Behind us, the hall door opened: Shay and Carmel. I had been placing mental bets with myself on how long Shay would be able to go without conversation, not to mention nicotine. “What were yous talking about?” he inquired, dropping into his spot at the top of the steps.
Jackie said, “Holly.”
I said, “I was giving Jackie hassle for bringing her round here without telling me.”
Carmel plumped down above me. “Oof! Janey, these are getting harder, only that I’m well padded I’d’ve done myself an injury there . . . Now, Francis, don’t be giving out to Jackie. She was only going to bring Holly the once, just to meet us, like, but we were all so mad about her we made Jackie bring her back. That child’s a little dote, so she is. You should be dead proud of her.”
I got my back against the railings, so I could keep an eye on everyone at once, and stretched out my legs along the step. “I am.”
Shay said, feeling for his smokes, “And our company hasn’t even turned her into an animal. Mad, isn’t it?”
I said sweetly, “I’m sure it’s not for lack of trying.”
Carmel said, with a tentative sideways look that made it into a question, “Donna’s petrified she’ll never see Holly again.”
I said, “No reason why she shouldn’t.”
“Francis! Are you serious?”
“Course. I’ve got better sense than to come between nine-year-old girls.”
“Ah, that’s brilliant. The two of them are great mates, so they are; Donna would’ve been only heartbroken. Does that mean . . . ?” A clumsy little rub at her nose; I remembered the gesture, from a million years ago. “Will you be coming back as well, like? Or just letting Jackie bring Holly?”
I said, “I’m here, amn’t I?”
“Ah, yeah. And it’s lovely seeing you. But are you . . . ? You know. Are you home now?”
I smiled up at her. “Lovely seeing you too, Melly. Yeah, I’ll be around.”
“Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, and about bleedin’ time,” Jackie said, rolling her eyes. “Could you not have decided on that fifteen years ago, saved me a load of hassle?”
“Ah, deadly,” Carmel said. “That’s only deadly, Francis. I thought . . .” That embarrassed little swipe again. “Maybe I was being a drama queen, sure. I thought as soon as everything was sorted, you’d be gone again. For good, like.”
I said, “That was the plan, yeah. But I’ve got to admit it: tearing myself away turned out harder than I expected. I guess, like you said, it’s good to be home.”
Shay’s eyes were on me, that intent expressionless blue stare. I gave it right back and threw in a big old smile. I was just fine with Shay getting edgy. Not wildly edgy, not yet; just a shimmering extra thread of unease, running through what had to be a pretty uncomfortable evening already. All I wanted for now was to plant the tiny seed of realization, somewhere deep in his mind: this was just the beginning.
Stephen was out of my hair and Scorcher was getting there fast. Once they moved on to the next case on their list, it would be just me and Shay, forever and ever. I could spend a year bouncing him like a yo-yo before I let him be sure that I knew, another year hinting at my various interesting options. I had all the time in the world.
Shay, on the other hand, not so much. You don’t have to like your family, you don’t even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone. Shay had started out high-strung, spent his whole life in a context that would have turned the Dalai Lama into a gibbering wreck, and done things that wrap years’ worth of nightmares around your brain stem. There was no way he was more than a short stroll from a breakdown. Plenty of people have told me—and several of them even meant it as a compliment—that I have a God-given talent for fucking with people’s minds; and what you can do to strangers is nothing compared to what you can do to your very own family. I was pretty near positive that, given time and dedication, I could make Shay put a noose around his neck, tie the other end to the banisters of Number 16, and go diving.
Shay had his head tilted back, eyes narrowed, watching the Hearnes move around Santa’s workshop. He said, to me, “It sounds like you’re settling back in already.”
“Does it, yeah?”
“I heard you were round Imelda Tierney’s the other day.”
“I’ve got friends in high places. Just like you do, apparently.”
“What were you looking for off Imelda? The chat or the ride?”
“Ah, now, Shay, give me some credit. Some of us have better taste than that, you know what I mean?” I threw Shay a wink and watched the sharp flash in his eye as he started to wonder.
“Stop that, you,” Jackie told me. “Don’t be passing remarks. You’re not Brad Pitt yourself, in case no one’s told you.”
“Have you seen Imelda lately? She was no prize back in the day, but my Jaysus, the state of her now.”
“A mate of mine did her once,” Shay said. “A couple of years back. He told me he got the knickers off her and, honest to God, it was like looking at ZZ Top shot in the face.”
I started to laugh and Jackie went off into a barrage of high-pitched outrage, but Carmel didn’t join in. I didn’t think she’d even heard the last part of the conversation. She was pleating her skirt between her fingers, staring down at it like she was in a trance. I said, “You all right, Melly?”
She looked up with a start. “Ah, yeah. I suppose. It just . . . Sure, yous know yourselves. It feels mad. Doesn’t it?”
I said, “It does, all right.”
“I keep thinking I’ll look up and he’ll be there; Kevin will. Just there, like, below Shay. Every time I don’t see him, I almost ask where he is. Do yous not do the same?”
I reached up a hand and gave hers a squeeze. Shay said, with a sudden flick of savagery, “The thick bastard.”
“What are you bleeding on about?” Jackie demanded. Shay shook his head and drew on his smoke.
I said, “I’d love to know the same thing.”
Carmel said, “He didn’t mean anything by it. Sure you didn’t, Shay?”
“Figure it out for yourselves.”
I said, “Why don’t you pretend we’re thick too, and spell it out for us.”
“Who says I’d have to pretend?”
Carmel started to cry. Shay said—not unkindly, but like he’d said it a few hundred times this week—“Ah, now, Melly. Come on.”
“I can’t help it. Could we not be good to each other, just this once? After everything that’s happened? Our poor little Kevin’s dead. He’s never coming back. Why are we sitting here wrecking each other’s heads?”
Jackie said, “Ah, Carmel, love. We’re only slagging. We don’t mean it.”
“Speak for yourself,” Shay told her.
I said, “We’re family, babe. This is what families do.”
“The tosspot’s right,” Shay said. “For once.”
Carmel was crying harder. “Thinking about us all sitting right here last Friday, the whole five of us . . . I was only over the moon, so I was. I never thought it’d be the last time, you know? I thought it was just the start.”
Shay said, “I know you did. Will you try and keep it together, but? For me, yeah?”
She caught a tear with a knuckle, but they kept coming. “God forgive me, I knew something bad was probably after happening to Rosie, didn’t we all? But I just tried not to think about that. D’yous think this is a comeuppance?”
All of us said, “Ah, Carmel,” at once. Carmel tried to say something else, but it got tangled up in a pathetic cross between a gulp and a huge sniff.
Jackie’s chin was starting to look a little wobbly around the edges, too. Any minute now, this was going to turn into one great big sob-fest. I said, “I’ll tell yous what I feel like shit about. Not being here last Sunday evening. The night he . . .”
I shook my head quickly, against the railings, and let it trail off. “That was our last chance,” I said, up to the dimming sky. “I should’ve been here.”
The cynical glance I got off Shay told me he wasn’t falling for it, but the girls were all big eyes and bitten lips and sympathy. Carmel fished out a hanky and put away the rest of her cry for later, now that a man needed attention. “Ah, Francis,” Jackie said, reaching up to pat my knee. “How were you to know?”
“That’s not the point. The point is, first I missed twenty-two years of him, and then I missed the last few hours anyone’s ever going to get. I just wish . . .”
I shook my head, fumbled for another smoke and took a few tries to light it. “Never mind,” I said, once I had taken a couple of hard drags to get my voice under control. “Come on: talk to me. Tell me about that evening. What’d I miss?”
Shay let out a snort, which got him matching glares from the girls. “Hang on till I think a minute,” Jackie said. “It was just an evening, you know what I mean? Nothing special. Am I right, Carmel?”
The two of them gazed at each other, thinking hard. Carmel blew her nose. She said, “I thought Kevin was a bit out of sorts. Did yous not?”
Shay shook his head in disgust and turned his shoulder to them, distancing himself from the whole thing. Jackie said, “He looked grand to me. Himself and Gav were out here playing football with the kids.”
“But he was smoking. After the dinner. Kevin doesn’t smoke unless he’s up to ninety, so he doesn’t.”
And there we were. Privacy for tête-à-têtes was in short supply around Ma’s (Kevin Mackey, what are the two of yous whispering about there, if it’s that interesting then we all want to hear it . . .). If Kevin had needed a word with Shay—and the poor thick bastard would have gone chasing after exactly that, once I blew him off; nothing more cunning would ever have entered his head—he would have followed him out to the steps for a smoke.