Aftermath (16 page)

Saoirse
was finding it very difficult to get her head around the reality of the situation. She couldn’t stop focusing on the fact that Conor was her father and she loved him and she knew h
e loved her, no matter what
he’d done. He’d always been the one on her side in an argument. She thought she knew him but she was beginning to think that she never really knew him at all. It was unacceptable that the pregnant woman who’d descended on them that evening and her beloved father were connected in any way.
Hope was the polar opposite to her mother, anyone could see that and years younge
r than her too. What could her dad ever have seen in Hope
?

She knew her mother could be a nagging pain sometimes but she’d thought they were happy together. She was always catching them hugging and kissing in the kitchen when they thought nobody was around. It grossed
her out but the fact that her d
ad was married to another woman made her feel very ill indeed.
They’re supposed to be married,
she thought to herself
, which means he lives with her too and sleeps with her.
Now she really did feel like throwing up. She
willed herself not to be sick as s
he didn’t want to worry her mother
.

“
She has to
be
lying, mom, doesn’t she
?” Saoirse asked in a small voice.

Kerry jumped. She’d been so lost in her own thoughts that she’d forgotten she was still sitting in her daughter’s
bed
room.

“I don’t
know
darling. I really don’t know,” Kerry sighed. “I certainly hope so.”

“Why is she doing this to us M
om? She has nothing to prove that she knows Dad.” Saoirse’s voice was rising in panic. “I don’t believe she’s really married to him. She can’t be! Why would she do this when Dad isn’t even here to defend himself? She’s just some stupid attention-seeking bimbo!” Saoirse punched her pillow in anger and frustration before dissolving into heart-wrenching sobs.

Kerry gathered her into her arms and held her close. “Sss
h
h, darling, everything’s going to be ok. We’ll sort it out, don’t you worry.”

“How can we sort it out, M
om?” Saoirse wiped her hand across her tear-stained face. “It’s her word against ours until we can find Dad and what happens if we never find him? We’ll be left wondering about the real truth. She’ll ruin his memory for us.”

“Hush now, darling. Hush.” Kerry felt a fraud trying to comfort Saoirse when she felt so afraid herself.
“She’s made a mistake, a very big mistake. It’s as simple as tha
t. We’ll fix it. Wherever your d
ad is, we’ll find him and he’ll give us the answers we need.”

“What if he’s dead M
om?” Saoirse whispered the words that nobody
else
had dared to say aloud.

“He’s not dead!” Kerry snapped. “He can’t be dead. I’d know it if he was gone. I’d feel it in my soul. Your father is a very strong man. Wherever he is, I know he’s fighting to get back to us.”

Saoirse sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

“You should try to get some sleep, sweetheart. It’s been a very long day.” Her face softened as she took in the exhaustion and strain on her daughter’s face.

Saoirse nodded wearily and Kerry stay
ed with her until her
rhythmic breathing signalled she was sound asleep. She wished she could sleep. It had been months since she’d slept properly. Insomnia had plagued her since the tsunami; at first she’d had nightmares about the waves and now her nights were tormented with fitful dreams about Conor.

Eventually, she wandered into her own bedroom and sank onto the bed, feeling as if she was in some bizarre parallel universe. Surely she had somehow accidentally stepped from her own happy, peaceful, predictable life into someone else’s crazy nightmarish world. The birds were singing in the syc
amore trees that lined the drive
when
she finally dozed off.

“She’s asleep,” Chantale whispered as she tip-toed from her spare bedroom, where her daughter was sleeping. Hope couldn’t face returning
to
the flat so her mother had insisted that she stay with her. Chantale had slipped a herbal remedy into her daughter’s tea as soon as they’d returned home from the Darcys. Hope had fallen asleep almost as soon as her head had hit the pillow. She was worn out from the events of the evening. Chantale had stayed with her, perched on the edge of the bed, until she was sure that her daughter was sound asleep.

Darren turned to her as she slipped into bed beside him. “Poor lo
ve,” he whispered, pulling
his ex-wife near to him. They’d gotten much closer over the past few months, reunited in their caring of their daughter and somehow the spark of their past feelings for each other had been rekindled.

Chantale related the night’s events to Darren, knowingly that it sounded ridiculously far-fetched. Saying it out loud made it seem even more bizarre.

“I never trusted that guy, you know,” Darren muttered when she’d finished. “I always had a bad feeling about him. He was too over-the-top, always smiling and happy; nobody is ever that happy. It made me wonder what he was hiding. He was forever going on about how much he loved Hope and how amazing she was. It was too much, almost like he was trying to convince himself how much he loved her. Asshole!”

“Well, it’s easy to see different things with the benefit of hindsight and we don’t know the full story yet,” Chantale yawned widely. It had been a long day. “Who knows, maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything.”

“I doubt it,” Darren said shortly.

“I feel so sorry for her,” Chantale whispered, a sudden catch in her voice. “It’s bad enough that her husband is missing but then she discovers that he’s married to someone else and has children with her. I can’t imagine what she’s going through, my poor girl. She’s pregnant and alone. It’s so unfair.”

“She’s not alone, love,” Darren tried to comfort her. “She’s got us. We’re here for her.”

“I know, but it’s not the same as having her husband, her partner with her.”

Darren nodded into the darkness, not knowing quite w
hat to say.

Ch
a
pter 10

It was very late by the time Isabel Murray finally arrived home from another exhausting day at the police station.
She jiggled her key in the front door and let herself inside her cosy little cottage.
Peace at last
, she breathed a deep sigh of relief. It was at times like this she was glad she lived alone. Charles, her last boyfriend, had been a light sleeper and woke at the slightest sound. He resented her arriving home at all hours of the night and it was one of the reasons that they’d broken up.

It didn’t take her long to shrug off her tight, uncomfortable uniform jacket, slip off her shoes and walk barefoot into the kitchen. She went straight to the refrigerator
,
where there was a bottle o
f crisp white wine chilling
,
and
poured a large glass into the Waterford Crystal goblet that Charles had given her the previous Christmas. “Ah, bliss,” she murmured as the refreshing liquid hit the back of her throat. She closed her eyes and savoured the peace
and quiet in her little house
, home sweet home
. Isabel enjoyed her own company. Her job was very demanding and hectic and she got very little time alone during the day, so she savoured the peaceful solitude of living alone.

She hadn’t noticed until that moment, but in the weeks since Charles had moved out, the place had become a mess.
It’s not a filthy mess, more a slightly untidy tip
, s
he consoled herself, taking
in the piles of magazines and newspapers that were scattered around the kitchen counters. She surveyed the collection of glass bottles that were building up in the corner and promised to take a trip to the recycling bank as soon as possible.

Charles would have freaked out at the state of the place. He was a bit of an obsessive neat freak and she’d known that her untidy ways really got on his nerves. She could see his blood beginning to boil when she’d fling her work uniform on
the
bed, not bothering to hang it up immediately.
Ch
arles always hung up his suits
and folded his shirts meticulously.
Although, she was quite certain she’d be more careful too if she spent as much money on designer clothes as he splurged.
Sometimes, she’d make a mess just to annoy him, especially towards the end of their relationship, when they’d both known it was over but neither of them was actually brave enough to finally end it. She’d see him clenching and unclenching his fists, itching to hang up her clothes neatly in the wardrobe next to his.

She poured herself another glass of Pinot Grigio and made her way into the living room where she lit one of the burnt-down candles that were dotted around
the room. Candles helped her
relax after a stressful day and she liked nothing better than to revel in their soothing ambience. She sank into her soft, cream leather couch and made a silent promise to herself to clear away the empty wine glasses that were beginning to gather dust on her coffee table.
No wonder Charles left
, she thought wryly.
He’s probably
found himself a domestic goddess by now
. So much for opposites attracting
, she thought as she took another sip of her wine.

All the same, she had to admit the place needed a good tidy-up; boyfriend or no boyfriend
. I’ll
do it at the weekend. I just do
n’t have the energy to face it any sooner.
She finished her wine and yawned loudly. It was after midnight and way past her bed time.

She slid between the satin sheets and closed her eyes, making a mental note to change the sheets for her favourite Egyptian cotton as soon as possible. Charles liked satin sheets, claiming it gave the bedroom a s
exy atmosphere
but they made her skin itch and scratch. She’d choose comfort any day over sexiness. Maybe that was the problem with her and her disastrous relationship history.
When the honeymoon stage was over she usually resorted to wearing comfortable clothes like tracksuits and worn jeans with loose, baggy tops. The effort of making a sexy impression quickly wore off but she knew that wasn’t a good thing. It was just that she spent so much time buttoned up in her tight, uncomfortable uniform every day at work that the thought of coming home and wearing something sexy and restricting was just too much like hard work.

“My boyfriend should accept me for who I am,” she’d complain to her friend, Louisa, when she tried to convince her to get dressed up and maybe wear a little more makeup.

“Of course he should,” Louisa would agree, “but it doesn’t work like that. He’ll soon stop seeing you as the sexy creature
that you really are if
you
only ever wear
grubby jeans and baggy tops.”

Isabel could see her point but she was yet to find a man who was worth the effort. “I’m sure I’ll find someone someday who accepts me for who and what I am, not what I wear,” was her usual defence.

Maybe she’d had too much wine or she was over-tired but sleep wouldn’t come. She lay there tossing and turning, getting hotter and hotter and more uncomfortable. Her mind kept wandering back to her latest case, about the mysterious missing man and his two wives.
Isabel knew it had the potential to become very messy. If the media got hold of the story then the two women’s lives would become a living hell. She knew they’d be hounded for their stories and wouldn’t get a minute’s peace from the paparazzi. It was an absolute fiasco; one marriage of twenty years and another apparent marriage o
f a year.
Conor Darcy, or whatever his name was,
was probably having a mid-life crisis when he met the younger woman and instead of having an affair he decided to do the “honourable” thing and marry her instead.

She’d spent hours on the internet poring over the law relating to bigamy. The fact of the matter was that if Conor had knowingly married Hope while he was still married to Kerry, then he was a bigamist. It was as simple as that. Ludicrously, b
oth wives seemed to believe
th
ey were legally married to him
. It was Isabel’s job to investigate if the first marriage was valid and whether or not the second marriage was carried out in a legal way. She needed to find out if anyone at the second ceremony knew anything abou
t the first marriage, in which case they would have aided and abetted in the crime.

It was a mess and the work involved seemed never-ending. She had to check Conor’s background and
his alter ego,
Niall’s too. Maybe he was a serial bigamist. Perhaps Kerry and Hope were only two in a long line of unsuspecting wives! Where did he get the time or the energy to carry on a double life? It was exhausting to even think about it! She could see that Conor did have ample opportunity with the amount of travelling he did to carry on multiple lives. Maybe there had been weddings in other countries too. Isabel vaguely wondered if her superintendent would allow her to travel overseas in the name of research. She doubted it but it would make a nice change from being stuck in the police station in rainy, grey Cork. The weather forecasters had predicted a heat
wave but it was the middle of August already and there was no sig
n of it. The sun had barely peep
ed out from behind the clouds in weeks.