Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(81)

Manda scowls. ‘Ah now, stall the ball, Hazel. You’re making her sound like a proper skank and she wasn’t.’ She turns to me. ‘She was just gorgeous, that’s all. Never short of a few offers, you know.’

My phone vibrates. I glance down, praying for it to be anyone other than Jacqui. I know I’ll have to face that fight eventually but it can definitely wait another day. Or another week. Another lifetime.





Parnell


Saskia French still not answering. Hicks don’t have next of kin. Have a lovely old Doris from flat 12a keeping a watch out for her. When u back?

SMS 12.03 p.m.



I tap out a reply while Hazel gestures for the bill.



Covert surveillance, love it Should be back at HQ 5.30ish. Looking like Maryanne was preggers when she left Ireland.

SMS 12.05 p.m.



Once it’s sent, I turn my attention back to Hazel O’Keefe, conscious she’s going to stride out of Ganley’s in the next few minutes just as quickly as she strode in, and Manda Moran was right, she has been a lot more use.

‘So what did you think when Maryanne didn’t come back?’ I ask. ‘I mean, fine, maybe she was going to have a termination, but didn’t you find it odd that she never came back? Never even made contact again?’

‘Sure, why would she come back?’ Hazel says, wiping her chocolate moustache. ‘What was here for her in Mulderrin? A bollix of a father and spotty little brother?’ She shrugs. ‘Good luck to her, I thought.’

‘And you, Manda?’

‘I was a bit hurt,’ she admits, ‘and maybe a bit worried, yeah. But I had me own shit to deal with, you know. I thought she’d probably just hitched up with some rich, hot fella and like Hazel said, good luck to her.’ She looks at me earnestly, like it’s important I understand something. ‘But I did think about her a lot though. I’ve looked for her on Facebook, but sure, I didn’t know if she was married, if her surname had changed.’

‘She’d changed her first name too. She was calling herself Alice.’

A dewy-eyed look passes between them. ‘Alice,’ says Hazel, smiling, and it’s a proper smile too. A genuine smile that says Maryanne had meant something. ‘Alice in Wonderland. That’s what we used to call her ’cos she always had her head in the clouds, you know? Living in this dreamworld about all the places she was going to go, places she wanted to live. We were only teasing though and she loved it. She always said she loved the name.’

Manda’s dewy-eyes give way to tears – tears which surprise her and appal Hazel.

‘Jeez, cop yourself on, Mands,’ she says, looking around to make sure no one’s noticed. ‘We’ll be the talk of the town, you big gom.’

I fish a tissue out of my bag and Manda sniffs gratefully. ‘So who else are you talking to, Cat?’ she says eventually.

‘No one else. It’s been a flying visit.’ Something stirs in me – the chance to plunge my hand into another wasp’s nest. ‘Actually, Swords mentioned someone called Tina McGinn,’ I lie. ‘Said she was a bit of a character, would flirt with her own shadow, that sort. They’re often the best kind of witnesses.’ Maybe I’ll call in on her.

It sounds weak to my ears and I’m not even sure what I’m hoping to achieve. Do I actually want to speak to Tina McGinn, or do I just want to gauge if she’d have been Dad’s type?

Hazel O’Keefe’s eyebrows hit her hairline. ‘Flirt with her own shadow? Is that what Swords said?’ A fast glance towards Manda. ‘Fucked her own shadow, more like. More cocks than a hen house, that one.’

Manda doesn’t protest. Her pious face says it all. ‘She doesn’t live around here anymore, not for years. Last I heard, she’d broken up another marriage down Spiddal way.’

I sense there might be a story here – maybe a Moran man who fell for the wanton charms of Tina McGinn? I get an even stronger sense that contrary to Dad’s assertion that ‘there was absolutely nothing going on’ between him and Tina McGinn, I’d bet everything I hold sacred on the fact there absolutely was.

Which gave Maryanne stronger leverage to blackmail him to do what?

‘Right.’ Hazel O’Keefe stands up abruptly. ‘I better get home, I suppose, if I want the house still standing.’ She kisses Manda on both cheeks and they make promises to meet up properly in the New Year, promises they both know they won’t keep. ‘I hope you catch whoever did it,’ she says to me. ‘She could be a right cow sometimes, but sure, couldn’t we all at that age.’

‘Ah now, she wasn’t that bad, Hazel.’ Manda dabs at her eyes again, more for effect than necessity. ‘Don’t be speaking ill of the dead.’

Hazel picks up her phone. ‘It was just that she was snide, you know, that’s what I could never stomach. Me and Mands, and even Durkin Donut – that’s Colette Durkin – we fought and fell out and we slagged each other and all that, but Maryanne could be proper, proper snide. Putting you down in front of folk. Taking the piss without you realising.’

‘And always taking your stuff,’ chimes in Manda, clearly thinking ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ ‘Not stealing it, she was more wily than that. She’d just suddenly be your best pal, you know? All over you like a rash, flattering you, saying whatever she had her eye was soooooo gorgeous and she was so jealous, that sort of thing. Before you knew it, you’d given it to her – “here, it’d look better on you,” I’d end up saying. Sad thing is, it always did.’