Stand by Me (57 page)
‘Gabriel told me that one of your friends is letting you stay here,’ he said.
‘I’m renting it,’ she told him sharply. ‘I pay for it every month out of my salary. She’s not “letting” me stay.’
‘What are you doing that’s paying you a salary?’ he asked.
She told him about the job at Glenmallon.
‘You got that all by yourself?’
‘Why do you sound so surprised?’ she asked.
‘A job,’ he said. ‘I never thought of you supporting yourself by getting a job. I didn’t think you were that sort of person.’
‘You don’t know what sort of person I am,’ she said abruptly. ‘You never did. And I had a job before I met you. I supported myself then, didn’t I?’
‘I’m sorry.’ He walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to belittle you.’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Don’t give me such a hard time, Domino,’ said Brendan. ‘Please.’
She looked up at him, astonishment in her eyes. ‘What do you want from me?’ she demanded. ‘Instant forgiveness? For me to fall on my knees and thank you for coming home?’
‘Of course not. But ...’
‘You broke my heart,’ she cried.
‘I never meant to.’
‘Will you go to jail?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I spent a lot of time talking to Ciara about it yesterday and we’re going to have a meeting with the guards ...’
Dominique shuddered.
‘. . . but she’s hopeful that they don’t have a strong enough case for fraud. There are issues in court, of course, about judgements against the companies and that sort of thing, but that’s entirely different.’
‘Can you pay them back?’
‘Who?’
‘The people in Cork? With the difficult-to-find Panama money?’
‘I’m hoping to come to some arrangement,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to Ciara about that too. Anyway, you’ve got to look at it like this, Domino. If I’d done the Barbados investment by the book I probably wouldn’t have to pay them back because property prices have fallen. This way they might get something. So in the end they’re better off.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘Perhaps not. But it’s the truth.’
‘You should never have left the way you did.’ Dominique tacitly accepted that he wasn’t entirely wrong about the Barbados deal. ‘That’s what hurts me more than anything. That you didn’t tell me what was happening.’
‘You didn’t need to know that sort of stuff, Domino. I was afraid of the effect it would have on you.’
‘What were you afraid of?’ Her voice was steely. ‘That I’d get depressed again? You know that was a completely different situation. I can’t believe you’re even speaking about it.’
‘I was afraid you’d do nothing but worry. And want to talk endlessly about it. And I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.’
‘I did nothing but worry anyway. If you’d told me, I might have been able to help,’ she said.
‘What could you have done? Hosted a charity dinner where people put money in a gold envelope for us?’
Dominique caught her breath.
‘Let’s face it, honey, you’re beautiful and you’re kind and you’ve been a wonderful asset to me in the last few years, but you know jack-shit about finance. I don’t think you could’ve come up with a solution when I couldn’t.’
‘I’m not the one who had to skip the country because I made a mess of my business,’ she said tightly. ‘And I found solutions for me and Kelly all by myself.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He looked at her contritely. ‘I didn’t mean that you couldn’t cope. I just . . . Well, look, I’m back now and we can do more than cope. I promise you. We’ll sort this out and then, who knows, there will be plenty of opportunities for me. I just have to get back down to it and make things work. And I will, Domino. You know I will. With your support, I can do anything.’
‘Oh, Brendan ...’
‘You can’t walk away from me now.’ He looked pleadingly at her. ‘You’ve got to give me another chance.’ She stared at him. And then she allowed him to put his arms around her and hold her tightly against his chest.
Greg phoned the following morning.
Dominique was asleep in the main bedroom. She’d shown Brendan to the tiny box room with its foldaway bed, saying that this was the best she could do, that she had the main room and Kelly was in the guest room. He’d started to object but then, suddenly, had given in, telling her he appreciated that she needed time to come to terms with everything. She’d said that she certainly did need time and that she was very tired now. She’d left him in the smaller room, gone to her bedroom and lain down, fully clothed, on the bed. It was a long time before she undressed and crawled beneath the covers, but she didn’t nod off until the sky had begun to lighten with the oncoming dawn. Then she’d fallen into an uneasy slumber, dreaming that she was searching for Brendan again but never finding him.
The sound of the phone ringing took a while to penetrate the fog of sleep, and it wasn’t until she heard Brendan’s deep, gravelly voice from the hallway that she realised that the events of the previous night had really happened and that he was home.
‘We’ll come down today,’ he was saying as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. ‘I can’t wait to see everyone.’
She was out of bed and brushing her hair when he came up the stairs and poked his head around the door.
‘Sleeping Beauty,’ he said. ‘That was Greg. I told him we were going to Cork.’
‘When?’ she asked, even though she’d heard him on the phone.
‘A couple of hours. I want to see Mam and Dad.’
‘Have you spoken to them yet?’
‘I told Greg to tell Mam I’d talk to her in person. I don’t want to have an unsatisfactory phone conversation with her.’
‘And where are we going to stay in Cork?’ asked Dominique.
‘At Mam’s, I guess.’
‘You don’t think that people will know you’re back?’
‘Nobody does yet,’ he said. ‘The media aren’t half as savvy as people think.’
As they drove through Abbeyleix on their way to Castlecannon, having stopped at the B&B to pick up Brendan’s bag on the way, Dominique’s mobile rang. It was Greg again.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How’re you doing?’
‘OK.’
‘Bit of a shock?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, look, I know Brendan was going to go to Mam’s, but I’ve asked them to come to Briarwood instead. You should too. We’re out of the way of prying eyes here.’
‘Why aren’t you at your apartment?’ asked Dominique.
‘Looking after Lugh,’ explained Greg. ‘Emma asked me to stay here. She phoned last night. She’ll be home later.’
‘Oh, OK.’
She relayed the conversation to Brendan, who frowned.
‘I want to go home, not to Greg’s place.’
‘Maybe afterwards,’ she said. ‘When we see how the land lies.’
‘Is everyone meeting at Greg’s?’ Kelly, who’d been texting Alicia and Charlie on her phone, piped up from the back seat. She hadn’t wanted to come to Cork, but in the end had decided that she should be where the action was. She wanted to look after her mother. Dominique was very pale, and the shadows under her eyes were huge. Kelly knew that she too was very conflicted about Brendan’s return. Kelly herself had her own life and was living with Alicia and didn’t have to worry about her dad. But it was different for her mum, who’d had to change everything, absolutely everything, and now was faced with having to change it all back again.
It wasn’t realistic of her dad to waltz back into their lives as though nothing had happened, she thought. But no matter what he’d done, they simply couldn’t just abandon him.
It was raining steadily by the time they arrived at Briarwood, and they hurried quickly past Maurice and Lily’s car, which was already parked in the driveway. As they stepped into the porch, Greg opened the front door.
‘Hi, Domino.’ He hugged her quickly and then kissed Kelly on the cheek. ‘Hi, Kells.’
Then he looked at his brother.
‘Well,’ was all he said.
‘It’s good to see you,’ Brendan said. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘We’ve all missed you,’ said Greg. ‘But maybe for lots of different reasons.’
‘Are you going to give me a hard time?’ asked Brendan.
‘No,’ said Greg. ‘Mam might, though.’
But Lily didn’t give Brendan a hard time at all. When he walked through to the conservatory where both she and Maurice were sitting, she burst into tears. He came over to her and put his arms around her, and she held him close to her and patted him on the back over and over.
‘I’m sorry, Ma.’ Brendan had tears in his eyes too. ‘I’ve let you down. I never meant to.’
‘Why?’ asked Maurice.
‘It all went wrong, Dad. Things spun out of control and I couldn’t stop them.’
Dominique sat in the corner, Kelly beside her, and listened as Brendan went through it all again. She wondered how many times she’d hear it, hear his excuses, hear that it had all been a mistake. She knew it had. She knew that Brendan hadn’t deliberately set out to bring down his company or lose money. She could understand how he’d got caught up in a spiral of events. But running away, leaving them. That was entirely different. That was a choice.
Chapter 30
It wasn’t long before they heard the crunch of tyres on the gravel and then the ringing of the doorbell. This time it was June and Barry who walked into the conservatory, followed by Greg.
‘You thieving bastard!’ said June furiously before she’d even taken off the short red jacket she was wearing. ‘You’ve ruined us with your stupid, stupid schemes.’
Brendan flinched, but he let his sister and her husband rant at him about the mess he’d made of everything. Gabriel Brady had warned him that people would want to lash out and had told him to be prepared for it. Brendan had taken it from Dominique as best he could, but it was harder to take from his angry sister without losing his own temper.
‘How could you think that running away was the best thing to do?’ Lily asked her son when June had finally run out of things to say. ‘Didn’t I bring you up better than that?’
Brendan pushed his hands through his hair. ‘Yes, Mam,’ he said. ‘It was just that everyone was pressurising me and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t cope.’
‘You could have talked to any of us,’ said Greg. ‘We would’ve helped out.’
‘I couldn’t,’ said Brendan fiercely. ‘I was the success of the family. I couldn’t ...’ His voice trailed off and he suddenly looked defeated.
Dominique watched as his jaw tightened. She could see that he was struggling to keep himself under control. She got up from the wicker chair where she’d been sitting and stood beside him. Then she put her hand on his arm.
‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘I truly do.’
‘Do you?’ he whispered.
She nodded. ‘It’s like a crushing weight, isn’t it? When you can’t see a way out. It’s impossible to deal with.’
He slid his hand into hers. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for being here.’
‘We’re all here for you,’ Greg told him. ‘You and Domino and Kelly. You know that.’
June snorted, and Barry prodded her in the side.
‘Can we agree?’ asked Lily. ‘That as a family we’re behind Brendan? That we’ll support him in whatever lies ahead?’
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