Chapter 2
2
EMMY RYAN
A blast of Dolly Parton singing ‘9 to 5’ woke Emmy up and she stretched one arm out to the left and banged it up and down in random places until she hit the button that switched Dolly off for exactly five minutes until the next outburst. Yes, she still used an old-style alarm clock, because she was paranoid that she’d forget to charge her phone overnight and it would die and she’d be late for work.
Her other arm felt for Cormac, but his side of the bed was already empty. Groaning, she prised open one eye and aimed it at the digital screen on the clock: 8a.m. Still dark outside, as it would be at this time until the Scottish spring finally kicked the gloom away in March.
Emmy hated winter. When she was on day shift on the elderly ward at Glasgow Central Hospital, she went into work in the dark, and if she finished any time after 3p.m., the skies were already black when she left. The only bonus was the cosiness of the thick jumpers and furry boots that were her standard out-of-work wardrobe from October until the end of February.
She pushed herself up in bed and listened for signs of life. None. For a moment, she wondered if Cormac had already left, maybe headed to the gym before work, and her heart began to thud just a little bit faster. Surely he’d have woken her? But then, leaving her to sleep as long as possible was just the kind of thing that Cormac Sweeney would do, dammit. Or maybe… maybe he just couldn’t be arsed waking her. A month ago, she’d have said he’d never do that, but lately he’d been so preoccupied, so distant, that it wouldn’t be a surprise.
A deflated, half-hearted snap of her fingers had just flicked on the bedside lamp, when the door opened and in he walked, all six feet two of handsomeness. Not that she was biased. Even an objective eye couldn’t deny this man’s win in the genetic life lottery. Her mother, Ailish, was still convinced that he had such a strong resemblance to the Irish actor, Daryl McCormack, that they had to be related and fully expected some strings could be pulled to get them an invitation to next year’s BAFTAs. Not that her mother would agree to a swanky night out these days. It had been pretty much impossible to get her out of the door for any kind of social interaction since… well, since their whole bloody family had fallen apart.
‘Hey gorgeous, happy Hogmanay,’ Cormac said, as he placed a wooden tray down on the bed with her usual winter breakfast: a mug of black coffee and a toasted, buttered cinnamon bagel. The delectable aroma of the Colombian beans mixed with the warm, oozing buttery bun stirred any remaining sleepy senses to life.
Food and her man. This should be the very best way to start the day. The only things that stopped it from being perfect were that he was fully clothed and about to leave, and that creeping suspicion that something wasn’t right with them. He’d been acting strangely for days. Weeks even. And every spider sense she possessed was telling her that she knew the reason why. She just wasn’t ready to admit it.
Or was she just overthinking everything because of all that had happened with her mum and dad? The complete dissolution of the one relationship she’d never doubted for a second. There wasn’t a handbook for how you were meant to feel when you were a grown adult and your parents split. Or for finding out that your dad was a cheating arse who’d been having an affair with – oh, the cliché of it – his two-decades-younger assistant. Her poor mum had been absolutely blindsided, although, in hindsight, his sudden predilection for fake tan and teeth whitening should have been a dead giveaway.
Cormac hadn’t done either of those things, but still, her suspicions that he could be seeing someone else, or thinking about it, were keeping her awake at night. He’d been so checked out recently. He was jumpy if he was on the phone when she walked into the room and one time when – ashamed as she was to admit it – she’d checked his phone while was sleeping, he’d changed the password. He’d come home late a few times and once she could definitely smell perfume.
Now, seeing him doing something so sweet this morning, she was wondering if she’d been wrong.
‘Happy Hogmanay,’ she replied, stretching over to kiss him, oblivious that the angle made the hem of her pyjama top dip into her coffee. ‘I was worried that you’d gone off to work and I’d missed you.’
‘I’m just going now,’ he murmured, between slow, gentle kisses.
‘Don’t go. Stay. Come back to bed. Stuff the world, it can do without you today,’ she said, already knowing what his answer would be.
‘Yep, but the station can’t. I’m on grub duty,’ he answered, as expected. ‘There would be an uproar if I didn’t show today and the lads went hungry.’
Grub duty. It basically meant he was in charge of preparing the lunches for the shift. Actually, dinner too, given that he’d somehow agreed to cover for a mate and that meant he’d be doing a double shift, and would be at the station for twenty-four hours, sleeping between call-outs in the bunk room. A double shift on New Year’s Eve. That was about as unlucky as it got for a firefighter on one of the busiest days of the year. Yet, he hadn’t complained once, because he truly cared about his job, something she’d realised the first time she’d met him.
Cormac Sweeney had walked into her ward in his firefighter uniform almost a year ago, and by the time he’d reached the nursing station, Emmy was in lust. When he’d asked if he could sneak in to say hello to an elderly man he’d pulled out of a fire caused by a smoking chip pan, her heart was paying attention. When she took him through to the man’s bedside and Cormac treated the gent with such care and respect, bits of her were already in love. Especially the bits that, despite her fears, were responding to his kiss right now.
He must have felt the heat rise between them because he broke off the snogging session and gave her one last smile as he stood up from the bed. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning, but I’ll try to call you later. Sorry we’re not going to be together at midnight, babe. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
‘No worries, but call me if you can. I’ll be in all night. Or if I get bored, I might head over to Mum’s and go wild with a bottle of wine and the box of Quality Street that’s still under the tree. And I’ll drop in on Gran at some point too.’
‘Yeah, I’ll try, but you know how it is. It’ll be chaos.’
He brushed her off so easily and there was something shifty in the way he didn’t make eye contact. She wracked her brain to remember the psychological tells they discussed on all those episodes of Criminal Minds that she used to binge on. Did the suspects look down to their left or their right when they were lying? Or did they just, like Cormac, back out before you could spot where their gaze was going? Not that she had any serial killer concerns, but there had definitely been something off with him lately.
‘No worries,’ she answered, trying to play it cool. ‘I do know how it is. Have a good shift. And please stay safe.’ He was already at the door.
‘You too,’ he retorted distractedly, obviously checked out of the conversation. Her shift at the hospital definitely didn’t require a safety warning. The most physically hazardous thing that ever happened on her ward was an octogenarian going rogue with a Zimmer frame.
‘I love you,’ she said, as he went out the door. It was superstitious, an ever-present anxiety that the one time that wasn’t the last thing she said to him would be the time he got injured at work. Or worse…
If he said it back, it was drowned out by the thud of his steps on the stairs.
Emmy slumped back on the bed, deflated. There it was again, the niggling feeling. He wasn’t being unkind or rude or abrasive, just… distant. As if he wanted to be anywhere else but here. And it was a demeanour she recognised only too well. Her dad had perfected it when things started to go wrong with him and Mum. He’d stopped paying attention when she spoke. Stopped laughing at her jokes. Started staring into space as if he had something on his mind. Turned out it was a thirty-two-year-old called Donna. The man she’d adored above all others her whole life was now someone she barely recognised, and even two years later, there was still a lingering fracture in their closeness, one that was papered over with cordial tolerance.
After she polished off the bagel and coffee, she drifted back to sleep for a while, still knackered after her double shift yesterday. It had been midnight when she’d crawled in the door and she’d been too wired to sleep, so she’d worked her way through two episodes of Selling Sunset before climbing in beside a sleeping Cormac at 2a.m., and drifting off to dream about a palatial estate in the Hollywood Hills.
Her second alarm of the morning woke her at ten minutes to ten. She had her morning routine down to perfection. One hour and ten minutes to get showered, dressed, and over to Glasgow Central Hospital in time for her shift to start at eleven.
Before she got up, she did a quick internal check and, yes, her worries over Cormac’s behaviour were still there. Emmy knew she had to confront it, but even the thought of that twisted her stomach into knots. Tomorrow. The first day of the New Year. May as well get the year off with a bang and…
Bang. Bang. Bang.
It took a second to register that the noise was coming from her own front door. Someone had just thudded it with the kind of force that suggested urgency. Maybe a delivery driver, keen to get his last shift of the year over with.
She slid out of bed and trotted down the stairs, spotting the outline of a man in the opaque glass side panel next to the door. He wasn’t holding any kind of parcel, so not a delivery guy. No post-person’s red jacket either.
Shit. This was one of those moments when she really needed to have one of those personal safety alarms. And a bra on. Whoever it was, they were about to get greeted by a wild-haired, red-eyed woman in her pyjamas.
Cormac had already undone the overnight locks and security chain, so she only had to open the Yale at the top of the door. Trying to keep as much of herself hidden as possible, she slowly pulled open the heavy oak door and peered round it.
‘Dad!’ she exclaimed, confused. There was absolutely no reason for her father to be at her door at this time of the morning. Or for him to have bloodshot eyes and hair that looked like it had just come out of a tumble dryer. He was always so impeccably groomed, this sight in front of her was hard to take in. The dishevelled suit, the tie pulled loose, the unshaven face. None of this fitted on Eric Ryan. They used to joke with him that he was like one of those middle-aged silver foxes that featured in travel promos for Saga Tours and adverts for life insurance. Right now, he would be more suited to an NHS warning about the dangerous after-effects of binge drinking.
‘What’s happened? Is something wrong? Is it Mum?’ That came out automatically, before she remembered that he would have no clue how Mum was, on account of the fact that he’d had some kind of midlife crisis, destroyed Mum’s life and wrecked their family.
‘Yes, love, it’s Mum,’ he replied, and she was surprised there was no slur to his words. Given his appearance, she’d half expected him to have got here fuelled by tequila.
‘What is it?’ Her blood ran cold. ‘Is she hurt? Has she been in an accident?’
He immediately put his hands up as if he was surrendering. ‘No, no. Nothing like that. She’s fine.’ He ran his fingers through his hair, exasperated.
‘It’s me who’s not okay, Em. I need help.’
‘With what, Dad?’ she asked, confused and aware that this whole scene was playing out on the front doorstep and Mrs McFadden from next door was walking up her path and craning her neck so much to see what was going on that she was almost walking backwards.
Her dad’s voice escalated with uncharacteristic drama. ‘I’ve been a total idiot and I need to fix my mistake. Emmy, I need you to help me get your mum back.’