“We were just talking about Aiden Doyle,” Manda says to Hazel, which is an out-right lie. We’d actually been talking about Manda’s hair, a lovely rich auburn.
‘Oh yeah? I heard he was back visiting the father over Christmas, all right. I bet he had nice things to say about us, hey?’ She catches my face. ‘Ah go on, what did he say? We’ll have probably deserved it, honestly, it’s fine.’
I give them the short version. ‘Just that you could be a bit harsh sometimes.’
‘Yeah, and the rest,’ says Hazel, hailing the waitress. ‘He was such an oik back then though. Hear he’s a big hot-shot in London now. Hey, d’ya think he’d be in the market for a ready-made family? I could just see me and the kids tearing it up and down Bond Street.’
‘Speaking of London,’ I say, once she’s ordered her hot chocolate. ‘Hazel, do you know if Maryanne knew anyone in London, or even England would be a start?’
‘No. Not that she ever mentioned, anyways, and believe me, she’d have mentioned it. She had these couple of cousins in Chicago and seriously, you’d think she had the freedom of the city, the way she went on about it.’ She sits back a little, rubs a rhythmic hand over her bump. ‘There was this English family in the village around the time she went missing, they were over from London, I think.’
My heart stops.
‘Oh God, yeah, I’d forgotten about them,’ says Manda. ‘See I told you, Cat, she remembers everything. I’m fecking useless. Memory like a goldfish.’
‘What, and you think .?.?.?’ I don’t know how to finish this sentence and I’m grateful when the arrival of Hazel’s ‘chocolat chaud’ forces a brief pause.
Hazel takes a sip, mutters, ‘Luke-fucking-warm as usual. Ah no, I didn’t mean anything by it. You mentioning London made me think of them, that’s all. We didn’t really have much to do with them. The girl knocked around with us a coupla’ times, I think, that was about it.’
Manda nudges Hazel. ‘That’d have been pure Maryanne, though. Decides she likes the accent and then takes off to England without so much as a backward glance.’
‘Ah, you’re such a gom, Mands. Look, Cat – it is Cat, isn’t it? – between you, me and the gatepost, Maryanne was pregnant, and there’s only one reason you go to England if you’re pregnant. I’ve half a mind to pay a visit meself!’
‘You never told this to Bill Swords?’ I say.
It’s not meant to sound like an accusation but Hazel takes it as one.
‘Course I fucking didn’t. You don’t grass on your mates, and anyways, I thought she’d probably be back, so why would I make trouble for her by going round telling people her business?’
‘How are you so sure she was pregnant?’ I keep my voice light, careful not to wind her up again, although I get the feeling Hazel O’Keefe could get wound up by a Buddhist monk. ‘Did she tell you?’
A lightning shake of the head. ‘No. But come on, she’d gone up a cup size in less than six weeks. And I’d caught her throwing up in the Diner a few times’ – she prods the table – ‘in here, I mean, that’s what this place used to be called. She blamed the drink but she wasn’t drinking much either, that’s another thing. I mean, she hadn’t stopped drinking or anything, but she wasn’t getting plastered like usual. I’m telling you, as sure as I’ve a hole in me arse, she was pregnant – fact.’
I don’t disagree. ‘It’d have cost a lot of money though, if she was planning a termination – flights, travel, staying over? Where would Maryanne have got that kind of cash?’
‘She did well on the tips in here,’ offers Manda.
Hazel’s more cynical. ‘Ah, she was fierce resourceful, was Maryanne. Sweet-talked it out of some lovesick eejit, I’d say.’
Blackmailed it?
‘Any ideas on the father?’
‘The father,’ repeats Hazel, laughing. There’s a line of chocolate milk running the length of her top lip – Manda doesn’t point it out so I don’t either. ‘My money’d be on Ryan Roland or Shane Dillon but it could have been anyone, really. She had a thing for older fellas too, so God knows. She wasn’t exactly .?.?.’
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.