Chapter 21
Susan
Friday
An hour later, we’re at the kitchen table, halfway through the takeaway and all the way through the wine.
I’m holding it together, smiling and nodding while, inside, I’m dying.
Jon goes out to the utility room to get another bottle of Malbec and some Cokes for the girls.
Leesa’s telling us that she and Maeve are going shopping in Kildare Village tomorrow and Greta’s rolling her eyes. I’m barely listening.
“Oh, guess who I bumped into when I was there last week,” Leesa says to Greta. “Your new friend Phoebe. She says hi.”
Something in Leesa’s tone makes me tune in properly to the conversation.
Greta is nodding but doesn’t respond, wondering, perhaps, if this is just a ploy to stop her fast-fashion lecture.
“Who’s Phoebe?” I ask.
Leesa’s answer comes with a conspiratorial nod. “Greta’s friend she met in her hiking club, who also happens to be”—she lowers her voice and glances left to right with exaggerated care—“Albie Byrne’s sister.”
Ah. Inwardly, I squirm, and glance toward the utility room. For Jon and for me, Albie Byrne—or, more to the point, the story behind how we know his name—is an awkward topic.
Albie Byrne was the driver of the other car in Greta’s accident.
Not his fault, not hers, just bad luck and ice on the road—made worse by potholes and a failure on the council’s part to salt the route.
Greta got a good settlement from the council; Albie didn’t look for anything out of it, but then again, all he suffered was a broken ankle.
He’s a local councillor now; his big, round head beams down at us from lamp-posts around Blackrock, but ten years ago, when the accident happened, he was just plain old Albie Byrne.
Out in the utility room, Jon is still clinking around getting ice for the Cokes, and I’m quietly glad he’s not here for this conversation.
Greta’s accident is a difficult subject, one we avoid.
She shouldn’t have been out driving that night, and it’s down to Jon and me that she was.
I was giving a maths lesson to a Leaving Cert student in Carrickmines, and Jon was supposed to collect me afterward.
We only had one car—still do—officially, because we’re trying to do better for the environment; unofficially, because I hate driving and will walk or bus anywhere to avoid it.
But that night ten years ago, Jon forgot he was picking me up and went for drinks after work.
When he saw my text to say I was ready to be collected, he rang Greta to ask her to do it instead.
And that’s when she had her crash. She never blamed Jon, never blamed me, but whenever the topic comes up, it still makes me sick inside.
As for Jon—well, I guess I always assumed he felt just as bad, and that’s why we don’t discuss it.
Through the filter of my discovery today, I wonder…
Maybe he’s just coasting through life, not giving his part in Greta’s accident a second thought.
Leesa is still waiting for a reaction, nodding meaningfully, as though this connection between Phoebe and Albie is serious gossip.
It’s not though. Everyone knows everyone around here: Albie Byrne is a former team-mate of Warren Geary’s, and Celeste went to the same school as Leesa and Greta, and Leesa’s husband, Samir, works for the same engineering firm as Warren.
So Greta becoming friends with Albie Byrne’s sister is not the big deal Leesa would like to infer.
She loves gossip though, and I can’t blame the girl for trying to drum something out of nothing.
“Phoebe was saying she’s just booked a ski trip with Albie and his fiancée in January,” Leesa adds.
“Verbier. They go every year, apparently. I googled the resort. It looks amazing. Then I googled how much.” Her eyes widen.
“Greta, you should cozy up to Phoebe and wrangle an invite.” She grins, then stops.
“But seriously, is it not weird being friends with her when her brother basically crippled you?”
I wince.
Greta shakes her head. “The accident wasn’t Albie’s fault, you know that.”
My cheeks heat up. It wasn’t Albie’s fault, but it was, to a degree, mine and Jon’s. A seemingly small action with huge repercussions.
Jon arrives back with the drinks and I quickly change the subject.
“How’s the summer going, Maeve? Big year from September with the Leaving Cert ahead?”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me of school,” she says, forking more rice on to her plate.
“Oh, wait,” Jon says. “Isn’t the Geary daughter in your class, Maeve?”
Maeve nods.
“The bratty daughter,” Aoife pipes up, grinning delightedly. “She is a brat. You’re not wrong.”
I throw her what is supposed to be an admonishing look, though my heart’s not in it, then glance at Maeve, who is beside her, still engrossed in her food.
They’re like twins with their long dark hair and deep brown eyes and White Fox hoodies.
Maeve’s purple beanie and Aoife’s glasses make up the only discernible differences and I’m reminded again of another pair of sisters, Aimee and Venetia. God. Imagine losing your sister.
“So what’s the story with the boyfriend and the bunking-off?” Jon asks me. “I’m guessing not a motive for threatening texts or smashing windows?”
Everyone looks at me, though Greta and Leesa already know the story.
“OK, basically, I was out for a walk with Bella one day in May, down by the football pitches, and I saw her there with a guy.” I glance around at my audience.
“In her uniform, during school hours, I mean. She didn’t see me, so she wouldn’t have known until the message this week that she’d been spotted.
” I turn to Maeve and Aoife. We probably shouldn’t be discussing Nika in front of them.
“Do not repeat those details though. I’m only saying it because I trust you and you’re here with the grown-ups. ”
Two heads nod vigorously.
“Did you not say something to her?” Greta fails to keep the disapproval from her voice. She’d never have let it slide.
Leesa squeezes my arm. “She’s on mat leave; she doesn’t have to care what they do. And come on, we all did it back in the day.”
Greta’s only reply is a firm headshake, and I’d well believe it—this isn’t just for show in front of Maeve and Aoife.
Greta was the good girl, the one who followed the rules.
Leesa was the troublemaker, though no worse than half the kids her age.
As usual, I was somewhere in the middle—experimenting with a bit of everything without going too far.
I shrug. “I might have said something if I’d walked right past her, but she was at the other side of the pitch, and by the time I got around there, she and her boyfriend had gone. Well”—I glance at my nieces—“not her boyfriend, as it turns out.”
I fill the others in on the Zach–Nika–Ariana love triangle and the comments from the other kids in their year.
“Serves her right,” Aoife says, and Maeve raises her eyebrows in a gesture that means, I think, she agrees with her sister but isn’t going to say so out loud.
“But…does this pile-on give Nika a reason to break our window and text you, and so on?” Jon asks.
“The first two, maybe,” I concede. “It’s the ‘and so on’ bit I can’t imagine.”
Silence then. I guess none of us are comfortable discussing murder hypotheses in front of Maeve and Aoife.
“Well, I’m not sorry Nika’s getting a taste of her own medicine,” Greta says, with uncharacteristic malice. I don’t think she means it, really. I don’t think she’d wish bullying on any teen, but she’s still angry on our niece’s behalf.
“A taste of her own medicine…” Maeve repeats thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t it be good if there was a medicine you could give to fix people like that.” She looks up. “Fix them or get rid of them.”