‘My mother never wanted to speak to my father again, but she never forbademe from talking to him. But he never even reached out. He never made an effort. Do you know what that does to the mind of a thirteen year old?’
I didn’t. I had loved my dad; now I just missed him.
‘Gordon O’Neill is a name that’s followed me my whole life. I’ve had people track me down and ask me for the money he still owes them, even after I changed my surname, but I’ve never heard even a whisper from him.’
She stopped drying her hands and sat down across from me at the kitchen table, letting out a long and mighty sigh as she settled into the chair. While she took a moment, I did the mental mapping in my head about how best I could un-implicate Fran from this.
‘Maeve, this might sound strange, but do you have any photos of your father?’
‘Why?’
‘It may just be useful to the investigation, if that’s okay.’
She gave a giant huff and begrudgingly trotted out of the room. I waited, unsure if she was even going to come back. I was lost in a swirl of my thoughts about Fran when, out of nowhere, a handful of photos were slapped down onto the table in front of me, startling me. Maeve had re-entered the room.
I picked them up. The first was of O’Neill – decades younger – holding a baby I assumed to be Maeve. He looked extraordinarily cheery, smiling widely as he cradled the newborn in his arms. The next photo was O’Neill again, flanked by two people who I assumed were his friends. They stood outside some building, grinning at the camera and holding an oversized cheque with the ‘Heart of Hope’ insignia plastered on the front. O’Neill was unmistakable in the middle. I didn’t recognise the face on his left, but on his right stood Thomas Macleod, identified easily as the Director of the SFO from his uniform and the insignia on his badge. Sure enough, all three of them wore the ornate bronze rings on their little fingers.
I looked at the name of the building, St Nicholas’s Children’s Home, and the headline: ‘Children’s home receives £100,000 grant for renovations and support’.
‘Thank you, Maeve,’ I managed to say, my words stumbling over each other as I tried to rise to my feet, everything beginning to make sense. ‘St Nicholas’s…’ I murmured, recognising the name from Fran’s report. Surely, I couldn’t be thinking right? But as hard as I tried to resist, I believe I had stumbled upon what, in our line of work, you would call a motive.
SEVENTEEN
FRAN
‘This place smells like the inside of Florence Nightingale’s vagina,’ said Angus, pushing himself back on the chair, placing himself in the corner, where he’d feel the safest.
‘How do you even know what Florence Nightingale’s vagina smells like?’ I asked. ‘And also, that is deeply offensive.’
‘I can just imagine it smells like this whole aura. Death, decay, dysentery.’
‘Oh, piss off, and don’t speak ill of Florence Nightingale. Just keep looking out, all right?’ I quipped to him playfully. ‘You’re just moaning and groaning, and it’s giving me a bit of a headache if I’m being honest with you.’ I inhaled to raise my voice to the highest pitch I could.‘Oh, I’m Angus, and the outside scares me, ooh no. It’s so scary.’
‘Hah hah, you’re hilarious. When’s your stand-up special coming out? Never!’ Angus snapped back.
Once again, the longer we spent together, the more we had regressed into children. Even back at St Nicholas’s, we had never really bonded like Angus had with Edith. The inseparable little boy and girl who’d spend their days laughing and leaping around the house. Edith was the soft, kind-hearted one; I was the onethat would force them to watch zombie B-movies when everyone else had gone to bed.
‘When was the last time you were even outside? Like, you know London has had an Olympics now?’ I said, eyeing a silver-haired man across the street. I scowled when he turned around and I saw he was very clearly not our man.
Angus, still infuriated with me, pushed his hand across the beer-drenched table, so his middle finger was only an inch away from my face. I slapped it away, then saw him jolt his other hand towards me to do the gesture again.
‘Piss off, seriously,’ I shrieked as Angus’s amused glance snapped to the door. A man in his mid-fifties deftly dipped his head beneath the low-hanging beam as he stepped into the pub. I saw Angus’s hands clench into fists as he watched the presumed regular go to the bar and order his usual.
‘You okay?’ I asked, trying to mask my concern. He had got worse since I had last dragged him out of the house.
‘Yeah. You going to text your husband back yet or not?’ Angus asked, swiftly changing the subject. ‘Going to let the poor guy just think that you’ve upped and vanished and run off to Argentinia or something?’
‘Argentina,’ I corrected.
‘No, Argentinia. You can say it two different ways; it’s the emphasis of the vowel – it’s like scone and scone.’
‘No, you’re adding an extra syllable, Angus. It’s Argentina, not Argentinia. Look it up.’
Angus whipped his crappy phone out of his pocket and began to tap furiously on the keys.
‘You’re going to besoupset with me when you find out I’m right,’ he murmured.
While I waited for the penny to drop on Angus’s clueless face, I tentatively picked up my phone and stared again at theresponse I had drafted, ready to send, the cursor blinking like a countdown to some kind of time bomb.
