for her to fall in love with him. He captured her with his smile, his kiss and his words. And that’s all it was, until he said it to her: Love. She couldn’t believe it was happening. It was too good to be true.

A hard day to bear the fact, walking the path to the park, that she was right all along. It was too good to be true.

Their habitual entry through the park gates without fail heralded the unleashing of the imaginary reins that kept her children close by and as she called pointlessly after them to “go easy” they escaped off into the distance in the general direction of the playground, leaving her to follow comfortably on their trail. They were doing all right, she acknowledged tenderly as she watched them go. Knowing that she would never fill the void left by their father she wished that she could, at the very least, make it less noticeable for them, less painful. She found it difficult to entertain the idea that they were part of a lie. She loved them to the moon and back and had always thought of them as the consequence of a tremendous love affair, but knowing it now not to be true she wondered how this would affect them. What would she say when they were older? Would they find out the truth? Did they even need to know? Would they resent her for being so gullible? Would they pity her or love her regardless?