Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars

by Jean Grainger

  During the interview, the Morgan children, then aged five and seven, played angelically with educational and sustainable wooden toys while munching happily on carrot sticks and hummus. Julia sat on their large comfortable sofa beside her husband. If you had to draw the perfect American family, the Morgans were as close as you could get. The perception was that Charlie Morgan was a powerful man, unafraid to do what was right, but despite that, an all-round good guy. Scarlett was terrified but managed to hide her nerves as she asked intelligent and pertinent questions. Artie had set the interview up for her, but made her promise to take the credit. Her old editor was more like a father figure to her, and though he made out like he was insulted that she had left him and got the job at the Examiner, she knew that really he was proud of her. He knew Charlie Morgan’s father from years ago, so pulled in a favour.

  The interview was wide ranging, sounding Charlie Morgan out on issues from abortion to gun control, and he presented a compassionate yet realistic case for everything. Broadminded, liberal, he appeared to have his feet very firmly planted in the realpolitik of twenty first century America.

  So impressed was she with him, that she wrote an uncharacteristically flattering piece on him, admitting that she had been looking for flaws but there just didn’t seem to be any cracks in the image he presented to the world. All really was as it seemed. Of solid New England stock, he had graduated from Harvard and chose to leave the family business to his brothers and entered politics. Julia was his childhood sweetheart and they seemed happy. As he sat in the sunny living room of his Montauk home, he looked handsome and relaxed. Not slimy or aggressive or sexist or any of the other traits she’d come to associate with politicians. His brown, slightly curly hair was well cut to look casual, and the light blue linen shirt and Levi 501s fitted him perfectly. His skin was tanned dark brown from a summer sailboarding with his children.

  It was at moments like this that it struck her how far she’d come from the cowering kid of a crazy alcoholic Irishman and poor old Lorena. She had kept her promise to herself and studied hard for her last year at school and graduated, then went to the local community college to study journalism. There was no way Lorena could have afforded to send her to one of the big colleges.

  She did well and managed to get a job on a local Yonkers newspaper, writing about local charities and reporting on town council meetings. Artie Schwitz, the editor, was a small old Jew who liked the spark he saw in Scarlett. He remembered Dan from his days drinking and roaring around the streets and decided to give his daughter a chance. She was tenacious and dogged in her pursuit of stories, often scooping the bigger publications, and it was through her persistence she managed to increase the circulation of the Yonkers Express to record numbers. The interview she had done with the mullah from a radical Islamist mosque on the Lower East Side, who had refused all interviews before, plucked her from obscurity. In a letter that she was sure was correct, written in his native tongue, she’d told the old man from Iraq how she had gone to night school to learn Arabic. He agreed to talk to her and explained the despair and fear in Moslems in New York in the wake of 9/11. It was an unimaginable scoop for their small paper and led to a huge surge in circulation.

  Her coverage of 9/11 continued to be very well received, and when she wrote a feature on the reaction of the Islamic community of the city to the terrorist attacks one year on, with the blessing of the mullah, she won the prestigious Carter award for journalism, the youngest ever recipient. She knew she was on the rise, and when she saw Carol Steinberg at a press event, she approached her and asked her for a job. Carol had smiled politely and suggested that she email her resume to the Examiner office. Two weeks later she had an interview. Life since then was a whirlwind. She bought a small house, a car and a whole new wardrobe on the strength of her new salary and the money she had saved over the years working for Artie. She was on top of the world.

  Charlie made no reference to the fact that his father had asked him to do the interview as a favour to Artie, and she was grateful to him for that. In the months that followed, they would meet at events and they were always friendly. Then one night in Atlantic City, after a Democrat campaign meeting, they found themselves staying at the same hotel. He invited her for a nightcap in the small residents’ bar, and not realising his staff had gone for the night, she agreed.

  They talked and laughed until the early hours, and she found herself telling him about her father. Not used to drinking, she poured her heart out, about the violence and fear that overshadowed her childhood. Her anger at her mother for not leaving, for not keeping them safe from him, and her anger at Lorena for giving her such a stupid name, it all came out. Charlie said he loved that she was called Scarlett O’Hara and that she was every bit as hot as Vivien Leigh.

  He listened without judging and congratulated her sincerely on how far she’d come. Undoubtedly the whiskey played a part, for she had never told anyone about her past, but Charlie was easy to talk to. She felt she could trust him. They met a few more times after that night, both knowing an affair was inevitable. And so it began, she was his mistress, the other woman. She looked at herself in the mirror some mornings and said that to herself, but those sordid, dirty little words just couldn’t be applied to what she and Charlie had. With him, it was honest, it was love.

  She tried to block out Julia and his children, the eldest now about to start middle school. If the relationship was good, he wouldn’t be seeing Scarlett. That’s what she told herself. He never gave her any of the standard lines, that his wife didn’t understand him, that he was only staying for the sake of the kids, that they’d be together properly when the kids left school. He simply never discussed it. His life with Julia was one thing, his life with Scarlett something else completely and never the twain shall meet.

  She pretended that it suited her, that she was so taken up with her career that a full-time relationship would be just too restrictive. But as the months went on, she knew she was lying, to him and to herself. She never raised the subject with him, probably, she told herself, because she wasn’t at all sure of what his reaction would be. He told her all the time that he loved her, that she was not like anyone he’d ever met, that she was gorgeous, but still she was not convinced. If he had to choose, would she be the one? He used to joke that she was his Vivien Leigh and always signed his texts ‘Rhett’ or just ‘R’. She always thought it was cute, though she wished he could have chosen something other than her ridiculous name to make jokes about. In the cold reality of what had happened, she realised that he wrote R in case anyone found the texts. Charlie was protecting himself.

  And now, the worst possible thing had happened. She’d destroyed everything she’d worked so hard to build.

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  Acknowledgements

  This is a book about friendship. It’s about the closeness you can have with people to whom there is no blood connection but yet are central to your happiness. The family you choose for yourself. I have been extraordinarily fortunate in my life to have known deep and lasting friendships and, for all of them, I am eternally grateful. If I had one wish for my children it wouldn’t be fortune or career success,though of course that would be nice, it would be that they would be surrounded by people who make them feel good about themselves, who don’t judge, who support them in the good times and the bad, who can make them laugh.

  This book holds a special place in my heart, and of the four books I’ve written, these are the characters that are hardest to leave. I wanted to write a book about friendship because I have personal experience of such loyalty and love as exists between Liam, Hugo, and Patrick. I hope my friends can see our relationships reflected in theirs.

  I would especially like to thank those friends who help me to get my books to print. In particular, my editor Helen Falconer, and my proof-reader Vivian Fitzgerald Smith for their wonderful insights. Once again, I could have achieved none of this without my dream team of first readers
, those I trust with my new born bookbaby to be kind but honest. The wonderfully witty and charming Jim Cooney, Joseph Birchall, the co-founder of the Irish Indie Publishing Experience Support Group, my mother Hilda, who, while she is never anything but utterly biased in favour of her firstborn, is a source of tremendous support. Tim O’Riordan, himself a wonderful songwriter, who kept my story in the strangest of places and whose opinion I value hugely, and finally my best friend, the gorgeously funny and kind Beth-Anne O’Dwyer, who I can talk to forever, who makes me laugh so much, and who I know has my back, always.

  Thank you to all my friends, how grateful I am to have you. Some scattered all over the world and some within the throw of a stone. I love you all and cherish your presence in my life, be it once a day or once a year. You know who you are.

  To my gang, Rob, Colleteo, Lia, Jack, Ellen, Barbara, Pete, Ruby, Renee, D-daw, Daniel, Ais, Simon, Johnny, Hil, Conor, Sórcha, Eadaoin, and Siobhán. Ye know what ye mean to me.

  And finally, I have to thank once again my husband Diarmuid, who always cheers the victories and gives me courage in the darker days. Thank you for everything, mo rún, mo chroí, mo stór.

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  Just go to my website www.jeangrainger.com to download this free novella. I hope you enjoy it!