Solace (16 page)

But Eoin was in court, and Imelda was staying safely in her office, and Mona was absorbed in the work she had to get finished before lunch. And so Joanne clicked on, and found out what was
happening in the world. A teenage film star was pregnant. A model had been filmed taking cocaine. Mel Gibson had gone apeshit and said something anti-Semitic to a police officer. Paris Hilton had
been spotted with her dog. It was junk. It was mindless. And when next she glanced at the clock it was almost lunchtime.

It never ceased to amaze her how easily and rapidly time seeped away when she went online. She opened the Lefroy transcript and looked at the last notation she had made. She stared at it,
struggling to place herself back inside its world.
Check?
her own handwriting read, in block capitals. No arrow, no word circled, nothing to make clear what needed to be checked, and how,
and why. She read the paragraph again. Paddy Glackin, the barrister for the plaintiff, was setting out the grievances of his client. Mrs Lefroy had sent her son to the very best schools. Mrs Lefroy
had supported him through his years in college. Mrs Lefroy had paid for his master’s, the master’s he had never finished, and when he had gone into journalism, she had supported him
then, too, making sure there was money in his bank account, making sure her son had the means to live the lifestyle he wanted to be seen to live. She had paid for the mews house to be painted and
decorated, so that he and his friends would be comfortable there. She had bought him his first car. She had never been anything but supportive of her son, Glackin went on, even when he had broken
her heart by moving to London. And when she had signed over the lease of the mews on his return to Dublin, she had done so in good faith, in the belief that he needed a home, that he had tax
difficulties, that he was under pressure. And because Mrs Lefroy wanted her son to have a place of his own, because she did not want to see him suffer, she had signed the deeds transferring the
property to him, and very soon afterwards, said Glackin, she had discovered what kind of a son she truly had. She had had her eyes opened, said Glackin, to the true nature of their bond.

Joanne rolled her eyes. Glackin was fond of his melodrama. She skimmed the passage again and again, and still she could not see anything she needed to check; still she could not spot the detail
about which, on a previous read, she had written a note to herself. She looked back to the previous page. It was more of the same; Glackin setting out in agonized detail the depth of the
son’s betrayal. How lonely the old woman was. How badly she had been let down. How she had lost her husband so many years ago, and was no longer in touch with her daughter. ‘And now
this, Judge,’ Paddy Glackin had said. ‘And now this.’

She stopped. She read the paragraph again. She opened the folder of case notes and searched through the very first details they had gathered from Rupert. He was one of two children, he’d
told Eoin; his sister, Antonia, had moved to New York many years ago. He had said nothing else about her; had Eoin
asked
him nothing else about her? Apparently not. And all through the court
transcripts Joanne had read nothing, until now, of a daughter; there had been no mention of another child at all.

Joanne looked across the room. Mona was gazing at her computer screen with an absorption Joanne recognized; it was now her turn in the rabbit hole, clicking and staring her way through the
links.

‘Hey,’ Joanne said, and Mona turned her head in surprise.

‘What?’ she said.

‘What’s the story with the daughter?’

Mona looked blank, then wary. ‘What daughter?’ she said slowly.

‘Mel bloody Gibson’s daughter – whose daughter do you think I’m talking about?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mona said, clicking hurriedly into a Word file.

‘The Lefroy daughter,’ Joanne said impatiently. ‘There’s a daughter. In the notes from the opening consultation.’

‘Oh,’ said Mona, her expression breaking into bright relief. ‘The sister. Oh, yeah.’

‘Antonia.’

‘Yeah, Antonia.’ Mona said. ‘Why? What about her?’

‘What
about
her?’ Joanne almost shouted. ‘What became of her? There’s not even one other mention of her in the case notes.’

Mona shrugged. ‘I guess she’s not important.’

‘Of course she’s important,’ Joanne said. ‘How can we expect to know the whole story about a case involving two members of the same family if we don’t find out
everything we can about that family?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, we don’t need to know anything more,’ Mona said, turning back to clatter at her keyboard. ‘We don’t need help, remember. Rupert is the
one who’s clearly in the right. Eoin’s said it over and over again. Our case is as good as won.’

‘But we should have looked into the daughter. If the other side haven’t brought her up, hasn’t made something of her, there must be some reason for that. Mustn’t
there?’

‘Don’t go making work for us,’ Mona said, in a warning tone.

And then Imelda’s door opened, and Imelda stepped into the room. She glanced at Mona – glanced down to where Mona’s feet were hidden by her desk – and looked to Joanne
with a frown. ‘I was sure I told you to look into that sister of Rupert’s several weeks ago,’ she said, her eyes on the file open in front of Joanne. ‘Is that not the
case?’

‘No,’ Joanne said nervously, and she heard Mona exhale between her teeth.

‘Well, my mistake,’ Imelda said, handing her the phone. ‘Get on with it.’

‘It’s six in the morning in New York,’ Joanne said.

‘Ring her during lunchtime, then,’ Imelda said. ‘You don’t have anywhere you need to be, do you?’

*

Antonia Lefroy picked up on the second ring. It was still early in New York, but she did not sound wary as she said hello, and neither did she sound as though she had just been
woken. She sounded confident, capable, used to dealing with interruptions.

‘Ms Lefroy?’ Joanne said, and heard in her own tone the very nervousness and uncertainty she had expected in the other woman’s.

‘This is she.’

‘My name is Joanne Lynch. I’m calling from Brennan and Mullooly Solicitors, in Dublin.’

‘Hold on, please.’

There was a pause. Joanne heard a quick solid noise, like the movement of an object, or the sound of a door closing. When Antonia came back on the line her breath was close to the mouthpiece,
and it came out in a long sigh. She was expecting bad news, Joanne realized. Who could receive a call from a solicitors’ office in another country and not expect bad news?

‘I don’t want to worry you, Ms Lefroy,’ she said. ‘Nothing has happened. Nothing is wrong.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that, I think,’ Antonia said tightly. ‘This is to do with my mother and my brother, I suppose?’

‘Rupert is our client. Your mother is suing him—’

Antonia interrupted. ‘Yes, I know all about their little tussle. I read the papers. Or I should say the paper. It hasn’t been reported anywhere other than the
Irish Times
, I
hope?’

‘The
Sunday Independent
did something last weekend.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Antonia clicked her tongue. ‘Sordid, I suppose?’ She didn’t wait for Joanne to reply, but told her to go on.

‘Ms Lefroy, there are a couple of things I’d like to ask you,’ Joanne said.

‘Such as?’

‘Things to do with your mother, and your brother, family . . . history things.’ She winced at her words. At the other end of the line, she heard a clipped laugh.

‘Family history things?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Joanne blustered. She felt a wave of relief that she had waited until the office was empty to make the call. ‘Ms Lefroy, in her testimony, Mrs Lefroy has
described her relationship with you as being estranged.’

‘I didn’t read that in the papers.’

‘It hasn’t made it into the papers.’

‘And you’re calling me to see if you can change that, I assume?’

‘I’m not a journalist, Ms Lefroy.’

‘You don’t sound much like a solicitor either, I have to tell you.’

‘I’m a trainee. I’m working on your mother’s case.’

‘My brother’s case, from your perspective, surely.’

Joanne swallowed. ‘Yes.’

‘And what do you want from me?’

‘Well, I was hoping . . .’ Joanne stopped. ‘I was hoping you could fill in for us, a little bit, the background to your own . . . estrangement . . . from your mother. How that
came to be the case, and why. What happened, you know.’

‘I see.’

‘I mean, I know it’s very personal information . . .’

‘It certainly is.’

‘But I think it’s also essential to the progress of your brother’s case, if we are to represent him fairly.’

Antonia laughed curtly. ‘What makes you think I’m on my brother’s side in all of this? What makes you think I believe Rupert to be the one in the right?’

Joanne hesitated. She had been getting into the swing of things, and now she felt uncertain again. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Lefroy,’ she said. ‘It’s
just . . . with the implication that you and your mother no longer get on—’

‘You assume that I despise her just as much as my brother does. That I have just as great a desire to see her shamed and ruined.’

‘Well, no,’ said Joanne. This woman had just as much talent for melodrama as Paddy Glackin, she thought. The combined force of the two of them in the courtroom would be too much to
bear.

‘Do you have a mother, Miss Lynch?’

Joanne stammered. ‘Do I?’

‘Of course you do,’ Antonia broke in impatiently. ‘You sound about eighteen years old. You probably still live with your mother.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Joanne said, more sharply than she had intended.

‘So you are estranged from her.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You no longer live in the same house as your mother. Therefore you and she must be estranged. Am I correct?’

Joanne frowned. ‘I don’t think . . .’ she said, but then she couldn’t find anything else to say. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said after a moment.

‘Because you see, Miss Lynch, from my mother’s point of view, that is all it takes to become estranged. The mere fact of geographical distance between us, and of lives lived
separately – of a life, on my part, lived on my own terms – that is enough to constitute an estrangement. That is why she describes us as estranged. Do you know how many years I spent
living in the house on Fitzwilliam Square?’

‘No,’ Joanne said. ‘We don’t know anything about you, actually. That’s kind of the point.’

‘Thirty-nine.’

‘You’re thirty-nine?’

A long pause confirmed the error that Joanne already knew she had made. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I mean . . .’

‘Flattery may get you everywhere in your chosen profession,’ Antonia said, ‘but no. I am not thirty-nine. I am well past it. What I said is that I lived in my mother’s
house, with my mother, for thirty-nine years.’

‘Oh,’ Joanne said. She wrote 39 in her notebook and circled it twice.
Not age
, she added, and immediately put a line through it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said
again.

‘Sorry for what? Don’t be sorry for me. I’ve been out of Dublin ten years now. My life has never been better. I’ve lived in London, and now I’m in New York, and
I’m doing what I want to do. And I’m still in touch with my mother. Has she told you that? I’m still in touch with her very regularly, in fact.’

‘She hasn’t said anything about you.’

‘Well, there’s a reason for that. My mother has not forgiven me.’

‘For moving away?’

‘For moving out of her house,’ Antonia said. ‘My mother was used to having me in that house with her. To cook for her, and clean for her, and keep the place going for her, like
some kind of Victorian maid. And now that I’m no longer where she liked me to be, my mother prefers to pretend that I was never there. That I never existed. And yet I still visit her at least
once a year. Which is more than my brother did when he was living abroad. It was only when his money ran out that he decided to do that.’

‘Sure,’ Joanne said, and circled some more random words on her notepad. ‘I’m sure everything that’s happening between them must be difficult for you.’

‘Not particularly,’ said Antonia. ‘I left Ireland to make my own life. I had to become immune to caring about certain things.’ She sighed. ‘But I’m afraid I
still don’t know why you called me. Would you be so good as to tell me? What is it, exactly, that you wish to find out about my brother? Do you even know the answer to that question yourself
?’

Joanne did not respond.

‘Well, let me help you,’ Antonia said. ‘Let me tell you, first of all, that my brother is a compulsive liar. You probably know that already.’

‘Well . . .’

‘Of course you do, you’re representing him. But let me tell you something even more complicating – which is not going to help you, I’m afraid. Not only is my brother a
compulsive liar, and a consummate one, but he learned how to lie from my mother. She will tell you that black is white, and he’ll tell you white is brown. Are you beginning to understand
me?’

‘I think so,’ Joanne said slowly, though that was not quite true.

‘Good. Then what you’re beginning to understand, Miss Lynch, is that representing my brother is about as easy a task as it would be to represent my mother.’

‘I see.’

‘So good luck with it. And, please, don’t call me again. I have nothing to tell you. My mother may say that she is not in touch with me, but she is, and I don’t trouble myself
to think about her reasons for saying otherwise. I don’t see myself as estranged. I see myself as away.’

With a dignified click, she hung up. Joanne stared at the phone. She was not sure what had happened. She glanced again at the useless notes she had taken. Her heart was thumping. Imelda would be
back from lunch any minute, and she would see all this as dynamite: how Elizabeth had treated her daughter, how domineering and selfish she had been as a mother, how she had refused to let her
children build lives of their own. Imelda would bring it to their barrister, Linda O’Halloran, as further ammunition for Rupert’s case, for the argument that his mother was merely
bitter at his display of independence, merely jealous of the success he had made of the mews house, all on his own. And then there was the detail about Elizabeth being a consummate liar. The second
part of that detail – the part about Rupert being a talented liar too – Imelda would ignore: it was irrelevant for the purposes of their defence, she would say. But Elizabeth’s
lying: that, Imelda and O’Halloran would whip up into a savage attack on the old woman’s character – on her unreliability – on her claims to have been a good mother, a
mother who wanted only honesty and decency from her son. If Elizabeth Lefroy could not act honestly herself, O’Halloran would address the courtroom, on what basis could they attach so much as
a shred of credibility to her accusations about her son? It was all there. It lay sparkling on a platter, waiting to be snatched up and thrown. Once again, Joanne imagined Elizabeth on the witness
stand, her eyes dark, her posture defiant, her chin held high. The jet beads at her throat.