Those Faraday Girls

by Monica McInerney

  Her understanding? Had she always understood? Maggie wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She was too unsettled by the revelations and events of the past few days. Because the truth was there had been times in her childhood when she wished Clementine hadn’t gone away so often. Times she would rather not have stayed with her aunts. Events in Maggie’s life that Clementine missed because she was away on an island somewhere, or on top of a mountain. Maggie was very proud of her, but if she was honest with herself, had she resented Clementine’s work sometimes? Miranda’s words came to mind. That Clementine had been Maggie’s mother when it suited her. Was that true? That she wasn’t always there for her?

  There was something she needed to know. ‘When that thing happened in London, with that man at work, and with Angus —’

  Clementine nodded.

  ‘Would you have come if Miranda wasn’t able to?’

  ‘Of course. We wouldn’t have let you go through something like that on your own.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Any of us. Me. Leo. Your aunts. I’d have brought you back to Hobart with me, but before any of us knew what was happening, you’d gone to New York.’

  ‘You’d have brought me back home?’

  ‘If you’d wanted to come, yes, I would have.’

  It hadn’t even occurred to Maggie to go home to Tasmania. She thought now about being back in Hobart, living in the old family home, surrounded by all that beauty every day – the water, the mountains, the clean air, the vivid sunsets. Every day. Having her mother there, every day. Except she wouldn’t be there. She’d be in Antarctica.

  It was as if her mother had read her mind. Clementine stroked Maggie’s hair away from her forehead again. ‘I don’t leave until November, Maggie. There’s plenty of time for you to decide if that’s what you’d like to do next. If you want me to stay home, I will.’

  ‘You actually mean that, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I mean that.’

  To both their surprise, Maggie started to cry.

  Clementine sat up and pulled her into her arms. ‘Maggie, what is it? Why are you crying?’

  ‘I thought you’d say no.’

  ‘Why would I say no? You’re my daughter. You mean more to me than anything.’

  ‘Do I?’

  Clementine laughed. ‘Maggie! Of course you do. Where has all this come from? What did those sisters of mine say to you?’

  ‘It wasn’t just them. I couldn’t sleep. I started thinking about things —’ So many things. Sadie. The diaries. The lies. She wished she could talk to Clementine about all of them.

  Clementine stroked her hair again. ‘Maggie, you’re tired, I can see it. You’ve had a lot going on the past while. You’ve just brought your fiancé home to meet the family. That’s enough stress to knock anyone out, even you. Will you do something for me?’

  Maggie nodded.

  ‘Stop thinking so much. Relax a little. And try to get some sleep. Do you want to stay here with me? I can get you another pillow.’

  ‘No, I’ll go back to my own bed.’ She began to climb out from under the covers, then stopped. ‘Do you mind me calling you Clementine? Would you rather I called you Mum?’

  ‘You can call me whatever you like.’

  ‘I think I might stick with Mum for a while.’

  ‘Mum it is, then.’

  Maggie hugged her closely. ‘I love you, you know.’

  ‘And I love you, you know.’

  ‘How many times?’

  Clementine smiled. ‘You know exactly how many times. Twenty-six. Now go to bed.’

  Maggie had managed just an hour or two of sleep before she woke before eight to the noise of an engine straining up the steep hill towards their house. She got up, looked out her window and saw an orange courier van making its way up the road.

  When she got downstairs Leo was already at the front door in his dressing-gown. ‘They rang to say they were on their way,’ Leo explained, talking quietly. ‘My mobile worked for once, a miracle. Incredibly efficient company to get it to me so quickly. I asked them to use the fastest service money could buy. They must have sent it via rocket.’

  The delivery man got out of his van, came up the path and handed over a satchel. Leo signed for it. Maggie wanted to snatch it out of his hands and tear it open. Leo was just turning it over when Miranda appeared behind them.

  ‘What on earth are you two up to?’

  ‘It’s a document from my lawyer in London,’ Leo said, after just a moment’s hesitation. ‘A new patent going through on the lawnmower device.’ Leo tucked the satchel under his arm. ‘Maggie, why don’t we get dressed and head up the laneway for a morning walk? We need some time together, don’t you think?’

  They were just leaving when Gabriel appeared, dressed in black jeans and a blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up.

  Leo greeted him. ‘We’re going for a walk. Will you join us?’

  ‘Sure, thanks,’ Gabriel said.

  ‘But the report?’ Maggie whispered to Leo. ‘I thought you wanted to —’

  ‘We can trust Gabriel,’ Leo said.

  Leo filled Gabriel in within minutes of leaving the house. Gabriel asked Leo several questions, curious about the private detective’s methods.

  Leo opened the envelope as soon as they were out of sight of the house. Maggie realised she was holding her breath as Leo carefully withdrew a folder. He leaned it on the wall nearby, so they could all see. It was a businesslike report. Name, age, description. Brochures for the company the woman ran. The address and a photo of her house in the Dublin suburb of Phibsboro. Another photo. The woman with her husband and daughter.

  Leo picked it up. Maggie noticed his hands were shaking. He stared at it for a long time. ‘She’s married. She’s got a daughter.’ His voice was a whisper. He checked the report again. ‘A daughter of eighteen. My second granddaughter. Your cousin, Maggie.’

  Maggie took the photo from her grandfather. As she looked at it, she realised she was holding her breath. It was an informal shot. A woman with a smiling face, relaxed in the sunshine. A round-faced man, also smiling. A brown-haired young woman. A happy family.

  ‘Is it her, Tadpole?’ she asked. ‘Is it Sadie?’

  He took the photo back again and studied it intently. ‘It’s her. It has to be her.’ He was quite agitated. ‘She’s practically down the road, Maggie. It must be fate that she’s ended up in Ireland too. Have you finished the diaries? Do you know enough yet? I think we need to move quickly, if we’re to get Sadie back here to meet everyone. It’s the best chance. Eliza’s already talking about seeing if she can change her flights and go home early.’

  ‘I’m reading as fast as I can, I promise.’ She was. She wanted to get it over and done with. ‘I’ve got about four more to go.’

  ‘And nothing yet? You haven’t found what might have upset Sadie so badly?’

  Maggie hesitated, then shook her head. She needed to read all nine, let them sink in, before she would be able to talk to Leo about them.

  Leo gazed at the photograph again. ‘I’m worried, Maggie. I haven’t thought this through enough. What if it is Sadie, but she doesn’t want to see me? Slams the door in my face? And she might. All these years I’ve written to her and she’s never written back.’

  ‘She’s always written back to me,’ Maggie said. She hoped he hadn’t set her up, that this was what he had been intending the whole time. Even if it was, she knew what she had to do next. She made the offer. ‘I could go.’

  His shock seemed genuine. ‘What? Drive down to Dublin yourself?’

  ‘I could go too,’ Gabriel said. ‘If you don’t want the others to know, perhaps that’s the best way. We could leave this afternoon, tell them that Maggie and I are going to do some exploring and will be back tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s too soon,’ Maggie said. ‘I still need to read the diaries.’

  ‘I could drive while you read.’

  ‘What if all three of us went down?’ Leo asked. />
  ‘You can’t leave,’ Maggie said. ‘Not when everyone’s come all this way.’

  ‘They came to see you, not me.’

  ‘They’ve seen me. I think Gabriel’s right. The two of us could be there and back within a day. We’ll do some more filming this morning, then head off this afternoon.’

  ‘But what if it isn’t Sadie? What if the detective has made a mistake?’ Leo asked anxiously.

  Maggie had never seen her grandfather this upset. She put her hand on his arm. ‘We’ll find out, Tadpole. And if we can bring her back, we will.’

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Maggie and Gabriel were on the road to Dublin before eleven. They’d been met by a delegation of Faraday women when they came back in from their walk with Leo. It was going to be a beautiful day, the warmest yet that summer. Too good to spend inside filming, Miranda had decided on behalf of everyone. They were going to take a picnic lunch down to the beach and spend the day there.

  ‘In that case, Maggie and I can take off earlier than we’d planned,’ Gabriel said easily.

  It took them less than half an hour to get organised. Everyone gathered in front of the house to wave goodbye. They promised they’d be back within twenty-four hours.

  ‘Good luck,’ Leo said quietly, hugging Maggie.

  ‘Thanks, Gabriel,’ Maggie said, as they drove down through the village, turning at the old church before taking the road that led up through the heather-covered hills. ‘This is really going above and beyond the call of duty.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I checked the Charter of Fake Fiancés this morning and it was there, number seven in a list of twenty: “Thou must drive to Dublin if necessary”.’

  ‘I’m serious, Gabriel. If you’d known what you were getting yourself into —’

  ‘Maggie, I told you, it’s no problem. All of this is much harder for you than me.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d find it difficult if I were you. They all seem to want a piece of you. The only one who doesn’t is Clementine, who has the most claim to you. She’s the calmest of them all.’

  ‘She always has been.’

  ‘I think you chose the right mother out of all of them. Well done.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They made their way across the hills, bare except for the turf bogs here and there, the drying sods of turf heaped into piles to dry in the sun. Maggie took the opportunity to read over the detective’s report about Sadie again. It was strange to see someone’s life laid out in a stark, factual way like this. Stranger still to think that Sadie might have been living this false life for nearly twenty years, calling herself a different name and living with her husband and daughter in Dublin. It was that photo of the three of them that had shocked Leo the most, Maggie knew that. If it was her, there was the proof that she truly did have another life somewhere that they all knew nothing about. Not just a new life, but a new family. All these years Maggie had imagined her living as a hippy, part of a commune somewhere in tropical Australia. She still couldn’t bring herself to let go of that image.

  She looked at the photo again now, focusing on the woman. In some ways it was like looking at a stranger; in other ways there were echoes of her mother and her aunts. She had the same dark eyes and a similar-shaped face. Her hair looked dyed, though it was hard to tell, windswept as it was. The husband looked nice. Smiley-faced. Freckled. Very blue eyed. And their daughter. Maggie’s cousin. It was harder to tell from her photo what she was like. Her face was turned upwards to her parents, laughing too. All three of them looked happy.

  Gabriel interrupted her thoughts. ‘Is Leo going to tell the others that he’s found Sadie? At least, that he thinks he’s found Sadie?’

  ‘Not yet. He wants to wait until he’s sure.’

  ‘Will they be pleased?’

  ‘Of course they will. She’s their sister.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone ever go looking for her before now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They might have. But if they did, I was never told about it.’

  The same question had been gnawing at Maggie too. Perhaps they had gone looking. Perhaps each of them in turn had tried to find Sadie and failed. Layer by layer, the truth of the situation, all that had been hidden from her over the years not just by Leo, but by Clementine and her aunts, was filtering into her mind.

  ‘Can I ask you something personal, Maggie?’

  ‘That sounds serious.’

  ‘I’m curious about it, rather than serious. Why do your aunts have such a hold over you?’

  ‘A hold over me?’ She laughed. ‘Gabriel, they’re aunts, not alien controllers.’

  ‘I know that. I understand the concept of aunts; I have a few of them myself. But mine draw the line at socks at birthdays. Yours seem to have a stake in your entire life.’

  ‘They all brought me up. I suppose they do have a stake in me. And it’s not like it’s some awful torture. They’re my family, I love being with them.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I do. I do.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘I like walking into a room and it being filled with my mother and my aunts and my grandfather. I loved it when I was a child and I still love it now. It was obviously different for you, just you and your mother.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated.’

  ‘I’m glad we’re keeping you entertained.’

  ‘Completely. I’m intrigued too. About these reunions, especially. It’s like you have all got into a habit none of you can break.’

  His observations were making her feel uncomfortable and annoyed in equal measure. ‘Gabriel, we’re here because we want to be here.’ She corrected herself. ‘Because we feel we should be here. For Leo, more than for ourselves, but what’s wrong with that? When Tessa died, he had to be everything to five young daughters, mother and father. I think that’s something to admire.’

  ‘He talks about her so much still, doesn’t he? You’ll see it on the film tomorrow night. She was quite something, by the sound of things.’

  Maggie wished she could agree. Wished she could say, Yes, Tessa had been a wonderful woman and her diaries were the proof of it.

  Gabriel noticed her hesitation. ‘You don’t agree?’

  She chose her words carefully. ‘I don’t know any more. Her diaries don’t quite match up to that public image.’ She needed to talk about it. ‘Have you ever kept a diary, Gabriel?’

  He shook his head. ‘I already know what’s in my head. I don’t need to see it on paper to make it real.’

  ‘But if you did write things down, they would be your real thoughts? The real you? Show the sort of person you really are?’

  ‘They would have to. There’d be some self-delusion, some hedging of the facts, but the truth would come through eventually.’

  ‘I thought the same thing. But if that’s the case, then the real Tessa is nothing like the person Leo has described all my life. The Tessa he’s told my mother and aunts about, every day for years. The Tessa we celebrate with these July Christmases, this holiday house, all of it.’ Maggie thought back to all she’d read and tried to put it into words. ‘I thought it would be an honour to read her diaries, Gabriel. To get to know my grandmother in an intimate way like that.’

  ‘And it hasn’t been?’

  She shook her head. ‘I wish I hadn’t read them. I wish I’d never found out what she was really like. She’s selfish and self-centred and dismissive. There’s page after page of it. She’s mean about Leo; about everyone around her.’

  ‘But Leo said that they were the loves of each other’s lives.’

  ‘That’s what he believes. But I don’t think he was, not for her.’ She didn’t say it out loud but from what Maggie had read, the only love of Tessa’s life had been Tessa herself.

  ‘Then why did Leo want you to read them?’

  Gabriel knew everything else about her family. There was no reason not to tell him this as well. As briefly as possible, she explained ab
out Tessa and Bill, and of Leo’s theory that Sadie had read something shocking about them in the diaries, something that had caused her to run away.

  ‘That Bill is her father, not Leo?’

  Maggie nodded. ‘I don’t think Leo actually wants me to find it. I’m sure he hopes I won’t. But I think it’s coming up in the diary I’m reading now. The timing is right.’

  ‘You haven’t jumped ahead? Skipped a few years? I wouldn’t be able to resist it.’

  ‘I needed to get the whole picture of her first. I wish I hadn’t now. I actually wish Leo had done as he said and burnt them all, years ago.’

  A beep of an arriving text message sounded in the car. Gabriel indicated and pulled over to the side of the road, taking out his mobile phone. ‘Sorry, Maggie. I’ve been expecting this. I might need to call them back.’

  He read the text. It was from his writer flatmate, letting him know he’d had a story accepted by a small literary magazine. ‘Good for him. He says he was going to keep some champagne for me but unfortunately he and his girlfriend have just drunk it all.’

  He put the phone away and pulled back onto the road.

  ‘What did they think about you coming on this trip to Ireland?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘They were sick with jealousy. They wanted to know why they never got a job offer like this.’

  A job offer. There it was. The fact of the matter. She was making the mistake again of thinking this meant as much to him as it did to her. They came up to the motorway then, the surface instantly becoming smoother after the bumps of the country road they’d been travelling on. Better for reading too, Maggie realised. The quicker she got it done, the better. And that’s what this trip was about, after all: Sadie and the diaries, not her and Gabriel. She reached into the back seat for her leather bag. She’d pushed all nine notebooks into the bottom of it that morning, covering them with a scarf.

  ‘I’d better get back to work,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. Happy reading.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She wished it was going to be.