Hush Hush Read online

  Chapter Five

  ‘Tell me again why I have to be here when she comes,’ demanded Shane.

  Conor drew out the grill pan and sniffed the fish fingers.

  ‘Try poking them with a fork,’ advised Shane. ‘If it goes through, they’re done.’

  ‘Right pair of master-chefs, aren’t we? Anyway, you don’t have to be here. You happen to live here, and if I invite someone to Saturday lunch, why shouldn’t you be eating your lunch here at the same time?’

  ‘Because it’s not someone, it’s a woman. And most blokes in your size twelves pay the kid the going rate to sod off for the afternoon.’

  ‘Nice try, but that’s not me.’ Conor rammed the pan back under the grill. ‘And will you kindly moderate the “sod offs” and “friggin’ hells” when Angela is here?’

  ‘Friggin’ hell! What am I, Little Lord Fauntleroy?’

  ‘You will be if you don’t behave. I’ll make you wear velvet pantaloons, talk with a lisp and answer to the name of Crispin for the afternoon.’

  Shane gurgled with adolescent laughter. He was exceedingly fond of Conor’s empty, unenforceable threats. ‘But seriously, Dad, won’t you scare this woman off if you introduce the offspring, like, too soon? Or are you letting her see the worst from day one, so she can’t accuse you of springing a nasty surprise six months down the line?’

  ‘I’ve told you, Shane. If I invite a ‒ woman to lunch, I want to behave naturally. That means, neither hiding you under the floorboards nor parading you as the only begotten, OK? It’s no big deal.’

  He turned away to fuss with the dinner plates, so their eyes wouldn’t meet.

  Shane was left to snort in silent contempt. No big deal! This was a blatant attempt to reverse the Rosie fiasco.

  Shane still had vividly unpleasant memories of Rosie. Conor had kept her under wraps until it was too late for civilised introductions, allegedly out of deference to Shane’s allegiance to Kate.

  So, instead of being forewarned and forearmed, Shane had stumbled upon Rosie in the bathroom one morning. God, what a sight! Brassy red hair in shoddy imitation of his mum’s au naturel tresses. Big bosoms slung inside Conor’s dressing gown, fat arms and legs. Dad was slumming it and then some! She’d been a cheapie, pay-by-the-hour lookalike of Kate Stanton McGinlay. Their eyes had met in the bathroom mirror with mutual antipathy.

  Rosie had played a stormer in the following weeks though, pretending to be an earth-mother in front of Conor, ruffling Shane’s hair, squeezing his kneecaps, buying him presents and looking downcast and wounded when she didn’t get a kissy-huggy response.

  Shane was conducting a phoney war ‒ and losing ‒ until the day he caught Rosie in the act.

  He came upon her one morning, while Conor was downstairs making breakfast, rifling through the wardrobe in his parents’ master bedroom ‒ still occupied by his father, but never by his father and Rosie. When she stayed the night, they did the business (as far as Shane could tell) in the motel-like anonymity of the spare room.

  Rosie had already appropriated a small pile of Kate’s things on the dressing table ‒ two negligées, an unopened three-pack of white M&S pants, a Cellophane-wrapped box of Chanel No 5.

  Rosie was busy stuffing the pants into her handbag when she turned and caught Shane smiling at her. ‘I won’t tell if you sod off for good,’ was the deal he offered.

  She’d shoved the stolen goodies back onto the wardrobe shelf. ‘Get stuffed, small-fry! Who’s going to believe you, anyway?’

  ‘I am,’ said Conor, surprising them both. He’d come looking for them to announce breakfast. He stood behind Shane with folded arms, thunder darkening his face.

  Rosie recovered. ‘Suits me,’ she’d snorted, pointing a melodramatic finger at Shane. ‘There’s no future in a relationship with a man who has to drag a little shit like you around wherever he goes.’

  Shane had fought the urge to frisk her on the way out, in case the family silver (two crested teaspoons, to be precise) nestled in her undergarments. A week later, there was still no sign of her, but Shane had needed to make sure and feel safe.

  ‘Rosie gone for good, Dad?’ he felt driven to ask unsubtly one evening.

  Conor had shrugged laconically. ‘As far as I’m concerned. Sorry to put you through that, son. There must’ve been something off-beam about her all along.’

  It had been on the tip of Shane’s vinegar-soaked tongue to replace ‘off-beam’ with ‘crazier than a shit-house rat’, the meaning of which still eluded him but the tone of which sounded just right. But something in Conor’s demeanour had stopped him. The sunken chin, the TV remote control dangling limply from one hand. He might take it personally.

  ‘Did you ‒ you know ‒ pick her cos she looked like Mum?’

  Conor’s chin tightened as it sat on his chest. ‘I never noticed a likeness.’

  ‘What about the red hair?’

  Conor jumped up suddenly. ‘I’m going to get a beer. Thousands of women have red hair, including your Auntie Grainne. That doesn’t mean I grew up fancying my sister, and latched onto Mum cos she looked like Auntie Grainne.’

  ‘Thought never crossed my mind.’

  ‘Good. And no, you can’t have a beer with me.’

  Ever since, Shane had lived in mortal dread of Rosie mark two hoving into view. Because, when it came to women, it had to be said, Conor specialised in women with problems.

  Even Shane’s protective love of his mother was tempered with this unpalatable truth. Shane adored Kate but he was often confused by her behaviour and sometimes downright scared of her outbursts, though he never let on. The last time he’d been in New York, Kate had tried to tuck him in one night, then burst into tears and smashed a couple of ornaments when he pointed out (very gently) that he was way past that stage. He supposed the drinking didn’t help, though it wasn’t her fault she’d had a nervous breakdown before she left Loxton. It wasn’t Conor’s fault, either. It was, according to Granny Margaret in Dublin, One of Those Things.

  And now, this Angela one coming to lunch. As far as Shane could see, the old man wasn’t up to it. Even Kate had taken the bloke for a ride, dumping the kid on him and doing a flit.

  Shane had only recently decided that the old man’s quest for female companionship must have something to do with his alleged good looks. These had first been alleged at the school gates by a couple of giggling girls when Conor had collected Shane after football one night. Secretly flattered on the old man’s behalf, Shane had taken to comparing their features in shop windows and car doors when they were out together. The results were not encouraging.

  Conor doled out burnt fish fingers, spuds and over-steamed peas.

  ‘You should let me cook, Dad. I came top in cookery last year. This is a pretty sad effort.’

  ‘But you’ve got other, more cerebral homework,’ fretted Conor, shoving the grill pan in an overflowing sink. ‘I’ll do pasta with tuna tomorrow. I can’t burn that.’

  They ate in silence for a bit. Conor held his elbows at tense angles, sawing through an overcooked roast potato of the frozen rather than the peeled variety. If only he could persuade Mrs Turner to live in permanently and become a well-paid domestic slave. Hell, she’d been widowed for eight years and lived on a tough estate, visited sporadically by her foul-mouthed daughter-in-law. She might go for live-in servitude, sleeping in the converted loft.

  Shane gave up the ghost and dropped a potato from his mouth onto his plate, still steaming and whole.

  ‘Shane!’

  ‘It’s frigging thermonuclear!’

  ‘I hope you’ll be on your best behaviour for lunch with Angela.’

  ‘Aw, Dad, do I really have to? Isn’t one ugly McGinlay enough at a time?’

  ‘But she’s looking forward to it!’ lied Conor. Angela had sounded terrified at the prospect over the phone.

  ‘She’s a widow, right?’

  Conor put down his cutlery. ‘She’s not a little old woman in black, if that’s what you
’re visualising. She’s attractive and vibrant.’

  Shane sighed. That told him nothing. ‘What colour’s her hair?’

  ‘Brown.’

  ‘And her eyes?’

  ‘Sort of bluey.’

  ‘What did her old man die of?’

  ‘A heart attack. And don’t go on about it when you meet her.’

  Shane, who was generally too sensible and sensitive to wilfully do such a thing, wound up Conor a bit more by observing, ‘You’ve got to be careful, though, Dad. She could be a black widow after all, marrying men for their money, then bumping them off.’

  ‘Lucky I’m not arachnophobic,’ said Conor stoutly. ‘And her mum’s nice, too.’

  Shane pulled a face a contortionist would’ve patented. ‘God, so there’s an old battle-axe in the background? They’ve probably cooked up the husband-poisoning scheme between them.’ He leant forward and pronged an unprotected fish finger off Conor’s plate, intoning, ‘Digitalis.’

  ‘Digi what?’

  ‘It’s a poison that’s odourless, colourless and impossible to detect,’ revealed Shane. ‘When you keel over, it looks just like a heart attack. It’s in all the Agatha Christie books. They reckon that’s how the mafia bumped off John Paul the First.’

  Conor decided to stack their two plates in an authoritative manner. ‘If you don’t fancy lunch here, we could go to the Fire Station.’

  ‘Great ‒ if I was still ten!’

  Conor glared. ‘I thought you loved the place.’

  ‘Move with the times, Dad.’ The Fire Station was a local restaurant with an obvious theme, complete with fireman’s pole for bored kiddies to slide down.

  His only hope in getting Conor to notice the ageing process, Shane reckoned, was the magical advent of his voice breaking. Now and then it hit a bass note when he least expected it, but then rose almost immediately to an embarrassing squeak, like a bad singer grappling with scales.

  ‘Tell you what, Dad.’ A wicked gleam leapt into Shane’s eye. ‘You reckon she’s a bit of a veggie, so why don’t I do my tex-mex vegetarian chilli, like I did for the cookery exam? You rustle up your customary burnt offerings for me and you.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Conor, missing the wicked gleam, was tempted.

  Grilled breakfasts and leathery meat-and-two-veg were about his culinary limit. He wanted to give Angela something better. And the cookery teacher had raved about Shane’s tex-mex on open night. At the time, Conor had considered it unmanly to enthuse back.

  ‘All right,’ he finally nodded. ‘If you give me a list of ingredients, I’ll lay in provisions.’ He paused. ‘Thanks, son.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ mumbled Shane. He was getting used to these twinges of guilt.

  Angela straightened up from Robert’s grave, eyeing the white tulips she’d arranged, ad-hoc fashion, in the pepperpot flower-holder thingy. On a bench nearby, Rachel sat with blonde head bent, snipping stalks off a hardy species of geranium for her grandparents’ grave, five rows behind Robert. Sadie, meanwhile, was puffing noisily in the rarefied cemetery silence, scrubbing bird mess off Fenton’s headstone with a J-cloth and Cif.

  Sadie had gone for granite, which looked weather-beaten in the space of a year. Robert’s black marble headstone still gleamed, rain or shine, the white lettering picked out with the sharp definition of bones on a Hallowe’en skeleton suit.

  Angela wiped her hands on her coat and stood back to admire her handiwork. The budded tulips pointed upwards, tiny praying hands.

  Instinctively, Angela felt guilty. She was trying to appease Robert, buying him off with a votive offering, so he’d leave her alone to get to know Conor. It was two weeks since the London picnic. Tomorrow, she was going to Conor’s for lunch.

  ‘Hey!’ called Sadie. ‘You’re standing on an Eva Shanley’s grave.’

  ‘Am I? Sorry,’ said Angela to the unknown Eva Shanley. She joined Rachel on the bench, treading carefully. ‘Mum, what was Owen like at fourteen?’

  Sadie looked thoughtful. ‘Much as he is now, middle-aged and serious. He never gave me and your dad a moment’s trouble, which was worrying in itself. I should’ve realised he was just biding his time to skip off and reinvent himself. Is this about Conor’s son?’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Angela frankly. ‘Should I bring him a present? Or should it be a general thanks-for-having-me-to-lunch gift, like a bottle of wine?’

  Sadie pondered. ‘You could always slip the lad a tenner as you’re leaving. He probably gets cards full of money from his aunties and puts them towards things you’d never dream of buying for him.’

  ‘Good idea,’ brightened Angela. ‘And a bottle of Blue Nun for politeness.’

  ‘A shame the kid’ll be there at all, cramping both your styles,’ murmured Rachel, slinging a cat among the pigeons. ‘I mean, there you’ll be, in his house, with a master bedroom going begging upstairs, wine sloshing round your pleasantly numbed faculties and limbs, the Catholic guilt on temporary hold.’

  ‘Sssh!’ Throwing a look at Sadie, Angela slid down next to her and hissed, ‘No references to physical contact, if you please. Um ‒ you don’t think that’s why he’s invited me to lunch en famille, do you? In case I pounce on him across the salad bowl?’

  Rachel laughed smuttily. ‘You ‒ pounce? I know he hasn’t known you long, Ange, but he must have the measure of you as far as pouncing goes.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ muttered Angela, knowing exactly what it meant. Her womanly wiles, such as they’d ever been, hadn’t exactly been honed by sixteen years of comfortable marriage to a man who’d still fancied her in winter flannel nighties.

  ‘I think the son’s presence is significant,’ backtracked Rachel. ‘It’s like being invited to tea to meet your beau’s parents.’

  ‘But he’s not my beau!’ spluttered Angela. ‘And he dropped it too casually into the invitation ‒ oh, by the way, you’ll probably get to meet the child prodigy ‒ in fact, the more I think of it, the more it comes across as a way of keeping me at arm’s length.’

  Sadie puffed up to join them, suspicious of the muttering. ‘Now, if I were you, Angela, I’d find out a bit more about the wife.’

  ‘Ex-wife.’

  ‘Has she gone for good?’ mused Sadie. ‘Is she likely to reappear on the scene?’

  ‘Why she did a runner,’ prompted Rachel. ‘And has he got a cellarful of ex-wives, like Bluebeard?’

  ‘Enough already! How am I supposed to subtly extract all this key info?’

  ‘Who said anything about subtlety?’ snorted Rachel, snipping stalks with gusto. ‘Just ask him straight out what happened to his marriage. It’s not as if you’ve anything to hide. Your spouse didn’t leave by choice.’

  Angela stood up. ‘I find these ‒ unwholesome wonderings distasteful in this setting.’

  ‘Just remember’ ‒ and here Rachel wagged a finger ‒ ‘don’t do anything daft, like really fall for him, until you know about the wife.’

  ‘Ex-wife!’ snapped Angela.

  ‘I still can’t help liking him, for a divorced man,’ revealed Sadie, apropos of nothing. ‘Though God knows where you’d marry. The church can’t give its blessing.’

  ‘Slow down, Ma! You can’t help liking him because he’s shown an interest in me, without being a multiple bigamist or on the run from Broadmoor. As far as we know. Isn’t that the bottom line?’

  Sadie turned away, twisting the J-cloth through shaking fingers. ‘Lowest form of wit, Angela.’

  ‘Sorry!’ winced Angela, assailed by a rush of guilt, filial tenderness and roaring resentment of her mother. The joints of Sadie’s fingers looked swollen, and not just from the cold. It was the arthritis kicking in, Angela knew. But when she’d offered to clean Fenton’s headstone, Sadie had feigned deafness and scrubbed at the granite with renewed zeal. She was determined to play the martyr.

  ‘Let me take your coat,’ said Conor as she stepped over the threshold.

  ‘Th-thanks.’ Angela twiste
d out of it, an idiot smile clamped to her face. ‘Ooh, your house is lovely!’

  Despite the cringe-making note of cliché, it was true. Angela was awe-struck. 23 Pacelli Close, Loxton, had looked an imposing detached house from the outside, flanked by other four-bedroomed detached houses, and surrounded by luxuriant but pruned trees, always a sign of middle-class affluence.

  But the inside was something else. A gleaming wooden floor, carefully littered with pastel rugs, swept up to a spiralling wooden staircase. Through a door to the left, she glimpsed a cream velvet sofa cradling gold-tasselled cushions, and beyond that, a pair of french windows, hung with amazing, ruched curtains. The sort you had to unswag every five seconds and dust ‒ or so she suspected. It was like something out of Homes & Interiors. No wonder his ‘daily’ was often a live-in ‘weekly’.

  ‘This is Shane,’ announced Conor, while she gawped.

  She turned a few degrees, with a smile not so much clamped in place as held by invisible fixative. A figure shuffled down the stairs, extending a hand.

  ‘How do you do?’ mumbled Shane.

  Angela gawped again, before muttering, ‘Pleased to meet you!’ and pumping his hand over-enthusiastically.

  He wasn’t what she’d expected. Conor’s son was a skinny stick-insect of a child with a prominent Adam’s apple, sticking-up mousy hair and a pair of pebbly glasses. He had nothing ‒ not an iota ‒ of his father’s stocky masculinity, red hair or green eyes ‒ nor any discernible prospect of succeeding to such attributes. Angela could only presume that Shane had been hit with the ugly stick via Kate’s genetic input. She was ashamed to find this suspicion comforting.

  ‘Goodness!’ said Angela lamely. ‘You don’t look like your dad. I mean, you’re clearly going to be ‒ taller.’

  Shane shrugged and tugged up a sock that couldn’t get a purchase on his skinny leg. He’s probably a nice, sensitive, introverted kid, thought Angela, ashamed of judging by appearances. He probably collects insects in jam jars ‒ and empties them down the back of his father’s fancy-women’s necks, a cynical inner voice surmised. Could it have been Robert’s?