The Mystery of Mercy Close (26 page)

‘And your sisters?’

‘Actually, yes, we’re close. Even though two of them live in New York.’

‘And friends?’

That was a sore subject. ‘No friends at the minute. But that’s not my fault. I’ll tell you about it sometime. So, about your kids? Do I have to meet them and go on the bread-baking courses and all that?’

‘No.’ Unexpectedly he turned serious. ‘I know Bella has
met you and that’s potentially awkward, especially as she keeps asking about you, but it’s best if you don’t meet them.’

‘I seeee.’

‘At least for now,’ he added.

‘So have I got this right? You want me to be your sex buddy while your children get your love, your affection and most of your time.’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite so brutally,’ he said.

‘No, you’re getting me wrong,’ I said. ‘This is all fine. I don’t want children of my own – I mean, I might, in seventy years’ time, when I’m a little more mature, but definitely not now, and I
definitely
don’t want the responsibility of anyone else’s.’

‘Right.’

‘Artie, let’s get a couple of things straight. You’re not my type.’

A mask of polite enquiry settled on his face. ‘And what
is
your type?’

Instantly I thought of Jay Parker, his energy, his fizz, his fundamental untrustworthiness.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘All that matters is that you’re not it. And I don’t like the baggage you come with. However, on the plus side –’ I listed the different options on my fingers – ‘A) I really fancy you. B) I really fancy you.’

He looked at me for a long moment. ‘You’re forgetting C.’

‘Which is?’

‘Which is, I really fancy you.’ We locked eyes. ‘I really, really fancy you,’ he repeated. In a low voice he said, ‘I’ve thought of nothing else since I met you. All I want is to be with you, to take off your clothes, to taste your skin, to touch your hair, to kiss your beautiful mouth.’

Suddenly I was finding it difficult to breathe.

I swallowed hard. ‘I’m rescinding my rule,’ I said. ‘About not sleeping with someone on the second date.’

Artie stretched out his arm into the space between the
tables and, as if he’d conjured someone out of thin air, a waiter materialized behind him and took away the credit card that had magically appeared in Artie’s hand.

Within seconds the waiter was back with the payment machine and Artie keyed in a few numbers, and then we were on our feet and he was helping me into my swingy charity-shop coat and we were walking very, very quickly, almost running, back to the car.

Before we got there, he grabbed me and pulled me into a doorway and began to kiss me and I kissed him back, then I had to push him away. ‘No.’

We couldn’t have sex right there on the street and that’s what would happen if we didn’t stop. ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Be strong. Get me to some sort of bed.’

He drove and we didn’t speak. There was nothing to say. It was almost horrible, as tense as a car journey ferrying a critically ill person to a hospital. Everything slowing our progress, every red light, every dithery driver in front of us, was agonizing.

He took me to his house. And the beauty of him combined with the beauty of his home sent me into some sort of overwhelm, in which I could barely remember anything, except that it was one of the nicest nights of my life.

The following morning he woke me while it was still dark outside. He was already dressed. Dreamily I asked, ‘Do I have to hop it now? Before your kids come back?’

‘No. I have to go to work. I’m sorry, I tried to change some meetings, so we could have time together this morning, but it wasn’t possible. But you can stay as long as you like, just pull the front door behind you when you go. I’ve made you pancakes.’

‘Pancakes?’ I said faintly. How peculiar.

‘And I’ve something for you.’

‘Oooh, lovely.’ Naturally enough, I was expecting an erect
penis, but it was actually a pot plant. A dark-green aspidistra, almost black. Borderline sinister.

I sat up in the bed and stared at it. It was amazing.

‘Do you like it?’ he asked eagerly.

‘I … Christ, I don’t know what to say. I
love
it.’

‘I chose it myself.’ He was keen to tell me. ‘Bella didn’t help. I thought it would fit in, in your apartment.’

‘You’re right. It will. It does. It’s utterly perfect.’

It was how I’d known, despite all the impediments – to wit, his demanding job and his three children – that he ‘got’ me, that perhaps he and I might go the distance.

So I went back to sleep and when I woke it was daylight and I floated around the glassy wonderland of a house, doing forensic snooping.

As you might expect, I was very curious about Vonnie, and the fact that she was responsible for this wonderful home only made me more hungry for information. There were a few pictures of her dotted here and there and she was a stunner. You only had to look at her to know that she was one of those women who will
always
be skinny, skinnier even than her fifteen-year-old daughter, without having to make any effort. She favoured a boho chic look, dressing in shrunken little cheesecloth tops, no bra, faded jeans and flip-flops. Then I saw a picture of her dressed up in a Vivienne Westwood suit and Paloma Picasso-red lipstick and she looked so fabulous I had to swallow hard to tamp down the fear.

But it was the pictures of Iona that I was really interested in. I picked up photos and stared at her long floaty hair and her beautiful vague eyes and tried to mentally psych her out.
I am stronger than you
, I thought, scrunching up my face with intensity
. You don’t scare me. You
won’t
scare me.

Mum insists on calling SatNav ‘the Talking Map’, like she’s a medieval peasant who believes in witchcraft. And a good job I had it because on the old-fashioned, non-talking, paper map there was no road where Docker’s house was supposed to be. The lake was there all right, you could see that, but no road. I suspected that even with the help of the devilish Talking Map, Docker’s Leitrim house was going to be hard to find. It would be an excellent place to hide out.

We’d been driving a good half-hour before I told Jay Parker where we were going. There was no reason for the delay. I suppose I just wanted to be cruel and, all credit to him, he didn’t torment me with questions, just sat and played angry birds on his phone.

Eventually I said, ‘We’re going to Leitrim.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Docker has a house there.’

Suddenly he was sitting up straighter. ‘What’s this Docker thing?’

‘I found some documentation. There’s a connection between Docker and Wayne. Has been since “Windmill Girl”.’ I was battling between the need to stay mysterious and the desire to show off.

Jay was trying to contain his excitement but it was filling the car. ‘How did you find out that Docker has a house down there?’

‘You don’t need to know.’ It didn’t exactly make me seem like a super-sleuth if I told him that my own mother read about it in
Hello!
.

‘Where exactly is it?’

‘Take a look at the map there.’

Jay pored over the paper map and when he saw how remote Docker’s house was, he said, ‘Wayne’s there. Game over. We’ve found him. I knew you were on to something big … Christ, you’re good.’

‘Why didn’t you want me to tell John Joseph?’

‘I
did
want you to tell him –’

‘You lying article!’

‘– just not yet.’

‘But you and he are on the same side?’

‘Oh yeah, for sure.’

His tone was a bit off, it was a little too try-hard, and suddenly I realized something. ‘God, you don’t like him!’

‘Ah, come on, Helen. You can’t say that. There’s a lot to admire. He’s hard-working, a great businessman … he’s very focused.’

‘That’s right.’ I took my eyes off the road to flick Parker a scathing glance. ‘He’s very
focused
.’ I made it sound like a dreadful slur. ‘Okay, shut up now. I’m turning on the radio.’

‘Still listening to Newstalk?’

‘Don’t say “still” like you know me.’

But I
was
‘still’ listening to Newstalk. I liked every programme on Newstalk; I felt like the presenters were my friends.

Jay went back to his angry birds and I listened to
Off the Ball
, but somewhere around the Longford–Leitrim border the roads got narrower and we lost Newstalk. I did some frequency flicking and managed to pick up some local station, which, in its low-key, parochial way, I found comforting.

By ten o’clock we were on the far side of Carrick-on-Shannon and the landscape became increasingly phantasmagorical. Pewtery lakes appeared with startling suddenness. Pools of glassy water, spiked with reeds, leaked from the ground. Drowned fields, quivering with stillness, stalked the
road and the never-setting sun cast the entire county in an awful lavender light.

I’ve heard people say that having depression is like being hounded by a big black dog. Or like being encased in glass. It was different for me. I felt more like I’d been poisoned. Like my brain was squirting out dirty brown toxins, polluting everything – my vision and my taste buds and most of all my thoughts.

In that first awful bout two and a half years ago I felt afraid all the time. Mostly nameless fears, just a terrible sense of impending catastrophe. It was like having the worst hangover ever. It was like the day after a big night when the fear is at its worst. But at least with a hangover you can swear off the vodka martinis, indeed all alcohol, and you know that if you wait it out it’ll pass. Also, you know you can blame it on the chemicals. You know that it’s not your fault.

One night, during the last time, I’d tried to erase the horror by getting really, really, really drunk, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t get lift-off, I couldn’t escape the blackness, and the next morning was the worst of my life. I felt that, overnight, I’d dropped about a thousand floors below the surface. Bad as things had been before then, I hadn’t imagined that I could ever feel so appalling. It’s just a hangover, I told myself. Hold on for a day or so and it’ll go, like all hangovers, and you’ll go back to feeling normal terror, not this catastrophic stuff.

But it didn’t pass. I stayed a thousand levels down. And after that I was afraid of getting drunk.

I clutched my steering wheel and prayed I wasn’t going back into the hell. I was dreading all that came with it: the medications that didn’t work, the weight gain, the constant thoughts of suicide, the yoga classes. Worse than the yoga classes, the fool blokes you got in the yoga classes, with their drawstring linen pants and talk of their ‘heart centres’ …

It was around then that we lost the local radio. We drove in silence until talking to Parker became less unpleasant than staying with my own thoughts.

‘What have you been doing for the past year?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’

I made a scoffing noise. It was impossible for Jay Parker to do nothing; it was always go, go, go. Spending time with him was like being on a roller coaster – exciting maybe, but after a while you start to feel sick.

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘I’ve done nothing. I didn’t get out of bed for a month.’ He stared out at the empty landscape. ‘I was destroyed. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t work for nine months. This job with Laddz is the first thing I’ve done.’

Well, he needn’t expect any pity from me.

I returned to the subject that was still needling me. ‘Why didn’t you want me to tell John Joseph about Docker? What are you up to?’

‘Nothing. I was just being … you know … childish. I wanted to know something that other people didn’t. Just for a while.’

‘You’re up to something,’ I said. ‘Some sideline. You forget I know you. You’re always scheming and looking for the angle on things.’

‘I’m not. I’m different now.’ He grabbed my hand and forced me to look at him. His eyes were dark and sincere. ‘I am, Helen. I’m different.’

Angrily I shook him off. ‘Do you want me to crash the fucking car?’

A building loomed at us out of the ghostly countryside. ‘Is that a garage?’ I asked. ‘I need some Diet Coke.’

But the garage was closed. It looked like it had been closed for years. Since the 1950s. Peeling paint and faded reds and an appalling air of abandonment.

I got out of the car anyway. I needed to make a phone call without Jay Parker breathing down my neck. I had involved
Harry Gilliam in this thing and now that I was convinced Wayne had gone to ground voluntarily, I’d better call him off.

Harry picked up on the third ring. There was so much clucking and squawking in the background I could barely hear him say hello.

‘Sorry to interrupt your charity cockfight,’ I said.

‘What is it, Helen?’

‘That matter I discussed with you. I no longer need it looked into.’

A long, cluck-filled silence followed.

Eventually he said, ‘You found your friend?’

‘Not exactly, not yet. But I no longer believe his disappearance to be … a concern.’

More silence. More clucks. I don’t know how he managed to convey such menace.

‘I’ve already expended some resources on the task,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m very sorry.’

‘You be careful, Helen.’

‘Are you threatening me? Or is this a genuine warning? I’m not too good on subtext at the moment.’

‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘My hen is on.’

A crescendo of clucks reached me, then abruptly the line went dead.

I stared at the phone for a very, very long time, then I made myself move. A voicemail had come in. It was from Mum and there was something weird in her tone.

‘Myself and Margaret, we’ve finished unpacking for you.’ With awful clarity, I realized what the something weird was – she’d found the photos. ‘We found some nudey pictures of Artie.’ Her words were a little strangled. ‘I see now …’ She forced herself to continue. ‘I see now what you see in him.’

Jesus Christ. Jesus Jesus Christ. Jesus Jesus Jesus Christ. What had she done with them? Torn them up? Discreetly rewrapped them in my underwear? Or carefully inserted one
in a floral Aynsley frame and put it on the polished oval table with the photos of her grandchildren?