“Her too. We all did-not Rosie, but loads of us. He had his pick.”
“And so you sold Rosie out to get his attention. Is that what you had in mind when you told me you loved her?”
“That’s not bleeding fair. I never meant to-”
I fired the ashtray at the telly. It was heavy and I put my whole body behind it; it smashed through the screen with an impressive crashing noise and an explosion of ash and butts and splinters of glass. Imelda let out something between a gasp and a yelp and cringed away from me, one forearm thrown up to protect her face. Specks of ash filled up the air, whirled and settled on the carpet, the coffee table, her tracksuit bottoms.
“Now,” I said. “What did I warn you?”
She shook her head, wild-eyed. She had a hand pressed over her mouth: someone had trained her not to scream.
I flicked away glittering speckles of glass and found Imelda’s smokes on the coffee table, under a ball of green ribbon. “You’re going to tell me what you said to him, word for word, as close as you can remember. Don’t leave anything out. If you can’t remember something for definite, say so; don’t make shit up. Is that clear?”
Imelda nodded, hard, into her palm. I lit a smoke and leaned back in the armchair. “Good,” I said. “So talk.”
I could have told the story myself. The pub was some place off Wexford Street, Imelda didn’t remember the name: “We were going dancing, me and Mandy and Julie, but Rosie had to be home early-her da was on the warpath-so she didn’t want to pay in to the disco. So we said we’d go for a few pints first…” Imelda had been up at the bar, getting her round in, when she spotted Shay. She had got chatting to him-I could see her, tossing her hair, jutting one hip, slagging him off. Shay had flirted back automatically, but he liked them prettier and softer and a lot less mouthy, and when his pints arrived he had gathered them up and turned to head back to his mates in their corner.
She had just been trying to keep his attention. What’s wrong, Shay? Is Francis right, yeah, are you more into the fellas?
Look who’s talking, he’d said. When was the last time that little prick had a girlfriend? And he had started to move off.
Imelda had said, That’s all you know.
That had stopped him. Yeah?
The lads are waiting on their pints. Go on, off you go.
I’ll be back in a sec. You just hang on there.
I might. Or I might not.
Of course she had waited for him. Rosie laughed at her when she dropped the drinks down to them in a rush, and Mandy faked an outraged sniff (Robbing my fella), but Imelda gave them the finger and hurried back up to the bar in time to be lounging there, all casual and sipping her glass of lager and one button undone, when Shay got back. Her heart was going ninety. He had never looked twice at her before.
He bent his head close and gave her the intense blue gaze that never let him down, slouched on a bar stool and slid one of his knees in between hers, bought her the next drink and ran a finger over her knuckles when he passed it to her. She spun the story out as long as she could, to keep him with her, but in the end the whole plan was spread out on the bar between them: the suitcase, the meeting place, the boat, the London bedsit, the music-business jobs, the tiny wedding; every secret thing Rosie and I had spent months building up, fragment by fragment, and keeping safe and precious next to our skin. Imelda felt like shite about doing it; she couldn’t even stand to look over at Rosie, cracking up laughing with Mandy and Julie over something or other. Twenty-two years later and the color still flamed up in her cheeks when she talked about it. She had done it anyway.
It was such a pathetic little story, a snip of nothing, the kind teenage girls fight over and forget every day. It had led us to this week and this room.
“Tell me,” I said. “Did he at least throw you a quick fuck, after all that?”
Imelda wasn’t looking at me, but the red patches deepened. “Oh, good. I’d hate to think you went to the hassle of selling me and Rosie down the river, all for nothing. This way, yeah, two people ended up dead and a big bunch of lives ended up getting blown to smithereens, but hey, at least you got the ride you were after.”
She said, in a thin stretched voice, “You mean…? Me saying it to Shay. Did that get Rosie killed?”
“You’re a fucking genius.”
“Francis. Did…?” Imelda shuddered all over, like a spooked horse. “Did Shay…?”
“Did I say that?”
She shook her head.
“Well spotted. Pay attention, Imelda: if you go spreading that shite around, if you say it to even one person, you will regret it for the rest of your life. You’ve done your best to wreck one of my brothers’ name; I’m not having you wreck the other.”
“I’ll say nothing to anyone. I swear, Francis.”
“That includes your daughters. Just in case squealing runs in the family.” She flinched. “You never talked to Shay, and I was never here. Have you got me?”
“Yeah. Francis… I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. I never once thought…”
