Heart Stopper (24 page)

She moved in again and whispered, “Valerie played games with everyone; she had me, Kathy, Daniel, especially you. She played with all of us, but I think she liked your little brother best. Where do you think Aidan got the money to buy all the stuff he has? You gave up all your principles to make money for her and she gave it to him. The good-looking one. The charmer. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing her power as she got older, of losing her looks. She loved Aidan, the young man who could keep her feeling young.”

She knew she had hit again. She could see in his eyes, recognition, confirmation of his worst suppressed fears. And she could see the mist gather as his mind let go. She braced herself as Gerry lunged at her. She had the new device in her hands, her finger beside the button. She saw the man dart towards them as Gerry’s hands gripped her throat.

She saw Reyna start to get up.
No
!

She hoped the man was within 3 feet, he moved fast.

She pressed the button.

She heard falling bodies as her heart stopped. She had thought she’d have 3 minutes before her brain stopped functioning, but time flew when you were dying.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

The diplomat rubbed under his collarbone where all that remained was a small scar. A part of him was relieved, relieved to be rid of the wires, of the presence in his body. To know that his heart still controlled its own rhythm. But the greater part of him was devastated.

He walked out of the side street clinic and breathed in the morning air. Was there any point in returning to the embassy? If he could, he would still give his life to save his country. But the sacrifice would be pointless if the deed was known. They had known all along that there could be no comeback at all.

He walked down the street towards Massachusetts Avenue. As he turned onto it, he noticed a man standing at the corner, a suit jacket draped over his shoulder. The man was not even looking at him, but the diplomat felt a pang of fear. The man reminded him of the American, the neat blue suit, the calm. He wondered again what had happened to him, the man who had been so anxious to prevent the destruction of a foreign economy. Desperate enough to kill a fellow American. He wondered whether the man had acted on his own or whether there had been others in the shadows. The complete lack of communication for the last few days told him the American was dead.

He’d had no choice. He had gone to the meeting. Pretended that everything was fine. Smiled at the woman’s jokes. Shook her hand, the hand that would kill his country. Now all he could do was wait and watch as it died.

March 2012

Reyna stepped out of the terminal building at Shannon and stopped to breath in the Irish air. She wondered if its silk smoothness felt like home because of what Priya had said. Or whether she had just missed it so much as the last seven months had dragged through the nightmare landscape left after the bomb had exploded in her life. She looked down at the boy gripping onto her fingers, his face wiped clean, but still sleepy after the overnight flight. She had wrapped Skyler in as many layers as she could get away with, not knowing what climate she would find in March in Ireland.

She had rented the same Mercedes and this time the heating was not necessary. Skyler was almost five and if he hadn’t been so tired, he would have chatted the whole way, but instead he snuggled into the passenger seat and slept. Reyna put the radio on low and listened to the debate that had raged over the destruction of a few smaller economies when America had changed its foreign policy. Reyna had listened to the same debate in America, though it had been less heated, had heard the soothing tones of the politician who had signed the changes into law in August, the media loved the attractive, charismatic politician and she had had more than the usual fifteen minutes of fame, but not much more.

As Reyna drove, she occasionally glanced over at Skyler’s thin chest, reassuring herself with its movements. The three-year battle was over. And there was no clear victor except, she hoped, Skyler himself. Simone had teased her often enough about her name and had then gone and named the child… But Reyna liked it. Maybe because she loved him with an intensity that accepted every part of him, including the fact that he was Simone’s flesh and blood whose fine features and dark eyes and hair he had inherited. And that his father had been an 18-year-old waiter who wanted nothing to do with him or the ‘crazy French chef’ as he had referred to Simone when she had told him she was pregnant.

And Simone hadn’t wanted anything to do with the baby either; there wouldn’t have been a baby if Reyna hadn’t insisted that Simone listen to the doctor who had told them it was too late for a termination, that she would care for the baby. And Reyna had put up with the screaming, the ranting, the hitting. She had loved that baby from the first breath he took. And in doing so, Reyna had handed Simone the deadliest weapon to use against her. Which Simone had done. For two long years after Reyna, not able to put up with the abuse anymore, had left her. Simone had always made it clear she did not want Skyler so Reyna had never imagined Simone would restrict Reyna’s contact with the child to monthly visits, but Simone’s spite had been stronger than any vestige of maternal feeling. She used the threat of never seeing the boy again to make sure Reyna could never break free of her. .

Reyna drove slowly. She was too late anyway; the memorial service would be over by the time she got to Connemara. She had always been too late for Priya. Too late to realize what she felt, too late to realize that Priya was not like Simone, could never have been like Simone. Too late for everything, the words cycled by riding on the broken white line of the motorway.

She drove through Galway, barely able to look at the green glass walls of the buildings she could see from the Quincentennial Bridge as she paused in its traffic. There would be enough time to visit the clinic later. The Fairer Research Company was gone, but the Fairer Clinic was still there. It supported the patients with implanted Fairer pacemakers, though now the pacemakers that were installed were those manufactured by other companies. No company could survive the deaths of the two Daniel Fairers and Gerry Lynch, especially when one of them was the owner of TechMed Devices.

Her insides hurt when she thought of her grandfather, still convinced he had done everything for the right reasons. Until Daniel had been killed. Reyna had watched the agony in his eyes when Catherine had screamed over and over again at him for her lost son, for all the losses. Reyna couldn’t bear the pain in the study and walked out to sit outside on the steps of the mansion, melting in the heat of a New York August. Catherine joined her and they had gotten into the car, but her mother had run back into the mansion emerging a few minutes later with the wooden rocking horse. Reyna looked at Skyler and knew he would love the carved horse that Catherine had brought back to Connemara. Catherine had flown from New York to Shannon later that day so had missed the discovery of her father’s body that evening, slumped at his desk. Age, grief, and guilt too high a toll for his 86-year-old body. Catherine had not come back for the funeral.

The road past Priya’s house was edged with traffic so Reyna was forced to sit for a few minutes outside its driveway. The grass was neat, the new paint gleaming and she wondered why Tara and Aidan kept it so well when they were only renting it until they found somewhere else. Or that’s what they said, but Reyna knew the house was now their home. She envied their ability to put the past behind them. But she wondered whether Tara looked over at Aidan every now and then and wondered.

At least they didn’t have to see Valerie. Valerie who had fought on that awful day to hide the truth from Gerry even when threatened with a gun. The surprise at Reyna’s sudden arrival that morning and the terror of Reyna disclosing anything about her had pushed Valerie into an attack that the American man had stopped with a vicious blow. Valerie’s injury and the resulting brain damage, though slight, had forced her to retire. She now lived in London in the flat she had bought for Aidan and where she had visited him whenever she could in the six years since she’d met him at her wedding to his brother. She had not done anything illegal; she’d eventually been allowed to leave Galway after the police had dredged through her past. Valerie would not talk about the details of the games she had played, or the reasons. Reyna had the feeling Valerie’s future would be very different to the one she had planned, that the fear of growing old alone was now a real one.

Skyler mumbled in his sleep. He woke up as they approached Spiddal and demanded the toilet. Reyna pulled in at a hotel in Spiddal and waited for him outside the toilets. She was getting used to having him around again. They came out of the hotel and she decided to stretch her legs. They wandered hand in hand down the main street stopping every few yards as she pointed out places and objects. He took it all in with a serious look on his face. She leaned down to kiss his cheek.

The painting stared out at her from the gallery window. She straightened up and took in the painted words branded across the top of the window.

Catherine Turner Art Gallery.

Reyna stared at the painting and felt her heart break again. She could still taste the salt on her lips. She peered through the glass. Many of the paintings were Priya’s. She could see the scrawled signature ‘PJ’, but she didn’t need that to recognize the hand that had painted them. She touched her hand to the warm glass over the seascape she had picked up in Priya’s living room and through the wetness in her eye, she noticed the reflection below her; Skyler had his hand pressed up against a portrait of a sheepdog, its lolling tongue almost sticking through the glass to lick his palm. Reyna took his other hand and then picked him up and hugged him tight to her. He chuckled and she rested her forehead against his for a minute before carrying him back to the car.

∞

The potholes in the back road to the house had been filled in and the car glided through the trees. Reyna pulled in at the back door and sat for a minutes taking in the familiar and the new. The skeleton of the building at the side had been renovated and extended towards the back creating a courtyard between the two buildings. The simple lines of the extension matched the old farmhouse. The window boxes on both buildings spilt out a profusion of blue and red and pink, the younger annex sporting even more, with yellow and orange added in to the mix.

Skyler had already scrambled out and Reyna followed slowly. He headed towards the gap between the houses and disappeared around the corner. Reyna heard him giggle and walked around the corner to find him sitting on the cream stones. Sitting facing him was a sheepdog looking as surprised to bump into a little boy. The dog looked up as Reyna appeared and she felt a momentary dart of fear for Skyler, but the boy giggled again as the dog ignored Reyna and licked Skyler’s face. It got to its feet and Reyna realized it only had three legs. She reached down to rub its head and noticed that the purple bone-shaped tag on its collar read ‘Trio’. Reyna laughed as she took Skyler’s hand and helped him up.

The extension had large sliding glass doors that were unlocked and Reyna stepped into a light-filled white-walled living room with oversized couches and armchairs spread around a huge fireplace. The early spring sunlight streamed through the skylights. There were photos and paintings hung on the walls, the splashes of sea-green waves and the layers of earth-brown bog inside competing in the battle of colors outside.

Skyler and Trio were getting acquainted outside and the boy’s squeals of laughter trickled into the room and then faded as Reyna wandered through it. She stopped at a painting that hung in the corner, feeling a physical ache in her chest as she stared at the portrait. The light brown eyes, the smooth skin, the midnight black hair. She had dreamed this face for months and she was lost in it again.

“Did no-one tell you it was rude to stare?”

Reyna jerked back from the painting and turned to the door.

Priya walked over to the mantelpiece and placed a wreath of lilies on it, the cream flowers resting their heads against the walls. She was thinner, the black suit hung on her slight frame. But she looked healthier than the last time Reyna had seen her lying in the clinic recovery room the day the pacemaker was installed.

Reyna took a deep breath and tried to slow her sprinting heart. She gestured to her own collarbone and asked, “How are you doing?”

Priya patted the slight rise of skin. “Most of the time I forget it is there.” She smiled. “Other times I panic when I think I can’t generate my own heart beat and I need this thing to keep working.”

I miss you
. “They miss you at the clinic.” Reyna managed to keep her voice business-like.

“I use a home controller to transmit the pacemaker information to the clinic. Still have to do it under a false name. Mostly as a record and a double-check; I pretty much do the checks here.”

Reyna nodded. “It’s safer this way. We can’t be sure whether he acted on his own. Whether there are others looking for that technology. The only place it is now is in your head. I brought everything back here and destroyed the device you used. And all the papers. I can’t be sure though. It was chaotic for a while, but I think I covered everything. Valerie had no idea what Gerry had been doing. She was just used over those last two days to put more pressure on him. She was too busy playing her own games.”

They stood facing each other across the room. The silence was broken by the bark of a dog and Priya called out for Trio. She looked back in surprise at Reyna when the dog arrived followed by a little boy.

Reyna walked over to Skyler and took his hand. She drew in a deep breath and turned to Priya.

“This is my son, Skyler Turner. Skyler, this is Priya.”

Priya hid her shock well apart from the slight widening of her eyes. She knelt with a smile and held out a hand to Skyler who took it shyly.

“I see you’ve met Trio already. He was rescued off a calendar.” Priya smiled as Skyler looked in puzzlement at the dog who nudged him and headed back out looking over its shoulder.

Priya said, “Go on out with him, he won’t let us rest if you don’t.”

Skyler raced Trio out of the door, the three-legged dog almost as agile as the boy.

Reyna asked, “Is my mother back too?”

Priya got to her feet and gestured at the farmhouse. “Powli dropped us off. He’s been another unusual, but welcome, addition to our lives. Catherine went in to change.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t make it to Michael’s memorial.”

Priya said, “I guess there are a lot of things that didn’t happen as we thought.” She turned away and walked towards the kitchen.

Reyna tried to figure out the trace of anger in Priya’s voice. It had been Priya’s decision not to call her on the date and at the time they had agreed. Six months. February 1
^st
2012, 6 p.m. If she had wanted Reyna to come back. Reyna had told Simone about Priya and Simone had finally realized that Reyna would never let Simone hold her captive again. But Priya hadn’t called. Reyna had obtained custody on that day, Simone handing over the boy she had used to get what she could out of Reyna. And Reyna had waited for her other love to call her home, brimming with excitement and the freedom finally to tell Priya about Skyler and the hold that Simone had had over her.

Priya said, “He’s a beautiful boy. Why didn’t you tell me about him?” She was not looking at Reyna.

“At the time I couldn’t risk Simone finding anything out about me. And I didn’t want to feel anything for anybody else. To give her anything else she could use to control me. I didn’t want to lose him. And, I didn’t want him to lose me. His mother didn’t really want him; she just needed a way to get to me. And to my grandfather’s money.”

Priya frowned.

Reyna burst out, “I need to take Skyler in to his grandmother. She’ll be anxious to see him.” She ignored the confusion on Priya’s face and strode out into the courtyard calling for Skyler. The boy and dog followed her as she went to the back door of the farmhouse.