Things We Never Say (19 page)

Not that it mattered how Lisette looked tonight. The attention would all be on Zoey herself and how great she looked for thirty. Thirty. She repeated it to herself. It was only a number, after all, but there was a small part of her that thought it also sounded a lot more grown-up than twenty-nine. Maybe that was what had happened with Lisette, she thought in a sudden spurt of amusement. She hit thirty and decided to be a grown-up. Only she went straight to being a middle-aged grown-up.

Anyway, thought Zoey, the party would be grown-up and sophisticated but with a fun dimension. All her friends would be there, after all, so it couldn’t get boring; and thankfully this would also be a family occasion at which there’d be no unwanted appearance from Disgruntled Deirdre and her equally disgruntled daughters. Zoey hoped that Donald was finally coming to realise that she was far more important to him than his former wife and just as much a part of his family as his pampered girls. And that she was worth every single cent he spent on her.

Lisette wasn’t looking forward to Zoey’s party in the slightest. If it had been at all possible to get out of it, she would have, but she hadn’t been able to come up with a single excuse not to go. It wasn’t that Lisette didn’t enjoy parties and going out, but her idea of a good time was very different to Zoey’s. Besides, her sister-in-law’s family would be there too, and they were far too raucous for Lisette. They all talked at the same time, didn’t listen to each other, drank too much, laughed loudly at unfunny jokes and generally took over any gathering they were at. Not that she could blame them for taking over Zoey’s birthday – it was her night after all – but Lisette truly would have preferred a quiet evening in a restaurant, with good wine and equally good conversation.

She couldn’t remember what she’d done for her own thirtieth birthday. Fifteen years ago, she realised with a sense of dismay. Where had those years gone? Years when she didn’t have to worry about anyone other than herself and when she could go where she liked and do what she liked. She hadn’t appreciated them at the time. Hadn’t appreciated how good living and working in Dublin as a young, free and single girl could be. Only the thing was, she hadn’t really lived a hectic young, free and single life. She’d actually been quite lonely, spending most of her free time studying her English and traipsing around the city’s cultural highlights, until she’d met Gareth at Dublin’s Alliance Française. They’d both come to a talk about French painters (not a topic she was madly interested in, but she was feeling homesick and wanted to hear French accents), and she’d noticed the bearded Irishman with his grey eyes, narrow chiselled face and unfashionably long hair almost at once. He looked like an artist, she thought, as she observed him sitting in his seat making notes in a spiral-bound book. After the talk, when people were drinking coffee, she’d manoeuvred her way to his side and asked him, in her still less-than-fluent English, what he’d thought of it.

She’d been surprised when he spoke to her in more than passable French, which had led to a much longer conversation than she’d expected. And then he’d opened the notebook and shown her that the notes she’d thought he was making were in fact profile sketches of her, which delighted her even more.

‘You have an interesting face,’ he told her. ‘It’s worth drawing.’

She’d been told before that she had an interesting face, although it wasn’t something she’d ever taken as a compliment. Good bone structure, which she undoubtedly had, didn’t necessarily lead to beauty. In her case it gave her a slightly aloof, angular appearance that, together with her hair, generally made people think she was older than she was.

But Gareth liked her hair. He told her that it was soignée, which made her smile. But he meant it.

He asked her out and she accepted. She liked the coincidence of them both being teachers, art and history being his subjects, while she specialised, not surprisingly, in French. At a boys’ comprehensive school, which, she told Gareth, could be tricky.

‘But I love it,’ she added. ‘I love the boys and I love being here.’

She eventually fell in love with him too, thinking that he was one of the gentlest men she’d ever met, thoughtful and kind. He was a good teacher and a good painter and a good person. Unfortunately, as it turned out, he wasn’t a good businessman.

God, she thought, as she looked at the pile of bills stuffed on to the kitchen shelf, we’re in such damn trouble here. Over the past few months they’d cut everything back to the bone. They’d got rid of their multi-room satellite TV and downgraded their phone and internet packages. Lisette took advantage of any money-saving coupons she could find and she was now a pathological switcher-off of electrical appliances. But none of these savings could possibly make a dent in the mortgage payments on the investment properties they owned, which were now less of an investment and more of a millstone.

Except for Papillon. She felt an almost physical pain in her heart when she thought of selling it. When she was in her twenties, all she’d wanted to do was to leave France, which she’d always believed was too bureaucratic and too stuffy and too much – as she used to say – up its own derrière. But when Jerome was born and she’d brought him home, she suddenly felt French as well as Irish, and she wanted her son to feel as though he was a citizen of both countries. She wanted that for Fleur too.

Buying the house in La Rochelle had been a culmination of that desire. It was more than a holiday house. It was their home in another country. Unfortunately it had become a major bone of contention between them, the elephant in the room in every single conversation they had these days. And because they were in such a deep financial hole, every conversation they had was about money. It had never been like that before. Money hadn’t been important to them. They’d joked about Donald, who seemed to believe that as Fred’s elder son, and because he worked in the business with him, he had a certain image to maintain. They secretly mocked his apparent obsession with sales targets, profitability and income, even though, back then, they were both quietly envious of his beautiful home in Clontarf.

Not that he had that any more, thought Lisette. Somehow, Donald too had slid backwards, because his house in Baldoyle wasn’t anything like the one he had left behind. Even his new wife was a cheaper model. Or, Lisette amended, a model who looked cheaper but who might actually be more expensive to maintain. Deirdre used to buy sparingly but well. Zoey, from what Lisette could make out, took a more scattergun approach. Both Lisette and Gareth had been sad when Donald and Deirdre split up, and at first Lisette had tried to maintain her relationship with Donald’s wife, with whom she’d got on well. But that friendship had faded since her brother-in-law’s remarriage. He didn’t like anyone being in touch with Deirdre, who, Lisette had to admit, had taken him to the cleaners in the divorce.

Funny how things had all started to change after Ros had died, she thought. Fred’s wife had been a quiet sort of woman but somehow her influence seemed to hold the entire family together on every level. And now it had splintered apart and nothing was the same as it had been before. Although perhaps nothing had been as wonderful as she was remembering. That was the trouble with looking back. You couldn’t help doing it from the perspective of where you were now.

She got up from the kitchen table, ignoring the pile of bills, and not wanting to depress herself still further by deciding which ones they could pay this week. The thing to do, she told herself, was to get off her high horse about tonight, take full advantage of Zoey and Donald’s hospitality and have a great time. Maybe even drink too much. Lisette rarely drank too much. But sometimes letting the alcohol take you over wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

I’ll trawl through my wardrobe, she decided, and find the most suitable outfit I have for a bling-bling night, even though my bling-bling days are far behind me. And I’d better remind Gareth that we’re picking up his dad too. She knew that Fred was looking forward to the party, despite the fact that he was more than twice the average age of Zoey’s friends. He was probably convinced that one or two of them would fancy him!

What is it about men, she asked herself as she climbed the stairs and went into the bedroom, that no matter what age they are, they think they’re eternally attractive to women? Whereas we perpetually worry about lines and wrinkles and looking older and undesirable? She glanced at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror and frowned. If she didn’t make a big effort tonight, people would think that she was Fred’s wife, not his son’s. And that would be one blow too many to take. She opened her make-up bag. She had a lot of work to do.

It took Abbey a few seconds to realise where she was. The half-dream had seemed so real that she was sure Ellen was physically there beside her and reached out to touch her. Meeting nothing but thin air, she blinked a couple of times, and then the noise of the crash filtered back into her consciousness. That was what had jerked her into wakefulness again. She rubbed her eyes, got up from the chair and made her way to the kitchen, where she expected to find Fred fussing over whatever he had dropped.

But there was no sign of him. She called his name tentatively, not wanting to appear as though she was checking up on him. She’d already gained the very strong impression that Fred didn’t like being thought of as old or helpless, despite their conversation about age and mortality.

‘Mr Fitzpatrick?’ she called, slightly louder. And then, with a touch of embarrassment, ‘Fred?’

There was still no response, and she stood uncertainly in the kitchen, thinking that although being on the patio outside had reminded her of Bella Vista Heights, the inside of Fred’s home was very different. The airy kitchen was cluttered and untidy, with a selection of unwashed mugs on the worktop beside the sink, a pile of newspapers on another worktop and a variety of empty bottles on a third. There were also two cups beside the kettle. One contained a tea bag and the other a spoonful of instant coffee. Which meant, she thought, that the sound she’d heard of grinding beans hadn’t been Fred making her coffee at all.

She tried calling again, but there was still no reply.

He could be a bit deaf, she supposed, and unable to hear her. Yet she couldn’t help feeling a little bit concerned. She walked slowly out of the kitchen and paused in the hallway. Once again she called his name, without reply. She looked into the living room where he’d been sitting when she first arrived, but there was no sign of him.

She crossed the hallway to a smaller, more comfortably furnished, television room. In the centre, a Lay-Z-Boy recliner faced an enormous wall-mounted flat-screen TV. It was connected to a state-of-the-art speaker system. He’d be with Pete on that one, thought Abbey. Pete loved his gadgets. Cobey had been a gadget fan too. She remembered, with a dart of anger, that she’d bought him the latest iPad as soon as it had hit the Apple store on Stockton Street, even though he already had the previous one. He’d taken both of them when he’d left.

She moved through the house, still calling Fred’s name, but it wasn’t until she pushed open the door to a home office with a desk that she let out a cry of shock.

Fred was lying, half on his side, half on his stomach, stretched across the floor. A small printer was upended beside him.

‘Mr Fitzpatrick!’ cried Abbey. ‘Fred? Are you all right?’ The question was instinctive. She already knew that he was in big trouble.

She dropped to her knees and rolled him on to his back. His eyes were closed. Her first priority was to see if he was breathing. He wasn’t. Nor could she find a pulse.

‘Oh shit,’ she said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

She grabbed the phone from the desk and, kneeling beside Fred’s prone body, dialled 911. There was the sound of an unconnected number. She looked at the phone in anger. ‘Nine one one,’ she said out loud. ‘Emergency. Come on!’ And then she remembered that some countries used 999 as an emergency code.

This time her call was answered straight away. She told the dispatcher that Fred was unconscious and not breathing. The dispatcher asked if she could do CPR, and Abbey, giving thanks to Ellen, who had taught her, said she could.

‘The ambulance is on its way,’ said the dispatcher. ‘It should be with you very shortly.’

Abbey placed her hands on Fred’s body and began chest compressions, counting in her head, keeping the rhythm even. But she was horribly afraid that they weren’t having any effect.

‘Come on, Mr Fitzpatrick,’ she muttered. ‘Come on, Fred.’

She glanced up. Directly opposite her, on the wall, was a painting of a large rock in a stormy sea, lit by a shaft of sunlight spearing through the dark clouds.

‘Be strong,’ she urged Fred. ‘Like the rock. Please.’

She continued with the CPR until she heard the siren of the ambulance on the street outside. She pressed the button for the gate and the paramedics hurried into the office, where Fred was still prostrate and unresponsive. They immediately took over from her, and, after she’d quickly told them how she’d found Fred, asked her to wait outside.

Abbey’s knees were like jelly. She sat on the floor of the hallway, her back against the wall and her legs bent. She listened to the sounds from Fred’s office, where the paramedics were continuing their attempts to revive him, and felt sick. She leaned her head on her knees and closed her eyes, trying to compose herself. It wouldn’t do any good for her to faint now and be another emergency for the ambulance crew to deal with. She took a few deep breaths and then got slowly to her feet.

She wasn’t the right person to be here, not when his life was at stake. It should be someone close to him. Someone from his family. But she didn’t know any of his family and they didn’t know her. Her hands were shaking as she opened her purse and took out Ryan Gilligan’s business card. She dialled the number, which seemed to ring for ages before he answered, sounding tired and vague.

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Abbey Andersen.’

‘Abbey!’ This time he was more alert. ‘Is everything all right?’