Shocked, confused, Joan mangled her attempted riposte. ‘Who the hell are you to think you are talking to me like—’

  ‘Haven’t you asked yourself why your marriage failed and why you haven’t even attempted to find someone else… to even just hang with?’

  ‘How dare you?’

  ‘Don’t you know why you’re an alcoholic?’

  Joan removed her shades, as if allowing her eyes space to bulge.

  Jenny, comfortable in her seat, folded her arms on the table. ‘Don’t you question why you’ve been such a shit mother? Your kids have been medicated since their teens. Each and every one of them. Every type of anxiety med. That’s all down to you. You know that, right? Their angst, their fucked-upness… that’s from living with you.’

  Joan’s breath was coming in quick sudden rushes.

  ‘Don’t you ever look in the mirror and wonder where your dreams disappeared to?’

  In barely a whisper, Joan said, ‘Fuck… you.’

  ‘Newsflash, Joan – it’s her.’ Without looking at her mother, Jenny gestured across the table with her thumb. ‘Don’t you get it yet? You are her instrument, and you allowed it to happen, you dumb, ignorant, stupid, fucking idiot.’

  For a moment Joan was still. Then, turning her back to the room, quietly said, ‘Mom, I’ll be downstairs in the car.’ Then she left.

  Vera stared across the table. ‘Proud of yourself? Talking to your sister like that? If I was you, Jennifer, I’d line up all your saints on a shelf and pray to them one by one.’

  ‘Funny, you never said that to Joan in your house six weeks ago. In fact, you’ve never said that to Joan any of the times she’s attacked me over the years.’

  ‘I’ve told you before – I can’t control what either of my daughters says or does.’

  Jenny leaned across the table and pointed at Vera. ‘Of course you can – you’re her mother. You just don’t, because you enjoy the show. And even if you didn’t, you mustn’t upset Joan, the chosen one, the golden child. Jesus Christ! You do know that you’ve destroyed her? The way you brought her up – it’s how people drive hamsters insane in experiments. You give it treats for no reason. Randomly. You don’t let it learn how the system of rewards operates.’

  Vera squinted. ‘What are you talking about? I love all my children equally.’

  ‘No, Mum, you don’t love all your children equally. You never did. Originally, you loved Hugh-the-golden-child and… well, that was actually it. Joan and I were fine. We did things for you. We did whatever you wanted. Our personal, private dramas were your favourite show, and you could get involved in them and by doing so, we thought it was proof of your love and concern. But it was just proof of your love of game playing. And what’s the game? Being the centre of it all.’

  Jenny finally took a deep sip of wine. She had waited for so long to point this out to her mother. She had longed to do so for years. Yet, the cleverer part of her knew that it was pointless. Vera would not respond. She would not engage – not meaningfully, anyway. That was not how narcissists worked.

  Steadily, Vera returned her daughter’s gaze. Her eyes flickered a few times but that was it. It was her usual reaction when blanking everything that she’d just heard and didn’t like. The next thing she’d do was to gaslight Jenny – the favourite weapon in her armoury.

  Calmly Vera said, ‘Are you mad, Jennifer? That wine – is it your first? Have you been drinking too much today? Drink does strange things to us when we’re stressed, and you’ve certainly been stressed recently. I hope you’re not on meds and drinking. Joan’s girls all had such problems when the doctor put them on those anti-anxiety pills. I told Joan it wasn’t a good idea. But would she listen?’

  Sometimes, Jenny wished that the only thing she’d wanted from her mother was the house; that it was all just a simple matter of demanding something in an arrangement approaching fairness. However, the truth was that she’d always just wanted Vera to treat her like a proper daughter. Even now, after everything her mother had done to her, part of Jenny didn’t want Vera to vanish from her world.

  But it was time to do what Shane had always wanted her to do. His mantra was, ‘The only way to deal with your family is to not deal with them.’ In other words, toss them overboard like the toxic waste they were.

  ‘Mum, you and I are done.’

  ‘We are what?’

  ‘Finished. I never want to see you again.’

  ‘You can’t… What are you saying? After I gave you Clareville? You treat me like this after what I just did for you?’

  ‘You did it for yourself, Mum. You did it because this is the way you want things. Because this is the world you want to live in.’

  Jenny could see everything clearly now. Vera didn’t allow anyone to be happy unless she was the source of that happiness. If Jenny’s world was great, then that would make her mother ratty and envious and Vera would attempt to ruin it, usurp it, or pass it off as inconsequential. For Jenny, the triumphs and delectations of her life had been guilty pleasures. That was because her life was a gift her mother had never intended for her. Vera had birthed Jenny for Vera.

  ‘So, you tricked me into giving you Clareville? You’ve basically admitted it. And all because you want to get me back for… for just being your mother. For just wanting what was best. Always. I thought you loved me, Jennifer. But all this time… you’ve just been lying.’

  Jenny almost applauded. It was a textbook rendition of Vera’s modus operandi at flash points. She would accuse her adversary of being manipulative (which Vera was). She’d label her enemy as vengeful (which Vera was). She’d call her opponent a liar (which Vera, above all else, was).

  ‘Mum, let me tell you exactly why you gave me the house. You gave it to me so you’ll never have to acknowledge how you manipulated Ultan to come to Ireland where he would be killed in my kitchen. So you’ll never have to apologise to all the people – me, Shane, Otto, Ultan’s friends, even Dee’s friends – for everything we all had to go through.’

  ‘You are completely insane. I’m not going to sit here and—’

  ‘I’m not finished. You gave me the house so your life could carry on, uninterrupted. You gave me the house because just a little part of you figured that you owed me something for me ending up as collateral damage in your failed plan. You gave me the house so I could be grateful – because you, more than anyone, know just how corrosive repeated gratitude is to a person’s dignity. You loved how Hugh needed you, required you, depended on you. And you love how Joan does so now. You want me to be like that, too. You always have. That’s why you kept the house dangling over my head – until a better use for it came along, with Ultan.’

  Vera was on her feet, her chair pushed back. Impatiently she began buttoning up her coat. Jenny remained seated, looking up at her mother with calm curiosity as she continued: ‘Dad wanted me to have the house. Now I have it. You didn’t give me the house. He did. And now it’s mine. As it should’ve been for the last twenty-five years.’

  ‘Goodbye, Jennifer.’ Vera turned, walked across the room and exited.

  Calmly, Jenny stood and gathered her things. So that was that. She was free of her mother. Free of her family. She’d said what had needed to be said and she’d finally received her due, her fair share, justice.

  But at what price?

  Shutting down that thought, Jenny caressed the serrated edge of the house key inside her jacket pocket, running her finger along its contours. It was the fatted calf.

  In no hurry, Jenny left the boardroom and descended the stairs. In the hallway she waved goodbye to the secretary through the glass door to the reception area. Then she was outside on the street, buttoning her coat. Only feet away, Vera was elegantly slipping into the passenger seat of Joan’s silver Mercedes. She shut the door and half lowered the window.

  ‘You know, Jennifer, sometimes I think that you’re the coldest of them all.’

  Her mother said it as though there had been a competition and that, surprisingly, her youngest had won.

  As Jenny walked back to Clareville, she couldn’t help but be flattered.

  51

  It was another busy summer evening in Clareville, the pavement bustling with early birds making their way to favourite eateries. Outside Luigi’s, Shane had to press himself against the glass to allow a middle-aged woman with two shaggy St Bernard dogs pass him. Shane could only imagine what type of house was required for keeping such large, expensive and impractical animals. Beyond the glass, the clientele were, as usual, all on their best behaviour; not being too loud, not being too famous or too rich; all very aware that perhaps a bigger, more charismatic, more spectacular beast might be about to emerge from the undergrowth.

  As Shane walked on, a grey-haired man in a cream suit paused at the entrance and nodded a smile to him. It was one of Shane’s neighbours – the judge. They’d seen each other every second day for the last few years and the judge had never acknowledged him. But since the drama of six weeks ago, the judge, like their other neighbours, even greeted him by name.

  Do not turn into one of them.

  Was it already too late? It was hard to step away from the fun of pursuing the perfect cool, of denying the extraordinary feeling that comes with personally knowing the chef, the front-of-house greeter, or the star.

  The fact was, Shane was no longer the person he had been. Whether he liked it or not, money had changed absolutely everything. The deal with Otto was guaranteed to work out and soon they’d have over a million euros, on top of owning their Clareville house. He’d wanted none of this in particular – but now that it had all happened anyway, Shane finally understood the true power of money. It wasn’t the mere ability to buy stuff, to travel at will, to skip the queue. Instead, the greatest gift that money could give was the freedom to stop thinking about money.

  I’m not one of them. I’m still me. Richer. Freer. But me.

  As he approached their house, he recognised the desperate urge – a need – to get to his study and write. It was welcoming. It was familiar. It hadn’t changed. It was the only thing he knew, and Shane was aware that part of the reason for this was his ingrained immaturity; he still held intact his adolescent idealism. He remembered when he was sixteen, drinking in the park with his friends before the local disco, and they’d talked about their ambitions which they didn’t yet recognise as ridiculous dreams. There were wannabe actors, musicians, football players and even a special ops commando. Shane had wanted to be a writer. Now, when he thought of how none of his friends had become what they’d wanted to be, he was dismayed by their lack of appetite for life. Every one of them had killed the very best part of themselves.

  You never killed the best part of yourself… instead, you killed someone else.

  When Shane thought of the fact that he was now a killer – that he had slain a man, put him down, shot him in the head, blown his face off – part of him believed that it was not true. That perhaps Ultan had committed suicide. Why else would he not have dropped the knife? Why else would he have threatened Jenny and given her time to relay that fact to her armed and adrenalised husband?

  Shane knew that Jenny thought Hugh’s suicide had been a demonstration of her brother’s weakness, his selfishness and his cruelty. She’d wondered how he could’ve done that to their parents – specifically to Vera. However, Shane had much sympathy for those who chose the time and place of their own extinction. All men seek happiness. Especially those who go and kill themselves. Maybe that’s what Ultan did. Maybe I’m just the equivalent of the guy on the motorway who drives the car that the person purposely walks in front of. Am I just the unwitting instrument?

  Shane walked up the pathway to his front door, opened it and slipped inside. He kept walking towards the kitchen, knowing that Jenny was still out at the solicitor’s office. He was then in the backyard, crossing the decking and entering the garage. There was the new Land Rover – silver and shiny, even in the shadows. It didn’t interest him much.

  Pulling up the rolling metal sectional garage door, he looked up and down the laneway before pushing out the wheelie bin. It felt normal. It felt like the thing a regular neighbourhood dad would do – separate his bottles and tins from the rest of his rubbish before putting it out on a Thursday night. And Jenny would be a typical mother who also recycled, cared about the environment and who worried about the birds in the garden starving in winter. And they would have two, maybe three, children and they would be proud of them, even though their children were extraordinarily ordinary. And Shane would bring the family to Disneyland every winter and in August they’d go to some beach resort with an excellent kids’ club.

  Glinting in the setting sun, he saw the last of the glass beads brushed in tight against the far wall of the laneway. He’d never forget Jenny’s command – ‘Don’t hesitate. Shoot him.’ It had been the very last thing he expected her to say. If it had been anyone else in the world, he would definitely have hesitated. He would’ve questioned it. He would’ve questioned it a second time. And even then, would he have pulled the trigger?

  But it hadn’t been anyone else. It had been Jenny. And if there was one person that he could trust above all else, it was his wife. Because of that, he needed to protect Jenny, to shield her, to be there for her – always.

  At university, twenty-five years ago, Shane had only been a part of Jenny’s life – but she had been everything in his. Back then, he’d been young enough to have a powerful sense that what was at stake in their relationship was nothing less than the rest of his life, and that every incident had an unimaginable significance. When they’d got back together in that club seventeen years ago, it still felt like that. And every year after that, it had continued to feel just so.

  I’m the guy who got the girl… but at what price?

  He looked up to the back of their towering Clareville house. He looked into the garage at their pristine new Land Rover. He thought of his spanking new boat that would be delivered next weekend. He remembered that Luigi’s front-of-house had known his name the last few times they’d gone there.

  ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ Shane muttered wryly.

  You’ve lost yourself.

  This was certainly a moment that his late father would have offered some meaningful advice. His father had taught Shane that he should never feel sorry for himself. ‘Have you cancer like David up the road?’ ‘Are you paralysed from the neck down like Maura’s boy in that motorcycle accident?’ ‘Did you march a hundred miles through a jungle only to watch your family drown in the Red Sea, like those poor people on the news?’ His father had a gift for zeroing out the scales. ‘Then enjoy your incredible good fortune, Shane.’

  Absorbing the low-grade self-loathing, he thought, enough of this pity party. Maybe he did deserve the house and the Clareville lifestyle. Over the years, despite his best efforts, they had become part of who Jenny was. And he’d taken possession of all of them. He’d defended them. He’d even killed for them. Therefore, had he not earned them?

  Behind him, from the kitchen door of the house, a happy buoyant voice called out to the neighbourhood – ‘Shane, I’m back.’

  He smiled.

  It was time to go home.

  THE END

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank:

  Anne Hughes, first reader and initial editor.

  My agent Donald Winchester at Watson, Little Ltd.

  Aubrie Artiano, James Faktor and all the team at Lume Books.

  My editor Cate Bickmore for her keen expertise and sharp eye.

  My parents Carmel and John, and my sisters Pat and Teri.

 

 

  S.D. Monaghan, Toxic People: A Gripping and Unputdownable Irish Psychological Thriller

 

 

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