Joanne looked across the room. Mona was gazing at her computer screen with an absorption Joanne recognized; it was now her turn in the rabbit hole, clicking and staring her way through the links.
‘Hey,’ Joanne said, and Mona turned her head in surprise.
‘What?’ she said.
‘What’s the story with the daughter?’
Mona looked blank, then wary. ‘What daughter?’ she said slowly.
‘Mel bloody Gibson’s daughter — whose daughter do you think I’m talking about?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mona said, clicking hurriedly into a Word file.
‘The Lefroy daughter,’ Joanne said impatiently. ‘There’s a daughter. In the notes from the opening consultation.’
‘Oh,’ said Mona, her expression breaking into bright relief. ‘The sister. Oh, yeah.’
‘Antonia.’
‘Yeah, Antonia.’ Mona said. ‘Why? What about her?’
‘What about her?’ Joanne almost shouted. ‘What became of her? There’s not even one other mention of her in the case notes.’
Mona shrugged. ‘I guess she’s not important.’
‘Of course she’s important,’ Joanne said. ‘How can we expect to know the whole story about a case involving two members of the same family if we don’t find out everything we can about that family?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, we don’t need to know anything more,’ Mona said, turning back to clatter at her keyboard. ‘We don’t need help, remember. Rupert is the one who’s clearly in the right. Eoin’s said it over and over again. Our case is as good as won.’
‘But we should have looked into the daughter. If the other side haven’t brought her up, hasn’t made something of her, there must be some reason for that. Mustn’t there?’
‘Don’t go making work for us,’ Mona said, in a warning tone.
And then Imelda’s door opened, and Imelda stepped into the room. She glanced at Mona — glanced down to where Mona’s feet were hidden by her desk — and looked to Joanne with a frown. ‘I was sure I told you to look into that sister of Rupert’s several weeks ago,’ she said, her eyes on the file open in front of Joanne. ‘Is that not the case?’
‘No,’ Joanne said nervously, and she heard Mona exhale between her teeth.
‘Well, my mistake,’ Imelda said, handing her the phone. ‘Get on with it.’
‘It’s six in the morning in New York,’ Joanne said.
‘Ring her during lunchtime, then,’ Imelda said. ‘You don’t have anywhere you need to be, do you?’
*
Antonia Lefroy picked up on the second ring. It was still early in New York, but she did not sound wary as she said hello, and neither did she sound as though she had just been woken. She sounded confident, capable, used to dealing with interruptions.
‘Ms Lefroy?’ Joanne said, and heard in her own tone the very nervousness and uncertainty she had expected in the other woman’s.
‘This is she.’
‘My name is Joanne Lynch. I’m calling from Brennan and Mullooly Solicitors, in Dublin.’
‘Hold on, please.’
There was a pause. Joanne heard a quick solid noise, like the movement of an object, or the sound of a door closing. When Antonia came back on the line her breath was close to the mouthpiece, and it came out in a long sigh. She was expecting bad news, Joanne realized. Who could receive a call from a solicitors’ office in another country and not expect bad news?
‘I don’t want to worry you, Ms Lefroy,’ she said. ‘Nothing has happened. Nothing is wrong.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that, I think,’ Antonia said tightly. ‘This is to do with my mother and my brother, I suppose?’
‘Rupert is our client. Your mother is suing him—’
Antonia interrupted. ‘Yes, I know all about their little tussle. I read the papers. Or I should say the paper. It hasn’t been reported anywhere other than the Irish Times, I hope?’
‘The Sunday Independent did something last weekend.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Antonia clicked her tongue. ‘Sordid, I suppose?’ She didn’t wait for Joanne to reply, but told her to go on.
‘Ms Lefroy, there are a couple of things I’d like to ask you,’ Joanne said.
‘Such as?’
‘Things to do with your mother, and your brother, family. . history things.’ She winced at her words. At the other end of the line, she heard a clipped laugh.
‘Family history things?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Joanne blustered. She felt a wave of relief that she had waited until the office was empty to make the call. ‘Ms Lefroy, in her testimony, Mrs Lefroy has described her relationship with you as being estranged.’
‘I didn’t read that in the papers.’
‘It hasn’t made it into the papers.’
‘And you’re calling me to see if you can change that, I assume?’
‘I’m not a journalist, Ms Lefroy.’
‘You don’t sound much like a solicitor either, I have to tell you.’
‘I’m a trainee. I’m working on your mother’s case.’
‘My brother’s case, from your perspective, surely.’
Joanne swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘And what do you want from me?’
‘Well, I was hoping. .’ Joanne stopped. ‘I was hoping you could fill in for us, a little bit, the background to your own. . estrangement. . from your mother. How that came to be the case, and why. What happened, you know.’
‘I see.’
‘I mean, I know it’s very personal information. .’
‘It certainly is.’
‘But I think it’s also essential to the progress of your brother’s case, if we are to represent him fairly.’
Antonia laughed curtly. ‘What makes you think I’m on my brother’s side in all of this? What makes you think I believe Rupert to be the one in the right?’
Joanne hesitated. She had been getting into the swing of things, and now she felt uncertain again. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Lefroy,’ she said. ‘It’s just. . with the implication that you and your mother no longer get on—’
‘You assume that I despise her just as much as my brother does. That I have just as great a desire to see her shamed and ruined.’
‘Well, no,’ said Joanne. This woman had just as much talent for melodrama as Paddy Glackin, she thought. The combined force of the two of them in the courtroom would be too much to bear.
‘Do you have a mother, Miss Lynch?’
Joanne stammered. ‘Do I?’
‘Of course you do,’ Antonia broke in impatiently. ‘You sound about eighteen years old. You probably still live with your mother.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Joanne said, more sharply than she had intended.
‘So you are estranged from her.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You no longer live in the same house as your mother. Therefore you and she must be estranged. Am I correct?’
Joanne frowned. ‘I don’t think. .’ she said, but then she couldn’t find anything else to say. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said after a moment.
‘Because you see, Miss Lynch, from my mother’s point of view, that is all it takes to become estranged. The mere fact of geographical distance between us, and of lives lived separately — of a life, on my part, lived on my own terms — that is enough to constitute an estrangement. That is why she describes us as estranged. Do you know how many years I spent living in the house on Fitzwilliam Square?’
‘No,’ Joanne said. ‘We don’t know anything about you, actually. That’s kind of the point.’
‘Thirty-nine.’
‘You’re thirty-nine?’
A long pause confirmed the error that Joanne already knew she had made. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I mean. .’
‘Flattery may get you everywhere in your chosen profession,’ Antonia said, ‘but no. I am not thirty-nine. I am well past it. What I said is that I lived in my mother’s house, with my mother, for thirty-nine years.’