Locked Out of Heaven

by Shirley Benton

  I climbed back down and took off my shoes, something that would have been a great idea in the first place.

  “I know, it’s hard to believe she got into Trinity College Dublin,” Susie said loudly with a headshake to nobody in particular and everyone in the room.

  Everyone looked at the floor or slurped their drinks.

  It seemed to take an age before I had the shoes off and was back on top of the crates again. Once I got there, my mind went completely blank. There was nothing to be heard except voices coming from somewhere. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their tones didn’t seem to indicate that they were too happy.

  “I . . . I don’t really know what to say . . .”

  “That’s why she’s a counsellor,” Susie hollered. “She’s paid to say nothing.”

  And then I realised that this was my punishment. My public flogging for leaving my perfect husband. The sound of drinks being slurped grew louder.

  I tried my best, I really did. I said a few words about how Susie had always put her family first, while trying to strike the balance between the seriousness of the situation and celebrating her life. I couldn’t quite believe how insane the situation she’d just created was and feel miffed at how she was playing on everyone’s discomfort, most of all mine. But I continued to act as if it was all fine, because there really was nothing else I could do. She just stood there, staring at me, as I struggled through my speech and tried to swerve around turning it into an obituary.

  “And . . . em . . . I’ll stop boring you now and let you get on with the night. Thanks so much again for coming, everyone,” I said with a note of finality before dropping my head, indicating my intention to disembark from Susie’s excuse for a stage.

  There were a few isolated claps, but nobody seemed to know if clapping was appropriate, either. For a very non-PC bunch, they were on their best behaviour tonight and totally discombobulated by the situation.

  “Oh, come on. I think my daughter deserves a decent clap for that.” Susie clapped slowly, almost indolently.

  A few people joined in but dropped off fast when it became clear that Susie’s clapping was more of the mocking variety than anything else.

  “My perfect daughter, no less. When you start out in a place like here, you have a long road to travel to perfection.”

  I could see Dad’s habitual frown deepen. He put a hand on Susie’s arm in what I recognised as his steadying gesture. It had all the effect of a snowflake on a bonfire.

  “And nobody was more aware of that than Holly. As soon as her brother died, she put her head down and looked after herself so that she’d get out of here. I have to hand it to her – she was single-minded and it worked.” Susie pulled a face of fake sympathy. “Of course, the perfect life didn’t work out for her long-term. She had the perfect man to fit into her aspirations of a perfect life, but he wasn’t enough for her. So really, she can look down her nose on her parents all she wants, but she still couldn’t keep it together when the time came—”

  “That’s enough!” Willie grabbed Susie by the arm and gently tried to move her towards the hall door.

  She was having none of it.

  “You’d think Holly never cared about her brother dying at all really, as long as it wasn’t her . . .”

  And here was my punishment for not allowing Susie to cry on Terry’s shoulder about Ricky earlier. If only she knew.

  “Stop it, Mum. This isn’t helping,” I said uselessly as I clattered off the stage of horror.

  I’d forgotten to get down from it when Susie started her soliloquy.

  “I bet you all think Holly’s so great, don’t you?” She tried to make eye contact with someone – anyone – but those with any sense were averting their gaze. “She thinks it herself. She thought she was good enough to be with a rich farmer years ago, you know. He’s around here somewhere today, would you believe!

  “She wanted to set up shop with him. I put her straight about where that was going, of course. She had ideas above her station, my Holly. I blame myself for that. I taught her and my boys the wrong things about life. I told them that all they had to do to make a life for themselves was to study. That worked out well. Do you see my grade A son here tonight?”

  I shook my head as I caught Cliff’s eye. He’d had decades of being the other son now. He just looked resigned. He didn’t expect anything else.

  Enough was enough.

  “Susie, it’s time to stop now. You’ve had your say loud and clear.”

  “Oh, I’m only getting started.”

  Cliff pushed his way through the small crowd and grabbed Susie by the arm.

  “Susie, stop it! Ricky would be so ashamed of you for treating Holly like this!”

  That was it then. Something about Cliff’s words hit a note with Susie, and all of her bravado and gusto left her. She stared at Cliff as if she’d never seen him before, then dropped to her knees and started to weep into her hands. It was an awful, strangled sound, worse than any wailing and screeching could ever be. The group around us had the sense to shuffle away without needing to be told, most of them drifting back into the sitting room or melting into the background whatever way they could.

  Cliff crouched down beside Susie, pulling her into him. I kneeled in front of them both and rubbed Susie’s arm. Willie stood behind us, shaking his head. Not one of the four of us could find a single word to say.

  “I’ll get her a drink of water,” Willie said.

  And then I heard the voices again. They were drifting in from the hall. Now, I heard their words for the first time.

  “You’re nothing but a scumbag. Always were, always will be.”

  Damo.

  “Says the loser alco! How many litres of spirits did you drink before you came here?”

  Terry.

  “At least I can sleep at night, Terry. Can you? All these years, you’ve deceived Holly.”

  I looked at Cliff over Susie’s head. I knew one of us needed to go out there and shut them up, but hearing my name mentioned had caused me to hesitate.

  “Don’t bring Holly into this!”

  Damo laughed. “You can’t keep Holly out of this! How can you, after what you did to her brother? You and your drugs.”

  Damo’s words hit me like a wallop.

  Susie dropped her hands and looked at me sharply through her tears.

  I saw the train coming towards me and waited for it to hit us all. I couldn’t push Susie out of the way. It was too late.

  “You thought you were such a hard man back then. You thought being a drug dealer made you someone. You weren’t quite so cocky, though, when your drugs killed someone, were you? But it wasn’t bad enough that you fucked up Holly’s life once – you had to go and do it again by worming your way into her life and marrying her!”

  I’d only seen Susie stop in her tracks once before, in the flats when we ran in and saw Ricky at the bottom of the stairs. For the first time since that unthinkable nightmare of a day, she stopped again. She didn’t move. She didn’t blink. I wasn’t even sure she was still breathing.

  Then, out of nowhere, she found the energy to spring up. I tried to pull her back, but she was too quick. She ran out into the hall and into the driveway, where Terry and Damo were arguing.

  “You were Ricky’s dealer!” she said to Terry. “You killed my son!”

  And then she collapsed and was gone.

  It was only as I was ringing for an ambulance that I noticed cameraman Paul through the open front door, leaning against the gate and capturing every second of what was unfolding.

  Chapter 57

  When I came out of Susie’s hospital room, Terry was there.

  I started to walk.

  He trailed me.

  “Holly, I need you to listen—”

  “Have you no shame? Get out!”

  “Just give me a chance!”

  “Listen to yourself!” I hissed, trying to keep my voice low. “You haven’t even asked how Susie is. It�
�s all about you.”

  I walked down the corridor as fast as I could, hoping I’d shake him off but knowing I wouldn’t. He followed, but quietly. I kept going until I reached the hospital’s entrance area and walked through it. A group of people were huddled at the door, watching the rain belting down outside. I walked out into the wet night with Terry close behind me.

  “Is Susie okay?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Jaysus, Holly! You give out to me for not asking how she is and jump down my throat when I do!”

  “How could she be okay after what she found out?”

  “How is she medically?”

  “Medically? Let me see. She’ll die without treatment and as she’s refusing it, the only answer is that medically she’s fucked.”

  “I meant, why did she collapse? Was it . . .”

  “Because of what you said? It certainly didn’t help. The doctors reckon it was a combination of being undernourished and severely stressed.”

  “She was drinking very quickly when I arrived too, I noticed. You really shouldn’t let her drink so much.”

  I shook my head. “God, I really wish it was you in there instead of her.”

  I walked to my car, leaving it until the last second to unlock it with the central locking, and jumped in. Terry jumped into the passenger side before I could lock the car internally.

  “I know you’re angry, but—”

  “Angry? You think angry covers how I feel about you aiding my brother to kill himself?”

  “Nobody forced Ricky to take drugs, Holly. If he hadn’t bought them from me, he’d have got them from someone else.”

  “Don’t. Don’t you dare try to absolve yourself from your part in this. You traded drugs for money. You sold young, vulnerable people things that would kill them. You’re as much to blame for his death as he was!”

  “I’m not saying I have no part in this. I’m just saying I’m not the only part. You can’t take Ricky totally out of the equation. Don’t make the mistake of making a saint out of him just because he’s dead.”

  I slapped Terry’s face so hard that I felt my shoulder blades twinging.

  He lifted a hand to his face. “God, Holly, don’t you see? I’ve lived the best part of my life with the guilt that I killed your brother.”

  “And none of that stopped you from going down the same route again, did it?”

  “I was young. I made a mistake and I spent every minute after that trying to make up for it. I worked so hard to give you everything you wanted. Our house on the right side of town, holidays, a future for the children we’d have . . . Then when we got that and it all started to go wrong, I had to do something to put it right and keep things the way you wanted them.”

  “Is that what our entire relationship and all those years together were about? Some sort of sick atonement exercise for you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “It was, wasn’t it? I was your guilt-fuelled obsession. You never wanted to be with me – you wanted to be with the sister of the boy who overdosed in an attempt to salve your own conscience by giving that girl a good life. How crazy is that! As if any material things could compensate for losing Ricky.”

  “I loved you, Holly. I love you. And it’s a hell of a lot more than you ever felt for me.”

  “I will not let you try to turn this into being about me.”

  “We both know I wasn’t the one you wanted. You have no right to get all high and mighty with me. I have given you a good life, one that I’m not sure you even deserved after how you treated me. It’s a much better one than you’d have had with that alcoholic bogger, I can tell you that much.”

  “How do you know about Damo? I thought I was the only one who knew.”

  His face dropped. “So you knew anyway.”

  “How did you find out, Terry?”

  He didn’t reply for a long time.

  “I’ve been watching him. For a few weeks on the trot. Did the same thing every day. He went into a bar in the afternoon, drank himself into a stupor all day and fell out of it at closing time. It’s always a different bar every day, usually in suburbs – presumably so that he won’t meet anyone he knows. He hasn’t been doing it for the last while, but it’s only a matter of time before he’s at it again.”

  “Terry, have you been following him?”

  He shrugged.

  “I can’t believe you did that!”

  “Surely you’re not more concerned about that fact than what he is? His relationship was in terrible trouble because of it all, I heard,” Terry continued. “He was trying to tell a barman about it one night. The barman had no interest, of course, but Damo just talked on anyway. He was too drunk even to notice me sitting in a booth behind him.

  “It’s a pity that he developed his little problem, because he and his girlfriend had been talking about getting married and having a houseful of children before all this. He’s still crazy about her, the poor useless bastard.

  “And it won’t be long before he destroys his career – he’s been calling in sick at work a lot recently. We shouldn’t pay our taxes to have people like that working for the state—”

  I pointed a finger at his nose. Even as I did it, I was aware that I looked like an old lady shaking her fists at a politician who dared to come to her door looking for her vote after his party cut her pension, but I was powerless to stop myself.

  “Don’t you, of all people, pontificate about paying tax like you’re some sort of law-abiding citizen! You make me sick.”

  “Aw, Holly.” He grabbed my wrist and yanked it down without releasing it, moving towards me until I could feel his hot breath on my face. “Does it hurt that your fantasy man is just as flawed as your husband?”

  I wriggled my wrist and pulled it away.

  “Damo didn’t kill an eighteen-year-old man and then carry on with the rest of his life as if nothing happened, Terry. He didn’t take that man’s sister as a lover and a wife. Nor did he creep his way into the life of the family he robbed of a son and brother, mocking them silently with his presence at anniversary Masses and family occasions. The same ones where Susie insisted that an empty seat be left for Ricky as a mark of respect. Whatever Damo’s problems are, he’s not a sick fuck. That’s your jurisdiction.”

  I reached over Terry and opened the passenger door, trying to contain the fury that was threatening to consume me. I wanted to lash out with my fists, to claw at Terry’s skin until there was nothing left of him, but I knew he’d degraded me enough already. I wouldn’t allow him to drag me down any further.

  “Get out.”

  He shook his head. “The pity of it all, Holly, is that I really loved you.”

  I pushed him out of the door and locked it firmly behind him. He stood in the rain for a minute or so, staring at me, before turning and walking to his car.

  Chapter 58

  As soon as Terry was gone, I had to turn my attention to the reason why I’d left Susie’s bedside in the first place. As the producer of Diary of a Boomeranger, Luke needed to know about this.

  “Luke? Something’s happened.”

  I explained the whole horrible situation to Luke, except for what Terry had told me about Damo.

  “What I don’t understand is how they even knew about the party in the first place,” I said when I’d told Luke everything.

  “The fucker,” Luke said.

  “Who?”

  “Paul. I was on speakerphone to you in the canteen when you told me about the party. He came down for his lunch mid-conversation and sat a few tables away. He obviously heard everything.”

  “So he came to the party to film without authorisation from anyone?”

  “He certainly didn’t mention it to me.”

  “So what’s going to happen now?”

  “Look, Holly, I’m sorry this happened, but you don’t need to worry. I won’t let that footage be included as part of the show.”

  I exhaled a huge sigh of relief. “Thanks, Lu
ke.”

  “That little bollocks Paul has been trying to throw his weight around ever since he joined the company. I’m all for ambition, but the trouble with him is he hasn’t an ounce of talent. This isn’t the first time he’s blotted his copybook, either. In fact, he’s had a few official warnings already for various misdemeanours. Leave it with me and I’ll sort him out.”

  “Why?” The word I’d been thinking popped out before I could stop it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m delighted you’re not going to show the footage, but why? It would be a big coup for the show, surely?”

  There was a long pause. “It would, Holly. I won’t lie about that. But I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would I? I’m not interested in destroying anyone’s life for the sake of a few headlines to promote the show. Especially not yours.”

  Now that I’d started the questions, I couldn’t stop.

  “And why not mine especially? Am I the favourite or something?”

  A very long pause ensued.

  “You’re special, Holly. Very special.”

  This time, I was suddenly struck dumb.

  “Plus, I don’t want you threatening me with legal action,” Luke said with a forced laugh after a long, awkward pause. “Leave this with me and it’ll be sorted out, all right?”

  “Sure. Thanks, Luke,” I said before hanging up, wondering what exactly had just happened there.

  Susie was allowed home later that day, under strict instructions to rest and eat properly. When we got home, I told her why I’d left Terry.

  “Oh, Holly, you should have told me. I can’t believe what that bastard has put my children through. This is all my fault.”

  I shook my head. “This is exactly why I didn’t tell you. I was afraid you’d blame yourself. He manipulated us all, Susie.”

  I left her to rest.

  That night, Damo landed on the doorstep. I hesitated for a few seconds before holding the door open and gesturing at him to come inside.

  “It’s very quiet,” he said as we walked into the sitting room.