Chapter 11
The next morning, Madeleine and her daughters entered the darkened church for Elizabeth’s funeral mass.
They walked slowly behind her coffin as it was wheeled towards the altar by the undertakers.
Instantly Madeleine was transported back to her husband’s funeral, over twenty years ago.
All the old pain rushed forward, as familiar as if it was yesterday.
The shock. The fear. The grief so painful that it had felt like a knife had hollowed her out on the inside.
At four and two, her girls had been so small, they didn’t understand what was happening – and, in some ways, she was glad their age had protected them from the magnitude of their loss.
She had done her best to hold it together for their sake, but had also known how fragile she was.
It would only have taken the slightest thing for her to crumble.
Of course, Elizabeth had been a rock in those days, but she had been grieving too; she had lost her son, in the cruellest of circumstances.
They arrived in front of the altar and Madeleine blessed herself before sitting in the front pew, her daughters following her.
‘We gather here today to say goodbye to our dear sister Elizabeth,’ Father Byrne began sombrely.
The elderly priest should have retired years ago but, with so few young men entering the priesthood, there was no one to replace him.
Madeleine saw Lucy dab at her eyes with a balled-up tissue.
Faith reached across the pew to squeeze her other hand.
Madeleine’s mind drifted to the launch in Dublin.
She knew her team would be arriving at the venue to set up.
She had tried phoning Anna before the church to get an update, but there had been no response.
As she sat in the pew, as well as praying for Elizabeth, she also said a prayer that Anna had been able to get the books released from the port authorities.
It all hinged on her being able to talk sense into the customs officers.
Madeleine vowed that if Anna managed to salvage this, she would give the girl a promotion.
The priest continued with the mass when she heard her phone vibrate inside her handbag.
The girls turned to look at her in disbelief.
She reached down and fumbled to get the phone out of her bag.
It was probably Anna with an update. Her stomach flip-flopped.
This was crucial. She took out the phone, but when she saw who it was, her stomach somersaulted and she felt a wave of nausea.
She turned to her daughters and looked at them pleadingly.
‘I have to take this,’ she whispered, moving out of the pew past them before they could stop her. She hurried down the aisle towards the side door, feeling the eyes of the funeral-goers on her as she went past them. As soon as she was outside, she pressed the answer button.
‘Jerry…’ she began nervously as she stood shivering in the churchyard.
‘Is everything okay?’ She fervently hoped that Anna had been able to sort out the mess.
The wind was chopping up the waves down in the cove below.
In the distance a trawler returned to shore, flocked by gulls waiting for their chance to scavenge the catch.
‘Where the hell are you?’ Jerry hissed as soon as she answered.
‘I’ve just arrived at the venue for the launch and there are no damn books there!
Howard O’Brien and his agent are asking where his books are, and what am I supposed to tell them?
I tried asking Anna, but I can’t get a sensible word out of the girl.
She’s saying something about the books being stuck on a boat somewhere in the middle of the Irish Sea!
She keeps crying every time I try to talk to her.
Bloody millennials. What the hell is going on, Madeleine? ’
Dear God, no. Madeleine felt the blood drain from her body.
‘You promised me that this would be sorted, Madeleine,’ Jerry continued. ‘But no one on your team seems to know what is happening. Guests are due to arrive in two hours and we’ve no bloody books!’
‘I-I’m sorry, Jerry.’
‘Why am I only hearing about this now?’ he demanded.
‘I thought I would be able to sort it,’ she admitted, feeling defeated.
‘You’re telling me that I have to tell Howard O’Brien that his book launch is cancelled? The launch that is due to take place in two hours?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said, suddenly feeling light-headed.
‘You need to get back here, Madeleine. We have two hours to sort this – you need to fix this.’
She could picture him now, marching around his office, gesticulating wildly, a blue vein near his right eye pulsing, like it always did when he got stressed.
‘I don’t care if you have to jump into a speedboat and chase down the ship – you have to fix this!’ he said manically.
‘I can’t, Jerry,’ she said in a small voice that sounded alien to her own ears. ‘I’m at my mother-in-law’s funeral.’
‘But you never liked the woman! You were always complaining about how she treated you,’ he went on as if Elizabeth’s funeral could be brushed aside just because he needed Madeleine.
‘Look, Jerry, I can’t get leave here. My girls need me.’ A strange sense of relief flooded through her as she uttered the words. The worst had happened: she had told Jerry and now it was his mess to fix.
‘If you don’t come back here and sort this out, you can kiss goodbye to your career.’
His voice drifted further away from her.
She felt as though she was floating above her body, looking down on herself.
For the first time in her life, she was all out of answers.
She couldn’t fix this. Her chest tightened; she couldn’t get air into her lungs.
Her legs had turned weak; her vision was blurry.
Then she was falling, falling towards the cold, hard ground.