A Keeper(10)

She stood up abruptly to avoid sinking into a now-familiar swamp of regret. The box was returned to the wardrobe and with a sigh Elizabeth accepted that she would have to share this secret. Breaking her dead mother’s confidence made her feel disloyal, but she had to tell someone about what she had found. Who would know more about Edward? She imagined her mother turning in her grave but she was going to have to speak to her Uncle Jerry and Aunt Gillian. She looked at her phone. It was still only seven thirty, too early to talk to anyone. She would make herself some toast.

Opening the kitchen door she didn’t notice it right away. It was the rustle of paper that drew her attention, and then she saw it. Sitting up in her canvas tote bag, holding an energy bar between its small dusty pink paws, was a rat. Elizabeth screamed and slammed the door. Panting with fear she leaned against the wall and scanned the hall for any other rodents. Her body shuddered as she considered how many of them might be in the house. Had they been in the bedroom with her last night? Of course she was used to seeing rats weaving around the black plastic hills of rubbish on the streets of New York late at night, but this was different. Seeing one at such close quarters seemed almost pornographic in its horror. She considered all the things that were in the kitchen. Her car keys, the house keys, her handbag with her passport and purse. She needed a trap or poison or whatever new methods had been developed since she was a girl. The obvious place to go was Keane and Sons, which for as long as she could remember had been an Aladdin’s cave full of anything you might want that wasn’t food or clothing, though of course her cousin Noelle had added a baby boutique, despite the protests from Uncle Jerry.

The shop wouldn’t open till nine. After having a very brief, heart-stopping cold shower, she got dressed and came back downstairs. The kitchen remained off limits and it was still only eight o’clock. The large pile of post was spread across the console table. She sighed and sat in the high-backed mahogany chair that had always been used when anyone was speaking on the phone. It creaked as it always had and the back hit the wall as she knew it would. Ripping open the various envelopes, she found appeals from donkey sanctuaries, cancer charities, guide dogs for the blind, several electricity and phone bills, a letter from the refuse collection company acknowledging the end of service from that address and then a letter from her mother’s solicitor, Ernest O’Sullivan.

She assumed it was going to be a bill, but the letter was addressed to her. He wanted to speak to her about her mother’s will and a codicil that had come to light. Elizabeth checked the date on the letter. A week after her mother’s funeral. She folded the paper and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans. Hopefully it could be dealt with over the phone. She didn’t fancy having to drive all the way over to Kilkenny. As long as it didn’t involve her Uncle Jerry or complicate her plans, she didn’t care. Her goal was just to sell up and head back to New York with enough money to help Zach through college. He claimed he didn’t want to go but she knew that Elliot would read him the riot act when he got wind of their son’s plan. It was one of the reasons she had agreed to let Zach head west by himself to San Francisco for a visit with his father. She pulled her phone from her pocket. It would be after midnight in California, too late to call. She would ring in the evening. Looking at the screen she saw that she had a missed call and a voicemail. Zach! Even as she wondered how she hadn’t heard the phone ringing, she remembered she had left the phone on silent from the night before.

‘Hi, Mom. It’s me. Just to let you know I’ve arrived. Dad picked me up from the airport and everything is great. Really warm compared to home. Hope Ireland isn’t too depressing. I’m shattered so I’m going to crash. Love you.’

It was so lovely to hear his voice. His New York swagger trying to mask his adolescent excitement about his trip. She thought about calling him back but decided against it. He’d done what she had asked and called her, so she would let him enjoy his little taste of independence. She would wait to return the call. She wasn’t going to be that sort of mother, or more precisely she didn’t want to be her own mother.

One of the most enduring memories she had of her mother was the day Elizabeth was leaving Buncarragh to begin her studies at university in Dublin. She had expected her mother to perhaps be a little upset but what she was not prepared for was the emotional outburst that her departure had provoked. Her mother hadn’t just shed a tear as she waved her off from the door, she had collapsed into full-scale sobbing. Elizabeth remembered being embarrassed and impatient. It wasn’t as if she was heading off to war or a hospital for major surgery. She was just doing what dozens of other teenagers from Buncarragh were doing and their parents weren’t holding on to porch pillars, wailing as if they were watching their family trapped on a sinking ship. Afterwards, on the bus to Dublin, she had recalled all the excuses her mother had made over the years for not allowing her to go on any school trips. She had assumed it was to do with money, but in retrospect it seemed far more likely that her mother had an unhealthy attachment to her. Some might have said she was just being overly protective but to Elizabeth it had felt more like possessiveness. When the idea of her doing her postgraduate work in America had been broached, her mother had come up with a thousand reasons why Elizabeth shouldn’t. When the day finally came for her to fly to JFK, there was no sign of her mother at the airport to wave her off. She’d claimed she was ill, but Elizabeth knew the clingy truth.