Reluctantly Charmed (18 page)

Twenty-two calls in, I could feel a “top of the morning” about to slip out of me. Then I hit the jackpot—an intern receptionist. She sounded so young—I could hear her braces cluttering her mouth in her speech. “Uh, who? Mr. Hasselhoff? Oh, that guy . . . Uh, sure, I have his number, I think.”

I nearly felt bad, nearly. I was sure she wasn’t allowed to just give out numbers. Accepting it would be unethical . . . and then I wondered who else she might have. Would it be really wrong of me to ask for Brad?

Turns out what she gave me wasn’t the Hoff’s number after all, it was his PA’s, PA’s, PA’s PA or something—she was so far removed from him I wondered if she’d ever even seen a red swimsuit.

“So it’s for a chocolate bar?” It was the first time ever, I presumed, that the PA had gotten her mouth around the word
chocolate
.

I gave her the pitch, trying to sound as enthusiastic as possible.

“Are you Irish? Oh, David loves the Irish. But he prefers, like, the Germans, uh-huh?”

“That’s great. Do you think he might be interested?”

“No.”

“Not at all? Are you sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Really?”

“Yah. David is clean-living. He doesn’t eat refined sugars so, like, he won’t be interested in this.”

“Could I send on details of the script and the shoot anyway?” I pleaded.

“Sure. But it probably won’t get in front of him.”

“Please.”

“Uh-huh.”

I e-mailed it through, pinging it into cyberspace with my fingers crossed and making a silent wish. At least it had left my desk. At least now it was sitting in the recycle bin of somebody else’s desktop.

There was an atmosphere in the office that day. It felt like we were about to pitch for something big; there was a rumble, an energy, that something was about to happen. People were fidgety, and I couldn’t help thinking that it had something to do with me. Had everyone seen
Heat
magazine? Was it common knowledge that I was in supposed cahoots with the fairies? Were there fairy and folklore stories on the tips of everyone’s tongues here, too? Or was I just paranoid?

I happened to walk past the Glorious MD, All Must Bow at His Feet, as he was posturing outside his office. His PA, who seemed to be permanently affixed to his ear, looked at me and then whispered to him. And, for the first time in five and a half years, he threw a chin nod, the equivalent of a papal blessing, toward me.

I didn’t respond. I positioned my own chin even farther into my chest and scurried on. As I passed by my work colleagues, I saw the neon glare from spacemonkeys.com flickering on computer screens. I didn’t have the courage to look up to see who was
reading what, and who might be looking at me strangely come the next day.

When five o’clock came around, I was just happy the workday was over. I put on my coat, slung my handbag over my shoulder, and sidled up to Matthew. “I’m going to head out. Going for dinner at my parents’ house.” I started to walk away and then quickly turned back. “Is it just me?”

“Hmm?” Matthew looked up from his desk. He looked half asleep, and his green eyes were misting over.

“I just feel like everyone’s looking at me. Are they? Or am I just paranoid?”

“I haven’t really noticed. They could be, I guess.”

“I knew it.” I tightly clutched the strap on my handbag. “They are. The Glorious MD gave me a chin nod.”

He grinned. “You’re in, so.”

“This could go weird.”

“Relax. Maybe they’ve heard about the Hoff, and they think you’re cool now or something. Or maybe they dig fairies. So what if they’re looking at you? Suck it up.”

He rummaged around the masses of paper on his desk, doodled something on a sticker, and stuck it on a Starshoot bar. “Here. For the bus trip.”

I shoved it in my pocket.

Later, while sandwiched between a group of schoolgirls playing Ne-Yo on their mobile phones and screaming at the top of their lungs on the top deck of a yellow number-8 bus to Sandymount, I felt peckish and whipped out the Starshoot. “SMILE,” Matthew had written on the sticker next to a picture of a smiley face. Maybe Matthew was right. Maybe I did need just to suck it up. I could never stay mad at him for long—he always did make me smile.

I was looking forward to Mam’s cooking, but I also wanted to ask Dad a few questions. Something had been jarring with me about Maura Ni Ghaora. Who was she? Why was she so determined to stay close to me? What did she have to gain? I was suspicious about her background, too, especially since she’d mentioned Liam McCarthy and Brick. I knew Dad was interested in that era—and I thought he might know more about them than I did.

Just as I got to my parents’ front door, my phone rang. Jim.

I took a moment to steady myself before I answered. “Jim. Hi.” I sounded wobbly.

“Kate, yeah. All good?”

It is now
, I thought. “Yes, grand. You?”

“Look, there’s a launch for our new song on Thursday night. No biggie, quiet enough. Can you come?”

“Eh . . . ’”

“With me, like, my, you know . . .”

Date? Was he really asking me this time? “Yes. Sounds great. I’m in.”

“Cool. I’ll send you on the details. Good chat.”

And he was gone. I was wide-eyed and startled when Mam swung open the door.

She’d cooked lasagna. Dad was grumbling because he wanted potatoes with it. She was refusing.

I kicked off my shoes and collapsed onto the couch, feeling giddy and expectant after Jim’s call. I flicked through the newspaper, half expecting to see something written about me. There wasn’t anything.

“Are you looking for your picture?” Dad winked at me. He was sitting in his spot, a battered armchair molded to his shape.

“No,” I lied, wondering why I was a bit disappointed that I
hadn’t seen my photo in there. What was happening? Was I beginning to enjoy this stuff?

“No mention of the Red Hag today. We’ve already been through it.”

“Maybe that’s the end of it.”

“Maybe.” He nodded. “I’d be sorry if it was.”

“Really?”

“I would, yeah. It was a great laugh being on the telly. All the lights. The paycheck didn’t hurt, either. Some of these media people have more money than sense. Everyone saw us. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing with relations from Kerry and Donegal pretending they want our autographs now.”

We both laughed at that. The Irish attitude to fame—drag you down before you get too big for your boots.

“They must be calling you, the media people?” Dad said. “Why don’t you do something? I bet there’s money to be made in some of this for you, too. Your mother and I are taking what we can.”

I bet there is, too
, I thought. “I don’t know, Dad. Then what happens? Do I become like one of those people who do reality TV and for the rest of their lives when they walk into a pub other people think they know them from somewhere? Only for me they’ll realize they know me from the fairies, and they might think I’m a witch, because who knows what would stick? And I’ll never get a date, and it’s hard enough being single here, anyway. I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’re thinking about this too much. You’ve always been an overthinker.”

“Thanks for the diagnosis.” I changed the subject. “Dad, Liam McCarthy: what do you know about him?”

Dad nestled even farther back into his armchair and gave me the rundown on Liam and Brick. Apparently Liam had died, decrepit and bankrupt, back in the early eighties, aged in his early
eighties. Brick had been about ten years younger, Dad thought. He’d disappeared around the early eighties, too. Liam was a criminal, but he never served time in prison, in spite of many investigations. Brick was a psychopathic killer who had masterminded kidnappings and murders and tortured gang members—terrible crimes often in the name of a confused justice, gang against gang, drug lord against drug lord, with Liam and Brick winning every time. Dad reckoned that Brick had had an undercover army that carried out his every request. They were always one step ahead of the law, and, together, they’d dominated the headlines and terrified regular Irish people for years.

“Liam was a
me feiner
,” Dad said, crossing his legs.
Me feiner
is an Irish insult meaning “self-server,” someone interested only in his own gain. “He pretended to be a politician, ‘of the people by the people,’ but he was only out for himself. Like a lot of them, I suppose. But he was different—he was a dangerous fella. All smiles and then he’d throw a dagger in your back.”

“You mean all that stuff with Brick?”

“Now he
was
dangerous. How they didn’t catch that bastard. Should have locked him up and thrown away the key.”

“He must be dead by now, though.”

“Ah, he’d have to be. He just disappeared into thin air, though, when Liam McCarthy died. He was at the funeral, or the wake, and then that was it. Gone.”

“How come the police never got him?”

“It’s hard to tell. There were a lot of rumors that Liam McCarthy was paying them off, and then when he got into power, he managed to publicly distance himself from Brick, but privately they were still in cahoots. Another corrupt politician, hey?” He laughed to himself. “They’re all at it.”

Dad hauled himself out of his chair. “I’ve got a book about
Liam somewhere. But where . . . ?” He began to riffle through the bookshelves behind him.

I wondered how and why Maura had known them. I supposed she could have come across them in her job as a journalist, but the timing was curious, I thought, because if Maura was Liam and Brick’s peer, she was a lot older than I’d ever guessed.
A lot
.

“Here it is!” Dad shouted, like he’d found gold. He pulled the book off the shelf and handed it to me proudly.

I flicked through the pages to the pictures in the center of the book. Liam McCarthy had been a tall, handsome man in his day, but became white-haired and bent over as the years passed.

“Can I borrow this book, Dad?”

Dad nodded. “He was a bit of a ladies’ man. Never married, which was unusual for a politician, not even to pretend to have a normal family life.”

I wondered whether
that
was the connection with Maura. She could have been a girlfriend of Liam’s.

“There were always rumors about him around religion, too. He’d be photographed going to mass and all that, but some said he was in a group that was into all that dark arts stuff—sacrificing animals and praying to the devil, that kind of crap.”

“Really?”

“Rumors. You know, he wasn’t a popular man. I suppose they’d start rumors about anyone. But there was a club in Dublin—the Hellfire Club. People said he was a member of that.” Dad drained his glass and looked sadly at it.

“What was the Hellfire Club?”

“The Hellfire Club was an old ruin of a house on top of a hill in Dublin. The story goes that it had been built on a cairn, an ancient passage grave, in the 1700s, and that it was haunted. It had been burned down several times, and adopted by satanic cult
groups over the years for devil worship. It was full of old rumors and scary stories.”

A shout came from the kitchen. “Do you want to eat out there or in here?”

“I’ll eat anywhere so long as there’s potatoes.”

“You’ll go hungry, so.”

“It’s fine, Mam. We’ll come into the kitchen. Come on, Dad.” I put the book in my bag, then grabbed Dad’s arm and heaved him out of his chair.

In the kitchen, Mam was on the phone, bent over, listening intently. Her cheeks were brimming with air and conversation was moments from erupting.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

We sat at the table, watching her attempt to rein in her excitement.

“Yes, yes. Well, she’s here now. Uh-uh. I’ll ask her.” She straightened up, and the veins in her neck jumped out. “Kate. Is your phone off?” She started pointing to her own phone. “The producer of
The Nightline
wants to talk to you.”

“
The Nightline
?” I said in disbelief. “Prime-time TV. Seriously?”
The Nightline
is
the
Irish television show. It’s current affairs, it’s entertainment, it’s the cornerstone of Irish cultural life and has been for the last thirty years.

Mam thrust the phone into my hand.

“Hello.”

“Kate, wonderful to speak with you. Anna Clarke, head producer on
The Nightline
.” The voice was plummy. “How’s your diary, Kate? We want you to come onto the show to talk about fairies.” I wasn’t being asked, I was being summoned.

“I don’t know. I’m not really sure.” A million thoughts raced through my mind, but I stopped at one that I couldn’t answer:
Why would I do this? It might be fun for two minutes, but there’s the rest of my life to think about.
“No. I don’t think it’s for me. Thanks for asking, though.”

Mam’s face dropped. She shook her head at Dad, who was rolling his eyes to heaven and mouthing the words “Do it.”

“Anna, does it have to be me? My parents are as much involved in this as me, and you know they already have media experience.”

“Yes, we have seen them. But we’d prefer you. After all, you’re the redhead everyone is talking about.”

“Well, I really don’t want to go on TV, but they will. And they’re in the same gene line—Kate McDaid was related to my dad, too.” I paused, waiting for her to respond.

“You’re definitely not interested?”

“Definitely not.”

Another pause. “Put me back on with your mother.”

I gave Dad the two thumbs-up. His smile was so wide it almost wrapped around his face.

Five minutes later, Mam hung up. She let out a little scream. “They want us. Well, really, they’d like you, but they’re going to take us.
The Nightline
. Can you believe it? There’s a wardrobe to choose from; they’re putting us up in a hotel. A hotel! Your father and I haven’t stayed in a hotel since Ruth Murphy’s wedding. It’s so exciting.”

“It is, Mam, it’s great. But just maybe be prepared that it could all fall a bit flat. I mean, it’s prime time. The viewers may not be interested in fairies and witches.” I hated being the voice of reason, but someone had to warn them.