Chained Reaction Read online

  “Lucy has another year of study to do, so I can’t expect her to drop everything. Besides I need to do this alone, Lucy will understand, not that it’s any of your business.” Jamie couldn’t help throwing that last line in seeing it was what drove Lucy crazy, the fact that Michael wouldn’t move on and get himself another girlfriend.

  “You had your fun, ruined her and made a fool of me. This place should be mine and so should Lucy. She is…” Michael started hiccupping and fell back onto the sofa.

  “Lucy isn’t ready to settle down with anyone and neither am I.” Jamie was finding the conversation uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure what Lucy and he had and tried not to scrutinise it for fear of finding out the truth.

  “She hasn’t told you, has she?

  “Told me what? Lucy is a free spirit; she can do and see who she likes. I made her no promises and she knows that.”

  “Why you…” Michael launched himself out of the settee with the whiskey bottle in one hand and a fist formed in the other. Jamie jumped back and watched as Michael stumbled and fell face down onto the wooden flooring, the whisky bottle smashing and seeping liquor into the floor grooves.

  Jamie helped him up and was met with little resistance as he half carried him into the spare room and pushed him up and onto the bed.

  “Sleep it off. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Go to hell,” Michael hissed back.

  He should never have taken his boat out and left Michael supposedly sleeping it off in the spare room. When he got back from trying to speak with Lucy, his car was gone and so was Michael. When the police came knocking at his door, he feared the worse, that Michael had been injured. Instead they were there to arrest him, Jamieson O’Sullivan, the registered owner of a car found abandoned, on suspicion of dangerous driving and fleeing the scene of an accident. Jamie offered no alibi and no denial. To do so would point the blame at Michael and he felt he had done enough to him. He was accepting the consequences of his actions.

  Unfortunately the judge was out to make an example of him seeing this wasn’t the first time he had been arrested and charged for a criminal act. Back in Northern Ireland, he’d been well-known by the local constabulary throughout his turbulent youth. If it hadn’t been for his English grandmother bringing him over to live in England with her, he would have been behind bars long before now. He couldn’t pay her back by having Michael, her other grandson and the one who was expected to help run the family business once he had graduated, end up being sent to prison. His cousin’s future would be destroyed because of something he had in a way initiated by his relationship with Lucy. It was obvious Michael was still in love with her.

  If he had known then that he would be sentenced to five years and Michael and Lucy would end up living together, he might have acted differently. It was too late to change things, Lucy was back with Michael now and if he told her the truth about that night, it would serve no purpose.

  Sure he had been tempted those first couple of years, locked up in that concrete box, his cell buddies, a serial burglar, a drug dealer, and a crazy guy who thought he was God. If he could have got his hands on Michael, he might have forced the truth out of him rather than have to go on another day paying for his crime. But now, it would feel more like retaliation for taking something far more precious than his freedom. He wanted her back but not by going down the path of bitter recriminations.

  * * *

  “Lucy, I’m tired. It’s been a long day and I’m used to sleeping alone.”

  He knew how cold his words sounded and witnessed the hurt in her eyes as she turned away from him and stood up.

  Moving over to where her dress lay draped across a wicker chair, she snatched it up and pulled it on over her head without bothering with her underwear. Grabbing up her knickers and bra, she shoved them into her handbag and then stood over him, hands on her hips, her features taut with anger.

  “You were right, you haven’t changed. Still a bastard who is capable of breaking my heart over and over again. You take but never give.” She spun on her heels and marched out.

  “Lucy, stop, come back.”

  He rushed to the door but she carried on to her car without a backward glance.

  The car screeched out of the driveway.

  * * *

  The following morning, Michael walked into her bedroom dressed in the same suit she had seen him leave in, on his way to the airport. She bolted upright and met his tense unsmiling features.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in New York?” she said.

  “My father rang me as I was stepping down on American soil and told me the good news. Caught the next available flight back.” His voice told her it was the opposite of good news and he already knew where she had been.

  Lucy could see by the dark circles under his eyes that he hadn’t slept on the plane. His short, layered brown hair was sticking out in tufts and he was unshaven making his boyish features jaded.

  She felt guilty and ashamed, not because of what she had done but because of what she was continuing to do. “What news might that be?” She reached over for her robe that Michael stood holding in his hand.

  “That Jamie has been released.” He stepped back.

  “What were you planning, a welcome home committee?” Her eyes met him levelly.

  “You don’t seem surprised by the news. Perhaps you have already given him his welcome home present. Susie tells me you went out yesterday afternoon and didn’t return until late. I tried ringing you before boarding the flight back.”

  She wrapped the robe around her negligee-clad body, feeling the vulnerability of her nakedness beneath the sheer garment. “Susie should learn to keep to the job she’s paid for and not report my every move back to you.”

  She went to walk past him when his hand shot out and ensnared her wrist. “You didn’t answer my question. Have you been with him?”

  “What if I have? I’m back here now, in your house and in your bed where I belong. Isn’t that what you are always telling me? I met him because he rang and now I’m back. You were right all along and now if you don’t mind, I need the bathroom.” She was fighting back the tears, her voice shaky.

  “Did you tell him then?” He still held onto her wrist.

  She glared back at him. “What difference does it make? Now please, let go of me.”

  His fingers came away from her wrist and Lucy turned and fled into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her. She couldn’t carry on like this any longer, lying to herself and trying to pretend what she was, what she had become was for the sake of her daughter. She had spent the last three and half years giving her body to a man she didn’t love whilst all the time her thoughts were with Jamie, and now it was obvious he didn’t want her, not permanently.

  She could hear Michael moving around in the bedroom, probably changing out of his crumpled suit. He would see the red shift dress lying on the bedroom floor screwed up along with the undergarments taken from her handbag. The same red dress she had purchased for a friend’s engagement party six months earlier that she had then changed back out of, ignoring Michael’s pleas for her to wear it and that he loved her in it.

  Opening the bathroom door, she stepped out at the precise moment that Michael was ripping the red dress apart with his hands. He threw the two pieces of fabric at her feet.

  “I’ll buy you another dress, one that won’t have the smell and touch of him all over it. Did he tell you what he plans to do? I’ll give him two months and he’ll be back inside. He even had the blasted nerve to ask father if he wants to purchase the boathouse from him. That property should have been mine.”

  “He’s selling the boathouse.” She muttered, a sick hollow feeling rising up within.

  “Yes, darling. Obviously he isn’t as sentimental as you over your former little love nest. Father has of course agreed, seeing the damn property was originally part of the estate and should never have been segregated.”

  Lucy started dressing not caring that
Michael was watching her every move. “Why do you resent and hate him so much? I know it’s not all because of me, you’ve never accepted him. Is it because he was your grandmother’s favourite?”

  Michael’s expression darkened and she knew then whatever the reason was for his hatred of Jamie; she had only played a small part of it in the beginning. Now it had escalated into something else and she doubted even Michael knew why and how it had all started.

  She wasn’t blameless, and in a way fuelled it by being here. At the time she had justified it by blaming Jamie for abandoning her and leaving her no choice. Finally she has woken up to the fact that the mistakes were all hers and moving in with Michael was the biggest one of all.

  “I don’t hate him, in fact if anything it’s total indifference I feel. What does madden me though is the way my grandmother felt duty bound to take the little bastard in. His father was a drunken gambler who never amounted to anything whilst my father worked hard to bring the family business back from bankruptcy, yet she always favoured the black sheep of the family.”

  “He was still her son and your father’s brother and Jamie’s part of that family,” she said.

  “Never, and the sooner he’s gone from here, the better. There’s nothing here for him now. And by the way, father is handing over my grandmother’s estate which includes the boathouse as a wedding present.”

  That statement caused her to drop her hairbrush and turn from the mirror to face him.

  “Married, what an earth gave him that crazy idea?”

  “I told him, next month, it’s all booked up.” A small sneer appeared. “Come on, Lucy, it’s about time. Father has been growing impatient. He wants to hand everything over to me but needs to know I’m responsible enough.”

  “You’re crazy. Married, that was never part of the deal. In fact I have already allowed this charade to go too far. I think it’s time I moved out.” Lucy went over to her wardrobe and took down a medium-sized suitcase from the shelving area above the hangers. She placed it on the bed and opened it up.

  Michael started pacing the room, a muscle twitching in his cheek indicating his pent-up frustration. Lucy glanced nervously at the door, afraid now of the scene that was unfolding and especially the unpredictability of Michael’s temper.

  “I wanted to take care of you, love you. But you never gave us a chance, always obsessing about Jamie. He was going to leave you, did he tell you that? He thinks I owe him. Well he did me no great favour.” He moved towards her.

  Lucy backed away until she was up against the bedside cabinet. Her hand shot behind her and shaky fingers enfolded the ornate gold lamp stand. The fear must have been so transparent because Michael immediately stepped away from her and raised his hands as if defending himself.

  “Lucy, I’m not going to hurt you, I could never. You must know that.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, his torso leaning forward, elbows on his knees and clasped his face within his hands.

  “Do you know what it felt like all these years, the constant pressure to be like my father, to not disappoint him and let him down? Jamie had none of that. He did and acted as he damn well pleased. If he wanted to bugger off backpacking around Europe, he could, whilst I had to sit in on endless boring board meetings. In fact maybe I would have preferred to have been sent down. At least I would have been free of the expectation wanted from me.” He raised his face.

  Lucy stared at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I thought Jamie would have told you long before now but then perhaps he had his own agenda.”

  She stood directly in front of him, no longer fearful. “It was you who stole Jamie’s car that night and caused that accident. You allowed Jamie to take the blame. Why?” She could feel herself begin to shake with the emergence of opposing emotions flooding through her. Anger, frustration, sorrow, regret, it was all there for the last lost four and a half years. How come she hadn’t realised or sensed it?

  “You robbed him, us, our daughter of so much. How could you have lied and tricked me like that knowing how much hurt and suffering I was going through? I thought you wanted to help me when all the time you could have done far more simply by telling the truth.”

  Her words snapped Michael out of his deflated act because to Lucy, his self-pity was simply that. She certainly didn’t feel sorry for him, her narrowed condemning glare revealing nothing he said now would bring her back to him.

  Michael stood up and went over to her dressing table. He picked up a silver framed photograph and brought it over to her. He looked at it for a second and then dropped it into the open suitcase. It was a head and shoulders shot taken in hospital of Lucy holding her newly born daughter in her arms.

  “Why don’t you ask Jamie the same thing, he was the martyr in all this, after all. Such a hero, taking the blame for another man’s crime,” he hissed out.

  Lucy snatched items of clothing from the hangers and placed them into the suitcase, and threw undergarments from the drawers in the same haphazard way. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. Michael’s confession was nothing compared to the hurt she was experiencing because of what she felt was Jamie’s betrayal of her. He was incapable of confiding in her and would rather she think the worst of him than tell her the truth.

  Maybe Michael was right that Jamie had been about to dump her that night. She thought he had been acting strange those last few weeks because he was picking up on the defensive vibes she was giving off. Questioning him about where their relationship was heading and what he wanted for the future was enough to frighten any man off but the big question she had yet to put to him was all about timing.

  She thought back to the night of Jamie’s arrest. That was the same night she had made a decision to tell him and let him decide. She was due to go to the boathouse when she had finished her shift that night but Jamie had turned up hours earlier. Arriving in his boat, he had moored it up by the pub where she was working not far from his boathouse. She could see he was upset and she thought it was because Michael had told him she was pregnant. She wanted to explain that Michael had found out from another source, her so-called best friend, but the bar was busy that night and the landlord wouldn’t allow her ten minutes alone with him. Jamie had stormed out.

  “Where are you going? What are you going to do? It’s obvious you can’t run to him.” Michael’s voice brought her back to her present predicament.

  “I’m going home, back to my mother. I should be able to find a teaching position locally and Caitlin will be at full-time schooling.” The thought of moving in with her sanctimonious mother was not an ideal option but it was the only one she had.

  “You’ll be back, just like the last time,” he taunted her.

  “Not this time. I stayed with you because I felt nothing, had nothing. I had given it all to Jamie and then to my daughter. I wasn’t living, purely getting through day to day.”

  He let out a short bitter laugh. “You and me both. I’m the only one who understands you. Your coldness and lack of enthusiasm in bed doesn’t offend me, it turns me on.”

  Lucy ran from the bedroom in search of her daughter. She found her in the nanny’s bedroom sitting in front of the television whilst Susie was lying on her bed talking into her mobile. She quickly snapped the phone shut and came off the bed.

  Taking her daughter’s hand, Lucy removed her from the cartoon TV station and took her out into the hallway.

  “Caitlin, darling,” Lucy knelt down and tucked a strand of curly dark hair behind her daughter’s ear. “We’re going on a holiday to see Granny in Scotland.”

  Her daughter hadn’t seen her grandmother for several years and it was obvious by her blank look she had no memory of her. Lucy wasn’t looking forward to this either. She hadn’t even spoken to her mother about coming to stay. “We’re going to have fun time together, you and me.”

  “Is Michael coming?” her daughter said in a small voice.

  “No, he’s
staying behind with Susie,” she replied.

  Caitlin grinned and hugged her favourite bear to her. Lucy didn’t feel guilty about taking her away from Michael; he had never formed a bond and was jealous of any time she spent with her daughter. Lucy went back into the nanny’s bedroom and spoke to her briefly.

  An hour later she was placing her house keys, car keys and credit cards down on the hall side table. It all belonged to Michael. She wanted only to take what she had bought with her own money. Picking up the suitcases, she then walked out the front door and called back over her shoulder, “Caitlin, hurry up darling, the taxi is here.” “Caitlin,” Jamie’s voice repeated the name as if saying a curse. “My mother’s name.”

  The cases dropped from her hands onto the paved pathway. She stared back into those dark intense eyes and watched as his gaze fell upon the dark-haired child who now stood by her side staring curiously up at him.

  He held up a hand and reached out to touch the thick dark curls that surrounded their daughter’s head.

  She knew her secret was out. Without meaning to, she drew Caitlin behind her away from his touch and it was then that she saw the pain and regret within his eyes.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you knew, that Michael had told you. Then yesterday I realised you didn’t want to know.”

  “You are so wrong. If I had known, I would have…”

  “What, Jamie, read my letters, allowed me to visit you, ring me? You went to prison for another man’s crime. The message couldn’t be any clearer.”

  Caitlin, sensing the upset, was hugging her leg. This wasn’t fair on her, none of it was.

  “Is that why you moved in with Michael, to punish me?”

  “Michael offered a roof for me and our daughter. I could no longer afford the rent on my flat, I got behind with my studies and my mother wasn’t speaking to me.”