The Stone House (27 page)

‘That's Long Island and Goat Island,' he explained, as he reached forward to kiss her slowly. Kate responded warmly, wanting his kiss to last for ever.

‘I've been wanting to do this ever since you threw that pint over me,' he teased.

‘It was an accident.' She giggled as she began to kiss his neck and run her tongue along the edge of his ear.

‘Hey, we both stink of garlic and if we stay here much longer we risk being arrested for what I want to do to you.'

Kate burst out laughing, not believing his honesty.

‘So what about we head back to Baltimore and—'

‘Conor won't be back for hours!'

‘Then you'll just have to come back to my place.'

An hour later she was lying in bed with him, his arm around her, drenched with sweat as her body rocked with his in total climax, Derry pulling her closer and closer as Kate let herself get swept away by the sheer physical pleasure of being with him.

Later that evening she declined Conor's offer to join him for a farewell dinner in Shay and Tina's home up on the hill, content to be with Derry and gorge herself on takeaway pizza and chips.

‘Don't go back tomorrow,' he urged. ‘Stay on here with me.'

‘I've got to get back, the office are expecting me.'

‘Fuck them. Phone your boss and tell him you got delayed or something.'

Kate considered the temptation of being with Derry and staying on for another glorious four days in the revamped coastguard house he was renting. She had never done anything so reckless or abandoned in her life.

‘Give me four days,' he pleaded. ‘Beautiful Kate, listen to me, just stay.'

Throwing caution to the winds she phoned the office, telling Bill's secretary Pamela that due to unforeseen circumstances she wouldn't be back in the office till Monday. Pamela told her that Bill would go crazy and that he'd set up meetings for Thursday and Friday for her.

‘Tell him to cancel them and that I'll talk to him on Monday,' she said firmly, switching off her mobile.

‘Shameless hussy,' Derry teased, nibbling her ear.

Retrieving her bag from the boat Conor had a big grin all over his face when she told him he'd be travelling back to Dublin on his own.

‘Don't say a word, Conor,' she pleaded, ‘or I'll throw you overboard.'

BACK IN PATTERSON'S
Kate was disappointed not to have heard from Derry Donovan. Perhaps she had misjudged him, and their few days together had been just that – a few days, nothing more than a fling. A brief, passionate and mutually sexually satisfying fling!

A fling. Well she sure had flung! Fuck him! Likely he was one of the gold ring brigade, already married, and had hidden it from her or was already involved in a relationship. Funny, she hadn't taken him for one of those slimeball types that she usually ran a mile from in Leeson Street. There was no point beating herself up about it, a good time had been had by all!

She had other things to think of anyway as her father had been summoned before a council committee for an oral hearing to explain various planning applications and appeals over a period of ten years.

‘All I can do is tell what happened. If they want to cast Martin and myself as villains then that's what they'll do. We were and are no different from every
other builder or businessman in the country. Buy low and sell high, that's always been our motto and there's no crime in that!'

‘Daddy, please get someone to represent you,' begged Kate. ‘I can come along but I'm not technically qualified in the planning area. You need to have someone advise you before the hearing.'

After some deliberation Jack Hartigan, an old college friend of Bill's, had been appointed.

‘I'll come up to Dublin to see him,' Frank promised.

Kate was relieved. She had passed a lot of the accounts and ledgers to Rory, coming clean about her father's involvement.

‘Don't worry, we'll do our best to get as discreet a settlement as possible,' he reassured her.

Her father was in ebullient form after the meeting with the solicitor in Fitzwilliam Square . . .

‘There's nothing they can do to me at this stage of the game. All those sites have been rebuilt, there are families and businesses and offices on them now, and there'd be huge controversy if the council tried to reverse legitimate decisions made by their own members. Jack feels they'd be in an impossible position if they tried to backtrack.'

‘But, Dad, they could fine you, assess the profits you made.'

‘Aye, they could,' he admitted grudgingly.

Her parents were staying in Dublin overnight with her, sleeping in her bed, while she took the new blue Habitat couch.

‘This place is the size of a fart box,' complained her
father, examining the modern one-bedroomed apartment overlooking the seafront at Monkstown from top to bottom. ‘Though I'll give you it's airy and bright!'

‘Frank, the view is magnificent from the front window and balcony and when Kate gets a few pots growing here on the balcony it will be a nice retreat for her after a long day at work.'

Kate couldn't imagine herself in a month of Sundays lugging plant pots and compost and stuff from a garden centre up in the lift and then having to tend them and water and mind them.

‘I'll bring you a few clippings and bits and pieces in a pot the next time we're coming up,' promised her mother, as if reading her mind.

Kate loved the new apartment and ever since Minnie had fallen madly head over heels in love with architect Colm O'Halloran and married him, she actually liked being on her own. She liked not having to share, able to collapse into bed after working late with a bowl of Cornflakes and milk instead of making chit-chat with a new flatmate. She was only a few minutes from the DART station, which brought her right into town, and the village had a host of eclectic shops and restaurants, which were perfect for her needs. Being single was something she had to accept and gear herself accordingly.

‘Will I cook?' she offered.

‘No,' said her father, scanning the small galley kitchen and eating area. ‘It'd be nicer for your mother to get to eat out.'

She got a table in FXB's, the steakhouse on the Crescent, knowing her father would approve of the rib-eye, fillet, sirloin and strip loins on the menu.

‘Nothing like good Irish beef,' he murmured as the waitress brought their food to the table. Watching him eat, she realized he had got older, shrunk a little; the skin around his eyes was lined with wrinkles and his hair was receding. The past few weeks were bound to have put a strain on him, on both of them. She didn't know how her mother remained so calm and didn't end up screaming and roaring at him. Maeve Dillon looked the same as always, perhaps a little trace of grey in her hair, her skin flawless, her bright brown eyes sparkling under her dark eyebrows, a pretty woman who'd managed to retain her looks.

‘We don't know what we'd have done without you, Kate,' she said. ‘You've been a tower of strength, what with your good advice and legal connections and getting that accountant friend of yours to look over the books.'

‘It's all right.' She smiled.

‘What with Moya and Patrick away in London and Romy in Australia . . .'

‘I'm not having bloody Patrick shove his nose into my business, do you hear?' Her father gesticulated, waving his fork at them.

She wondered what her brother-in-law had said or done to annoy her father.

‘Kate, we'd be lost without you,' said her mother, reaching for her hand. ‘You are such a good daughter!'

Kate sighed. It must be hard on them, growing old together now she and her sisters had all grown up and moved away. Her father unfaithful and at risk of financial ruin, her mother's honesty compromised, her head buried in the sand unwilling to face up to all that had happened. But yet looking across the table at the two
of them it was clear that they still loved and cared for each other deeply.

‘Your father knows he has to change his ways,' smiled her mother. ‘That things in future have to be done correctly – people expect it!'

‘Aye paperwork and forms filled in and certificates to beat the band! I'll get Jackie a bloody computer to put up our files on and do the correspondence. She's a bright girl, she'll have it set up in no time. Maybe even take in a junior partner, train him in.'

‘That's good.'

‘Once this business with the council is settled and I know where I am with the taxman, it'll be a clean slate. I promise you!'

Kate tried to convince herself that he really meant it.

The next morning she left them having breakfast in the apartment, arguing good-naturedly over a pot of marmalade as she ran for work.

Ten days later her mother phoned to say her father had suffered a massive heart attack behind the wheel of his silver S Class Mercedes about a mile from home and had died instantly.

She immediately phoned Romy in Australia and broke the awful news to her.

‘How long will it take you to organize a flight home?' she asked her sister. ‘Flynn's the undertaker's need to know.'

Romy had said nothing. Kate knew how much of a shock it must be to hear such news so far from home.

‘Tell Flynn's to go ahead, not to wait for me.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘I'm not coming home! I won't be at the funeral. I'm sorry he's dead but I'm not coming home. There's no point to it.'

‘What am I supposed to say to Mammy?' cried Kate.

‘Just tell her the truth.'

‘You mean tell her you're an enlightened bitch that hasn't the decency to come home and pay your respects to the father who raised you? What kind of person have you become, Romy? None of us know you any more.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘What will people think, what will they say?'

‘You can tell them I couldn't get a flight, that you couldn't contact me. I don't give a damn what you say because I'm still not coming home. You don't need me there.'

‘Mammy needs you.'

‘She's got you and Moya. She'll manage.'

‘How can you be so hard, so cold?'

There was no answer and when she tried to ring back there was no reply.

Shocked, the family had come together to bury him. Moya and Patrick and the children, Fiona sick with fright and Danny screaming he wanted Grandad to come back. Maeve Dillon, overcome with grief and hurt even further by Romy's absolute refusal to mourn her father, a final act of cruel defiance.

‘Why can't she do the decent thing, if not for him, for Mammy and the rest of us?' sobbed Moya, furious with her youngest sister.

Kate was clueless as to what to say, for Romy had always
been wild and separate from the rest of them, a crazy catalyst for making things happen within the family.

Father Eamonn had flown straight away from Chicago insisting that he be the one to conduct Frank's final funeral mass.

‘It's the very least I could do for Frank, who always made me welcome and made me feel part of the family.'

Kate could still not believe it: that the man she thought invincible was actually gone, her father's huge presence and life force so suddenly removed from all their lives.

Rossmore's church was packed with friends and family, locals and a number of her father's business acquaintances, including most of the members of the local county council and their sitting TDs. Gerard O'Malley the local Fianna Fail representative was fulsome in his praise of her father, Kate wondering would he have been so supportive if faced with a legal hearing in a few months' time. A number of businesses closed out of respect, not just in the town but also in Waterford itself. The blinds were down in Lavelle's as the restaurant and shop had closed for the day as a mark of respect. Her mother looked in a state of shock. Dressed immaculately in a black suit, she sat small and fragile in the front pew. Moya was gaunt and pale, her eyes red rimmed as she tried to control her own emotion and look after the children, who were collapsed with grief. Kate sat utterly numb through her uncle's mass, refusing to believe that the father she loved, and she did love him despite all his failings, lay in the large coffin in front of the altar.

He was buried in the graveyard only a mile away, laid to rest beside his infant son. Those attending were asked back to the Stone House for drinks and some food. Kate, taken aback, saw Sheila O'Grady and one of her daughters passing around plates and helping to serve the buffet. She'd seen her at the back of the church – but here in the house!

‘What are they doing here?' she demanded of Moya.

‘Mammy asked them to do the catering. We'd never have managed this big crowd on our own and Sheila was the one suggested the hot buffet.'

‘I don't believe it,' moaned Kate, close to tears, not believing the audacity of the woman, standing here in her mother's home.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see her mother and Sheila talking, Sheila squeezing her mother's hand before carrying a tray of vol-au-vents to the other side of the room.

Aunt Vonnie appeared beside them.

‘You all right, Kate? Your mother wanted Sheila here, wanted her to be the one to do the food for Frank, to be involved. They are old friends and they have always had a lot in common. You're too young to understand . . .'

Kate nodded. She didn't understand it! But she had no intention of causing a scene.

‘Maeve adored your father and is going to be absolutely lost without him.'

‘Frank would have liked that Eamonn was here for the ceremony,' interrupted her Uncle Joe who was nursing a brandy and port, ‘and the fact so many people came to pay their respects. He was respected, you know,
and despite all the stupid rumours and gossip lately, well liked. He did more for this part of the country than most people know. He was a good man, and you girls remember that!'