THE SOCIAL WORKER IS there at the door already, raising a hand and nodding.
She watches from the door as Cara parks badly, and re-parks, and gets out of the car. Cara walks towards her, making a half-wave of recognition, then stops – she has forgotten her purse and phone. Too far away to explain, she makes a pantomime of remembering these things, smacking her brow and shaking her head at her own silliness so that the woman understands why she is turning around.
Her palms are moist when the social worker shakes her hand – ‘Hi Cara. Bernie.’ – and leads her along a short corridor. Cara thinks of lie-detector tests, the way they measure anxiety levels and perspiration. It can’t be right, because telling the truth when nobody wants you to and no one might believe you – that is just as stressful, surely, as lying.
Bernie talks in a long, low monotone, like a background radio. She is only filling in the silence until they get to the office. Cara realises that she is barely aware of what the woman is saying.
‘Everyone has trouble finding the place. Everyone… It should be better signposted.’ She stops at an open door. ‘It’s an issue,’ she says, and gestures for Cara to step in.
The room is tiny, with filing cabinets on all sides. It smells sickeningly like air freshener. Cara stands back while Bernie squeezes past her and in behind a desk covered in stacks of cardboard folders. Isolated in the centre of the table is a single envelope-folder of dusty blue. There are dents and swirls in the corner where drying biros have been forced back to life. Bernie perches her bottom on the window ledge at her back, nods at Cara. ‘So…’
Cara takes a breath to speak, but exhales instead. Bernie doesn’t seem fazed. ‘Sit down,’ she says. ‘You can close the door if you like or – whatever you like.’ She is younger than she looked in the car park, not quite forty, perhaps, though up close, it is clear that the crease between her eyebrows is a deep and permanent fixture. She has abnormally dark, hurt-looking eye sockets. It’s as though someone has pressed a thumb under each eye until a groove has formed, bruising the flesh.
The door is being held open by a metal wastepaper basket. Cara shifts it with her foot, and the door falls slowly closed. She sits down on a swivel chair, too big and too luxurious for the little room, and too low. Her knees are higher than her hips. It will be an effort to get up.
That poor ladybird, tipped onto its back in the matchbox – has it managed to turn itself over yet? Has it even moved?
Cara heaves herself forward, so that she is sitting at the edge of the chair. It threatens to roll out from beneath her. She stands up again. ‘Maybe not,’ she says. ‘Sorry. I’m clumsy at the moment. Baby brain already!’ She rubs her abdomen and shrugs, as though it is not part of her at all, but a cumbersome attachment that she drags about reluctantly. She laughs and it sounds stupid.
‘You’re tiny!’ says the lady, raising her pitch and her eyebrows both at once, and smiling, relaxed suddenly. ‘I didn’t even notice you were pregnant… how far gone?’
‘Oh, nothing at all…’ Cara knows she isn’t showing. She doesn’t know why she mentioned it like that. ‘Like, eight weeks, I think… I just feel heavy,’ she says. ‘I’m starting to feel awkward.’
‘Well, congratulations. Is it your first?’ Cara loves this question. She laughs and tries to conceal her pride. ‘No! My fourth!’
‘Oh! Gosh, you don’t look like someone who has three kids!’
‘I started young. Youngish.’
‘So, I have your email here,’ says the lady, sliding open a drawer, as though the email is in there, and pushing it closed again, ‘and it seems as though you have reason to be concerned about your grandmother.’
Her eyes stretch open, and she blinks frantically. Cara realises that the woman is exhausted, that it is pure effort for her to stay alert; her patience is wilful, her sensitivity professional.
Grandad used to have so many flesh tones on his palette at one time, steely blues and burgundy reds, drops of linseed oil to keep them soft. When he covered the palette with clingfilm, the paint flattened – each glob of colour turning ugly, private; like the underside of a snail. She imagines turning her brush in a lovely sandy tone, glossy with oil and the colours not quite blended so that she mixes them on the canvas, the pinks and yellows merging into skin. She would make the social worker rested and pretty – add layers beneath the eyes, phasing out the purplish blue. It is something Grandad never would have done. It would be a lie.
The social worker offers only her dogged patience to the silence. Then a tiny, suppressed yawn swells her throat. She brings the back of her fingers to her mouth. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, ‘it’s been a long day. Ohhh.’ She allows an open-mouth yawn now, covering it with her hand. ‘Sorry. So, it seems to me that you have cause for concern?’
Cara opens her mouth to speak and her voice comes out low and trembling.
‘Does it? I don’t know… I don’t want to be, you know, dramatic. I just – I’m worried and I don’t know what to do. I need advice.’
‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes, I just, I don’t know if this is as serious as I’m making out, or if it’s even something that I should be taking up your time over. I just want advice.’
‘You said your grandmother has dementia?’
‘I don’t know if she’s been… diagnosed or whatever. She doesn’t know who we are a lot of the time. She tells me people have been asking her to sign things. She says she’s signed things and she can’t remember what… that’s dementia, isn’t it?’
‘It certainly sounds like it. Has she been assessed?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, this is the thing. My aunts are in charge and they don’t tell us anything. One of the carers said that the dementia wasn’t on her file. She said she told my aunt that, but my aunt told her she’d lose her job if she didn’t show a bit of respect.’
‘In charge?’
‘They say they are executors.’
‘So they have taken power of attorney?’
‘No. This is the thing. They are pretending my grandma is fine; they haven’t taken power of attorney. And they are moving around her money, getting her to sign things, selling her property, having her house redecorated…’
‘And they are selling her house?’
‘No, her—’ Here Cara falters for a moment, embarrassed, ‘—other properties. She is quite wealthy. My grandad was a painter. He was quite successful… they became quite wealthy.’
‘Oh! Would I know him?’
‘Dennis Kearney?’
‘Rings a bell… I did art for my Leaving Cert…’
‘The thing is – the thing that the carer said to me, is that my grandmother has no idea what’s going on, but all these things are happening under her name, you know? Because she says they get her to sign things. You see, there are some family things… family issues.’
The lady nods and clicks her tongue. ‘Oh I know!’ she says gravely, nodding at the metal filing cabinet, as though there are dark, untellable stories running on in there in the drawers. ‘I know only too well… you see the worst in people in this job. It’s usually the mother who is the victim, it’s usually the kids, they see it as their right, and it’s usually about money.’
‘It must be a hard job. It must be so tiring. I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t.’
‘Thank you. Yes, it’s – it has its difficulties alright.’
‘Well, you know, I don’t want to take up your time. I don’t know whether to be worried, or whether this is their right, you know? And in a way, my grandmother doesn’t really know what’s going on so she’s not that upset about it so maybe it doesn’t really affect her. She gets upset but then she forgets completely.’
The social worker has gained interest. She’s leaning back on the windowsill, her hands knotted in her lap. She is looking hard at Cara and nodding.
‘Oh, look, I don’t know what’s relevant. I just need advice. What say do I have in my grandma’s care, for example? And is it illegal, what they’re doing?’
‘Yes, it is certainly illegal. Now who are we talking about here – just your aunt?’
‘I have two aunts. I think they’re both in on it, but one is sort of the ringleader… and my mother. My mother has taken Grandma’s cheque book. Maybe for safe keeping, but I don’t think so. I think she’s using it. The carer said my mother got Grandma to sign them before she took it. She says she bought herself a bus, but I don’t know.’
Cara cannot read the expression on Bernie’s face now.
‘And why are they doing it? Do they need money?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. My aunts are extremely wealthy… my mother less so, maybe. But, you see, my Aunt Aoife, she doesn’t think it’s fair, that my grandmother looked after us more than my cousin, helping us out financially as well, I mean. We – see, myself and my sister – we grew up with our grandparents. Our mother is – she is strange. She joins cults and things. My little sister was taken away from her by social services, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘Well, they were involved. They were calling over and interviewing my mother and things so my mother just left my sister with my grandparents and left the country.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘My sister?’
‘Your mother. Your sister. Both.’
‘My mother is Eileen Kearney. My sister is Freya Kearney.’
Bernie writes it down. ‘I’ll find out.’
‘So, our grandparents, I think they paid for a lot of things for us growing up and certainly as adults. I mean, I couldn’t have managed without Grandma, and my little sister is a single mother you know, and still in college and all. She lived with Grandma – my grandmother – and last summer my aunt kicked her out, and there was really nothing we could do because Grandma had broken her hip and she was fragile and couldn’t walk or anything and there would have been a fight and, at the time, you know, we thought it would be too stressful for Grandma if we argued… but my aunt… she’s settling the score, I suppose. According to my grandmother, you know, she made this… list. She worked out how much my grandma ‘owes’ her and her daughter, and she’s organising it now that she has the chance. I suppose that’s how she sees it. She’s making it fair, as she sees it.’
‘Well, that’s not right.’
‘Well, no. Because she’s taking advantage, I suppose. But what I’m wondering is – is it really bad, what they’re doing? And how I can address it without upsetting my grandmother.’
‘And in your email you said there was a large cheque?’
‘Yes, my grandmother gave me this letter.’
Cara has it folded in her back pocket – God, the social worker must think she’s such a flake, carrying a thing like that around in her back pocket. She hands it over. Bernie frowns with a kind of glee as she reads.
‘Who is Davitt Dunlin?’
‘My grandmother’s solicitor, she knew his father… so as you can see it’s a letter confirming the cheque for €100,000 to my mother. He says, “You assured me you were of sound mind and were certain that you wished to transfer the money…” or something like that, doesn’t he?’
‘That’s what he says, yes. He says Eileen – that’s your mother, is it?’
Cara nods.
‘He says she called him to the house, saying that your grandmother wished to change her will, but that “we agreed to leave the will as it is until you are feeling better”. This is really strange. I’ve never seen a solicitor carry on like this before.’
‘He’s a family friend. He grew up with my mother, and aunts.’
‘Well, I need to get in touch with this man.’
‘Okay. I think he really believes it though, you know. I think he just doesn’t know… but what I’m saying anyway is that I only know these things by fluke.’
‘Mmmmm,’ says Bernie, and suddenly Cara is afraid that the social worker will misunderstand; she will think Aoife and The Lily are all Grandma’s fault, that Grandma must be that way too, if her daughters are, that they are just a mad family doing mad things and that her grandmother deserves them.
‘You were right to contact us.’
‘Look, I don’t want to be dramatic, I just—’
‘I’ll get you some water.’
Cara had no intention of crying. And now there is a wash of mascara on her hands, and her face must be a mess. Does she even feel the emotion running out of her? And now she is shaking and cold and for no reason she can understand.
While Bernie has gone to get water, it occurs to Cara that she may sound mad; that Bernie may think she has made it all up, that it is she who is after Grandma’s money somehow. And then a cool terror trickles though her – this is exactly the kind of thing her mother would do. Her mother would come here, weeping like this, saying the first thing that came into her head, and believing it. What if Cara is doing the same? What if she has imagined it all? But no. There will be records. There is the letter from the solicitor.
When the social worker comes back Cara takes the water and sips, but it is too cold and her stomach seizes up.
‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘I must seem mad to you.’
‘Not at all.’
‘I might be making a big deal out of nothing.’
‘No. You’re certainly not.’
‘So, I suppose the question is then, as the grandchild, you know, where do I stand? What do I do?’
‘Well, it’s out of your hands now.’
‘It is my responsibility. My grandmother looked after me all my life.’
‘Yes, no I understand all that, but in terms of addressing this situation with your aunts and your mother. I will look into it.’
‘Do you need anything from me? Proof of anything?’
‘I will get all that. I just need you to fill in a statement for me.’
‘But I’m not accusing them of anything, exactly, it’s just what I told you – it’s not so clear.’
‘You just list everything you told me. Tick the boxes there for what your concerns are – emotional abuse? Financial abuse?’
‘Both, I suppose.’
Again the reassuring, knowing nod, the heavy eyelids. ‘Usually is. I’ll leave you to fill that in at your own pace. Wait till I get back before you sign it. I need to witness it.’
‘My grandmother would be heartbroken if they told her I’d said she was unfit. She would be humiliated. Do you see?’
‘That’s not what we would say to her. But you need to protect her, if people are taking advantage.’
‘Will my aunts see this?’
‘It’s confidential. Don’t worry. You’re not implicating yourself in anything. You just list your concerns and then it’s out of your hands. You owe it to your grandmother, you know.’
*
By the time she gets out of the HSE office, she only has twenty minutes to get to the music school. She should feel relieved after unloading all the shameful dealings of her family, but instead the meeting has left something pressing like a stone on her tongue, a queasy satisfaction tightening in her chest and a fear – as though she has exposed herself. What does she imagine they can do to her – the aunts? Money is all they have. Her grandad’s money to fight her with, but they cannot hurt her babies and they cannot take Pat away, so why does she feel afraid? They could upset Grandma. They could tell her that Cara said she was unfit.
At the end of the road she has to pull up and get out.
It’s just pregnancy sickness, perhaps, the nausea that has clenched her whole body suddenly, making her kneel by the car and retch at the tarmac. She is shaking. It’s a thing she’s never felt before, this sanctimonious dread that feels so like guilt; the loneliness of being right on her own terms.
There is a little garden on the corner of a street. A sign on the railings saying ‘Community Garden’. It looks like an explosion of weeds, the green tangles tumbling out under the gate and coiling around the bars in a crazed celebration of vegetation. She wants to give the garden something, so she pulls up again, the little car almost toppling as the side of it mounts the kerb. She releases her seatbelt. She is late – late for her little girl; she is late and still she is stopping. She takes the matchbox out of the glove compartment, opens the car door and leans towards the garden. She will leave the little ladybird to feast on all the greenfly. Now that she is closer, she sees that the garden is growing parsley and rosemary and mint, and some strangled peas, with limp, frost-bitten pods. She slides open the little box and already she knows what has happened. She can feel the dry weightlessness of the box. The ladybird has died, its little legs clamped to itself, the flat black underside and the shell a frank crimson red, light as confetti.