The House On Willow Street (50 page)

The hostess, Caroline, was one of Redmond’s favorite people in the world. She loved all the gossip and scandal, although you’d never think it to meet her. She adored Redmond for what he could tell her. And she repaid him by inviting him to lunches like this one, with people who were quite startled to find themselves seated at a table with such a notorious biographer.

Redmond was charming to them all, telling them a few naughty tidbits that would pique their interest. A few drinks later, and people were giggling and asking him for the latest gossip, wanting to know what was the story on the Richardson biography, was he really going to do it? The word on the street was that Senator Richardson’s wife, Antoinette, was furious and determined to stop it at all costs.

“Really?” said Redmond, as if he hadn’t already learned this from a reliable source. “They’re very interesting, these Richardsons.”

When he was being clever and opaque, his accent became even more pronounced. Redmond insisted he was descended from Portuguese nobility—born on the wrong side of the sheets, sadly. Having them think that he came from a wealthy aristocratic background made his life easier and smoothed his entrance into the great salons of New York. Very few people knew the truth: that Redmond had grown up in abject poverty in Puerto Rico. After years of hard work, he’d clawed his way out of the slums—and he intended to make sure that he would never be poor again. And if that meant writing scandalous books that had the publishers’ lawyers going gray in the face when they read them, well, that was fine with him.

“Yes,” he said, “the Richardsons are very interesting.”

In truth, his latest project was proving tiresome. The research was taking forever. There was no doubt that the Richardsons had clamped down on all the insiders, determined not to let anybody know anything about them. Of course, these rich people tended to overlook the staff, or to assume that their trusted family retainers would never breath a word of gossip. Ha!

Antoinette Richardson was notoriously mean with staff and there were plenty of ex-household and current members who were prepared to spill all—for a price, naturally. It was one of the servants who’d first tipped him off about Suki Power. She sounded interesting, and yet she seemed to have disappeared off the radar. Redmond needed to find her: that would speed things up no end, if he could only find out what she knew.

Why had she divorced Kyle Junior? That was something that had mystified a lot of people. Why leave one of the richest families in America—unless there was something horrendous going on? No, there was something there, and he was determined to find out what it was. He’d wasted the last couple of months tracking down Senior’s myriad business dealings with the Pentagon, but with issues of national security involved, sources had been reluctant to talk. Pursuing the Suki Power angle would be much more likely to yield results.

Besides, his books sold on delicious gossip—scandal rather than scams. Suki Power could be the key. He made a mental note to talk to his chief researcher, Carmen, first thing tomorrow morning.

Mara lay in bed with Rafe in his house, which was on one side of the bike workshop. The house was a vision in wood and had a manly feel about it: in other words, as Mara explained to Rafe, he had no
stuff.

“No vases, no knickknacks, no stuff,” she said every time she went there.

“I have a king-size bed, though,” Rafe pointed out.

“There is that,” murmured Mara.

They’d spent the evening in bed, watching a movie on the big screen mounted on the wall opposite the bed, and now Mara was feeling pleasantly sleepy. From the side of the bed where her handbag was came the ping that signaled a text message on her mobile phone. Lazily, she reached down and picked the phone up.

HEY, MARA, HOW ARE YOU? WAS THINKING OF YOU. HOPE YOU’RE WELL. THINK OF YOU A LOT. HAPPY NEW YEAR, LOVE JACK.

She almost dropped the phone in fright. What the heck was Jack texting her for?

“Who was that from?” said Rafe, climbing back into bed and nuzzling her neck.

Mara tossed the phone to the floor. “An old friend,” she fibbed. “People do send lots of messages at New Year’s, don’t they?”

“Yeah, they do,” said Rafe. He moved toward her mouth. “So many more interesting things they could be doing,” he murmured before kissing her.

D
anae had never liked January. It was a dark month. A month where people who had been clinging on to life for Christmas finally gave up their desperate effort and let go. It was a month of many funerals and many cards of sympathy sent through the post. She hated to hear the news that some sweet pensioner she’d grown friendly with had died. She was also conscious of an otherworld darkness to the month, before the lightening of spring that was February.

However, having Mara around certainly brightened the place up. It was hard to feel sad around her. She was as full of life and as wildly energetic as her namesake Mara the hen. Even more so, now that she was so in love with darling Rafe. The inner light that lit Mara up burned even more fiercely these days.

Meanwhile, the fluffy Mara was finally laying eggs. She’d laid three since Christmas: lovely brown speckled ones that Danae collected with pleasure. She loved it when the former battery hens began to lay again. Some of them never did—too traumatized. But Mara was clearly delighted with herself, and squawked loudly when Danae went to collect the eggs,
as if to say
“Look! Look what I did. I can do it. I am Hen, hear me squawk!”

Mara and the feathered Mara were the bright sparks in the month of January, but even so there were many mornings when Danae felt her age as she woke up to the grayness of the sky and the sense that the sun would never shine down upon Avalon again.

She had a sense of foreboding too, a feeling that all was not well in the world, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when the letter arrived as she got ready to open up the post office that morning. As postmistress, she saw many letters first, and as soon as her eyes caught sight of this one, she knew it meant trouble. It was a letter sent to her as next of kin, arranging a meeting with an oncology consultant about Antonio. There was a number to ring and the letter seemed to imply that the nursing home would already have been in touch, that she would already know. But she knew nothing.

Danae phoned the consultant’s office to confirm the appointment, not asking for any information and not expecting any. Such details would never be given out over the phone. She knew she had to ring the nursing home. Perhaps it was not a mistake that they hadn’t told her that Antonio was ill. With any other patient, the information would have been relayed instantly in a phone call. But Antonio, he was different. Danae was different, and people who mattered in the home knew it.

They would not have wanted her upset over Christmas. They knew the history of how Antonio Rahill came to be lying in a nursing home bed with a catastrophic brain injury. They knew that his mother, Rosa, used to phone to make sure Danae would not be present when she visited. Not that this mattered any more; Rosa was long dead and nobody
else visited Antonio Rahill, except his brothers at Christmas for an hour, perhaps.

Thanks to Mara and her magic, this had been the first Christmas that Danae hadn’t spent tormented by the guilt of knowing that Antonio would never be able to participate in the seasonal celebration. Her niece had that amazing gift of making people come together, making them enjoy themselves. And that’s what she’d done for Danae: she’d given Danae the gift of friendship, allowed her to make friends. Allowed her to open herself up to the community of Avalon, something she hadn’t done in all the years she’d lived there.

And now Danae was being punished. Punished for casting aside all thought of her husband for a few days and enjoying a life that Antonio would never have.

The phone in Refuge House rang and rang and rang until finally it was picked up and a voice Danae knew well answered.

“Hello, Aggie,” said Danae. “How are you?”

“Danae,” said the woman with the soft Cork accent that meant Danae would always recognize her voice on the phone, “I know what you’re phoning about. I’m sorry it wasn’t handled well. The doctor’s office phoned us after you’d phoned them and they said they were sorry. They’d thought you’d know, and we explained—”

“It’s all right,” said Danae interrupting. “I had to know sometime.”

“Of course you did,” said Aggie. “But you didn’t have to find out in such a blunt fashion. The director was going to discuss it with you on your next visit.”

“Is he in today?” Danae asked.

“He will be later.”

“Listen, I’ll start driving now. I’ll be with you by noon.”

“You don’t have to come today,” said Aggie.

“No,” Danae said firmly, “I’m coming.” It would mean having to close the post office, but there was no way around it. At such short notice, she wouldn’t be able to arrange for someone to come in and cover in her absence. “I’ll shut up shop right away and see you later.”

Danae walked home quickly.

Lady, tired from her usual early morning walk was surprised to see her mistress back unexpectedly. There was no sign of Mara. She’d been up late with Rafe; Danae had heard them laughing and giggling at some old movie.

“It’s the first
Airplane
one,” Mara had said. “Please say you’ll come and watch it with us, Danae.”

“No,” Danae had said, smiling, and she’d gone to bed with Lady.

Danae knew she could wake Mara and ask her to come with her to the nursing home, but she needed to do this alone. It was clearly the end, and she owed it to Antonio to face it.

In the nursing home, Danae went as usual to her husband’s dorm, but there was no sign of him.

Steve, one of the nurses, appeared at her side.

“He was coughing and making noise in the night,” he said to Danae. “We moved him to a private room. Come this way.”

Steve walked out of the dorm and further up the corridor to one of the rooms that Danae had always mentally assigned “the dying rooms.” It was here that patients were moved when it was time for them to die. So it was true then: Antonio was dying.

Taking a deep breath, she walked into the room. All his things were there. The picture of the Virgin Mary his mother had brought at the very beginning. Rosa had insisted she
didn’t want ever to set eyes on Danae again, and in the early years, there had been one or two difficult incidents when a member of staff had intercepted Danae as she made her way to Antonio’s dormitory, warning her that his mother was with him, and leading her off to somewhere she could sit and wait until Rosa was gone.

Now Rosa was dead, and Antonio’s brothers were busy running their various empires: the food shops, the betting shops. It didn’t look as though anyone had been to see him this Christmas. There were no other gifts except for the big box of chocolates she’d brought. Antonio’s sweet tooth. There could never be enough chocolates in the world for him, and because he walked, walked around and around downstairs, he burned it off.

But this time, the big box of chocolates that she would have expected to be long gone was lying on the sideboard, barely touched.