Page 76 of Hard
‘Keir.’ She raps on the French oak to gain my attention. ‘How much whisky have you drank?’
‘Ocht, I’m fine.’Mostly.I shake my head, coming away from the contents of Agnes’s cardigan.
‘So the newspaper,’ she prompts.
‘It’s bullshit.’ Mostly.
‘Watch your language,’ she warns, then affirms, ‘but I thought as much myself. And most people will. What’s the problem? Not the singer, surely? Yon man couldn’t shout coal up a passage, by the way.’ Which is Agnes’s way of saying,He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.‘And his songs?’ She tightens her arms across her chest, pursing her lips and shaking her head. ‘I’ve seen more exciting blancmange.’
‘He’s part of the problem.’ I don’t really feel like rehashing it all for Agnes’s benefit, but I know there’s no avoiding it. ‘He’s not really the reason I’ve taken to drink.’
‘I should hope not. The man seems as weak as his chin.’
‘But he’s still got me in the newspapers. And Sorcha, too,’ I add darkly. ‘And brought her mother back.’
‘Jayne’s in London?’ she yells.Fuck me, rolling pins at dawn. I wouldn’t like to be on the wrong side of this woman. ‘Don’t you worry. She’ll no’ get past me. And I’ll be callin’ her ma and tellin’ her so.’
‘Agnes, her parents don’t want anything to do with her. Not after last time.’
When Sorcha was four years old, Jayne fooled her parents into thinking she wanted to be in her daughter’s life. So they gave her a place to stay and money to take me back to court. I suppose they wanted to think the best of her. Regardless, there isn’t a court in the land that would change the current order we have. Jayne gave up all parental rights, even had counselling before doing so. That year, she took their money and more of mine, before pissing off back to the States without so much as a word of legal advice.
It took her parents and me a while to get back on good terms. But they’re Sorcha’s family, and I wouldn’t keep her away from them... even though I paid her mother to do exactly that. It was for the best even though I never thought in a million years she’d choose cash over her own flesh.
‘You’ll not be giving her money this time, though, surely?’
‘I already have,’ I reply, leaning back in my chair and rubbing both hands through my hair until it’s standing on end. ‘I gave her nearly twenty grand, yet I know she’ll have sold her story, such as it is, to the newspapers. It’s just a case of when it goes to print.’
It wasn’t until after I left the hotel that it had made sense. She didn’t want me to pay for the room because one of the tabloids will pay for it as part of the deal. Her story and its tenuous and probably twisted connection to Robin Reed, who appears to have disappeared into a treatment facility until the possibility of an investigation into a conviction for driving while off his face disappears.
‘Well, what’s there to tell.’ It’s not a question, though not quite the assurance she means it to be. ‘Who’d be interested in what she has to say? And what’s with all the sighing? This isn’t like you.’ Agnes’s frown is full of disapproval.
‘There are things Jayne will say that I rather she didn’t. Things that might or might not be true, but I don’t want Sorcha to hear them anyway.’
‘I’m no’ so green as I’m cabbage looking, lad.’ A burst of deep laughter breaks free from my chest at her words. ‘I wasn’t always old, you know.’
‘You’re not old now.’
‘Not too old,’ she says, ‘but once, I was young. And bonny. And in love. And I ’ken things that go on in a marriage bed are supposed to stay there.’
‘Exactly. But I guarantee that Jayne will have sold shi—stories to the newspapers. Sorcha doesn’t need that.’Idon’t need that.
‘No, true,’ she agrees, ‘but life isn’t ever perfect.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that.’ If my tone is harsh, she doesn’t bite. ‘For years, I’ve put my child first. And the first time I think of myself—think with my dick—I turn into my mother.’ I’m angry and embarrassed to be voicing the parts of my life I keep to myself, the things I only think of alone and in the darkness. I push back my chair and begin pacing the long room. ‘I sometimes think if it hadn’t been for you, I’d have probably gone the same way as her.’Addiction, selfishness, and bad choices. ‘This just confirms it all. And fuck, if that doesn’t hurt.’
‘How so, lad? Tell me where you see the parallels.’
‘I came second to the blokes my mother was screwing. Second to drugs and to booze. I won’t—won’t—let the same happen to Sorcha.’
Agnes sighs. It sounds like disappointment and stops me in my tracks. I’m right—I’ve known all along. My mother didn’t love me like she should. I just couldn’t voice it aloud.
‘Your mother didn’t choose to make you second choice. That’s not how addiction goes. She loved you.’
Sliding my hands into my pant pockets, I snort derisively. How can she say that—say that to me? I was there. My psyche still bears the scars.
‘I know she did,’ she adds vehemently, ignoring my scorn. ‘When you were a wee lad, before we took you in, Alf used to say you had buckets of determination. That you would go far. And look around you—you have. You’re a good man, Keir. But you’re sometimes a hard one. Oh, you’re good to me, and you’re good to that wee girl. A good father and a grand friend. You even give that terror of an ex-wife far more than she deserves. But you’re not kind to yourself, and you’re not kind to the memory of your mother. You’d do well to remember that there are those in this world who aren’t as strong as you. And your mother was one of them.’
Agnes’s words strike me immediately, painfully, almost bringing my knees out from under me.
