The Confession, page 21
I sobbed then, unable to see through the tears. Me, the hard man.
‘I’m your big brother, Charlie. You know I’d do anything for you. Please, come back.’
I wanted to climb on to the bed and wrap her in my arms, just like I used to when we were kids. I wanted to protect her from all the bad in the world.
For so long it had been just the two of us. I couldn’t imagine being without her.
They had to help me from the room.
I went through the whole gamut after that.
Shock. Denial. Devastation.
Confusion. Why had Charlie walked home alone that night and not waited for a cab or a lift? Had she been running from somebody or something?
Anger. She had put her safety at risk, taking a road that didn’t even have a properly marked footpath, the police said. The driver had probably sped off in shock. The cops assumed he or she would hand themselves in when the realization of what they’d done sank in.
Fury. I had abandoned her that night. The one time I wasn’t there for her, the worst had happened.
And loneliness. I felt so terribly alone in the world. I had nobody left. No siblings. No parents. No extended family. No close friends.
I picked a small church on the Coast Road for Charlie’s funeral, near the graveyard where we would bury her. I thought there’d just be a handful of us. I’d had time to think it through – the normal three-day funeral ritual didn’t apply in those circumstances. The cops wanted a post mortem and Charlie was held in the morgue for a week before she was released.
In that time, word had spread through her college and wider circle.
The church was packed to capacity, and the line of people coming up to shake my hand at the end seemed to go on and on. I was impatient, monosyllabic. I just wanted to get out of there, get her buried and go home.
For the first time in my life I felt myself longing for drink – anything that could send me into oblivion.
But then I realized that the numbers at her funeral meant something so special, it was worth enduring.
Charlie was loved. She was so loved.
Some of her best friends I knew. But with them were their families – all of them had met Charlie and brought her into their hearts. The rest of her nursing class came, her lecturers and tutors. One man nearly broke down as he shook my hand.
‘She was amazing,’ he sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry.’
A colleague had to take his arm and move him so I could continue with the endless handshakes.
People returned to their seats and waited for me to lead the funeral cortege from the church. I stood up, almost crippled by the weight of grief. Five boys, her friends from college, joined me in hoisting her coffin on to our shoulders and carrying her for the last time.
Charlie had lived for such a short time. She’d had a horrible start, but she’d loved her life and she had been happy. Despite Betty and Seamie.
Just before we exited the church, I saw him.
I almost didn’t. My head was bowed as we walked down the aisle, but at the bottom I looked up at the mourners who’d come to say goodbye to Charlie and hadn’t even been able to get a seat for the Mass.
He caught my eye because something about his suit made me think he hadn’t been in the line at the top of the church. Charlie’s friends were all of a type, mainly students, and, while dressed in their best today, none of them had the money for what he wore. I looked at his face, lowered as her coffin passed, his hands clasped in prayer, watch visible just under the suit. A Bulgari.
His eyes were red and puffy. He’d been crying.
It was him. The man I’d seen in HM Capital. What was he doing at Charlie’s funeral?
Julie
I walk up the centre aisle behind the coffin, flanked by my mam and Helen. Harry is being carried by my dad and my brothers. The only family he had and, really, they’re only doing it for me.
All I can concentrate on right now is putting one foot in front of the other. Getting up to the top of the church and into my seat. This must be what PTSD feels like. Everything that’s happened over the last few weeks, over a lifetime with Harry, it’s all come to this. Is it really happening? Is he really gone?
I can’t believe the suddenness of it. The finality. Even with all those days he lay in that hospital bed.
The offertory table in the middle of the church catches my eye. We’ve left out Harry’s boxing gloves, an Ireland rugby shirt and his most-read novel, the well-thumbed copy of The Count of Monte Cristo.
The sight of his favourite things brings a lump to my throat and I hang my head.
I hate you, Harry, I say to myself. I hate you for ruining everything. What memories have you left me with?
It’s a large funeral, as I thought it would be. I know there are a few people here who’ve come because they are well-mannered, kind-hearted people. They’re here to say a respectful goodbye.
But the rest of them are here out of either nosiness or nastiness.
At the end of the Mass they form a line and come up, one by one, to shake the hand of Harry’s widow. His stepmother, despite the invite, hasn’t bothered to come. Just as well. I can imagine Harry sitting up in the coffin and telling her to fuck off out of the church, miserable, hypochondriac bitch. Then she’d tell everybody she had some mad illness, just to prove she was actually sicker than dead Harry.
I almost smile. There are so many things only we talked about, little jokes only he would understand. In the last few years we’d started to settle into a nice middle-aged relationship that I hadn’t even appreciated. We knew each other, our ways and thoughts. There was a relief to it, after all the drama.
Is that why I never pushed for the full truth about the women he’d slept with? Was it because we’d had to deal with so much pain I couldn’t bear any more? There must be some logical reason for me not getting to the bottom of what had happened with the Carter girl. I knew Harry always got what he wanted. Why was I so quick to assume his innocence – every time?
And there’s that little voice again.
You loved him.
That was my crime, for so long.
I take each proffered hand, making sure to make eye contact with the person in front of me, while my head spins with what ifs.
Harry lived for weeks after Carney’s assault. But he never came back. I can’t even remember the last words we exchanged. Was it something to do with the remote control? Had I asked him to make me tea?
No. I remember.
We were watching the crime drama and Harry said, ‘I think he did it,’ pointing at some character on the screen. I shushed him.
I shushed him.
I close my eyes, until Mam nudges me softly and practically lifts my hand to greet the next in line.
There’s nobody I wouldn’t expect among these fellow mourners.
Those who Harry really sold out in the bank, acolytes of Richard’s and other board members, haven’t come. Alice is right. I would have noticed, even unconsciously, if any of them had turned up.
Some of the people who lost badly in Harry’s investments are here. But I know these men and women. They’re decent. I can see it in their faces – the confusion over whether they made the right choice to come along and then their resolve when they see me, the woman left to deal with the fallout. There’s no bitterness there, not towards me, anyway.
Not one of them would have wished Harry in that box just a few feet away from us, even if they had cause to.
The line is reaching a conclusion.
That’s when I see her and my blood starts to boil.
Those bloody teeth.
Lily. The woman who came to our house that New Year’s night so many moons ago. The woman he no doubt screwed while I was entertaining our guests.
She’s like a gift from God. Seeing her, I’m no longer a mess of emotion, hating my husband one minute, wishing he was still alive because I miss him so much the next.
I feel only one thing in Lily’s presence. Fury at what Harry put me through.
She arrives in front of me. Lily hasn’t aged as well as me. She’s put on weight and her skinny frame can’t hold it. Her mouth and eyes are puckered at the sides. Her hair is scraped into a messy ponytail, her make-up barely there. She looks exhausted.
Why has she come?
I sit up, feeling more alert than I have in a long time.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she says. I take her hand like she’s just any other person in the queue but hold it tight. Too tight.
She tries to free herself, but my grip is firm and I pull her down towards me.
‘Why are you here?’ I whisper when she’s close enough for those around not to hear.
She turns her face to mine and I get a waft of Chanel No. 5. My favourite perfume.
‘I was in love with Harry,’ she says.
And I can see in her mean little eyes that it’s the truth.
I drop her hand like I’ve been scalded.
It had just been sex, that’s what Harry had said. He’d never mentioned love.
Even from beyond the grave, he can hurt me.
My mother, sensing something is up, leans across.
‘Hello, I’m Harry’s mother-in-law. Will you be coming on to the graveyard?’
Lily straightens.
‘No, I’m sorry. I have my son with me. He’s outside. I must get going.’
My gut twists. I suspect something so terrible I can barely breathe.
‘How old is he?’ I ask.
She looks at me, unwavering, and I see a little fire in her eyes.
I wait for it, bracing myself. Don’t say eleven! I scream in my head. Please, don’t say eleven.
‘He’s one,’ she says, and the fire dies. ‘My husband is with him. I’d better go. Sorry, again.’
She moves on, and I feel like a tyre that has just had a valve opened, the air hissing out of my lungs in relief.
The handshakes finish and the priest completes the blessing. The rest of the day is a blur.
Later I lie alone in bed, calm after Mam consented to me taking a Valium (I’ve never had a problem with prescription drugs; Mam just thinks, because I drank, I must have abused all substances). I think about Lily coming and then wonder how many other women there were in that church who’d slept with Harry.
Women were always his Achilles’ heel.
JP Carney must have known one of them.
It must be her, the one from that night, the one I’ve been avoiding thinking about.
The answer to what Carney did must lie there.
JP
The Guards told me it was natural that I would try to find meaning in Charlie’s death. To look for answers where there were none. They didn’t understand. I knew there had to be more to it.
In the first instance, how the hell did Harry McNamara (I looked him up and found out his name the day she was buried) know of Charlie’s existence, let alone know her well enough to turn up at her funeral? I’d serviced office equipment at his bank. We’d never exchanged a word.
My mind went into overdrive.
Charlie was private when it came to her love life. I figured she didn’t bring boyfriends around for fear of me scaring them off, intentionally and unintentionally. I was prickly and protective, the worst type of big brother.
But now I wondered if she’d had one boyfriend in particular and if she’d been keeping him secret because she knew I’d disapprove. She worried so much what people thought, and Harry McNamara was a married man. The only reason he’d be interested in somebody like Charlie would be for sex. She was smart enough to know that’s what people would think and what I, for one, would probably point out.
What else had I not known? If she’d been keeping that big a secret, then perhaps there were more.
The driver who’d killed her still hadn’t come forward, and the police considered that strange. The Guard who’d broken the news told me a week after Charlie’s funeral that they would be appealing to the public for information.
‘Normally, in a situation where the crash was an accident, the driver hands himself in quite soon after,’ she said. ‘It takes them a few days to deal with their own shock but when they finally realize what they’ve done they come clean. Very few people can live with the guilt. It’s unusual for it to go this long.’
‘Unusual why?’ I asked.
She shrugged, as if she had no answer.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Do you think Charlie could have been knocked down on purpose? Are you even sure that she was knocked down? What if somebody hurt her and then just . . . just dumped her body?’
The Guard shook her head adamantly.
‘That’s what the post mortem was for,’ she explained. ‘The injuries Charlie sustained were compatible with being hit by a fast-moving vehicle.’
‘But . . . could somebody have hit her on purpose?’
She shook her head again, but there was slightly less vehemence in this one.
‘The stretch of road where she was hit – it’s badly lit. There are no paths. It’s more likely somebody was driving home and came upon her without even realizing. Maybe she stepped out on to the road to thumb a lift.’
‘So why did you say it’s unusual nobody has come forward?’
‘Don’t you worry, John Paul. There wasn’t anybody in Charlie’s life who wanted to hurt her. We’ve looked. She was a well-liked girl. And you don’t think anybody was out to get at you, who then might have targeted your sister. So it had to have been an accident. We’ll find whoever did it. It’s very rare for somebody to get away with a hit-and-run. It’s hard to hide the evidence when it involves a great big bloody car.’
As terrible as it sounds, the notion that Charlie had been killed deliberately was almost easier to grasp than what they said was the truth – that she’d died as the result of an accident – an arbitrary, random tragedy that could have happened to anybody. There had to be more to it.
But if somebody had driven into her on purpose, they would have had to know that she was on that road at that time, and alone.
Charlie’s phone had smashed when her bag landed on the road, but the SIM card was retrievable. I put it in my phone to find her friends’ numbers. Those jotted down, I scrolled through the contacts list to see if she had a ‘Harry’ there, or somebody I didn’t recognize. There were lots of blokes’ names, but none that began with H. It didn’t mean anything. She might have had data saved on the actual phone and not the SIM card.
I went into the messages box and read through the few she’d saved. It took me a while to get past the first name in the folder, my own. Instead of John Paul, she’d saved me as J Pee-Pee Head – a term of affection, believe it or not, from when we were kids. The messages she’d sent me the night she died were there, asking me was I still angry and then for a lift. The crushing feeling I’d had in my chest ever since tightened as I re-read them.
If only, if only, if only.
I hadn’t been back to work since and knew I couldn’t go in there again. I couldn’t see Sandra again. She’d tried to talk to me at the funeral, but the second she uttered the words ‘You couldn’t have known’, I had to walk away. The poor girl didn’t deserve it, but I knew that if she stayed in my life, every time I looked at her I would be reminded. I’d chosen to be with Sandra rather than answer my sister’s call. I was all Charlie had in the world and I’d ignored her.
I shut my eyes to block out the sight of her last messages and then opened them again. I wanted to feel guilty. It was better than feeling despairing and hopeless.
There were other messages – very few, considering how often she was on her phone. Their content was what you’d expect. Organizing lunch dates, discussing outfits for parties, complaining about night shifts at the hospital.
Ten messages in total on a phone with a storage capacity for many more.
Had she been deleting texts?
I went into the trash folder on a whim and found an exchange buried there.
It was to her friend, Hazel.
C – You’re right, I should put my foot down and stop letting him call the shots.
H – I sort of meant you should put your foot down & tell him to feck off. You’re worth more.
C – I know hon. I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t love him & I know he loves me.
H – Ah, sorry. No lectures from me babe. Look at the fecking trail of destruction behind me last month. 3x1-night stands and pretty sure I have an STD.
C – Dirty bitch!!!
H – I’m messing. Delete that in case somebody sees it.
That was it.
My sister had been in love. I hadn’t even known.
I searched her photos folder, but it was even more fruitless. There were a couple of the two of us that I hadn’t seen before. They were the only ones she was in, really. She wasn’t a bit vain. No selfies, like you’d find on most girls’ phones.
In fact, I had very few photos of her. When you spend more or less every day of your life with somebody, you don’t really need to take pictures.
I used this as a reason to ring Hazel. I rang and asked her would she drop over any photos she had of Charlie, so I could get copies.
She came over that night. She’d gone around my sister’s friends and collected a bulky envelope of photographs.
‘Thanks for doing this,’ I said, welcoming her in. It was pissing rain outside and she was dripping wet, her dark hair stuck to her face. ‘Shit. You should have called. I didn’t realize it was so bad out – I’d have come to you.’
She shook her head and pulled the envelope from her bag.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s our job to rally round you, not the other way around. Thank God they’re dry. I was worried. This bag is new; I didn’t know if it would keep the rain out. I must have looked like a right nut-job pelting down the road from the bus, trying to protect my bag and not my head.’
