Northern Spy(41)

They greet me like I’m their sister, too. Damian brings me into the circle, his arm around my shoulders, and Seamus and Niall smile at me. They seem uncanny. I’ve spent months picturing them, and here they are, exactly as they were in my head.

I shake hands with them, feeling slightly hysterical, like I want to let them in on the joke. I had some parts wrong, though. Niall seems younger than I’d imagined, a young twenty-six, his pale ears sticking out from his head. And Seamus doesn’t come across as threatening. He has on a beige suit with wide lapels, his red hair brushed to the side. He looks, in that suit, with his faded red hair, vaguely silly, like a lost member of Monty Python, which must make him more effective as a recruiter.

Marian starts to tell a story about us and Aoife as girls, and the three men listen. They don’t suspect her. You can tell from their faces that they adore her.

I spend a while talking with Damian about cooking. He’s tall and handsome, rocking his weight back on his heels, leaning forward to hear me when the crowd becomes too loud. He seems completely at ease, despite having participated in a felony robbery last week.

When Aoife and Sean enter the room, we break our conversations to cheer. They start to circulate among the guests, and the crowd at the bar grows louder. One of our neighbors from our estate, Michael, appears at my shoulder. “Tessa Daly, how are you keeping yourself? Still at the BBC?”

“I am.”

“How can you do it?” he asks, and I’m aware of Seamus turning to listen.

“You can’t change it unless you’re in it.”

“Sure, sure, but tell me this—where’s your boss from?” asks Michael.

“He’s English.”

“And his boss? Is he English?”

“She’s from Manchester.”

Michael nods gravely. “They’ll let you work for them, but you’ll never run the gaff.”

Another of our neighbors walks past and says, “Hiya, Michael.” He holds up his hand. “Gerry.”

“Where do you get your news, Michael?” I ask.

“Al Jazeera,” he says. Behind him, Seamus smiles into his glass. “Serious, love. I can’t be doing with the shite in the news here.”

After Michael makes his way to the bar, Seamus comes to stand with me. He says, “Is Finn here?”

My chest tightens. He knows my son’s name. “No, he’s with his father.”

Tom is away for work this weekend. I shouldn’t have lied, but I don’t want Seamus to know that my baby is home alone with a babysitter.

“It’s for the best,” says Seamus. “He shouldn’t have to see this.”

I can’t tell if he’s serious. The crowd is already getting leathered, and we’re only in the first hour, we haven’t even started on the bottles of wine and prosecco with dinner. Aoife told the bartenders not to serve shots, so guests are ordering vodka, up, in a rocks glass.

White balloons nudge against the ceiling, their long strings dangling an inch above the floor. Niall and Marian are ordering drinks, Damian is behind us talking to a woman in a dress with black feathers on its shoulders. As she laughs, the feathers move a little. I’m aware of Cillian Burke behind me, like he’s a magnet and the back of my skull is covered in iron shavings, all of them standing on end.

“How old is Finn?” asks Seamus.

“Ten months. Do you want children?” I ask, so we’ll stop talking about mine, my son, my heart.

“Not given the crisis we’re in.”

“In Ireland?”

“With the climate,” he says drily.

“Oh. Because you’re worried about what they’d suffer, or because you don’t want to add to overpopulation?”

“The second,” he says. “You can never predict what your children might suffer.”

I try to ignore that. It wasn’t directed at me.

“Which population models have you seen?” I ask, and we talk about demographics as Marian, Niall, and Damian drift back over. I still feel shaky. Seamus knows my son’s name, his age. I try to stop myself from thinking that means something, that I’ve failed to protect him.

Niall messes with one of the balloons, fidgeting with its string. “Don’t tie that around your neck,” says Marian. “Idiot.”

As we move into the banquet room, Seamus falls into step beside me. “Marian told me what you said to the police.”

My shoulder blades draw together. Here it is, finally. Here’s the accusation. I feel myself harden, preparing to deny it.

“About her being pregnant,” he says, and the knot in my stomach loosens. “That was clever. Fair play to you.”

We’re seated at separate tables for the dinner. I slide into my chair and take a sip of ice water. Under the tablecloth, my legs are shaking. My mother sits down across from me, and our eyes catch. She knows, I realize. Marian has told her. She’s aware of this situation, that I’m an informer, at an IRA wedding.

I don’t understand. She’s my mam, she should be making any excuse to get me out of this hotel.

Around us, the others talk and pour wine. My mam must see the hurt in my face. Her own expression is blank, but when she reaches for her glass, she misjudges, jolting red wine onto the tablecloth. “Slow down, love,” says her brother, laughing. “You’ll never make it to ‘Rock the Boat’ at this rate.”