Concern and sympathy were pouring off her voice. If she’d been there, I think I would have punched her lights out. “‘Ah, now, Francis,’ nothing. You and Ma have yourselves worked up into some hysterical frenzy over sweet fuck-all, and now you want me to play along—”
“Listen to me, I know you’re—”
“Unless this is all some stunt to get me over there. Is that it, Jackie? Are you aiming for some big family reconciliation? Because I’m warning you now, this isn’t the fucking Hallmark Channel and that kind of game isn’t going to end well.”
“You big gobshite, you,” Jackie snapped. “Get a hold of yourself. What do you think I am? There’s a shirt in that case, a purple paisley yoke, Carmel recognizes it—”
I’d seen it on Rosie a hundred times, knew what the buttons felt like under my fingers. “Yeah, from every girl in this town in the eighties. Carmel’d recognize Elvis walking down Grafton Street for a bit of gossip. I thought you had better sense, but apparently—”
“—and there’s a birth cert wrapped inside it. Rose Bernadette Daly.”
Which more or less killed that line of conversation. I found my smokes, leaned my elbows on the railing and took the longest drag of my life.
“Sorry,” Jackie said, softer. “For biting your head off. Francis?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Listen to me, Jackie. Do the Dalys know?”
“They’re not in. Nora moved out to Blanchardstown, I think it was, a few years back; Mr. Daly and Mrs. Daly go over to her on Friday nights, to see the baba. Mammy thinks she has the number somewhere, but—”
“Have you called the Guards?”
“Only you, sure.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“The builders, only. A couple of Polish young fellas, they are. When they finished up for the day they went across to Number Fifteen, to ask was there anyone they could give the case back to, but Number Fifteen’s students now, so they sent the Polish fellas down to Ma and Da.”
“And Ma hasn’t told the whole road? Are you sure?”
“The Place isn’t the same as you remember it. Half of it’s students and yuppies, these days; we wouldn’t even know their names. The Cullens are still here, and the Nolans and some of the Hearnes, but Mammy didn’t want to say anything to them till she’d told the Dalys. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Good. Where’s the case now?”
“It’s in the front room. Should the builders not have moved it? They had to get on with their work—”
“It’s grand. Don’t touch it any more unless you have to. I’ll be over as fast as I can.”
A second of silence. Then: “Francis. I don’t want to be thinking anything terrible, God bless us, but does this not mean that Rosie . . .”
“We don’t know anything yet,” I said. “Just sit tight, don’t talk to anyone, and wait for me.”
I hung up and took a quick look into the apartment behind me. Holly’s door was still shut. I finished my smoke in one more marathon drag, tossed the butt over the railing, lit another and rang Olivia.
She didn’t even say hello. “No, Frank. Not this time. Not a chance.”
“I don’t have a choice, Liv.”
“You begged for every weekend. Begged. If you didn’t want them—”
“I do want them. This is an emergency.”
“It always is. The squad can survive without you for two days, Frank. No matter what you’d like to think, you’re not indispensable.”
To anyone more than a foot away, her voice would have sounded light and chatty, but she was furious. Tinkling cutlery, arch hoots of laughter; something that sounded like, God help us, a fountain. “It’s not work this time,” I said. “It’s family.”
“It is, of course. Would this have anything to do with the fact that I’m on my fourth date with Dermot?”
“Liv, I would happily do a lot to wreck your fourth date with Dermot, but I’d never give up time with Holly. You know me better than that.”
A short, suspicious pause. “What kind of family emergency?”
“I don’t know yet. Jackie rang me in hysterics, from my parents’ place; I can’t work out the details. I need to get over there fast.”
Another pause. Then Olivia said, on a long tired breath, “Right. We’re in the Coterie. Drop her down.”
The Coterie has a TV-based chef and gets hand-jobbed in a lot of weekend supplements. It badly needs firebombing. “Thanks, Olivia. Seriously. I’ll pick her up later tonight, if I can, or tomorrow morning. I’ll ring you.”
“You do that,” Olivia said. “If you can, of course,” and she hung up. I threw my smoke away and went inside to finish pissing off the women in my life.
Holly was sitting cross-legged on her bed, with the computer on her lap and a worried look on her face. “Sweetheart,” I said, “we’ve got a problem.”
She pointed at the laptop. “Daddy, look.”
The screen said, in big purple letters surrounded by an awful lot of flashing graphics, YOU WILL DIE AT THE AGE OF 52. The kid looked really upset. I sat down on the bed behind her and pulled her and the computer onto my lap. “What’s all this?”
“Sarah found this quiz online and I did it for you and it said this. You’re forty-one.”
Oh, Jesus, not now. “Chickadee, it’s the internet. Anyone can put anything on there. That doesn’t make it real.”
“It says! They figured it all out!”
Olivia was going to love me if I gave Holly back in tears. “Let me show you something,” I said. I reached around her, got rid of my death sentence, opened up a Word document and typed in, YOU ARE A SPACE ALIEN. YOU ARE READING THIS ON THE PLANET BONGO. “Now. Is that true?”
Holly managed a watery giggle. “Course not.”
I turned it purple and gave it a fancy font. “How about now?”
Head-shake.
“How about if I got the computer to ask you a bunch of questions before it said that? Would it be true then?”
For a second I thought I’d got through, but then those narrow shoulders went rigid. “You said a problem.”
“Yeah. We’re going to have to change our plans just a little bit.”
“I have to go back to Mum’s,” Holly said, to the laptop. “Don’t I?”
“Yep, sweetie. I’m really, really sorry. I’ll come get you the second I can.”
“Does work need you again?”
That again felt worse than anything Olivia could dish out. “No,” I said, leaning sideways so I could see Holly’s face. “It’s nothing to do with work. Work can take a long walk off a short pier, am I right?” That got a faint smile. “You know your auntie Jackie? She’s got a big problem, and she needs me to sort it out for her right now.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
Both Jackie and Olivia have tried hinting, occasionally, that Holly should get to know her dad’s family. Sinister suitcases aside, over my dead body does Holly dip a toe in the bubbling cauldron of crazy that is the Mackeys at their finest. “Not this time. Once I’ve fixed everything, we’ll bring Auntie Jackie for an ice cream somewhere, will we? To cheer us all up?”
“Yeah,” Holly said, on a tired little breath exactly like Olivia’s. “That’d be fun,” and she disentangled herself from my lap and started putting her stuff back into her schoolbag.
In the car Holly kept up a running conversation with Clara, in a subdued little voice too quiet for me to hear. At every red light I looked at her in the rearview mirror and swore to myself that I’d make it up to her: get hold of the Dalys’ phone number, dump the damn suitcase on their doorstep and have Holly back at El Rancho Lyncho by bedtime. I already knew it wasn’t going to work out that way. That road and that suitcase had been waiting for me to come back for a long time. Now that they’d got their hooks in, what they had saved up for me was going to take a lot more than one evening.
The note had the bare minimum of teen-queen melodrama; she was always good that way, was Rosie. I know this is going to be a shock and I’m sorry but please don’t be feeling like I messed you around on purpose, I never wanted to do that. Only I’ve thought about it really hard, this is the only way I’ll ever have a decent chance at the kind of life I want. I just wish I could do it and not hurt you/upset you/disappoint you. It would be great if you could wish me luck in my new life in England!! but if you can’t I understand. I swear I’ll come back someday. Till then, loads and loads and loads of love, Rosie.
In between the moment when she left that note on the floor of Number 16, in the room where we had our first kiss, and the moment when she went to heave her suitcase over some wall and get the hell out of Dodge, something had happened.