Blood And Water (31 page)

“No, wait, I’ll come with you,” Enya said, leaning over to grab her bag.

“You are a real asshole, do you know that?” she threw at her father. “I can’t believe I ever thought that you ever cared even a small bit about us. You’re nothing but a selfish bastard.”

“Oh, look at you. Like butter wouldn’t melt. Like some kind of prodigal daughter. You bugger off, bury your head in the sand and come back expecting us to welcome you here with open arms?”

“Actually yes, yes, I do,” she replied, shocked by the vitriol in her father’s voice. “Because that’s what families do. Normal families not like this ridiculous excuse of one.”

“Normal? Well, that’s almost entertaining coming from you. I saw the way you looked at
him
!” he shouted, pointing towards McDaid who instantly coloured

“Me?” He squirmed, wishing he were anywhere else but here witnessing this monumental and intimate implosion, waiting for the moment when he could secret himself away unnoticed.

“Where are your loyalties? Oh, I’m sorry,” William stated with mock-apologetic ignorance. “I forgot, you don’t have any. You never did.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dad – now you’re being childish,” Enya objected. “What the hell has got into you?”

But William was on a roll.

“Don’t give me that. Look at you with your short tops and tight jeans. You’re a harlot. That’s all you are.”

“Right!” Enya declared with a resigned breath. “I’ve had enough of this.” Turning to her mother who sat looking horrified in her chair, she said, “I’m sorry, Mum, to leave you like this.” She made her way to the door.

William shouted after her. “And take that pathetic excuse of a man with you! And you can give a message to that other idiot brother of yours. Tell him I’m alive and I’m going to make him regret the day he ever walked out on me.
Go on! Get out!
” he roared.

The scene was frightening. He raved like he was going mad and looked like he might collapse all over again.

If he didn’t, Martha thought, it would be a miracle. She made her way towards a stricken Barbara.

“And as for you, Little Miss Innocence!” William spat out, like some kind of sniper spotting her move, his mouth going full throttle with the word’s tripping out of him like automatic machine-gun fire.

Seeing Martha about to fall victim to his next verbal onslaught, Rian stepped in front of her as if to shield her.

“Don’t even go there, Dad. I know you’re upset but you’ve gone too far, way too far.”

“Have I really?”

“Yes, you have.” Rian was using all his diplomatic powers to try to diffuse the situation. “And you know you have, so let’s sit down and see if we can take things down a notch or two.”

“Don’t you patronise me. I’m not one of your poor little famine children. I am your father and I will do as I wish.”

“Well, why don’t you start by behaving like my father?” Rian countered politely without raising his voice.

The words were like a slap to his face and a stopper to his mouth. With a cavernous breath William turned to the fireplace and leaned into it, bracing himself with both hands.

“How in God’s good name did I end up like this?” he asked the flames. “How did I end up with such a ridiculous, disrespectful collection of offspring? Not one of them worth any more than the next. Useless, all of them!”

Rian looked at Martha who instinctively placed a hand on Barbara’s shoulder and indicated they should go.

From the corner of his eye William spotted her manoeuvre.

“
You!
” he barked.

Martha stopped, unsure if he was yelling at her or Barbara.

“You stay right where you are. This is as much your issue as it is mine. Did you not see your son’s disgusting antics? Here I am trying to recover, trying to make sure we have a future: they’re out there, you know,” he raved, “waiting for me to fall, wishing for me to trip up. All I expect of my family is some support – is that too much to ask, to stand by me and help?”

He let out a deep sigh as if resigned to being let down and turned to Martha.

“You understand that, don’t you?” he asked her with a devilish glint in his eye. “You know how important family is. You know how powerful the need for a family can be, don’t you?”

Martha swallowed while Rian looked quizzical.

“You’re just a Good Samaritan, that’s all, aren’t you, Martha? Just a good girl.” His tone had a nasty bite making her skin prickle, her senses on high alert.

William hadn’t intended on using the information he had gleaned, not yet anyhow, but he was so caught up in the momentum of his emotional steamroller he just couldn’t help himself.

Earlier, looking at the dossier McDaid had given him, he knew something was off. It hummed trouble. William had always considered himself to be an excellent judge of character, it was his job. As an incisive politician he had to make snap decisions based on perceptive assumptions and he trusted his instinct implicitly. And his instinct told him that something wasn’t quite right with this Martha woman. It was only after he’d locked the file away that the name began to vibrate somewhere deep in the archives of his mind.

“You know,” he said to her, sitting back down into the couch and crossing his legs, like he was holding court and about to recount an incredibly fascinating story, “at first I didn’t think that was your name. Martha. I knew there was more to you the first moment I saw you.” His composure miraculously regained, he appeared perfectly comfortable looking up at her.

Does he know
? Martha asked herself, not for one minute duped by his capricious demeanour.

“You don’t really look like a Martha. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was about you. But at the time I didn’t think it really mattered – I thought you were just some kind of predatory, unscrupulous cougar. Rian’s always been a poor judge of character, but then you got yourselves engaged and that really changed everything. And then, in the hospital, I saw you in a different light. Something about you made me uncomfortable and I asked a few questions.” He saw her blanch. “Yes, that’s right, I know who you are.”

“What are you talking about, Dad? You leave her be, you understand?” Rian took a protective step forward.

“Or what? What’ll you do? Cry?
Oh boo hoo!
” he sneered. “But you need to hear this, boy …”

Rian turned to Martha and put his arm around her, feeling her quake as he held her close.

She always knew that at some point she would ultimately have to admit to Rian who she was but she certainly didn’t envisage it coming out like this. She always assumed it would be on her terms, in her own way. She only ever imagined a scenario where she was the one in control of not only the information but also the moment.

“He’s right,” she whispered, looking up and straight into his eyes, knowing that this had the potential to rock everything, needing to make him trust her, if that were even possible now.

“What?” he asked. “What is it?”

“I was going to tell you, I just didn’t know how and certainly didn’t want to tell you like this.”

“Well, then,” he replied in defiance of his gloating onlooking father, “whatever it is it can wait till we’re alone.”

“Tell him!” William’s voice rang out from the couch. “Tell him.
Now.
Or I will.”

Refusing to look at William, wishing only ill on him, she took a deep breath, feeling as if she were standing on the edge of the deepest, steepest cavern with no strings attached.

“My name,” she said, placing both hands on his chest, begging him with her eyes to understand, “is Martha Byrne. I am Lillian Byrne’s sister.”

“So?” Rian asked, irritated and confused. “Who the hell is Lillian Byrne?”

She didn’t answer immediately, hoping he’d put two and two together, hoping the name that had caused such a stir in recent days would connect with him. But he didn’t get it, forcing her into the final humiliation of spelling it out for him.

“Ciara’s mother. Lillian was Ciara’s birth mother,” she said softly.

“Lillian … oh Jesus, oh Martha …” The words were filled with disappointment and anguish, his face a mass of contorted expressions.

“I knew!” William clapped. “Hard to believe, it took me a while. It wasn’t even the last name that twigged it for me – it was Roundstone. How many girls from there are you ever likely to meet in a lifetime? And then I recognised the features, her face. You really are quite alike, do you know that?” He saw the tears well in her eyes but went on regardless. “Now I don’t believe in coincidence and I’m assuming that this is not one, is it?”

She shook her head. “No,” she whispered, wishing William would curl up and die right there on the couch, hating every single hair on his head and inch of skin on his body.

“So I assume it’s money or some kind of childish naive retribution you’re after,” William probed like it was some immature game they were playing.

But she didn’t hear him; all she saw were the eyes of her fiancé filled with sadness and anguish.

“Martha.” Rian said her name like the very word hurt.

“Please, Rian. It’s not what you think. Please, you have to believe me. Trust me. Please.”

“Trust you?” William commentated from the couch, delighted with himself. ”You deceived him, you deceived us all.”

“That’s enough, Dad,” Rian interjected without taking his eyes from Martha. “This is our business.”

“Your business?” he guffawed. “Then you’d better deal with it!”

He watched gleefully as Rian and Martha left the room.

The front door slammed behind them.

Barbara had watched in horror from the couch as the whole malicious episode, like some kind of climactic TV soap opera, unfolded in front of her eyes.

This was her life. This was what she had bought into.
Again.
Here was the man she had decided she wanted to stay with but he, it transpired, was the Devil. Her heart, like lead, felt no happiness – only absolute repugnance. Had she really made her choice?
This
choice. Was he it? Was this the kind of person she wanted to be? Because by staying with him this is exactly what she would become. She would be as bad as him, tarnished by association. Remaining with him would be seen as an endorsement of his actions. And even if she were only tolerant of his actions, it would always be just her and him. Alone. But together, growing old, wallowing in each other’s malice. Was that what she wanted?

Her lack of sobriety over the years had managed to mask the evil streak in him; she had been too pissed and locked up in her own troubles to notice what kind of a man he truly was.

She was so hot, her body convulsing inside.

“Are you happy with yourself?” she asked William, hoping the disgust she felt was apparent in her tone.

“I don’t want them in this house again, do you understand?” he told her, his mirth spent. “Either of them. Any of them!” he hissed.

She shook her head in disbelief.

“Don’t you dare shake your head at me!” he spat.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“About what?”

“About Martha.”

“I knew as soon as we met her that something wasn’t right.”

“So rather than say anything to Rian you went behind his back and tried to sabotage his relationship.”

“That boy couldn’t hold down a relationship if he tried.”

“Not with you working away in the background, no, he didn’t stand a chance. And what about Seb? What happened there? Why was Kathryn with you this morning?”

He looked at her with contempt but didn’t answer.

“What did you mean when you said Seb walked out on you?” she asked, pulling together pieces of conversations she’d heard and had. “It was Seb in the house, wasn’t it, before, when you had your attack?” The realisation dawned on her. “He left you but I found you.”

Immediately and despite herself she found herself thrown back to that event and imagined a totally different scenario. What if she hadn’t found him?

“And what about me?” she finished. “Are you going to throw me out when I say or do something you don’t like?”

But William had stopped listening to her, deciding he didn’t like this sober Barbara. She asked too many questions, she was logical once more. He’d forgotten what she was like, the old Barbara: so unpredictable, so hard to manage. She was, he concluded, easier to cope with drunk and, turning on her, funnelling the hard edge of his remaining bitterness towards her, he lined her up in his sights.

“This is all your doing, all of it, a spiral of disasters one after the other. For years this has followed us like a bad penny with nothing but dire luck looming. I should never have let you talk me into it.” He spoke like she wasn’t capable of understanding, like she wasn’t there. He got up to roam the room. “We should have left her there, just like I suggested. Why didn’t I listen to Sister What’s-her-name? It would never have come back to us: an unmarried mother, a bastard child? They’re ten a penny. She told us so. No birth cert, nothing to trace her back. But no. You had to have her. You and your conscience. Living this – this charade, this lie. ”

Out of breath, he flopped into the upholstered antique carver in front of the matching writing bureau that stood before the window overlooking the garden. With his elbows on the bureau he rubbed his aching temples.

“Now as usual I have to fix things. Pick up the pieces.”

Barbara watched him from behind, his memory of events contradictory to the actual events. She had wanted none of this. It was his scheme. How dare he blame her? And as if by some cruel, twisted coincidence that same sick feeling that she felt in the pit of her stomach the day he told her she must go to Donegal with Lillian washed over her. Clutching her belly and swallowing hard, she fought the impulse to vomit. But still William ranted, his words as disgusting as the idea of her vomit. She stopped listening, internally turning down the volume of his voice. She was surprised at how effectively this blocked him out. Why hadn’t she thought of doing this years ago, she asked herself. Because, she answered, she didn’t need to: copious amounts of whiskey did the job for her. Relishing the memory of the lovely hot spirit, she licked her lips.