the table to emphasise each point. ‘It’s my thirty-fifth birthday on Saturday week. I don’t particularly want to have a party but for some reason that’s what’s being arranged for me by the family – and by family I do not mean my sister Lavinia, because the only way she can appear in Ireland without getting handcuffs slapped on her wrists is on Skype. I mean the company family. The party is in City Hall in Dublin, a big do, and I would rather not be there but I kind of have to be because the board have chosen that day to announce to everyone that I’m taking over the company while my father is alive, kind of like being given the seal of approval. That’s twelve days away. Because he’s so ill, they had a meeting last week to see if my birthday party could be moved forward. I told them it’s not happening. Firstly, I don’t want the job. I haven’t worked out how to fix it yet, but I’ll be announcing somebody else as the new head that night. And if I have to walk into that bloody room, I want Maria back, by my side, holding my hand the way it should be.’ His voice cracked and he took a moment to compose himself. ‘I thought about it and I understand. I changed. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. She was worried, she went to Sean and Sean took advantage of her. I went to Benidorm with him when we finished our Leaving Cert, and I’ve partied with him every weekend since I was thirteen – believe me, I know what he can be like with women. She doesn’t.’
I opened my mouth to protest, but Adam lifted a finger in warning and continued.
‘I’d also like to get my job at the Coast Guard back, and for everyone in my father’s company who’s worked there for the past one hundred years to get off my back because I was chosen to take Father’s place instead of them. If I had my way, I’d rather any of them got the bloody job. Right now it doesn’t look likely, but you’re going to help with that. We need to undo my grandfather’s wishes. Lavinia and I can’t take over the company, but it must not fall to my cousin Nigel. That would be the end of the company. I have to work something out. If none of those things are fixed, then I’ll drown myself in a bloody stream if I have to, because I’m not living with anything other than that right there.’ He jabbed the table with a butter knife to emphasise the final two words. He looked at me wide-eyed, wired, threatening, daring me to walk out, to give up on him.
It was tempting, to say the least. I stood up.
His expression turned to one of satisfaction; he’d managed to push another person away, leaving him free to get on with his plan to demolish himself.
‘Okay!’ I clapped my hands as if I was about to start a clear-up of the area. ‘We’ve a lot to do if we’re going to make this happen. Your apartment is out of bounds now, I assume, so you can stay with me. I need to go home and change, I need to get to the office to pick up some things and I need to get to a shop – I’ll explain what for later. First, I have to get my car. Are you coming?’
He looked at me in surprise, at my not leaving him in the way he thought I would, then he grabbed his coat and followed me.
Once we were in the taxi my phone beeped.
‘That’s the third one in a row. You never check your messages. Not very encouraging for me for when I’m hanging off a bridge somewhere looking for a pep talk.’
‘They’re not messages, they’re voicemails.’
‘How do you know?’
I knew because it was eight a.m. And there was only one thing that happened as soon as it hit eight a.m.
‘I just know.’
He studied me. ‘You said no secrets, remember?’
I thought about it and out of guilt for having read his ‘proposal’, which was currently in my pocket, handed him my phone.
He dialled and listened to the messages. Ten minutes later he handed the phone back to me.
I looked at him for a reaction.
‘That was your husband. But I think you already know that. He said he’s keeping the goldfish and he’s getting his solicitors to draw up paperwork to ensure you’re legally never allowed to own a fish again. He thinks he might be able to prevent you entering a pet shop too. He’s not sure about winning at funfairs but he’ll personally be there to beat you and make sure you don’t win.’
‘Is that it?’
‘In the second message he called you a bitch twenty-five times. I didn’t count. He did. He said it was twenty-five times. He said you were a bitch multiplied by twenty-five. Then he said it twenty-five times.’
I took the phone from him and sighed. Barry didn’t seem to be cooling down at all. In fact, he seemed to be getting worse, more frantic. Now it was the goldfish? He hated that goldfish. His niece had bought it for him for his birthday and the only reason she’d bought him a fish was because Barry’s brother hated fish too so it was technically a gift for her, to be stored in our home for her to look at and feed when she visited. He could keep the damn fish.
‘Actually,’ Adam snatched the phone back from me with a mischievous look in his eye, ‘I want to count, because wouldn’t it be funny if he got it wrong?’
He listened to the voicemail again on speakerphone and each time Barry spat the word out viciously, with venom and bitterness and sadness dripping from every single letter, Adam counted on his hands with a big smile on his face. He ended the call looking disappointed.
‘Nah. Twenty-five bitches.’ He handed it back to me and looked out the window.
We were silent for a few minutes and my phone beeped again.
‘And I thought I had problems,’ he said.
How to Sincerely Apologise When You Realise You Have Hurt Someone
‘So this is him?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered, sitting in the chair beside Simon Conway’s bed.
‘He can’t hear you, you know.’ Adam raised his voice above the norm. ‘There’s no need to whisper.’
‘Shh.’ I was irritated by his disrespect, his obvious need to prove that he wasn’t moved by what he saw. Well, I was moved and I wasn’t afraid to admit it; I felt raw with emotion. Each time I looked at Simon I relived the moment he shot himself. I heard the sound, the bang that left my ears ringing. I ran through the words I’d said leading up to him putting his gun down on the kitchen counter. It had been going well, his resolve had weakened, we had been engaging perfectly. But then my euphoria had taken over and I’d lost all sense of what I said next – if I’d said anything at all. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember.
‘So am I supposed to feel something right now?’ Adam interrupted my thoughts, loudly. ‘Is this a message, a psycho-babble way of telling me how lucky I am that I’m here and he’s there?’ he challenged me.
I threw him a dagger look.
‘Who are you?’
I jumped up from my chair at the sudden interruption by a woman walking into the room. She was mid to late thirties and held
