‘What are you doing here, Jack?’ she asked, wiping her nose with her hand and sniffing.
Jack moved slowly towards her, holding her gaze until he had reached the sofa. He sat down beside her, turning to her and reached for her hand.
‘I will do anything to marry you on Saturday, Molly. Anything.’
Molly started to say something but he held up his hand to stop her. ‘Please — just let me finish. I know that I have done something really fucking stupid and I can’t tell you why except that it has nothing to do with how I feel about you. Molly, I love you. We are great together. We have our whole lives mapped out in front of us and I know that what I did was wrong and stupid and I regret it with every bone in my body but please, please, forgive me. Molly, please marry me. This Saturday. Please.’
Molly looked at Jack’s beautiful blue eyes, welling with tears themselves, and pleading with her. He had never looked more handsome. Sitting beside him on the sofa she once more felt the comfort of his size, the relief of having someone to look after her. A single tear dribbled down his cheek.
‘You are everything to me, Molly,’ he said, and she knew he meant it. Her hardened heart started to soften. He took her face in his hand and at his touch she started to feel her heart racing in that delicious way. Her body was softening too.
‘Molly, my beautiful Molly,’ he whispered and she closed her eyes and tried to shut out everything that had happened as his hand slipped underneath her dress and worked its way up her thigh, stopping only to finger the garter belt she had quite forgotten she was wearing.
As usual, when Jack’s fingers did the walking, Molly was putty in his hands.
‘I swear to you it will never happen again,’ he whispered as his lips met her throat and his tongue found her ear. He knew that drove her crazy.
‘I give you my word. I give you everything I have. One little slip-up shouldn’t stand in the way of our perfect life together, Molly. You know that. I know you do.’
Molly’s heart slowed down, her body hardened again. The bits of her that had been quivering stopped. She opened her eyes.
‘One little slip-up?’ she said.
‘I just met her today,’ Jack said, his hand stopping on her thigh as he felt the change in his fiancée’s demeanour. ‘She came on to me and like the weak pathetic idiot that I am, I let her. If I could have today again I would do it so differently, you have to believe me.’
Molly sat up straight and pushed Jack’s hand away from her leg.
‘You want today again, Jack? But what about the other days? What would you do about all the other days?’
‘What other days?’ He looked at her, bewildered and hurt.
He doesn’t know, thought Molly, seeing her reflection in those big blue pools of Jack’s eyes. He doesn’t know that I have talked to Jess. And Rangi.
‘The days when you have been having sex with my best friend and anybody else in a matching jacket and pants, Jack. Those days.’ She wrenched the garter belt over her boot and aimed it at Jack like a slingshot.
For a moment Molly saw panic in her former fiancé’s eyes but almost instantly it turned to something else. She let the garter drop to the floor.
‘That bitch!’ His interest in Molly momentarily evaporated as he focused elsewhere.
‘That fucking bitch. You know why she’s dobbed me in, don’t you? I dumped her. She got too clingy and I dumped her. The cow. And now she is ruining my life and yours. Some fucking friend, Molly. Some fucking friend.’
Suddenly Molly didn’t feel like crying any more. She wiped her nose on one of her mother’s precious Versace cushions and looked up at Jack, dry eyed.
‘So let me get this straight, Jack. Jess has ruined your life by telling me, your fiancée, about all the other women you, my fiancé, have had in the lead-up to our wedding. Is that right?’
Jack looked horrified.
‘Well, when you put it like that it doesn’t sound so good but what I meant was …’
‘You mean, “Here we have husband-material Jack White. Tested by hundreds and still squeaky clean.” Don’t bother with the advertising spin on this one. You’ve been in the business too long.’
Jack flopped into the armchair on the opposite side of Bobs’ living room.
‘Molly, I didn’t come here to fight with you. I came to patch things up. Work things out. I’ve been a prize dick, I can see that, but for you I will change. For you I will do anything.’
‘Jack, you didn’t even bother to come looking for me when I caught you with your fancy-woman. That is the least you could have done.’
‘You were gone by the time I got dre—’ he broke off. ‘You were gone by the time I came looking for you. I ran to the lifts but there was no sign of you. There didn’t seem much point in going any further. I knew you would come home or come here eventually. Anyway, that’s in the past, Molly. I want to talk about our future. About how I can change.’
Molly looked at the man she thought she had loved so much and made up her mind.
‘I don’t want you to change, Jack,’ she said, standing up. ‘You know, I don’t even think you are the problem. I think I’ll do the changing instead. I have worked really hard my whole life to be the me that you have dumped on. I’ve been a really good daughter to an occasionally flaky mum. I’ve been an excellent student even though I’m by far not the brightest bulb on the chandelier. I made my business work by giving it 16 hours a day. I’m nice to people. I always go to the gym. I never drink too much. I’ve never taken drugs. I don’t eat fat. I help blind people across the street. And do you know where all this trying so hard for my whole bloody life has got me? Standing here staring at the lying, cheating, two-timing piece of shit I made myself perfect for.’
Her face aflame, Molly put her arms on Jack’s chair and leaned in to his face.
‘Gee, I’m so glad it was all worth it,’ she spat at him.
Jack was stunned. He had never seen her like this. ‘So am I right in thinking the wedding is off?’ he asked, nervously.
‘Dead right, buster,’ Molly shot into his face. ‘But before you walk out of this house and out of my life for ever and ever amen, I want to know one thing, Jack. Just one thing. And the least you can do is answer me honestly. You owe me that.’
They stared at each other in frozen silence.
‘Did you ever love me, Jack?’ Molly asked slowly. ‘I mean, really love me?’
Jack tried to escape her gaze but it was impossible. With one hand, she reached over and grabbed his handsome chin, piercing him with her eyes.
‘Did you?’
‘Molly,’ he said as his own eyes again filled with tears. ‘I just walked into that shop and saw you there surrounded by peonies and poppies and beautiful things with your perfect skin and your beautiful body and that smile, Molly, that smile. I just looked at you and thought, “She fits”.’
‘Did. You. Love. Me.’
Jack’s tears brimmed over and Molly thought she saw a glimmer of the truth.
‘Hell, Molly. I don’t even know what love is.’
She stood up and walked out of the living room and opened the front door.
‘Goodbye, Jack,’ she said as the man in her life walked out of it.
Chapter 8
1969
Brendan Byrne poured another pint of Guinness and thanked the Lord as he did so.
Hadn’t he been run off his feet since Margaret Mary O’Reilly saw a vision of the Holy Virgin just a hop, skip and a jump from his very own doorway? And it’d been a while since his feet had seen so much exercise.
‘So how did she know it was the Virgin, then?’ Mickey O’Meara was asking Seamus Mahoney. ‘How did she know it wasn’t someone else who looks exactly like her?’
Seamus looked at the crusty old goat sitting at the bar and wondered how he had he ever got to 55 without having his head knocked off his shoulders for being a smart-arse.
‘Well, Mickey, how many visions of people who look just like the Vi
rgin Mary but aren’t actually her have you heard about before? I think after nearly 2000 years it’s pretty safe to assume that when a Virgin-like apparition miraculously appears on a hillside it is Our Lady and not some other lady. It’s called having a little faith.’
Mickey looked doubtfully into his pint and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sounded a lot like that Ingrid Bergman to me, that’s all I’m saying, Seamus. No need to go getting all red in the face, now.’
Seamus was getting his knickers in a twist all right, despite trying his hardest not to.
‘And since when have there been visions of American film stars appearing in the Irish countryside, Mickey? You’ve taken leave of your senses, you eejit. Who’s going to come for miles to see Ingrid Bergman? Who’s going to worship at her feet?’
Again the older man turned to his drink.
‘They already do, Seamus. Come for miles to see Ingrid Bergman. At the picture theatres in Cork. And they pay good money for the privilege.’
Brendan leaned over the bar and signalled to Seamus to come in closer.
‘Take my advice, Seamus, and leave off of Ingrid Bergman. The old bastard’s never been the same since some fool took him nearly 20 years ago to see her play a nun with your man who sings I’m dreaming of a White Christmas. He’s mad for her.’
Seamus nodded sagely and handed Brendan his empty mug, indicating with the slightest raise of an eyebrow that another would be well appreciated.
‘Didn’t she disgrace herself, your friend Ingrid, Mickey?’ said Seamus, ignoring Brendan’s advice and turning back to the old fellow.
‘Didn’t she have a whole crop of kids to some dark fellow while she was still married to someone else?’
Mickey sputtered in his beer.
‘She most certainly did not!’ he remonstrated. ‘Who told you that? Some … some … some Englishman, I’ll bet. Pure as the driven snow, Seamus. She’s a bride of bleedin’ Christ, after all.’
The din in the bar was getting louder and louder and while Seamus doubted that any conversation was as pointless as his, he suspected that the Virgin was at the root of most of it.
‘Well, if being an apostle of degradation doesn’t count Ingrid Bergman out of being a holy vision,’ Seamus said into the ear of the sulky old man, ‘still being alive probably does. Had you thought of that, Mickey?’
With that he swilled down the last of his pint and banged the empty glass on the counter, nodding his head by way of a goodbye to Brendan.
As he walked home for his by now no doubt burned and ruined dinner, he fumed over Mickey O’Meara’s miserable outlook. Couldn’t he just shut up like everyone else and thank God that a miracle had blessed the village of Ballymahoe?
But something the old man had said had struck a note with Seamus and he couldn’t shake it.
‘They paid money for the privilege …’
There was something in that, he was sure.
Chapter 9
Wednesday, 17 February 1999
Molly Brown had one hell of a headache.
As well as finding out in the worst possible way that her wedding was a big fat non-starter, the aftershock of drinking a clever combination of beer, wine, margarita and gin was kicking in.
After closing the door on Jack and life as she knew it, she had headed back to the living room and made a beeline for Vivienne’s gorgeous matching luggage discarded in all the excitement. Grabbing her aunt’s handbag, Molly had flopped into the armchair, which was still warm from Jack’s butt.
Closing her eyes and concentrating on the pain in her head instead of the one in her heart, Molly had fished around in the Louis Vuitton shoulder bag for the supply of Tylenol and Advil she knew Viv would have brought with her.
Failing to locate them, she flagged the Braille, opened her eyes and had a good perv. If the painkillers were making themselves so hard to find there must be some pretty good stuff in here. And anyway, how can a girl in my condition resist checking out the contents of another woman’s handbag? thought Molly. Just the distraction I need.
Sure enough, it was pretty good pickings.
There was Viv’s Hermes diary, a selection of Chanel lipsticks in almost every shade of brown, a Tiffany’s compact, the leather chequebook holder that Molly had made in craftwork at high school, a comb, a miniature bottle of non-CFC hairspray, a roll of sugarless mints, a gold-plated manicure set, a beautiful kid leather travel folder with Viv’s passport and travel documents and an opened envelope with an Irish stamp.
Without stopping to wonder if she should, Molly opened the envelope. The letterhead read O’Rellys in big letters, followed by a Dublin address and phone number.
Dear Ms Connor,
Thanks for your inquiry of last month regarding the whereabouts of your brother Tom.
To be honest with you, we haven’t had an awful lot of luck in tracking the fellow down and were wondering if you had any further information that could shed some light on the matter.
I don’t know if you’ve spent much time in Ireland but West Cork’s a fairly big sort of a place and there’s an awful lot of Toms there. No actual Tom Connors by the looks of things but it’s possible he has changed his name in the 45 years since you’ve seen him or goes by another.
As it happens, Connor is not a particularly common name. Is there any chance it could once have had an ‘O’ before it? As in O’Connor?
Initial phone inquiries made to our contacts in Tarooragh have met with a dead end and I’m sorry to tell you the deposit you sent us has been exhausted.
We await further instructions from you. Would you like us to assign our Relate team to the search for Tom Connor? Our pool of experienced private investigators have had great success in the past finding relatives for people such as yourself.
Of course there would be a further fee involved should you wish to go down this road.
Also, upon finding Tom Connor, would you wish to travel to Ireland to meet him, have him travel to the United States to meet you, or would you prefer to correspond via the post?
It’s important that we know this in the event that we find him. We look forward to hearing from you.
Regards
Charlie Ahern
Molly stared at the letter in disbelief. On top of everything she had now found out an uncle she had never known existed was missing. Was there no end to it?
Forgetting her headache, she sprang out of the armchair and raced up the stairs, bursting into her mother’s bedroom.
Bobs was sitting on the bed sobbing into a perfectly pressed hanky, sipping gin from the not very secret stash she kept in her bedside cabinet while Vivienne reclined on the chaise drinking from the toothbrush mug in a ‘joining ’em not beating ’em’ sort of fashion.
They both stared at Molly, half scared, half pitying.
‘So what did you tell him?’ started Vivienne.
‘Bugger him,’ said Molly, waving the letter at her aunt and her mother. ‘He’s history. It’s Tom Connor I’m on to now. Why did I not know about him before? Are there any other family skeletons you might like to tell me about? Is there anything else I don’t know? Was I plucked from a desert island after being raised by chimps for the first five years of my life? Are the Kennedys actually alive and living the high life in Acapulco? What is going on?’
The older women exchanged an unfathomable glance.
‘You tell her,’ said Bobs. ‘It was your idea.’
‘You tell her. You’re her mother,’ Vivienne retaliated.
‘And not a very good one, according to you, darling sister. I probably can’t be trusted.’
Molly threw up her hands in exasperation.
‘That’s right. Make it about you. Never mind that I seem to be living a life cocooned in a mystery wrapped in an enigma and surrounded by lunatics,’ she flopped onto the end of the chaise.
‘Viv,’ she implored her aunt, ‘who is Tom Connor?’
Vivienne reached over and took Molly’s hand, squeezing it so slowly it took Moll
y a while to realise it wasn’t a gesture of love and affection.
‘Don’t ever go through my things again,’ said her aunt with a forced smile that belied the menace in her voice, ‘or I will kill you. Okay?’ She released her grip and took a second to compose herself.
‘Molly, you know your grandparents split up when I was three and your mom was two? Your grandad came here with Bobs and your grandma took me to New York?’
Molly nodded.
‘When Mom died last year, the resthome sent me a box of her stuff. Stuff I’d never seen before. Stuff I never knew existed. There were some letters from our grandmother, your great-grandmother. Just two letters to be precise. I guess she stopped writing when Mom never answered her. But the letters refer to Tom. To the Tom that was left behind. To our big brother Tom.’
Molly was gobsmacked.
‘You mean they not only split up you girls but they left their son behind? In Ireland?’
Bobs reached over for the gin bottle. ‘Tipple, anyone?’
Vivienne held out her toothbrush mug for a refill and Molly picked up a teacup from beside Bobs’ bed, tipped its contents into a potted palm behind the chaise and held it out too.
‘You have to understand,’ said Bobs, ‘that they were really quite loony. By all accounts they couldn’t agree on even the simplest thing and when they split I can only imagine the histrionics over who was going where with whom.’
‘So do you know how old Tom was? Do you know anything about him? Mum, didn’t Grandad ever mention him?’