He had been delighted to hear it.
As she cleaned her teeth, pulled down the bed and changed into her pyjamas, she tried to guess what it was he wanted to talk to her about. He’d insisted he wasn’t ill, so it wasn’t that. He’d also assured her again that there was nothing wrong with Clementine or any of her aunts. What could it be?
She tossed and turned in the bed. After nearly three months of quiet time here in New York, today felt overwhelming. Dolly’s death. Meeting Gabriel. Leo’s arrival.
One of her grandfather’s many sayings came to mind. Every cloud has a silver lining. If Dolly’s death had been the cloud today, meeting Gabriel was the lining. She had liked him straightaway. Really liked him, she realised now.
What would have happened if Leo hadn’t been waiting in the foyer when they got back from the restaurant? She tried to picture it. Gabriel would have come up to her apartment. She would have made him coffee. He would have taken out his guitar, sung her the song she’d dared him to sing. She imagined more conversation, more laughing. And then what?
It took her a long time that night to get to sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Maggie met Leo in the foyer of his hotel the next morning. It was very grand, with plush carpets, glittering chandeliers, uniformed staff and gleaming brassware. He assured her he had slept the sleep of the just and was in fine form. In the mood for a walk, he declared. He had his briefcase with him again. She offered to carry it, but he insisted he was well able to take care of it himself.
Together they strolled the four blocks up to Central Park, past the horsedrawn carriages, in through the Columbus Circle entrance. It was a warm, crisp day, the paths speckled with shadows, the sun sending flickers of light onto the ponds. The park was busy in patches, people already setting up rugs and towels on the grass, rollerbladers slipping silently past them, trim mothers jogging past, pushing their babies in expensive space-age prams.
They walked for ten minutes until they came to a shady area with an empty bench.
‘Let’s sit down. Make ourselves comfortable. Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you want a hotdog?’ He nodded towards a cart in the distance.
Maggie shook her head.
Leo lowered himself to the bench with a mock groan. ‘Do you know, by the way, that there are more than twenty-five thousand trees in this park?’
‘I did, as it happens.’ In her first few weeks she had seriously toyed with the idea of counting them all.
‘Remarkable, isn’t it? In the middle of a huge city like this. More than a hundred and fifty different species too.’
‘You’ve been reading up on it?’
‘I couldn’t just turn up without a bit of New York knowledge to offer you, could I?’ He smiled at her.
‘You’re not here just to tell me about the trees, though, are you, Tadpole?’
‘Of course I am. I’ve been wanting to see the Central Park trees for years. Once a tree man, always a tree man.’
‘You’re just a kidder.’
‘Yes, but not all the time. Not today.’ He put his hand on hers. ‘I need your help, Maggie.’
She waited, suddenly anxious.
Leo smiled at her. ‘Do you remember when you were little and I used to set those tasks for you, to find out lots of different things from the library? And the way your mum used to get you to help around the house?’
‘The lists? Of course I remember them.’ She laughed. ‘I still live like that now. I can’t do anything without a list.’
He reached inside his pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper. He handed it over without a word. She opened and read it. It was in exactly the same format the childhood tasks had been in.
Maggie’s List for Today
1. Diaries
2. Donegal
3. Sadie
Signed,
Tadpole
She read it twice. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’
‘Of course you don’t. Not yet, anyway.’ He took a breath. ‘There’s a lot I need to tell you, Maggie. I’ve thought long and hard about whether I’m the right one to tell you this, but if I don’t, who will and when? It’s gone on too long already. I’m not getting any younger.’
‘Tadpole, I’m sorry. I still don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘How could you?’ He turned so he was looking at her. ‘Maggie, I need to get a few things clear in my head before we go on. Why did you decide not to come to Donegal this year?’
‘I know it would have disappointed you, and I’m sorry, but it just didn’t seem right. I needed time away. I still do.’
‘It was important to me that you be there this year. There was something I wanted you to do for me. I’m an old man, Maggie. Getting older every day. And I realised there are things I want to organise before it’s too late.’ He took out his wallet and opened it up to a photograph. ‘It’s about Tessa, Maggie. My Tessa. Everything on that list comes back to her in some way.’
Maggie took the photo. She had already seen it, many times before. It was a casual photograph of her grandmother as a young woman, laughing, the wind blowing her hair back, her red lips open to show perfect white teeth. She looked like a film star, Maggie had always thought. The love of Leo’s life. Maggie had grown up hearing stories about her.
‘I had this plan, you see, for this Christmas in Donegal. You know Tessa used to love to do scrapbooks?’
Maggie nodded. She’d grown up with those scrapbooks too, filled with recipes and coloured pictures and tips about all sorts of things. She’d always liked them, thinking of them as a link to her grandmother. Not as much as she liked the special scrapbook Sadie had made for her fifth birthday, but close.
‘A month or two ago I decided I was going to ask you all to help me put together a Tessa scrapbook. I thought it might make a good little job for you. Something to take your mind off things. I was going to hire you, pay you for your time.’ He smiled at her. ‘I also thought you might have had enough of numbers and it would do you good to spend time with some words instead. I had it all worked out. Once we were all together in Donegal, I was going to ask you to interview each of us, collect the memories of Tessa that we had and write them up in the scrapbook, with photos of her. A collection of memories, so we’d never forget.’
Maggie smiled. ‘I’d love to have done that. It’s a beautiful idea. I think I would have gone to Donegal if I’d known about it.’
‘I should have told you. It’s my own fault. As I said, I wanted to make a ceremony of it. I had it in my head that I would make an announcement about it on our first night together in Donegal. Have you ready – pen poised – as everyone started talking. But then something else happened. Something I didn’t expect. And I realised that was all tied up with Tessa too. And I needed to think about it a bit more.’
He was quiet for a few moments. Maggie waited, conscious then of the noise around them. Traffic noise, sirens, distant merry-go-round music. A crying child, a laughing child.
‘It’s about Sadie, Maggie. Your aunt Sadie. There’s a lot about Sadie that I haven’t told you. That none of us have told you. And I think it’s time we did.’
His serious tone unsettled her. ‘Is she dead? Is that what you mean?’
He shook his head. ‘No, she’s not. I can tell you that for sure.’
‘Then what? It’s you who has been sending me those cards all these years?’
‘No, they’ve come from Sadie. As far as I can tell, anyway.’ He took his granddaughter’s hand again and held it briefly. ‘Maggie, we’ve never told you the whole truth about Sadie. But I promise what I’m about to tell you about her is true. And I also promise that we have always felt uncomfortable lying to you about her.’
‘Lying?’
‘Not so much lying as telling you a different story than the truth.’
‘Isn’t that lying?’
‘I don’t know any more. I don’t know whether a lie told out of necessity is the same as a lie told for gain.’
He paused. ‘Maggie, the truth is your Aunt Sadie didn’t run away and join a hippy commune twenty years ago. She made a terrible mistake and did something very foolish, something that none of us have ever been able to fully understand. There was a fight, a very big fight, between your mother and her, and that was the last time any of us saw her.’
‘She’s in prison?’
‘No, she’s not. But she did do something wrong and it involved you. I think it’s time you knew about it.’
He told her, in careful detail, everything about that time. He didn’t look at her as he spoke, just stared ahead, as he told her the whole story. How Sadie had taken over full-time care of Maggie while Clementine went to university. How attached she had got. How upset she had been when Clementine wanted all her sisters to take turns caring for Maggie when she first started going away. He told her about the roster that had been drawn up, with Miranda coming first, the plan being that Maggie would go and stay with her for two weeks. How it had changed at the last minute.
Maggie thought she remembered her first flight with Sadie. She remembered – she thought she remembered – being in Melbourne with Sadie. But everything else? She couldn’t recall any more details. She also couldn’t take in the words Leo was using. Kidnap?
‘How could she have kidnapped me? She was my aunt. That’s not kidnapping. It’s not like she took me off the street.’
Leo tried to explain what those two weeks had been like. The terror that something bad had happened, or that something bad would happen. Clementine inconsolable, wracked with grief and guilt. They all had been. They had all blamed themselves, Leo knew that. All the conversations, as they waited by the phone for Sadie’s calls. Leo had seen it in his daughters’ faces. Miranda remembering a snap she had made at Sadie, her constant goading about her weight, her lack of boyfriends. Eliza barely taking any notice of her, except to complain about how messy she was. Clementine grateful but increasingly uncomfortable with Sadie’s attachment to Maggie. Juliet guilty for not noticing it had all been happening. Leo too had been riddled with guilt. Hadn’t he admitted to himself that he thought of Sadie as his runt, the girl in the wings while his other four daughters shone? He didn’t tell Maggie that part of it. But the truth was they’d all felt partly to blame for Sadie’s sudden disappearance. None of them had been kind to her. Only Maggie. And so she had taken Maggie with her.
Leo told Maggie why they had decided not to call the police; that Clementine particularly had been scared it might prompt something worse to happen. ‘We just didn’t know what state of mind she was in, that was the worst of it. She rang every two nights and left messages on the machine saying you were all right, but she’d hang up if we answered. You were never in danger, though, Maggie, I’m sure of that. That was the one thing that kept us hopeful. Sadie would never have hurt you. She loved you too much.’
He told her about finding that Sadie’s passport and birth certificate were missing. The incredible moment when the school librarian had rung to enquire after Clementine’s health, because she had run into Maggie herself on the beach near Byron Bay. The urgency of getting there as quickly as they could, both Clementine and Leo terrified they might have moved on before they found them.
Maggie was finding it all very difficult. Tiny scraps of images were flickering in and out of her mind. Were they lost memories? She didn’t know. All she knew for sure was that she should have been told this long before now. She wasn’t angry about it. Not yet. She was confused and upset. ‘I can’t believe it’s taken you, any of you, this long to tell me. Why not tell me the truth? Not when I was five, I can understand that, but when I was older. Why did you wait until now? Let me keep thinking she was a hippy – a stupid story like that?’
‘It all just happened. We took the easy option, Maggie. I’m not proud to say it, but that’s what we did.’
‘You should have told me before now. Clementine should have told me. It was part of my life.’
‘Yes, we should have.’
‘So what else isn’t true?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you all lied to me about that, have you lied about other things?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Is Sadie my mother? Is that what all of this is leading to?’
‘No, Maggie. Clementine is your mother. I promise you.’
‘And David is my father?’
‘David is your father.’
‘So why are you telling me about this now? Why did you come all this way to tell me this?’
‘Because I’ve found out where Sadie is. I think I have, at least. I think she might be in Ireland. In Dublin.’
‘In Dublin? What is she doing there?’
‘I don’t know yet. I hired a private detective, after I happened across a photograph on the Internet of someone I was sure was Sadie. It seems I might be right.’
‘It seems? You haven’t rung her? You haven’t been to see her, now you know where she is? But why not? She’s your daughter. You must be desperate to find out how she is.’
‘I am. Of course I am.’ He hesitated. ‘But something made her leave all those years ago. Something she read in Tessa’s diaries. And I need to know what that is before I go and talk to her. I need to be prepared.’
‘But she can’t have read them. You burnt them after Tessa died.’
Leo shifted in his seat. ‘I didn’t burn them, Maggie. I kept them. And Sadie found them and read something in them that badly upset her.’
‘You didn’t burn the diaries? Another lie?’ The look on Maggie’s face saddened Leo. She ran her hand through her hair, unconsciously mimicking one of his own gestures. ‘I can’t believe this. How can you have done that? She was their mother. They needed to read about her. They deserved it.’
‘Don’t be angry with me, Maggie, please.’
‘How can I not be? And if you think I’m angry, how do you think Clementine and the others are going to feel? They’ll be furious.’
‘I know why you might think that. Believe me, I do. I’ve had sleepless nights about this for years. But I had to do it. Not for their sake. For my sake.’ He stood up then. ‘Can we walk for a little while? I need to try and explain it to you.’
As they walked down light-dappled paths, he talked. He didn’t give her every detail, but he told her enough that she understood. He had adored Tessa. She had been the centre of his life. ‘I wish you had known her, Maggie. She just glowed. She was pretty, funny, witty… If she walked into a room, people noticed her. And somehow, through some incredible stroke of luck, she and I met and we fell in love and we got married. She swept me off my feet.’
She had heard him talk about Tessa like this many times before. She needed to hear it again. After the shock of his other announcements, she needed every piece of detail and explanation he could offer.
‘She wasn’t perfect, Maggie. I know love is blind, but I could see that sometimes she could be too impatient, with me and with the children. She was very quick-witted, and sometimes she was dismissive of people who couldn’t keep up with her. But she energised me. I just loved being with her, watching her. Loving her.’
‘She was the love of your life?’
He nodded. ‘She truly was.’
She heard the sadness in his voice and her heart went out to him. ‘I’ve always thought it was so romantic, the way you talked about her, all the ways you remember her. Don’t be sad, Tadpole. You were the love of her life too. Even if it wasn’t forever.’
‘I don’t know if I was. That’s what I’m frightened of.’ They walked on for a few moments in silence before he spoke again. ‘Your mother and your aunts don’t know this, but I met Tessa because she was going out with my brother Bill. You never met him. Clementine would remember him a little, I think. He was hard to forget, you see. He had the same charm Tessa had. But he was so casual about her. He didn’t appreciate her.’
It was as if he’d forgotten his granddaughter was there now. As if he was airing thoughts he�
��d hidden away for years. Maggie listened as he spoke of days out with Bill and Tessa, being happy just to be the third person, until the day Tessa and Bill had broken up and she arrived at his house. ‘I thought at first I was just the rebound, but I was wrong. She loved me. We got married. Bill was best man. I was so confident of her love. And it helped that he’d got a job in South Africa. Tessa became pregnant with Juliet, then Miranda and Eliza. We had a house filling with children. I’d always wanted that. Then Bill started visiting again. He was just the same – as funny and as witty as ever. He brought out the best in Tessa too. All I could do was watch them together. And worry. No matter how much I tried to ignore it, there was still an attraction between them. And then she told me she was pregnant again. I was delighted at first. It was wonderful news. Our fourth child on the way. But then I got worried. I got suspicious. I hated thinking that way, but it was like I couldn’t help myself.’
Maggie understood then. ‘You thought Sadie might have been Bill’s —?’ She left the sentence unfinished.
‘I tried not to. When she arrived, I could see straightaway she looked like the others. I told myself it was just jealousy planting ideas in my head. Bill wasn’t even around when she was born.’
‘Do you wish you had asked about it? Found out for sure one way or another?’
‘I couldn’t do it. I would have hated Tessa to think I didn’t trust her.’ He breathed deeply. ‘If it was true, I didn’t want to know.’ He stopped walking then and turned to her. She was struck by how sad he looked. By how old he looked. ‘But something Sadie read in Tessa’s diaries made her want to run away from her family. What else could it be? She always felt like she didn’t fit in. And the truth is, she didn’t.’
‘But why take me with her?’
‘I still don’t know. Perhaps she was playing at her own family. She loved you. She already thought of you as her daughter.’
Maggie wished she could remember those years. It was odd to be talked about like this, to hear herself being described and not be able to recall it vividly. Her own memories of her aunt were so slight; the scrapbook Sadie had made for her the strongest link between them. Not that she’d looked at it for a long time.
Those Faraday Girls Page 35
