Blood And Water (30 page)

“Well, yes,” he faltered.

“Why?” William quizzed.

“I don’t know.” McDaid shrugged. “I didn’t think it was a secret.”

“Of course it’s a bloody secret! Why else would I ask you not to mention it to anyone?”

“But, you asked me to find out, so I thought –”

But William cut him short. “Well done and for God’s sake, man, don’t argue.”

McDaid watched eagerly as William opened the file, extracted the single sheet and read though it once, then twice.

“I told you,” McDaid offered, resulting in a death-stare from his employer.

“When I want your opinion I’ll ask.”

“Sorry, sir, I was just –”

“Well, don’t,” William warned without lifting his eyes.

“Pretty boring really,” McDaid mumbled because he just couldn’t help himself.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” William growled.

McDaid, suitably warned, sat down and buried himself in his iPad.

William wasn’t really sure what it was he was looking for. He had hoped to find something, anything that he could use to get rid of her: He wasn’t happy to have people who judged him watching his every move. It made him uncomfortable. But McDaid was right. She was pretty unremarkable. Single, never married, trained nurse turned social worker and volunteer. Born and bred in wilds of the West of Ireland, she seemed harmless enough. But something just didn’t rest right with William. There was more, there had to be, but he was feeling tired and just couldn’t make his mind work any harder.

Taking the bunch of keys from his belt he opened the safe concealed in the corner alcove cupboard and laid the file safely inside.

Despite the health warning from William’s consultant for him not to consider doing anything resembling work for at least two weeks, Barbara, after her token protest, happily let him disappear into his study with his side-kick, grateful for even a few short moments to herself.

She’d made her way into the sitting room and immediately pushed up the window. The heat was stifling: she could hardly breathe. From the window she saw the car pull up. Her stomach turned as she watched with bated breath to see who would get out. She had successfully avoided her children so far since the great reveal and dreaded the prospect of answering the questions which she knew they would have. She had run from them not out of badness or any malignant purpose, but because she had no idea what to say to them, or more specifically Ciara. She didn’t know if she should hug her or apologise to her, knowing that neither would feel quite right. But she needn’t have worried because Ciara kept herself clear of the hospital and, Barbara prayed, she was unlikely to turn up to the house, not unless it was to cause trouble – and, in spite of everything that had passed, Ciara wasn’t the sort to do that.

Instinctively she let out a sigh of relief when she saw Enya and Cormac emerge. They were alone.

Minutes later they joined her in the sitting room.

“How about I get you all some tea?” Gladys asked cheerfully, delighted by the busyness of the house, but also fully aware of the tension the guests brought with them and doing her best to dissipate it.

“Thanks, Gladys, that would be great,” Enya replied with a reassuring smile then went to her mother to place a stilted kiss on her cheek.

The sentiment of the gesture, while strange, wasn’t lost on Barbara who smiled gently at her daughter as she took a seat beside her on the couch.

“So I take it he’s in his study then?” Enya asked.

Barbara replied with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

“How are you, Mum?” Enya asked noting her sober and seemingly sound demeanour.

“I’m doing fine,” Barbara replied shyly, finding the attention unsettling.

“You do know we’re here for you, all of us?” Enya said.

The sentiment disturbed her. Never before had any of her children asked over her welfare – well, perhaps they did but she neither noted nor remembered it.

“I’m fine, really. But thank you, I appreciate it. Truly.” She lowered her eyes, embarrassed by the intimacy of the moment.

“I know now probably isn’t the right time, but I’d, we’d …” Enya looked up at Cormac for reassurance, “we’d all like to know what happened and, well, what it means, I suppose.”

“I know,” Barbara sighed. “Your father and I will of course sit with you all to talk about it but not just now, not yet, if that’s okay?”

“Absolutely. We understand. When you’re ready,” Enya told her with a sideways glance back at Cormac.

“How is she, your sister?” Barbara asked, the words seeming hollow but she was genuinely interested to know.

“She’s okay-ish,” Cormac replied, kneeling down to stoke the burning embers of the fire. “She’s at home with Robert. I think they’re planning a bit of a trip – you know, get away from it all.”

Barbara responded with a nod. Yes, she could identify with that. She knew just how Ciara was feeling: that instinctive and almost uncontrollable urge to escape. Unconsciously her eyes found the drinks tray on the dresser beside the door. She had chosen to get away from it all years ago and had only just now, it appeared, come back to land. Her mouth was parched. She swallowed the emptiness in her throat and bit down on her lips, relieved by the sharpness of her teeth sinking into the soft flesh.

A gentle knock at the door preceded Gladys’s entry.

“Can I get you anything before I go?” she asked.

“That would be lovely, Gladys,” Barbara replied with as much normality as she could manage. “Can I ask you to get me some iced water?”

“Of course,” Gladys replied and scurried away, delighted to be of use.

The sound of the front door ringing brought with it the arrival of Rian and Martha. The living room hadn’t seen this much activity in months, the family all gathered – well, almost.

Gladys clattered back into the room with Barbara’s water, not a minute too soon, and then went and brought more cups for the latest arrivals who chatted politely amongst themselves.

Barbara was just about to send one of the boys to fetch him when William entered the room, prompting the boys and Enya to stand to attention and greet him one by one.

“Sit down, Dad,” Rian said. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

“No need to fuss.” William was delighted, playing to his audience.

“You look much better,” Rian told him as he took up position in his usual spot at the fireside end of the couch opposite Barbara.

“Yes, you do – much better,” Martha affirmed, leaning over to kiss him on each cheek, a gesture which William accepted reluctantly.

Watching her sit back in the chair offered by Rian, William waited till their eyes met and held onto her gaze for a short but intense moment. Both Barbara and Rian noticed it and Barbara sensed in her husband a hint of aggravated stress that had been pleasantly absent recently.

There was no denying the tension that filled the room with William’s arrival: no one spoke, like the words were too frightened to come out. Concentrating on drinking their tea, between them the children passed an apprehensive eye-raising glance from one to the other, unsure how to behave or what to say.

“So,” Cormac started, breaking the tense silence with a smart-alecky comment to his brother, “I hear you two are off again to save the world?” Then he smirked, just to take the edge off his jibe. But he needn’t have worried as both Rian and Martha grinned in response.

“That’s right,” Martha told him, speaking to the room as if they might all be interested. “We’re heading to Darfur this time.”

No one noticed their father’s flaring nostrils nor the increasingly fast rise and fall of his chest.

A polite knock at the door preceded McDaid’s head popping around its edge.

“I’m off now,” he announced. “I left some options for you on your desk, sir.”

William made to get up,

“No, please,” McDaid insisted, “stay as you are, I can make my own way out. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Thanks, Simon!” Enya said and once they heard the front door bang shut, remarked, “He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?” She looked to her family for affirmation.

William responded with an irritated guffaw.

“Seriously, Dad?” she challenged him.

Cormac put a calming hand on her leg, telling her silently with his eyes not to rise to it.

In his pocket his phone pinged and vibrated. Ignoring it, he got up to close the window, the draft giving him a chill down the back of his neck.

It pinged again. And again.

Simon McDaid had stopped in his tracks, turned and was racing back towards the door, almost tripping on the first step, his eyes being glued to the screen of his phone. Briefly he lifted his head, alerted probably by the noise of the window dragging in its frame. Their eyes met briefly. Cormac recognised the look: it was the look of fear and he saw it full and furious in the young man’s eyes. Cormac’s heart stopped and his mouth filled with bile, knowing without seeing what was about to happen. The doorbell rang three times in fast succession.

“Jesus Christ, who’s that?” William grumbled.

Rather than going to answer it Cormac sat down, calmly gave the event about to unfold a twenty-second time frame and silently counted.

One … two … three …
McDaid entered the room.

Four … five … six …
He glanced quickly at everyone except Cormac
… Seven … eight … nine …

“Was that you?” William complained, turning in his seat to look at him, irritated by the apparent lack of manners, barging in like that. “What on earth’s got into you?”

Ten … eleven … twelve …

“Eh,” McDaid faltered. “Eh … I …” He stuttered like a fool, completely lost for words while proffering his phone. Finally he looked at Cormac who lifted his head from his hands and nodded back.

Thirteen … fourteen … fifteen …

“I think you need to see this,” McDaid told William without coming any further into the room.

“Well, show me!”

“Not here,” he replied nervously.

“Show him,” Cormac told him quietly, feeling his phone vibrate again in his pocket. Refusing to check as he didn’t need to, knowing that the shit in less than five seconds was about to hit the fan.

Sixteen … seventeen … eighteen …

McDaid walked over and volunteered his phone.

“What do I do?” William asked.

“Just watch.”

Nineteen … twenty…

Boom.

Chapter 27

You filthy dog!” William shouted, getting up from his chair and lunging at his youngest son.

Cormac fell to the floor, and almost comically adopted the foetal position, curling up his legs and wrapping his arms round to protect his head.

McDaid leapt forward to hold William back while Barbara shouted warnings.

Rian picked up McDaid’s discarded phone to see for himself what had triggered such a ferocious response from his father.

“Holy shit!” he gasped, then laughed. “Go, Cormac!” Unbelievable. This was trouble. Just as his father had discussed with McDaid earlier, Rian too was aware of the media commentary about his father’s health and had also wondered how his father could prove his fitness to remain in office. This video would do him no good in that regard, that was for sure.

McDaid, holding back his boss, shocked but also slightly amused, silently quipped:
Careful what you wish for, Minister, you did ask for teeth …

“Stop it!” Enya yelled, stepping in to cover Cormac from her father’s flailing arms and feet. “Dad! What on earth are you doing? For God’s sake, stop! You’ll give yourself another heart attack!”

“And if I do, this time it’ll be
his
fault!” William shouted, pointing at the slowly unfurling Cormac. “It’ll be your doing, you filthy pig.
Yours!
”

“Dad!” Rian called out. “Calm down. Please.”

“Calm down?” William hollered, spinning to twist his incensed attentions on him. “How dare you tell me to calm down? Have you seen it? Look at it. You, standing there, Mister Self-righteous looking down your perfect little do-gooder nose at me. How dare you!”

“Alright, alright,” Rian conceded, holding up his hands in assumed defeat. “That’s enough.”

“How could you?” William asked, turning back to Cormac who stood up, defeated.

“It’s okay,” Cormac said to an incensed Enya. “I deserve it. For what it’s worth I didn’t do this on purpose. I didn’t know I was being filmed. I tried to stop them putting this out there but …” he shrugged with Kathryn foremost in his mind, “my plan kind of backfired.” For a split second he considered the potential for his own confessional moment to his family here, but decided, and rightly so, that now wasn’t the time.

“I don’t give a shit about you,” his father spat.

“I’d never have guessed,” Cormac mumbled, making his way to the door, disappointed but not surprised that his father didn’t seem remotely interested in asking how or why. “I’m going anyway.”

“Good riddance and don’t bother to come back! Don’t dare darken my door again!” William roared.

“
William!
” Barbara shouted. “
That’s enough!
”

“
William!”
he mimicked. “What? All of a sudden you care about these . . . these . . .” he fumbled for words, “these
shits
. Sober for five minutes and what, you’re the world’s best mother? Look, woman, look at what they’ve done. To you. To us, all of them. Worthless. Have you been that drunk that long that you’ve totally forgotten? We’ve given them every opportunity and look how they repay us!”

“Enough, Dad,” Rian stepped up. “Mum’s done nothing. She doesn’t deserve this.”

Cormac stood rooted to the spot, stunned by their father’s vicious verbal assault. “
Leave her be!
” he shouted. “I’m the one to be angry at, not her.”

Turning back to Cormac, William’s eyes filled with revulsion and he barked with such force it made Enya jump. “
Don’t you even dare!
Go on! For once just do as you are told and get out!”

Not willing to have a second heart attack on his conscience, Cormac decided he needed to leave. “I’ll wait for you in the car,” he said to Enya. He knew his father would never give him the opportunity to explain. He could talk to the others separately.