My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind. by Annette Sills (epub e reader .TXT) 📗

Chapter 35

I pursued the two men in their long coats along the cobbles like I was chasing a pair of cloaked villains. The snow was falling thick and fast by then and their shadowy outlines weaved through the blurry curtain of white. I wondered if they were heading for the dimly lit bistro at the end of the street. Engrossed in their conversation, they didn’t hear me approach. Then I called out Dempsey’s name and they both turned, startled. The younger man put a protective arm on Dempsey’s shoulder.

“Leave him alone!” he shouted in what sounded like an Italian accent. “He doesn’t want to talk to you!”

Fiftyish and craggily handsome, I could make out a pair of dark eyes, bushy eyebrows and a scar running down his left cheek. He turned to Dempsey.

“Come on, Tim,” he urged. “We’re already late.”

Dempsey hesitated and stayed where he was.

“Stop!” I shouted, hurrying towards them. “I’m sorry about what happened back there! Please! I’m your niece – I’m Tess’s daughter. I just want to talk to you. Please!”

I suddenly shrieked as I lost my footing and went skidding on a patch of ice. My bag went flying but I managed to grab hold of a nearby lamppost to stop myself landing flat on my backside. I held on to it for dear life, slithering on the spot like a bad ice-skater clasping her partner’s waist. By the time I’d steadied myself Dempsey was standing behind me with a concerned look on his face.

“Are you OK?” he asked as he bent and picked up the scattered contents of my bag, putting them back in it.

“I am now,” I laughed, slightly shaken. “That was a bit Torville and Dean, though.”

“Very impressive axel, I must say.” He smiled and handed me my bag then turned back to the angry Italian who was frowning and folding his arms.

“See you in there in five, Stefano,” he said.

Stefano made some kind of gesture of annoyance with his hands, flung his red scarf around his shoulder, then turned and walked towards the bistro.

“Actors!” said Dempsey, shaking his head and watching him go with an affectionate smile.

We were alone in the empty street with the snow falling silently around us. The city sounds were distant, and it felt like we were tucked in one of the few quiet crevices in London. Dempsey put his hands in his pockets and stepped from one foot to the other, tentatively searching my face.

“You’ve a look of your mother around the eyes,” he said.

“People say I look more like my dad.”

He swallowed. “I was very sorry to hear of Tess’s passing.”

“So you knew she’d died before you got my email?”

He nodded.

“A friend heard her obituary on Irish radio and rang me.”

“The famous mid-west radio death-notices, by any chance?”

He nodded again.

“Can I ask why you didn’t come to the funeral?”

He moved his head to one side.

“I ... we’d been estranged for so long. It felt wrong.”

“She was your sister!”

He stepped back like I’d slapped him and I immediately regretted my sharp tone. I had to be careful. I’d already blown my fuse once. I couldn’t risk doing it again if I was going to get him to tell me about my brother. He lowered his eyes to the ground. He struck me as quite frail, a very different man to the quietly confident theatre director who’d answered questions in front of a huge audience a couple of hours earlier.

“I’m sorry for what happened in the theatre,” I said, brushing a fleck of snow from my nose and tightening my scarf around my face. “I didn’t come to London to embarrass you. I just lost it.”

He smiled weakly.

“It’s the type of thing Tess would have done when she was young. She had a hot head on her too.”

“She did?” I found it hard to imagine my fearful delicate mother behaving like that. “Look, Timothy, I’m not here for recrimination. I just want to find out what happened to Tess’s baby. I know you and James, his birth father, took him from the home.”

Dempsey exhaled sharply and stepped back, his breath visible in the dim street light.

“It’s very important to me,” I went on. “I have no family now. My only other brother died not long before Tess, and Dad passed when I was ten. They’ve all gone from me. I want to know if I have anyone else out there belonging to me.”

I omitted the fact that he too belonged to me but it hung in the air like an icicle.

He reached into the inside pocket of his coat. “When are you leaving London?”

“Tomorrow lunchtime. But I can stay longer.”

He handed me a business card. “Meet me at the café by the boating lake in Battersea Park tomorrow morning at ten.”

I frowned down at the card.

“How do I know you’ll turn up?”

He sighed.

“I’m not a monster, Carmel. I’ll be there.” He nodded down at the card. “Besides, you have all my contact details now so you can stalk me if I don’t.”

As he turned to go he threw me a small smile. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot, Carmel. I’m glad you found me but I’m sorry, I really have to go now. It’s a work dinner with the producer of my next play and I’m already very late.”

“Just before you go. I need to know. Is my brother alive?”

Dempsey nodded.

“And you know where he is?”

“Yes, yes, I do.”

As he walked away I watched his shadow fade in the whirling snow and the tail of his coat disappear through the door of bistro. Slightly dazed and still gripping his card in my hand, I made my way back down the street. As I passed the wine bar, the women from earlier clattered out of the door on to the cobbles, laughing and chatting.

“Goodnight,” I said, a grin spreading across on my face.

“Goodnight,” they replied, pulling on gloves and scarves and fake fur.

Emerging on to the