Chapter 17
17
ZAC
For a couple of moments, Zac wondered if his mum’s old friend had escaped the awkward moment at the funeral by giving him the wrong address. Or maybe she was in there, behind the couch, pretending no one was home. No, he discounted that one. Alice hadn’t seemed like the kind of woman who wouldn’t keep her word.
His head was still reeling from everything that had happened today. After the funeral, he’d nipped back to Aunt Audrey’s house and… he caught himself. It wasn’t Aunt Audrey’s house any more. That was going to take a bit of getting used to. Anyway, he’d gone back there so that he could say goodbye to his cousins and their kids, before they hit the road for Center Parcs. Right up until the last minute, Jill had been wavering about going, too upset after saying goodbye to her mum this morning.
‘You know she’d be furious if we wasted her money,’ Hamish had pointed out correctly. Aunt Audrey was unfailingly generous, but also notoriously careful with her cash. ‘We’d get nothing back and she’d hate that,’ he’d added, a variation of the argument he’d used every time Jill had wavered over the last few days. In the end, the enthusiasm of the kids and her wish to cheer them up after losing their gran had won her over once again and when Zac had said goodbye to them, they were changing out of their funeral clothes and getting ready to go.
Zac had had a quick change too. He’d ditched the suit and pulled on his black jeans and a dark grey jumper, then added the padded jacket that he’d brought with him because it was always bloody freezing in Glasgow at this time of year. Everything else, he’d packed into his case and then it left at the door.
Last job was to find his dad. Cillian was in the back garden, sitting on the stone bench, with the gazebo above it protecting him from the snow that was coming down thick now. For a second, Zac had thought he was sleeping because his head was back, as if he was staring at the sky, but his eyes were closed.
‘Dad?’
There was a pause, and his heart had skipped a beat, before his father had brought his head forward and opened his eyes. His dad was only fifty-six years old, and he was a handsome guy, who kept himself in great shape, but right then he looked as old and as weary as Zac had ever seen him. ‘Sorry, son. Just having a chat with your mum in my head there. Helps sometimes.’
‘I do the same thing.’ It was true. Sometimes he’d catch himself telling her something in his mind, and it would make him smile because he knew that she hated to miss a thing.
‘Listen, I just need to pop out for a while – I said I’d nip over and see one of Mum’s friends that I met at the funeral.’
Had it been his imagination or had his dad turned even paler?
‘Oh. Right. Which friend was that now?’ There had been an unusual edginess to his dad’s voice.
‘Alice. She seemed really nice. I’m hoping maybe she can tell me a bit more about Mum when she was younger.’
‘I don’t think we’ve got time, son. We need to get to the airport.’
His dad had said that with such conviction, Zac had frowned, confused. ‘But our flight is at nine o’clock. We don’t need to be there until seven.’
‘I know, but with this weather…’ His dad’s words had tailed off, as he obviously gave up on that argument.
Zac had immediately realised what the issue was. His dad didn’t want him to speak to Alice. And it wasn’t a huge leap to think that must be because she might tell him something that his dad didn’t want him to hear.
Zac hadn’t even begun to process how he would deal with this situation, if, as he now suspected, Cillian Conlon didn’t share his DNA. The biggest part of him was praying that this was all a mistake, even though the tiny voice in his brain was telling him it wasn’t. Either way, he wanted to tell his dad that nothing would change, that it was only biology, that Cillian would always be his father. But that didn’t negate his need to find out for sure and put all these questions and fears to rest.
‘Aye, well, I don’t want to be sitting in an empty house, surrounded by Audrey’s memories, so I’d like to get off to the airport early. We’re as well there, where we can get dinner and a pint.’
‘Okay, but I tell you what then – why don’t you go on whenever you’re ready and I’ll meet you there, just in case I get held up. Text me and let me know when you’re leaving. I’ve left my suitcase at the door?—’
‘I’ll take that with me,’ his dad had offered. ‘May as well get it all checked in and then we’re sorted.’
More and more lately, as the months went by without Mum, it had felt like his dad appreciated being needed or doing things that were helpful. He’d show up at Zac’s flat to fill the fridge with beer. Or he’d buy tickets for a football game that he knew Zac would want to go to. Zac appreciated it all and he’d started doing the same. Including Dad in his plans for the weekend. Suggesting things they could do together. Dropping by on the way home from work. He could see Dad missed Mum’s company and her sense of purpose too. She always had a plan and a list of things to do and places to go. When they got back to Dublin, maybe he’d suggest a holiday, just the two of them. His dad loved to ski, so maybe a week in the Alps over Easter.
He’d bent down and given his old man a hug. ‘It’ll be okay, Dad.’ Neither of them had chosen to clarify what he was referring to. ‘Love ya.’
‘Love ya too, son.’
A car horn had blasted from out in the street, interrupting the moment. ‘That’s my taxi. I’ll see you later, either here or at the airport.’ For all he knew, he’d be back there within half an hour, if the conversation with Alice was a non-starter.
Now, standing outside her door, he’d begun to think that would be the case, when he heard the sound of a lock being opened and suddenly Val was in the doorway.
‘Come on in, you’ll catch your death of cold out there,’ she chirped, then froze. ‘Sorry. Not the day for comments about death. I’m always putting my foot in it.’
Zac laughed. ‘That’s okay. I’m pretty good at that myself.’
He couldn’t help but notice the white furry mules on her feet because they clicked all the way down the hall, past two large suitcases that were just outside the door ahead of them.
‘Are you off on holiday?’ he asked, just to break the ice really.
‘Ah, I wish. No, they’re Alice’s. She’s off to London tonight. Moving there permanently. You caught her just in time.’
Her words triggered a memory of Alice saying at the wake that she was going to London. In the moment, he hadn’t given it a thought, but now he realised their paths might have been destined to cross again whether he’d come here this afternoon or not. ‘Is she flying?’ he asked, struck by the potential coincidence.
‘Aye, son, because her canoe has a puncture,’ Val deadpanned with a wink, making him laugh despite the craziness of the circumstances. This woman reminded him of his mum and Aunt Audrey so much. One of them would come out with a quip like that and it would set them both off. That thought was just what he needed to calm the uncharacteristic clench of nervousness at the back of his throat.
Alice got up from the kitchen table to greet him with a hug, and as he reciprocated, he saw the open album of photographs on the table, and beside it a small pile of snaps.
‘Have a seat, and I’ll get you a drink,’ Val offered, as he and Alice parted. ‘Coffee, tea or beer? My Michael keeps some cans of lager in the fridge, so they’re cold already.’
‘Coffee would be great, please,’ he said, spotting that there was a pot already brewing on the machine beside the cooker. ‘Just black. No sugar, thanks.’
‘I’m on it,’ Val said, crossing to the other side of the room.
Alice still hadn’t said anything other than ‘Hello’ and he could sense that she was as nervous as him. He felt awful that he’d caused that. ‘Can I just start by saying I’m really sorry to have ambushed you at the wake. This has all been a bit of a shock. I only discovered the note and the photographs this morning and it’s all thrown me. Especially today.’
‘I understand,’ Alice assured him. ‘And I hope you don’t think I was being unhelpful. It was all a bit of a shock to me too.’
Val brought the coffee over, then pushed the biscuit tin in his direction. ‘There you go, Zac. I bet you were too busy to stop for so much as a sausage roll this morning.’
An ache in his gut reminded him that she was right, and he took a chocolate digestive gratefully. There were so many questions he needed to ask, but he knew better than to charge in. He’d interviewed hundreds of clients and witnesses in his time, and he’d learned that no one responded well to cold questions, so instead of starting where they’d left off this morning, he gestured to the photo on the top of the pile on the table.
‘My mum,’ he said, spotting her face.
‘Yes,’ Alice said gently, picking them up. ‘I picked out all the ones I could find of her because I thought maybe you’d want to take them? Or even make copies now by photographing them with your phone, if that would be okay? I’d hate to lose them.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ he agreed, pulling out his iPhone.
Over the next fifteen minutes or so, they went through each photo one by one. Alice would tell him where it was taken and why, or perhaps share an anecdote, while he captured the image on his camera roll. Today was worth it just for these. They were in age order, and in the youngest she must have been about twelve, right up until her early twenties. In Aunt Audrey’s house there had been old photo albums that had belonged to his gran, so he’d seen photos of his mum in her youth, but most of them were posed shots on special occasions with her family. These ones were different. She was with her friends. Laughing. Celebrating. Singing into hairbrushes. Being mischievous. Dancing. Blowing kisses. Giggling. And she looked so full of life it brought a lump to his throat.
‘This one is your mum’s birthday celebrations in London, a few months before she left.’
He turned the photo over and the inscription there hit him like a bullet between the eyes.
The birthday gang! Jan 1995.
The month he had to have been conceived.
He turned it back over and studied the faces there. His mum. Alice. Two other women. And one guy.
‘Who is he?’ he asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
‘Larry. He was my boyfriend at the time. We got married shortly after that.’
Another bullet. And he could see by the red rash creeping up Alice’s neck that she was taking shrapnel too.
The lawyer in him had already formulated a sequence of questions, but he held off, went gently, unable to bear causing her any distress. In the pause, he studied the photo, his stare almost entirely on the one male in the picture. There was something… something familiar. Bullet number three hit him with the answer.
‘Hang on – is that Larry McLenn? The politician?’
Holy shit. He’d seen this guy all over the news for years. He’d even visited Ireland as part of a UK delegation for something or other, and then there had been a big scandal – caught on a covert recording accepting bribes and snorting cocaine, if Zac remembered correctly. The guy was a complete sleaze. No morals. No standards. No…
Oh no, no, no.
Realisation dawned and he ran that back.
No morals. No standards. The kind of guy who would sleep with his girlfriend’s best friend, approximately nine months before Zac was born? Is that what his mother was apologising for in the letter?
He raised his eyes to meet Alice’s, and found his answer right there, in the absolute horror and devastation that was in her eyes.
‘Did my mum have a relationship with him?’ he asked her, seriously wishing that he knew none of this.
Alice took several seconds before she managed a quiet, ‘I don’t know. I had no suspicion of it at all until I met you today…’
He put the pieces together. ‘And I showed you the letter. And questioned the date my parents met.’
Val leaned forward, said softly, ‘You definitely weren’t premature?’
Zac shook his head. ‘No. Ten pounds. Full term.’
‘Bugger,’ was her whispered reply.
He didn’t want to ask the next question. He really didn’t. Yet he knew he had to. ‘Now that you have all this information, do you think there’s a possibility that they could have had an…’ He couldn’t make the words come out. Not in relation to his mother. She was the most honest, genuine person he’d ever known. He reworded the question. ‘Do you think there’s a possibility that there could have been something between them?’
Again, Alice thought about her answer before speaking. ‘I would never have thought so. That wasn’t Morag. She was good, and kind, and, sure, she loved to have fun, but I find it impossible to believe that she would do that to me. Or to anyone.’
There was some consolation that Alice had the same opinion of his mum’s integrity that he held. But he sensed that she was holding something back.
‘But…?’ he probed.
Alice let out a long sigh and her shoulders sagged. ‘Larry could be persuasive. Charming. He was a master manipulator, and he could make people do things that they didn’t even want to do. Not through threats or violence, but just by finding their weak spot, or getting them at a vulnerable moment. He was a shark, and not many people were a match for him.’
Zac felt pure visceral anger begin to tighten his chest. This guy sounded like such a prick, and in Zac’s line of work he’d met so many just like him. The husbands who controlled their wives, who were charming in public and narcissistic, megalomaniacal assholes behind closed doors. They didn’t intimidate him in the least, but he could see how twenty-five-year-old Morag would be no match for someone like that.
‘So I guess the bottom line is that the only person who knows is him. And possibly my dad, but I can’t bring myself to ask him. Not now. Maybe not ever.’
Val put her mug on the table. ‘Oh, your poor dad. I can only imagine how difficult that would be for him. Especially after losing your mum and your aunt. For what it’s worth, my advice would be to let it lie, if you can. You are who you are because of the parents that raised you. Isn’t it enough to know that?’
He thought for a moment, but he already knew the answer. ‘No. I really wish it was, but that’s a loose end that I can’t leave. I’m a facts guy – occupational hazard – and not knowing the truth would keep me awake at night.’
‘Well, maybe think about it for a wee while at least. It’s a lot to take in,’ Alice suggested, and he could feel that came from a place of care and concern. But this information had been lost to him for almost thirty years, and he couldn’t leave it any longer.
‘Where will I find him – Larry McLenn? Do you know where he lives?’
The shadow of horror that crossed Alice’s face made him flinch. ‘I do. But Zac, it’s really not a good idea. Stay away from him.’
There was no doubt this was rash. Impulsive. But he only had a short time to get answers on this trip, so he checked his watch and then pled his case.
‘I have a few hours before I need to get to the airport for my flight back to Dublin. I hear you’re headed that way too.’ Alice nodded, as he went on. ‘The thing is… I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to come back to Glasgow, so I can either kill time until my flight or I can go and at least try to make sense of this and get an answer. If I don’t find him, fair enough, but at least I won’t have missed an opportunity.’ He watched as the colour drained from her face and he felt terrible for upsetting her, so he immediately clarified his thoughts. ‘Please don’t think I’m pushing you to be part of this, though, Alice. If you’re not comfortable sharing his address with me, I can use my own resources to locate him and I’ll grab a taxi there. Thank you so much for your help and for sharing those photos with me. They’re really special. I can see why my mum loved you.’
He stood up and, with a grateful smile, gave them both a hug. First Val, then Alice. He then pulled his jacket off the back of the chair, but as he did so, he spotted Val’s raised eyebrows and pursed lips, then then two women had yet another one of those unspoken conversations.
Suddenly, Alice exhaled, shaking her head, as if making a decision to do something even though it was against her better judgement.
‘Zac, forget what I just said. Wait right there while I get my coat.’
Val nodded her approval. ‘I’m with you too. Let me grab my lippy and the keys for the Jeep.’