‘Listen to me, Jessie. I know exactly how this looks, but you’re too young to understand the reality of what happened here tonight.’
Josephine was heartbroken. She had never wanted her daughter to have to experience something so frightening. She had made coffee for everyone, left them clearing up downstairs, and then brought her daughter into her bedroom. Locking the door behind them, she had tried to explain as best she could that sometimes things happened, and there was nothing anyone could do to prevent them.
Jessie was staring at her mum, her lovely, quiet, kind-hearted mum, who everyone thought was as soft as shit and treated with kid gloves. Her entire life, she had believed that her mum was weak. Jessie had always felt that she needed to be protected, and Jessie had been willing to do just that. But it had been a lie. Her lovely mum, who had her ‘problems’, was actually capable of literally anything. Her mother obviously knew all about her dad and his business. Jessie knew her mother would have shot those men without a thought if the need had arisen. She had handled that shotgun like a pro. She was a liar; like her dad, her mother was a great big whopping liar. Here she was, acting like butter wouldn’t melt, when it was all an elaborate act. Everything in her life had been a big pretence.
‘Please answer me, Jessie. Talk to me, darling.’
Her mum sounded so genuine. It was amazing – she actually sounded as if she cared. She was once more all nervous tension; she even looked anxious, her voice quivering with emotion.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Mum.’
Josephine was relieved to hear her daughter actually speaking. She had not said a word for so long. ‘I just want you to understand that what happened tonight was a one-off. It wasn’t supposed to happen. None of it. Please, Jessie, you have to understand that, darling. Your dad would die before he would ever have let you see that.’
Jessie nodded slowly, unsure what else she was supposed to do.
Josephine Flynn could understand the way her daughter was feeling. She had been party to something that she had no experience of, and Josephine remembered only too clearly how disturbing it was to witness it first-hand. But there was nothing anyone could do about that now. Most importantly, Jessie needed to understand that she could never discuss it with anyone outside their family. Here were some things that were best kept private.
Grabbing her daughter’s hands in hers, Josephine squeezed them tightly, as she said huskily, her voice choked with emotion, ‘Come on, Jessie love. You must have guessed that your dad wasn’t the usual. I mean, I know you must have heard things about him.’
Jessie was sitting beside her mum on the bed, and she could feel the warmth of her mother’s hands as she gripped hers tightly. It felt wrong. She wanted to pull her hands away, push her mother as far away from her as possible. But she still loved her mum more than anything. This made no sense to her. She was just a kid, only fourteen years old. She didn’t know how to react to the night’s events. She had been a witness to extreme violence and murder – something that would have frightened her had she seen it on a movie screen, let alone in real life. Now here was her mum, acting like it was nothing, as if it could be explained away and forgotten about.
Josephine brought her daughter’s hands up to her mouth, and kissed her fingers gently, so desperately sorry for the girl’s predicament. She’d do anything to take the pain away instead of having to make her daughter understand the importance of family loyalty, and how easily a careless word could destroy the life they had together.
‘Look, Jessie, I know you can’t understand any of this now, but you will one day. When you’re older and wiser, you will understand why I am asking you to forget about tonight. I need you to promise me that you will never ever tell anyone, not even your nanas, about this. You’ve already guessed how serious this situation is. You’re not a foolish girl. Remember, your father needs your loyalty now, and so do I.’
Jessie watched her mother carefully. She understood then that her mother would always put her father first, no matter what. She had sacrificed her own peace of mind for her husband many years before, and that was why she was so strange. Jessie did understand about the loyalty that her mother was asking of her. Family loyalty, along with being Irish Catholic, had always been seen as very important. Now her mother was asking it of her, and she couldn’t refuse. No matter what she might be feeling deep down inside, she suddenly realised that she could never, ever, turn against her own family. It was a real moment of revelation for her. The knowledge that, even after all she had witnessed, all she now knew about her parents, if push ever did come to shove, she would never breathe a word to anyone. The fear that had overwhelmed her was suddenly replaced with another fear – the fear of losing the only life she had ever known. She had no other choice, and she would do what was expected of her.
Chapter Eighty-One