Dark Mirrors

by Siobhain Bunni

  Philip studied his wife as she ranted, the way her eyes flared passionately, her wild gesticulations and heaving breast. She was so good, he thought, and wondered just how he could bring her round. He hadn’t expected her to welcome him back with open arms – hadn’t thought it would be easy to get her to forgive him – but she was here, wasn’t she? And that was a start. How could he swing this, he calculated, detached from her emotions. And anyway, if he couldn’t convince her to come of her own accord, he’d come and get her regardless. He was used to getting his own way, and this was no different. He wanted her back, whether she liked it or not.

  “I can’t explain it, Es. I just couldn’t get you out of my mind. But none of that matters. I’m here. Now. And I want you.” He leant in towards her, pleading.

  She shook her head in abhorrence. He wasn’t getting it. Not only that, he couldn’t see that she was immune to his charm. He had passed his ‘best before’ date. Leaning back in her chair she observed him, calmly realising she wasn’t going to get any credible answers off him here. He was incapable of the truth. He was delusional. He seemed to have convinced himself that he had done nothing terminally wrong.

  “So this is where you’ve been living?” she asked awkwardly, changing the direction in order to buy herself some time and gather her thoughts.

  “Yes, beautiful, isn’t it?” he responded proudly, oblivious to the bite in her tone, and threw his arms open to the air as if to embrace his kingdom. “This sun!” he exclaimed, closing his eyes reverently, absorbing it as if for the first time. “The atmosphere! The people! Why,” he asked whimsically, “did we never come here years ago, Es?”

  She watched with disbelieving wonder as he then invited the hovering waiter to refill his glass and requested the menu in proficient Spanish. He smiled at her, raising his eyebrows as any good show-off would, but she wasn’t an impressionable conquest any longer and didn’t know whether to be fascinated or sickened by the arrogance of his display.

  “So!” he said cheerfully, like the conversation of moments ago was a mere formality that was now done with, settling forward in his chair to rest his arms on the table, convinced he was making some headway. “How have you been? Really. How are things at home?”

  “We thought you were dead!” she blurted out, amazed by his frivolous chatter and alarming disconnection from reality.

  “Not you, Es!” he remarked shrewdly, folding his arms across his broad chest, “Not you. You knew I couldn’t do that. Didn’t you?”

  The smug, self-righteous tone of his response irked her. How dare he! How dare he belittle the feelings of so many people about whom he was supposed to care.

  “You’re right, Philip,” the words burst clear of her mouth. “I always knew it wasn’t your style, but I never had you down for a coward, a thief, a liar or a bigamist!” She delivered her attack suddenly and forcibly, supported by a hard, intense and accusing glare, infuriated by his supercilious smile.

  “I’m sorry, Esmée. I’m sorry I hurt you, sorry I hit you, but . . . but . . . you couldn’t possibly understand . . .” He dropped his voice to a patronising whisper. “There were things . . .” He paused and looked down at the table as if searching for the right, simple, word that would adequately explain himself to this, his estranged wife. “Things that I don’t expect you to identify with . . .”

  “You’ve already said that and frankly I’m tired of your lame excuses. You need to credit me with some intelligence and just fucking tell me what the bloody hell went on! How about you start by telling me why you left your shoes and socks like that in the car? I’m baffled.”

  He smiled slowly, obviously reliving the moment. “No particular reason really. I just thought it was a nice touch, a small display of obsessive compulsiveness before I died – you know, get everything straight.”

  “Oh Philip, how very you!” she spat. “And the rest?” she prompted.

  He observed her for a moment, taking stock of the spirited woman bristling in front of him, wondering what she would do, how she would react, if she knew the truth, the whole truth . . .

  * * *

  The security guard lay unconscious on the carpet with a bloody gash on his head. Robert didn’t need to act shocked. He was. Things hadn’t quite gone to plan. It was supposed to be easy. On paper and in theory it appeared effortless, foolproof even. He and Brady’s team were to arrive at the bank just before 9 a.m. He would open up and wait for the time lock to release on the safe. Brady and his cohorts would lie in wait behind the screen. Amanda and Mike would arrive as they always did just after 9:15, Amanda armed as always with a coffee and muffin for Robert as well as herself. It was a running joke in the back office that she was besotted with him. On arrival, she and Mike were to be intercepted by Brady from behind the screens. They, thinking that Robert was being coerced, would co-operate and allow themselves be bound, gagged and locked in the office while Robert was ‘forced’ to empty the safe. Between them they assumed that the threat of danger upon Julie and the kids would be enough to guarantee compliance: there was no one brave or smart enough to play ‘have-a-go hero’ amongst Robert’s workmates. Or so they thought. But it all went wrong when that gobshite Mike tried to cut loose. He always was an eejit. The son of a prolific developer who also happened to be their best local customer, how could Robert say no when asked for a reference? The reference that ultimately got him the job. In this bloody branch. He shouldn’t have bothered. That fucking idiot cost him everything. Bill the security guard had no option but to intervene – it was his job – but got the butt of the gun at the back of his head from Tommo for his efforts. That’s when Amanda made an attempt to trigger the alarm. Tommo and Brady lunged forward to stop her. In the ensuing confusion Robert had left the room. And saw the detective outside. Frank. Then the alarm went off. Blind panic reaped reflexive reactions. And then it was over. An apparently straightforward robbery had turned into murder.

  Robert sat on the floor of the banking hall with a cup of sweet tea in his hand, watching the blinking blue lights of the ambulance outside and listening to the weeping testimony of Amanda as she recounted the event. He hated tea, let alone sweet tea, but he was drinking it anyway. It just wasn’t supposed to happen like this. That wasn’t meant to happen. What the hell was he going to do now? They got away, all of them, except him. But they left empty-handed.

  “We’re not done yet, Bobby, my son,” Brady had whispered. “Open your fucking gob,” he muttered venomously, taking a firm hold of Robert’s balls, “and you’re dead. Clear?” He tightened his grip.

  Robert nodded furiously and then Brady was gone. Out the back door. Empty-bloody-handed.

  Within minutes there were cops everywhere, closing off roads and securing the bank itself. The ambulance arrived after and word quickly came back to say they’d found Julie and Harry safe: scared but well. At first they were gentle with him: firm but gentle. But he knew the moment they suspected his complicity when the flavour of their questions changed. They became distinctly more hostile, their questions bullish and direct.

  After a couple of weeks Robert was arrested. Turning against Brady was elementary. Despite the failure of the heist, he still owed Brady the money. There was no way he’d forgive that, on top of which Robert doubted Brady would believe he hadn’t ratted them out: so why disappoint? He was a dead man walking. They offered them a new life, a new identity, a fresh start. And help for his addiction. The gambling had to end: that was a deal-breaker. But it was a sweet deal regardless: too good to refuse. Julie, however, was different. When the truth came out she went wild, savage even, and refused to find reason in his actions. He tried to explain his predicament and when that didn’t work he lied. He told her Brady had forced him to do it, but that story unravelled as the court case progressed and, as always, the truth came out. What she just couldn’t forgive, she declared with absolute finality, was how he could have even considered putting their children, both born and unborn, in such extreme danger. She threw him out tha
t night, telling him to go and never come back. So he did just that. That simple.

  Why she just couldn’t accept that he had no other choice, he couldn’t quite fathom. She left him and took his children from him. Estranged and in a foreign country, he found it difficult to divorce himself from what had happened. The death of Frank Gill affected him more than he could ever have imagined. At the time he was just there. Wrong place, wrong time. And, yes, it was sad. Horrible even, and he couldn’t get the faces of Frank’s family out of his head. At the time, still a free man, he attended the funeral and contemplated Frank’s grieving children as they cried openly when the coffin was lowered into the ground. He was almost jealous of Frank Gill, whose wife wept with silent dignity as they filled his grave with soil. It was an accident. But it had become his accident.

  South Africa was good to him. His house was beautiful, his job was great, the weather magnificent. The women, outstanding. But he couldn’t settle. They told him that heading back home wasn’t an option. If he came out of the programme, he did so at his own peril and cost. They couldn’t and wouldn’t protect him. And while Brady got fifteen years, he still had eyes and ears everywhere. Good sense failed Robert as he weighed up the odds. Distance numbed his reason and it seemed like a good idea at the time. He’d changed his name once before so he could just as easily do it again. It wasn’t difficult – he still had the fake passport and birth certificate he’d bought to arrange for that safe-deposit box in Dublin before he left. He could use that. He’d liked the name, Philip Myers, there was something debonair about it, he thought, and so Philip Myers was officially born. Finding the impressionable young woman wasn’t difficult either.

  He picked her not only because she was the oldest of the girls, but also because out of all of them she seemed the most interesting, a real challenge. All he wanted to do was make it right. Make the pain go away. Her pain. He charmed, wooed her and promised to take care of her. It cost him nothing.

  No sooner was he back than he found himself slipping into his old ways. Maybe it was the smell of the country or taste of the Guinness, but he just couldn’t resist the draw of the cards. He was careful not to revisit his old haunts, but found new ones, better, more lucrative ones that had sprung up while he was gone. Promising himself that this was only a hobby, he managed well at the start, balancing small wins with small losses and exercising a control that his Gambling Anonymous mentor in Pretoria would have been proud of. That’s what he told himself anyway. But as the years passed and boredom set in, self-control, like his first wife, left him to fend for himself. So he was right back to square one.

  Then he heard Brady was to be released a little earlier than he was expecting. He had half-formed plans to disappear and relocate the following year to Spain, but Tommo's warning visit to his house meant he had to act fast, without perfecting his plans. As Tommo had gleefully revealed, his cover had been betrayed by himself of all people, in a bar one night after too many Jack Daniels, trying to impress a young lady, who by great misfortune happened to be employed by Brady's empire.

  It was time to go.

  * * *

  Now, looking at Esmée across the table in the rainy Spanish square, it was time to reel her in. Again.

  He splayed his palms flat out on the table in a self-righteous display of accepted defeat.

  “All right,” he began, making a deliberate show of preparing himself to bare all, “I am a gambling addict. I have an addiction: an illness. Cards are my thing, poker to be exact.” He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the table. “I lost everything I had – Julie and I had – and more. I hadn’t paid the mortgage in months and my credit cards were maxed out. I lost it all.” He risked a quick glance upwards to gauge her reaction. She was blank. “Anyway,” he continued, taking a deep breath, “I had the chance of one last game, a game that would change everything, if I won. The stakes were high, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I was sure I could win. I’d played most of the guys before: they were amateurs. I was better than all of them. I was the player. Brady was there that night. We’d been up against each other before but he didn’t really register. Anyway, that night he won and I lost. Simple as.” He paused, eyes lowered, sighed and continued. “I had nothing else to sell, nothing of any great value anyway. That’s when Brady came up with the plan.” He stopped to swallow. “The robbery was meant to settle my debt to him. But, well, you know what happened there.” He looked at her properly this time. He couldn’t read her, her face, the wall of silence. “I was such a disappointment to Julie and Harry. I’d let them down. I was so ashamed. There was no way I could have made up for that. So I ran.” He let out a repressed sigh, fixing a pained expression on his face. “But I was wrong. I shouldn’t have run,” he finished, sure his soliloquy had breached her defensive bastion. But when he looked up again he saw only disgust.

  “Esmée!” he implored, trying again. “I paid the price. Please don’t punish me again!”

  He leant towards her, catching her stare, which she held on to, and leaning in to match his stance she whispered, “And what about me. What was I?”

  “You? Well . . .” he searched, “you were . . .” He was lost for words and decided on a different approach: a kind of honesty. “At the start, yes, I admit, I was fascinated by you, by you all. And yes, I did track you. I wanted to help.”

  “Help! You wanted to help? Well, let me tell you, Philip or Robert or whatever the hell your name is, the only person who needed help was you!” She was revolted by him. She could see through his lies and barefaced excuses. Empowered by her animosity towards him and invigorated by her hurt, she wasn’t willing to be held captive any more.

  “Just let me explain, Esmée –”

  “Explain? You must be kidding, right? I don’t want your explanations.”

  “I need to tell you, I need you to believe me . . .”

  “But I can’t believe you, Philip, can I? I don’t even know you. I don’t know who you are.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Esmée!” he shouted. “It’s not as bad as you think!” His booming voice resonated through the empty square, the pursuing silence deafening.

  Esmée let the silence rest and his words sink in before replying. “Not as bad as I think? Are you mental? Philip, I’ve actually met Brady.” She paused to let the implications of the admission sink in. “I’ve had his breath on my face and his hand on my tits. He accosted me in the park with the kids, so don’t sit there and tell me it’s not as bad as I think. It’s worse than you think.” Her breath came short and heavy, compromised by her fury. “I’ve been questioned, interrogated, searched, humiliated and threatened. After all I’ve heard about you these last few weeks, Philip, I wouldn’t trust you with my spit!”

  He was losing and he knew it. “I did it for you! I wanted to make it right.” But his words were weak and lacking integrity – they were dying words, words from a man grasping at straws.

  “For me?” she exclaimed incredulously, pushing herself further forward. “Don’t you dare blame me for what you did. I never asked you to do anything for me.” Her words were sharp and firm. She wanted to slap him, hard. “You really are a coward, d’you know that?” she hissed venomously, her eyes tight and oozing contempt. “And don’t you dare lay your bullshit on me. You did this for no one but yourself.”

  They didn’t notice the waiter until he coughed politely, looking over their heads uncomfortably.

  “You wish to order now, yes?” he asked awkwardly in his cheerful English, mortified by the display he’d borne witness to.

  Esmée picked up the menu only to throw it back down again immediately. “Actually, I’m not very hungry.” She wasn’t going to perform for anyone, no matter how embarrassing it would be.

  Philip, without taking his eyes off her, spoke expertly in Spanish to the waiter. She had no idea what he was saying and couldn’t have cared less but, whatever he said, their server retrieved the menus and swiftly retreated. He’d probably go in and tell his comrades about the a
rguing diners, but she didn’t care.

  She felt Philip’s eyes bore into her as she took a long desperate drink.

  He was judging her, assessing her, wondering where this new-found confidence had come from, wondering what to do next. She was different, very different and it felt more than a little uncomfortable, this new power she had over him.

  “Why did you bring me here, Philip?” she asked, repositioning her glass on the table, tired now of the little man who sat before her, tired of the man she thought she knew. His game was over and she wanted to go home, the reunion nothing more than a pitiful anti-climactic farce. “What do you want?”

  His mood in response to her tone was shifting. He wasn’t enjoying this woman. He didn’t care for the lack of respect and the nasty tone of her voice. There was no need for that. He did, after all, really do it for her. Her and her stupid family. When, he wondered, had she become so ungrateful? He was going to give this one more try. And then after that if she didn’t comply he’d have to take up a different tack. He would give her one last chance, then his patience was used up.

  “I miss you, Esmée,” he gushed. “I want you to join me, come out here. We can start afresh just you, me and the kids.” He held out his hand to her, willing her to take it, to see sense.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Was it possible that this man had the audacity to believe his offer was, never mind tempting, even possible?

  “Es, please don’t do this – the children need a father and you . . .” He didn’t need to expand any further.

  “I need what? A man? A husband?” This time it was her turn to raise her voice.

  “Keep your voice down!” he hissed as he looked around at the thankfully empty tables and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “You have no idea what I need – you haven’t even the remotest clue!” she screeched, indifferent to the now-concerned waiters who had gathered to peer out from behind the safety of the tinted glass window. “Well, let me tell you something, Philip Myers,” she continued savagely. “Whatever it is you’re so sure I need it sure as hell isn’t you!” She paused briefly to replenish her lungs. “You’re a liar, a cheat and a thief and believe me those qualities don’t figure high on my criteria for the ideal husband. And if I had a choice, if I were left to pick a husband without being steered and manipulated, it – wouldn’t – be – you!” Her finger punctuated the last words, leaving no doubt that this time Philip had lost.