The Mystery of Mercy Close

by Marian Keyes

  Christ, if only I’d known.

  15

  While I was waiting for Shannon O’Malley to call me back, I rang Head Candy, the hairdresser’s that Wayne had made three calls to yesterday morning. There was a chance that I’d get the answering machine message again because lots of salons didn’t open until ten or even eleven, but some opened at eight, for people to get their hair blow-dried before work, so maybe I’d get lucky.

  Sure enough, some girl answered. ‘Head Candy.’

  Then the code of the hairdressers kicked in and she said, ‘Can you hold?’ Before I had a chance to say a word, there was a click and I had to endure ninety seconds of anonymous R’n’B. And the thing was, I knew your woman wasn’t on another call or dealing with a customer, she was just staring into space, clacking her leopard-print nails on the counter, but that’s what happens when you ring a hairdresser’s, right? It’s taboo for them to treat you politely and there’s no way round it; they’ve a protocol as unwavering and sacred as that of the Samurai.

  After the correctly insultingly long period of hold had elapsed, she came back. ‘Ya, help you?’ In my head I could vividly see the peacock-blue streak in her meringue-hard, albino-white, twelve-inch high, asymmetrical quiff.

  ‘You, young lady,’ I flooded my voice with warmth, ‘are currently top of my Shovel List.’ Then I spoke quickly. It’s essential to move with speed when you’ve just dissed someone. Don’t give them any recovery time, that’s the key. ‘Hi, my name is …’ Who would I be today? ‘Ditzy Shankill. Wayne Diffney’s assistant. Wayne has lost his mobile and he thinks he might have left it with you. He was in with you …?’

  Come on, meringue-head; tell me if you’ve seen him.

  ‘But he didn’t come. No, it’s over there on the other shelf, no, the one up high.’

  Clause 14 of the Hairdresser Receptionist Code says that it’s obligatory to carry on a conversation with an embodied person while on the phone to a disembodied one.

  ‘What? Wayne didn’t come?’

  ‘That’s forty-five euro. Will you be wanting any products today? No? Laser? No, Wayne made an appointment to see Jenna yesterday at one o’clock, but he didn’t show.’

  ‘When did he make the appointment?’

  ‘Just enter your pin there. Yesterday. Eight thirty. Soon as we opened. Wanted to come in right away. Begging, like. Earliest Jenna could do was one o’clock and we had to move things round to fit him in. But then he didn’t come.’

  ‘Did he ring to cancel?’

  ‘No. And I got my head bitten off by Jenna. How was I to know? He’s never flaked before.’

  ‘Was it normal for Wayne to ask for last-minute appointments?’

  ‘No. Quiet sort of guy. No hassle. Usually.’

  ‘Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘Have I?’ She sounded alarmed. Could she get into trouble for that?

  Mum had reappeared, trying to persuade me to go to CoffeeNation with her and Dad.

  ‘No, I’ve a busy morning,’ I said. ‘As well as me going to the doc, Jay Parker will be calling round with a key.’

  She went a bit dreamy-eyed. ‘I don’t understand why you and Jay Parker ever split up. You and him were perfect.’

  I eyed her coldly. ‘What way perfect?’

  ‘You’re both … you know … great fun.’ She said this awkwardly. It pained her to say anything nice about any of her offspring. It’s the way of her generation; she wouldn’t want us getting self-esteem. I think there was a law passed saying Irish mothers could actually be prosecuted if any of their female children exhibited signs of normal self-worth. As it happens, I have plenty of self-esteem, but I had to make my own and if the right people found out I could have got Mum into a lot of bother.

  ‘I thought you liked Artie.’

  After a long pause she said, ‘Artie is his own man.’

  ‘How have you made that sound like a heinous insult? You mean he doesn’t smarm all over you like Jay Parker does.’

  ‘We can’t all be charmers.’

  ‘I said “smarm” not “charm”.’

  ‘With Artie, well, it’s complicated, isn’t it? With ex-wives that don’t seem very ex to me –’

  ‘She is ex. She’s entirely ex.’ I worried about many things but unfinished business with Artie and Vonnie was not one of them.

  ‘But she’s always at their house.’

  ‘They’re friends, they’re civilized, they’re …’ I struggled to explain. ‘Middle-class.’

  ‘We’re middle-class and we don’t carry on like that.’

  ‘I think we’re the wrong sort of middle-class. They’re liberal.’

  ‘No, we’re certainly not liberal.’ She said this with some satisfaction. ‘But with his three children, it’s a lot for you to take on.’

  ‘I’m not “taking on” anything. I see him; I have lovely sex with him –’

  ‘Oh!’ she howled, pulling her cardigan over her eyes.

  ‘Stoppit!’

  ‘What if you wanted children of your own?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘So why would you take on someone else’s kids? Three of them? And one of them a neo-Nazi?’

  ‘He’s not really a neo-Nazi. I shouldn’t have said that – he just likes their look.’

  ‘And that young one, Bella. She’s mad about you.’

  Bella was mad about me.

  And that was a concern. I didn’t want anyone to start depending on me.

  I checked my emails. Good news and bad news. No, let’s just call it bad news. I’d heard back from my two contacts – which was good – and both of them were refusing to help me – which was obviously bad.

  You see, I wasn’t entirely honest with Jay Parker when I said that he’d been watching too many movies. It is extremely possible to get access to a person’s private phone records or bank details.

  If you’re prepared to pay enough.

  And if you’re comfortable breaking the law.

  There was a time when people with access to confidential info about others would give it out willy-nilly – in return for money or favours or ‘gifts’, of course – but since the Data Protection Act everything has changed. From time to time people get sacked or even get prosecuted for passing on titbits, like someone’s criminal record. It’s made my job a lot harder.

  But a few years back I’d been put in touch with two solid-gold contacts – one who did phones, the other who did finance – by a very successful Dublin PI, miles further up the pecking order than I am. I’d been able to help him out with something and as a reward he’d given me an introduction. Not a face-to-facer, obviously. I know almost nothing about these two contacts except that they operate out of the UK and – probably because of the highly illegal nature of the work they do – they’re very expensive.

  I didn’t use them often because the clients I got didn’t tend to have that sort of jingle.

  But, oh maybe eighteen months ago, I was working a matrimonial and coming up against blank walls at every turn so, eventually maddened by frustration, I lost the run of myself and without checking it was okay with the client I consulted both of the contacts.

  They came back with bank and phone records that were, frankly, dazzling in the story they told, but my client – a woman who’d suspected her husband of cheating and salting away money – went into denial. Nothing was wrong with her marriage, all was well and she certainly wanted nothing to do with these ‘disgusting lies’ as she termed the information.

  She refused to pay me for it. We tussled back and forth for weeks, but when she threatened to shop me to the coppers I had to let it go – so I wasn’t able to pay my sources. And because so much of this business is based on trust, I’d ruined two beautiful relationships. Three, in fact, because even the big-shot PI who’d given me the introduction would no longer speak to me.

  Last night, while I’d been in the car on the way to Roger St Leger, I’d sent two pleading emails, one to the phone source,
the other to the bank records person, in which I promised to pay my outstanding debts, as well as paying in advance for a new lot of information. But my hopes weren’t high that they might have forgiven me.

  As indeed had proved to be the case. Which, in my moral landscape, is fair enough: if someone messes you around, you waste no time on bitterness but you never give them a second chance.

  Yes. All very good, at least in theory. But let’s face it, bitterness can be extraordinarily enjoyable. Besides I needed these sources to give me a second chance, so I decided to email them again, offering more extravagant apologies and, crucially, more money. I pressed Send. I could only wait and see.

  Then I checked for new texts, wondering if John Joseph Hartley had got in touch with Birdie Salaman’s details. He hadn’t. Obviously, because of my own efforts, I now had an address for Birdie and a landline number, so I had something to work with, but I thought it was … well, interesting, that I’d heard nothing from him, not even a text to tell me that he couldn’t find anything.

  My phone rang. ‘Helen, Shannon from Dr Waterbury’s here. I’ve good news. He can see you if you can get down here in the next fifteen minutes.’

  Fifteen minutes. Brilliant! It meant there wasn’t enough time to even pretend to consider having a shower.

  Getting dressed, though; that could be a problem. Every stitch I owned was packed into cardboard boxes that were scattered randomly around the house and I’d no idea what was in any of them because I’d been in such a state when I’d been parcelling up my life.

  For my pitifully short night’s sleep I’d had to sleep in a pair of Dad’s pyjamas that I’d found in the hot press, but I couldn’t get through the day wearing clothes belonging to elderly people. I am not Alexa Chung.

  I rang my sister Claire but it went to her voicemail. She never answered her phone; she never got to it in time – it was always in a tangle of stuff in her Neverfull. And I wondered how many weeks of her life she’d wasted listening back to messages. ‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘I need clothes. Could you bring stuff over? Check out Kate’s room too.’

  Claire was about a foot taller than me, but I was prepared to roll things up and tuck things in because her clothes were fabulous. As a delightful bonus she had a very well-dressed seventeen-year-old daughter who was the same height as me.

  While I was talking, I opened one of the boxes and tugged at the top layers of fabric. Bright colours spilled on to the floor: sarongs, bikinis. I seemed to have hit a beachwear cluster. ‘Just enough for a couple of days,’ I said. ‘Till I get myself sorted.’

  I tore the lid off another box and found myself looking at three cashmere cardies which I should never have bought. I’m not a cashmere cardy type. To put it mildly. I’d only bought them because there had been that brief buzz about investment dressing meets Mad Men meets Glee. And the colours were all wrong for me – butterscotch, caramel and toffee (or, to put it another way, light brown, mid-brown and dark brown). I never wear browns or variants thereof but I’d been misled by the names. I’d forgotten that it was cardigans I was buying and not ice cream.

  I like black and grey and sometimes very dark blue or green, so long as it’s almost black. You can put in the occasional pop of yellow or orange, if they’re confined to a small area: example, trainers. If I could dress myself in Wayne Diffney’s house, I would.

  More rummaging produced a peculiar knitted dress in the most God-awful colour – why had I even packed this? I should have just thrown it away. And why had I brought this jumper? A polo neck, the second most egregious of all necks, surpassed in hideous unwearability only by the cowl neck.

  I burrowed down further into the box, finding more bizarre stuff as I went … then made myself stop. I was tipping into overwhelm.

  I rang my sister Margaret, who picked up after one and a half rings. She always picks up; she’s very conscientious. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve had to move in with Mum and Dad.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘All my clothes are packed away, I’ve nothing to wear.’

  ‘Sit tight,’ she said. ‘On my way with some stuff for you.’

  ‘No, no, it’s grand,’ I said quickly. I couldn’t possibly wear anything belonging to Margaret. Like Claire, she’s about a foot taller than me, and while I was willing to work around it with Claire, there was no way with Margaret: our tastes are worlds apart, if you could even use the word ‘taste’ to describe Margaret’s taste. She’s one of those baffling types who think clothes are just for covering yourself with. Utility-chic, you might call it. Like, if she was cold and all there was to hand was an acrylic mustard-coloured cable-knit jumper, Margaret would wear it. She wouldn’t even apologize for it. Whereas every right-thinking person would rather lose a limb to frostbite.

  Sometimes I’ve wondered what it’s about, her lack of interest in clothes – even Mum thinks she’s dowdy – and I suppose it’s because she knows who she is and she’s happy enough with it. Which is a good thing, of course. In a way.

  ‘No need to bring anything,’ I reassured. ‘I’m only ringing to whinge.’

  ‘I’ll be over later,’ she said. ‘We’re going to unpack for you, set you up in your bedroom, make things nice for you, Mum and I and … Claire.’ She wavered over ‘Claire’ because Claire was the unknown in every equation. It wasn’t that she was lazy and unreliable. As such. No, just very, very, very busy. An award-winning multitasker. She had a job, a good-looking husband and three children, including that ever-exploding bomb: a teenage daughter. Into the mix throw a commitment to fighting the perimenopause on every front and you have the recipe for a very overextended woman.

  ‘See you later,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Okay. Thanks.’ I hung up and faced facts. There was no choice: I’d have to wear yesterday’s jeans. And yesterday’s top. And yesterday’s trainers. And yesterday’s scarf. Not yesterday’s underwear, though. That was pushing it too far. I tugged at more sleeves and legs in another box and, by some unexpected luck, the contents of my underwear drawer came tumbling out.

  Next, make-up, I said to myself. You’re having a laugh, I replied. I’ll brush my teeth and that’ll have to do.

  16

  I got to the surgery in thirteen minutes, but still ended up having to wait a further twenty-seven. Why do they do it? Why don’t they just treat you like an adult and let you know how long you’re going to have to wait?

  Question: How do you know a doctor’s receptionist is lying? Answer: Her lips are moving.

  As I took my place in the roomful of sick people, the appalling sinking feeling I’d had since I woke up suddenly increased in volume. I’d managed to stay one step ahead of it while I’d been making calls and Googling stuff but now that I was sitting still and there was nothing to distract me, I was hit by its full impact.

  It was so hard to stay on the chair and not bolt out of the place, that I was squirming.

  To make matters worse, Shannon O’Malley’s attitude abruptly shifted from hysterically friendly to wounded, even aggressive.

  ‘We missed you at the school reunion,’ she said accusingly. ‘Why didn’t you come?’

  I stared at her, unable to find any words.

  ‘It was great,’ she said. ‘Great to see everyone again.’

  She paused, leaving a space for me to say something, and once again my brain couldn’t provide a single thing.

  ‘I was on a high for ages afterwards,’ she said, sort of defiantly.

  I was hit with the horrible thought that maybe it was my fault that I had no friends. Maybe, as Rachel said, I did have a bit missing. Why couldn’t I be like a normal person and go to my school reunion? Instead of feeling that I’d prefer to douse myself in petrol and light a match. I mean, even the thought of playing ‘My life has turned out better than yours’ with all those saps I’d endured five bone-crushingly tedious years with was too much to bear.

  Then I reminded myself that I used to have a friend and she was an exc
ellent friend, a quality friend.

  ‘You were busy, I suppose,’ Shannon said, sounding (and I’d be the first to admit that my interpretations weren’t entirely reliable) – but sounding almost unpleasant.

  Uncertainly, I eyed her. How much did she know about me? Had she read my file? Surely she had. How could you work in a place that had tons of confidential information on people you knew and not read it?

  ‘Mind you, you’d want to try having three kids, if you want to know about busy.’ She sounded marginally less hostile. ‘Although, of course, they’re so rewarding. You should meet my ten-year-old. A wise soul if ever there was one, ten going on fifty …’

  Tedious, oh very tedious. No wonder I hadn’t wanted to go to the school reunion if this was the kind of personality that was on offer. I tried to tune it out by remembering some of Bronagh’s antics and a really good one came to mind, but if I’d tried telling Shannon O’Malley why it was so funny, I’d have to keep explaining till the end of time and she still wouldn’t get it.

  Bronagh and I had been at a party, when Kristo Funshal had shown up. You mightn’t even remember Kristo Funshal because his acting career has since died an entirely deserved death, but at the time he was riding a modest-sized wave of success and, despite being married, he was putting it about left, right and centre. He was movie-star handsome, and by that I mean he looked like he was made of mahogany and latex.

  His presence at the party was causing quite a stir. All the girls, except myself and Bronagh, were sliding him sidelong, flirty looks and giggling behind their hands and Kristo was smirking so shamelessly and saucily that I could have puked. Next thing he crooked a finger and summoned me over to him.

  ‘Did you see that?’ I gasped at Bronagh. ‘What a skank.’

  She shrugged, unsurprised; she called me ‘the bait’. ‘You’re a looker,’ she often said. ‘You’ll get men for both of us. They’ll come for you but they’ll stay for me.’ And she was right.

  Kristo treated me to another crook of his finger and, outraged, I said to Bronagh, ‘Go over and talk to him.’