Chapter 61
61
In the car, on the way to Kearney’s Farm, Joey said, “Anna, can we—”
“Just a moment. I need to make a call.” I found the number. “Ike? Got a minute? How are people feeling? Generally?”
“Everyone knows what happened.”
“How?”
“Because,” he bit out, “They do. Small place, I keep telling you. Maybe Declan Erskine told his brother, who told twelve other people, you know how it is.”
“How’s the town taking it?”
“No one blames Hal. If anything happened to him, you’d get blowback. No one really blames anyone. It was just a clash between two businesses, that’s how people are seeing it, nothing to do with them. No one—except maybe Burke—likes what was done to the Kearneys. But because Kilcroney was behind it, they’re fine to turn a blind eye.”
“You mean everyone would be glad if the whole mess could be just magicked away?”
“That.”
Could it be that easy? But for good or for ill, it was clear the town’s delicate ecosystem would be damaged badly by a criminal investigation. Maybe pretending everything was fine was the fastest way to ensure it became fine?
“Thanks, Ike.” Another call was beeping: Tipper Mahon.
“Anna.” His voice was heavy. “I’m sorry. With every ounce of my heart.”
“For what exactly?”
“I knew what was going on. I kept my mouth shut. Myself and the boys started work at her ladyship’s while ye were paying us.”
“Why, Tipper?”
“Dan Kilcroney’s been good to me down through the years. Given me a lot of work. But I didn’t know the Kearneys would be wiped out. I thought they were on easy street with their Airbnb and barn and that.”
Scolding him wouldn’t help.
“There’s no excuse for what I did,” Tipper said. “Declan and Vazey are mortified too, but I’m the gaffer, I made the decisions. We’ll give back the double pay to the go-bo—to Mr Armstrong.”
“I’ll tell him. Okay, Tipper.” I hung up and said to Joey, “Keep the insurance company out of this. Tell Colm to take Kilcroney’s offer. That’s the only way forward.”
“I agree.”
“What about Burke?”
“Nothing we can do. We touch him and the whole thing unravels. Not everything can be tied up neatly.”
He was right, but briefly my impotence made me furious.
“But his wife did sleep with an Oscar-winning director,” Joey said. “Maybe it all shakes down in the end.”
—
At the beautiful stone and glass house, Brigit was back from Dublin. “Just for tonight.” She looked heartsick. “I had to come.”
Holding her tight, I said, “I think all the stuff here is going to be okay.”
In the kitchen, Colm was plucking socks from a clothes horse and lobbing them into an overnight bag. He seemed more alert than previously.
“Queenie herself decided,” he greeted us with. “She’s having surgery on Wednesday morning. I’m heading up to Dublin tomorrow with Brigit.”
“Wow,” Joey said. “Are you okay?”
“Haven’t a clue. But a decision had to be made. Only time will tell if it was the right one. So what’s the latest? Out there?” He nodded towards the town.
“How much do you know?”
“Kilcroney, Rose Tolliver, Nicolas Burke, Hal Mahon. Hash, rain, fabric softener, remortgaging the Broderick. How’m I doing?”
“Bang up to date. Can we speak with all of you?”
“Brigit!” Colm called. “Lenehan. Come here!”
We gathered at the kitchen table.
“Okay,” I began. “The bottom line is that Kilcroney’s offered to fix everything, super-quickly. He swears it won’t happen again. He says he’s the one who did the fires, not Hal. Insisted, like.”
“That’s…noble?” Lenehan said.
“Also,” I added, “on Thursday, he sent an ‘anonymous’ email, threatening to set the place on fire. Helen got proof it came from him. So, we’ve evidence, in case he thinks about starting any new nonsense.”
“But how’s everyone taking it?” Brigit asked. “You know, all of it.”
“Ike says that people want everything to settle. Obviously they won’t forget what went on, there’s a lot of sympathy for you but—”
“—no investigation?” Colm said. “What do you think?” He and Brigit exchanged a long look.
“Best way forward, I think,” Brigit said.
“Aren’t you angry with Kilcroney?” I looked from Colm to Brigit to Lenehan.
“I would be if it wasn’t for Queenie,” Brigit said. “But she simplifies everything.”
“Yeah,” Colm agreed. “I just don’t have the bandwidth to hate him. He had his reasons. Money. It wasn’t personal.”
“If the retreat can still go ahead without anymore hate, we can keep our energy for Queenie,” Brigit said. “I’ll take that. With pleasure.”
“Okay. Sorted,” Lenehan said. “I’ll start dinner.”
“Did you two check out of the Broderick?” Brigit asked Joey and me. “Anna, you can have Queenie’s room. Joey, we’ll put you in Sully’s.”
I helped Lenehan make dinner, did a load of washing and scrubbed the kitchen. Joey went around the house, changing light bulbs and remote-control batteries, then ironed freshly laundered clothes for Brigit and Colm to pack.
Around 10 p.m., the five of us took a break and Brigit opened a bottle of wine. Halfway through my first glass, I had to go to bed, where I plunged into sleep, like a stone tumbling off a cliff. Most nights, my aging bladder woke me a couple of times but nine hours later, when I woke, I hadn’t moved an inch.
Queenie’s room was washed with shy, buttery light. Unmoving, I lay in the yellow glow, while chunks of information assembled themselves for me.
It was time to put on my big girl’s pants. Even though I wasn’t at all keen on the expression—did they mean my big girl underwear? Or my big girl’s trousers? I preferred to put the situation another way: it was time to be painfully brave.
These were the facts: Joey and I had an undeniable connection but we were never going to work. One of us always ended up devastated and this time it was me. But I’d got over him in the past: I’d get over him again.
Joey and Rose? I had no idea what it was—a friendship, a flirtation—but it was definitely something. Joey liked Rose; at least he had until he suspected she’d been using him. And it was that—Joey’s mistrust of everyone—which was the most important thing, because it was partly my fault.
I wanted him to be happy.
Downstairs, no one was up. I took a coffee and sat outside. Droplets of dew still clung to the grass.
“Hey.” Joey was at my side. “Can I join you?”
“Sure.”
“So beautiful here,” he said. “Especially at this time of day. Anna, can we talk?”
Our eyes met. “Joey, you owe me nothing.”
“Rose and I went to a classical concert in Galway on Sunday. That’s all.”
“Joey.” I had to swallow. “Yesterday, watching you implode when you thought Rose had only pretended to like you, it was…”
He paled. “Okay. Right…I thought she and I had a connection.”
This wasn’t news. Painful as it was to hear, it was healthy he’d admitted it.
“You’d checked if she had planning permission because you thought she had another motive for being friendly? Do you do that with everyone who’s nice to you? Because that’s a hard way to live.”
He took a big breath. “Anna, you might not get this because people tend to like you. Me, I just make them uncomfortable. First I was Narky Joey, now I’m that flash fuck from Dublin, the go-boy.” He looked pained. “Remember, on Friday evening in your room in the Broderick? Margaret and your mum were mortified sitting next to me. Same at the karaoke. Apart from Luke and Rachel, everyone scattered, getting as far away as possible.
“But Rose seemed interested in me . We liked some of the same things, especially music. We had good chats, it felt…yeah… good . Then to discover it was only because she was scouting out a finance stream? That hurt. I felt…so stupid.”
“You’re wrong though,” I said. “She knew what your job was, but she enjoyed being with you. She said .”
“It wasn’t anything romantic.”
I wasn’t sure that was true. “You’ve had trust issues for a long time. You said it yesterday to Kilcroney: you don’t trust anyone.”
“It’s just how I am.”
“It’s not, though. Stuff has made you that way. Joey, staying away from love, sex, whatever you want to call it, I get what you said about it making you feel bad. But you’re lonely.” Carefully, I ventured, “The therapy you did with Elisabeth was helpful? Maybe you could try it again?”
I expected he’d scoff at the suggestion. But he surprised me by saying, “I mean, maybe . The man, Trevor’s his name, said I could come back if I ever needed to. So, maybe.”
“ Yes -ee. Joey, you’ve checked out of an important part of life. You should be going on dates—”
“Wait. Stop. So what was Saturday night about for you?”
“It’s obvious how I felt. But I’ll survive.”
He nodded and, even though I’d forced this, a part of me died.
“Do you think we could be friends?” he asked.
I shook my head. “At least one of us always ends up in bits. We need to give up on it. Us. Trying to make it happen.”
“You know I really care about you?”
“Oh Joey, I really care about you too. But we’re not good for each other.”
“I’m sorry.” He sounded choked.
“Please, Joey, just be happy. Promise you’ll try.”
“I promise I’ll think about going back to Trevor. I ‘heard’ what you said. I respect it. I’ll do what I can. Okay?”
“Sure.” But it was no longer my concern. “So will we drive into town now and tell Kilcroney he’s in the clear?”
“Let’s go.”