Christmas Day at McAuley’s Old Ale House.
Opening for two hours over lunch and badgering old men, who only normally removed their caps for funeral corteges and the Irish national anthem, to don metallic paper hats and play whatever sappy board game I’d got from Santa. Beating Reg at Hungry Hippos then wiping the floor with Sligo Tom at Buckaroo. Mum and Dad flat out serving, not watching me close enough. Getting bloated on fizzy pop then leaving half my lunch.
Mum getting angry and Dad getting blamed.
Opening up again in the evening. A younger crowd this time. Dad’s friends and their lesser-spotted wives, drenched in new musky perfumes and flaunting new bling.
Being sent to bed but then creeping back down. Sitting on the stairs and watching all the dancing, the laughing, the fighting, the crying.
McAuley’s isn’t opening today.
All part of Jacqui’s ‘proper family day’ treaty, no doubt. A treaty I’ve already flouted by turning up ten minutes before lunch.
Dad snares me at the kitchen door. The attention’s suffocating and feels more like a chokehold than a bear-hug. It also seems a little left-field given the last time I saw him I accused him of sleeping with Maryanne Doyle. I’d expected him to be civil, of course. Maybe to feign a little affection even, if only for Finn’s sake. But there’s an intensity to the way he’s holding me, the way he’s breathing me in like I’m a newborn.
I daren’t breathe him in. He reeks of something awful – a chemical lemony scent, like bug-spray.
Jacqui, flushed from the kitchen, clocks my face. ‘Yeah, I know, it’s disgusting. It’s called Silver Man. Finn chose it.’
‘Because Grandad’s got silver hair,’ says Finn, hugging my thigh as tight as a tourniquet.
Dad looks down, ruffles his hair. ‘Yeah, thanks for reminding me, champ.’ A bit quieter. ‘I’ll wash it off in a bit, he probably won’t notice.’
Which is probably true. He certainly never notices that Auntie Cat and Grandad Mike barely say two words to each other.
‘Drink?’ asks Dad, loosening his grip and easing me out of my coat. ‘We have red, white, Prosecco, Aperol . . .’
‘That was my choice,’ shouts Jacqui, her head practically swallowed by the oven. ‘Apparently it’s all the rage in Australia.’
‘So’s skin cancer.’ Noel’s voice lurks behind the kitchen door. I should probably peer round and offer some kind of festive pleasantry but I’m loath to wish him a Happy Anything.
‘Wrong actually,’ says Jacqui. ‘The Aussies are a lot more sun-savvy than us Brits.’
‘A white wine, please.’ I say to Dad, keeping it civil but clipped.
I follow the sounds of Finn whooping at Super Mario and find myself standing in the living room. It’s less stark in here than the rest of the flat and my face smiles down at me from every surface.
Soaked on the log flume at Alton Towers.
Decked out like a fat fairy for my Holy Communion – a pair of rosary beads in one hand, a packet of Haribo in the other.
Me and Jacqui dressed up as witches for Halloween.
That one kills me. We both look so happy and so, so pleased with ourselves in our cute little costumes that it makes me want to weep. It makes me want to go into the kitchen and tell her that I’m truly sorry I didn’t get here earlier like she wanted.
But I don’t. I’ve only got the strength for one argument today.
Jacqui’s done a stellar job, right down to the gingerbread men garnishes bobbing away at the top of our champagne flutes. Dad sits at the head of the table – perfectly decorated in reds, greens and golds – and I position myself two seats away. Ash stations himself in between, happy to play the human firewall.
And it’s OK for a while.
Tolerable, at least.
Ash keeps things interesting with a story about a colleague whose girlfriend jilted him at the altar twice, over two consecutive Christmases, and wonderful Finn acts like a prism, casting rainbows among the rumbling black clouds. The food’s complicated enough to warrant long, time-killing explanations from Jacqui about how it came to be on the table. And the crackers are fun, I suppose. I win a giant paperclip.
‘So you’re working on that case – the Doyle girl, right?’
It’s Noel that brings it up. Whatever happens now, I can always point to the fact that it was Noel, not me, who tore open the can of worms and dumped them all over the Christmas table.
‘There’s a lot of people working on it,’ I say, flatly.
‘Have you arrested anyone?’ he says, eyes glinting. ‘It’s usually the husband, isn’t it? Bet it’s the husband.’
‘Can we talk about something else?’ I tap Jacqui with my foot under the table. ‘Hey, have you still got that Saturday girl in the shop, Jacqs, the one with the crazy eyebrows?’
She taps me back, a little harder. ‘Ah, come on, Cat, give us the scoop. We knew her, for God’s sake!’
Dad stares blankly but there’s a microscopic flutter in his eye – the kind of thing you only notice when you know someone inside out. When you’re alert to every slight mood shift.
‘Well, I suppose we didn’t know her.’ Jacqui loads more carrots onto Finn’s plate – a futile endeavour. ‘I remember her though, I hung about with her a few times. You probably don’t remember Cat, you were only a kid.’
‘I do, actually.’ I look straight at Dad. ‘She was gorgeous. You’d hardly forget her in a hurry.’
Jacqui laughs, elbows Noel. ‘Do you remember, Geri had just left the Spice Girls and Cat reckoned Maryanne was going to replace her, that’s why she’d disappeared.’
I don’t remember this at all, not one misty memory of ever saying that. And I’d have staked my life on being able to recount every single thing that happened that day.
What other details could I be missing?
Noel grunts. ‘Didn’t think she was that fit actually. Average, I’d say.’
Ash laughs. ‘Oh, you’ve turned down better, have you?’
‘Too right I have, mate. You want to see some of the Spanish women, some of the dancers at the club.’ He kisses the tips of his fat gnarly fingers. ‘Precioso.’
‘Very good, Noel’ I say, giving him a slow handclap. ‘That the sum of your Spanish? Not a lot of need for prolonged conversation where you work, I suppose.’
‘Oh, I get by,’ he says, smiling savagely. ‘How about Que te jodan? That means “Fuck you.”’
‘Noel!’ yelps Jacqui, looking at Finn.
‘That’s ENOUGH.’
It’s not Dad’s tone that shocks, it’s the fact he’s spoken at all. He hasn’t made a sound since we sat down other than to laugh half-heartedly at Finn’s cracker joke.
Noel plays the innocent. ‘Enough what? She said she didn’t want to talk about her job so I’m just telling her about mine.’
Finn asks to get down from the table. I wait until he’s out of earshot and safely goggle-eyed in front of Super Mario before I speak.
‘I’ll tell you something about my job, Noel. I’m going to Mulderrin on Monday. How’s about that?’ Dad puts his fork down, pushes his chair away from the table. For a second I think he’s going to walk out but he’s just lost his appetite. ‘I’m looking forward to it actually,’ I say, hitting my stride. ‘It’ll be nice to go back after all this time. Why did we never go back there, Dad?’
Dad tops up his wine-glass, avoiding my eyes. ‘On holiday, you mean? Wasn’t Florida good enough for you, sweetheart? Couldn’t the Maldives hold a candle to Mulderrin, no?’
Jacqui laughs, that shrill keep-the-peace laugh that’s become second nature.
I shrug. ‘Just always seemed a bit unfair to me. We saw Nan and Grandpa all the time. Why did you never take us back to see Gran again?’
He knows the subtext. He knows where this is heading but he’s not ready to draw weapons.
And so he tries humour.
‘Listen to her,’ he says, flicking his head towards me and smirking at Jacqui and Noel. ‘Always with the why, why, why. Same as when she was a kid, used to drive us all mad. “Why are flats called flats when they’re not flat, they’re high.”’
Jacqui laughs. ‘“Why do we have chins?”, “Why’s water wet?”’
I nudge the conversation back. It’s a sharp vicious nudge. ‘Auntie Carmel told me Mum wanted to be buried in Mulderrin but you wouldn’t have it. I doubt Hatfield Road Cemetery held a candle to Mum’s birthplace.’
‘Since when have you and Carmel been so pally?’ Dad sneers.
‘For years,’ I lie. ‘We’ve got similar interests. Similar likes and dislikes.’
We both like the act of disliking Dad.
He stiffens. ‘It’s none of Carmel’s business, anyway. I wanted your mum near me, Cat, not in another bloody country.’
Jacqui gives a small wistful mew, reaches across for Dad’s hand.
‘Shouldn’t it have been about Mum’s wishes though,’ I say, ‘not doing what suits you. I mean, when did you even last visit her grave?’
He meets my eyes for the first time. ‘Yesterday, actually. Tidying up the flowers I’d left earlier in the week. You?’
‘On her birthday.’
A tiny smile but there’s no satisfaction in it. ‘Right. So five months ago then.’
Jacqui cuts in, light and airy, wilfully ignoring the storm that’s brewing. ‘Lots of people don’t like the ritual, Dad. It’s a personal thing.’ She squeezes his hand tighter. ‘Although I’m with you, I like to visit Mum regularly. I think it’s a mark of respect. A mark of honour.’
Her cloying tone needles me. ‘I honoured Mum in life, Jacqs, I think that’s more important, don’t you?’ I tilt my head, mock inquisitive. ‘Dad, is that why you go to Mum’s grave so much? To make up for all the shit . . .’
His fist on the table is loud and final. A glass of wine topples and the dark ruby stain spreads ominously across the tablecloth. Jacqui jumps to attention, relieved to have something practical to focus on. Noel sits back and returns my slow handclap, barely concealed amusement dancing across his face.
Dad stands up, chin high, shoulders squared, and walks out of the kitchen.
Out of the flat.
*
Clearly I’m not proud of myself but I’d be lying if I said I felt shame. Finn didn’t notice and that’s the only thing that matters to me, really. While I’d never intentionally set out to hurt Jacqui, her mealy-mouthed insistence on sticking to this Dad-of-the-Year fantasy makes her collateral damage as far as I’m concerned and maybe it’d be for the best if I did push her away for good. She and Finn are the only ties that bind me to Dad, the physical ties anyway.
The emotional ties have the elasticity of spider silk. A tensile strength comparable with steel.
Much later, I see Dad in the kitchen, standing over the sink and staring out of the window into the semi-darkness. He’s smoking, taking long luxurious draws, every inhale as sacred and fulfilling as a silent prayer. He turns his head slightly when he hears me and there’s a sly twitch at the corner of his mouth that says he’s been expecting me. There’s no corrosive energy, just an air of sad inevitability. A sense that it was always heading here.
Just me, him and the sliver of the moon lighting the rooftops of north London.
I sit at the table.
‘Where’d you go?’
‘Out.’ It’s an inane icebreaker and he knows it. ‘Just say what you have to say, Catrina’
On the outside I think I’m doing an OK impression of calm but inside my body’s gone rogue. Heart racing, head pounding, fingers tingling. Panic attack 101. Something stops me from being completely consumed by it, though.
A purpose.
I take a small shaky breath. ‘You told the Guards you didn’t know Maryanne Doyle. Why did you lie?’
If I’m expecting catharsis, it doesn’t come. If anything I feel worse.
‘I didn’t know her.’ He sounds calm, almost relieved. As if he was expecting much, much worse.
‘You did, Dad. We picked her up in the car. She was hitch-hiking.’
‘Did we? I must have picked up twenty hitchers that holiday, the place was rife with them back then. It was the only way some people got to work.’ Over his shoulder. ‘Maybe we did, I honestly don’t remember.’
I sit up straight, anchor myself. ‘It was only a few days before she went missing. You’d have remembered then, when the Guards asked you, even if you don’t remember now.’
He gives me that look. The one that says I’m the apple of his eye and the bane of his life and his world would be a whole lot easier if he didn’t love me so much. I’ve been staring down that look for so long now, I recognise it even in his blurred reflection.
‘I’ll tell you what I do remember, sweetheart. I had forty stolen mobile phones stashed under Gran’s dresser, two feet away from where that fat fucking Guard had planted himself, and all I cared about was keeping him talking, keeping his eyes pointing forward, you know?’ He turns around, offers his wrists across the kitchen floor. ‘So go on then, arrest me if you want. Historical handling of stolen goods, is that a thing? Because if it isn’t, we don’t have anything else to talk about.’
For one soaring, luminous second I let myself believe him. He’s just Michael McBride, your average dodgy London geezer with his stash of knocked-off phones and his cockney heart of gold that can’t resist helping out the odd honest, hard-working hitcher. And if they’re pretty, hard-working hitchers, well what’s a man to do . . .?
And it’d all sound so feasible if I hadn’t seen what I’d seen.
‘You were with her in Duffy’s field, Dad, a day or two after we’d picked her up. I heard you arguing. You implied she was blackmailing you.’
He sways a little, like a boxer seeing stars, riding out a blow to the head. All his questions collide at once. ‘But how did you . . . why didn’t you . . . I mean, what the hell were you doing there?’
I give it to him straight. ‘I followed you. You were hardly ever around and I missed you. And I was bored,’ I add cheaply, to sour the sentiment. ‘Jacqui and Noel were off doing whatever. Mum was always busy with Gran. I had nothing to do, so I followed you. I thought it was a great game.’
If I was prone to arrogance I’d say he looks impressed, although by what, I’m not sure. The eight-year-old me with the keen ear and the sharp eye? Or the grown-up me who’s kept his secret hidden for so long?
He stubs out his cigarette, lights up another. Takes a seat straight across from me, settling in for the duel.
‘So?’ I say, chin high. ‘Why were you with her in that field?’
His answer is a long plume of smoke but I see his eyes wavering through the trails, weighing things up, charting the path of least resistance. He doesn’t speak for a long time. The fridge hums in the background and there’s raucous canned laughter from a distant TV. He takes another deep draw of his cigarette and during the long inhalation, he seems to make a decision about something.
My stomach churns as I wait for the exhale.
‘It was your mum’s fault.’
I recoil like I’ve been slapped. Actually, scrap that – like I’ve been head-butted.
He backtracks. ‘Well, OK, maybe that’s unfair. It was your mum’s idea though.’
Fault. Idea. The interchange of words means nothing.
Mum?
‘Maryanne was a wild one. A bad influence on Jacqui. She’d given her some weed, you see, and your mum found it in her pocket, completely lost the plot.’ He shrugs. ‘She told me to put the hard word on Maryanne, threaten her with the Guards if she didn’t steer well clear of Jacqui.’
I think of fourteen-year-old Jacqui, of that sweet leafy scent that had hung off her for months, long before she encountered Maryanne Doyle. And then I think of Mum, her warrior-like approach to protecting her kids. She’d have had no qualms about tackling Maryanne Doyle herself. She’d have relished it, in fact. It doesn’t make sense.
And nor does another thing.
‘So why didn’t Mum say all this when the Guards came round? I mean, it could have been relevant, a drugs slant. There’s no way Mum would have held that back, not when a girl was missing.’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Yeah, because your mum was faultless, Catrina. A real modern day saint.’ He knows it’s a low blow, I don’t bother pointing it out. ‘She was protecting Jacqui, I suppose. Weed was still a big deal back then and there was no way your mum was going to drop Jacqui in the shit, didn’t matter who’d gone missing.’ His face softens. ‘That’s what you do when you’re a parent, sweetheart. You protect your own kids first and sod all the rest. It’s just the way it is and your mum was no different.’
Protecting Jacqui, or protecting Dad?
The latter’s too dire to contemplate so I quickly file it under ‘no go’ in the locked box in my brain – the place where I stash the taboo stuff, emotions I can’t bring myself to cope with.
‘So why the secret meeting in Duffy’s field. Why didn’t you go to her house? Have a quiet word in the Diner?’
Eyes wide. ‘Are you joking? If I’d gone to the house, Jonjo Doyle would have put her in hospital, and I’d have been in the next bed. And I didn’t go to the Diner because’ – he blows out his cheeks, thinks for a minute – ‘well, I don’t why, to be honest, it was eighteen fucking years ago, I can’t remember every last detail. I saw her having a cheeky smoke in the field one day as I was passing and I took my chance, that’s all.’
I know that’s not true. He was meeting her there. I know it on a bone-deep, intuitive level but if being a Detective’s taught me anything, it’s that it’s not worth fighting over points you can’t prove.
I nod slowly. ‘OK, so that’s why you were threatening her. But you accused her of threatening you. You said the word ‘blackmail”.’
He lets out a laugh, a quick scornful breath. ‘Christ, did I really say that? It was hardly blackmail. It was just a seventeen-year-old girl thinking she was the Mata Hari of Mulderrin and wanting me to know about it.’
Which explains nothing. My face tells him as much.
He pulls in a bit closer, every bit the cosy raconteur with the juicy anecdote, not the man teetering on the edge of ‘suspect’. ‘So I said exactly what your mum told me to say, right. “Stay away from Jacqui or we’ll tell the Guards about your dirty little habit.”’ He pauses, gives me a look that I can’t quite read. ‘And then she – Maryanne – says, “Well maybe you should stay away from Tina McGinn, or I’ll tell your wife about your dirty little habit.”’
I’ll process that anger later. ‘Right, so she was blackmailing you?’
He flicks a hand, dismissive. ‘Well, she was trying, bless her, but there was absolutely nothing going on between me and Tina McGinn and she knew it. She was just a barmaid in Grogan’s who’d flirt with her own shadow and she must have seen us having the craic a few times. Tina knew your mum, for God’s sake, it was all bullshit.’ My face says ‘yeah yeah’ but I keep it buttoned. ‘So anyway, I said to Maryanne, “You can put an announcement in the parish newsletter for all I care, darling, just stay away from my daughter, OK.” Best thing you can do with people like her, just call their bluff.’ Another pause. ‘And that was that, really. She piped down after that.’
He grinds out his cigarette. Story concluded.
And they all lived miserably ever after.
I feel like I’m floundering, losing leverage. I need to pull myself up, draw myself back level but I can’t find anything to hook on to. Plausible lie after plausible lie, Dad’s dismantling everything I’ve ever believed, and even if I don’t believe half of what he’s telling me, there isn’t a lot I can say. The only two people who can contradict him are dead.
And so I ask the unthinkable.
‘Where were you last Monday night, Dad?’
His head jerks back, utter confusion. ‘What?’
‘The night Maryanne was killed. Jacqui said you were supposed to be staying at hers but that you cancelled and that’s really unlike you. She reckons she couldn’t get hold of you all evening as well, your phone was off.’ I swallow quickly, keep going. ‘So what came up, Dad? What was so life-or-death that you couldn’t put your “precious” kids first?’’
Confusion contorts into anger. Panic and anger. ‘Where are you going with this?’
I lean back, lengthening the distance between us. ‘I’ll tell you exactly where I’m going. A girl blackmails you, threatens you, whatever you want to call it. She goes missing, you lie about knowing her to the Guards, and then eighteen years later she turns up dead, less than five minutes from your door and around the same time that you go inexplicably off-the-radar.’
I’m going with conspiracy over coincidence. Sod Parnell and his ‘rare breed’.
‘Did you hurt her, Dad?’
The words burst out of me, flailing and unfettered, and in that moment I know it’s over. Any hopes for the future, all nostalgia for the past, obliterated with one unutterable accusation.
‘What the fuck is this?’ His face slowly twists in pure undiluted disgust. ‘I mean, who the fuck are you?’ He bangs the side of his head. ‘You’re not right up here, sweetheart. Your mind’s diseased. You’re a disease.’
It takes a second to realise I’m crying.
When I was little, Dad used to say he’d rather go blind than see his baby girl cry. No sooner would my knee hit the concrete or my dummy hit the floor than he was scooping me up, making it all better, stemming the flow with kisses and wild promises.
I want him to stem the flow now. To make it all better with just one rock solid alibi.
‘Just tell me where you were.’ I press my fingers into my eyes. ‘Tell me where you were last Monday night and I’ll stop all this, I promise. We can start again. Have a proper relationship. No more fighting . . .’
Something flickers in his eyes, something like longing. But it’s just that; a mere flicker.
‘I’ll tell you nothing. I don’t answer to you, Catrina, remember that.’
I blink hard. ‘As a daughter, maybe not. But as a police officer, you should really think about it.’
His eyes flash dark, almost black. ‘And unless you’re arresting me, you should really think about getting out of my fucking house.’