Only We Know (10 page)

My request must have seemed like a bolt from
the blue. We had seen each other at Sally’s funeral, briefly, and on a couple of
other occasions, Dublin being the size it is, but I always felt he was wary of me.
However warm his greeting, I couldn’t escape the thought that, behind the friendly
exterior, he was dying to be rid of me. So it came as a surprise when he responded
warmly to my email, agreeing to meet me, and within his response, I read a degree of
interest on his part in our becoming reacquainted. We arranged to meet for coffee in a
hotel near Spencer Dock but, an hour beforehand, he rang to suggest we meet instead out
at Sandymount Strand.

‘It’s such a beautiful
morning,’ he had said, his voice confident and optimistic. ‘Let’s make
the most of it.’

And I had found myself in the car park by
the strand, a paper cup of coffee in each hand, leaning against my car and waiting for
him to turn up. I was nervous in a way I couldn’t quite figure out, for what was
there to be nervous of? As his car swung into the car park – a black Range Rover
gleaming in the morning sun – I caught his eye and saw the grin already on his face,
felt the jump of my nerves as I pushed myself away from my car and went to meet him.

‘Great minds,’ he said, coming
towards me with two paper cups of coffee held aloft.

He leaned forward to
kiss my cheek and we laughed while awkwardly holding our twin coffees.

‘Mine are from Dunne &
Crescenzi,’ he said, glancing sceptically at the cups in my hands. ‘What
about yours?’

‘Petrol station.’

‘Ah, Katie! Throw that muck away and
take one of these!’ he said, in a voice that might have sounded brash and bullying
were it not for the charm of his accompanying smile. And I, surprising myself, did just
that, telling myself it was best to get on his good side if I wanted any information out
of him but, really, that was a lame excuse, for it had always been that way between us –
him giving the orders, setting the pace, and me reluctant to disappoint, not wanting to
be the one to show resistance.

The tide was way out that morning, the brown
sand skimmed and marbled and stretching for miles, occasional breezes blowing in little
eddies over the hard surface, sending up brief clouds of dust. We walked together, Luke
and I, out across the strand, past the Martello tower, veering south in the direction of
Bray Head. The sky above us was a brittle blue. We drank our coffee and chatted, and it
was surprising to me how quickly and easily we settled into a pattern of conversation.
It was a knack he had, I realized, of putting people at their ease, the openness he had
that made you feel you were an old friend with no barriers or secrets between you and
him.

We talked at length of his business and its
success. Two pubs, a restaurant and a half-share in a country house that was being
converted into an exclusive weekend retreat – he had made a name for himself as one of a
handful of entrepreneurs who were responsible for
the transformation of the Dublin social scene, developing
venues that were casually chic, modern enough but with a nod and a wink in the direction
of the traditional Irish pub. There was no doubting Luke’s success, his Midas
touch and innate understanding of what passed for ‘cool’. And when the crash
came, he seemed to escape unscathed. Not everyone was as lucky. And when I put it to him
that it was unusual he had managed to remain untouched by the downturn in a business
that relied heavily on a thriving economy, he gave a belting laugh, then sent me a
sideways look, saying: ‘Prudence, Katie. Prudence saved me.’

Snatched glances at him as we walked side by
side showed him to have aged well. He was thirty-nine – two years older than me – and
his sandy-brown hair was cut smartly, with only a peppering of grey at the temples. He
wore jeans, Converse shoes and a green parka – casual clothes, but you knew they were
expensive. There was something of the ageing Brit-pop star about Luke. His wedding ring
appeared to be platinum and was the only flashy thing about him, if you could even call
it that.

‘What about luck?’ I asked.

‘Luck?’

‘It could easily have gone the other
way.’

He frowned then, a pinched line of confusion
running between his eyebrows.

‘If you consider the rest of your
peers, other entrepreneurs in the pub and club scene, all of whom played a part in the
regeneration of the economy –’ I listed a few ‘– they haven’t all been
as fortunate as you. Some of them got badly burned.’

Young guns with a
pioneering attitude that in hindsight seems like borderline gambling; borrowing heavily,
they had pressed ahead, transforming Dublin from a dingy urban backwater, tired and
neglected in the post-colonial years, into a vibrant, youthful city, pulsing with money
and music, culture and excitement. Luke nodded, sanguine, as I spoke of some of those
who had fallen.

‘Poor fuckers,’ he intoned.
‘They hadn’t a clue what was up the road waiting for them. Thought it was
going to be champagne and oysters till Doomsday. They pushed it too far, took on too
much. It was madness.’

‘Do you see them much now?’

He shrugged. ‘Mulvey, the odd time.
Farrell’s a basket-case since he lost all his money, and the others have left the
country.’

‘They must hate you,’ I said
jokingly, but he glanced at me sideways and I felt his confidence slip.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because they’re in hock for
millions, and you’re still afloat,’ I said, laughing at his expression. He
seemed genuinely affronted.

‘I suppose.’

I asked him whether any of his peers had
commented on his TV appearance, but he waved away the question, as if embarrassed by
it.

‘I have to ask, Luke: was it planned,
your speech that night?’

‘No,’ he said firmly.
‘Honestly, it wasn’t. To tell you the truth, I don’t know where it
came from, what came over me.’

‘You seemed so passionate.’

‘I was livid!
Christ, all that self-important bullshit the others were coming out with, the faffing
around in the studio beforehand … It just got to me, and I kind of exploded. It was
funny in a way, thinking back on it. My philanthropic side coming out.’

‘Your mother would have been
proud.’

‘Yeah, well …’

We had reached the edge of the shore now,
the water starting to turn back on itself. The tide comes in swiftly over the strand,
and there are signs warning you to avoid being trapped. But we lingered for a moment,
the sea lapping the toes of our shoes.

‘So what has you working on this
story, Katie? I don’t give interviews to just anyone, you know,’ he said, in
a jokey voice. ‘Did you beg the editor to let you have it? Wave our old connection
in his face? Claw away the other slavering journos who were grasping for it?’

I laughed, but it was a hollow sound, and he
was waiting for an answer. It would have been so easy to make a joke of it, make some
glib remark about a catfight in the board-room or sleeping with the editor. It was the
kind of flippancy that came effortlessly to me. But instead, surprising myself, I told
him the truth.

‘I didn’t want to do it, but it
was foisted on me. I didn’t want to interview you, Luke. The thought of it scared
me.’

‘Scared you?’

I turned to him then. ‘I was scared of
what it might stir up, afraid of waking old ghosts.’

Maybe it was the way he was watching me as
we paused at the edge of the water. The stillness that had come over his features and
the softening in his voice. Maybe it
was just
that he had stopped talking about himself and his own concerns and was now focusing on
mine. Whatever it was, I read it as an opening – a small, truthful space for me to slip
into and for once speak plainly about my feelings. But I have never been very good at
judging such moments. What I see as openings for honesty are often something else. And
when I gazed up at Luke’s face that sunny morning, I saw something slip over it: a
guardedness.

He said, ‘Nothing to be afraid
of,’ and something inside me seemed to plummet.

I don’t know what I expected of him,
but it was more than that. ‘Don’t you ever think of her? Don’t you
ever think about what happened and wonder whether –’

‘No.’ He looked me full in the
face, his mouth set in a stern line, anger in his eyes. ‘No, I don’t think
about it, Katie. I don’t allow myself to think about it. That’s my choice.
That’s how I get through my day. And if you’re wise – if you want to make
something of yourself, do something with your life – then you’ll do the same. Stop
dwelling on the past because thinking about it won’t change a thing. All it will
achieve is your own destruction.’

I was startled into silence, overwhelmed by
the sudden change in him – his charm had fled, leaving in its wake that shell of a man
cloaked in anger and fear.

‘What about Nick?’ I asked
quietly, compelled somehow to press on. ‘Do you ever talk to him about
it?’

He laughed then, a small harsh burst that
contained little amusement. ‘What would be the point, Katie? You know what
he’s like.’

I didn’t say anything after that, and
neither did he, the
two of us just standing at
the water’s edge, taking in the ripples in the hard sand, bubbles gathering in the
shallows. After a moment’s silence, he said: ‘We’d best turn
back.’

For the rest of the walk to the car park, I
tried to push down the wave of disappointment that kept rising within me. Our
conversation turned back to his business. In one way, I suppose, my opening up to him
had seemed to produce a corresponding openness in him: on the way back to our cars, his
comments took on a new candour. But there was no further mention of what had happened
when we were kids or anything it might have stirred up, and for some reason, this seemed
to crush me in a way I couldn’t begin to understand.

He spoke about his father, how he had always
been an inspiration and a guide when it came to economic matters. How when Ken had died,
Luke had lost his father, but also a mentor.

‘It must have been such a
shock,’ I said, remembering my own reaction to the news. A vehicle crash in the
Wicklow hills. No one else involved.

‘It was. Even though it’s been
years now, I still miss him.’

I made some remark then about the accident,
about the unfairness of such a death and about the treacherous way the road wends down
into the Sally Gap. He focused on the sand in front of us, softening now where the
marram grass sprouted in tufts, and his expression seemed to tighten. ‘Depends on
the state of the driver, I should think,’ he said, distracted.

Something in me held back from pressing him
on it, but it had struck a discordant note in me, the suggestion of
intent that cast a cool shadow over my memory of Ken Yates,
sketchy as it was.

He walked me to my car, and stood waiting
while I unlocked the door and threw my bag onto the passenger seat.

‘I meant to get in touch with
you,’ he said, ‘after Mum’s funeral. It was good of you to
attend.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘It meant a lot to us – to me and Nick
– that you were there. You should have stuck around afterwards, though. We never got to
talk. You could have come back to the house.’

‘I didn’t want to
intrude,’ I said, shy all of a sudden.

It occurred to me then that, with
Sally’s death, there was no one else who had been there that summer – only the
three of us remained. Perhaps he thought it too, because he said next: ‘Are you in
touch with Nick?’

I shook my head: no.

He nodded, his eyes passing over my face.
‘I don’t hear from him much myself,’ he admitted. ‘Not once
since the funeral.’

‘No?’

‘You know how it is.’ He
shrugged, then laughed, looking back towards the sea, but there was something sad about
the way he had said it that got me thinking of the brothers and what might have happened
between them.

Then, just before we parted, he turned to me
and I thought he was going to make some remark about old times, but a shadow crossed his
face and he said: ‘You don’t really think they hate me, do you? Mulvey and
them?’

I laughed – I
couldn’t help it. He seemed hurt or put out somehow, which was ridiculous.
I’d only been winding him up.

‘Jesus, Luke. No. How the hell should
I know what they think?’

He nodded again briskly, then recovered
himself, laughing even at his own seriousness. ‘Well, goodbye, Katie Walsh,’
he said, and leaned in towards me. I’d thought he was going to kiss my cheek, but
instead he put his hands on my waist and pulled me to him and I felt his lips press
against my own. He drew back and I stood there, too startled to say anything, watching
him walk away from me.

As I left the strand that day, heading back
into the city, I kept thinking of that kiss – the surprise of it, the firmness of his
mouth against mine, how purposeful it had felt. I was so busy thinking about it that I
never stopped to consider what he had said just before it. Too distracted by all that
was stirred up within me to remember how troubled he had seemed – the worry in his face
– and all that it might mean.

I think about him now and what he had said.
Keeping my eyes trained on the line of the horizon, navy against the lavender grey of
the evening sky, his words come back to me:
Stop dwelling on the past because
thinking about it won’t change a thing.
For people like me and Luke the
past is a closed door, a sliding bolt to contain that tentacled thing.

My phone rings and my heart leaps in fright.
My hand is shaking as I answer it.

‘Katie?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s me,
Nick.’

I suck in my breath and feel the fluttering
in my chest cavity. ‘Nick. Is there news?’

‘No. He hasn’t turned up
yet.’

A sinking feeling then; the clamour of my
heart quietens a little. I feel the strangeness of the silence between us.