Please Forgive Me (38 page)

‘It might not be that hard at all actually,’ Helena interjected. ‘In fact, there’s someone who – one way or the other – should be able to tell us exactly where he is.’

That ‘someone’ turned out to be David Reed, a high-powered and highly decorated local senator who had served his time in both Vietnam and Korea, and who also happened to be Nathan’s brother. The Reeds were a very well known and respected political family in the Bay area and Alex recalled how Helena had mentioned that in view of his military background, Nathan couldn’t have done anything else.

‘I think I recognise the surname actually,’ she said when Helena told them about Nathan’s family, who she planned to contact as soon as she’d read the letters, and perhaps felt ready to hear the truth.

Some years after Nathan’s departure she had divorced the hippie boyfriend and in the meantime moved to Santa Barbara and got married again to a man called Bob Freeman, hence the surname. But the second husband had died some six years before.

‘I’ll admit I kept tabs on how the Reeds were doing over the years now and again,’ she said. ‘Newspaper articles, things like that.’ But ominously, she revealed, Nathan hadn’t been mentioned.

Leonie was held rapt by the woman’s story and Alex wondered again why all of this seemed to mean so much to her. She herself would have been just as happy to deliver the box of letters to Helena and having learnt their story, left it at that and got on with her own worries. But for Leonie, it all seemed to run so much deeper.

When they bade goodbye to Helena in Union Square (finally leaving her alone to read her letters in peace) and returned to Green Street, Alex decided to broach the subject once and for all.

‘Seeing as we’re uncovering old stories, are you ever going to tell me yours?’ she asked, when they’d finished discussing Helena and whether or not the couple would ever be reunited. ‘I mean, I know you’ve had something else on your mind all this time, something other than those letters.’

Her friend looked at her and Alex momentarily felt guilty for raising the subject, particularly after what had been a particularly emotional few days for everyone.
 
But it seemed that this time, and possibly as a result, Leonie was prepared to lower her guard. She looked away. ‘I don’t know where to start…and I honestly don’t know if you’ll believe me.’

‘Try the very beginning,’ Alex said with a sigh. ‘After everything that’s come to light lately, I really don’t think anything would surprise me.’

Following her shock at finding Billy in Andrea’s house, Leonie drove back to Dublin in a zombie-like trance, almost unable to contemplate what she’d discovered.

And it
was
a discovery, not just a suspicion, because almost as soon as she’d walked into that room and seen Billy there …

There was only one conclusion to come to.

The guy hadn’t even noticed her lack of response, had barely acknowledged her presence actually. He was so immersed in the football there could have been an earthquake going off beneath him and he wouldn’t have realised.

‘Come on, mate, you don’t know what you’re doing!’ he’d remonstrated; arm out to the TV, the cigarette still dangling from his lips.

Leonie had slowly left the room then, there didn’t seem any point in staying. Instead she went back outside and waited in the car for Suzanne. Clearly he wasn’t too concerned about anything other than the football, and looked to be right at home in Andrea’s front room. What was it that Suzanne had said?

‘He’s Mum’s boyfriend, but …they’re always fighting.’

She gave a sideways glance at Suzanne, who was listening to her Ipod, not a care in the world. Did
she
know about this? Highly unlikely, as she would surely have said something before…

Leonie felt nauseous as she drove along the N11, the beautiful blue sky and warm evening sunshine almost making a mockery of her feelings.

But was she absolutely sure? She wondered now, trying to be rational for a second. Had her imagination
really
run away with her this time? After all, it would be crazy to just launch straight in with accusations if she wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

So for argument’s sake, and especially before she confronted Adam, she needed to put the pieces together.

She tried to figure it out, tried to think back on everything Adam had told her about his and Andrea’s previous relationship. OK, so according to him, they were together in the very early days of Suzanne’s life but split up completely when she was still a young baby. They’d had a fractious on-off relationship for a short time after that, but everything ended completely when Adam moved to the UK. That was the version she’d been given anyway, and as far as she was concerned there was no more to it.

So what about Billy, she wondered, her thoughts going right back to the root of all this. Where and when did he come into it?

‘So where does Billy live, then?’ she asked Suzanne, when they’d returned to the apartment.

The teenager was on the sofa watching TV and drinking Coke. She’d been quiet and rather subdued since their discussion earlier, and Leonie sensed that she was staying in to keep in her future step-mum’s good books, and especially in the hope that she wouldn’t tell tales to her dad. But Leonie wasn’t concerned about that now. She had much bigger fish to fry.

Suzanne shrugged. ‘Some place in Wicklow town. I don’t know; I’ve never been there.’

‘But he stays at your house a lot too.’ He certainly seemed at home there anyway, despite the fact that the place was unoccupied.

‘Sometimes. But he goes away with his band a lot.’

His band? Leonie raised an eyebrow. That certainly accounted for the scruffy, juvenile dress sense and dodgy hair!

‘He’s in a band? How exciting.’ She hated coaxing information out of the teenager like this; it seemed underhand somehow, but she needed to get a greater idea of what was going on in order to try and get her head around it.

‘I don’t think they’re very good though,’ Suzanne said, finishing her Coke. ‘They’ve been around forever and you never, like, see them on MTV or anything.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘And Billy’s
always
broke.’

Leonie stood still, almost afraid to move. ‘Really?’ she said, wanted to draw out this particular line of conversation further.

‘Yeah.’ Suzanne picked up a cushion and plumped it up, before setting it down again. ‘It drives Mum crazy.’

‘I guess that’s not very helpful when she has to buy stuff for Hugo – and you of course.’

‘I know, especially when he’s always borrowing money off her too. He, like,
never
has money for anything. That’s how I know the band is rubbish,’ she finished, confident in this pronouncement.

Again, Leonie’s heart began to race. ‘Your poor Mum; she must get tired of that sometimes,’ she said, trying to choose her words carefully.

‘She hates it, and they’re like, always fighting about it. I don’t know why she puts up with him really. I wouldn’t let a guy treat me like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like never bringing her out to dinner or giving her nice things, or anything. And sometimes he goes on tour for with the band for ages without telling her, and doesn’t, like, phone when he’s away.’ She rolled her eyes again. ‘But I guess she loves him, although I honestly don’t know why.’

Leonie was getting a strange depiction of Andrea here, one totally at odds with the one she’d been familiar with up to now.

‘But you get on well with him all the same?’

She shrugged. ‘He’s OK. I hate the way he always smells of smoke though, that’s really gross. And sometimes he gets drunk and acts like, totally brainless, kinda like some of the guys I know, even though he’s got no excuse ‘cos he’s supposed to be an adult.’

‘I hate the smell of smoke too,’ Leonie demurred, her heart sinking afresh as this entire situation gradually became clearer. Billy sounded like a complete and utter waster. He had no real job, drank and smoked like a trooper and was continuously cadging money off Andrea. Hardly the ideal father figure.

‘He’s a good dad to Hugo I’d imagine though?’ she let the question hang in the air for a while.

‘I guess. He doesn’t really take care of him though, not the way my dad takes care of me.’ She turned to look at Leonie, her expression so innocent and devoid of guile it was almost as if she’d morphed into a different person. ‘I know I’m really lucky he’s so nice to me, and I guess I don’t really show it all that it much.’

Leonie tried to smile. ‘It’s OK, he knows you love him.’

But once they’d moved on to the subject of Adam, she knew she’d have to put a stop to the conversation and soon. She couldn’t talk or even think about her fiancé just now.

Not when her suspicions were being confirmed more and more as time went on.

***

As expected Grace too was horrified. ‘Oh my goodness, are you absolutely sure about this?’ she said, white-faced when Leonie told her what she was thinking. ‘Because you need to be absolutely, one
hundred
percent sure before you say anything. I mean, if you just come right out and
 
–’

‘Well, it’s impossible to be absolutely sure, but I’m about as sure as I can be,’ Leonie admitted, jadedly.

It was mid-morning on Sunday, and they’d met up for brunch in a cafe on South Anne Street in town. After a full night spent tossing and turning and trying to figure out what to do next, Leonie was desperate to talk things through with someone before Adam returned later in the afternoon. Suzanne was again out meeting friends, so she’d phoned Grace for crisis talks.

As it was a gloriously sunny day, they managed to bag an outside table under the heat lamps, and now Leonie stared unseeingly at passers-by as they strolled along the streets, enjoying a crisp, bright Sunday morning, seemingly without a care in the world.

‘And he’s in a band, Suzanne said?’ Grace said referring to Billy.

‘Yep, although not a very successful one if he keeps coming back to Andrea for handouts.’ She went on to recount everything else Suzanne had told her about the thus-far enigmatic Billy. ‘Lucky for them that Adam’s so generous, isn’t it?’

‘But what was he like?’ Grace asked, taking a bite out of her breakfast bagel. ‘I mean, apart from …
 
Did he have any reaction to you being there or…?’

‘Are you mad? He barely even realised we were there, what with the football and the thick haze of smoke around the place. God only knows what he was smoking either,’ she added in an aside.

‘But will he say anything to Andrea about you?’ she said, and Leonie realised what her friend was getting at.

‘I don’t think so. I doubt he even copped who I was, probably assumed I was just some friend of Suzanne’s. So no, I doubt he’s given her anything to worry about. Although I understand now why she was so keen before to keep him under wraps.’

‘Is it that obvious?’ Grace said sadly.

Leonie sniffed, her eyes glittering. ‘Unfortunately, yes. I knew it as soon as I walked in the door. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m right, Grace.’

‘Well you have to be, don’t you?’

‘I just feel so stupid that I didn’t suspect anything before,’ she admitted to her friend, trying to bite back tears.

‘But how would you? You only knew as much as Adam had told you, and naturally enough you took that as gospel. Anyone would.’

Leonie gulped back her coffee. ‘I know but with Andrea, I always knew there was something not quite right, something I just couldn’t put my finger on. It didn’t help that I disliked her on sight – well before actually – and especially hated the way she had Adam wrapped around her little finger. And still has obviously,’ she finished with some bitterness.

‘So what are you going to do?’ Grace asked the question that Leonie had spent the night asking herself over and over. ‘How are you going to approach this?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Obviously I can’t let Andrea – ‘

‘This isn’t just about Andrea though, is it?’ Grace pointed out. ‘That’s what you have to consider.’

‘I know.’

Pausing briefly to eat their food, they were both silent for a few moments, while Leonie considered the enormity of everything she’d learned over the last twenty-four hours. And just when she and Adam were supposedly back on track and she’d turned some kind of corner with Suzanne…

‘To be honest, I’m still reeling over Suzanne’s admission about her being on the pill,’ she said to Grace then. ‘It just seems so sad to me, and I can’t figure out how any mother could allow – ‘

‘Ah Leonie come off it,’ Grace interjected in no-nonsense tone. ‘I don’t think any mother actually
allows
something like that. Suzanne might seem too young in our eyes but she’s big and bold enough to be responsible for her own actions, and in fairness to Andrea, wagon or not,’ she added sardonically, ‘at least she’s making sure the girl is being responsible about it. I know she’s barely fifteen, and believe me, I’d hate to think that my two would be up to divilment at that age, but if they are, then there’s not a whole lot I can do about it other than encourage them to be responsible too.’

‘She’s hardly a great role model herself, is she?’ Leonie said dourly, ‘Considering.’

‘Clearly not, but
-
’

‘Ah, don’t tell me you’re sticking up for her…’

‘I’m not sticking up for her at all. To be honest, I think she’s an absolute
bitch
, but at the end of the day she’s also a mother.’ Grace picked at the remains of her bagel. ‘And like any of us, maybe she was only trying to do her best for her kids.’

Leonie’s mouth dropped open. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Now you’re trying to
justify
her behaviour?’

This wasn’t what she’d expected at all, especially not from Grace, who knew almost as much about and the Adam and Andrea situation as Leonie herself. How could she even think about defending her in this situation?
 
And even worse, how could she not by completely
horrified
by the woman’s carry-on?