The One I Love (21 page)

“Not mad. You were just trying to open yourself up and maybe you rushed it with Mark, but that’s okay. Next time will be better.”

Leslie smiled at her new friend because what she’d said was true. She had rushed into something with Mark. She was so desperate to move on, and to be with someone who really understood what she was going through and it had all been a little too simple. The poor man had his own issues, his battles to win and lose. Elle was right: next time
it would be better because next time she’d know better.
I’m not ready and that’s okay
.

“How’s Jim?” Elle asked.

“Do not bring Jim into this,” Leslie warned.

Elle put her hands up. “Okay, Miss Touchy.”

“I am not Miss Touchy!”

After Elle had left most of her tea in the cup and Leslie was fortified with a nice hot coffee, they decided to take advantage of the bright, warm day by going for a stroll in the Phoenix Park. Leslie had stopped to look in her postbox when Deborah from Apartment 8a entered the main door. Deborah had managed to maintain a safe distance from Leslie since the incident in which she’d mistaken stale cat-shit for Leslie’s rotting corpse. She mumbled hello.

“Well, hello, Deborah,” Leslie said loudly.

“Hi,” Deborah said.

“This is my friend Elle. Say hello to my friend, Deborah.”

“Hi,” Deborah said again.

Elle grinned. She’d heard the story on more than one occasion because, for some reason, Deborah’s misguided concern for Leslie had really hit a nerve.

“You see, Deborah, loners don’t have friends.”

Deborah nodded and looked about to see if there was anyone around who could possibly save her if Leslie decided to physically attack. “I’m going now,” she said, and made her way to the lift.

“Lovely seeing you!” Leslie called.

Deborah disappeared into the lift.

“You need help,” Elle said.

“Yes,” Leslie said, “I really do.”

They took a stroll in the park and ended up in the zoo
and enjoyed a perfectly charming day together that both women would remember with fondness for a very long time.

On 29 May 2008 the television show
Crimeline
featured a reconstruction of Alexandra’s last movements. In the week that had passed Tom had attempted to call Jane but she didn’t pick up the phone or respond to his messages. In one of those unanswered messages he reminded her of the date and time of the show and thanked her again for all her support and help in getting him this far along the track. Then he apologized for not being a better man.

Jane had listened to his message a number of times and her anger turned to regret and embarrassment because, as much as she was disappointed that Tom had turned out to be a human being with actual faults, the person she had really been shouting at that night was Dominic. Of course, that was Jane’s problem. She couldn’t scream and shout at Dominic because she had always been so desperate to win his love that she’d never allowed him to see who she really was and how messed up, sad and lonely, and sometimes bitter and hateful she could be. Because to show him that would be to go against the image of cool, kind, anything-goes Jane, the Jane she had spent the last eighteen years creating for Dominic and Dominic alone. She had taken out her pain and aggression on Tom – poor, desperate, haunted Tom – and she felt really sick about it.

The only silver lining was that she hadn’t told Elle or Leslie about her encounter with Tom’s whore. Her reasoning had simply been that she didn’t want them to be as disappointed in him as she was. She didn’t want them to stop searching for her friend just because her husband was
a selfish dick. But now it dawned on her that neither Leslie nor Elle would have been as disappointed as she was because neither of them was a silly romantic. While she had seen Tom as some sort of hero, they had merely seen him as a man.

The night of the reconstruction she sat in her sitting room with Elle and Rose, and even Kurt and Irene took a break from pretending to study so that they could follow Alexandra into the ether and with any luck beyond. She had thought about calling Tom just before the show aired but she didn’t have the nerve so she left it.

Breda sat on her favourite green velvet chair surrounded by her family – Eamonn and Frankie, Kate and Owen. Even their five-year-old, Ciara, was sitting there quietly, waiting to see Auntie Alexandra or at least the actress who would be playing her.

Alexandra’s father smoked a cigarette in the garden, then came inside and sat down in the midst of his family, finally about to face what had gone so wrong.

Despite Breda’s invitation, Tom watched it alone.

The reconstruction started and an actress with brown hair, dressed in black trousers and a black shirt with a large bow, carrying a black tote bag, appeared in the doorway of Alexandra’s home. The camera followed her walking along her street. An actress in her mid-fifties was brushing the step at number fourteen. Mrs Murphy had been asked if she’d like to play herself but she was too shy and felt an actress would be better. The fake Mrs Murphy called out
to the fake Alexandra saying what a lovely day it was. The fake Alexandra agreed that it was perfect and she walked on towards the station and through the turnstiles, then stood waiting for the DART.

The same three teenagers who had seen the real Alexandra sing James Morrison agreed to be part of the reconstruction to win cool points – the eleven months had done wonders for their skin, especially the girl’s. The fake Alexandra started to sing James Morrison’s “Last Goodbye” badly. The teenagers acted as though they were laughing and one of the boys even slapped his thigh. The fake Alexandra stuck out her tongue and they pretended to laugh harder, ensuring the camera moved away from them quickly. When the DART arrived she stepped onto it and sat beside an actor in his mid-fifties. Across the way an actress in her forties was looking out of the window. The camera returned to the fake Alexandra and the fake older man. He asked her to wake him at Tara Street if he slept. She agreed. There was a shot of the DART moving along the track before returning to the inside. The DART pulled into Tara Street station and the fake Alexandra nudged the older man and told him it was time to get off. He got off and she jumped out of the DART, followed him and handed him a bag. He thanked her and she returned to the train.

The fake stranger sitting opposite, who had been looking out of the window when the fake Alexandra had got on the train, grinned at her and told her that her own dad was as bad. The fake Alexandra mentioned that the doddery older man had been sweet and then they looked away from one another and out of the windows. Another shot of the DART on the tracks and Dalkey station appeared. Inside
again, the fake Alexandra picked up her bag, stood up and fixed her clothes before disembarking. She made her way through the station and out into the sunshine. She continued straight onto the main street and took the left at the end. After that she took a right and another left, and after that the fake Alexandra faded from the screen and was gone.

The presenter appeared in front of the screen, which was showing an empty street in Dalkey. He reminded the viewers of the date and time of the incident. He reminded them of the woman’s name and reiterated what she was wearing, her height and weight. He asked people to cast their minds back to that day. “The twenty-first of June 2007, a bright, warm day, a day when Alexandra Kavanagh,
née
Walsh, daughter, sister, friend and wife, turned a corner in Dalkey and vanished from plain sight. Someone knows something. If you’re that someone, please call.” He gave the hotline number, the email and postal address, then moved on to a robbery in Carlow.

Jane, Elle, Kurt, Irene and even Rose sat quietly. Rose was the first to get up to leave, shaking her head and sighing. “She was a cheeky pup in her day but nobody deserves that,” she said, and made her way back to her basement apartment and a much-needed drink.

Irene and Kurt made their excuses and returned to their studies. Elle and Jane sat together in the dark. “Wanna go to the pub?” Elle asked.

“I’ll get my bag,” Jane said.

Tom sat alone in his sitting room, ignoring the texts buzzing on his phone. He drank from his whiskey glass and
prayed that the someone who knew something would phone the hotline because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on.

Alexandra’s father cupped his face in his hands and cried like a baby. This distracted Eamonn, Kate and their spouses from Breda, and while they soothed him Breda stood up quietly and, unseen, walked up to her bedroom, took off her cardigan and folded it. She pulled her duvet down and got into her bed and, except to go to the toilet, that was where she stayed.

Chapter 10

Lost In Limbo

Here we are blind but trying to see

and here we are speechless but trying to sing
,

and here we are paralysed but trying to tango
,

lost in limbo
.

         Jack L,
Broken Songs

June 2008

Jane was doing her accounts in the gallery. When she looked up from her computer screen she was just in time to see an extremely glamorous woman in her late forties enter the premises. It was a hot day but the woman wore gloves and took one off as she came in. “Jane Moore?” she said.

“Yes?”

“I’m Martha, Irene’s mother.”

“Oh,” Jane said, standing. “Hello.”

“Hello,” she said, and smiled a wide smile, revealing perfect porcelain teeth. “I thought it was about time we met.”

“Okay,” Jane said.

Martha pulled a chair that was resting against the wall to Jane’s table and sat down. Jane put her hand out to shake Martha’s but she didn’t seem to notice it so Jane sat.

“Well,” Martha said, “Irene is so enchanted by you I
honestly don’t know who she has a bigger crush on – you or your son.”

Jane had no idea how to respond to the woman’s statement or her passive-aggressive tone so she remained silent. Martha took another moment to remove her second glove. “It seems she is determined to stay with you,” she said, “but how could I compete with a party house where anything goes?”

She smiled another wide smile, and Jane could feel her temper rising and her face twisting, the way her mother’s did before she spewed bile.

Martha’s smile remained fixed. “So I was hoping you’d give me some tips on how to get her to come home.”

“I wasn’t aware you’d noticed she’d gone,” Jane said, in a tone that matched her mother’s at her very snottiest, “but then you were preoccupied with a boy young enough to be your son. I guess mine isn’t the only party house in town.”

“Funny,” Martha said. “I suppose you think I’m a bad mother because I needed to take some time out to recover from a broken marriage. I suppose you think that you’re a better mother than me.”

“I do and I am,” Jane said, channelling Rose.

“Oh, really? I know that you’re allowing them to sleep together under your roof, allowing them to drive around on a motorbike together, and don’t think I don’t know about the drinking.”

“In case you failed to notice, your daughter had a birthday in February, and as they’re both eighteen, everything I let them do they’re entitled to do. I also feed them, clean up after them, listen to them, encourage them and watch over them, so if you ever want to come into my gallery again it will be with the intention of thanking me for caring
for Irene, and if not, you’d better be prepared to run. Understand?”

“You know, I met your mother once at a bridge club – she was a nasty bitch and you’re exactly like her.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jane said. “Now get out.”

Martha stood up. “My daughter belongs with me.” Her bitchy I’m-better-than-you façade was slipping. “How the hell can I compete with you?”

“I don’t know how to help you, Martha, and to be honest you haven’t inspired me to want to,” Jane said.

Martha walked out, leaving Jane to stare after her.

What an ungrateful tart
.

It turned out Martha had split with her toyboy and in his absence she missed her daughter. A few days earlier she had approached Irene about coming home and Irene had told her she was happy where she was and didn’t want to move, so close to her exams. Martha had tried everything in her emotional arsenal to encourage her daughter to return home but Irene was adamant that she was happy, safe and secure, and it was nice to be in a house where she was cared for. Martha had shouted that she was ungrateful and cruel to use the past few months against her, but Irene insisted that Martha had always been the kind of mother who had been absent whether she was there or not. “It’s not your fault, Mum. You are what you are.”

Martha was selfish and the whole world revolved around her, but despite these failings she was also kind and charming and fun to be around and Irene wasn’t angry with her. She wasn’t venomous; she didn’t want to cause her pain. All she wanted to do was stay with her boyfriend and Jane until her exams.

“And then?” Martha had said.

“And then I don’t know.”

“Please come home to me then.”

“No, Mum, I’m going to Greece with Kurt.”

“For how long?”

“A couple of weeks,” she had said.

“And then?”

“And then you’ll probably be back together with whatever his name is or someone else.”

“Irene,” Martha had said, “that’s not true.”

“Of course it’s true,” Irene said. “You can’t be alone and that’s the only reason you want me home.”

“Not fair.”

“Totally fair. But it’s okay – I understand. I’m terrified of heights, you’re terrified of being alone. We all have our issues.” She had kissed her mother’s cheek. “I love you, Mum,” she said.

Shortly after, Martha watched her peel off down the street on the back of Kurt’s motorbike, and instead of thinking about what her daughter had said, instead of realizing that the girl had a point and that she needed to change if she wanted their relationship to change, she thought about Jane Moore and what a stupid bitch she was for turning her daughter against her.