Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(87)

There isn’t an affirmation self-congratulatory enough, or a vat of wine big enough, to stop me feeling awful about this until the day I die. I push my fingers deep into my sockets to try to blur the image of a confused and sleepy Finn, shivering in his dinosaur PJs.

‘I’m so sorry. Really, I am.’ I want to take her hand but I know she’ll swipe it away. ‘He shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I don’t understand why he did. Can you see now that he’s an arsehole?’

Her voice is firm. ‘I can see that he must have been massively upset about something.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, stop sugar-coating him.’

She kneels down, eye-to-eye. ‘What, like how you sugar-coat Mum? Canonise her, even. I loved her too, Cat, but she wasn’t perfect.’

‘So? Who is?’ I snap back.

Jacqui cranes her neck closer. ‘Have you ever wondered why an angel like Mum would stay with such a supposed “arsehole” as Dad?’

Yes, many times. I’ve come up with, in no particular order – love, money, stability, religion, habit, fear of the unknown and low self-esteem. But I’m not about to share these.

Instead I say, ‘Your point is?’

‘Well, just that Dad can’t be all bad. Not if the holier-than-thou Ellen McBride loved him.’

I catch fire. ‘Show some fucking respect, Jacqs, that’s Mum you’re talking about.’

‘And she had her faults, Cat. She could be so moody sometimes, remember? Nothing was ever good enough. Even the way she drew the curtains could make you feel like you’d somehow disappointed her when she was in one of her sulks.’

‘At least she made us feel safe.’

She jerks her head back, bewildered. ‘I literally don’t know what you mean by that? Dad’s always made me feel safe. God, I don’t know where we’d be if .?.?.’

‘You’re talking about money, Jacqs.’

A nasty expression. ‘Oh, and you’re not?’

This sideswipes me. Money?

Jacqui takes my silence as confirmation of something, she almost looks pleased. ‘I had a feeling it was about that,’ she says, nodding to herself, ‘But I wanted to hear it from you. I told Dad not to mention it, I said you’d kick off, I told him, but obviously he wanted to be straight with you.’ She looks around again, gives a haughty little sniff. ‘I mean, you’re obviously doing OK, and we’re going to need that loft-conversion if we have another baby. And we said it should be a loan but Dad insisted .?.?.’

A loan.

A fucking loft conversion.

That’s what she thinks this is about?

Rage rips through me like a forest fire. I try counting to ten, focusing on my breathing, thinking about Aiden Doyle and the shards of possibility there.

But, of course, there are no possibilities. There never can be. Because he is Maryanne Doyle’s brother and my father is .?.?.

What?

‘Do you really want to know, Jacqs?’ I stand up. ‘Do you really want to know what this is about, and what I think Dad’s capable of?’ The flat look on her face says ‘we’ve been here before’ and it only serves to pour petrol on the ravaging blaze. ‘Wait there.’

I fly up the stairs before reason sets in and pull the shoebox out from under my bed.

Underneath the family photos that Mum took in Mulderrin and the red fluffy notepad where I write the unspeakable things, something glitters, as good as new.

I haven’t taken it out for years. A stupid, supernatural fear of what it could unleash, maybe? But then hell was unleashed the minute that desk clerk walked into our squad room and said, ‘A body. A woman. Leamington Square.’

I fly back down the stairs, resolute.

‘This.’ I hold the Tinkerbell pendant between my thumb and my forefinger. Jacqui doesn’t blink. ‘Do you remember this?’

Her head moves up and down, then side to side, as if to say, ‘Yes, I remember. No, I don’t have the faintest idea why you’re showing it to me.’

‘I found this in the boot of Dad’s car in Mulderrin. It was the day we were leaving and I was helping him clear all the crap out.’ Jacqui’s chin retreats into her neck – she knows this is bad but she doesn’t know why. ‘I gave this to Maryanne Doyle the day before she went missing. She said it was gorgeous and that it matched her belly-button ring, and because she was so bloody pretty and I was so bloody gormless, I said she could have it.’

She starts backing down the hall, more wary of me than of what this could mean about Dad. I can hear her later;

‘Seriously, Ash, she’s not well. She’s finally flipped. I was frightened.’

Her hand is on the door-catch and I realise she’s going to leave without saying a single solitary word, leaving me with no choice but to spell it out it out to her. No sugar-coating. No filtering.

No-holds-barred.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying? I gave it to Maryanne Doyle, Jacqs. She put it in her pocket and I didn’t see it again. So how did it end up in the boot of Dad’s car? What was Maryanne Doyle doing in the boot of Dad’s car?’





24

I’ve never subscribed to the cult of New Year’s Eve. Never grasped the fascination. All that reflecting on the past and hoping for the future always strikes me as a profoundly bad idea when you’ve been poisoning your body for seven days straight, and your nervous system’s shot to pieces by marathon-style boozing and energy-sapping grub.