Chapter 3 #2
‘I did my best,’ Madeleine said, defending herself. ‘The journey was a nightmare.’
‘If you had left when we called, you would have made it on time,’ Lucy said. ‘It doesn’t take that long to get here from Dublin.’
‘Well, I had to finish a meeting first…’ she admitted.
‘You’re never there when we need you!’ Lucy blasted.
‘Now, hang on…’ Madeleine tried to calm her down. She understood their emotions were running high. They had lost a person they dearly loved, but this wasn’t the time to have a go at her.
‘When are you going to stop putting your work first?’ Lucy went on.
‘I came as quickly as I could,’ Madeleine defended herself. ‘But the bloody roads here are more like dirt tracks, and don’t get me started on the tractors … then the Gardaí impounded my car. I tried to ring you, but my phone is dead.’
‘You always have an excuse!’ Faith accused, backing up her sister.
‘When are you going to see that your job isn’t more important than your family?’ Lucy went on, her face contorted in fury.
‘Girls, of course my family is important to me.’ Madeleine was affronted. ‘But I am the marketing director of one of the biggest PR companies in Ireland. My job is important too.’
‘This isn’t helping anyone,’ Faith said, dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled tissue. ‘Nanna has just passed away.’
‘You’re right,’ Lucy agreed, calming down.
‘I’m so sorry, girls,’ Madeleine tried. ‘I know how close you both were to her.’
‘She was amazing.’ Lucy began to weep once more. ‘I can’t bear to think that we won’t get to see her ever again.’
Madeleine watched desperately as Lucy convulsed into sobs, her body quivering with grief.
Although Madeleine and her mother-in-law had had their differences over the years, she still admired and respected the woman and knew how close her daughters were to her.
Her own relationship with Elizabeth had been different.
It was more complex. Tricky. Her mother-in-law had had her own views on parenting, and sometimes they had clashed with Madeleine’s.
Elizabeth had been traditional: she believed a mother’s place was in the home and had never understood Madeleine’s career or her commitment to her job.
Her world view had been simpler, and over the years they had often argued about it.
Madeleine knew how much her daughters adored their grandmother, so she had never told them any of this – and besides, she knew they would never understand.
The clock on Elizabeth’s bedside table read almost midnight.
It had been hours since she had last checked her phone, and it felt like someone had chopped off her arm.
God only knew what was going on with her team in Dublin.
Were they all still in the office, working late, running around like headless chickens scrambling to finalise the last details for the launch, or had they gone home, content that everything was under control?
She really didn’t want to upset the girls further by asking if either of them had a charger, but she desperately needed to get her phone turned on so she could check in with the team.
Just then Noleen returned to the room and stuck her head around the door. ‘Madeleine, I’ve a nice warm cuppa and a sandwich with your name on it in the kitchen.’
Madeleine followed Noleen down to the kitchen, glad to escape the tense atmosphere in the bedroom.
It was obvious that the girls weren’t happy with her, but they didn’t understand how stressful her day had been.
She sat down at the table and when Noleen placed the warm tea and sandwich in front of her, she immediately began devouring it.
‘You’re hungry,’ the nurse remarked as she ate.
‘You’ve no idea.’
‘It’s time for me to head on and leave you and your family alone together,’ Noleen said as she slipped her arms into the sleeves of her raincoat, ‘but I’ll check in with you all in the morning.’
‘Thank you for everything,’ Madeleine said gratefully through a mouthful of bread as the nurse let herself out through the back door.
As Madeleine sipped the sugary tea, she spotted a phone charger plugged into the wall.
She jumped up and was overjoyed when she saw it was the right fit for her phone.
She immediately plugged it in and waited for it to come to life.
As soon as the screen lit up, she forgot about her sandwich and went straight into her emails.
The internet was patchy. Only after she had climbed onto the counter to lean out the window did she manage to get a signal.
Emails slowly began to land in her inbox; she could see their subject lines, but the full messages weren’t downloading.
Her heart thumped as she gleaned from the gist of the subject lines that there was a problem with the books for the launch.
Eventually they finally downloaded. Panic shot through her when she learned that the shipment of Howard O’Brien’s books that he was due to be signing at the launch on Thursday was stuck in customs. Apparently, there was some issue with the paperwork, and they would not release the books.
Fear engulfed her. How would she tell Howard O’Brien and his agent that there was an issue with the books?
As marketing director for the firm, ‘the buck’–or, in this case, ‘the book’ –literally stopped with her.
Her reputation would be ruined if she didn’t fix this.
She listened to her voicemails then: there were seventeen messages, each one getting increasingly impatient.
She had several texts from her team asking her to call the office urgently.
Her earlier headache started to intensify.
How was she supposed to sort this out from here?
The internet wasn’t reliable. She didn’t even have her car so she couldn’t drive back to Dublin.
The Garda had told her she could collect her car when she produced her driver’s licence, but as that was in her house in Dublin, she wasn’t going to be able to get her hands on it easily and she couldn’t hire a car without her licence either.
If she had known about this earlier, she might have had some hope of sorting it out, but nobody would be working in the customs office at this time of night.
Suddenly she had an idea – she could borrow Lucy’s or Faith’s car, drive to Dublin, be at the customs office when it opened in the morning, try her best to sort out the issue and, if necessary, plead for them to release the books.
Then she could drive back to Inishbeg Cove by tomorrow evening.
She knew the girls wouldn’t be impressed, but she was sure they would understand once she explained the situation.
And besides, Elizabeth had already passed on; it wasn’t as though Madeleine could do anything here anyway.
She knew she was risking being caught driving without a licence again, but it was a risk she was prepared to take, given the exceptional circumstances.
Her breathing began to slow and her heartbeat calmed down as she felt a sense of control once more.
She had taken back the reins of the runaway cart and had it all in hand again.
Madeleine Brennan would sort this out – she always did.
That was how she had worked her way up the ranks.
She stood up, smoothed down her trousers and went to tell the girls about her plans.