Things We Never Say (5 page)

She took a deep breath and banished the memory. That was all in the past. Her ill-fated marriage, which she’d rushed into less than a year after her mother’s death, was long over. She hadn’t seen or heard from Calvin Schwartz since their divorce, although she knew, from insider gossip, that he was still in the States and that he was seeing someone else (although not, it turned out, the woman with whom he’d had the affair). Anyway, nothing for her to care about there. Nothing to get upset about. Except that she couldn’t help the occasional rush of anger she felt whenever she thought about him and his betrayal.

But things had turned out for the best. As they so often did. She’d left the chain and got another job and eventually moved to Girona and started working in the boutique hotel, and she’d suddenly realised that this, for her, was what running a hotel was all about. Meeting real people rather than businessmen (the majority were still male) who were simply in town for a meeting or a conference which could have been in any other city in any other country, staying in a big hotel because they felt safer in the security blanket of a chain where everything would always be the same.

Being in charge of El Boganto had been a revelation to her and she’d enjoyed every single minute. But now she wanted more. She wanted to be the owner, not the manager. She wanted to be able to make the long-term strategic decisions. She wanted to give it a go herself. She knew that she’d never be able to do it all entirely on her own, so she’d built up a network of contacts in the region’s hospitality industry. She knew that they’d been impressed with her credentials – and impressed by the fact that El Boganto’s occupancy rate had soared under her management. As a result, she’d sounded them out about potential opportunities and the response had been heartening. But whether it would be as positive when she actually had a deal on the table would be another matter altogether.

She knew that the Mirador would be a massive undertaking. She knew that she’d have to pitch it perfectly. She also knew that – even with the consortium that she and Petra, her financial adviser, had put together – it might be difficult to get the financing she needed. But she had a strong track record (if you excluded the emptying of Waterford crystal vases over the heads of board members) and she knew what she was doing. She’d seen other hotels over the past few weeks. The Mirador was the only one that had excited her.

She opened the folder that Jaime had given her and spread the brochures out in front of her. This hotel had a certain something about it. Had the potential to be wonderful. The fact that its potential hadn’t been realised in the past didn’t make it a bad bet for the future. From what she’d learned, the previous owners had borrowed heavily at the top of the market to take it over, but business had slumped and they hadn’t been able to keep it going. Suzanne thought they’d got their business model all wrong. And that they’d got the feeling of the hotel all wrong too. The Mirador wasn’t the sort of place that should ever have had plastic chairs around its swimming pool. It should be an exclusive hotel, playing up to its wonderfully evocative decor and the unparalleled beauty of its location. It should be a byword for elegance and style, the kind of place for which visitors would pay a premium. And it could be. She knew it could.

Tomorrow she would ask Petra to arrange a meeting with the two female investors she knew were interested in buying a hotel with her. She shivered with excitement. This was possible. It really was. She’d make it work.

Which would definitely be one in the eye for her father.

It was a long time since she’d allowed herself to be riled by thoughts of Fred. It was funny, she thought: no matter how much you got over things that happened to you, you never forgot how people made you feel. Fred had always made her feel stupid and worthless. Not, she thought, because he believed she was stupid, and maybe not even because he thought her worthless, but her father was a relic from a different age, with views about women that had long since been consigned to the dustbin of history. All the time she was growing up, he had somehow managed to hang on to the idea that what women wanted (regardless of any assertions to the contrary) was to get married, have children and settle down to a life of domestic bliss. He also seemed to think that he should have a say in who his only daughter settled down with. Additionally – and this was the most irritating, infuriating, insane thing of all – he seemed to think that she shouldn’t see any other men until she met the one he approved of.

Her mother, Ros, said that Fred was being protective. Particularly protective, she would add, because Suzanne was his youngest child, a precious late arrival so long after Gareth. Suzanne, however, thought he was being controlling and freaky. Bullying, even, she told Ros sometimes, giving her grief if she’d gone out without saying where she was going, no matter who she was with. She was smothered by Fred and frustrated by the way he tried to rule her life. She hadn’t realised until years ago, when she’d gone home for Ros’s funeral, just how much he’d influenced all of them. But however difficult it had been for Don and Gareth, it had been a thousand times worse for her.

Having a father like Fred had isolated Suzanne. She found it hard to socialise with other girls of her age who had normal parents, not overbearing like her father and subservient like Ros. She envied her school friends their apparent freedom and swore that when she was old enough she’d be walking out of the house and never coming back.

The walkout happened sooner than she’d originally planned. She was seventeen and had gone to the first party she’d ever attended that wasn’t for small girls in lacy socks, and where the drinks weren’t orange squash and red lemonade. The party had been thrown by the older sister of a classmate and everyone was invited. Suzanne was determined that she wasn’t going to be the only one not to go. She was tired of being left out, tired of being different. So she made her plans, thankful that on the evening in question Fred was working late at his car-alarm business, while Ros was also out because the party coincided with her bingo night, her one social activity.

Of course she knew that eventually her parents would wonder where she was, but she didn’t care. She was going to have a night of total freedom and tomorrow could look after itself.

The party was fun, and she was pleased when one of her classmates called her Sexy Suzy, remarking that the short dress she was wearing showed off her long legs. Suzanne sipped cheap red wine and basked in the compliments, even though she was well aware that the guys at the party would probably compliment any woman if they thought she was good for a bit of fun later. (Her opinion of the opposite sex was entirely influenced by her father and brothers, and by Ros too, who frequently warned her darkly that boys were
only after one thing
.)

However, Danny Murphy certainly didn’t seem like that. She’d got talking to him halfway through the evening, and he’d chatted with her about a wide range of subjects without once indulging in any kind of inappropriate behaviour (which, if she was truly honest, was a little bit disappointing). Later, he offered to drive her home. Suzanne thought that being in a car with him might lead to some of the inappropriate behaviour she’d been hoping for, and so she accepted.

It was the unaccustomed drinking of red wine that had dulled the usual alarm bells in her head. But the alarm bells weren’t to do with any activity she might have got up to with Danny, they were about her overprotective father. Danny had no sooner pulled to a halt outside the house when Fred had catapulted himself into the street and was dragging the passenger door open. He hauled Suzanne out of the car, told her to get inside and yelled at Danny to keep his filthy hands off his daughter. Danny hadn’t waited around. He’d put the car into gear and gunned it down the street. Meanwhile, Fred frogmarched Suzanne into the kitchen, ranting on at her about sneaking out of the house, letting herself down and being cheap and tarty – and drunk.

‘I’m not,’ she wailed. ‘I was invited to a party and I went. I’m entitled to have a life, you know.’

But Fred didn’t see it like that. He told her she was grounded, which made her shake her head and say that she wasn’t a child and couldn’t be treated like one and that he’d embarrassed – no, mortified – her in front of Danny Murphy, who was a nice guy but who’d never want to see her again. He was a bullying old git, she raged, before Fred told her not to be cheeky, that she was still a child to him and that her behaviour that night had been completely unacceptable. Suzanne had looked at her mother in despair, because Ros had been sitting in her armchair while all this was going on, not saying a word. But when her mother did open her mouth, it was only to say that Fred was concerned for Suzanne’s welfare and he knew what he was doing.

Lying in bed later, Suzanne knew that she’d had enough. Her father was a tyrant and her mother downtrodden. If she stayed, she’d begin to think it was a normal way of life. She had to get out. And so she made her plans. A month later, on another evening when both her parents were out, Suzanne walked out of the house with a backpack and all the money she had. She went straight to the ferry port and got on a boat to England. She swore that she was never coming back.

It had probably been easier to lose yourself in the crowd back in the eighties than it was today, Suzanne thought. It was harder now to avoid being tracked down, because of mobile phones and Laser cards and CCTV all over the place. But over twenty years ago, even though she knew her parents would have been looking for her, nobody found her. She called Donald from London, asking him to tell Ros and Fred that she was alive and well and not to worry about her. Donald had begged her to come home. He said that she was being selfish and that of course everyone was worried about her. But she said that she was tired of being worried about, that she needed to stand on her own two feet and that it would be a long time before she set foot in Ireland again.

When she did eventually return, for Ros’s funeral, she realised that there was nothing to keep in her home town. And nobody she wanted to come back to either. So the day after her mother had been buried, she left again and hadn’t even thought about returning since.

There were a million places Lisette would have preferred to be other than standing in the kitchen of her father-in-law’s house on a beautiful Saturday morning. But because Fred had fallen and sprained his wrist quite badly a couple of days earlier, he needed someone to call by and help out, and she was the obvious choice. She supposed they were lucky he hadn’t broken the wrist. Or his hip, which would have been a damn sight worse. The way Lisette saw it, if Fred’s hip had gone, that would’ve been the end of him. Eighty-one-year-olds didn’t recover well from broken hips, although Fred might have been an exception; he was strong as a bull, despite the fact that he’d had a heart bypass five years previously. All the same, thought Lisette, he’d never fallen before. Maybe he was finally on the slippery slope to infirmity.

She unpacked the groceries she’d brought and began to put them away. Fred, sitting at the kitchen table, watched her.

‘I probably could’ve done it myself,’ he said. ‘I’m not helpless, you know.’

Lisette bit back the retort that it was because he’d been trying to reach something from a high shelf that he’d lost his footing and hurt himself in the first place. And that anyone would be helpless with their arm in a sling.

‘It was an accident,’ Fred continued. ‘Could’ve happened to a bishop.’

Lisette looked puzzled. Sometimes her father-in-law’s expressions defeated her, even though she’d been living in Ireland for nearly twenty-five years and knew most of them. What had accidents and bishops got to do with each other? She gave her Gallic shrug and continued to put the shopping away.

‘I should’ve bought my stuff online,’ added Fred. ‘Saved you the journey here.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ Lisette told him. ‘I had to go to the supermarket myself this morning. And we only live five minutes away.’

‘Lucky me,’ said Fred.

Lisette glanced around at him. She thought she’d detected a touch of sarcasm in her father-in-law’s voice, but she wasn’t certain. She put the last items in the cupboard (three pouches of microwave rice, a culinary travesty in her opinion) and then asked him if he’d like a cup of tea.

‘If you’re having one yourself,’ he replied.

She didn’t really want tea, but despite his comment she felt obliged to have one with him, so she filled the kettle and, when it had boiled, poured the water over the tea bags in their individual mugs. When she was at home, Lisette made weak loose-leaf tea in a pretty ceramic pot, enjoying the ritual, but Fred liked his brew as strong as it could possibly be, so two cups and two tea bags was the only option.

‘There’s Jaffa Cakes in the biscuit barrel,’ he told her.

Lisette said nothing. She opened the fridge and took out a carton of milk, telling herself that if Fred liked microwave rice or wanted to eat those disgusting biscuits, or if he liked his tea to resemble tar and stocked his fridge only with EasiSingles, full-fat milk and bottles of Guinness, that was entirely his business.

‘So how’s things with you?’ asked Fred after she’d placed the mug of tea and a plate of biscuits in front of him. ‘Did you enjoy your holiday? Are you glad to be home?’ He winked as he said this, and she knew it was because he was perfectly aware that she was always a little depressed when she and Gareth returned from their annual six weeks in their holiday home near the picturesque town of La Rochelle.

‘The holiday was perfect, as always,’ she replied. ‘And I suppose I can’t complain too much because the weather has – naturally – been lovely since we got back.’

Summer had arrived in Dublin with the end of August and the beginning of the new school term, when Lisette and Gareth, both teachers, returned to work.

‘It was always lovely in September when I was a boy,’ said Fred. ‘Though, funny, all the summers I remember as a kid were warm too. They couldn’t have been, I suppose, but I don’t ever recall being stuck indoors because of cold or rain.’ He gazed unseeingly in front of him and Lisette knew that he was lost in those memories. He did that more and more these days, though in fairness to him, a good deal less than her own
maman
, who was ten years younger but frequently waxed lyrical about her idyllic childhood in Nantes.