His eyes fix on a photo, just to the right of my head. One of those expensive family portraits that make it look like you all like each other.
‘It was supposed to be a one-off,’ he says eventually, sighing deeply. ‘Just Maryanne. But it spiralled out of control. I didn’t want what happened .?.?. I’m not a bad person, Catrina .?.?. I know you think I am, but I’m not .?.?. nor was Maryanne, really .?.?.’
I say nothing. He’s trying to convince himself, not me.
‘I was in deep shit, you see. I owed money to this .?.?. well, this guy you don’t want to owe money to, let’s just put it that way. I was playing a lot of poker back then. Underground poker, backroom stuff. Winning big sometimes, losing big more often. Anyway, this guy wanted his money back. One of his men approached Jacqui, you know. Stopped her in the street, told her how pretty she was, gave it all that “you could be a model” bullshit.’ He laughs, sadly. ‘Christ, she was hyper that night, do you remember?’ I do. Hyper’s not the word I’d use. Try insufferable. ‘I knew it was him playing games though. I knew what the threat meant.’
‘Patrick Mackie?’
A quick nod. If he’s surprised I know the name, he doesn’t show it. ‘So I needed to get away for a while. Get us all away. Lie low. And your mum felt guilty that she hadn’t been home for years – I mean, we hadn’t been back since you were born – so I thought two birds, one stone, why not? Just for a few weeks while I worked out what to do.’
‘So you were always a fuck-up, Dad. That really isn’t big news. What’s it got to do with Maryanne?’
He picks up a bottle of something clear; gin, maybe vodka, I can’t see the label. ‘We need to get one thing straight, sweetheart. I never laid a hand on Maryanne, then or now. That isn’t what this is about.’
I stay stock still. ‘OK, I’m listening.’
Something unlocks and the words spew out. Maybe if I’d offered to hear him out years ago, instead of all the teenage histrionics and grown-up passive-aggression, we might have got to this point sooner.
‘It started with that bloody barmaid in Grogan’s.’ He shakes his head bitterly. ‘We had a drunken kiss one night – and that’s all it was, Catrina, a stupid drunken kiss, I could hardly remember it the next day. But Maryanne saw us. She was a sharp one, I’ll give her that – had a bit of scandal on everyone and wasn’t afraid to use it if it benefited her. Anyway, she threatened to tell your mum what she’d seen and well .?.?. me and your mum were on a sticky wicket already, and on top of all the shit with Mackie, I just didn’t need it.’
‘So how did blackmailing you benefit her? What did she want?’
He closes his eyes, sighs again. ‘She was pregnant.’
I knew this, of course. We’ve suspected it ever since the post-mortem and Hazel O’Keefe more or less confirmed it yesterday. How can that only be yesterday? But hearing it from Dad adds an ominous weight to it. He says the word ‘pregnant’ like it means everything. Like it’s the reason we’re here. The reason we’ve spent a lifetime splintering each other’s hearts.
‘She said she’d keep schtum if I gave her a few hundred quid and a lift to Dublin that Saturday, to the ferry. She wanted an abortion, you see, she had to get to Liverpool.’
I remember that Saturday. Dad gone since lunchtime, Mum perming Gran’s hair. Jacqui and Noel off somewhere. ‘Gallivanting,’ Gran called it.
I was so bored that day I actually did my maths homework.
‘So I said yes .?.?. eventually. What else could I do?’
‘You could have told Mum? I mean, what was one more .?.?. especially if it was just a drunken kiss.’
He cuts me off quickly. ‘But you see, I felt sorry for Maryanne too, even though she was a crafty one. Jonjo Doyle was a nasty little shit, especially after a few pints, and I knew the beating she’d get when he found out she was up the spout.’ He looks at me for a long second, trying to communicate something. I think he’s begging me not to judge him too harshly. ‘So I hit on an idea, see? The worst fucking idea of my life, sweetheart, but you’ve no idea how stressed out I was about Patrick Mackie and for the first time in weeks, I could actually see a way out.’
He pushes the bottle towards me, doesn’t offer me a glass. I want to say no but it might steady my heartbeat.
I drink straight from the bottle. Neat white rum.
‘Patrick Mackie was a nasty, greedy bastard.’ He points a finger. ‘Now I wasn’t involved in this at all, you understand, but I knew he had this racket going – paying prostitutes a few thousand quid to get pregnant and then selling the babies on the black market.’
There were rumours he was involved in people trafficking .?.?.
‘He made good money of it too. There’s plenty of desperate people with deep pockets who can’t have kids. Problem was, half the time the girls were addicts. They’d promise to stop using but they never did, and then the babies were born addicted, or with low birth weights, what have you, and I think it was getting to the point where he was wondering if it was worth the hassle. I had nothing to do with this, you understand,’ he repeats. ‘I just heard a lot of things, knew a lot of people .?.?.’
It’s obvious where this is heading but I need to hear him say it.
‘So Maryanne got me thinking – ’cos she was upset, you know – she wasn’t blasé about the abortion, she just thought she didn’t have a choice. And so I looked at her – fit, healthy, good-looking, smart, that perfect Irish colleen thing going on, and I thought, “well maybe you do have a choice, missus?” Patrick Mackie had all the contacts and I mean, it was obvious any rich couple would take one look at Maryanne and fall in love with her, which meant falling in love with her baby ten times over, so I knew it meant big money. Enough for her to make a clean break away from that shit of a father. So I made that clear to Mackie, when I finally got up the guts to make contact. I made sure he understood this wasn’t some skank-whore he could palm off with a couple of grand, he’d have to pay big but then he’d get paid big as well – at least five times what he was paying Maryanne – so it was a good deal for him .?.?.’
‘And a good deal for you. You’d be back in the good books. Everyone’s a winner, eh?’
Defensive. ‘Everyone was a winner, sweetheart. Maryanne bit my hand off.’
‘Everyone apart from the baby, sold off to the highest bidder like a meat raffle.’
I should want to spit at him. Bounce his head off the wall. Tear at his face. But I don’t feel angry, I feel nothing. Hollow and weightless. I dig my nails into the palms of my hands just to feel the sensation.
‘I thought the highest bidders were good people. Criminals maybe, but having a few brushes with the law doesn’t mean you can’t give a child a good life. It doesn’t mean you don’t know how to love. Do you know how hard it is to adopt legally if you’ve got more than a speeding fine? Might have changed now, of course, but back then .?.?.’ His voice trails off.
‘So what happened next?’
‘What she’d asked to happen. I picked her up, she hid in the boot until we were well out of Mulderrin .?.?.’
The Tinkerbell mystery solved, eighteen years and a hundred battles too late.
He frowns, confused as to why I’m so shaken by such a small detail. ‘Well, it’s just you never knew who you’d pass on the road,’ he says, explaining, ‘Or who’d flag you over for a quick chat. We just didn’t want to take the risk, that’s all. But as soon as we were a good few miles away, she jumped into the back, went to sleep I think, and I drove her to Dublin as planned and she got on the ferry. Only difference was that someone from Mackie’s crew was waiting at the other end to take her to London. And she didn’t go through with the abortion and she got paid ￡10,000 quid.’
Ten thousand pounds. Around ￡12,000 in today’s money. The watch on Dad’s wrist couldn’t have cost much less.