One Bad Turn Page 7

  The B & B was old and smelt of fried rashers, and the rust-spotted mirror in the bathroom made her look more beautiful then she felt she ever had before. That day, she walked for miles across the island, and had dinner in a pub in the evening. She had never been in a pub on her own before, but this was a day for new experiences. She had brought a novel with her, but didn’t open it, preferring to listen to the songs being hammered out on a battered yellow guitar by a bearded student, with long, tapered fingers, whose checked shirt hung loosely from his rangy frame. His friends sat in a circle around him, occasionally shouting requests and passing pints over his shoulder to stand on the table in front of him. They had come to the island, the barman told her, to learn Irish and had finished their course that afternoon. After a while Eileen was pulled into their circle and began to sing along with them, quietly at first and louder as the beer flowed and her confidence grew. Later, the guitarist handed his instrument to a blonde young woman in a floral dress and came to sit beside her.

  ‘You have a lovely voice.’

  She gave the obligatory Irish response to a compliment.

  ‘Ah, not at all. I’ve barely a note in my head.’

  ‘You do, though. I liked listening to you there.’

  Smoke from the turf fire and the students’ many cigarettes added another layer of warmth to the room, and when the guitarist offered to buy her a drink Eileen didn’t refuse. A local man sitting at the bar, curls of grey hair peeping from under his greasy cap, looked across at her and winked. At first she thought he might be bothered by the students, irritated by the way they had taken over his local, but later, when their stock of tunes was running low, they asked him if he’d sing and he accepted their invitation gracefully. The students fell silent as his song rang out, unfamiliar words in rich Galway Irish curling, like the cigarette smoke, in the heavy air. It felt utterly natural when Eileen found the boy’s hand in hers.

  She had never kissed anyone with a beard before, she told him, and it seemed like the greatest witticism in the world as she laughed the words into his throat. Over his shoulder she caught a sharp look from the beautiful blonde woman, then saw her shrug in resignation. The boy cupped Eileen’s face in his hands and kissed her again. She had never felt so present before, so unencumbered by memory or responsibility, and together they fell out into the night, the wind whipping them together, the shoulder of his red shirt scratchy under her cheek.

  A light shone from her landlady’s bedroom window. They stumbled around the back of the house and found that the man of the house had left his car unlocked. There was more laughter as they settled themselves into the back seat, and it was Eileen who took control, Eileen who said, yes, please, yes, do, don’t stop. Afterwards the boy hugged her tightly and told her to take care. Then he bent over, kissed her hand and disappeared into the salty velvety night.

  *

  Six weeks later, back home, when Eileen realized that she was pregnant, there was no sense of surprise, and no feeling of regret. Just a feeling that she was being shaken out of something, and the stirrings of hope. Her father shrugged when she told him, and told her there would always be a home there, for the two of them. For the three of them, he corrected himself, then laughed out loud, surprising both of them. The laughter felt natural, she thought.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A beam of sunlight struck Claire’s eyes and she blinked, then wobbled for a moment on top of the bin before jamming her hand against the skylight shaft and steadying herself again. She was barely breathing now and the effort it was taking to remain as still and silent as possible was putting a strain on all of her muscles. By raising herself on tiptoe she could just about see out of the open window and, extending her hand as far as she could, she waved it vigorously, then immediately realized how futile the gesture was. The newspaper-seller was fifteen feet away, maybe more. He’d have to be looking in her direction to spot her, and why would he do that? If anything, he seemed to be in a dream. He wasn’t touting for customers even, just leaning against the steel pole of the pedestrian crossing and staring straight ahead. He was probably, Claire thought, thinking of Brazil or whatever sunny spot he had left to come to Ireland, and wondering if selling newspapers on a deserted back street in Dublin had been worth the journey. He didn’t know that he was the best hope she had.

  Clinging to the window frame with one hand, she looked back down into the toilet again. She couldn’t risk calling to him – if she could hear every word that was being said in the surgery, the women in there would be able to hear her too, and everything she had done so far to try to remain hidden would have been for nothing.

  Quietly, the muscles in her lower back twanging in protest, she climbed down to the floor. She needed to attract his attention. With what? She looked around the room, evaluating the contents. A toilet-roll holder and a soap dispenser, both firmly fixed to the wall, wouldn’t be much use to her. She walked over to the coloured bag that hung from the handles of Anna’s buggy and opened it, even though she already knew by heart what was inside. Nappies. Wipes. Anna’s vaccination records. Everything the dedicated mother needed. Nothing that was of any use to her now. She dug deeper. A plastic spoon. A sippy cup, full of water. Hang on a minute. She picked up the cup and swung it by one of its two handles, testing the weight. Thoughtful mammy that Claire was, she’d filled it before she left home, figuring Anna would wake up from her nap hot, cranky and needing a drink. She tossed it from one hand to the other. Could she? It was a ridiculous thought. But this was a ridiculous situation. She shoved her hand into the bag again. A felt-tip pen, left over from an age-inappropriate colouring set her parents had sent her daughter, which she’d shoved into the bag and forgotten about. Claire paused for a second. Then, with a quick, decisive motion, she ripped the vaccination card in two. The noise sounded like a gunshot in the tiny tiled space and the child in the buggy twitched and turned her head to one side. One second passed, then two, and Anna’s eyelids twitched. Claire held her breath. Not now, not now.

  The little girl’s eyelids were half open now, her eyes unfocused, her brain hovering between sleep and consciousness. A state Claire knew wouldn’t last long. Five minutes. Just give me five more minutes, darling girl.

  Holding her breath, the torn paper clasped between her teeth, Claire walked around to the back of the buggy and pushed it forward slightly, then pulled it back again. The tiny space didn’t allow her much room to manoeuvre but she did the best she could to establish a smooth rhythm. Back and forth. Back and forth. Please go back to sleep, just for five minutes. Five minutes, Anna Bear. That’s all I need. Back and forth. Back and forth. The hum of conversation from the next room rose and dipped. Back and forth. Please, Anna. Claire walked to the head of the buggy again and took a quick look under the hood. Anna’s eyes had closed, and her breathing had deepened. Thank you, baby.

  But she wouldn’t be that lucky a second time.

  She scribbled the shortest message she could think of on the back of the vaccination card:

  ‘Help. Police.’

  Below it she wrote the main Garda emergency number and underneath that again the number for Collins Street Gardaí, with the name of her partner, Philip Flynn, scribbled beside it. Would the man in the orange jacket understand what she was trying to do? There was no time to worry about that now. He was all she had.

  Not daring to look at the child again, Claire climbed back up onto her perch, cup in hand, the note folded into one handle. Sweating now, she stretched herself up to her full height again and peered out of the window. The man in the orange jacket hadn’t moved and, as she looked at him, she found herself talking directly to him in her mind. Please see me. Please understand what I need. She raised herself onto her toes, thought briefly of all the gym sessions she’d missed recently and then, reaching out of the window, flung the cup and its precious addition as far from her as she could. Time paused. The orange cup seemed to fly through the air in slow motio
n. Had her aim been too erratic?

  And then, as she watched, it found an arc, soared, then landed with a thud about two feet from the man’s shoes. As it hit the ground its lid opened, drenching the ground and the hem of his trousers. He jumped, then gazed around with an almost comically alarmed expression on his face. Looked right, then left, then down at the cup. He walked towards it, stared at it, then picked it up and peered at the cardboard that was tucked into the handle. Then he stepped back, glanced up and down the road again. ‘Open it! Read it!’ Claire wanted to scream. ‘Read it for me!’

  In the buggy in the room below, her daughter gave a twitch, a low moan and then, finally, a cry.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Heather, 2000

  Heather’s second foot had just joined the first on the pavement when she felt the hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Miss – could you come back into the shop, please?’

  The tone was blandly polite, but there was no misunderstanding the look on the man’s face. Heather grasped immediately what had happened and forced a smile.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I can explain everything.’

  ‘This way, Miss.’

  There was an edge to the security guard’s voice now and the sharpness in his tone caused two passing teenage girls to turn and stare.

  Heather’s cheeks started to burn.

  ‘It was just a mistake. I’m sure—’

  ‘This way.’

  He had dropped the ‘Miss’, she noticed. Accepting that it was pointless to argue any more, Heather dipped her head and followed the man’s broad back in its black uniform jacket into the store. Her mind whirled as she tried to remember the exact sequence of events that had got her into that mess. It was just a jumper, a stupid, average, light grey V-necked jumper. Too small for her. She’d known that as soon as she’d lifted it off the hanger. But Marc had been insistent that she buy something for herself, that she ‘treat’ herself. He always did that she realized, blaming him irrationally for everything that was happening. He presented her with free time, as if it were a gift voucher with an expiry date, then demanded proof that she’d enjoyed using it too.

  So, even though she had been feeling hot and flustered and at least a half a stone overweight, she’d hung the top over her arm and wandered half-heartedly around the shop looking for a pair of trousers to match. But she hadn’t seen anything else she’d even kind of liked, and when she’d caught sight of the time, and remembered she had only a half-hour left to enjoy what might be the week’s only solo cup of coffee, she’d put the trousers back on the hanger and walked towards the door, forgetting about the jumper that was now wedged between her handbag strap and her arm.

  ‘There’s been a terrible mistake.’

  The words sounded feeble even as she uttered them and the security guard looked unimpressed.

  ‘It’s shop policy to call the guards in these cases,’ he grunted over his shoulder, as she trotted after him. The shop was lined with mirrors and she shuddered when she caught sight of herself. She’d tied her hair back that morning, hoping it would make her look like the student she aspired to be, rather than a harassed young mother on a rare morning off, but the ponytail, coupled with her makeup-free sweaty face, made her look scruffy, shaken and, she had to admit, as guilty as hell. Her reflection followed her through the shop, full-length mirror after full-length mirror, her shoulders sinking further down in each one until she was practically hunched over. She could feel rather than see other shoppers nudging each other, wondering what she’d done.

  She would be brought to court. Of that, she was certain. Marc’s barrister friend Paul had lectured them on shoplifting over dinner at their house just a week before.

  ‘Those women will say anything to get off,’ he’d chortled, teeth stained with red wine.

  ‘They claim they’re stealing clothes for sick babies, homeless grannies, whatever you’re having yourself. But it doesn’t matter. Soon as you set foot outside the shop you’re bollixed, and rightly so.’

  Marc, and Paul’s wife, Gina, had laughed with him and hadn’t noticed that Heather hadn’t joined in, too busy working out how many glasses of wine were left in the various bottles on the table and wondering if there was any hope of their guests leaving before Leah woke, wanting to get into their bed at 3 a.m. She loved having Marc’s friends over, of course she did. They were opinionated and intelligent, witty and sarcastic as hell. But any mention of children just highlighted the age difference between them, which, most of the time, she was able to ignore. Paul and Gina had two teenagers who didn’t require a babysitter and who, Gina assured them, would sleep in till midday, regardless of when their parents came home or what state they were in. The baby stage was so lovely, she’d said to Heather once, hiding a grimace at a sick stain on the sofa. But it was nice to get your life back too.

  Oh, Jesus, Gina and Paul. The thought of Marc’s oldest friends hearing that his twenty-seven-year-old wife had been arrested for shoplifting made Heather gasp for breath, and she patted her handbag, checking for the familiar hard lump of the inhaler in the side pocket. She had worked so hard to fit in with them. Learned how to cook, appreciate wine and laugh at stories of student excess, even though she’d been still in primary school when whatever they were talking about had taken place. It was only in the past few months, now that she had applied to go back to college and was finally able to envisage a time where she’d have her own life and ambitions to talk about, that she had started to feel she really belonged in their gang. And now she was going to be named in the papers as a thief.

  Heather shut her eyes, unable to banish the image of Gina’s long nails raking through the newspaper, her perfect eyebrow raised. A look on her face that said it was an awful thing to happen but, you had to admit, not totally unexpected. After all, she’d warned Marc when he announced his engagement to Heather that marrying a woman twenty years his junior could cause him serious problems.

  ‘Fine for a fling, darling, but do you really want to be that guy, having to explain to clients at the end-of-year drinks that she’s not your daughter?’

  Marc had relayed the conversation to her, months after the wedding, intending it to be an amusing anecdote. Heather had spent the next dinner party restraining herself from throwing salt in Gina’s soup. And now here she was, about to give the woman every bit of the proof she needed that she had been right all along.

  And the story, if it got out, wouldn’t stop with Marc’s friends. No, the papers would love it too. Marc was one of Ireland’s best-known property developers and had spent years courting media attention, particularly during the renovation of the giant house he’d bought for his new family on the Fernwood sea front. It was the best possible advertisement for his business, he’d told Heather, each time he granted permission for a Sunday newspaper to do yet another feature on them ‘at home’. Heather hadn’t minded too much, particularly when Marc insisted paying for the house to be professionally cleaned each time the photographers called. But it meant every newspaper in the county had photographs of them, and of their daughter, just waiting to be reused if Heather turned up in the Dublin District Court.

  And what if the journalists dug even deeper? A hack with a bit of time on his hands could find out there were even more dots to join about Heather Gilmore, née Sterling. Her teenage years hadn’t been exactly innocent. There had been the night when that garda had lost his hat and his sense of humour. The other time when Heather’s then boyfriend had been done for possession and a picture of her had appeared in the Evening Press, running after the prison van in tears, her Goth makeup smeared, doing a more than passable Robert Smith impersonation as mascara ran down her cheeks. It had been nothing a hundred kids hadn’t got up to in their teens. But she hadn’t told Marc any of it, and now was not the time to start divulging her secrets. His business was flying. Their beautiful daughter was about to start preschool, which meant Heather herself could
finally do the medical degree she’d always dreamed of. But would any hospital hire her if she had a criminal record? This could destroy everything.

  The security man reached a door at the back of the store, fingers poised to punch in an entrance code, and Heather’s vision blurred. Would it help, she wondered, if she fainted? Would they call an ambulance? Or would it do her more harm than good? Perhaps they’d prop her up against the wall or throw water over her until she woke up. Could they arrest you even if you weren’t conscious of what was going on?

  ‘Heather? It is Heather, isn’t it?’

  She blinked and a face swam into focus. Short dark hair, bright intelligent brown eyes. She knew it from somewhere. The woman spoke again.

  ‘Heather, it’s Eileen! From school! Jesus, I haven’t seen you in years, but I’d know you anywhere.’

  ‘All right, Eileen. Just in the middle of something here, pet.’

  The security man turned, his face changing as he smiled at the new arrival.

  ‘Just a bit of business to attend to, you know yourself.’

  A wave of hopelessness crashing over her, Heather gave a small sob and a tear wobbled its way down her cheek. The other woman reached out her hand.

  ‘Jesus, are you okay? You haven’t been robbed or anything, have you?’

  Eileen’s face was full of concern, but Heather caught the frown on the security man’s face.

  ‘Best stay out of this one, love,’ he said.

  But Heather had seen a lifebelt. She reached out and grabbed it with both hands.

  ‘Oh, Eileen, it’s awful. They think I stole something. I didn’t – you believe me, don’t you?’

  Eileen stared at her. It was more than a decade since they’d last met, Heather thought. There was no reason to believe she would want to help her, but right now she was her only hope of salvation.