Dead Secret (23 page)

One last visit. The tiny chemist shop in Lochglas is dark and old fashioned and smells vaguely of lavender soap and TCP. I knew they’d stock Yardley. They have an entire shelf. Soaps and talcs and perfume and thick, creamy hand lotions fragranced with lavender and sandalwood and violet and geranium. Smells of yesterday. I can only buy English Roses in a gift pack of perfume and hand lotion. I take it to the counter. An elderly lady with white, permed hair and an overall smiles at me and takes the box, carefully removing the price.

“That’s a nice one,” she says, “isn’t it? Twelve pounds
ninety-five
, please.”

It is cheaper than a bouquet. I take the perfume out and put it in my bag and throw the rest of the box into the back seat of the car. I drive back towards Inverness. I go past the bay but do not stop, do not glance towards the loch or wonder if Mother is in there. An act of faith.

I head for a little-used car park on the outskirts of town. The car park Cory Construction were working on when my mother was murdered. It was to be part of a shopping centre that never materialised, my landlady had told me. Phase one for a
non-existent
phase two. The shopping centre was moved elsewhere. Public money gone to waste. There were whispers of corruption, jobs for the boys. It stands, not a white elephant so much as a
grey concrete one, dumped in the mire of its own dirt and
excrement
. With the shopping centre being built in a different area, the car park stands away from the heart of the city and is little used. It is only two storeys high and spray-painted graffiti, red as blood, stains one side. I park on the second storey and lock the car. Is she really buried here, encased in hundreds of tons of rubble and concrete? My mother?

I walk down a flight of stairs, lit by a flickering fluorescent strip light. The stairs are filthy, a collection of cigarette butts and crisp packets and flattened beer cans that echo in the stairwell when kicked. It is no place to die. No place to end up. I try
thinking
of her, not having a conversation the way I do with Da, but just thinking of her, trying to feel her round me. Despite
everything
, the memories that have come back over the last few days about Da, there has been nothing more about Mother. She isn’t Mum or Ma or Mummy; she is just Mother. In my head, there is still only the feel of a fur collar and the vague scent of roses. I couldn’t say I love her. I don’t know her well enough to love her, though I certainly know some of her weaknesses. But I feel a vague… tenderness, maybe. The beginning of a love, or the end of one.

A door bangs and there are footsteps on the stairs above. I stand to the wall to let a man pass me. I hear him whistling as he reaches the bottom and another door bangs. I go right to the basement, as close to the foundations of the place as I can. It stinks. There is an empty whisky bottle on the ground and beer cans and dark patches of liquid gunge on the floor. I take out the perfume bottle from my bag and click open the top. I put my finger on the spray and walk quickly through the basement and out into the stairwell again, spraying till the mechanism chokes
and the bottle is empty. Somewhere inside me, I say goodbye without using the word. It is finished. Then I throw the bottle into the corner with the whisky bottle and the cans and leave, the sickly sweet scent of roses mingling with the acrid stench of old beer and stale piss.

Crisps in the car, no time for lunch. Licking the tang of salt from my fingers, the faint, damp smear of fat on the steering wheel. Da’s car, tinny with the vibration of speed.

It’s a race against time to reach home, to be there for Pa’s body being brought into the church. The shell of him. The
remains
, as Father Riley would say. I am not sure if I bring his spirit with me or leave it behind in the bay of Lochglas, blowing through the deserted house, whistling through the gaps in the jagged glass.

Sarah and Peggy are waiting. The anger hidden in a smile, a tear, a pained embrace. Three women, a triumvirate of grief. For the moment, the rest waits. The rapprochement breaks weakly, the watery light of a false dawn.

I was shaking, Da. I hated being that close to him. I was so close I could smell him. I could see his Adam’s apple. I could almost hear him swallow. But I couldn’t let him know I was frightened. And I shook him, I think I really shook him. I saw it in his eyes. The funny thing is, I wasn’t lying when I said I knew. I did know.

Do you know that feeling when you’ve lost something and you keep looking and looking for it but still you can’t see it? You check the same places over and over. You get angry and frustrated and you think it’s never going to turn up and you can’t even think of anywhere to look any more. And then you look in one of the places you looked first and suddenly, miraculously, the thing you’ve lost is there after all. Right under your nose. And you can’t quite believe it because you looked there, you really did. That’s the way I feel now, Da. I was looking for something that I had all along,
something
that was never really lost.

You know what I like? I like the fact that I can never prove you didn’t do it. It is almost religious, my faith, a belief in something I can’t see, something I can’t prove. The truth is that it is not
impossible
that you killed Mother. Terry Simons says you did it. James Cory, naturally, says you did it. Kirstin never said, but she thinks you did it. She thinks Mother is in the loch. And you know, even for me, it would not be so difficult to comprehend the leap from love to hate. They are intimate friends, love and hate. At first, you
think how could a man ever make love to, and murder, the same woman? But then you see that perhaps it can be part of the same process, the same outpouring, the same passion. Love and hate and jealousy and possessiveness. It is in those tragic photographs that appear in newspapers: husband and wife, murderer and
victim
. Here at a child’s birthday party, there at a family wedding. They smile in those photographs, smile like they are the happiest families on earth.

So it is not impossible. But if you ask me what I believe, rather than what is possible, I cannot believe you killed Mother. I do not believe it of you for the same reason Terry Simons won’t believe it of Cory. He knew Cory, he said. Well, I know you. But my knowing is sharper, wiser, truer, than theirs. I have to believe it.

I can’t prove it. How can you prove someone didn’t do something until you prove someone else did? And I won’t waste a second of my life proving anything about Cory. People have tried for over twenty years to prove who did it. And he’s not having twenty years of my life. He’s had enough of what is mine already. When I looked at him today, I knew one thing for certain. If you had killed
anyone
, you would have killed him.

You know, Da, when you hear a song that you really like and you play it over and over and you play it just once too often? That last time you play it, you don’t enjoy it, and the next time you hear it, it has begun to get on your nerves. And then finally you hear it and you wonder why you ever liked such a song. The lyrics are
clichéd
and the tune’s trite and it might have dazzled you for a while with its clever catchiness but really, the whole thing is worthless. That’s the way I feel about the idea that you killed Mother. How could I ever have seriously thought it, considered it? I’m sorry. I’m sorry I doubted you.

But there’s something more, Da. It is not just that I do not believe you killed her. It’s that even if you had, I cannot believe your whole life would be defined by it. Do I believe in God? I don’t know. But I believe in redemption. These last few days, I’ve tried to imagine how I would feel if you killed her. I’ve rolled the idea round in my mouth, trying to taste it, like wine. Da killed Mother. Then I spat it out and waited to see what taste was left. It has taken a few days, but it is not as I expected; there is no bitterness, no rancid residue.

Murder is evil, I know that. But I’ve tried to think about evil, about what it is. Is it one, solitary action? If you had killed her, you would have done an evil thing. But it wouldn’t have made you an evil man. There’s a difference. You wouldn’t be a mass murderer, a man set on doing evil all his life, a man who took pleasure in it.

What about Cory? Is he a normal person who did one evil thing, and then simply went back to normality? One thing’s for sure: he certainly did go back to normality. He held onto everything in his life. He didn’t pay. His marriage, his business, his position:
nothing
changed. You shed your life and he kept his. Burrowed deeper into his success. That’s the way money works. People see nice white fingernails and they think you couldn’t have done anything dirty with fingernails like those. What was it Father Peter said…
repentance
and penance? Cory? I don’t think so.

I was prepared to do a little repentance and penance with Sarah and Peggy. I dreaded talking to them. I parked around the
corner
for five minutes and breathed deeply before I went in. I had concocted a cover story on the long journey south, just to tide me over until I decide what to do about Sarah. But I didn’t have to use it. There were no questions. I think the two of them had got together and decided all this nonsense was just my way of dealing with grief, and I don’t suppose they were wrong there. Anyway, they must have discussed how to play it, because both of them just hugged me and said they were glad I was back. I was grateful for that.

Sarah and I went together to see Da at the funeral parlour. She had already been while I was in Lochglas, but she came again. I can still feel a tremor inside me, thinking about it. I was terrified of seeing him. Terrified. Sarah was calm. The parlour had that awful dimmed-light feeling the minute we walked through the door, that reverential hush that makes you crave the comfort of noise. There was a huge vase of pinks on the front reception, just browning slightly at the edges, like they had been singed with a match flame.

“We’re here to see Joseph Connaghan,” Sarah said quietly.

The way she said it, it sounded like we were in a hospital at visiting time, that we’d see Da sitting up in bed when we went in the room. I said nothing.

The woman in the dark suit smiled kindly and said to just wait one moment. She went to check one of the side rooms and, I guess, switch the lights on. Not much point in wasting
electricity
on the dead. She held the door open and motioned us to come through and Sarah squeezed my hand briefly. And then we were in there.

You looked lovely, Da. Do you remember we used to joke about the Irish and the way they sit around at wakes and say ah, so and so was a beautiful corpse? You had me in stitches one night
talking
about some old timer who lost his wife. Remember that story? He was in the pub, chatting, and he said, “Ah sure now, Josephine was a lovely corpse,” and another old timer said sure she was, but the nicest corpse he ever did see was his Anna. The fists were
flying
in minutes, like something out of that old John Wayne film,
The Quiet Man,
that we watched on television one Christmas. My dead body is better than your dead body. But I’m not being Irish, Da: you really did look lovely.

There was pink in your cheeks and a faint smile on your lips and your hands were clasped over your tummy. And I knew it was all fakery, the skill of the mortician, that peaceful smile and flush of pink, but I wanted to pretend it wasn’t. I wanted to pretend there was something spiritual that made your body look like that, that there was some significance to it other than the undertaker’s skill with blusher.

“He looks so peaceful, doesn’t he?” whispered Sarah, and we held hands beside you, Da. I tried to imagine if you could see us.

I wanted to hold you; I so wanted to hold you. It was the fear stopped me, because all I could think about was the old you, the
softness of you and the smell of you and the warm, pumping blood in your veins, and I knew if I held you now it wouldn’t be like that. Then Sarah put her head on your chest and she cuddled you,
actually
cuddled you, and I felt bad that she could do it and I couldn’t.

“What does he feel like?” I whispered and she said softly that you were fine, that it wasn’t frightening, it was just Da. There were more things to be frightened of than your own dad when he’s dead, she said, and I knew it was true.

So I reached out a hand and I put my fingers on your hand. Not bravely, but tentatively, like I was touching a trap that might snap on my fingers any moment. And I felt the coldness, the feeling of hard, cold marble beneath my fingers and I gasped with it, with the sheer, awful horror of it. It was more than a gasp, like a squeal, and Sarah caught hold of me and held me up because my legs simply gave way beneath me, and I leant on the arms she placed under my oxters and let her take the weight of me because I could do nothing else. I didn’t cry, I bawled with sheer fright, my mouth open, the howl silent.

“It’s okay, Becca,” Sarah whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” She kept repeating it in my ear, whispering, soothing like a mother to a baby. My little sister. “It’s okay, Becca. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s still Da, it’s just Da… just Da… just Da, Becca. Ssh, ssh, ssh.” She wrapped her arms round me then, not hesitantly, as she had when Tariq died, but with the confidence of a childhood left behind, of maturity. “It’s just Da.”

But it wasn’t, Da. It wasn’t you. You had looked so real
somehow
lying there, so much like you had when you were alive, but there was nothing human about the feel of your hand. You were cold as a slab of stone. I might as well have been touching one of those statues guarding you in the church that night.

I left then, Sarah holding me still, and we walked past reception where a woman was changing the pinks for fresh white lilies. Out into the streets where there was noise and talk and laughter and there was comfort in all of it. I didn’t see the point in staying in there. You weren’t there. I feel closer to you now, lying talking to you in the dark, than I did standing over your body.

What does that mean? I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow’s whole process will be hocus pocus too. I don’t know what to believe in. Except in you. I’m not sure I believe in a heavenly Father but I believe in my earthly one. I went looking for you both – and at least I found one of you. I have put my hands in your wounds and I believe. I know what I know. You were a good man, Da. All your life you were a good man. We came first, Sarah and I. Everything else was sacrificed.

Maybe you loved Mother too much to find another partner. But how could you anyway, with all that history, all that baggage, with everything that had to be kept secret? Easier to stay alone.
Remember
Betty, the widow who lived a few doors along from us? Sarah and I used to tease you that she had her eye on you, and in all honesty I think she probably did. She was a smart-looking woman, younger than you. But I stopped teasing you about her because it wasn’t a comfortable joke. It just didn’t seem funny. When we met her in the street, and she engaged you in conversation, I remember you spoke politely because your manners were always impeccable. But there was a distance there, an emotional distance, that I never saw any woman ever bridge. I wonder how it felt when you were alone at night. I wonder about the ache then.

It wouldn’t have been possible really, would it? Not even if you’d wanted it. All those secrets. A whole other life to hide. If you’d met someone else, if you’d told them, would you have seen fear
in their eyes at every tiff? Would they have told me and Sarah? I can understand why none of it seemed worth it. Why you simply made do and got on. How could you find someone else who knew you well enough to know, really know, that you hadn’t done it? To know the colour of your guts when they spilled inside out. Like I know now.

We brought your body to the church that night, a short
ceremony
in preparation for the requiem mass tomorrow. I keep thinking of you now, lying in that box in the still church with the lights out. I don’t like to think of you there, abandoned amongst all the
statues
and shadows; the candles and the altar curtains; the coldness of stone walls. No one with you. It is a cold place to lie. I haven’t abandoned you, Da. I carry you in a warmer place.

I dread tomorrow. I cannot imagine, I just cannot imagine,
laying
your body in the cold earth. Throwing dust on your coffin. Putting flowers on your grave. It hurts. Part of me doesn’t want to stop hurting because it’s the only live thing I have left, the only
connection
straight from me to you, an umbilical cord of pain. Once that goes, what’s left?

Except love, I suppose. When I think about it, the only thing that’s left from your life is your love and maybe that’s the only thing worth keeping from a life anyway. I suppose I am part of your love. All these nights looking for something that endures from you and I was it all along. What lasts after you have gone? I do.

And Sarah. Because love isn’t just about blood, is it? I am sorry. I’ve just realised that in all these conversations I’ve never once told you the obvious. I loved you, Da. Unconditionally. I love you still. Whatever you have or have not done.