A Keeper(32)

‘Elliot. Sorry. I was just about to call you.’ She made her way across the bar and out into the lobby.

‘Elizabeth. Hi. You’ve heard from him, right?’ She noticed his voice contained a little more irritation than relief at discovering the whereabouts of their son.

‘Yes. He called. What a little fool. All of this just for a girl.’

‘A girl?’ An odd question. Elizabeth had a slight sinking feeling. The calmness of a moment ago had disappeared.

‘Yes. That’s what he told me. He went to meet up with a girl.’

‘That’s all he told you?’

‘Yes. Why, what is it? Tell me.’

‘Try woman. As far as I can ascertain this girlfriend of his is in her mid-thirties.’

Elizabeth gasped and thrust an arm against a metal pillar to steady herself. Her son was barely seventeen years old.

‘What? How do you know this?’

‘He told me! He thought it would make me less worried to know that he was with an older person! What should we do?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I could strangle him. He was just on the phone as if butter wouldn’t melt. Who is she?’

‘No clue. I remember the family name is Giardino. I’m driving down to the family home tomorrow to pick him up.’

Giardino? Giardino. Why was that name so familiar to Elizabeth? Was it a celebrity? A store she went to? A student? The answer came to her with the sudden shock of walking into a glass door.

‘Michelle. Did he mention the name Michelle?’

‘That’s it! You know this woman?’

‘She’s the maths tutor that comes to the house.’ She stopped herself from adding, ‘the one you insisted I got.’

‘And you didn’t notice anything?’ His tone was accusing.

‘Do not try to put this on me. She just shows up every Thursday after school. Normally she leaves right after I get home.’ Elizabeth felt slightly nauseous. Michelle Giardino zipping up her padded winter jacket and then freeing her long dark hair from the collar, before calling out casually, ‘See you next week, Zach’ as she went to the door. Zach cross-legged on the floor with his textbooks spread out on the coffee table in front of him. The floor. The couch. Her bed. Had Miss Giardino been rolling around with her teenage son? Had Elizabeth been paying her to … she could barely bring herself to consider it … to fuck Zach?

‘Where did she come from?’

‘The school! The school recommended her.’

‘Well, you have to inform them immediately.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ But if she was being completely honest she knew she wouldn’t, or at least not at once. She hated talking to the office of her son’s high school. The judgement in their voices as they listened to her excuses for late payment of fees or the patronising way they explained the importance of attendance. She knew this would somehow become her fault. Only a bad mother would allow this to happen. Once more Michelle Giardino’s pretty face floated into her mind’s eye. A rage bubbled up inside her and she longed to reach out and smack the smug look off her face. ‘Well, at least now I know why he was keeping this whole thing a secret.’

‘It’s her I’m pissed at,’ Elliot said. ‘I don’t blame him. I mean, my first girlfriend was a lot older than me.’

Elizabeth’s blood ran cold. Was that supposed to reassure her in some way? She didn’t know how to respond so simply chose not to. The silence between them was interrupted by a slight crackle on the line.

‘I …’ He sounded as if he was going to try and comfort her or qualify what he had said, but then thinking better of the idea continued, ‘I’ll call again after I’ve collected him. The three of us can have a talk.’

Elizabeth bristled. She didn’t like it when Elliot decided to resume the role of parent. Swallowing her irritation, she replied, ‘Yes. Talk then. Bye.’

‘OK then. Bye.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’ A little weary chuckle and then he was gone.

The next morning banished all memory of the blue skies and brilliant winter sunshine of the day before. Mottled grey clouds hung heavily across the damp fields while strong gusts of wind shook the bare branches of the trees. The dining room of the hotel was filled with disconsolate-looking guests sitting beside packed bags. ‘Delayed.’ ‘We don’t know.’ ‘Might be cancelled.’ The mood of the room and the lack of tables prompted Elizabeth to get some coffee in a paper cup and head out to her car.

The road to Bandon was simple enough, but then she took a wrong turn in a village called Old Chapel and ended up on the top of a hill at a crossroads where nowhere she wanted was signposted. A group of windswept children peered at her over the wall of a school playground as she turned around and headed back to the village. This time she found the right way and was soon driving beneath the imposing stone walls of the ancient abbey in Timoleague. The road then seemed to head inland away from the coast and Elizabeth wondered if she had gone wrong again but then she emerged through a long tunnel of trees and found herself driving along a narrow causeway across what looked like a salt marsh. At the other end there was a humpbacked bridge that seemed to be almost hewn from rock. Beyond that there was a wider grass verge where she pulled over to check her map. Noelle’s red marker pen stopped at the village of Muirinish, which is where Elizabeth had told them she was going, but that was slightly inland. She knew that she needed to be by the sea. Peering through the windscreen she couldn’t see anything that resembled a house or even an entrance. Maybe it had been knocked down years before and she was now the proud owner of some rubble? Grabbing her handbag, she decided to get out of the car and explore a little on foot.