‘He said lots of things. If you’re asking if he said anything about you specifically, then no. Same goes for wanting to end it all. He was in pretty good form.’
‘So why did he jump?’
‘I don’t know.’ I’d always wondered what the number umpteen felt like. Maybe I needed to get I Don’t Know tattooed to my forehead. ‘My best guess is he cracked under the pressure.’
‘Pressure?’
‘Well, your mother doesn’t seem to be very fond of Maria.’
She hooted at that, loud and harsh. ‘You mentioned Maria’s name?’
‘A few times, yeah.’
‘Did she call her a trollop?’
‘Let’s just say there were variations on a theme.’
‘She called her the Whore of Babylon once.’
‘Nice, yeah. Biblical.’
She adjusted her visor as we rolled down into Drumcliffe, the sun streaming in. ‘Problem there is,’ she said, ‘that was always a bonus for Finn. Anything that pissed off Saoirse was good with him.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so.’
‘Good for you.’
‘So if it wasn’t the pressure, why did he jump?’
‘I haven’t the foggiest clue.’ I stole another Marlboro Light, got it lit. ‘If it’s any consolation,’ I said, ‘the cops don’t believe he jumped. They think he was pushed.’
‘Pushed?’
‘Yeah, but don’t get your hopes up. They think it was me pushed him.’
I was glad I’d stolen the smoke before breaking that one. A chill settled between us. ‘Why would they think that?’
‘Because I was there and they can’t think of any reason why he’d want to jump. And before you start thinking like a cop too, I should point out that Finn’d have taken me with him if I’d been sitting in the cab when he landed on it.’
‘I didn’t know he …’ She swallowed hard.
‘Well, he did.’ It was the first time I’d said it out loud, one of those moments when you realise you’ve been thinking something a long time and not really known you were thinking it. I should be dead.
I felt the crash coming on hard, this on top of damn all sleep and too much coffee, the concussion and the shock, and Ben, Christ, Ben in a coma. I laughed out loud, heard it thin and shivery. ‘It’s kind of weird, y’know? Like drowning witches in a pond. If I’d been in the cab, I’d be in the clear but dead. Except I wasn’t, so now I’m in the frame. Jesus,’ I said, ‘I never thought I’d need an alibi for someone’s suicide.’
She flinched, then glared across. ‘You’re a horrible human being.’
‘Keep your eyes on the road.’
‘Why would you even say such a thing?’
‘Because you’re asking all these bullshit questions so you won’t have to face the fact that Finn’s dead and gone and didn’t care enough about anyone to say goodbye before he went.’
I guess that one made us even. It wasn’t exactly a slap in the face, but she recoiled, her colour draining away, and then she flushed. I edged towards the door in case she reached and raked, but when she took a hand from the steering wheel it was to cup her mouth, perhaps to catch the single precious whimper that emerged.
‘Grainne,’ I said. I tried to soften my tone but it came out like a frog gargling gravel. ‘In the long run, it’s better if you deal with it sooner rather than later. Trust me.’
Her eyes were wet, hard and bright. For some reason I thought of Fiver in Watership Down. Then she ruined it with a sneer. ‘Oh yeah? Your only brother committed suicide?’
It wasn’t just the eyes. She had her mother’s way with the hired help, too.
‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘I killed him.’
That bought me a nifty goldfish impression. ‘You …?’
‘Killed him. And watch the fucking road before you kill the rest of us.’
‘But why would you …?’
‘Doesn’t matter. What matters is I buried it when I should have been purging and now it’s too late. So my advice to you is to take yourself off to a dark room and have a good long think about how Finn’s gone. And I mean, forever. You know how you were hoping he’d be the one to link you up the aisle the day you get married? It’ll never happen now.’
‘Jesus,’ she whispered, ‘why are you saying these-’
‘Because it’s his fault it’ll never happen. Stop blaming yourself, start blaming him. Otherwise you’ll go daft.’
‘But-’
‘But nothing. Maybe, okay, he had his reasons. But whatever they were, they had nothing to do with you. So let it go, cry him into the ground, move on.’
‘You’re a cold fucking bastard.’
‘Yeah, well, someone has to be.’
We were on the long straight into town now, passing Bertie’s Pitch amp; Putt, which was just as well, because she jammed on and swerved onto the hard shoulder without so much as a glance in the rear-view. I reached over, knocked on the hazard lights. She sat with her shoulders hunched, knuckles white on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead without seeing much of anything at all. Not so much Fiver, now. More Bigwig. Or Woundwort, maybe.
I did a quick tally of the pros and cons of swiping another couple of Marlboros, decided against. Reached for the door handle.
‘Don’t get out,’ she said, still staring ahead, the words softly desperate, an old monk’s prayer.
‘Grainne …’
‘He didn’t do it. He didn’t jump.’
‘If that’s the way you need to-’
‘Just listen a second,’ she said quietly. ‘Listen, okay?’ And then the rocket fuel sparked in the back of her mind and she punched the steering wheel and suddenly she was screaming at the windscreen. ‘All I want is someone to fucking listen to me for once!’
I got the message.
In behind the pellucid eyes and layers of kohl and Arctic cool, the grief and the rage, Grainne Hamilton was very badly scared.
28
All the Hamilton women wanted me to read their personal correspondence. Maybe it was my manly baritone and sensitive poet’s eyes. Or maybe they were congenitally illiterate.
‘There,’ she said, handing across her iPhone.
Finn had set her up with the email address years ago, when she first went off to Kylemore Abbey Boarding School for Girls, so Grainne could bitch without worrying about Saoirse sneaking a peek. The mail I was looking at had the subject header, To Be or Not.
‘Shakespeare,’ she said.
‘Sure.’
‘As in, Will Shakespeare.’
‘Ah.’ I scrolled down to the body text, said, ‘Listen, we probably shouldn’t be parked on the side of the road. Looks odd.’
She drove like she walked, hunched forward ever so slightly around the shoulders, as if hunted, but for so long that it’d become a part of who she was.
A Gra, the email began, which was a cute touch, Gra being short for Grainne and the Irish for ‘my love’.
Quick one, just to let you know I’ve had to make changes to the TF. Can’t say too much now but you’ll understand — just didn’t want to do it without keeping you in the loop. ALL WILL BE REVEALED (LOL!). Seriously, you’ll love it when it all falls out — the Dragon will roast Gillick. God, I’d love to be there for that. Take pictures. Kodak moments!
Anyway, the update is lodged with Cenk Mehmet, 7C Mustafa Cagatay Cad., Girne (number below). And do me a solid — don’t mention this to Maria, not until you get the green light. Okay? I’ll take that as a promise …
Chat soon,
Love ‘n’ hugs,
F
I scrolled on down, but apart from the attachment, that was it. We were up on Hughes Bridge by then, the traffic building even at that early hour, Grainne edging along in first gear, her slim fingers a-tremble where they rested on the gear-stick. I put the phone down on the pile of CDs stacked behind the seats and claimed another Marlboro as my consultancy fee.