Authors: Joanne Clancy
“I know you think
we're wrong, but Conor and Ni
all are the same man,” Hope insisted
. She sounded almost triumphant at the fact that Kerry and Saoirse accepted the two men were identical.
“Are you his...mistress?” Kerry felt sick at having to speak the abhorrent word aloud. “Are you having an affair with him? Is that it?”
“Don't be ridiculous!” Hope cried. “Do you honestly think I'd be here if I was having an affair with him? I swear to you on the life of my unborn child that I'm not. I'm
married to him. I married him
last year in west Cork and it was the happiest day of our lives. Actually, we were going to be celebrating our first wedding anniversary when he returned from Japan.” Her voice cracked and s
he couldn't continue. It was
too much.
“This isn't getting us anywhere,” Chantale interjected. “Why don't we try to work together to find Niall or Conor rather than getting more and more upset about the situation?”
“There is no situation. The only situation is in your daughter's head!” Kerry said firmly. “She clearly has problems, not me.”
“No I bloody well don't!” Hope shouted. She was absolutely furious. Who the hell did she think she was talking to her in that condescending, patronising tone of voice?
“Please,” Chantale pleaded. “Can't we try to b
e calm? Believe me, Mrs. Darcy;
we want clarification just as much as you.
“Why don't I make
some tea?” Saoirse interrupted.
“Great idea,” Chantale agreed. “I'd love a cup of tea. Let me help you.”
When the tea arrived, laced with sugar, Hope wrapped her hands around her cup and sipped the scalding hot, too-sweet liquid. It burned the roof of her mouth and the tip of her tongue, but she didn't care. She stared unseeingly in front of her, trying desperately to understand what was going on. How was it that that only a few short months ago her biggest worry was telling Niall that she was pregnant? Now, her whole life was turned upside down. Not only did she have to cope with her husband being missing but there was another woman who firmly believed that she was married to him too! If it was a film she would have dismissed it as being completely ludicrous.
Hope took another sip of her tea and glanced around the room. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts and nobody seemed to want to make
an effort to talk. Everyone had
finally run out of steam. She peered over her cup at Kerry and Saoirse. Not only was there another woman claiming to
be her husband's wife
, but there was also a scowling teenager who
believed she was his daughter!
Hope simply couldn't comprehend that Niall might have a daughter. He'd talked so movingly and lovingly about wanting a child of his own with her one day, that it was impossible to accept that he was a father already. How could he have kept that from her?
Niall had been the one who talked about children, who wanted to have children more than her. He'd been gently trying to persuade her to have a baby for a while, saying that the time was never really one hundred per cent perfect
to have a baby, but that they c
ould cope together. He'd talked about his need to have a family of his own one day, after the years of his childhood when he'd felt he never really belonged anywhere. Why did he need a family with her if he already had one? Why had he made her think that what happened between them was unique and wonderful when quite clearly it wasn't? Hope couldn't decide if she was more upset about the daughter than the wife.
Her
gaze alighted on the framed photographs which were dotted around the room. There was a large framed family portrait in prid
e of place over the fire. Hope guessed that Saoirse must have been around seven or eight when the photo was taken as her wide, beaming smile was rather gap-toothed. Beside her was a very pretty girl. She looked a few years older, maybe about eleven or twelve. Their parents stood smiling
proudly behind them. They seemed
so happy it made Hope feel physically sick. There were two silver-framed photos on the mantelpiece. One was of a smiling fair-haired baby with round, chubby cheeks and the other
was of the Darcys on their wedding day. It was an outdoor photo taken in a cliff-top setting, with spectacular views out over Cork harbour.
Hope glanced around the large, oval shaped room with its beautiful bay window overlooking Kinsale Bay. She and her mother were sitting on the large dark brown sofa and there were comfortable armchairs a
t either side of the fire where Saoirse and Kerry were sitting
. There was an oak dining table at the far end of the room with oak chairs to match. The furniture was old-fashioned and
a little too dark for the room in her opinion, but the furniture itself was of good quality. Hope was more a fan of modern interior design but she could appreciate the old-world quality of Ballycotton House.
How the hell did Niall have enough money to keep both houses running?
She wondered.
This place must cost a fortune to heat in the winter
.
She had never even remotely suspected that there might be another woman in Niall's wife. How could there be when he was so busy and when their own lives had been full of happiness and closeness? What was it about Kerry and Saoirse
and the other daughter
that would have made him want to stay with them anyway? There was nothing particularly special about Kerry with her limp hair and exhausted eyes.
Saoirse unnerved Hope
. She studied
the
girl more intensely and as much
as she tried
to deny it, there was a definite resemblance between Saoirse and Niall. She tried to dismiss her doubts from her mind, but there really was
no denying it. The girl
's hair was blonde while Niall's was black but her bright blue eyes were definitely Niall's, not only in their striking colour but in their expression. You could almost see the light of her soul in her blue eyes dancing out at the world, just like Niall's,
full of intelligence and curio
sity. Hope
had
doubted she would ever see eyes like Niall's again
, until she met Saoirse. She
had her mother's colouring and her father's striking attractiveness.
How could it be possible? Why would
Niall have married me
when he had a family already? Was he unhappily married to Kerry? If so, why hadn't he simply divorced her? Worse than that, why had he been so keen to start a family with
me
when Saoirse is living proof that he's
been down that road before?
Her head was starting to whirl. She couldn't get a firm grasp of the questions and conflicting emotions that were flying through her mind
. I must be going crazy
, she thought.
Chantale put a protective arm around her daughter's shoulder. “I think we should be going.”
“I think that's probably a good idea,” Kerry said quietly, the fight seemed to have left her.
“We can't leave it like this,” Hope said, rubbing her tired eyes.
“You need some rest, d
arling,” her mother insisted, “i
f not fo
r yourself then for your baby.”
Kerry winced at the word “baby.”
“Good riddance, stupid fat cow,” Saoirse hissed under he
r
breath.
“Saoirse, that's enough. Get upstairs to your room!” Kerry suddenly snapped. She'd had about enough conflict for one day.
“I hate you! I wish my d
ad was here!” Saoirse yelled as she stomped upstairs.
“You can see yourselves out,” Kerry said curtly to Chantale and Hope.
Chantale nodded and ushered her daughter out of the living room to the front door. It was dark, but there was a full moon casting an eerie glow across the grounds of Ballycotton House.
“It's all a horrible mistake,” Hope said as she struggled into the passenger seat of her car. “That woman doesn't know what she's talking about.”
“I know, love, I know,” Chantale soothed. “Everything will be fine in the end. I'm sure there's a perfect
ly
reasonable explanation. I promise you we'll work it out.”
Kerry couldn
't get Hope's words out of her mind. Hope had
said they would have celebrated their first wedding anniversary at the end
of March and Kerry was on a mission to find out if her husband had left any trail behind. Maybe there was a note in his diary referencing Hope. She waited until Saoirse went to bed and then she made her way
to Conor's home office. It was still practically untouched since before they'd left for Japan.
A large oak desk was the main item of furniture and it took up most of the space in the room. A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf lined the back wall and his favourite leather chair was stacked with paperwork.
She didn't have the heart to change anything and somehow she got great comfort from seeing the familiar untidy mess of his doc
uments that were strewn across
his huge oak desk. “Organised chaos,” he'd laugh when she'd nag him to tidy up.
When she was feeling particularly depressed or really missing him, she'd sit for hours in his battered leather office chair and close her eyes, just thinking about him, but not tonight. Tonight she was on a mission. She was searching for answers and she got the feeling that she was about to start uncovering some truths right here amongst the rubble of her husband's paperwork. She knew what she was searching for; his diary. Conor had a memory like a sieve and couldn't remember anything unless it was written down. He kept his appointments in an old-fashioned Filofax, preferring to write everything down than trust his schedule to modern technology. She'd bought him various technical gadgets
over the years
but he had resolutely refused to change his ways. He kept the diaries for years, as he hated throwing anything out, afraid that one day they would be important.
“How will it ever be important for you to know what you were doing ten years ago?” Kerry remembered waving a diary from 1990 in his face one afternoon. “Have you ever actually needed them?”
“No, no
t yet, but you never know when the day will come,” he
’d
smiled at her.
That day had finally arrived. She grim
aced when she saw the mountain
of paperwork she had to trudge through to
find his diary.
Maybe he took
it with him to Japan
, s
he thought in a panic.
No he would never have taken his work diary with him on holiday. It has to be here somewhere.
She sat down heavily on his leather chair, a sudden dart of pain shooting through her left leg. She was exhausted; physically and emotionally drained after Hope's visit, but she was determined to find what she was looking for. She needed some answers and hopefully her husband's diary would reveal something to her.
She rummaged through the drawers in his desk. The top drawer was crammed with pens and notebooks and other miscellaneous stationery. The second drawer contained folders and his diary and the third drawer housed his iPad.
Kerry took out the contents of the drawers and spread them on the table in front of her. She hoped there would be a clue, an explanation for what had happened. She wasn’t sure what sort of an explanation she was looking for, but she wanted to find one
nonetheless
; anything to put her out of the misery of not knowing. There was nothing of much interest in the folders.
She’d saved the diary until last.
Nervously she flicked through the pages until she got to the month of March. There was nothing suspicious on any of the pages; just page after page of boring
work
meetings and appointments, scribbled in Conor’s indecipherable handwriting.
Tentatively, she opened the iPad and tried to log in. It was password protected. Kerry stared at the screen in front of her. She had no idea what his password might be, so she tried his name, which was rejected, then her own, then their daughters and various combinations of birthdays and anniversaries. Each time the machine beeped at her and asked her to try again.
Reluctantly, she typed Hope’s name. Thankfully, it didn’t work either. A wave of relief washed over her. She wasn’t sure how she would have reacted if Hope’s name had
actually
worked.
Where the hell is he
?
She was overcome with anger and hurt. He had a lot of answering to do when she finally found him. She was filled with a deep sense of dread and foreboding that Hope wasn'
t the total liar that Kerry
wanted her to be.
Kerry was worried about Saoirse. When Hope and Chantale had left she'd gone upstairs to her bedroom to try to talk to her, but Saoirse wasn't interested. She'd brought her some tea and chocolate as a peace offering and sat with her for a long while, but Saoirse had hardly spoken two words since they'd left. Kerry couldn't think of a single comforting thing to say to her daughter. What was the point in the usual assurances and platitudes that everything was going to be alright when it was blatantly obvious that everything was very wrong? What could she possibly say to Saoirse that could help in any way? So she sat at the edge of her daughter's bed, sipping her tea and worried abou
t what was going to happen next.
Would more women come crawling out of the woodwork? What else would she discover about her husband? It seemed he had woven an intricate web of secrets and lies around himself and they were all caught in the middle of his deception.