Revenge (14 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

Declan Costello woke up with a blinding hangover. He opened his eyes warily – the sunlight was already giving him gyp. He squinted his eyes and attempted to look at his watch, but it was a pointless exercise. He brought his right arm as close to his face as possible – all he could see was a blur. His watch was a solid gold Rolex, with a gold face and gold numerals. He could see fuck-all, let alone the time.

He looked around him groggily; he recognised the bedroom at least. It was the boudoir of one Samantha Harker. He had found himself here on more than one occasion and, in his defence, he had never remembered actually arriving. He pulled himself up in bed and, putting the pillows behind his back, he leant into them, using the headboard as a backrest. He could smell himself – a mixture of sweat, alcohol and Samantha Harker. He scrabbled around on the bedside table and, as he knew he would, he found his cigarettes and lighter. He lit a Benson & Hedges, and pulled the smoke into his lungs lazily.

The room was actually very clean. Samantha was a good housekeeper – he remembered that from past experience. Her flat was spotless, and quite well decorated, considering.

She was a nice enough girl and a game bird.
Great
pair of tits, and not bad-looking. She was very young though.

He felt a sudden flush of shame wash over him – he was old enough to be her father. She was the only girl that made him feel like this. Yet here he was, once more in her bed. He closed his eyes in annoyance.

He could hear her moving about in the kitchen. Her flat was so small, it was like being in a fucking envelope. The bedroom door opened a few minutes later, and Samantha came into the room, smiling that big smile of hers, and bringing him a mug of tea. Her little girl was, as always, hot on her heels. The child was like a miniature of her mum. She had the same blue eyes, the same thick blond hair, and the same wide smile. She stood at the end of the bed, and he could sense her watching him.

‘Here you are, Declan, a nice cup of tea.’

He took the steaming mug of tea carefully. Samantha always acted as if he didn’t owe her anything, and why wouldn’t she? He owed her fuck-all.

Samantha sat on the bed beside him. She was devoid of make-up, and her dressing gown hid the killer body that he knew so well. ‘What a great night again! Honestly, Declan, I really did enjoy myself.’

He smiled, unsure what to say to her.

Samantha looked closely at the man she had spent the night with on more than one occasion and seeing the way he was acting – as if his being in her bed was something to be ashamed of – she felt the burning anger that only humiliation could bring. He was the only man she had ever allowed into her home, into her bed, since she had given birth to her daughter. She had felt such an affinity with him from their first meeting, she had truly believed they had made a genuine connection. He was much older than her, but that didn’t bother her at all. She had been attracted to his personality, his strength, and his kindness. She had felt all of that straightaway. She had also felt a deep physical attraction to him that she had never felt for anyone else before. He had sought
her
out after their first meeting; she had never once looked for him – she had too much pride in herself for that. He had pursued her, as she had known he would. Now he was suddenly acting like she was beneath him, and that hurt.

She opened her arms, and pulled her little daughter on to her lap, hugging the child to her. Declan watched her warily. He could feel the atmosphere changing, knew that he was naked, and had no option but to wait for his opportunity to get his kecks on, and run like the fucking wind as far away as humanly possible.

Samantha looked into his eyes for long moments. She was still hugging her little daughter tightly, and he could see how the child enjoyed her mother’s embrace, and how much affection there was between them.

‘Listen, Declan, I don’t like you treating me like this. You act like this has never happened before, but it has – many times. I’ve fallen in love with you, Declan, I think you already know that. But I will not let anyone treat me like a whore. If you don’t want to see me again, then you can fuck off, OK?’

Declan wanted to hold her, tell her it was going to be all right. But he couldn’t. ‘You could be my daughter, Sam. I’m far too old for you. I’m trying to be the good guy here.’

Samantha smiled sadly. ‘Well, it’s a pity you didn’t think about that before we got so involved. It’s OK to sleep with me in secret, then? Thanks a bunch, Declan. You know where the door is.’ She stood up and, with as much dignity as she could muster, she carried her daughter out of the room.

Declan lay there in Samantha Harker’s bed, wishing with all his might that he was anywhere else in the world. He could hear Samantha in the kitchen, chatting away to her little girl, pretending that everything was fine, but beneath the love he could hear in her voice for her child, there was a deep abiding sadness.

Declan Costello had never felt so guilty about anything in his whole entire life.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Carmel Costello watched her two daughters with growing irritation. They argued constantly with each other and with her. They treated her like she was no more than a servant. Assumpta, the eldest, had become her nemesis; she would argue that black was white if it meant going against her own mother. Gabriella, too, would gladly pick a fight with her own fingernails – she was as spoilt as her older sister, and even more inclined to argue just for the sheer hell of it.

Patrick always tried to insinuate that they took after her! As far as she was concerned, they were their father’s daughters. They were completely spoilt – they had never once had to do anything for themselves, and they never
were
going to do anything for themselves. She had given them everything they had wanted, and they repaid her by demanding that she give them even more. To be fair, she had used them to make Patrick do whatever she had wanted him to do. The girls had been her bargaining chips, her way of making him toe the line, and he had done everything she had asked of him.

Now the girls were completely out of her control. They were both without a conscience, without any moral compasses whatever. They were as spoilt as she was but, unlike her, they didn’t have the brain capacity to understand that it took more than a temper tantrum to get what they wanted from a man like their father.

Patrick was disappointed in the girls and she was as disappointed in them as he was. The girls’ education had cost a small fortune, and they didn’t have a single qualification between them. She had been so sure that they would both be achievers, would both make their parents proud of them. It had never occurred to her that they would end up no better than if they had been brought up on a council estate. She had assumed the fact they went to a very expensive private school would have at least guaranteed them a place in society, would have given them something that could have helped them to get on in life. But it had been a waste of time and a waste of money.

She was also becoming aware that her husband saw these daughters of his as the product of
her
machinations,
her
insistence that he let her sort it all out, because he was incapable of understanding the economics of a female’s education. But she was not to blame – it was her daughters who had failed them both, who had not understood that they were in a position to make something of themselves, who had both left a very expensive education with no more than a backward glance, and nothing whatsoever to show for any of it. Even she had read more books than they had, and that was saying something. She had simply assumed the school would see to everything they needed for a decent education – they were getting paid enough money after all. It had never occurred to her that the school would take the money and run.

Patrick saw his daughters as no more than the spoilt brats they were. He was absolutely right about that, of course. Now she had to break the news to him that Assumpta was pregnant. She was losing him, she knew that much; he already saw her as the architect of everything that had gone wrong with the family. This could be the final straw.

The girls were still at it. It was amazing really to see them in action. When they were fighting they really didn’t have any care for anyone else around them.

‘Assumpta, shut up for five fucking minutes and talk to me, will you?’

The girls both looked at their mother with abject shock at her words.

‘Your father is going to go fucking ballistic when he finds out you are in the club. So, if I were you, darling, I would think long and hard about his reaction to your news. I would also make sure that the father is on hand, or at least give him a name. By Christ, I never thought that I would look at you two and feel such shame!’

Assumpta and Gabriella exchanged glances. It suddenly occurred to them both just how serious the consequences of their lifestyles might be.

When Assumpta looked at her mother, Carmel saw the fear on her eldest daughter’s face. She had finally broken through to both of her girls.

‘Your father is going to want to kill whoever is responsible, take my word on that. So, please, Assumpta, use your brain for once, and try and make this as painless as possible for everyone concerned.’

Carmel Costello had finally won her daughters’ full attention and, even though she knew it was only because they needed her to stand between them and the man who had fathered them, it was still something of a coup for her.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Michael had just come through the back door of his house and, as he was taking his sheepskin coat off, he called out loudly, ‘Oh, Josephine, you’re not going to fucking believe this, darling. It’s so fucking mental.’

Sitting in her daughter’s kitchen, Lana Callahan was all ears; she knew a serious bit of gossip when she heard it. She shook a warning finger at her daughter, and Josephine smiled. She always told her mother everything eventually anyway.

Michael bounced into the kitchen, all dark good looks and natural confidence. That was his way. He always seemed to be happy with his surroundings; no matter what the situation might be, nothing ever seemed to faze him. He sounded shocked, though, about whatever he had heard. Lana suspected that this was one of the few times he had let his usual guard down.

The sight of his mother-in-law, however, sitting to attention at his kitchen table, stopped him in his tracks. She wasn’t his biggest fan, he knew that, but she was a woman who liked to know what was going on first-hand. And she was like the grave.

So, grinning nonchalantly, he said in a pseudo-dramatic voice, ‘This is something you might regret hearing, Lana, I’m warning you now.’

Lana laughed. She loved to hear the latest gossip, but she was more than capable of keeping it to herself; she knew the danger involved in repeating things she heard in this house, especially when it concerned people like the Costellos and their ilk.

Josephine opened the fridge and took out a can of lager and, as she opened it, she looked at her husband craftily, and said, ‘Come on then, Flynn, don’t keep us in suspense.’

Michael took the beer from her and, after taking a deep drink, he wiped his mouth carefully. Then he waited for his wife to sit back down at the kitchen table before he said seriously, ‘Assumpta Costello is pregnant. Patrick is going off his fucking nut.’

He waited for the reaction he expected, but it didn’t arrive. Instead, his wife and her mother didn’t act even remotely surprised at his news. He had expected them to have been agog, as shocked as he was at the news.

‘Has she named anyone yet, Michael?’ Josephine kept her voice as neutral as possible.

He shook his head, unsure now if this news was actually as secret as he had first believed. Patrick had not said a word to him personally about any of it, he had heard it from Declan. Now he had a good idea why Patrick was keeping this news so close to his chest. If his own wife and her mother were not shocked at the news of Assumpta being pregnant, that could only mean they knew something that he obviously didn’t.

Michael shrugged carelessly, but he was a bit miffed. ‘I don’t know about that. Declan only told me because of Patrick’s extremely erratic behaviour of late. He has been so unpredictable, so fucking angry with everything and anyone. Patrick is obviously keeping all of this well under wraps, and who can blame him? But he is like a bear with a fucking sore arse and, when he finally does fucking let rip, God help the poor fucker responsible. He is like a man possessed. He’s ashamed into the bargain – I bet that’s the real fucking problem actually. After all, she’s still a kid, really.’

Josephine and her mother still didn’t say a word to him about Assumpta or her predicament. That was irritating him. He felt pushed out, as if he was a mug or a fucking outsider, who wasn’t deemed fit to know anything of importance. His good mood was slowly evaporating, and he was regretting his eagerness to discuss any of this with his wife or her mother. His amiable demeanour was gone in seconds and the women were immediately alerted to his changed mood. His voice was flat now, his irritation more than evident as he said sarcastically, ‘I am now assuming that you two ladies know more about this drama than I do. So come on – spill. I’m all ears.’

Josephine really didn’t want to be the one who told her husband about his closest friend’s daughter – well,
daughters
if all the talk was true. They had certainly kept it in the family anyway. If they had not been Patrick Costello’s daughters, their antics would have been the talk the town for a lot longer and with much more graphic detail. As it was, only a few of the women who were married to men with access to the inner circles had felt safe enough to discuss it amongst themselves, and they had never talked about it to anyone outside. It was far too dangerous. No one would want to be the person who informed Patrick Costello about his daughters’ private lives.

But both of his daughters had been putting themselves out there for a long time, with anyone and everyone who would have them, if the gossip was to be believed. Now Assumpta was pregnant, and it was going to be a whodunnit, there was no doubt about that. If there had been a regular bloke involved, then Patrick might have swallowed it, but that wasn’t the case. Assumpta had been taking on all-comers for a long time, and she was as brazen as she was available. It had been common knowledge amongst the women in the Costello world but, as always in these situations, the men had no inkling whatsoever.

Josephine could not help resenting the fact that girls like Assumpta managed to get a child without even trying, and grow it inside them without any problems whatsoever. If they didn’t choose to abort the poor child, they just pushed it out with the minimum of fuss. They treated childbirth and pregnancy without any kind of respect, they had no concept of the importance of what their bodies had achieved. Pregnancy was no more than a problem for them. It was just something they could choose to either continue with or, the more likely scenario, remove from their bodies, and then carry on their lives as if none of it had ever happened, as if they had never been lucky enough to have a baby inside them. A little baby that was healthy and snug inside a womb that would not let them down, would not suddenly expel the poor child from their bodies, leaving them not only devastated but, with each painful, bloody failure, feeling less and less of a woman, unable to do the one thing that was expected of them. It was so fucking wrong.
She
wanted,
needed
a child more than anything else in the world, yet she had miscarried one after the other. The only baby she had managed to carry longer than a few months had died inside her, and she had gone through the whole pain of early childbirth knowing she would get nothing at the end of it.

She realised that her mother was talking to Michael. She forced herself to listen to their conversation, but she was so hurt, so angry at life.

Michael was shaking his head in amazement now, his earlier annoyance with his wife and mother-in-law gone. He listened closely to Lana as she told him the score about Patrick’s daughters; she was very knowledgeable about them, and their lifestyles – that much was obvious to Michael. It seemed that the women knew far more than the men around them about what was actually going on.

He found himself believing everything that Lana was telling him about the Costello girls and their carryings on. There was a ring of truth in what she was telling him which he couldn’t ignore. He felt the same burning heat of humiliation and anger that his friend would be feeling at his daughters’ shame, and he was sorry to the very heart of him.

‘If Patrick knew that his daughters were laying down with all and sundry on a regular basis he would go off his fucking tree. The men who they have been with can’t have known whose daughters they were cavorting with, surely? No one would dare to touch them knowing they were Patrick Costello’s girls.’

Lana shrugged, irritated now. She had not trusted her daughter’s husband since the night the Barber brothers had gone on the missing list. He was a dangerous man, who acted like he was normal, but it was all a sham. If she had had her way, her daughter’s wedding would never have gone ahead. Her husband loved him, though; he saw him as the son he had never had, thought the sun shone out of his arse, as did her daughter. But she had sussed the real Michael, and his complete ignorance about men and the lure of girls like the Costellos incensed her. It just proved to her how foolish these men could really be.

‘You listen to me, Michael Flynn. You’d be surprised at just how low some men are willing to sink. From what we’ve heard, those girls have been at it for years. Carmel Costello might not be my favourite person, but she didn’t deserve what those girls have done. She tried to give them a decent start in life. Patrick Costello, the big-headed bully that he is, has to come to terms with his daughters’ actions. It won’t be easy for him, but he has no other option. So remember this for the future, Michael – it takes two to tango. If she can name the father of Patrick Costello’s first grandchild – and that is what her child is, remember,
his
grandchild, his flesh and blood – I will eat my fucking knitting.

‘And another thing, Michael, while we are all being so honest. I would lay good money on the child being black, or at least dark-skinned. But I expect you and the Costellos will sort it out. “Who would sleep with Patrick’s daughter?” This from a man who knows first-hand what men are capable of, who prides himself on his knowledge of the world around him. Patrick Costello is going to get the shock of his life, and do you know something? I’m glad. It’s about time you realised that you are not the be all and end all. There is always someone who will sneak under your radar, and take what’s yours, destroying everything you hold dear without you even noticing it.’

Michael was utterly taken aback at his mother-in-law’s vehemence. He had only sought to give his wife a bit of gossip, as he usually did when he came home. He told her everything about his life, his work – he always had done.

Josephine, however, had been very quiet throughout this conversation. She had left her mother to tell him what they knew about Assumpta and her unfortunate situation. In truth, he had heard
far
more about the Costello girls and their sexual gymnastics than he felt comfortable with. He could
never
let Patrick know that he was aware of any of this.

Lana, he realised, had enjoyed giving him the truth about the situation. Lana had never really been right with him since before his marriage to her only daughter. She had seemed to change overnight. He had put it down to his own mother’s interference, and Lana’s natural concerns for her only daughter. Now, though, he couldn’t help wondering if she just didn’t like him. She had once been his biggest fan – now she had no real care for him at all. Every time Josephine had lost a child, Lana had been there, holding her daughter’s hand, and he had seen her watching him closely, as he grieved the loss of his child with his wife. He had felt her blaming him for each one, even as he guessed that she didn’t want her daughter to carry his spawn.

While they were childless, Lana felt that she had the upper hand. As though the marriage wasn’t really consummated and, therefore, it could be dissolved. She didn’t understand that, as much as he wanted a child, he would always want Josephine more. She was everything to him, and she always would be. It was Josephine who craved a child. He didn’t care any more one way or the other. He just wanted his wife, his Josephine.

He smiled amiably, unwilling to let this woman know that she had affected him in any way. ‘Well, Lana, that’s told me, all right. In future, I will keep my fucking trap shut.’

Josephine could sense the animosity coming not only from her mother, but also from her husband. He had every right to feel aggrieved. Her mother had no right to treat him as she did, to show her contempt for him, and the life he lived. He provided her with everything she could want and more. Josephine knew that she had to say something to her mother. She had to show Michael that she understood how he was feeling, that she was on his side, as she always had been and always would be.

‘That’s enough, now. I think it’s time you went home, Mum.’

Lana looked at her daughter in disbelief. She was being asked to leave,
told
to leave. It wasn’t a request, her daughter was aiming her out the door all right. It was a dismissal.

Michael smiled genuinely then. He was pleased that Josephine could see his point of view, understood how he hated it when her mother treated him with such contempt in his own home.

Lana felt her face flush with humiliation. Josephine treating her so shabbily hurt her deeply, but she couldn’t retaliate.

‘Come on, Mum, Dad will be wondering where you are.’

Lana walked out of the room with as much dignity as she could muster. In the entrance hall of her daughter’s home, she picked up her coat from the arm of the large leather sofa that was all but lost in the huge space that Lana had always admired. Her daughter’s home was not just big, it was also very beautiful, Josephine had the money needed for such a property. Michael had always given her daughter whatever she wanted but, even knowing that, Lana still couldn’t bring herself to forget what he really was or what he was capable of.

Josephine held the front door open, and Lana walked out of the house quickly. But she couldn’t resist one last jibe; she was so offended at the treatment she’d received, which she felt was so unfair. She wanted nothing more than her daughter’s happiness. Josephine was a lot of things, but she wasn’t happy. How could she be with a violent thug like Michael?

‘I can’t believe you are really doing this to me, Josephine. I would give you the world on a plate if I could and you know that.’

‘Oh, I do know that, Mum, I always have. But Michael is my husband, and he has already given me the world on a plate, in case you haven’t noticed. He has also given you and Dad a good earn. You’ve never been so well off. And if I have to choose between you both, you know it will always be him, Mum.’

Lana walked away. As she got into her car, she heard the front door close loudly behind her.

Michael hated seeing his wife so torn. He wanted to protect her from anything that might harm her. It was his job as her husband. He opened his arms and pulled her into them. He could feel her body relaxing into his, knew that she was where she wanted to be.

‘I’m so sorry, Josephine. I don’t know what that was about.’