Chapter 19
Present
There was only so much Siggy could take. Usually, she managed not to get angry, not to rise to the bait, but that morning, her mother had spent half an hour saying the vilest things about Danial and his grandmother and Siggy had just snapped.
‘You don’t even know them, much less who’s behind those break-ins.’ If the words had to come out, ideally, it might have been at a normal volume, but Siggy was so upset, that she screamed at her mother.
‘What on earth?’ Her father had just come through the door.
‘It’s alright, we’re just…’ Blythe gave Siggy a look, it wasn’t an apology, but maybe, she knew she’d crossed a line.
‘You do know that the Sweeneys are in the dining room expecting breakfast in a five-star environment, they haven’t paid the guts of a thousand euros to spend their holidays listening to a pair of fish wives,’ he said, dropping into his usual chair at the kitchen table.
‘As for Maria, she’ll think we’ve lost the run of ourselves. ’
‘I’m sure Maria has heard a lot worse.’ Maria Stapleton had six lumbering sons and none of them seemed able to finish a sentence without including at least one swear word as punctuation.
‘Aye, well, maybe,’ her father said and reached out to pour some tea from the pot. ‘Are we alright?’
‘Humph,’ Siggy said.
‘I was just saying about that family in the McDaid house…’ Her mother put four boiled eggs on the table.
‘Ah, the Vals,’ her father’s face lit up. He’d really liked Danial when they’d met a few days earlier, walking the dogs along the beach. ‘Lovely people.’
‘No, Kip, they are not lovely people.’ Her mother sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘We know nothing about them, and everyone in the village is saying that he’s a real ne’er-do-good. Apparently, back in… wherever they came from, he was a…’
‘Now, now, Blythe, we all know what the gossip mongrels are like in Muffeen Mòr, let’s just take them as we find them and from what I’ve seen of that lad, he’s a good bloke.’
‘Oh, I might as well be talking to the wall. You can’t know a person, just because he’s handed you a cup of coffee…’
‘Speaking of coffee...’ He buried his head in the pages, suddenly lost in whatever sports drama was taking up the news.
‘Hmph, well the less we have to do with them, the better.’
‘I work with Danial, Mum, I’m not going to ignore him or avoid him.’
‘Yes, well, I’m sure Rae will see sense soon enough there, too. In the meantime, keep your distance, if he’s involved in anything illegal, I don’t want you near him.’
‘Are you for real?’ Siggy wanted to cry.
‘Tell her, Kip.’
‘Really, Blythe, don’t you think…’
‘Dear God, am I the only adult in the building?’ Her mother placed her fingers on her forehead as if to ward off an impending migraine.
‘It’s my final word, you’re to have nothing to do with him and if I see you knocking about with him, you can say goodbye to that job in the hotel until he’s well clear of it, do we understand each other? ’
‘Mum, I’m seventeen – when are you going to understand, you can’t just make decisions like this for me…
I’m…’ But of course, there was no point.
Her mother was well capable of going to the hotel and telling Rae she didn’t want Siggy anywhere near the place.
Siggy didn’t want that to happen, not because she’d lose her job, but because she loved spending time with Rae and yes, now, she looked forward to it even more, because dishy Danial Val was there too!
‘There’s no point talking to you, is there?
Other people can say things to their mothers, but here, it’s like living in North Korea,’ she couldn’t take any more of this nonsense.
‘I’m not hungry,’ she said then, pushing her plate away and stalking out of the kitchen as she fought back her tears of frustration with her mother.
She decided there was nothing for it but to head to school, so she set off walking. She hadn’t made it to the end of the drive when her father’s van pulled up next to her.
‘Want a lift?’ He had the soppy look about him, where she knew, all he wanted was to make things right with her.
‘I’m sorry Dad, for back there, but, come on, what’s her problem?’
‘Look, your mother is the best woman in the world, but she’s always been suspicious of newcomers, once they settle in, she’ll be fine, just let it wash over you, for now.’ He patted the passenger seat for her to sit in.
‘I don’t know how you…’ She was going to say, put up with her, but then, of course, she thought about that day in the square, so she said no more and threw her bag into the van before her. ‘Oh, my God, Dad, what’s that smell?’
‘Alright?’ Her father looked across at her.
‘I… that smell, it’s…’ She stopped. She knew what it was, Fiona Dixon’s perfume, but as soon as she put the name on it, well that was it, wasn’t it?
The game was up. Did she want to be responsible for ending her parents’ marriage?
And for what? For what couldn’t be anything more than a fling with horrid old Fiona Dixon.
‘STOP THE CAR.’ She hadn’t meant to scream, but she needed to get out, to breathe fresh air – to think.
‘Okay, okay, pet, I’m stopping, it’s alright,’ her father said, and he sounded just like he had when she was five years old and she didn’t want to go to school because Shakira English threatened to stuff her head in the girls toilet if she didn’t hand over her treasured Barbie pencil case.
‘Oh, God.’ She flung open the door of the van and jumped out to get away from it.
‘Are you alright, what is it? Do you feel sick?’ He was hovering about her now, solicitous and loving as always, but she couldn’t look at him.
All she could think was – how could you?
How could you do this to Mum? To sleep with her best friend, especially now?
Now, after all these years, they must have known each other forever, why not have a fling back when everyone was single?
Siggy couldn’t breathe – it felt as if the sky was closing in on her, as if everything around her had moved just a little too close, the trees on the avenue, the gravel under her feet, the sheep in the field, the van door opened next to her with the aroma of very expensive perfume leaking onto the road.
Her mother never wore perfume. She couldn’t bear to smell anything even vaguely synthetic, as she called it.
When Siggy was thirteen, she had to hide a precious bottle that her friends had bought her for her birthday.
Funny, but after the first few wears, she felt the same as her mother.
To her mind, there was something false about it.
Of course, she knew this was completely her own view, that women the world over adored perfume.
Millions were spent on the stuff every year, probably, but there was one perfume she could pick out at a hundred paces above all others and that was Fiona Dixon’s.
Not because it smelled so good, or elegant or any of those other things it probably purported to endow on its wearer, but rather because everything about it was too much.
Too sweet. Too cloying. If a perfume could smell like leopard print, leather and rhinestones, then that was how Siggy would describe Fiona Dixon’s signature scent.
And her father’s van reeked of it.
‘That smell?’ she said then, catching her breath and immediately regretting she said it. She needed to think this through.
‘What smell?’ Of course her father wouldn’t notice.
The dogs could blow off a week of onions, garlic and vinegar and he honestly wouldn’t complain.
He put it down to a damaged septum after a particularly unfortunate tackle with an Italian full back early in his professional career.
Nobody’s fault – that was what he always said, nobody’s fault.
Siggy tried to pull herself together. She had to think. There could be a completely innocent explanation for this – even for what she thought she saw in the village square that day – her father may have done nothing wrong.
Still, if he was having an affair with Fiona Dixon, it would not turn out well for her parents. Of course, Fiona was rumoured to have had several affairs, but her husband either didn’t mind or didn’t notice and they’d stuck together despite any gossip.
Her mother was made of completely different stuff.
Blythe Carney, for all her faults, abhorred any sort of deceitfulness.
Alright, so she was far from perfect. She tended to take things over, barge her way through and she could be a bit of a bully when it came to getting things done.
But she was decent and true. She had standards and that was more than Fiona had – strangely, Blythe was one of the few people in Muffeen Mòr who never listened to the wagging tongues when it came to Fiona’s affairs.
‘Siggy?’ Her father’s face hovered before hers – she winced at the concern there.
If her parents separated, what would become of him?
He would have to leave Still Water House – where would he live?
What would he do without her mother? Would he go and live with Fiona?
She shuddered at the thought of that – it would kill her mother.
And not just because they would be the talk of the whole village, but rather because she had a feeling it would break her mother’s heart.
‘I’m fine. I’m fine. Really, it’s just the van. It’s…’ She stopped. She needed to think about this before she said another word.
‘Stuffy? I know, I must get that window sorted out.’ He leant back into the van, took out a half-drunk bottle of water. ‘Here…’
‘I’m okay, if you don’t mind, I might walk the rest of the way.’
‘Are you sure you’re fit for it? I mean, you’re white as a ghost.
‘Well, unless you want to walk with me?’ She smiled at him, managing somehow to keep her lips from wobbling, the tears somehow held back in her eyes.