He couldn’t help but notice the white furry mules on her feet because they clicked all the way down the hall, past two large suitcases that were just outside the door ahead of them.
‘Are you off on holiday?’ he asked, just to break the ice really.
‘Ah, I wish. No, they’re Alice’s. She’s off to London tonight. Moving there permanently. You caught her just in time.’
Her words triggered a memory of Alice saying at the wake that she was going to London. In the moment, he hadn’t given it a thought, but now he realised their paths might have been destined to cross again whether he’d come here this afternoon or not. ‘Is she flying?’ he asked, struck by the potential coincidence.
‘Aye, son, because her canoe has a puncture,’ Val deadpanned with a wink, making him laugh despite the craziness of the circumstances. This woman reminded him of his mum and Aunt Audrey so much. One of them would come out with a quip like that and it would set them both off. That thought was just what he needed to calm the uncharacteristic clench of nervousness at the back of his throat.
Alice got up from the kitchen table to greet him with a hug, and as he reciprocated, he saw the open album of photographs on the table, and beside it a small pile of snaps.
‘Have a seat, and I’ll get you a drink,’ Val offered, as he and Alice parted. ‘Coffee, tea or beer? My Michael keeps some cans of lager in the fridge, so they’re cold already.’
‘Coffee would be great, please,’ he said, spotting that there was a pot already brewing on the machine beside the cooker. ‘Just black. No sugar, thanks.’
‘I’m on it,’ Val said, crossing to the other side of the room.
Alice still hadn’t said anything other than ‘Hello’ and he could sense that she was as nervous as him. He felt awful that he’d caused that. ‘Can I just start by saying I’m really sorry to have ambushed you at the wake. This has all been a bit of a shock. I only discovered the note and the photographs this morning and it’s all thrown me. Especially today.’
‘I understand,’ Alice assured him. ‘And I hope you don’t think I was being unhelpful. It was all a bit of a shock to me too.’
Val brought the coffee over, then pushed the biscuit tin in his direction. ‘There you go, Zac. I bet you were too busy to stop for so much as a sausage roll this morning.’
An ache in his gut reminded him that she was right, and he took a chocolate digestive gratefully. There were so many questions he needed to ask, but he knew better than to charge in. He’d interviewed hundreds of clients and witnesses in his time, and he’d learned that no one responded well to cold questions,so instead of starting where they’d left off this morning, he gestured to the photo on the top of the pile on the table.
‘My mum,’ he said, spotting her face.
‘Yes,’ Alice said gently, picking them up. ‘I picked out all the ones I could find of her because I thought maybe you’d want to take them? Or even make copies now by photographing them with your phone, if that would be okay? I’d hate to lose them.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ he agreed, pulling out his iPhone.
Over the next fifteen minutes or so, they went through each photo one by one. Alice would tell him where it was taken and why, or perhaps share an anecdote, while he captured the image on his camera roll. Today was worth it just for these. They were in age order, and in the youngest she must have been about twelve, right up until her early twenties. In Aunt Audrey’s house there had been old photo albums that had belonged to his gran, so he’d seen photos of his mum in her youth, but most of them were posed shots on special occasions with her family. These ones were different. She was with her friends. Laughing. Celebrating. Singing into hairbrushes. Being mischievous. Dancing. Blowing kisses. Giggling. And she looked so full of life it brought a lump to his throat.
‘This one is your mum’s birthday celebrations in London, a few months before she left.’
He turned the photo over and the inscription there hit him like a bullet between the eyes.
The birthday gang! Jan 1995.
The month he had to have been conceived.
He turned it back over and studied the faces there. His mum. Alice. Two other women. And one guy.
‘Who is he?’ he asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
‘Larry. He was my boyfriend at the time. We got married shortly after that.’
Another bullet. And he could see by the red rash creeping up Alice’s neck that she was taking shrapnel too.
The lawyer in him had already formulated a sequence of questions, but he held off, went gently, unable to bear causing her any distress. In the pause, he studied the photo, his stare almost entirely on the one male in the picture. There was something… something familiar. Bullet number three hit him with the answer.
‘Hang on – is that Larry McLenn? The politician?’
Holy shit. He’d seen this guy all over the news for years. He’d even visited Ireland as part of a UK delegation for something or other, and then there had been a big scandal – caught on a covert recording accepting bribes and snorting cocaine, if Zac remembered correctly. The guy was a complete sleaze. No morals. No standards. No…
Oh no, no, no.
Realisation dawned and he ran that back.
