‘Next time use your phone,’ I said. I nodded down at Grainne. ‘She’s a bit protective of the laptop.’
I sat down on the couch, pulled up the jeans to the knee. The scissors had punctured the skin but the cut wasn’t so deep I’d bleed out any time soon. I rolled down the jeans again, leaned across to pat Grainne on the shoulder. ‘Hey, are you okay?’
Muffled sobs.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘the laptop’s yours. No one’s taking it away. Alright?’
Right on cue Herb placed the Mac on the coffee table. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘See? It’s all yours.’
She told the carpet something.
‘Grainne,’ I said, ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying. And I don’t have time to be sitting-’
She turned her head, looked up at me. ‘You said we had a deal.’
‘Yeah, well, all bets are off. The laptop’s yours. I don’t want it.’
She wriggled into a sitting position. ‘But it’s no good … I mean, I thought we were doing it together.’
‘That was never happening. You were paying me to give it to you instead of your mother. Now I don’t need the money.’
‘But …’
‘Forget it.’ I looked across at Maria. ‘You okay?’
She nodded.
‘Change in plan,’ I told her. ‘Herb’s going to drive you to the airport.’
‘Like fuck,’ Herb said. ‘And anyway,’ he gestured at Grainne, ‘we can’t leave her here on her own.’
‘Not my problem. Not right now.’
Herb swore. Maria snorted, like she’d heard it all before. Grainne tugged at my jeans.
‘What?’ I said, looking down at her, but she didn’t have to say anything. She was staring up at me, her expression half-hopeful, shyly expectant and desperate not to be refused. She might as well have stabbed me in the heart with the scissors.
I’d seen that expression not twenty-four hours ago, Ben glancing up at me from under his fringe, his wan smile anticipating my latest failure, the latest round in the raising and dashing of hopes. The unsaid promises, the wordless craving of a fatherless child for something he didn’t fully understand except in its absence.
‘I don’t have anyone else,’ she whispered.
I looked across at Herb. He shrugged. Maria had her head tilted to one side, eyes watchful, a sneer on the brew.
‘There’s no way I’m driving the two of them anywhere,’ Herb said. ‘Are you kidding? Fucking world war three it’d be.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay.’
Herb said he’d take care of the clean-up, burn my trousers and socks, the shoes. He didn’t say anything more about my going to see Ben. I was guessing that meant he’d only brought it up as a way of buying time, hoping the rage would burn itself out. Which was why he wanted me to be the one to take Maria to Knock, put her on a flight. The idea being that an hour there and an hour back would help me cool off. Herb with no idea the rage was ice cold.
Saoirse Hamilton rattling around my head, her voice scabrous as she asked me if I honestly believed one day might make any difference to how she felt about her dead son.
We turned out of the driveway onto the Strandhill Road, headed for town. It felt like my brain was swimming in black ink. Ben a stab in the heart every time I drew breath and suffering a weird kind of horizontal vertigo, the world accelerating away. The sense of loss like a black and poisoned kind of light. It was everywhere, infusing every last thing with a corrosive despair, eating away even as it fed on itself. The heart turned iron, so that all I felt was the gaping, tugging vortex he’d left behind and a hatred of everything alive, of the world itself for being the world without Ben in it.
‘… fucking disappointed when she opens that baby up.’
‘What?’
‘I said, Grainne’ll be …’ She paused, looked across. ‘Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?’
‘No.’
We’d reached the railway station, were stalled in traffic on Lord Edward Street, the lights red. I had no memory of getting there.
Maria sipped from a bottle of water, tapped the cap home again with the heel of her palm. ‘I’m talking about the laptop.’
‘Forget it. We’re not going back.’
‘Who said anything about going back?’
‘I’m getting you out. That’s all you need to know.’
‘I’m owed, Harry.’ The brandy still working its old black magic. A bolshy tilt to her chin. ‘Finn made promises.’
‘Finn said a lot of things.’
‘Maybe he did, but it’s not just about me.’ She placed her hands, very deliberately, on her midriff. ‘Is it?’
‘You don’t even know it’s his,’ I said.
She conceded that by pursing her lips and nodding slowly. ‘Maybe not,’ she said, ‘but see it my way. It’s either Finn’s or it’s some flake who killed his brother, already has a kid of his own. Sorry,’ she needled, ‘had a kid of his own.’
The lights turned green. I eased off the clutch and trundled around onto the bypass, knocked the car out of gear again as we rolled up behind a Ford Focus.
‘Someone’s going to die for Ben,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t have to be you.’
‘Oh yeah? You’d kill your own kid, maybe? Just when you’ve lost another? Oh, wait — he wasn’t actually yours, was he?’ She patted her tummy. ‘At least this time,’ she said, ‘you know there’s a chance it’s yours.’
‘Maria, I know you’re drunk but I swear to God, one more fucking word about Ben and I’ll drive you straight to Saoirse Hamilton myself.’
‘And tell her what?’ she said. ‘That Finn jumped because you got me pregnant?’
I had a sudden urge to vomit. A flash of Gonzo flopped prone in a chair, a hole punched in his chest, the gun in my hand and the thick whiff of cordite. The sickening thrill of it.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ I said.
‘You never wondered?’ she said.
‘About what?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Why you.’
‘Not really. You’re a gold-digging bitch who got bored, needed to kick-start Finn. And I was, y’know, there.’
She seemed pleasantly surprised, if a little disappointed I’d stolen her thunder. ‘And here you are again,’ she said.
The lights turned green. This time we managed to make it through two sets before getting caught behind a red again. ‘What’re you saying?’ I said.
‘I’m saying, the Hamiltons will do okay. Me and you, we’re walking away with nothing. But if we were to-’
‘Forget it. You’re going to Knock and you’re getting on that plane.’
‘Right. And then go home and tell them I’m pregnant and we all live happily ever after.’
‘Not my problem.’
‘No?’
‘Not right now.’
‘Except you don’t know the baby isn’t yours.’
‘You want me and you to play happy families?’
‘I’m saying, Harry, that you already lost one kid today. You want to make it a twofer?’
She was good, no doubt about it. The lights went green again. We cleared the roundabout opposite Summerhill, heading south now, the road clear.
‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘I’ll abort. No way I’m going home to Ozankoy carrying some kid I don’t even know who the father is.’
I pulled over onto the hard shoulder, parked up, got the hazard lights flashing. She watched me roll a smoke, spark it up.
‘Forget the laptop,’ I said.
She smirked. ‘You’re the one keeps banging on about the laptop. You seriously think Finn’d be dumb enough to keep anything useful on it? Saoirse could’ve sent some scumbag in any time she wanted, break into his apartment, the studio.’
‘So why’s everyone want the Mac?’
‘Saoirse wouldn’t be exactly up to speed on the latest in computing. So long as she thought everyone else wanted the Mac …’
‘The woman’s looking for a suicide note. Wants to know why her son-’
‘Come on, Harry. You still believe that crap?’
It didn’t matter a fiddler’s fuck what I believed anymore. ‘So if there’s nothing on the laptop …’ I prompted.