‘You’re a good father.’
‘There’s always room for improvement,’ I answered, relieved at my reprieve.
‘Have you told them yet?’
‘Sure, didn’t I ring them Thursday. It’s all arranged. They’ll be home in three weeks for a weekend treat in the hotel. It’s all paid for.’
‘And you arranged all that yourself?’
‘I’m a grown man, Sadie.’
‘I know, but that can’t have been easy, going in there on your own and all.’
‘Sure, I was fine. It took me all of five minutes to arrange the rooms.’
‘The rooms? Maurice, you do know they’re living together over there.’
‘They can do what they like over there. But over here they’ll have two rooms for three nights.’
There was of course a small lie in what I’d told her: it had bothered me, and bothered me greatly to walk into that place, voluntarily. But my desperation gave me the incentive to stand at that reception desk to arrange a weekend visit home for the pair of you. As the girl approached me from the rear office, I had to brace myself.
There she was – my Molly – or at least how I’d always imagined her, all confidence and smiles but with a lovely air of modesty dancing around the edges. I swallowed hard as my hands held on to the reception counter and I came to my senses. You see, despite it all, I could see them in her.
‘Well, you have to be a Dollard,’ I said, when I finally found my voice.
‘No, I’m a Bruton. I’m Emily Bruton. My grandmother was a Dollard though, Rachel Dollard.’ No more than twenty at that point, she had the most beautiful of smiles. Her voice was sweet and light, innocent almost.
‘So you’re Jason’s daughter?’
‘Yes, that’s right: Jason and Hilary.’
‘I liked your father.’
‘He was a very good man…’ She nodded and looked down at her hands, smiling as if a particular pleasant memory had come to mind. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know your name. I’m only just getting to know everyone. Having been away at boarding school and university means I’ve lost touch a bit. And now, well, because of Daddy, I’ve come home to help.’
She looked at me with her kind brown eyes. I smiled back knowing this would all change once she heard my reply.
‘Hannigan. Your neighbour.’
I paused, to let the news sink in.
‘Ah. Mr Hannigan.’
As quick as you like, her bright eyes dulled with the mistrust and dislike of the man who’d bought up their land. ‘Well, I see,’ she said pushing her hair behind her ear, coughing, buying more time, ‘how can I help?’
At first I thought I was going a bit mad, thinking she was like Molly. But over the months when I got to know her more, the feeling didn’t change. In fact if anything, it got stronger. It was her character. Her graciousness, her courageousness with life. Thrown as she was into this place. Her life choices taken from her so young. There she was, her father having died, left with a broken-hearted mother and a hotel to run. Hilary, the mother, hadn’t an ounce of interest in it, Emily told me later. Had been dead set against it becoming a hotel in the first place. In fact when she’d first met Jason in Dublin, in his family-owned hotel, she thought she’d found her way out. A way to be rid of the crumbling house. Rachel and Reggie, her parents, seemed to hate it as much as her.
‘If that’s what he wants, Hilary, let him have it,’ Rachel had told her daughter when she’d first heard of Jason’s plan. ‘Frankly, I don’t care what he does, I just want heat. For once in my lifetime in this blasted place, I would like to feel warm. If he can manage that then he can build a bloody zoo.’
Emily’s legacy – the Rainsford House Hotel.
Had she lived, Molly that is, I believe she would have lived her life, like Emily, always righting things and sorting things with that same selflessness. I feel she’d have taken her father in hand. I might be a different man altogether.
‘I’m not the ogre they make me out to be, you know,’ I said, that first day as I stood across from Emily. She lowered her head to the computer to make the booking for your stay.
‘I didn’t say you were.’
‘You didn’t have to,’ I paused, searching her face, wondering if she might let me in at all. It was an odd sensation, this worrying about what others thought of me. ‘It was all just business you know, buying the land. Nothing personal.’ I coughed then and felt myself floundering around like some fish washed up on a beach. But somehow I got myself together and said this: ‘It can’t be easy with your father gone.’
She stopped what she was doing and looked at me for what seemed like ages, like she was trying to figure me out. She said nothing. I was a bit stumped as to where to go from there. It was then I noticed her tears. She leaned her elbows on the desk and sobbed. Funny isn’t it, what you remember in those moments of panic. It was the sound of jingling coins. I must have had my hands in my pockets foostering with my money, while I stood looking at her like a mute gom.
‘Ah, here,’ I might’ve managed. Or maybe I stretched out my hand on the counter to attempt some kind of useless comfort. ‘Wait there,’ I do remember saying after a bit, when things weren’t looking like they were getting any better, ‘I’ll be back.’
I went off to the bar, returning with two Bushmills only to find her missing. Bold as you like, I went around the counter and knocked on the office door. Not waiting for a reply, I opened it to find her with her head still in her hands at a desk.
‘Drink this,’ I said, as I placed the whiskey beside her. ‘It’ll steady you.’
She looked at it, then me. Finally taking it from my outstretched hand, she smelt it before taking some and grimacing.
‘Takes a bit of getting used to alright,’ I said, having a healthy mouthful of my own.
‘They hate you, Mr Hannigan,’ she said, after swallowing her second mouthful. ‘You paid them far too little for far too much. That’s what they’ve always told me.’
‘They’re not wrong. I’m a businessman. I’ll not apologise for that.’
Surprisingly, she gave the briefest of smiles. She was more composed now, sitting back in her seat. She gestured to a chair opposite her at the other side of the desk. I took it and sat as she tapped her fingernails at her glass, watching the liquid shiver under the impact.
‘It killed him. This place, this bloody dream of his. It killed my father,’ she continued, not looking at me but at the whiskey before tipping it back, shuddering and laying the empty glass on the desk before her. ‘We are in debt up to our necks,’ she added, speaking to the empty tumbler. ‘And my mother, well, what can I say … she’s heartbroken and totally out of it. She can’t face the mess. Losing money hand over fist in a hotel that no one will want to buy.’
‘You’re trying to sell?’
‘Oh, it’s not on the market. Not yet anyway. That’s what I’m here for. To try to figure it all out. Mother’s drugged up to the eyeballs. So it’s just me. It’s all up to me.’
She looked about her, surveying her empire. ‘And look at the fine job I’m doing,’ she laughed, as her hand gestured enthusiastically in my direction, while those big clear eyes of hers came to rest on mine, ‘confessing all to the enemy. Does that make you happy, Mr Hannigan?’ she asked, leaning into the desk, towards me. ‘To know that we are at last about to fall.’