July 1988
‘It’s mostly when he’s been down the local, and comes back plastered.’ Imogen tugged her cardigan sleeve up to her elbow, and Laura’s eyes widened. The cigarette burns on her thin arms ranged from scars to deep red and pus-filled. Laura had suspected, after Dillon’s outpouring a year ago, that things weren’t right in the farmhouse, that Tierney was a bully, and this confirmed her worst fears.
‘Oh, Imogen.’ Laura wanted to pull her into a hug, but she knew they weren’t at that place. Despite knowing her for eight months, Imogen hadn’t been an easy person to reach.
‘He …’
‘What is it, Imogen?’ Laura placed her hand on her arm, but she felt the woman tense, and removed it.
‘The thing is … he says he has rights.’
Laura covered her mouth, to stifle a gasp. ‘No, Imogen, that’s not the way it works,’ she said through her fingers.
A gust of children’s laughter swept into the kitchen, and Laura turned from where she was sitting with Imogen to see they were on the floor watching a ‘Rainbow’ video, Caitlin propped on Dillon’s knee sucking on her dummy, and playing with his hair, and Bridie leaning against him, her thumb pressed into her mouth, her eyes heavy.
Rachel was sleeping upstairs.
‘You must leave him,’ Laura said, her gaze back on Imogen who was pulling down her sleeve, and gripping her cuff in her fist, as though afraid of the secret she’d shared.
‘What, and abandon Dillon?’ Her eyes swam with tears, and she looked even smaller than her five-foot frame – far too thin. ‘What if he gets custody of Bridie and Caitlin?’
‘Please tell the Guards, Imogen. Surely they’ll do something,’ Laura insisted.
‘They won’t.’ Imogen sounded certain. And shaking her head, she stood up and padded towards the kitchen window. ‘It’s not that easy,’ she continued, her eyes penetrating the glass. ‘What if Tierney finds out I’ve contacted them, and then they do nothing? It’s not only me I have to think of.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘I wish I’d never met him.’
Laura joined her at the window. ‘Where did you meet?’
Imogen picked up a cloth and wiped the sink and taps with furious speed. ‘In the local when I’d just turned seventeen. He ran the boozer with his wife. Although I rarely saw her at that time.’ She paused for a moment. ‘He would let all of us drink underage – my parents would have killed me had they known.’ She screwed up the cloth and placed it on the work surface, and stared, once more, through the window. ‘Tierney seemed a nice bloke, back then. Good-looking, he was – came from a well-off family. His wife told me his parents had had high hopes for him, but then he started getting in with the wrong kind, got into a bit of trouble with the law. They wiped their hands of him.’ Imogen’s eyes shimmered. ‘I wish I’d never set eyes on him.’
‘But you ended up living with him.’
She nodded. ‘Tierney was left some money when his grandfather died, so he and his Mrs closed the pub and moved to the farmhouse. When my parents threw me out for getting pregnant – I wasn’t in a relationship let alone married – it was Mrs O’Brian who said I could come and live with them until I found my feet. She was a kind woman. Dillon adored her.’ Imogen flicked a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘I’ve said too much,’ she said. ‘I should go.’
She went to head across the kitchen, and Laura grabbed her arm. ‘Think of the kids, Imogen. What if something awful happens to them? You would never forgive yourself. I would never forgive myself.’
Imogen snatched her arm back, and the look she gave Laura was long and unsettling. ‘I am thinking of them,’ she snapped. ‘Dillon!’ she yelled, and he was there within moments, Caitlin in his arms, Bridie by his side. ‘We’re leaving!’
As they made their way to the door, Caitlin smiled sweetly at Laura, as though she didn’t have a care in the world.
Laura’s mind twisted and turned as she stood at the window, watching them disappear into the woods. Dillon with his usual stick, twirling it in his hands, hurling it high and catching it like a majorette, Imogen carrying Caitlin, taking brisk, sharp steps, Bridie struggling to keep up on her three-year-old legs.
Why wouldn’t Imogen tell the Guards about Tierney? Had he got some sort of hold over her?
Rachel let out a yell from upstairs. Laura turned from the window, and blocking her ears with her hands, fell into the armchair. But the child’s cries seeped in, along with a surge of guilt. She rose and headed up the stairs.
She lifted Rachel from her cot. She would never be cruel to the child, but even now, after all these months, holding her in her arms she felt nothing but painful loneliness. Jude would have finished his degree by now, and would be getting on with his life without them. It was so unfair. Rachel was his daughter too.
Downstairs, she turned off children’s TV – Rachel wouldn’t be interested – and slid her daughter into her highchair. She gave her a mug of juice, which the child gulped down, and bread fingers coated with Marmite.
Rachel rarely smiled, and wasn’t walking yet. She made noises, but hadn’t said her first word, not even ‘mama’. But Imogen had told her not to worry, that babies developed at different rates. She was only a year old, after all.
As Rachel squashed the bread into her mouth with damp chubby fingers, Laura smiled and said, ‘Is that nice, darling?’ But her daughter’s eyes seemed lifeless, somehow. Did she know her mother struggled to love her? That her father had abandoned her when she was the size of a peanut?
A knock at the front door startled Laura. She rarely had visitors, and was tempted to bob out of sight.
But whoever it was knocked again, more urgently.
From the kitchen window she saw a smartly dressed man, in a knee-length turquoise mac, stepping from foot to foot. He turned and smiled at her. She had no choice but to open the door.
Close up he looked to be in his thirties, with a round, pale face, and bloodshot eyes. He smiled once more, and dragged his fingers through his short, light ginger hair. ‘Laura Hogan?’
‘Yes.’ She poked her head outside, and glanced up and down the quiet road. A Ford Cortina was bumped up on the grass verge opposite. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m Marcus McCutcheon.’ She knew the name instantly. Why was he here, standing on her doorstep? Her parents’ accident was over a year ago. ‘I can tell you know who I am.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and I’m so sorry.’
‘May I come in?’ he asked.
The thought of him stepping inside didn’t feel right. Although he seemed pleasant enough, she didn’t know this man – this man whose life had been ruined by her parents.
‘I’m just on my way out, actually,’ she said, which was far from the truth. She rarely went out.
‘OK, not to worry,’ he said, turning to leave.
‘What do you want?’ she called after him, before he could cross the road.
He turned back and shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ Another shrug. ‘Closure, I suppose. It would be easier if your parents were alive; there would be something to focus on.’
‘Focus on?’
‘Yolanda’s at school now, and I often imagine my wife looking down from the heavens, wondering how her daughter’s life can be moving on without her. They were so close. But they forget at that age, don’t they? Forget those early years.’
His eyes were swimming with tears, and he looked so helpless, her heart went out to him. ‘Come in for a bit,’ she said. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’
He stood behind her, too close, as she spooned coffee into mugs. ‘My daughter doesn’t need me quite as much these days,’ he said. ‘I guess she’ll need me less and less, as time goes by. I seem to be flapping aimlessly, looking for something to make everything right again.’
Once they had two steaming mugs in front of them on the kitchen table, Marcus told Laura what she already knew. That the bend locals called Devil’s Corner was notorious for accidents. ‘My wife hated that bend,’ he said, blowing on his coffee. ‘But, like a fool, I told her she was silly to worry, that if she drove sensibly, which she always did, she would be fine.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Laura repeated, as the stranger continued going into the details of how he found out, how the first months were too painful, and how he kept going for Yolanda’s sake. When he was done he breathlessly slammed his head into his hands and wept.
Laura pulled tissues from a box and handed them to him, and eventually he calmed down, his eyes skittering around the kitchen as he dabbed his eyes and cheeks. ‘Was this their house?’ he asked.
‘It was. Yes.’
‘They must have had money.’ Was this what he wanted? Money?
She was reluctant to answer.
‘It’s OK, Laura; I’m not after your money. In fact, I’m not sure what it is I want – need – other than someone to pay for what your parents did.’
‘You can’t blame me, surely.’
His red eyes and wet cheeks made him look vulnerable. ‘No, I don’t blame you. You’re a victim too, I guess. Were you close?’
She shook her head. ‘No, not really.’
‘A blessing then?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Not so much pain when they died?’
She wasn’t sure how to answer. It had been the most painful time in her life. Losing parents she had hoped one day would love her – and the realisation that now they never would. And she’d lost Jude too – her precious Jude – the same week.
Throughout their talk, Rachel had silently tucked into her bread, studying Marcus McCutcheon, but now she let out a cry. Laura rose and lifted her from her highchair, and propped her on her hip, swaying and humming in an attempt to calm the child. She didn’t sit back down, hoping Marcus would take the hint and leave. What could she possibly offer him? She hadn’t been driving the car that killed his wife.
‘I remember when Yolanda was that small,’ he said, draining his mug.
‘They’re hard work,’ Laura said, unable to think of anything else to say.
‘Jacqueline never thought so.’ He got up, and put on his coat. ‘She was a great mother.’
‘She sounds pretty much perfect.’ Oh God, do I sound sarcastic? She hadn’t meant to.
But his reaction was soft and thoughtful, as he moved towards the door, and opened it. ‘Yes, yes she was,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’
The slam of the door behind him jolted Rachel into another fit of tears, and she began hitting Laura’s face over and over. If she’d been any bigger it would have hurt.
‘Calm down, Rachel,’ Laura said, wrestling with the child. ‘For God’s sake, calm down.’