Darkest Truth

by Catherine Kirwan

  I found the short film on YouTube. Another Bad Day at the Office told the story of a world-weary, overworked businessman, with a failing career, who develops a platonic friendship with a fifteen-year-old girl he meets in a park while she’s on her school holidays. The joke of the film, and probably what appealed so much to young viewers like Deirdre Carney, is that the girl, played by Rhona Macbride, is much more mature than the Gill character. She becomes his counsellor and business adviser and, as a result, he turns around his flagging career and becomes hugely successful. Until the girl goes back to school after the holidays, when he starts to flounder again and has ‘another bad day at the office’. The film was brilliantly made, with a light touch and extraordinary comic timing.

  And, with the benefit of hindsight, was the storyline just a little creepy? Maybe. Though nobody had thought so at the time. Even if it was, it wasn’t evidence of anything. Still, I would talk to the Film Festival about their Child Protection arrangements. I wouldn’t mention Jeremy Gill by name but I’d remind them that the festival could, and should, take appropriate precautions, as the law required. It had policies in place, I knew, but it might be a comfort to Sean Carney to hear that I had double-checked.

  It was time for bed, long since. I logged out and picked up the 1998 catalogue again, intending to put it back in the pile on the floor. Before I did, I turned to the Schools section of the catalogue to see the selection of films Deirdre and her schoolmates would have seen, though I knew already that one of them was Gill’s film.

  But, underneath the Schools listing for Another Bad Day at the Office was a photograph of Deirdre Carney and a piece of text which read:

  Another Bad Day at the Office was championed by youth jury member Deirdre Carney from Transition Year at St Finbarr’s Catholic University School.

  If Deirdre had been on the youth jury, there was a chance that Gill had met her during the festival, especially as she had ‘championed’ his film. At the very least, he would have received a copy of the catalogue. And, if he had the catalogue, it was inconceivable that he wouldn’t have checked every mention of himself in it.

  Even if they hadn’t met during the festival, Gill would’ve had to have known Deirdre’s face and name.

  And where she went to school.

  3

  I crawled out of bed and into the shower. I had spent much of the night awake, thinking about what Sean Carney had said and what I should or shouldn’t do with the feeling I had that he might be right about Jeremy Gill. But even if Sean was right, from a legal point of view, pursuing Gill made no sense. The wisest thing I could do would be to tell Sean that I wouldn’t be able to help. His daughter was dead: case closed. I would follow up with the Film Festival, make sure their procedures were fit for purpose. Leave it at that. Yet, even as I was thinking it, I knew that I couldn’t let it drop. And that it wasn’t something I could let sit till the following week, not with the festival starting on Sunday. Besides, it could do no harm to investigate a little, surely? To reassure myself there was nothing to it?

  I combed through my wardrobe. I rarely work weekends, but this wasn’t a normal Saturday. I might be meeting Sean at some point, who was a sort of client, so I was going to have to wear something half decent. I chose a grey wool dress, with wool tights in a darker grey, and pulled on my knee-high flat black leather boots. I twisted my hair into a messy bun, rubbed tinted moisturiser on my face and looked at myself in the mirror. Black circles around my eyes. Skin the colour of sour milk. Something that might turn into a spot on my chin. The tinted moisturiser wasn’t going to be enough. Yawning, I sat at my dressing table and clicked open my Mac foundation. On the way upstairs, I slid silver hoops into my earlobes.

  I revived a little after a bowl of Flahavan’s organic porridge, made with milk, and a mug of Cork Coffee Roasters’ Morning Growler blend. Over breakfast, I messaged my friend Alice Chambers, the Film Festival manager, to say that I needed to see her this morning and would it be okay if I called into the office around nine?

  Alice replied: ‘if u must!!! don’t expect much of a welcome!’

  I laughed, and replied ‘short visit, will bring u capp.’

  ‘Okay,’ replied Alice.

  With the Film Festival starting the next day, Alice was working at full throttle and probably getting by on four hours’ sleep, but her usual cappuccino would win me a five-minute window. I checked the local news online. For once, Cork had had a reprieve. The centre of the storm had bypassed the city, and the rain hadn’t been as bad as expected. But the air was laden with moisture still, and bloated grey clouds crouched barely clear of the rooftops. Though water wasn’t spilling from the sky at that exact moment, it would, and soon.

  I pulled on my candy-pink wool coat, then took it off again. I should never have bought it: most of my clothes are in dark colours, and anything bright feels scratchy and wrong. I still have the coat, though. Can’t bring myself to throw it out, or take it to a charity shop, and not just because I bought it in Brown Thomas and because it cost the best part of my Visa limit for the month.

  I felt last night’s raincoat. More me. Charcoal grey. And dry. Nearly. I wound a long grey and black striped wool scarf around my neck and reached for my bag and phone just as it pinged.

  ‘Where have you been lately?’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said.

  It was a message from my good friend and sometime personal trainer Davy Keenan. And I knew why he was calling.

  ‘Busy, sorry, talk soon :-),’ I replied, hoping it would be enough to hold him off.

  It wasn’t. I was walking out the gate when the phone rang.

  ‘Don’t you know it’s Saturday?’ I said.

  ‘Hello, stranger,’ Davy said. ‘You’re up early. How’s your fitness plan going?’

  ‘It’s not, Davy, okay, it’s just not. This is harassment,’ I said. ‘Have you nothing better to be doing?’

  Davy laughed.

  ‘I’m concerned for you, Finn, that’s all it is.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Or has one of your yummy mummies cancelled on you?’

  ‘Naw,’ Davy said. ‘Client due in at nine, very un-yummy daddy, in fact. Just thought I’d check in on you. When you coming to see me?’

  ‘Soon, Davy,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you this week, make an appointment, promise, okay?’

  ‘I’ll hold you to that.’

  I could hear a note of smugness in his voice that I decided to ignore.

  ‘Bye,’ I said and rang off before he had a chance to say anything else.

  I had first met Davy seven years ago when he had been a client of mine, charged with drink driving and cocaine possession offences. After one of Davy’s later court appearances, I had bought him a coffee and had a long talk with him. I’d explained how close he’d come to prison and we’d talked about him going into rehab. At the time, I knew he was humouring me in talking about it, but I told him that if he needed my help getting a place in a programme in the future, I’d do what I could. It took another year and a half, but he came back to me for a referral letter and I made a few calls for him. Later, after he came out of treatment and retrained, I gave him legal advice and organised the lease on his gym space.

  Davy applied the same devotion to sobriety and work as he had in the past to getting wasted. His gym was a success. Even during the recession he’d expanded and he seemed to have a knack for sales and pricing. I never asked how he’d acquired such expertise, though I had a fair idea. He’d given me a voucher for three personal training sessions as a gift and I had felt obliged to go, after numerous calls from him, with a plan to sustain a minor injury during session one and never to return. I’d reckoned that I was as fit as I needed to be. I walked most places, most of the time, and I was tallish; not skinny, admittedly, but not overweight by any normal standard.

  It didn’t matter, apparently. Davy had delivered a terrifying lecture on weight-bearing exercise, muscle loss and osteoporosis. ‘Use it or lose it in your thirties,’ he’d said and
signed me up for a series of classes and training sessions. He emphasised fitness and strength rather than weight loss but, almost despite myself, I had dropped a dress size in a year and was fitter than I’d ever been. Which entitled me to take a break, I’d thought, and, to my surprise, Davy had agreed. But he was back on my case again, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have go back to the gym. I would, definitely, but not just yet.

  I walked down Barrack Street, turning right at the bottom to go over the Nano Nagle footbridge. The river was mud brown and fat with flood, broken tree limbs rushing by, reminders of how bad the storm had been. The day was dull and quiet, nothing unusual for November. Except that it was a Saturday, and I was on my way into town to start an unofficial investigation into an Oscar-winning film director. If I stopped to think about how unusual that was I might come up with other words, like deluded, misguided and foolish. I didn’t stop.

  The Film Festival office occupied the upper storeys of a plush interiors shop on Emmett Place, opposite the red-brick Crawford Art Gallery. The festival, Ireland’s oldest, has been running annually since 1956, and prides itself on its commitment to short films. Winning one of the main shorts prizes at Cork is prestigious and has the added bonus of getting the film on to the Oscar longlist. I had been a board member for three years. Together with the rest of the directors, I had a duty to supervise the festival’s management and operation on behalf of the Arts Council and the local authority. The role is unpaid and, at times, the commitment can be considerable. As a result, more often than not, board members are drawn from film fans and regular attendees at the festival.

  I climbed the stairs. Open plan, the main room was filled with bleary-eyed, worried-looking people, the same as every year: last-minute hitches, difficult guests, organised chaos and a sense of impending doom that dissipated as soon as the opening film was under way. Holding the place together for the last decade was Alice Chambers, a tiny woman with stylishly cropped grey hair, Clark Kent glasses and a work ethic that put most of the lawyers I knew to shame.

  ‘Gimme that fast!’ Alice said. ‘I’m gasping.’

  She grabbed the coffee from me.

  ‘You’re welcome, Alice,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up, you big eejit, and come into my room for a sec, if you can find a space.’

  Alice’s office was piled high with stacks of boxes and reams of paper. With some difficulty, the two of us managed to get in the door and close it behind us.

  ‘Now,’ Alice said. ‘What’s so urgent?’

  I had to be careful. I needed to keep what Sean had told me confidential, even if he might have been happy if I’d spread it to the four winds and ruined Gill’s reputation.

  ‘I was lying in bed last night, Alice, and it came to me that it’s a couple of years since I reviewed the festival’s child protection policy. I just wanted to make sure that everything’s still going all right. A bit of a pain, I know, but could you run through it with me briefly, how you’re applying it, what you’re doing this year, etc.’

  ‘It’s the day before the festival. And you’re coming to me with this? Jesus, as if I haven’t enough to be at.’

  She paused.

  ‘But I know you’ll sit there and I’ll never get fucking rid of you unless I …’

  She had a thousand things to do. I was relying on her trademark conscientiousness. Along with the fact that I was asking as a member of the board of directors.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘I need this like a turkey needs Christmas, but here goes.’

  She summarised the policy from memory. ‘No under-eighteens at education screenings or workshops unless accompanied by enough responsible adults to ensure appropriate safety and supervision. No festival staff on their own with students at any time. Any under-eighteen guests to be chaperoned. And all staff and volunteers had been taken through the rules, along with their Health and Safety training, a week before the festival. Don’t worry, I’m on it.’

  ‘Sounds like you are,’ I said. ‘Knew you would be. Just one of those 3 a.m. thoughts, sure you know, yourself.’

  I was reassured, but needed to move the conversation on to Gill without arousing Alice’s suspicions. Not an easy thing to do. She’s one of the smartest people I know.

  ‘Anything else?’ Alice asked. ‘Do you want to check that we have enough loo roll? Or paper clips? How about fucking paper clips?’

  I laughed.

  ‘I’ll be back to you about the paper clips tomorrow so, just before the opening film. Seriously, though, thanks for that, you’ve set my mind at rest. I have to go into work for a while this morning so I thought I’d drop in now, get it out of the way.’

  I made as if to get out of my chair, but sat down again.

  ‘Hey, the festival made the paper yesterday I see. Jeremy Gill’s visit.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s great,’ Alice said. ‘All the Gill events are sold out, hope you have your tickets.’

  ‘Think so. What’s his schedule like while he’s here?’

  ‘Busy. Arriving at the airport on Tuesday afternoon, I’m going to meet him, then to City Hall, meet Lord Mayor, then Opera House for reception with sponsors and funders, usual rent-a-crowd wine-guzzling liggers not invited, though we can make an exception for you,’ she said, and smiled angelically at me.

  ‘Too kind,’ I said.

  Alice knew that I don’t touch alcohol, though she didn’t know the reason.

  ‘Then he’s on stage at 7 p.m., says hello to audience, quick chat about the new movie with yours truly, then roll movie and I take Jeremy and entourage to Paradiso, for fine food and glug glug, unless he’s off the drink as well. God, I hope not. He’s gone vegan, apparently. I had to tell Paradiso. No butter or cream for Jeremy. They said they’d put on some extra options for him.’

  ‘Where will he be staying?’

  ‘Muskerry Castle,’ Alice said.

  ‘Needless to say.’

  Muskerry Castle is Cork’s finest hotel. Backing on to an oak wood and overlooking the Lee valley, with a top tier golf course, and private salmon and trout fishing, it is world famous for its legendary hospitality.

  ‘He’s been before, apparently. Loves it. I’d love it too, if I could afford it. But he offered to pay his own bill, in fairness to him, though Muskerry agreed to sponsor us anyway so we didn’t have to argue about it. Anyway, the next day at noon, he’ll be doing a public interview with Tiernan McDevitt, again in the Opera House and, unbelievably for a Wednesday in the middle of the day, that’s sold out too. And then in the afternoon a workshop with film students and young film-makers. End of official programme. He’s booked to stay on the Wednesday night in the Castle again but his assistant said he might go to Dublin to visit the mammy instead so they’re not sure yet.’

  Film students and young film-makers.

  ‘That’s a bit of a coup, him doing the workshop, isn’t it? How did you swing it?’

  ‘He was the one who suggested it, wants to give back to the city and the festival. He’s really appreciative that ours was the first award he ever got. We wouldn’t have dared to hope for such commitment. I mean, can you imagine the opportunity it’ll be for those kids? It’s just amazing. Fair fucks to him, is all I can say.’

  He was the one who suggested it.

  ‘Tell me more,’ I said.

  ‘Not much more to tell. It came in an email. Limited numbers. No more than twenty film students, wants an even gender balance and has a special interest in film fans from local secondary schools. So generous of him, no sign of any ego at all so far. I was blown away. We all were.’

  ‘Wow. Fantastic,’ I said.

  Young people, young girls, and Jeremy Gill. Potentially hazardous? Or not? But I needed to make sure it was safe for those kids or I’d never sleep again.

  ‘Hey listen, Alice,’ I said. ‘Any chance I could go along to the workshop, maybe as some sort of steward or board of directors’ representative or something? You know I’m a big fan, I’d give anything
to be there and you’re going to need some responsible adults, right, remember our child protection chat earlier? Not that there’s any concern or anything but still, huh, what do you say?’

  ‘You’re shameless, you know that?’ Alice said, getting up from her desk. ‘Yeah. All right, I’ll sort it for you. And actually having a board representative there is a good idea. Now please get out of my office or we will have no Film Festival to put on.’

  ‘I’ll buy you a drink,’ I said.

  ‘Just one?’ she said, and pushed me out the door.

  Running down the stairs, I felt guilty about being less than honest with Alice. At least, I thought it was guilt, and I thought it was about Alice. But standing outside on the street, I shivered, though I wasn’t cold. I told myself that whatever happened, things were about to get interesting, and that that was good.

  And then I thought about the Chinese curse. And started walking. And tried to stop thinking for a while.

  4

  I headed in the direction of my office. I needed to check my diary for the upcoming week and do enough to clear Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday. After what I’d heard from Alice, I intended keeping a close eye on Jeremy Gill while he was in town. And I wanted to arrange another meeting with Sean Carney, and to meet his wife Ann.

  There was no time to waste, but I did anyway. Crossing Patrick Street, I cut down Marlboro Street as far as Liam Russell’s bookshop and circled back on to Princes Street. I thought about the mix of optimism and bravery and foolishness that had led people to settle and build and trade in this damp place. I thought about how, every so often, the water rose fast from the marsh beneath the streets and, just as fast, drained away leaving ruin in its wake. And I thought about the city’s narrow escape overnight, about how it was luck, and nothing else, that had saved it.

  I swung past the grand cast-iron gates, and into the English Market, busy already, though it was not yet ten, with the usual weekend foodie crowd stocking up on provisions for their Saturday night dinner parties. Taking a left at the fountain, I passed the wooden steps to the Farmgate restaurant on the balcony, went through the arch, and got an Americano with milk from Mary Rose.