She had needed that New York break from them, from the part she played when she was with them. The role of bright, clever, loyal Maggie – daughter, niece and granddaughter. She wanted to be something different to that. She wanted to be just Maggie. Her own person. Was that possible, though? If you were part of a family, was that family always with you, following you, surrounding you and enclosing you?
Certainly her grandfather thought so. Leo was so convinced everything could be made right, that all it needed was a bit of tweaking here, a bit of engineering there and, like one of his inventions, everything would fall into place. He would create the perfect happy family, memories of Tessa intact and Sadie back in the fold.
He was wrong. Maggie knew that. There was no such thing as a perfect, happy family. She knew that for sure because she had once believed there was. That she had been at the heart of one. Now she knew the truth. Her family was made up of layers and layers of lies and untruths and secrets, twisting and binding one member to the next. Maggie had thought it was just love that kept them close and connected. It was more than that. It was like a mathematical sum. Love plus lies plus secrets, truths, history, hopes, fear and happiness. What did it equal, though? She wished she knew.
Sadie couldn’t get back to sleep. She and Larry had come upstairs to bed, made love and then fallen asleep in each other’s arms. Sadie’s last thought before sleep had been contentment and certainty that she had made the right decision not to ring Maggie.
Now, as the digital clock beside her switched to three o’clock, she wasn’t so sure. She’d woken with a start, perhaps by her own thoughts. She lay there, picturing Maggie. She’d barely had a chance to look at her yesterday. It had been a quick impression, a sudden knowledge that this was the grown-up version of that beautiful five-year-old. Then Larry arrived and she’d sent her away.
She’d sent Maggie away. It felt like a terrible thing to have done. She pictured her niece now, in the guesthouse just up the road. Sadie knew it well. She could even picture the rooms, the beds, the decoration.
It seemed extraordinary that Maggie was so close. How had she found her? After all these years, why had she tracked her down now? She knew now that the English journalist must have had something to do with it. But there were still so many questions. Was the whole family in Donegal? Did they all know Maggie was here, turning up on Sadie’s doorstep? Were they in fact all staying at the guesthouse at this minute? And who was the American man? What part had he played in all of this?
Sadie thought of all the letters she had received from Maggie over the past twenty years. She’d watched her niece’s handwriting change, her vocabulary increase and her life expand. She’d read stories of Maggie’s trips to Melbourne and Sydney to stay with her other aunts. She’d heard about maths competitions, university results, high-flying job offers, job placements in Canada and her move to London. She’d heard details of Leo’s inventions, Clementine’s study, Miranda’s exploits, Eliza’s accident and recovery and Juliet’s business success. It was because of Maggie’s letters that Sadie had been able to stay away. They had kept her in touch and allowed her to keep away at the same time.
She thought back to the days she and Maggie had spent together in Hobart all those years ago. The fun they’d had. The conversations. What good company Maggie had been. She could recall her expressions, her earnestness, her sense of fun. Another memory came to her, one she often liked to recall; one that had cheered her up so much when it happened in Melbourne and still cheered her up now. A five-year-old girl putting her arms around her neck and saying she had a secret. ‘You’re my favourite auntie.’
A favourite auntie wouldn’t send her niece away after twenty years without talking to her first, no matter what the circumstances.
Sadie turned over in the bed and whispered. ‘Larry?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Are you awake?’
‘Mmm.’
‘I’ve just remembered, I have to go and see one of the suppliers tomorrow morning and we’ve got the weekly staff meeting. Do you mind going into the office early instead of me?’
‘Of course not.’ His voice was thick with sleep. ‘They’ve all been pining for me anyway, have they?’
‘Badly. Worse than me.’
‘I’ll go in extra early, then.’
‘Thanks, Larry.’
He put his arm around her and pulled her close in against his body. ‘You’re welcome, love.’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Maggie called down to the front desk three times before eight o’clock. The morning receptionist, a young Polish woman, was polite each time.
‘I’ll put the call through to your room as soon as it comes.’
‘It’s just I don’t know if she’ll ask for me by my full name or what. She might just say Maggie. Or it might be Maggie Faraday.’
‘Whatever she calls you, I’ll put her through.’
The phone beside the bed rang at exactly eight-thirty. Maggie snatched it up. ‘Hello, Maggie speaking.’
‘Maggie, it’s Sadie.’ It sounded like she was calling from a mobile phone.
‘Sadie. Hello.’ So much to say and no way to say it over the phone. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine. I’m good. How are you?’
‘Good.’
‘And the others?’
‘Everyone’s good.’
‘Are you all up in Donegal?’
‘How did you know that?’
‘From your letters, Maggie. You’re a very good letter writer.’
‘So are you.’ She paused. ‘Well, actually, no you’re not. But you’re a good card writer.’ They both laughed awkwardly.
‘I’m sorry about last night. I must have seemed rude.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘My husband doesn’t know about you, Maggie. About any of my family.’
‘He doesn’t? But —’
Sadie interrupted. ‘Maggie, how did you find me?’
‘Leo hired a detective.’
‘After all these years?’
‘He found a photograph…’ She told Sadie the whole story. She was babbling, she knew that. She could tell that Sadie was listening intently to every word, though. She looked down and saw that her free hand was clenched. She made herself breathe deeply. This was her aunt. It was Sadie. ‘Will you meet me, Sadie? Can I come to your house again? Talk to you?’
‘You can’t, Maggie. I can’t see you here. It’s too difficult.’
‘Somewhere else then? Wherever you want.’
Sadie suggested a meeting place in the nearby Phoenix Park. The polo grounds, just next to the zoo. There was a car park beside the pavilion. It was usually quiet, she said, especially this time of day. They could take a walk from there.
‘I won’t have much time, Maggie, I’m sorry.’
‘I can be there as quickly as you like.’
They agreed to meet in fifteen minutes. Maggie immediately rang through to Gabriel’s room and told him the news. He sounded happy for her. ‘I’ll meet you in reception to give you the car keys.’
‘You’re not coming?’
‘Don’t you want to be on your own?’
‘I’d like it if you were there too.’
‘Then of course I’ll come.’
Maggie and Gabriel arrived first. It was a beautiful summer morning. There was the glow of soft sunlight through the trees, highlighting the clipped green neatness of the polo playing field and the fresh white paint of the pavilion, with its border decoration of colourful window boxes, each one tumbling with flowers. They heard the faint hum of traffic, the noise of a mower far off in the distance and bursts of birdsong. Maggie could see deer grazing under a nearby copse of trees. Gabriel pointed out a squirrel darting across the grass, its tail an upright flash of white.
They heard Sadie’s car arriving before they saw it.
‘Wish me luck,’ Maggie said to Gabriel again.
‘You still don’t need it,’ he said.
I
t felt different from the start. This time they hugged. Maggie moved towards her and Sadie opened her arms straightaway.
‘Maggie,’ she said. ‘Let me look at you.’ She took a step back, still holding onto Maggie’s shoulders, staring at her intently. ‘You were gorgeous as a child and you’re even lovelier now. You’re beautiful.’
‘I’m not, but thank you. But you are. You look wonderful.’ Close up, Maggie saw the bloom in Sadie’s cheeks, the laughter lines around her eyes. She had a contented face. A happy face.
‘Not wonderful or beautiful. I never was. But you are.’ She reached across and tucked Maggie’s hair behind her ears. ‘And so are these. I’m glad they never changed.’
‘Your daughter got off more lightly than me.’
Sadie tensed. ‘You’ve seen Maudie?’
‘Just a photograph. The detective…’ She briefly explained.
Sadie smiled then at the mention of her daughter. ‘I noticed her ears the moment she was born. But they were never as lovely as yours.’
Her name was Maudie. It felt funny to hear her name, the cousin she had never met.
Their conversation was just skimming the surface, both of them as nervous as the other, Maggie was sure of it.
‘Who is that with you?’ Sadie asked, nodding towards the car. ‘The man from yesterday?’
‘Gabriel. He’s a friend of mine. From New York.’
‘New York?’
‘I’ve been living there for the past three months.’
‘You have? You didn’t tell me that.’
‘I’ve told you all about it in my Christmas letter. You haven’t got it yet?’
‘Not yet. Those priests aren’t always the most reliable of postmen, I have to admit.’
‘I’ve sent you writing paper again. You’re probably sick of it by now.’
‘No, never, Maggie. I promise you.’
There was another pause, a sudden awkward moment. Maggie hurried to fill it. ‘I don’t know where to start, what to say. I don’t even know what to call you. I can’t think of you as Sally.’
‘Then call me Sadie. I don’t mind, not here. We’re on our own.’
They started walking. They moved away from Sadie’s car, taking a path that wound its way alongside iron fencing. It was the boundary of the President of Ireland’s house and grounds, Sadie explained. They’d see the house itself in a few minutes. Casual facts, filling the spaces and easing them past the first strange moments.
Sadie raised the subject first. ‘Why are you here, Maggie? Why now, after all these years?’
‘Leo wants to see you.’
Sadie nodded, but didn’t answer.
‘He wants you back.’
Still nothing.
‘He’s an old man,’ Maggie said. ‘He’s nearly eighty. I think he’s trying to make everything as right as he can.’
‘I understand that. I promise you I do.’ They walked a short distance before she spoke again. ‘I can’t see him, Maggie. I left a long time ago. I’m too different now. I’m a different person. I can’t go back.’
There was no time to hedge around. She needed to ask the main questions. ‘Sadie, why did you go?’
‘For lots of reasons. And I can’t come back for even more reasons.’
‘It was reading the diaries that made you leave, wasn’t it? Tessa’s diaries?’
Sadie stopped walking. ‘You know about them? Leo told you?’ Her hand moved towards her neck.
Maggie recognised the gesture from the previous day. A sign of anxiety. She explained everything. She owed it to her aunt. She told her about Leo arriving in New York, asking Maggie to read the diaries, needing to know if Sadie had left because she’d learned that Bill was her father.
‘That’s what he thought?’ She was upset. ‘It wasn’t anything like that. Leo must have read the diaries himself. He must have known exactly why I left.’
‘He’s never read them, Sadie. He was always worried there was something in them about Bill and Tessa. He said he couldn’t face it if there was.’
Sadie’s face was suddenly hard. ‘Leo has lived his whole life like that.’
A week ago, Maggie would have defended her grandfather. Now she couldn’t. Sadie was right. ‘I’ve read the diaries, Sadie. I finished them yesterday.’
They were now facing each other on the path. ‘And what did you think?’
‘What did I think?’ Maggie didn’t hesitate. ‘I thought Tessa was a horrible, mean old witch, actually.’
Sadie started to laugh. Really laugh. A release of tension rather than the moment being funny. ‘I suppose that’s one way to put it.’
‘I’m sorry, Sadie. I know she was your mother but I didn’t like her. I thought she was selfish and cruel and conceited.’ She had to say it. She had to acknowledge the worst part of Tessa’s diaries. ‘And she was awful to you. From the very beginning.’
‘Yes, she was.’
‘You must have felt terrible. You must have wanted to get as far away as you could when you read those things.’
Sadie didn’t answer that. She didn’t need to.
There was more walking and more silence before Sadie spoke again. ‘It was my own fault. I shouldn’t have been snooping in Leo’s shed. I should have put the diaries back, forgotten all about them. Or told the others.’ Her first mention of her sisters. ‘But I couldn’t do it. I was desperate to read them. Desperate to know something my sisters didn’t. And once I started reading I couldn’t stop, Maggie. Even after the first pages, when I realised that the Tessa I thought I remembered, the Tessa Leo had always spoken about, was a sham. A fake. That the Tessa in the diaries was the real one. Not a loving mother, not a caring wife, but a —’ She tried to find the words. ‘What did you call her, Maggie?’
‘A horrible, mean old witch.’
‘I tried not to think that. She was my mother. I tried to like her. I tried to see beyond her words, tried to excuse her – that she was young, she was just letting off steam. Sometimes I almost did like her. She was very funny sometimes. So witty. Mean about people but in a very clever way. She actually reminded me of Miranda. Or at least Miranda reminded me of her.’
Maggie nodded. ‘Me too,’ she said quietly.
‘I was so excited to read them. I used to go down to the shed as often as I could and read just a few pages – save them up, like a treat. Someone else might have skipped ahead to their own birth, but it was like reading a secret novel about our family. I wanted to go with the story, watch it unfold, even though I knew the ending. At least, I thought I knew the ending. I hadn’t known about Bill and Tessa being lovers, so that was the first shock. And then Leo coming onto the scene, falling head-over-heels in love with her. It was like eavesdropping on the past, seeing them get married, Juliet arrive, Miranda arrive, Eliza arrive, all so quickly.’ She went quiet again for a little while. Maggie wanted to touch her, console her, but Sadie was keeping her distance now. ‘Then I arrived, Maggie, and spoilt everything.’
‘You didn’t. You can’t see it that way.’
‘I couldn’t find any other way to see it. I still can’t. It was the truth. Tessa didn’t like me from the start and she certainly didn’t love me. I annoyed her, I bored her, I drove her crazy. She found good things to write about all of the others, but there was never anything like that about me. Not one funny story, not one nice observation. I know, Maggie, because I read back over them, twice, to check.’
Twenty years on and Maggie could see how hurt Sadie still was, how fresh all the memories of the diaries still were.
‘I was the runt of the family, you see. Perhaps you don’t remember reading that, Maggie, but they were Leo’s words for me. I was the one to feel sorry for. The one to pity. Perhaps he loved me – I think he did, more than Tessa did in any case – but he wasn’t proud of me. He wasn’t amused by me. He didn’t have great hopes for me. That’s what hurt so badly. I’d always had a feeling he treated me differently than he treated the others, but I’d never reali
sed what it was. It only became clear when I read the diaries.’
Maggie did remember Leo’s words. Sadie’s memory was perfect.
‘I couldn’t stay there. Not knowing what I knew – that not only was I a disappointment to Leo in my adult life, but I’d been an annoyance to my mother as a child too. Not just an annoyance – a bore. I couldn’t bear to hear Leo talk about Tessa as that angel, to go through the rituals year after year in her memory. I found it hard enough to be part of the family as it was, never being able to keep up with Miranda’s wit, fighting with Juliet all the time, annoying Eliza, even Clementine —’ She hesitated there. ‘Especially Clementine, in the last few years.’
‘After I was born?’
Sadie nodded.
‘What happened, Sadie? Why did you take me with you that time? You must have known how upset everyone would be.’
Sadie turned and looked at her then. ‘Because when I got to Melbourne and I decided I wasn’t going back, I couldn’t say goodbye to you. I loved you too much, Maggie. I knew you loved me too. And back then I needed all the love I could get.’
Maggie didn’t ask, she just acted on impulse. She closed the gap between them and hugged her aunt close.
When Sadie drew back, her eyes were filled with tears. ‘I was running for my life, Maggie, and I just took you with me. I didn’t even think about them, about how they would feel. I look back and it’s truly as if I had gone mad. I have Maudie now. I can’t begin to imagine how Clementine must have felt. If someone took Maudie —’ She shook her head. ‘I’m lucky that Clementine didn’t kill me.’
‘Leo said she came close.’
‘I must have caused her so much pain. I still can’t forgive myself for doing that, even though I know why I did.’
‘But what about Leo, Sadie? He’s your father. He’s been so sad to lose you. Don’t you want to see him? To write to him at least?’
‘It’s not that simple. I’ve thought about it so much over the years and I’ve never been able to decide the best thing to do. Part of me wants to see him, but I know that every time I looked at him, I would remember he thought of me as the failure of his family. And I would become that person. I would become all those things Tessa said about me in her diaries. I know it would happen. And I can’t do it, Maggie. Because I know whatever each of us is like outside our family, in our own lives, as soon as we came together, it would be like those days again. Can I guess what they’re like? Miranda as sharp-tongued as ever, but getting away with it because she’s funny? Juliet trying to mother everyone? Eliza still on her high horse?’
Those Faraday Girls Page 49
