Page 67 of The Promise
‘Oh my God, no! He must have been terrified!’ I say,crying now with such regret that I didn’t know and I didn’t do anything to help him.
David looks wretched as he tries to find the right words to convey what he knew and, more importantly, why he didn’t tell me.
‘He told me it was a different way of life to how it used to be round here,’ he says. ‘He told me it’s all about power; it’s about drugs as well, and the power that some like to think they have around here, even stretching to their belief that you and I shouldn’t be together, Kate. He called them thugs. He told me not to worry and not to tell you.’
I shake my head.
‘But you should have told me, David!’ I cry. ‘You should have told me! We could have helped him! Did he owe them money? What did he say?’
‘He said … he said they were making him pay in more ways than one.’
‘Pay for what?’ I plead, my eyes wild with panic. ‘Pay for us? Was this to do with us? Was it Sean McGee?’
Mo storms out of the kitchen at that, almost taking the hinges from the doors, and Shannon follows, which stuns me and stings me almost as much as David’s secret did. All I can do to numb the pain is fetch a wine glass and join my mother for a drink to try and block it all out, but no matter how much wine I sink, I can’t sleep a wink when I go to bed, and I can’t get what my father told David out of my head.
Why was my father so afraid? Why did this happen to him? Was it because of us? David and me? Was he threatened because of me seeing David or was there something else behind his fear? I don’t know for sure, but I won’t settle until I find out.
David reaches out for me in bed, but I turn my back on him and hug the pillow instead. I am numb to the core and I just wish I could turn back time. I knew there was something simmering here. I feared my dad was hiding something that was on his mind, but I never, ever thought it would come to this. Now I’m racked with guilt that I should have paid more attention.
A traditional Irish wake is a singular occasion. As I sit in my mother’s tiny living room watching face after face – some familiar, some less well known, others complete strangers – come towards me, shake my hand, and offer words of sorrow and pray over my father’s body where he lies in his open coffin, there’s a strange comfort in it. Meanwhile I’m being washed along on a wave of grief that I know hasn’t even fully hit me yet.
‘He was a real character, a fine gentleman who thought the world of you, Kate.’
‘He loved your mother till the day he died, even if they weren’t together any more.’
‘He was an intelligent man in his own way. He could hold an interesting conversation. We had many laughs.’
‘You’re the image of him. You have his eyes. He always said you had his eyes.’
Hearing how others recollect stories and sharing their memories of my dad makes me feel both happy and sad at the same time, but beneath the cloud of constant handshaking, never-ending tea drinking, hurried whispers and various stories of my father’s life, I feel a simmer of anger ripple beneath my skin as I try to understand what exactly happened to him on the night he died.
There’s a much bigger story involved, a much bigger issue than a natural heart attack, which will inevitably be listed as the cause on his death certificate, and I won’t settle until I get to the bottom of it.
The funeral will be held in the local church where my father was baptised. As I sit here at his wake, numb with shock and pain, with streams of sympathizers expressing similar thoughts to me, I look at each of them wondering if they know what lies behind all this, and how much the sound of the underground is rattling behind their tears and words of sorrow.
As I look at them all for clues, I remember David’s father’s words of warning that day at the Old Rectory Manor when he made David choose between me or his parents.
‘It’s not the gossips or whispers, but the sound of the underground you should be more concerned about.’
And as much as I can’t stand the man, his words or warning seem to have rung true. So with all of that in mind,I ask David to go back to England and go back to work ahead of me.
‘You mean, you don’t want me to stay with you for the funeral?’ he asks me, his face crestfallen and hurt in a way I never dreamed I could have caused.
‘Stay for the funeral, yes, but after that I need to have some space to clean up all this mess and think things through,’ I tell him, and then, when he isn’t looking, I slip a note into his case before he goes saying ‘Sorry’.
I’m so heartbroken on so many levels about my dad; I’m so confused and upset with everyone around me and I don’t know if I can leave here after the funeral for a very long time. I’ve turned my back on everything I’ve ever known for a life that was so great, but I’ve neglected the people who needed me most. I need to fix my broken family, or at least what’s left of it, and to do that I’ll have to let David go back to England without me.
‘I-I don’t know what to say,’ he tells me before he leaves to go back to the life we left behind before this tragedy. ‘I can see how upset you are, Kate, and I know how much you’re going to miss him, but your father wouldn’t want you to punish yourself like this. I don’t think he would want you to ruin everything we’ve worked so hard for.’
‘My family needs me,’ I whisper to him. ‘I’m sorry, David, but right now my family needs me more than anyone else, even you, and I have to stay here to do what I have to do. You’ve no idea what it’s like to live here in the shadowswhen just a few miles away you lived the most privileged life; sometimes that makes me bitter and angry.’
He looks away and shakes his head, then bites his lip.
‘You’re angry at me now for our different upbringings?’
‘Not at you personally. God, I don’t know, I suppose just at the cruelty of it all,’ I try to explain. ‘You only think you knew trouble, you had to live with your father’s views, you knew which parts of town to avoid where you wouldn’t feel welcome, but you never knew trouble like we did here.’
Even though we’re standing so close right now, the distance between us has never felt greater. He takes a moment.
