As much as these thoughts excited her, she didn’t dwell on them long because to take her life back would be to put everyone else’s in a spin, and poor old Janey wasn’t capable of deliberately upsetting her nearest and dearest. Besides, they needed her. It was unspoken but accepted in the family that Rose would be dead and Elle would be in some sort of state-run facility – most likely a prison – without Jane’s presence, patience and care.
In the early days of Kurt’s life Jane had remained at home because she had no money and nowhere else to go and, although her mother did not provide any kind of assistance when it came to caring for the baby, she did feed Jane and her child. Those first few years of Kurt’s life had been the hardest and most miserable of Jane’s, but they had ensured that she and Kurt became the centre of each other’s universe.
When Elle’s talent was becoming recognized, Jane made a decision to learn the business. This was because, according to Rose, a number of people had queued up “to take
advantage of Elle”, and after Rose had driven them away, Elle was left unrepresented. Jane combed the streets of Dublin looking for a gallery owner to take her on four mornings a week. When she had walked into a small one near Clan-william Street, a man in his sixties had greeted her with a warm smile and she knew even before they spoke that she had a job. Initially he told her he had no work but she pressed him and told him that as long as he was prepared to teach her everything he knew she would work for him for free for a year. He had laughed, believing she was joking, but she was deadly serious so, as long as he didn’t mind that she left by midday, he had himself some free labour.
Albert had liked Jane from the first moment he saw her and, being a man who spent a great deal of his time alone since his beloved wife had died, he was only too thrilled by the notion of company. He was also happy to pass on his knowledge. Luckily for Jane he was a teacher capable of making learning fascinating. Jane had been working with Albert for a month before she brought him Elle’s paintings. He was blown away, and after Jane had read a book on PR they had a showing, which, thanks to a few tips from the book and Elle having a genuinely interesting angle to encourage media interest, was packed and a huge success. Jane had been working with Albert for four months when she received her first pay packet. They continued to work together for a further five years and were as close as father and daughter when Albert passed away one cold autumn evening. Albert and his lovely wife had never had any children and he was the youngest of his generation, all his family and pals having gone before him, so he had left his
business and home to the girl who had brought light and challenges into his final years.
As it turned out Albert’s gift of a home and business couldn’t have come at a better time because Rose had refinanced the house, hadn’t paid the mortgage in a year and the bank was set to take their home from them. Because Rose liked to stick her head in the sand and because she was arrogant enough to think that the bank would wait for her to decide when she was good and ready to get the job that would be necessary for her to make repayments, Jane took over.
She sold Albert’s house and used the money to buy her mother’s home from her. At first Rose screamed and roared at Jane for trying to steal her house, but when Jane’s solicitor explained to Rose in no uncertain terms that if Jane didn’t take over the mortgage Rose would be homeless and that in buying her out Jane would be paying her more than a hundred thousand euro in cash, she became far more amenable. There was enough money left to fix up the basement flat, which Rose had let go to rack and ruin, and when the contracts were signed and the money changed hands, Jane became the owner of a large Georgian property, complete with garden cottage, at the age of twenty-seven. By the time she was thirty she had sold the small gallery that Albert had left her, moved into bigger premises and named it after him. Since then Jane had run a successful business – and some would have said that if it hadn’t been for her Elle might not have done half as well.
But now, despite owning her own home and running a successful business, Jane wondered whether or not there was something more to life. She thought about all
the things she had wanted to do, medicine being one thing, travelling another. She’d never been out of the country longer than two weeks and never further than a beach resort complete with a kiddies’ club in Europe. As a girl she had dreamed of adventure: trekking in Brazilian rainforests, surfing off the coast of Mexico or going on safari in Kenya. And although her desire to get into medicine when she was a teenager had been tempered by her desire to get into Dominic’s pants, over the years she had grieved over her lost opportunity. She knew that she would have made a good doctor and, God knew, she had the patience.
Maybe I could still do it? Don’t be a dick, Jane, you’re ancient
.
Jane’s intermittent thoughts of escape were always interrupted, whether it was by Rose or Elle. That day Rose was still suffering with stomach problems but, of course, she wouldn’t admit it because to do so would be to accept that she had to lay off the booze and she had no intention of ever doing that. “We all have our crutches, Jane,” she said.
“Yeah, but most people’s crutches don’t cripple them.”
“I disagree.”
Every now and then Rose would clutch her stomach and breathe deeply.
“What can I do?” Jane asked.
“You can distract me.”
Jane stood up and broke into an Irish dance.
“Yes, very funny, Janey, you should really have your own sitcom.”
Jane sat down.
“Why don’t you tell me about Tom?” Rose said.
“What about him?”
“Well, how is he getting on? Have they found anyone who knows anything about the wedding ring?”
“They sourced it to a guy from Kent. He said he’d bought it off a man from Clare, and when they knocked his door down he said he’d bought it in a flea market in Rathmines. He had thought it would make a nice ring for his girlfriend; she’d got confused, thought he was asking her to marry him and then noticed it was engraved with Alexandra’s name, thought he was a cheapskate and broke up with him.”
“Well, how did it get into a flea market?”
“The owner swears she doesn’t know – she had receipts and a paper trail for everything else she’d ever bought or sold. It’s like someone just left it there.”
“And what does Tom think?”
“He thinks it’s hopeful. Maybe she’s leaving us a clue how to find her.”
“Balls. She’s dead, long dead.”
“Rose, please don’t say that.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Janey, of course she’s dead! And if Tom was honest with himself he’d say so – and you can be sure the police have mentioned the likelihood on more than one occasion.”
“Let’s just stop talking.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Tom – you like him.”
“He’s a lovely man.”
“Don’t play coy with me, Jane Moore.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Rose!” Jane got up from her chair and turned to leave.
“You be careful – you’ve been a gobshit with men for far too long.”
“It’s ‘gobshite’, Rose. The word you’re looking for is ‘gobshite’, with an
e
.”
“‘You say tomato’, Janey, and the point still stands: don’t be an eejit all your life. And judging by the dark circles and lines around your eyes, you’re not going to be pretty for much longer – so if you want a man get your skates on.”
Jane slammed Rose’s front door.
God, I hate that horrible old woman!
Four weeks into her nursing-home stay, Leslie was battling depression. Her surgeon had warned her that it was a possibility and explained why, but reason was hard to hold on to when everything inside her was screaming. She didn’t feel like talking and when she could no longer sleep she just sat staring at the TV with a remote in her hand. Elle would sit with her and sometimes she’d talk and sometimes she’d say nothing at all. Jane tried little tricks to brighten the place up, including coloured balloons, a big cuddly toy and scented candles. Tom told jokes, which Jane laughed at. Mostly they were jokes that Alexandra had told him. She’d loved jokes and once she’d heard one she stored it and could regurgitate it at will. He wasn’t good at telling jokes and often forgot the punchline so it wasn’t necessarily the depression that prevented Leslie laughing. Jim came in every second day. He’d fluff her pillows even if she didn’t want him to, fix the bed and poke around her locker, which annoyed her so much she’d be forced to talk to him.
“Will you just leave it be?”
“No, you’ve an apple in there and it’s gone off.”
“Just leave it.”
“No.” He threw the offending fruit in the bin. “I might clean your sink.”
“The cleaners will do it.”
“Yeah, well, they’re not here right now and if you won’t talk to me …”
“What do you want to talk about?” She sighed deeply, indicating she was not amused by his neediness.
“I don’t know. How about flash floods?”
“Flash floods?”
“In Clonee, can you believe it? Cars were floating down the M50.”
“Well, it has pissed rain day and night for the past month.”
“I hate the rain,” he said, looking out at the dark grey sky and the rain hitting the window.
“Yeah.”
“I was thinking about going away. A week in the sun before the end of September maybe.”
“Good.”
“We could rent a car.”
“We?”
“You could get some sun on that sickly body of yours.”
“Thanks very much.”
“You could walk on the sand and soak up the sun,” he said, “eat well, sleep because you’re tired and not because you’ve taken a bucket-load of sleeping tablets.”
“Stop monitoring me.”
“We could go to Greece or Spain or France – I bet it will still be nice there.”
“You really want to go on holiday with me?” she asked.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”
She nodded.
“And we both need something to look forward to.”
She nodded again.
“So when you’re feeling better and when your hormones are adjusted, we’ll go.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Maybe is good enough for now.”
After that she slipped away from him again but he was happy enough to have elicited some chat, and on the matter of a holiday a “maybe” was better than an outright “no”.
Tom knew he needed to fill his days with more than checking the findingalexandra and Jack Lukeman sites and hounding his liaison officer. His business was dead and buried, and the way things were shaping up for his competitors, he was glad to be out of it. He’d heard on the grapevine that demand for new builds was disappearing at a shocking rate. One builder he was familiar with was close to bankruptcy and another was barely treading water. Once his accountant had finalized his tax and VAT for the end of the business year he had money in the bank and because he’d only rented his offices he was free and clear.
Getting back into building was certainly not something he could consider in the current climate, and he wasn’t really qualified for anything else because he had left school at sixteen to work with his dad on sites around Dublin. Tom’s mother had suffered from dementia since she was young so from when he was ten she’d had no idea who Tom was. His father couldn’t care for her so he’d put her into the best home that money could buy. The problem
was that he couldn’t pay for the home and for him and Tom at the same time. That was when Tom had left school and they’d worked together to pay the bills. At night Tom would watch TV and his father would drink, and that went on until four years later when he had died of sclerosis of the liver. There was a year to go on the mortgage and Tom paid it off, sold the house and started his business.
He and Jane had discussed their similar backgrounds one night over dinner. She had told him about the father she lost to heart failure and she didn’t need to tell him about her drunken mother because he’d met her. She talked about leaving school to have Kurt and how Albert had given her her life back. Tom talked about his poor mother who had lost her mind long before she lost her life and his dad who, unlike Jane’s mother, had been a fall-down drunk incapable of stopping once he’d started, often disappearing for days on end. He talked about school too and admitted that at the time he had been delighted to leave, not being one of the most academic students and lacking any lofty career ambitions, but in the years since he had developed a keen interest in human rights.
“I know it sounds weird,” he said. “A bit hippie-dippy for a property-developer.”
“I think the fact that you’re using the term ‘hippie-dippy’ is weirder.”
Jane confided in him her fear of living in that big house without her son.
“It’s totally understandable,” he said.
“It keeps me awake.”
“You need to start living for you again.”
“And you need to take some of your own advice,” she said.
Tom stayed quiet for a moment. “Yes, there’s a part of me that knows you’re right.”
Jane had told him about her doomed love for Dominic as part of the apology for roaring at him the night she had been with him and Jeanette had turned up. He asked her about him now, to change the subject.
“His marriage is over,” she said.
“He told you?”
“No, Elle did. He’s staying away.”
“Good.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s actually the first time in fourteen years that I’ve a break from my son and his father.”
“And you’re not the slightest bit interested in how he is?”
“Nope,” she said. “I’m moving on.”
“Good for you.”
“What about Jeanette – are you thinking about going back there?”
“Oh, don’t! I’m so embarrassed.”
“Trust me, I know how that feels.”
After they had eaten, they walked together on Grafton Street. They stopped in front of a band playing for coins and watched them for a while, then pottered on. Initially they were looking for a taxi but, as the rain had stopped and they were entertaining one another, they ended up walking all the way to Jane’s. When they found themselves outside her door she asked him in.