‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m Oliver. Oliver Molloy.’ His hand was cold as he shook hers. ‘I can imagine how distressing it must be …’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t know him,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
She felt suddenly stupid, unsure why she had said that to a total stranger. A morbid desire to know the details of her father’s death made her carry on. ‘They said he was trapped under the ice? How did you find him …? I mean was the body …?’
Oliver studied her for a moment before he answered. ‘He was close to the edge of the canal, just beyond the reeds. He’d probably floated down from somewhere else. His hand was above the ice, but apart from that I didn’t see him … like you said he was trapped …’
‘Do you think it was an accident?’
‘I suppose … don’t you?’ His grey eyes looked into hers with interest.
‘I wouldn’t know. I just … I wondered. The thing is I didn’t know he existed until last night.’
Oliver Molloy watched her, waiting for some kind of explanation. His silence forced her to speak. She was surprised at her own anger.
‘My mother never told me about him … and then last night she came …’ She looked over at Rachel who was talking to a small group of people standing by the mourning car. Patrick Arnold was looking in their direction.
‘I’m sorry … that must have been quite a shock.’
‘Yes.’ Her uncle was still looking over. She didn’t want to meet him; she wasn’t ready for that. ‘Look, I’d better go. Thanks … for talking to me … I’m sure you must think it strange. I hadn’t meant to tell you all that. I’m just … never mind.’
The man reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out his wallet. ‘Here, take my card. If you ever want to call me … for advice or just to chat …’
She took the card from between his fingers: ‘Molloy and Byrne Solicitors’ in thick black print.
‘Not just legal advice … anything at all … sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger.’
Joanna slipped the card into her pocket. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
He smiled and said goodnight.
Oliver closed the door behind his last client of the day and walked to the window. The evening air was punctuated by the sound of car horns as frustrated commuters attempted to escape the chaos of the city in order to return to their comfortable suburban lives. Below, the quays were blocked in both directions. Traffic inched forward en masse like some huge lumbering beast as pedestrians launched themselves in front of slow-moving cars to cross bridges whose lights burned orange in the blackness of the Liffey.
A rough-looking couple were arguing in the street. The man took a few steps towards the woman who pointed a finger in his face as he swayed and gesticulated, spilling beer from the can that he clutched in one hand. The woman lifted a hand as though she was about to slap him, but he turned away. She tugged at his arm, and he shrugged her off, raised the can to his lips and made his way back towards the boardwalk where he would probably spend the night. The names she shouted after him hung in the night air.
Oliver turned away from the window, disgusted by the fact that he had wanted the man to strike out. He wanted him to lose his patience with the woman; the fact that he hadn’t rendered him, Oliver, the inferior of the two. If he had walked away, none of it would have happened. Mercedes would, at that moment, be making dinner in their house across the city – the house that he couldn’t bear to return to each evening; instead, choosing to stay late in the office, replaying the events again and again in his mind, tormenting himself with the possibility of an alternative outcome – one that might not have been so devastatingly absolute.
Mercedes had been in the kitchen that day when he arrived. A rich aroma of cooking spiked the air. She didn’t answer when he shouted hello, and he assumed she hadn’t heard him and continued up to the bedroom where he kicked off his shoes, undid his tie and pulled on a warm fleece over his white shirt. When he went back downstairs she was putting dinner on the table.
They talked about their day. He didn’t notice anything strange in her behaviour; she hid it well. Then she began to tell him about a guy in the office at work who was having an affair with a French girl in her department. She cursed him. She didn’t blame the girl, she said; she was smitten and couldn’t see that he was never going to leave his wife for her.
‘I suppose the only thing she can be blamed for is being foolish. What do you think?’ she said.
Oliver shrugged and told her he’d seen that kind of case so many times. Of course the law would say that the man was wrong; the mistress wouldn’t come into it, and the wife, well, she’d try to take the man for every penny she could get. They always did.
‘I’m not talking about law; I’m talking about lives. I mean … who’s to blame, the husband or the girl? What if I were the wife, for example, who do you think I should take it out on, you or the girl that you seduced?’
It was then that he went on his guard. ‘Look, not everything is black and white,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No, you don’t know these people, their situation.’
‘Ah, but I do.’
Mercedes’s eyes flashed as she spat the words, and he knew that she’d found out. He should never have believed that Carmen would keep quiet. She was too like Mercedes: a straight talker. She liked to get her own way, but she lacked Mercedes’s morals. Carmen didn’t care whose lives she destroyed to get what she wanted, and she knew that her sister was likely to forgive her in time.
Mercedes had stood up and instinctively he did the same. She walked round to his side of the table, drew her tiny frame up to its full height and slapped him so hard that his cheek stung.
‘Why did you do it?’ she said. ‘Why the fuck did you have to do it, and with Carmen. You … you think you’re so above it all, above everyone, but you’re weak. Can’t you see it? You’re just like the rest of them. Dangle a piece of bait and you’re hooked. It’s pathetic.’
He tried to apologize. He told her that, yes, he’d been weak at that moment. Hell, they hadn’t had sex for the last couple of months. What did she expect him to do? He realized as he said it that his apology with its counter-accusation was probably not the best tactic, but he couldn’t help but try to push some of the blame onto her. It was his only mechanism of defence.
‘So, you don’t think your sister had any part in this?’ he snarled. ‘You don’t think that her coming round here when you were away, dressed like a … like a fucking prostitute had anything to do with it? I mean, what man with blood in his veins wouldn’t, for Christ sakes? She was screaming for it!’
Mercedes hit him again. This time it wasn’t just a slap. She pummelled and kicked him, and he tried to grab hold of her wrists to stop her, but she bit his hand so hard she drew blood. He knew that he should’ve taken it, but something inside him just snapped. Mercedes lashed out, her fist catching his jaw. He stumbled backwards, and then lunged at her. His hands were round her throat as he pushed her down onto the sofa. She struggled and he pressed down harder to prevent her from hitting him again. He was appalled and aroused by the violence, and the more she tried to free his hands from her throat, the tighter he clenched them. When she finally stopped struggling, he released her. He thought that he had merely tired her out, stopped her from attacking him. Wasn’t that what he had set out to do?
Oliver’s hands were shaking from the memory as he tidied away the files on his desk. He jumped when the