‘Oh,’ Joanne said. She wrote 39 in her notebook and circled it twice. Not age, she added, and immediately put a line through it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
‘Sorry for what? Don’t be sorry for me. I’ve been out of Dublin ten years now. My life has never been better. I’ve lived in London, and now I’m in New York, and I’m doing what I want to do. And I’m still in touch with my mother. Has she told you that? I’m still in touch with her very regularly, in fact.’
‘She hasn’t said anything about you.’
‘Well, there’s a reason for that. My mother has not forgiven me.’
‘For moving away?’
‘For moving out of her house,’ Antonia said. ‘My mother was used to having me in that house with her. To cook for her, and clean for her, and keep the place going for her, like some kind of Victorian maid. And now that I’m no longer where she liked me to be, my mother prefers to pretend that I was never there. That I never existed. And yet I still visit her at least once a year. Which is more than my brother did when he was living abroad. It was only when his money ran out that he decided to do that.’
‘Sure,’ Joanne said, and circled some more random words on her notepad. ‘I’m sure everything that’s happening between them must be difficult for you.’
‘Not particularly,’ said Antonia. ‘I left Ireland to make my own life. I had to become immune to caring about certain things.’ She sighed. ‘But I’m afraid I still don’t know why you called me. Would you be so good as to tell me? What is it, exactly, that you wish to find out about my brother? Do you even know the answer to that question yourself?’
Joanne did not respond.
‘Well, let me help you,’ Antonia said. ‘Let me tell you, first of all, that my brother is a compulsive liar. You probably know that already.’
‘Well. .’
‘Of course you do, you’re representing him. But let me tell you something even more complicating — which is not going to help you, I’m afraid. Not only is my brother a compulsive liar, and a consummate one, but he learned how to lie from my mother. She will tell you that black is white, and he’ll tell you white is brown. Are you beginning to understand me?’
‘I think so,’ Joanne said slowly, though that was not quite true.
‘Good. Then what you’re beginning to understand, Miss Lynch, is that representing my brother is about as easy a task as it would be to represent my mother.’
‘I see.’
‘So good luck with it. And, please, don’t call me again. I have nothing to tell you. My mother may say that she is not in touch with me, but she is, and I don’t trouble myself to think about her reasons for saying otherwise. I don’t see myself as estranged. I see myself as away.’
With a dignified click, she hung up. Joanne stared at the phone. She was not sure what had happened. She glanced again at the useless notes she had taken. Her heart was thumping. Imelda would be back from lunch any minute, and she would see all this as dynamite: how Elizabeth had treated her daughter, how domineering and selfish she had been as a mother, how she had refused to let her children build lives of their own. Imelda would bring it to their barrister, Linda O’Halloran, as further ammunition for Rupert’s case, for the argument that his mother was merely bitter at his display of independence, merely jealous of the success he had made of the mews house, all on his own. And then there was the detail about Elizabeth being a consummate liar. The second part of that detail — the part about Rupert being a talented liar too — Imelda would ignore: it was irrelevant for the purposes of their defence, she would say. But Elizabeth’s lying: that, Imelda and O’Halloran would whip up into a savage attack on the old woman’s character — on her unreliability — on her claims to have been a good mother, a mother who wanted only honesty and decency from her son. If Elizabeth Lefroy could not act honestly herself, O’Halloran would address the courtroom, on what basis could they attach so much as a shred of credibility to her accusations about her son? It was all there. It lay sparkling on a platter, waiting to be snatched up and thrown. Once again, Joanne imagined Elizabeth on the witness stand, her eyes dark, her posture defiant, her chin held high. The jet beads at her throat.
She had never even seen the woman. She had only read her words in the transcripts; she had not even listened to the tapes. And she had heard only poor accounts of Elizabeth by now, from her son and from her daughter, and whatever about Rupert, she believed what Antonia had said about her mother; she had heard nothing to doubt or to treat with suspicion in Antonia’s tone. So why did she keep thinking of her? Seeing her standing there, wearing those beads? She would hardly even know jet beads if she saw them. She would not recognize them if they flew off their string and struck her in the eye. And yet, as she heard footsteps on the stairs now, she ripped from her notepad the pages on which she had scribbled during the phone call and tossed them into the bin. Her heart beat so hard she felt it almost as pain. When Imelda came in, Joanne turned to face her, then looked immediately away.
Imelda came over to her desk and tapped a fingernail on the wood. ‘So. You got her? Mademoiselle Lefroy?’
Joanne nodded. ‘I called her,’ she said, as casually as she could. ‘It wasn’t very useful, I’m afraid.’
‘How could it not be useful? What did you ask her? What did she say?’
‘She says she’s not estranged from her mother,’ Joanne said, looking at her computer screen, watching as, noiselessly, another new email piled its black weight on to the top of her queue. It was spam. ‘She says she phones her mother often, says she visits her once a year, says she worries about her all the time. She says the problem is her mother is confused, that’s all. That the mother doesn’t really know what she’s saying when she says that she and her daughter are estranged. That she doesn’t really know the meaning of the word.’ With a tiny click, she deleted the email.
Imelda, seeing the motion of her finger on the mouse, frowned. ‘She’s saying her mother is senile,’ she said, with a wave of her hand. ‘Well, we’ve argued that already. No harm in arguing it some more.’
‘No.’ Joanne shook her head. ‘She says her mother is just getting old.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Imelda said sharply. ‘Don’t give me semantics. She’s saying her mother is no longer the full shilling. We can definitely use that. We need her over here for next week’s hearing. Get her on the phone again.’
‘No,’ Joanne said, and she felt sweat break out on her skin.
Imelda laughed. ‘No? I’m sorry? Did you just say no?’
‘I mean, no, I don’t think we can use her. I don’t think she’d be useful to us.’
‘Why?’ Imelda snapped.
‘She hates Rupert. Says he’s a liar.’
Imelda shrugged. ‘So? We can put up with that.’
‘She says he stole from her.’
Imelda’s face changed. A stare, still, but not just a cold stare: something dawning in it, something uncomfortable. ‘For Christ’s sake. Stole what?’
Joanne looked at the screen. The bank website she’d been on earlier was still open. ‘Money. A lot of money. Says he forged cheques. Says he used her bank card.’
‘She says he did this or a conviction says he did it? Which is it? Is there anything to prove this actually happened?’
‘Not that I know of,’ Joanne said, feeling weak.
‘Not that you know of?’
‘I mean, no. No, there isn’t. Nothing ever came to court. She never took it that far. Antonia. She didn’t want to go through a court case with her own family.’