‘All the same’ said Lola, ‘it’s great to be back.’
‘And you being here makes it easier for Philip to see Bey,’ said Shirley.
‘I’m sort of hoping he won’t want much access,’ Lola admitted. ‘I know loads of girls in my position would want the father to be involved, but . . .’
‘He was pretty horrible about you when I brought back the earrings, but he’s probably over that by now,’ said Shirley. ‘To tell you the truth, Lo-Lo, I never understood why you were so doubtful about him.’
‘I think . . .’ Lola took a deep breath as she considered what she was going to say. ‘I think it was because he was so damn entitled. He thought he was doing me a favour by going out with me. He thought I wanted everything he had. He thought he was better than me and that I was lucky he’d chosen me.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Shirley. ‘He does come from a different background, after all.’
‘Yes, but . . . oh, I can’t explain properly. He was almost . . . almost feudal about it. I don’t remember if I told you this or not, but I wasn’t just wearing the Bluebells. He made me put on loads of jewellery; it was hanging off me. And I suddenly realised that he wanted to own me. When I said I didn’t want to marry him, he was so angry. He tried to kiss me even though I didn’t want him to, and—’
‘Lola! He didn’t try to rape you, did he?’
‘No!’ cried Lola. ‘I think he thought that if he kissed me . . . People don’t say no to the Warrens. He didn’t say no to his mother when she insisted I come for dinner that time. He didn’t say no when she served me those bloody snails. He was on her side all the time even though she was being horrible to me because I wasn’t good enough. I just feel . . . they’ll never think I’m good enough. And me turning him down will only have made them worse, you know?’
‘I think so,’ said Shirley.
‘Anyhow, this isn’t about me or him or even Adele; it’s about Bey. She deserves to know her father and I’m going to call him tomorrow to set it all up. He can lose the rag as much as he likes, but at least it will be out in the open.’
‘You won’t regret it.’ Shirley got up from the grass where they’d been sitting and brushed stray blades from her skirt. ‘I’d better get back to work. I’ll see you later this evening.’
‘OK,’ said Lola. ‘Have a nice day.’
Left alone with her daughter, Lola brought her to feed the ducks, something everyone with children did when they were in the city’s favourite park. She thought about what she’d say to Philip, and how she should react to however he himself reacted. She would be calm, she promised herself. She was a more mature woman than the girl who’d fled Dublin four years earlier. She was a mother, and her responsibility was to her daughter before anything else.
She smiled as Bey shrieked with excitement when she threw scraps of the bread roll she’d bought for that purpose and the ducks paddled over to the side of the pond and fought over them. She was doing a good job raising her. But Bey had a right to a father too. Lola would do what was necessary even though she didn’t want to.
‘Ducks!’ Bey cried. ‘Ducks, ducks, ducks.’
Lola took her camera from her bag and took a photograph of Bey throwing bread to the ducks. It was as she was putting it back that she became aware of the man watching them from the path.
Her first thought was that Richard Warren looked more patriarchal than ever.
‘Lola.’ He spoke when he realised that she’d seen him.
‘Mr Warren.’
‘I wasn’t sure it was you. We did only meet the one time. But you’re a very striking young lady.’
‘Am I?’
‘Sparky, too, I remember thinking. Knew your own mind.’
Lola shrugged and steered Bey away from the water’s edge.
‘A pretty child,’ said Richard. ‘Yours?’
Lola wanted to say no, but that would have been a betrayal of her daughter, so she nodded.
‘Ducks!’ cried Bey again as they clustered around looking for more bread.
‘Tomorrow,’ promised Lola. ‘We’ll feed the ducks again tomorrow.’
‘How old is she?’ asked Richard.
‘Just gone three.’
‘You turned my son down because you weren’t ready for marriage, but now you’re a mother of a three year old?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘I wasn’t ready to marry him ,’ said Lola.
‘Why?’
‘I really don’t think that’s any business of yours, Mr Warren,’ she said as she lifted Bey into her arms. ‘It was . . . nice to see you again. But I’ve got to go.’
Her heart was hammering in her chest. This was her opportunity, but it was the wrong opportunity. She’d rehearsed what she’d say to Philip, not to his father. And she wasn’t ready. Not here. Not now.
‘I didn’t recognise you at first.’ Richard detained her. ‘Like I said, we only met the one time. I was staring because of the little girl.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I recognised her.’
‘I’m sorry, but I doubt you’ve seen her before.’
‘Not her,’ agreed Richard. ‘But I’ve seen someone the image of her at that age. Philip.’
Lola stared at him.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ said Richard impatiently. ‘Do you really think I can’t spot a resemblance? I have a photograph of him in this park feeding the ducks too. And you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two of them.’
‘I know. I know. I was going to . . .’
‘To what?’
‘To tell him,’ said Lola. ‘Tomorrow. I was going to call to the shop and—’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said Richard. ‘I absolutely forbid it.’
She stared at him. ‘I have to have a conversation with him,’ she said. ‘I realise that I should have done it before.’
‘You’re definitely going to have a conversation,’ Richard told her. ‘But it’s going to be with me, not Philip. And you’re most certainly not coming to the shop to create a scene. Are you crazy?’
‘But . . .’
‘This evening,’ said Richard. ‘We’ll talk. Where do you live?’
‘I’m staying with a friend.’
‘I’m coming to see you,’ he said. ‘Whether you like it or not.’
She thought about it for a moment. Then she gave him Shirley’s address.
After he left, she was shaking so much she had to sit back down on the grass.
Chapter 10
Bloodstone: a green gemstone spotted or streaked with red
As soon as she felt she could stand up again, Lola left St Stephen’s Green and took a taxi she couldn’t really afford back to Shirley’s house in North Strand. When her friend arrived home at 5.30, she had to repeat the story of her encounter with Richard more than once because she was so overwrought that nothing she said made sense.
‘He’s coming here?’ Shirley squeaked when she eventually realised what Lola was saying. ‘Richard Warren? Will Philip be with him?’
‘I don’t know.’ Lola’s expression was stricken.
‘We’d better be prepared.’
‘For what?’
‘For why you didn’t say anything. For why you were only going to tell him tomorrow. For why I didn’t say anything either when I brought Philip the earrings.’
‘You were a messenger, that’s all,’ Lola said. ‘None of it is your fault.’
‘Ducks.’ Bey, who’d been sitting on the kitchen floor with a sheet of paper and a set of crayons, held her picture up to show her mother. Lola praised the coloured blobs and told her that she was very, very clever. Bey smiled and returned to her drawing, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth while she concentrated on what she was doing.
‘What time will he be here?’ asked Shirley later in the evening, after Lola had put her daughter to bed.
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’
And at that moment a knock came t
o the door, causing both their hearts to start racing.
‘Mr Warren,’ said Lola when she opened it. ‘Come in.’
He followed her into the tiny living room, where she introduced Shirley.
‘You’re the one who returned the Bluebells Lola took, aren’t you?’ asked Richard. ‘Are you part of this conspiracy?’
‘There’s no conspiracy,’ retorted Shirley.
‘Not telling my son he’s a father is most certainly a conspiracy,’ said Richard.
‘Philip didn’t want to be a father,’ said Lola. ‘He had ambitions of his own.’
‘That’s what you think?’
‘Yes,’ said Lola.
‘He asked you to marry him.’ Richard’s voice was cool. ‘You rejected him. You ran away to your family’s farm, taking some valuable jewellery of ours with you. You behaved disgracefully.’
‘Lola had hyperemesis gravidarum when she was pregnant,’ said Shirley. ‘She was very sick. That was why she had to rush home. She wasn’t trying to rob your silly earrings.’
‘I thought I was going to lose the baby,’ Lola explained when Richard looked confused. ‘I didn’t want to say anything to Philip, especially after turning him down. I didn’t want him to think that I’d marry him just because I was pregnant.’
‘And afterwards?’ asked Richard.
‘Afterwards there didn’t seem to be any point,’ said Lola. ‘My reasons for not marrying him hadn’t changed. Plus, I was in Cloghdrom and he was in Dublin.’
‘You didn’t think he had a right to know about his daughter?’
At Richard’s words, the same ones she had used herself, Shirley shot a glance at Lola, who shook her head.
‘Bey was my responsibility,’ she said. ‘I made the decisions. And I didn’t see the point in involving Philip.’
‘You didn’t give him a chance,’ said Richard.
‘Oh for crying out loud!’ exclaimed Lola. ‘Even if I’d been head over heels in love with him, you and your wife made it perfectly clear I wasn’t a suitable girlfriend, let alone wife. But I didn’t love him and I didn’t want to marry him and I didn’t want to spend my life feeling inadequate. I wanted to be independent.’
‘And now?’ asked Richard. ‘You said you wanted to tell him now. Why?’
‘I made my decision for what I thought were the right reasons, but Bey needs to know her father,’ said Lola. ‘And he has a right to know her too.’
‘Are you married?’ asked Richard.
Lola shook her head.
‘So you’re looking after the child yourself.’
‘I’m looking after Bey, yes,’ she said.
‘And it’s difficult, I suppose.’
‘No,’ said Lola. ‘She’s a pet, she really is. I love her and I wouldn’t be without her.’
‘Are you working?’
Lola explained about staying on the farm, but added that her ambition was to return to Dublin and find a job.
‘You talked about ambition before,’ said Richard. ‘When you came to dinner in our house. You wanted to be something ridiculous in the Civil Service.’
‘A principal officer,’ said Lola. ‘Obviously that didn’t work out.’
‘So you’re looking for a job. Do you live here?’ He looked around the small house with a critical gaze.
‘No,’ said Lola. ‘Shirley has let us stay for a while, but I’m going to find somewhere for Bey and me to live.’
‘Ah,’ said Richard. ‘I understand now.’
‘What?’
‘You want to tell him for the money.’
‘Money?’
‘Oh, don’t go all doe eyed on me!’ Richard looked at her with disdain. ‘I know your type. You get yourself in trouble and then you come looking for money. Maintenance, you’ll call it, but you’ll use it for living your life the way you want to at his expense.’
‘That’s totally unfair,’ said Lola. ‘If I’d wanted money from Philip, I would’ve told him about Bey a long time ago. And yes, I got pregnant, but there were two of us involved in that. So don’t try to make it all about me.’
‘But it is all about you, isn’t it?’ said Richard. ‘You’re the one who made the choices for everyone. And now you’re regretting them. Because you realise that you can’t stay with your mother and father forever and you need to find a way to live by yourself. So you’re coming after my son to help you.’
‘You’re so wrong!’
‘You want to ruin his life to enhance yours.’
‘Lola is only here to tell Philip about his daughter,’ said Shirley. ‘He’s entitled to know.’
‘Actually he’s entitled to live his life without someone else’s mistake catching up with him,’ said Richard.
‘Hello!’ cried Shirley. ‘It takes two to tango, like Lola said.’
‘I’m going to see him tomorrow,’ said Lola. ‘I don’t care what sort of character assassination you want to do first.’
‘You’re not going to see him at all,’ said Richard.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘Because you’re not going to destroy his life on a damn whim.’
‘Bey won’t destroy his life,’ Lola said. ‘She’s the loveliest, happiest little girl in the world. He’ll be proud to have her as his daughter.’
‘Philip already has a family of his own to be proud of,’ said Richard. ‘He’s married. His wife is pregnant. Surely you must know that already.’
Lola stared at him in shock.
‘How the hell would I know?’ she asked eventually.
‘There was a notice in the paper,’ said Richard. ‘He married the year after you broke up with him. Her name is Donna. She’s a lovely girl, from a good background, and she’s very suitable for him.’
‘So that’s what you’re worried about.’ Lola spoke slowly. ‘That knowing about Bey will mess things up for him and his new wife and family.’
‘This is not a good time for him to hear about another child,’ said Richard. ‘And although I’d love to say that the child isn’t his, it was clear to me at once that she is.’
‘Why are you here?’ Shirley felt she had to say something. ‘What do you want?’
‘What I don’t want are loose ends,’ he said.
‘I’m not a loose end,’ said Lola.
‘I rather think your daughter is,’ said Richard. ‘And you thinking that she should know her father and he should know her – that’s something I don’t want to happen.’
‘She’ll find out one day,’ said Shirley. ‘Better now than later.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Richard. ‘And I have a lot more experience at making judgements than two silly young girls.’
‘You can’t lie to Philip,’ said Lola.
‘I’m not proposing to lie to anyone. I’m proposing that you keep doing what you’ve done so successfully for the last four years. Which is to say nothing. Not now or in the future.’ Richard took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. ‘You said you needed to find work and a place to live. But you’ll also have expenses for your daughter. For as long as you stay away from Philip and ensure she knows nothing about him, I’m prepared to pay those expenses by way of a monthly sum.’
‘You’re joking!’ Lola stared at him.
‘I most certainly am not.’
He handed her the paper and she read through it. The amount he was offering was close to what she’d been earning in the Civil Service. It would make all the difference to her plans to move back to Dublin.
‘For all your fine words, the main reason you want to talk to Philip is money,’ said Richard. ‘So you can have it if you sign this.’
‘I . . .’ She stared at the agreement. ‘It’s not about the money. It really isn’t.’
‘Don’t sign it,’ said Shirley. ‘However much it is, it’s not worth it. Do the right thing. Tell Philip.’
‘And wreck his marriage?’ Lola’s voice was full of concern.
‘You don’t know that it would
be wrecked,’ said Shirley. ‘You don’t know anything other than what this old fart is telling you.’
‘I’ve made enough mistakes already,’ said Lola. ‘I want to be sure . . .’
‘Sign it,’ said Richard. ‘It’s the best offer you’re ever going to get in your life.’
‘If you don’t tell Philip now, Bey might resent you in the future,’ Shirley warned. ‘He’s a grown-up. He can look after himself.’
‘But his wife doesn’t deserve this stress, not now,’ said Richard. ‘She’s been very ill with her pregnancy too. She’s expecting twins, by the way.’
Lola looked at him, then looked at Shirley. She got up from the sofa and went into the bedroom. Bey was asleep, her red curls vibrant against the white pillow. She leaned against the door frame, uncertain of what to do. It seemed to her that every time she had to make an important decision, she made the wrong one. And this decision wasn’t just about her. It was also about Bey. And Donna, who she didn’t even know. And Donna’s babies. And Philip. It was about everyone.
She turned back into the room and sat down again. She read through the agreement. She looked at the amount of money. She wondered if Judas had felt this way when he’d been offered the thirty pieces of silver. But that was money for himself. This was for Bey. This was to make sure everything would be all right. It would give her daughter a better life than Lola could provide on her own.
She rubbed the back of her neck as she thought about all the options. This would be the most important decision she ever made in her life. And she was making it for Bey, not for herself. For once, she had to get it right.
‘Philip might offer you something better,’ said Shirley.
Richard snorted. ‘And you both wanted to convince me it wasn’t about the money.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Shirley.
‘Sign it and there’ll be an additional sweetener for you and you alone,’ Richard told Lola. ‘This is a one-time offer.’
Philip had said the same thing to her when he’d asked her to marry him. She’d turned him down for all the right reasons, and yet perhaps it had been the biggest mistake of her life. Would not signing this piece of paper be an even bigger one?
She took the pen that Richard Warren was offering her, hesitated for a moment and then with a quick stroke signed her name.
What Happened That Night: The page-turning holiday read by the No. 1 bestselling author Page 9
