With a final effort, the chair and Shane fell backwards, like timber falling. As the back of Shane’s head collided with the floor, there was a splintering sound and the spine of the chair popped free. He pitched forward – enough to raise the weakened chair inches and bang it repeatedly on the floor. The tape loosened around his chest to give him just enough freedom to work an arm loose. Within minutes, Shane was on his feet and free. He reached for his phone, but it wasn’t there. It was back in Clareville. With Jenny. With Ultan.

  Shane entered the master bedroom, where Otto was still taped to a chair with moistness expanding around his thighs, like he was a woman miscarrying in a late trimester. As he ripped the tape from Otto’s lips, the Austrian gasped for air, like a man emerging from the sea. ‘Thank God, Shane. Thank God.’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Where’s your phone?’

  ‘I don’t know… I… he…’

  ‘Where? Tell me.’

  He nodded at the dressing table. ‘He left it there.’

  Shane snapped up Otto’s mobile and dialled Jenny. It went to voicemail. He talked quickly: ‘Jenny, something’s happened. You need to get out of the house. Then call the police. Jenny, call me back. No. Don’t. There’s no time. Jesus. If you get this, just get out.’

  As he struggled to free Otto, Shane told him, ‘Call the police. Send them to Clareville. I’ve no time. Keys. Where’s your car keys?’

  ‘Wait. What? He’s already taken my Porsche.’

  ‘You’ve an SUV. Give me the keys.’

  Otto was growing paler. Breathing more heavily. He pleaded, ‘Don’t go. Please… he could be still here. What if he just wants us to think he’s gone? If you leave, he’ll kill me. Or… or… you leave and that fucking psycho kills you in Clareville. Whatever way you look at it, if you go and I stay… then one of us is making a terrible mistake.’

  For Shane, Otto’s face represented the visage of a spineless prick that had some kind of empty dangling sack where his balls should be. Then, Shane felt bad. Before tonight Otto had probably never been punched in his life, let alone experienced anything like the trauma he’d just – barely – lived through. He looked a different man without his glasses. It was as if they were the key to him. Without them, he missed handsomeness by inches – his nose too sharp, eyes too beady, hair too thin.

  ‘Otto, he’s gone to get Jenny.’

  ‘He’s a nutcase, Shane. As strong as a fox.’

  Shane, pulling the rest of the tape from the Austrian’s body, said, ‘It’s ox, Otto. Ox. Now get me the keys.’

  Otto staggered to his feet, wincing as his wet trousers stretched tight against his thighs. ‘Yes. Ox. Whatever. He’s a psychopath. Oh, look at the state of me. I’m so sorry, Shane.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s understandable. Otto, I need those keys!’

  Otto hurried to the dresser and threw them across to Shane. ‘You’re really going back?’ He sounded incredulous. Then, clearly dreading the answer, asked, ‘Want me to come?’

  ‘No. I told you what to do. Call the police. Now.’

  ‘Wait. Take this.’ Opening the dresser, Otto withdrew the pistol and smiled, a hint of his old self returning. ‘He’s stronger than all us marines combined, huh? You’ll need it.’

  46

  9.25 pm: Jenny was kneeling on the beanbag cushion, facing the window. Despite the city lights, the young night sky contained a visible star cluster that seemed like a weeping wound.

  When had she started crying? Her tears sprang from a sudden remorse that if she was about to die, then she would never get to tell Shane that life with him had been a great adventure. He had kept surprising her and giving her reasons to get up in the morning. She didn’t regret a minute of it. Then it occurred, that after he saw the photo on his phone, Shane would regret ever having met her.

  She asked, ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘Same as last time. You’d think you would’ve learned. Or maybe you were expecting me? You now know who I am, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why did you throw me away? You owe me that, Mother.’

  *

  In London, the morning of her appointment at the clinic, her father had knocked on Jenny’s hotel room door. He’d hired a private detective to find her, which had not been hard since she’d travelled under her own name.

  Lorcan begged Jenny not to go through with it. He could not stand by as another family member was lost. But a tearful Jenny remained adamant. She was not having this baby. Before London, she had tried punching herself in the stomach. She had even sat in the bath drinking gin before passing out. But the baby had clung on to her insides like a parasite.

  Lorcan offered her the deal – she could go to Toronto and put the baby up for adoption. He would take care of the accommodation and expenses. Within the firm, one of the Canadian board members was an evangelical, deeply involved in an American-financed zealous wing of the Catholic Church that steered pregnant women from abortion clinics to an unfussy adoption. If Jenny agreed to this, Lorcan would sign over to her his investment property in Clareville.

  They flew out to Toronto and Lorcan oversaw Jenny settling into a downtown condominium and meeting his contact from the firm’s board. Lorcan agreed that Vera must never know. She would consider giving up the child to be almost as bad as the abortion, and would forever hound Jenny as to the whereabouts of her grandchild. Especially if it was a boy.

  When Lorcan returned to Dublin, Vera and Joan were appalled that Jenny had completed the abortion and was now living in Canada. They were doubly dismayed when Lorcan explained that he had not severed relations with Jenny; that she would be returning to Ireland within a year and since she was no longer welcome in the family home, he was giving her Clareville. In response, Joan refused to speak to him; a silent treatment that had barely begun to thaw before his sudden death a year later. She’d never forgiven Jenny for the guilt of that, either.

  *

  9.26 pm: Jenny stood and faced her son. The most amazing transformation had occurred. His beard was gone, revealing pale, soft skin and acne scars across his cheeks that made his face look like a rifle range. But without his beard, he was no longer a man in his thirties. He was clearly mid-twenties.

  Again, she noticed the tattoos behind the V of his shirt spreading up to his neck. She assumed his entire torso was covered in them. Usually, Jenny was interested in men with tattoos. It often meant that they understood a few essential things about themselves; things that would never change. Carefully, she soaked up his eyes. They were hers. Then there was his now exposed chin that had been covered by bristles – it belonged to his father.

  ‘You’re not Shane’s,’ she stated. ‘You’re Otto’s.’

  He went to scratch his beard and was surprised to find it not there. ‘You never knew?’

  ‘I always knew. Shane and I were way too careful. It couldn’t have been him. But that one time with… Otto doesn’t know I had a baby, either.’

  ‘He’s a wealthy man. Surprised you didn’t marry him instead of Shane.’

  ‘I love Shane. If I were to have a child, it would’ve been with him.’

  ‘You did have a child, Mother.’

  ‘Stop calling me that.’

  ‘You gave birth to me. Me – Ultan. That makes you a mother. It makes you my mother.’

  She thought of Vera’s lies, her game playing, her endless manipulations. Jenny said, ‘Giving birth doesn’t make you a mother, any more than buying an easel makes you Picasso.’

  ‘You tell yourself that. I hope it makes you feel better. But I’m your son. Like, haven’t you a memory of pushing me out of your—’

  She spun around. ‘Don’t you dare!’

  *

  Jenny remembered every moment of her pregnancy. It was like trying to carry a pint of lager around for nine months without spilling a drop. Shipwrecked in Canada, she’d never felt like a mother-to-be. Even after four months, the only thing she had to show for the pregnancy were sore breasts and an all-consuming desire to eat carbs.

  She remembered the doctor squirting gel onto her stomach and then sliding a probe over it. Within seconds, Jenny saw the fluttering grey image on the screen. Her baby. The doctor flicked a switch and the room filled with a loud pulsating sound: the baby’s heartbeat. Jenny listened, while looking at the strange seahorse-like image in the picture – and felt nothing.

  Everything about the pregnancy was terrible. Eating constantly was the only way she could fill her days. The relentless poking and prodding by the examining medics, seemed almost as intimate as her sex life. During the final stages, the late prenatal ache between her legs was so intense that for weeks it had felt like the baby was about to drop out at any second.

  When she arrived at the Toronto maternity hospital, a nurse told her, ‘Don’t worry, at your age delivery is straightforward.’ But nothing was straightforward in that labour ward, where women with swollen bellies cried out all day in pain and fear, while stressed partners paced about muttering to themselves.

  When the contractions increased in speed, she was rolled into the delivery room. There, the child arrived quickly, and she had felt little more than a heavy, deep stretching before it had suddenly materialised, slippery and shining in her own body’s juices. Just like that, Ultan was dumped squawking and mewling into the world, a moist, ugly ball of toxic raw purple that had torn open the drapes of his mother’s vagina. As they took him away to clear his airways, Jenny had not even asked whether it was a boy or girl.

  When they brought it back, the baby was grey, gluey and angry with her. Clearly, he hated the world already. He smelt strange – sweet, unfamiliar and other-worldly. He terrified her. As the baby nestled into her shoulder, she had waited for that moment of bonding that would lead inevitably to heartbreak as it was denied. But all she thought was, I’m too young for this. I never wanted it. I should be out there, living my life.

  In the days that followed, Jenny felt like a hideous creature, bleeding heavily and passing clots as big as mandarins. She had so much milk for the baby that she leaked whenever she bent over, while her flabby stomach was like a bag of glue that refused to hold its shape. It would take her months to get her figure back.

  *

  9.28 pm: ‘I have to say, my grandmother is an incredible lady… just incredible.’

  Jenny snapped, ‘You don’t know anything about her.’

  ‘I know she found me. I know she welcomed me. I know she wishes I’d been in her life. And I knew that she could give me you.’

  47

  9.29 pm: Shane bleeped the SUV unlocked. Opening the door, two moths rushed inside like looters. She could be dead. Ultan was a dangerous stalker, obsessed with his wife. Ultan was armed. Ultan was insane. Ultan wanted to punish Jenny for being Jenny.

  In the SUV, Shane jammed the nuzzle of the gun into his palm, feeling the 0 press hard on his skin, as if to contain its potential violence. He placed it on the passenger seat which was covered with a sheet of old chip paper, translucent with grease. Jabbing the key at the ignition, his shaking hand struggled to insert it. He needed a cigarette. Jenny would kill him if she knew he’d had one earlier. Yet, the idea of Jenny alive and angry with him in the morning was comforting.

  The engine coughed and started. Accelerating down the driveway, he wondered whether he should just ram the gates, but they began to open of their own accord. Shane stepped on it and raced towards the city. Along the quiet empty street, the headlight beams illuminated the trees in a white glow, like a ghost flying through the branches. Despite the crisis, and much to his own self-loathing, he couldn’t help but notice the quality of the car. The difference between his own wrecked ten-year-old Land Rover and Otto’s glistening SUV was like the difference between his rowing boat and a fucking aircraft carrier.

  Within minutes, Shane pulled out into the bay-front traffic and the car vibrated over the ruts of the weathered road. Clareville was only ten minutes away – less if the streets weren’t busy. A white Lexus GX with the bumper sticker, Jesus Would Have Driven a 4X4, cruised at leisurely speed between two lanes. Shane repeatedly punched the horn until the Lexus moved over, the driver giving him the finger.

  The closer he came to Clareville, the heavier the traffic became. While slowly passing a McDonalds full of inner-city kids queueing for their type 2 diabetes, his hand rebounded from the stick to the gun and back again. Further along the street a homeless guy faced the wall, aiming his yellow urine rope, pleased to be shocking a gang of passing tourists. A fox, its coat the colour of a traffic cone, ran before his car and into an alleyway.

  The only thing Shane could do was watch it all and drive. He hit a speed bump and the car kangarooed. Jerking forward, he instinctively checked for his phone again – to call the police, to call Jenny – but of course it was not there.

  Jenny needed him and he was not there. His wife – she was assured of the power of her intellect, and she was right. She was confident in her indestructibility, and she was wrong.

  48

  9.39 pm: Ultan said, ‘I don’t like this room. People can see in far too easily from the road. Let’s go to the kitchen, Mother.’

  As if she was an old woman, his hand pressed on the small of Jenny’s back as he steered her out into the hallway. She opened the kitchen door and walked to the island.

  ‘Can I sit?’

  ‘It’s your house.’

  ‘So, I can leave?’

  ‘No.’

  She sat. He remained standing, towering over her.

  ‘Where are you from?’ Jenny asked, even though her mother had already told her.

  ‘From inside you. But I live in Bangkok.’

  ‘Bangkok? Why?’

  ‘Either because I’m dumb or full of self-loathing. Which do you think?’

  ‘What do you do there?’ Jenny’s mother had not told her this.

  ‘I’m a travel guide. An exclusive one.’

  ‘What’s an “exclusive” travel guide?’ Jenny sounded both surprised and disappointed. ‘You drive the transfer from the airport to the six-star?’

  ‘At first, I just worked for the Chatrium Hotel as a trainer, but I had nothing to do until late in the afternoon when some tourists trickled in. Throughout the rest of the day, a few mid-ranking police officials would tog out to hang with “whitey” and show off their wealth. To escape the boredom, I branched out to provide expertise for outdoorsy scientists – help them collect data while delivering trekking adventure know-how in hiking, biking and climbing. Then, one day, I’m in my room overlooking the royal park and the phone rings and it’s a little old Irish lady saying that she’s my grandmother and that it broke her heart that she didn’t even know that I’d existed, but that she’d always wished I did.’

  Jenny bitterly laughed. ‘It’s her dead son that she wishes existed. It’s all the sons she didn’t have that she wishes existed. It’s not you.’

  *

  Less than an hour ago, Vera had told her that, as Lorcan grew weaker, he had divulged the truth about what happened in London and Toronto. Lorcan had said that there would always be hope of Jenny and her son reuniting. If that was to occur, then the only chance that Vera would have to be a part of that family would be if she kept some type of relationship with Jenny. Lorcan had made Vera promise to never tell Joan about the adoption, as she would use it against Jenny and ensure that she never came back to the family.

  Vera had said to Jenny, ‘Lorcan was right. Joan is too emotional. She sometimes doesn’t think clearly. You see, Jennifer, I too know what’s right. And I know how to do this. I know how to get my grandson into this family. But Joan would try and sabotage my efforts. I mean, it’s your son. She would never accept him when she doesn’t even accept you.’

  It had been her mother’s project – a twenty-five-year-long mission. That was why Vera had kept Jenny hanging by a thread; why Vera had let her rent Clareville with the vague hope that she might leave it to her. She had not just wanted Jenny around so she could incrementally punish her. She had actually wanted something tangible – Jenny’s son. She was like a spider, unwearyingly waiting, year after year, for the prey to finally reveal itself.

  Jenny had asked her, ‘Is that why you never gave Shane a chance?’

  ‘I’ve never made a secret of my views on what marriage is. It’s children, Jennifer. He never gave you any. I know it’s an old-fashioned adage, but he never did his duty. Someone else did it for him. You told your father who it was. A man called Otto.’

  ‘Mum, you have no idea what happened.’

  ‘I know he was your teacher. What were you thinking, Jennifer? But God works in mysterious ways. And through your… your sex sin, a beautiful life arrived. My grandson. That teacher gave you something that your husband was too selfish to give you. That’s why, as you say, I never gave Shane a chance. Why should I?’

  Jenny’s eyes had watered. All she could think of was how much Shane had wanted a child and how it was she who had denied him. She asked, ‘So, how did my son find you?’

  ‘I found him, but of course. Year after year and no sign of you looking for my grandson. But I prayed, every night, that you’d be secretly arranging contact with him. And that you’d finally come to me and say, “Mumma, there’s someone I want you to meet.”ʼ

  It was incredible. Vera had managed to make even this all about herself.

  Her mother continued: ‘Over the last few years, our friends have started to die – like dominoes. Great men in your father’s firm, long retired; they’re all dropping like flies. Their wives, too.’ She sounded sad, but her expression was triumphant – Vera survives, so Vera wins. ‘One of them, Frank Bastick, from Canada, sent me a letter. His prostate was taking him. But he wrote charmingly about the times he’d had with Lorcan. He mentioned you and your adoption. Very casually. Very briefly. How far Lorcan went to protect your unborn baby. Frank assumed I knew. Or perhaps, he’d forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to tell me. Or maybe it was a miracle – God’s way of letting me know that my grandson was ready to come home.’