The Undivided (7 page)

‘I’m sure it will, my lord,’ she said, closing her hand over the jewel, wondering why, in this crisp breeze, the stone felt so remarkably warm.

By the time breakfast was almost done, the plans for Ren and Hayley’s shopping trip were well under way, with one unfortunate complication. When Hayley’s father came into the kitchen, shrugging on the grey, double-breasted jacket he always wore when he was playing chauffeur, he kissed her mother’s cheek, waved to her and Neil and then turned to Ren. ‘Hope you’re not planning any excursions today, Rennie, me boy.’

‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘The vultures are already starting to gather at the gate,’ he warned, stealing a piece of Neil’s toast as he sat down beside her.

Seeing them side by side, it always struck Hayley as amusing that the older they got, the more her father and her stepmother seemed alike: stocky, dark-haired and solid. Her father, a former stunt man, had worked for Kiva since marrying Kerry some fourteen years ago, not long after he fished a drowning child out of a lake on the set of Kiva’s first film. That movie was Kiva’s big break, after a Hollywood director, visiting Ireland to scout locations, discovered her on local television and cast her as his leading lady.

‘They’re out there already?’ she asked, glancing sympathetically at Ren, even if he had brought this on himself with his foolish outburst last night. Still, Hayley wasn’t surprised to learn the
paparazzi were waiting at the gate. For the next few days, they would not leave anything remotely connected to Ren Kavanaugh alone. Even her father would be quizzed for his opinion as he left for the airport later this morning. There was probably another clutch of them waiting at the airport, too. ‘Don’t those people ever sleep?’

‘They’re like vampires, love,’ her stepmother sighed. ‘They only come out at night to suck the life out of you.’

‘If they’re vampires, how come they’re down there this morning and the sunlight isn’t setting them on fire?’ Neil asked as he chewed his toast.

‘Dunno,’ Ren said, winking at Neil. ‘Let’s go down to the gate with a can of kerosene and some matches and find out if they’re flammable.’

‘Ren Kavanaugh,’ Kerry scolded, shaking her head. ‘It’s idiotic comments like that one that gets the vultures gathering at the gate in the first place. Didn’t you learn anything from last night?’

‘That’s a lesson Kiva’s going to deliver as soon as she wakes up,’ Hayley predicted. She didn’t envy Ren the lesson either.

Her father laughed and ruffled her hair. ‘You’ve got the fey gift of the Faerie, Hayley,’ he said. ‘It’s a well-known trait in our family.’

‘Fey, my arse,’ Kerry scoffed, putting a fresh mug of tea on the counter in front of Patrick. ‘Blind Freddy could have worked that one out.’

‘Still,’ he said, picking up the tea and taking an appreciative sip, ‘the Boyles are known for their gift with the Sight.’

‘You and your brothers getting pissed at Christmas and bragging about being fey doesn’t make it a fact, Patrick Boyle,’ Kerry said. She winked at Hayley, who was well used to her father’s insistence — usually when he’d had a few pints — that they were descended from Celtic seers from back in some distant time when that might have actually meant something.

But her stepmother had delivered her pronouncement on the matter, and clearly wasn’t planning to discuss it further. She turned to Ren. ‘Is your mam still asleep?’

Ren nodded. ‘I suppose. She took something when we got home from the airport last night. You could probably detonate a nuke in the next room, and she’d sleep through it.’

‘If you detonated a nuke in the next room,’ Hayley pointed out, reasonably enough, ‘she wouldn’t wake up at all, Ren.’

Ren pulled a face at her. ‘Nobody likes a smart-arse, smart-arse.’

Hayley grinned at him and then turned to her father. ‘Ren and I are taking Neil shopping, today. To buy shoes.’

‘Dear God, woman!’ Patrick exclaimed to his wife in horror. ‘Have you no respect for the manhood of these boys?
Shoe
shopping?’

‘I’m sure the experience will turn both of them gayer than Kiva’s stylist,’ Kerry replied calmly, as she started to clear away the breakfast dishes. ‘Maybe when they get back you can take these poor emasculated lads out to the garage, smear them in grease and have them dance naked around the Bentley. Just to even things up.’

Hayley burst out laughing at the mental image
that
conjured up, spitting out a mouthful of hot chocolate which splattered all over the counter. Kerry hurried over with a cloth to wipe up the mess. Neil and her father were laughing, too. Then she noticed Ren’s grimace.

Ren looked as if he would have laughed only it might hurt too much, which made Hayley instantly suspicious. Or maybe he was just feeling a little left out. Hayley thought there must be a special sort of loneliness that came from living on the fringes of someone else’s family, especially one as warm and close as hers. Although the Boyles treated him like one of their own, she knew Ren felt as if he didn’t belong in their tight-knit unit, just as she knew he felt he didn’t belong with Kiva, either.

Ren belonged to some unnamed and never identified couple who considered it cool to tattoo the palm of a toddler’s hand, and who had presumably perished in a boating accident when he was three years old.

Maybe.

Nobody knew Ren’s age for certain, either. It was the doctors who examined him after Patrick dragged him hypothermic and half drowned from the lake, who had assigned him his age. And his date of birth.

December tenth, 1983. That was the day they found him, backdated by three years. It was 2001 now, so that meant in a couple of months, he’d turn eighteen. Legally, at any rate. Ren might be older, or even younger, but nobody would ever really know for certain.

‘Ah, well …’ her dad was saying, as Hayley dragged her attention back from Ren’s misty age and origins to the conversation. ‘If you insist on ruining these boys, I suppose the least I can do is help them run the gauntlet.’ Patrick pushed up his sleeve to check his watch. ‘I have to leave for the airport in a few minutes to pick up Jon. If you kids are ready to go, I’ll drop you off at Frascati Road on the way.’

‘What about the paps?’ Ren asked.

‘You can hide in the Bentley’s trunk. It’s big enough to hold a party in there. We’ll just sail on past ’em, waving to the ravening whores on the way out. They’ll never even know you’re in the car.’

‘Don’t you mean the ravening hordes?’ Kerry asked.

‘Clearly, my love,’ Patrick replied with a perfectly straight face, drinking down the last of his tea, ‘you’ve not seen what’s waiting outside the gate this morning.’

Neil’s shoes, as it turned out, were not a problem. They found a pair at Clarks, the first store they visited, which fitted the bill of
being functional, school-appropriate, and not having any
Lord of the Rings
characters emblazoned on them. After Hayley paid for them with the credit card her mother had entrusted her with, the three of them window-shopped for a couple of hours around the Blackrock Shopping Centre to kill time until lunch. At least Hayley window-shopped. Ren and Neil dutifully tagged along, munching on hot cinnamon donuts, making rude comments about girls and shopping, which Hayley loftily ignored.

They ran into a clutch of girls from school at around eleven o’clock, who zeroed in on Ren like heat-seeking missiles. He wasn’t the only celebrity offspring at their school, but after last night, was probably the most notorious. Even more annoying for Hayley was that Ren should have run like hell at the very sight of them, but he didn’t. He stopped and chatted to them, smiling self-deprecatingly, brushing off his now apparently world-wide TV appearance with a shrug, and — in Hayley’s opinion — taking entirely too much pleasure in being swarmed by a clutch of bimbos. She stood there, tapping her foot, glaring at the ringleader — future beauty therapist Shangrila McGill — until the girl got the hint, gathered up her faithful followers and headed off down the mall in search of something new to obsess over.

‘You could have signed autographs,’ Hayley said, watching them leave. ‘I have a pen.’

Ren turned to stare at her. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yeah … right.’

‘Okay … I just think that for someone who complains how much it sucks being harassed by your mother’s fans, you’re pretty quick to flirt with your own.’

‘I don’t have fans. I go to school with those girls.’

‘I go to school with them, too, Ren. They didn’t even acknowledge I was here.’

‘That’s ’cause you scare them,’ Neil chimed in.

Ren grinned. ‘You know, I think he’s right.’

Hayley grinned suddenly, her anger evaporating at the idea she intimidated Shangrila McGill and her posse. That actually felt pretty good.

They decided to head across the road after that — in part to avoid running into the bimbo brigade again.

‘I’m hungry,’ Neil announced. He was walking between Ren and Hayley, heading for the travelator down to the car park, so they could cross the road at the pedestrian lights to the Frascati Shopping Centre.

‘You’re always hungry,’ Hayley observed. ‘And you just finished a donut. How come you’re skinny as a bean pole?’

‘Because he burns off all his excess calories talking so much,’ Ren suggested with a grimace that might have been meant as a smile. He’d been smiling less and less and growing progressively quieter as the morning wore on, which was probably why the bimbos annoyed her so much. For them he’d managed a smile.

‘I do not!’ Neil exclaimed, elbowing Ren in the side as hard as he could.

Ren grunted and doubled over with pain.

Neil laughed. ‘You are such a big baby, Ren.’

The pain of Neil’s elbowing apparently buckled Ren’s knees. Ren dropped hard onto the tiled floor, trying to catch his breath. He nodded wordlessly, his eyes watering.

‘He can act better than his mother, too,’ Neil added, obviously assuming Ren was faking.

When Ren still didn’t answer but remained doubled over on his knees, as the crowds of shoppers flowed around them, Hayley squatted down beside him, filled with concern. ‘Hey … you okay?’

‘I … will … be …’

‘Oh, my God!’ she hissed, as she noticed blood seeping into
Ren’s T-shirt. She looked up, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed them. ‘We have to get you out of here.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Neil asked, worried, now, that neither Ren nor his sister seemed to be fooling around any longer. ‘Is Ren okay?’

‘Where are the restrooms?’ Hayley asked her little brother, putting her arm around Ren’s shoulder to help him up.

‘Back the way we came,’ he said, sounding worried and a little puzzled. ‘What’s wrong with Ren?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, as Ren climbed unsteadily to his feet. ‘He just needs a bathroom.’

Neil seemed to understand he’d get nothing more from his sister, so he turned back the way they’d come, cutting a path ahead of them. When they finally reached the passage leading to the public toilets, Hayley turned to her brother. ‘Stay here. We’ll be back in a bit.’

‘What’s the matter with Ren?’

‘I’ll explain later,’ Ren gasped. He managed to smile at Neil, which helped. Sometimes a twelve-year-old’s hero worship was a useful thing, Hayley decided.

When they reached the men’s room, which proved blessedly empty, Ren collapsed against the basin as Hayley turned to find some paper towels.

‘Shit!’

‘What?’ Ren asked.

‘They’ve only got hand dryers here.’

‘It’ll be okay, Hayley,’ Ren assured her. He gingerly pushed back his tracksuit jacket and raised his T-shirt. ‘Christ Almighty, your little brother has elbows like a ninja.’

‘A ninja elbow didn’t do that,’ she said as she bent down to take a closer look at Ren’s field dressing. She’d seen them before and knew the reason without asking. ‘Did it happen again?’

Ren nodded, gently lifting the edge of the dressing to see how bad the damage was. Hayley winced at the sight of it. The cut was long and shallow and looked like Ren had been knifed in the ribs.

‘This morning,’ he explained. ‘Not a fun way to greet the day, let me tell you.’

‘Who dressed it for you?’

‘I went next door to Jack.’

Hayley didn’t share Ren’s enthusiasm for his neighbour, but she knew Jack was good at keeping secrets. Still, this looked serious and she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to hide it. ‘Your mother’s going to go ballistic when she sees that.’

‘The plan was to not let her see it.’ Ren frowned. Two of the sterile strips holding the wound closed had lifted. The wound was bleeding, but not profusely. He pressed them back down, and then lowered the T-shirt.

Hayley hoped the small amount of pressure he was applying would be enough to stem the blood flow. But that wasn’t their immediate problem. If Ren wanted to keep this a secret, they were going to have to come up with a plausible cover story.

‘What are we going to tell Neil?’

‘That he has ninja elbows,’ Ren suggested with a faint smile.

She didn’t return his smile, wishing he’d take this a little more seriously. ‘What are you going to tell Kiva?’

‘Nothing. I figure she’s so pissed off by what I said at the premiere, she won’t even think to worry if I’ve been slicing myself up again.’

And that was the rub. No matter what he said, everyone would think Ren had done this to himself.

‘You didn’t, did you?’ she asked. ‘I mean … slice yourself up?’

Ren turned to wash his hands.

‘I’m sorry … but … well … you know … I had to ask …’

‘No, Hayley. You didn’t.’

Hayley wasn’t sure how to answer that. She worried about Ren’s mysterious injuries, and believed that
he believed
he wasn’t cutting himself, but sometimes she really did wonder …

The look on his face prevented her from probing the matter further. She knew he was about to shut her out completely, and Hayley didn’t want that. ‘I’d better go check on Neil. You gonna be okay?’

‘Yeah. Just give me a minute.’

‘Take a few deep breaths,’ she advised.

The door opened before Ren could answer and a young man came in, wearing a Superquinn shirt from the centre’s supermarket that brought in most of the mall’s customers. He stared at Hayley in surprise, glanced at Ren, and then stepped up to the urinal at the far end of the restroom and waited, looking at them impatiently.