“You are not nineteen,” Lowell said. “You are only eighteen. If you were conceived, as you two so baldly stated, on the third of October 1995 and born in either the April or June of 1996, then you are only eighteen.”
“But I’m not!” said Eddy. “I had my eighteenth when Mum was still well. We had a party. I got legally hammered. And then for my nineteenth we had a picnic in her hospital room. I’m nineteen.”
“You can’t be,” Lowell said. “Miranda must have lost track somewhere along the line. Sometime in her travelling years.”
“Oh,” said Eddy, in a sort of small cry. She looked down at the swell of her belly, put both hands on it at its widest point, and burst into tears.
“What?” said Jude. “What is it?”
“Is it starting?” said Lowell, shooting to his feet.
“I was seventeen,” said Eddy, through sobs. “I was too young!”
“People are different at different ages,” said Jude, taking one of Eddy’s hands and patting it.
“No,” said Eddy. “I was too young for it to be legal.”
“What are you talking about?” Jude said. She was still clutching Eddy’s hand but she had stopped patting.
“I told you!” Eddy said. “I—” She broke off and let out a piercing yell, scrambling out of her seat, pointing at the blackness outside the kitchen window.
Before Lowell or Jude could do more than whip their heads round, the back door burst open and heavy feet, running fast, pounded along the corridor. Lowell leapt up, grabbed Jude and Eddy, and drew them into his arms, backing towards the dresser.
“Never mind me!” Jude said. “Get her away!”
Two men appeared round the corner of the kitchen doorway as Lowell and Eddy made a run for the front of the house. They were dressed in black leather jackets and black jeans and wore heavy boots with rounded toes and long rows of lacing. The sort of boots that might have steel toecaps in them. Jude reached behind her and groped on the dresser top. Her hand found the vase full of dead forsythia and she flung it wildly at them.
One of them, the larger one, screamed and threw himself in front of the other, shielding them both. The vase broke harmlessly against the stiff leather of his jacket and fell, shattering as it hit the floor.
“Who the feck are you? Fecking psycho!” he said in an Irish accent thick enough to block a chimney.
Jude’s mind raced wildly around Raminder contracting Irish hit men or Lowell’s father, unbeknownst to himself, killing some member of an IRA gang, undercover in Galloway during the Troubles. Then she came back down to somewhere more like reality, some connection much more likely.
“Which one of you two thugs is Dave Preston?” she said. “And what do you want with her? You’ve no legal rights to anything, you know.”
“Look at the state of his jacket!” said the little one. He was pale with very black stubble to match the very black eyelashes ringing his ice-blue eyes. Jude took them in because they were so wide, staring at her in disbelief.
“And who’s Dave Preston?” asked the large one. “Has she got a lawyer? Because we can get a lawyer.”
“And as for no legal rights,” said the little dark one, “we’ve got a signed agreement. And before you start lying, we saw her, sitting here bold as brass, the wee shite that she is.”
“Who are you?” said Jude.
“Oh, aye, I’m sure she’s kept us quiet,” said the large one. “I’m Terry Ennis and this Liam Doyle and we are the fathers of the unborn baby that wee menace has kidnapped, aren’t we?”
Jude tried to speak but felt her breath leave her as though she’d been punched. She took a beat and tried again. “Liam and Terry?” she said.
A muffled voice came from just behind the pantry door. “I didn’t keep you quiet. I told them all about you.” Eddy opened the door and came sidling in, Lowell behind her with a protective hand on her shoulder. “Eventually.”
“It’s true?” said Jude. “I mean, it’s real? I thought … Eddy, I thought you made up ‘Liam and Terry’ for something to tell your dad for why you were going to go away and come back without a baby.”
“What did you think I was going to do with it?” Eddy said.
“Sell it to the highest bidder!” said Liam on a rising note. “We don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl because we wanted the surprise. So our child would be out there in Phoenix or Kiev or somewhere and we wouldn’t even know if we were looking for a son or a daughter.”
“I didn’t think you were going to do anything with it,” Jude said. “I didn’t think it was real. I thought you’d bought a foam belly off the Internet to get sympathy when you turned up here.”
Eddy stared at her. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you locked yourself in the bathroom and freaked out when Lowell disturbed you, for one thing,” Jude said.
“I was doing my roots!” said Eddy. “I freaked out because he gave me a fright and I got the stuff in my eyes! And anyway, I showed you!”
“Not the edges,” said Jude. “I thought it was fake.”
Eddy walked over to where Jude stood and took her hand. She placed it high on the mound of her stomach. “That’s real enough, isn’t it?” she said. “Poor wee mite, it’s all upset.”
Jude had heard it called kicking and heard it described as fluttering, but inside Eddy was a commotion more like a tiny person moving furniture. She felt bumps and jabs and almost took her hand away at the oddness of it.
Eddy turned to the men. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My mum died.”
“Oh,” said Liam. “I’m sorry.”
“And she told me, on her deathbed, that this was my dad I’d never met,” Eddy jerked her head up to indicate Lowell, who had walked with her and was still standing behind her, gripping her shoulders. “So I just kind of took off. I wasn’t really thinking. I was coming back, honest.”
“Let’s all sit down, shall we?” Lowell said. “Gentlemen? Would you care for a glass of wine or perhaps a cup of tea?”
“Tea would be grand,” said Terry, crunching his way towards the table through broken glass. Lowell frowned at it but said nothing.
“So you found out where I was and got the next boat?” Eddy said.
“Flight,” said Liam. “Eddy, we’re really sorry about your mum and we’re really glad about your dad.” He smiled at Lowell. “But you’ve got to understand our position. You just disappeared.”
“I signed a contract!” Eddy said.
“Ach, it’s hardly worth the paper it’s written on,” said Terry. “I mean, it records intent, but the law’s a bitch. If you had changed your mind …”
“As it happens,” Lowell said. “The contract is void. And even if it weren’t, I would be taking personal responsibility for refunding whatever payment you made to my daughter in order to render it void.”
Liam’s ice-blue eyes filled with tears and his nose began to turn pink. Terry put his chin in the air and gave a mirthless laugh. “Got it,” he said.
“Lowell,” said Jude.
“Dad, what the fuck are you doing?” Eddy said. “I’m too young for a baby! And it’s not fair on them.”
Lowell blinked and frowned, then smacked his hand down on the tabletop. “Good Lord above, what do you take me for?” he demanded. “Good heavens, I didn’t mean to snatch the child from its parents. Dear me, dear me, dear me. Not at all. I simply don’t approve of a monetary element being part of family life. And since Eddy was too young to sign the contract, which is therefore null and void anyway, I don’t see why there should be grubby commerce associated with my grandchild. It will be my grandchild, chaps, whether you like it or not. I don’t have enough family to let any members of it slip through my fingers. I shall repay whatever you gave Eddy and I shall expect visits.”
“She wasn’t too young,” Terry said. “She was eighteen.”
“She was seventeen,” said Lowell. “She’s eighteen now.”
“I really don’t think that’s
right,” Eddy said. “I would know.” She glanced at Liam and Terry, who were nursing the steaming mugs Jude had just handed to them. “We’re having a bit of a … I don’t even know what you’d call it.”
“I’ve thought of something,” Jude said. “When was OJ arrested? Because we’ve all been placing a lot of weight on OJ night—the third of October 1995—but there were two OJ nights, weren’t there? The verdict and the big chase. I mean, look how mixed up Mrs. Hewston was, thinking you were in America, Lowell, when you were in Plymouth and thinking …” When she thought about it for more than a second, though, she could make no sense at all of what Mrs. Hewston said about the last time she’d seen Miranda, busy in the asparagus bed.
“OJ Simpson?” said Liam. “Why are we talking about OJ Simpson?”
“The last time I saw Eddy’s mother was the night the verdict was given,” Lowell said. “It was the first and last … ahem.”
“And she planted an asparagus bed and disappeared for ever,” said Jude.
“Ha!” said Eddy, looking at her phone. She put her hand on her belly. “Sorry, little darling,” she said. “You’ve proper upset it, you know,” she told Liam and Terry with a sideways look. “It never usually goes apeshit when I talk.”
“Ha, what?” Jude said.
“The chase through Los Angeles,” Eddy read from her screen, “was on June the seventeenth. There you go. June the seventeenth, 1994, I was conceived. OJ night number one.”
“Then you’d be twenty-one,” said Lowell. “And I didn’t even meet Miranda until June the twenty-first that year.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” said Jude. “Were you at least on a trip, or coming home then? Because Mrs. Hewston thinks you were mixed up in trouble. Were you in California in the early summer of 1994?”
“I’m not twenty-one,” said Eddy. “No way I’ve missed my twenty-first birthday.”
“And what about the asparagus bed?” said Liam. “Is that an expression for something filthy we’ve never heard? I thought I knew them all.”
“Wrong time of year for asparagus,” said Lowell. “And I’ve never been to California. I’ve been to Texas. In fact—”
“I’ll go to California with you,” said Eddy. “Once I’ve got my figure back.”
“And yes, I’m sure,” Lowell said to Jude. “Miranda and Inez and Tommy and Gary came for the solstice. I’m hardly likely to forget. They stayed all summer and then they left one by one, the last—your mother, Eddy—in the spring of ’95. I came home in late April and they’d gone, leaving most of their things and a beautiful asparagus bed behind them. It’s not a euphemism,” he added, turning to Liam. “I have a splendid garden, even if I say so myself. I’ll show you round in the morning. I mean, dear me, I’m assuming you’re staying. You’re practically family after all, and it’s getting late.”
“Home from where?” said Jude.
“Dallas,” Lowell told her. “A book fair. I remember flying home, happier than I had ever felt in my life. I was oblivious to what was going on around me, completely wrapped up in what was waiting for me back here at Jamaica. And then I arrived and what was waiting for me was nothing. An empty house, no explanation. Silly old fool, to think someone so young would be interested in me. I should have known better. I should certainly know better now.” He didn’t look at Jude as he spoke. He was rigid with the effort of not looking.
Eddy, in another gesture she seemed to have learned from Lowell over the last few days, put her head in her hands and rubbed her face hard. When she looked up again, her mascara was smeared up to her eyebrows and down to her cheeks, which, along with the white face following all the upsets, made her look more Gothic than ever, with her sheet of black hair falling straight from her prominent parting.
“What is going on?” she said. “I was fine with a mum and no dad. It’s not that unusual. Now, I just don’t know from one minute to the next. Maybe the toothbrush lab’s no good. Cost enough, mind you.”
“I think they’re pretty accurate,” said Liam. “They’d get sued if they weren’t. And we looked into it, you know, for after, for if it doesn’t look enough like one of us to say for sure. Not that we care—that’s the whole point, but in case there was ever a bone marrow or a kidney type situation.”
“Jesus, it’s not even born yet and you’re after its kidney!” said Eddy.
“I think he meant in case the child ever needed one,” said Jude. “Right guys?”
“So,” said Terry, well-used to ignoring Eddy, “have I got this right? You slept with her mum one night only and you’re definitely her dad—passed the paternity test and everything—but that would make her born when she wasn’t born?”
“Sitting. Right. Here,” said Eddy.
“Jaysis Gawd,” said Liam. “Are you serious? This is your big mystery? It’s like that old riddle about the surgeon. How long have youse all been scratching your heads when it’s right in front of you?”
Lowell frowned and Eddy scowled, but Jude thought she could feel a glimmer of something, far off but getting closer, like a heat shine on a long straight road.
Liam said, “If she’s nineteen—and she should know—and you’re her dad by a DNA test, but you didn’t sleep with Miranda until it was too late … it’s obvious.” He turned to Eddy. “Your mum’s not your mum, is she?”
The heat shimmer was gone. In its place were letters three feet tall, laid out in front of Jude, spelling the answer to the question she hadn’t even asked. The answer to a hundred little questions she hadn’t even realised were nipping at her.
Eddy said nothing, just sat as still as death. A girl in the family portrait looking out into the future, sharp and true, while around her, her parents were blurred, half lost and unknowable.
“It explains a lot,” Jude said gently. “It explains what your mum was so sorry about, while she was dying. And it explains why she kept you away and then sent you back here. It explains the problem with your birth certificate, Eddy.”
“Wait, hang on,” said Liam. “You can’t fake a birth certificate.”
Then Eddy spoke. “Yeah, you can,” she said glumly. “If you’re a traveller in Ireland and you roll up with a baby you haven’t got round to registering yet, nobody puts you in jail for it. I’ve seen it, in the Community, loads of times. People having kids on their own and only getting it registered when they need the doctor.”
“But Eddy, I don’t think Miranda faked your birth certificate,” Jude said. “I don’t think you’ve got one. Didn’t you always say she got bolshy if something official was going on? And she never took you west to the coast because to get into Ireland you need a passport, and to get a passport you need your papers?”
“How can I not have a birth certificate?” Eddy said. “I mean, sure, yeah, I couldn’t find it, but I thought she’d lost it and I’d get a copy. This can’t be right. Mum freaked about forms because she didn’t like official stuff. Didn’t like Social Services and nosy parkers. Cos she’d been in the system herself. That’s all.”
“That much is true,” Lowell said. “Miranda was rather down on officialdom even before you were born, Eddy. As you said, she had spent time in a children’s home and I think she had no great faith in social workers and whatnot.”
“But the main thing,” Jude said, “is it makes sense of the night you were born.”
Eddy turned slowly to face her as if she had string tied to her chin. “The night …?”
Jude nodded. “Mrs. Hewston isn’t as addled as we think,” she said. “You really were born right here at Jamaica House, like she said. But it was in the spring, when Miranda put forsythia branches in the vase in the porch and planted an asparagus bed. When Mrs. Hewston had her windows open to let the scent of the flowers drift in. And when Lowell was in Dallas.”
“Oh my word!” Lowell said. “And Mrs. Hewston was glued to the news.”
“Right,” said Eddy. “OJ. October.”
“No,” said Jude. “She never said OJ, did she? We add
ed that bit. Eddy, what day did Miranda say was your birthday?”
“April the nineteenth,” Eddy said.
“Google it,” said Jude, nodding at Eddy’s phone.
“There’s no need,” Lowell said. “I remember.”
But Eddy’s thumbs moved faster than he spoke. “It says some guy called Timothy McVeigh blew up a place in Oklahoma.”
“That’s actually pretty near Dallas,” Jude said. “Mrs. Hewston wasn’t too crazy to worry, in a funny sort of way.”
“So … I really am Miranda’s?” Eddy said, her face screwed up in an effort to understand. “Dad, you must have forgotten. Maybe a party. You were smoking everything you could lay your hands on, pretty much, weren’t you? Dad?” Lowell stared at her but said nothing. “And I look like her,” Eddy insisted. “Everyone says so.”
“No,” said Jude. “You remind everyone here of your mum—that’s true. But you don’t look like Miranda except for your black hair.”
“It’s dyed,” Eddy said. “It’s no colour at all, really.”
“Oh!” said Lowell, softly. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
“What’s this now?” said Liam.
“Maybe she didn’t know,” said Jude. “That does happen.”
“But she was tiny!” Lowell had stood up and was walking towards the door to the dining room. “I showed you.”
“Who was tiny?” Terry said.
“I was tiny, Mum said,” Eddy shouted after Lowell. Then she slumped back in her chair. “Can I still call her that?”
“Of course,” said Jude. “DNA doesn’t matter if she looked after you her whole life and loved you.” But as she said it, her mind flashed on a gold lipstick tube stuffed into the shrivelled elastic strap of a vanity mirror for twenty years.
Lowell was back, carrying one of the albums full of photographs and also a heavy silver frame. “What did you say?” he asked Eddy.
“Mum said I was tiny,” Eddy repeated. “She said I was like a fairy. She called me her little changeling.”
“Did she indeed?” said Lowell, sitting. “I recognised you as soon as you stepped into LG on that first day, you know. And then I convinced myself I was wrong. I told myself you looked like my mother.” He turned the silver frame to show them all. The woman in the photograph was as fine-boned as Eddy and as pale, but she had a swan-neck and a graceful jaw, deep-set hooded eyes, completely different from Eddy’s flattish oval, her little nose the only sharp thing on her face.
QUIET NEIGHBOURS an unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist Page 27
