Chapter 4
4
ZAC CORLAN
This was the first time all week that the kitchen had been empty of people and Zac knew it wouldn’t last long, so, coffee in hand, he opened his Aunt Audrey’s back door and let the freezing-cold air shock him awake. His late aunt. He kept forgetting that bit. She was still in every inch of this house, from the large ceramic chicken that sat on the counter storing fresh eggs, to the giant sunburst clock that hung on the far wall. Aunt Audrey had been a character. One who, if she were still here, would have been yelling at him to get the door closed because ‘the cold out there would make your bits fall off.’
At 8a.m. on any other weekday, he’d be in his office in Dublin, contemplating the pile of broken promises that came with the caseload of files in his in-tray. Being a lawyer who specialised in divorce definitely wasn’t a job for the faint-hearted and January was always his busiest month. But instead of being at work, he was in a house in Glasgow, preparing to bury the aunt that he’d visited with his mum and dad at least twice a year for his entire life.
Aunt Audrey had passed away suddenly, suffering a heart attack on Christmas Eve, almost a year after his mum, Morag, had succumbed to the cancer she’d lived with for years. Mum had died on the first weekend in January. The two women in his life, both gone in the space of twelve months.
‘Christ, would you shut that door? The cold out there would make your bits fall off.’
That came from his cousin, Jill, Audrey’s daughter and her absolute double, right down to the freckles, the ginger hair, her raucous laugh and her favourite sayings. Jill and her twin, Hamish, were a few years older than Zac, the elder brother and sister that he’d never had.
‘You sound just like Aunt Audrey,’ he told her, with an affectionate smile, that was returned, despite the pale mask of exhaustion and grief that Jill had been wearing since he got here last week. The irony was, that his and his dad’s flights to Glasgow had already been booked for Boxing Day, because even though his mum was no longer with him, he’d still felt the need to come here for the New Year celebrations as he’d always done. Back in November, when he’d organised the trip, it hadn’t been a popular decision with Camilla, his colleague and girlfriend of the previous six months. She’d been thinking more along the lines of St Lucia. Maybe Barbados.
When he’d dug his heels in and insisted that this year, the first without his mum, it was even more important than ever that he came with his dad to spend New Year with his aunt and family in Glasgow, she had lost all patience, especially when he broke it to her that she wasn’t invited. He wasn’t being difficult, but he figured the last thing Aunt Audrey needed was a stranger in her home at what was sure to be a tough time for her.
Camilla had called off their relationship and cleared out the drawer where she used to keep some essentials when she slept over. Last he heard, she’d consoled herself by taking three girlfriends on that Christmas and New Year trip to Barbados.
He hadn’t admitted it to a soul, but the truth was that he’d been relieved, glad that he was free to spend Christmas with his dad in his childhood home in Dublin, then fly here with Dad to spend New Year with Aunt Audrey and the rest of the family. His mum had grown up in this house, and Audrey had moved back in to take care of their ailing parents many years ago. There was something special about it. It felt like his mum was in every room. In every picture. In every memory they had here. There was nowhere else he’d wanted to spend New Year. But, of course, they’d all been blindsided when, instead of coming here to share the turn of the year with Aunt Audrey, it turned out that they were actually coming for her funeral. He’d been stunned when he’d received the phone call late on Christmas Eve to say she was gone and even now, it still didn’t seem real.
‘Your dad still sleeping?’ Jill asked him. She was holding a shoebox, which she put down on the kitchen table as she took the coffee he’d just poured her from the pot he’d already made. The coffee machine had been his Christmas gift to Aunt Audrey a few years back and she’d been chuffed to bits. Audrey and his mum would fire it up every morning they were here, and then the two of them would chat for the next hour while sipping their caffeine hits.
‘Yeah. He’s taken this pretty hard, especially with it being so soon after losing Mum. You know he adored Aunt Audrey too.’
Jill nodded, a sad smile crossing her lips. ‘And it went both ways. They were legends, all of them, weren’t they?’
She didn’t have to explain what she meant. His mum, his dad and his Aunt Audrey were a formidable team. Audrey had divorced her husband back in the nineties, and since then the three of them had stuck together, even though they were separated by a few hundred miles and a small stretch of sea. The Corlans would come here for New Year, and then Zac and his mum would come back for a month in the summer too. The Bennings would come to Ireland for Easter and then the second half of the school summer holidays. And the three adults would make sure the kids enjoyed every second of it.
Zac returned the smile. ‘They were.’ He pulled out a chair and sat opposite Jill, still savouring the peace. Since he’d got here, the house had been full of visitors paying respects, neighbours handing in more food than they could eat, and officials planning the ins and outs of today’s funeral. Neither his mum nor Aunt Audrey had been religious, so the service was going to be at the crematorium, with a Humanist celebrant, who also happened to be one of Aunt Audrey’s lifelong friends, so she could speak from a place of true affection and personal experience. Afterwards, there would be tea and sandwiches at the only hotel in the village, The Georgian House, up on the Main Street. That had been the venue for every celebration and Hogmanay party in his memory, and they all knew it was Aunt Audrey’s choice because it had been written into her letter of wishes, the one they’d found after she died. Apparently, she’d written it after his mum had passed, and the loss had given her a sense of her own mortality.
Zac hadn’t read all of it, just the parts that Jill had recounted to him detailing her plan for today: the ceremony, the venue, even the music – Blondie’s ‘Call Me’, ‘Love Is All Around’ by Wet Wet Wet, and ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion – all chosen because they were, in rotation, her favourite songs to belt out after a few Proseccos in a karaoke bar.
Jill’s gaze went to the sunburst clock on the wall. ‘The cars are coming at 10.30, so we’ve got a couple of hours of the calm before the storm. Are you sure you don’t mind that we’re deserting you and your dad this afternoon?’
Zac shook his head. ‘Of course not. I’d choose a week in Center Parcs over another day with me too,’ he teased. It had been Aunt Audrey’s Christmas gift to Jill and her husband, Archie, and Hamish and his wife, Mandy – a long weekend for both their families in Center Parcs, leaving today. Audrey could never have known that it would coincide with the day of her funeral. Jill and Hamish had considered cancelling, but she’d been so happy to treat them and their children that they’d decided it was the perfect way to honour her. Besides, their kids had just experienced their first heartbreak, losing the gran they adored, and a sad Christmas, so Jill knew her mum would have wanted to cheer them up before they went back to school next week. The cars were packed, and the plan was for them to set off after the wake. Zac and his dad were already booked on a flight back to Dublin tonight too.
‘Listen, there’s no good time to do this and I don’t know if we’ll get a chance after the service, so I just wanted to give you this now.’ She slid the shoe box across the table towards him.
‘What is it?’ he asked, leaning forward to take it.
‘I think it’s a box of your mum’s things from when she was younger. It was in her old bedroom, and it’s probably been there since the eighties. We found it when we were looking for something of Aunt Morag’s to put in the coffin with Mum today. That was in Mum’s wishes too.’
Jill’s eyes filled when she said that, and he forgot about the box as he went round to her side of the table to give her a hug. She let him hold her for a few moments, then pulled her shoulders back and, forcing a smile, waved him away.
‘Argh, don’t let me start. We’ve still got the service to get through and she’d want me to hold it together. You know what she was like. She’ll be sitting on a cloud somewhere with your mum, looking down on me right now and telling everyone who’ll listen that I’ve always had a touch of the theatrics. Anyway, here you go. I think it’s just full of photos and cards, but I’m sure it’ll make you smile. I’m going to go and start getting ready and hunt down some waterproof mascara.’
When she got up from her chair, Zac gave her another hug before she went, then sat down in her seat, reaching over to pull his mug of coffee towards him. He thought about leaving the box until later, but curiosity got the better of him, and he’d already showered and shaved, so he still had well over an hour before he had to get his suit on.
The top of the shoe box had the letters C&A written across it, and Zac had a vague memory of that being a big store in the centre of Glasgow when he was a kid. He lifted the lid off, and saw immediately that Jill was right – inside was a pile of envelopes, letters, photos, cards, concert tickets… all of which looked decades old. He flicked through them and some dates jumped out at him. Postmarks from 1988. Scribbled dates on the back of photos of his mum and Aunt Audrey going back to childhood ones from the seventies. Pics of his parents, looking younger than he’d ever seen them. His job had long since trained him to keep it together in times of sadness, but Jill’s dose of the ‘theatrics’ had suddenly become contagious. He blinked until his eyes unblurred, and then carried on flicking through each gem of a gift from a bygone time. There were birthday cards to his mum from his grandparents. A letter offering his mum what he knew was her first job, as a typist at a legal firm in the city centre. She’d loved that job, and he’d always wondered if that was why she’d so fervently encouraged his interest in the law and been so incredibly proud when he’d qualified.
He pulled out another card, this time one with flowers on the front, but no greeting. Strange. His mother had never struck him as someone who would go for the floral vibe. Intrigued, he opened the card and received a full blow to the windpipe as he saw the loops and curves of his mum’s handwriting. Even now, he didn’t quite understand why some things hit harder than others, but these were the same shapes he’d seen on every card and letter he’d ever received from his parents. The words were completely different though…
Dear Alice,
I’ve been trying to write this note to you for the longest time, but never seem to manage it. I don’t know where to start, so I’ll just begin by saying I’m so, so sorry. When I explain what happened, I’ll understand if you never forgive me. I didn’t mean ? —
That was it. It stopped right there. No full stop. No other information, other than the obvious – it had never been sent.
Zac read it over a couple more times, his puzzlement increasing with every read. His mum wasn’t the kind of person who would ever deliberately hurt someone, so this must have been some kind of misunderstanding. Or an accident. Or… Nope, that was all he could come up with.
And who was Alice? He put it to one side, deciding to ask his dad about it later. He knew that after they met, his mum and dad had spent a couple of months here together before they’d moved back to Ireland, so his dad might have known this ‘Alice’ too.
Mystery parked for now, he went back to the box and continued to flick, until he reached a strip of photo booth pics of his mum and dad, both of them pulling faces into the camera. The frown of puzzlement was replaced by a beaming grin as he stared at the image, taking in every young, unlined, gleeful curve of their faces.
When every detail was imprinted on his mind, he turned the strip over, and there was that handwriting again:
9 March 1995 – Our first date!
That was one he’d treasure forever, he thought as he slipped it back in the box. One to frame. One he’d show his kids one day when he was telling them about their grandparents. One…
The thought was barrelled right out of the way by another one, a niggle that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He took the photo strip back out of the box. Stared at their faces. Then turned it over again.
9 March 1995 – Our first date!
The realisation of the problem came to him quickly, but it was so preposterous, so utterly baffling, that his legal brain questioned it a dozen times before even considering admitting it as evidence.
9 March 1995.
He’d been born on the 24 th of October the same year.
Just over seven months after his parents’ first date in March. That couldn’t be right. He knew from photos and his mum’s stories about his birth that he’d been a strapping ten pound full-term baby. If that was the case… he did the calculations… he must have been conceived in January.
None of this made a shred of sense.
He jumped as the door opened behind him and his dad came in, yawning as he made a beeline for the coffee. ‘Morning, son. Jeez-oh, I slept like a log. How’s you? What’s that you’ve got there?’
Zac had no idea why he did what he did next. While his dad reached into the cupboard for a mug, he slipped the strip of photos and the card into the front pouch of his hoodie.
‘Och, just old photos and cards that Mum must have kept. Some pretty handsome ones of you in there, Dad. No wonder she couldn’t resist you.’
‘Aye, it was a curse being as handsome as me,’ his dad fired back, with typical Cillian Corlan humour. It was only when the coffee was poured and his dad joined him at the table that Zac could see the exhaustion and grief in every line of his face.
He wasn’t in the habit of keeping secrets from his old man – in fact, Cillian was as much of a mate as he was a father. But this discovery? No. And the questions that were now in his mind? Another no. This wasn’t the time.
Whatever secrets he’d just stumbled over were going to have to stay buried… at least for today.