Brothers & Sisters Read online

  ‘Just something… something came up.’ He didn’t elaborate and poured himself some tea.

  ‘Something happen?’ Louise was perplexed, he was unusually quiet.

  ‘Nope.’ His expression was like a neon sign, a flashing annoying light that was telling her something was off. ‘Just had a few calls to make, had a swim and went to bed, you do anything?’ he continued.

  ‘Eh, no, had an early night,’ she answered. She could tell that he didn’t believe her. Irked by his attitude and confused by his responses she immersed herself in thoughts of work instead. ‘Right then, want to talk strategy, about the case?’

  ‘Of course,’ he answered. The open neck on her blouse had caught his eye. Her skin looked soft underneath it. He wanted to reach across and touch it, he wondered had Alex done so, last night. He didn’t hear the question she had asked him.

  ‘Hello, Kelly, calling Tony Kelly, what the fuck is the matter with you this morning?’ She waved her hands at him dismissively.

  ‘What, eh, sorry, I was just thinking about something.’ Kelly tried not to be as obvious and adjusted his expression. He stared past her shoulder, from the dining area out to the lobby. Dublin was looking mighty bright and shiny through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He screwed his eyes shut and waited for his vision to reset, he was sure he had just seen someone the very same as Louise in the lobby even though she was sitting in front of him. He opened his eyes and fixed on the woman again, waiting for her to turn so he could see her once more. He looked startled when she turned and walked towards them. ‘Eh, Louise.’ He looked at Louise and then at the woman walking towards them. Louise turned to follow his stare.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she exclaimed and jumped to her feet, Kelly followed.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Louise asked her excitedly.

  Kelly stood behind her, confused.

  ‘Oh, I feel bad about last night; I just wanted to catch you before you head to work.’

  Kelly was stunned looking at both of them.

  ‘You needn’t have, I told you I was fine,’ Louise said to the woman, hugging her again.

  Kelly moved back to his seat, wondering what the hell was going on.

  ‘Oh, em, let me introduce you.’ Louise pulled the woman by the hand over to their table.

  ‘Kelly, this is my baby sister.’ The women looked at each other; the family resemblance was striking right down to their smiles. ‘Alex.’ Alex extended her hand to Kelly. ‘Alex, this is Tony Kelly,’ Louise said. ‘Here sit down and have some brekkie with us.’

  ‘Alex,’ Kelly reached out his hand, ‘your sister,’ He looked at Louise. ‘I didn’t realise.’ He shook his head. He scoured his memory looking for a mention of her sister. He vaguely remembered her talking about an Alexandra, how stupid had he been not to make the connection. If it had been a case he had been working on and missed an obvious clue like that he would have never lived it down. ‘I think I remember a sailing story with Alexandra or something last summer?’ Louise smiled that he remembered. ‘Lovely to meet you Alexandra,’ he said, relieved to find that the Alex, Louise had been talking to on the phone last night was her sister.

  ‘You better call her, Alex.’ Louise glanced sideways at her sister. ‘She’s only Alexandra when she’s in trouble.’ Both sisters smiled.

  ‘I didn’t know you guys had plans today?’ Kelly said.

  ‘Well, if you hadn’t have stood me up last night, you might have.’ Louise was curt in her reply; Alex could sense a frisson of tension between them.

  ‘You stood her up too.’ Alex cringed as she looked at Kelly. ‘So did I, I was supposed to come over and spend the night with her, but it was after three when we finished up the gig and then we went to an Early House,’ Alex said, apologising to Louise as she explained.

  Kelly felt awful; he scolded himself for his stupidity in silence. It hadn’t occurred to him that Alex could be a girl, let alone Louise’s sister. He felt like a right prick now, and not to mention the opportunity he had missed at the chance to spend the night with her.

  ‘I’m…’ he hesitated. ‘Don’t mind me, Alex,’ Kelly smiled tautly, embarrassed at how he must have looked to Louise. ‘I’m going to go and let you girls catch up.’ He shook Alex’s hand again. ‘I’ll see you over there, Louise, there’s no rush, not meeting the Inspector till lunch.’ He placed his hand on her shoulder as he left. He took his phone from his pocket and sent Louise a text.

  Sorry, didn’t get a chance to explain. No need for you to come in early, why don’t you leave it till one and we’ll get our strategy together then for the interviews.

  Louise didn’t answer him, but Kelly was expecting that, at least he had called that one right, he thought.

  Chapter 18

  September – 1970

  ‘Who is the father, Tim, you need to tell us,’ Mary McGrath probes, a little softer than before.

  ‘I can’t. I’ll take her away, to Dublin with me, nobody need know anything. I’ll look after her.’ Tim walks towards the door, desperate to leave. ‘I’ll be leaving for college in a week when I get the cutting done, I’ll bring her with me.’ He sighed. ‘And the baby.’

  ‘No, Tim, you can’t, please relax, sit down, we’ll help you.’ Mary’s words don’t get through. ‘She can’t go anywhere Tim, not tonight, she’s too weak.’

  ‘I can, I’ll bring her to college with me. I’ll help her look after the baby, we’ll do it together.’

  Thomas blocks the door. ‘It’s okay, son, let your sister rest, we know it’s not your fault.’ Thomas’s voice is less severe, almost as sympathetic as his wife’s. ‘We know the auld fella is a bit of a bully,’ Thomas says, referring to Tim and Rose’s father. ‘Sit down; we’ve all had a shock, but none as much as the fourteen-year-old girl up in the bed.’ He places his hand on Tim’s shoulder and walks him back to his chair. He keeps his hand on his shoulder as though he needs to keep it there for balance. ‘Mary, maybe the chap would love a cup of tea.’ He lifts his eyebrows at his wife to follow his lead. ‘Now, with the women out of the way, talk to me, Tim, man to man.’ Thomas takes the chair opposite him, sensing he is about to get through.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tim shrugs, reluctant to tell him.

  Thomas pushes a little harder. ‘We’ll help you, you know, you just have to say, we won’t breathe a word.’

  ‘I don’t know if she even knew she was pregnant herself.’ Tim pauses. ‘It wasn’t her fault, you know, he took her, he…’ The corners of his mouth reached down towards his neck and air raced shallowly through his lungs.

  ‘Who? Your father?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘No, he’s never… he only… he’s just angry.’

  Thomas can’t be sure but from what he can understand, Tim wasn’t blaming his father, not for anything more than being violent anyhow. ‘Who, Tim, who did this, if not your father?’

  ‘Patrick, it was that bastard, Patrick.’ Tim’s eyes fill with sadness. He drops his head into his hands and cries. ‘He had her,’ Tim says. ‘He raped her.’ It is easier for him to say the second time but still, Tim’s shoulders collapse over his chest as the air from his lungs escapes, carrying with it every ounce of hurt and disgust he had stored.

  Thomas has no words to comfort him, because there are none. ‘Does your father know?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’ Tim lifts the arm of his T-shirt and wipes his eyes. ‘We could never have told him, he would have killed Rose, or me, and then he would have killed Patrick.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She wouldn’t have done anything even if we did tell her,’ Tim says. Thomas can hear the bitterness in his voice. ‘You know my mother hasn’t been well?’ Tim says.

  ‘I do.’ Thomas doesn’t elaborate as to the rumours about how Maeve Fitzpatrick was suffering with her nerves or about how nobody would blame her, having to put up with the muck savages of Fitzpatrick men.

  *

  Mrs McGrath gently pushes back the bedroom door.

  ‘I�
��m awake,’ I say weakly.

  Mrs McGrath smiles. The baby is fast asleep in my arms, swaddled in a dark green towel. The room is dimly lit and in the darkness of night I can see out to the starry sky and the round full moon through the opened curtains. Fat salty tears bounce down my cheeks.

  ‘Oh now, sweetheart, it’s okay. You don’t need to cry. It’s all going to be okay. It hadn’t taken Thomas long to tell her what Tim had told him in the front room downstairs. We’ve been speaking to Tim, he’s explained everything,’ Mrs McGrath says gently. ‘Did you know the baby was coming?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not really,’ I mutter desperately. ‘Well’, I hesitate. ‘Not at first but then, I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘You had no one to talk to’. Mrs McGrath affirming that she understood and hot tears well inside my eyes. ‘You poor darling’. Mrs McGrath’s voice is soft and kind which makes me want to cry more.

  ‘Do you think you will be able to look after him?’ Mrs McGrath asks.

  ‘No,’ I sob. ‘I don’t know’. Ever since I realised I was pregnant, I have spent my time wishing it not to be true, I hadn’t got as far as wondering what I would do next.

  ‘Well don’t you worry, Thomas and I will see what we can do to help you. Are you ready to see Tim?’ she says, smiling.

  I nod, embarrassed.

  Mrs McGrath opens the door and Tim walks in, he looks at the baby and looks at me, then he sits by my side, holding my hand. We both watch silently as Mrs McGrath opens the bedroom door and leaves. We hear her footsteps on the stairs and the sound of muffled voices from the good room downstairs.

  *

  ‘The baby is only tiny. Four pounds, maybe five at the most,’ Mary says to Thomas, waiting for a reply. ‘We can’t send her back up with him. Fitzpatrick will kill her.’

  ‘I know, but what choice do we have, Mary?’ Thomas says.

  ‘We can help them get to Dublin maybe, get out of that hellhole up there.’ Mary runs her fingers through her hair, exasperated. ‘They’ve… well Rose especially, has suffered enough at the hands of those godforsaken Fitzpatrick savages.’ Mary’s voice breaks. ‘Just as well that, Patrick, is gone missing, otherwise I’d go down myself and strangle him,’ she finishes.

  ‘Our hands are tied though, Mary, it is not our decision to make,’ Thomas says reluctantly. ‘We can help them with money, but what will Rose do when Tim is in college? How will she hide from the schools. She has two years before she can leave.’

  ‘Maybe I could mind the baby for her?’ Mary suggests.

  ‘Get real, Mary, how could you mind the baby and they all the way up in Dublin,’ Thomas answers. ‘What about those mother and baby homes, are they still going?’

  ‘No,’ Mary shakes her head. St. Columba’s County home would have been the closet but if the rumours were anything to go by, Mrs McGrath would have no part in placing anyone in the care of the nuns up there, and definitely not a sweet, fourteen year old girl who found herself pregnant through no fault of her own. ‘What if we kept the baby…’ she pauses. ‘As our own?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mary, you can’t just take the girl’s baby, and anyway the doctors would know that he wasn’t yours, wouldn’t they have to check you…’ he draws circles in the air with his hands, ‘and everything?’ Thomas panics.

  ‘What’s the alternative, Thomas?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mary, but seriously, what would you say, oh by the way, I brought a new baby last night, here it is.’

  ‘Don’t be smart, Thomas, I’m trying to figure it out as best I can,’ Mary answers. ‘And besides, it’s perfectly reasonable to have people think I have had another baby, I’m only forty years of age.’

  ‘Forty years of age and not pregnant for the past nine months,’ Thomas says.

  ‘But that’s just it, the baby is premature, which could be why I haven’t told anyone yet. I can say the baby arrived three months too soon.’

  ‘And what about when the doctor wants to check you?’

  ‘I won’t let him, I didn’t let him check me on George and he was fine with it, considering I am a nurse.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mary, and what about the future? When Rose comes back looking for her baby, what will you say then?’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘No, but I do know that that child, those children, up in that bedroom have had a lifetime of sorrows in a handful of years and it will only get worse for them if we do nothing.’

  ‘I don’t know, Rose,’ Thomas shrugs his shoulders in desperation. ‘I don’t know.’

  *

  Tim sits gazing at the baby with tears shimmering in his eyes. I doze comfortably with him by my side as darkness tiptoes through the window.

  ‘I may go back up, otherwise Father will want to know why the combine is sitting idly in the field.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tim.’ I can’t look him in the eye.

  ‘Don’t, Rosie.’ He holds my face in his hands. ‘None of this is your fault, do you hear me, none.’ He stands, afraid to touch the baby. ‘I’ll come back. Mrs McGrath says you can’t leave yet. I’ll wait for Father to go out and come back up for you then, okay?’ he says.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. I want to ask him about his plan but I’m afraid of the answer. I’m afraid that Tim’s plan won’t work, not now with a baby.

  The door opens and Mrs and Mr McGrath sneak in.

  ‘We just wanted to talk to you before you go, Tim, if that’s okay?’

  ‘Sure.’ Tim says, looking at me. He is conscious of the time and afraid of what they need to say.

  ‘We’ve been thinking, we’ve had a chat downstairs, and we want to help.’

  Tim and I listen.

  ‘If you want, but only if you want…’ Mrs McGrath looks at her husband’s face as though she’s waiting for the final confirmation, ‘we can rear the baby for you.’ She pauses, knowing the weight of what she is saying. Her husband pats her hand to continue. ‘We can keep the little mite.’ She rubs the baby’s back and smiles, neither I nor Tim speak and she continues. ‘Of course, we would have to get you to promise to never speak of it again, and I mean promise.’ She looks at Tim first and then back at me. ‘The baby would be reared as a McGrath and would never know…’ she clears her throat, ‘how he was conceived.’ She looks at me for a long time, there are tears in her eyes. ‘For the baby’s good, but also for yours, darling.’ She lifts my free hand and rubs her own cheek with it. ‘Tim,’ she turns slightly so that she sees him more clearly, ‘you are going to college and Rose here still has two more years in school. If she disappears, they’ll look for her. The state will send someone to your house and all manner of trouble might arise out of it.’ She looks at our expressions, trying her best to understand them. ‘I don’t mean to frighten you, really I don’t, but how do you think you can survive in Dublin without any money. Tim, you’ll be a student, in student digs, how will you keep Rose?’

  Tim shrugs.

  ‘There’s another bit to the plan, our way of helping if you like,’ Mrs McGrath looks at her husband who nods his head. ‘The school, where I went, it’s a boarding school, and if you like, Rose, I can arrange for you to finish off your two years there, but only if you want to.’ She pauses. ‘I could explain it to your mother, that it’s a scholarship, full-board and tuition. The letters would come from the school. You would only have to come home at holidays or weekends, or not at all, if you preferred.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs McGrath, could I talk to Rose alone?’ Tim says.

  ‘Sure. But listen, it’s only if you want to. Do you understand?’ Thomas says as he walks his wife from his room.

  Chapter 19

  Thursday Morning – 2016

  Tim and Rose followed the uniform Garda to the meeting room just off the outer office on the ground floor. They had spent most of the previous evening sorting through their memories together, searching through the locked vaults of time, filtering the information th
at they felt comfortable talking about.

  Rose was anxious. Tim pulled a conference chair from the table and gestured for her to sit down. He was too tense to sit himself. It didn’t help that the windows were closed and the room was airless. He poured himself water from the cooler and waited.

  ‘Right then,’ Detective Kennedy entered the room, followed closely by Detective Kelly. Louise could tell by the reaction of both the Fitzpatricks’ faces that they weren’t expecting her. That gave her a little rush. ‘Rose Fitzpatrick, I presume.’

  Detective Kennedy’s face was friendly, unlike that of Detective Kelly’s, Rose noted.

  Tim finally took a seat.

  ‘It’s O’ Reilly,’ Rose corrected as she shook Louise’s hand.

  ‘Of course, sorry about that.’ Louise smiled. ‘Would you like to follow me?’ she instructed.

  ‘Sure,’ Rose answered.

  Tim stood to follow also.

  ‘Timothy, we’ll stay in this room.’ Detective Kelly could make out Tim’s unease with the separate interviews and was a little satisfied with the outcome of his plan. ‘We like to conduct the interviews separately, hope that’s okay?’

  Tim had no choice but to consent and nodded discontentedly.

  ‘Right then, let’s get going, Timothy.’

  It suited Tim that Kelly only knew him as Timothy as opposed to Tim, although he would have preferred Mr Fitzpatrick, it was definitely a power play on Kelly’s behalf not to use it. Half expecting him to remain standing so that he could be taller than him, Tim was surprised when Kelly took the chair opposite him across the table.

  ‘I can confirm that the body is that of your missing uncle Patrick Fitzpatrick, but I think you already knew that.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ Tim had decided to answer politely and not elaborate, he was off to a good start. ‘Not for definite.’

  ‘The coroner will be contacting you later. They are releasing the remains, you know, so you can give him a burial. I’m sure you’ll want to give him a proper send-off.’