'Is there anything you want to say to Conor, Sam?' Dee prompted.
Sam threw himself into Conor's arms. 'Thank you!'
Conor smiled at Dee over Sam's head. 'You're welcome, champ. Now, let's go and check out the barn, I have a job for you to do.'
Conor and Dee walked slowly down the stairs, Sam speeding ahead. When they reached the back door, Dee turned to Conor and smiled. 'He's thrilled, Conor, thanks.'
'No problem.'
She glanced at her watch. 'I'd better go and prepare for my guests.'
Conor's expression darkened. 'Will you be okay?'
'Yes, I'll be fine. Now that I know what I'm doing I feel in control. I hope Neil goes along with the plan, but if he doesn't,' she shrugged, 'then that's that.'
Conor looked around to see what Sam was up to. The child was over talking to Boxer but he was careful not to get too near the fence. 'I hope it goes well. Please don't worry about Sam, I promise I'll take care of him. Boxer's under lock and key, the sheets are new and—'
She put a finger to his lips and smiled. 'I'm not worried. Oh and by the way, I've thought of a question.'
'Sorry?'
'One question a week, remember?'
He groaned. 'Okay, then, go on.'
'Have you ever been in love?' she asked. She struggled to keep her voice light but she watched closely for his reaction.
He seemed to think about it for a moment and then nodded slightly. 'Yes, I have.'
'Conor, come on!' Sam ran back to them and tugged on his arm. 'What's my first job?'
'I'll leave you to it,' Dee said with a forced smile and started for her car.
'Dee, wait,' Conor said quietly, following her and grabbing her arm.
'I can't, Conor, I have to get back. Anyway, this is a boys' evening.' She dropped to her knees and held out her arms to Sam. 'You do whatever Conor tells you, okay?'
'I will,' Sam hugged her tightly.
'Call me in the morning and I'll come and get him,' Dee said, getting Sam's bag from the car and handing it over to Conor.
'Oh, but I was hoping to take him to buy the chickens tomorrow. You could come too and we'd get some lunch on the way.'
She shrugged. 'I'm not sure, Conor, I've such a lot to do.'
'Call me later,' he murmured, 'when they're gone.'
'It will probably be late.'
'It doesn't matter. Please, Dee?'
She nodded and turned her face so that his kiss landed on her cheek. 'Thanks for this,' she said brightly, getting into the driver's seat and starting the car. 'Bye, Sam.'
'Bye, Mum!' He roared above the noise of the engine and ran after her to the gate, waving until she was out of sight.
Dee drove away feeling slightly embarrassed and very annoyed with herself. Of course he'd been in love, he was thirty-two, for God's sake! What a dumb question to ask and what difference did it make anyway? She resolved there and then that she would not be asking any more questions. If he wanted to tell her things about his life, present or past, that was up to him, but she would not pester or beg for information like crumbs from the table. She was too old for such silly, schoolgirl behaviour and, she decided, as she thought of the evening ahead, she'd more important matters to think about.
Neil and Peggy sat at the kitchen table while Dee made tea. Neil seemed quite relaxed, she thought, but the same certainly couldn't be said for his mother.
'I feel like I'm in a time warp when I sit in this kitchen,' Neil said, looking around him. 'Nothing seems to have changed.'
'No, with the exception of the equipment, it hasn't really,' Dee agreed. 'Any money I had I put into adapting the house to cater for the crèche's needs. We partitioned the sitting room, installed toilets downstairs for both the children and staff and then we put a special surface down in the garden to make it a child-friendly zone.'
Dee carried a tray with tea and biscuits to the table and was just lifting the pot when the phone rang. She excused herself and went to answer it. 'Peggy, would you pour?' she called back before lifting the receiver. 'Hello?'
'Hello, Dee.'
Dee sighed. 'Hello, Aunt Pauline. Is everything all right?' She was usually the one to phone her aunt and even then she knew better than to phone after six.
'Everything's fine although Jack's knee is playing up again.'
'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Please, tell him I was asking for him.'
'You never called on Monday,' Pauline carried on regardless, 'you always call me on Mondays.'
'I'm sorry, Aunt, but like I told you last week, it's very busy at the moment.'
'You should never be too busy for your family,' Pauline retorted.
Dee thought of Sam and the conversation she should be having in the kitchen that would affect his whole future. 'You're quite right. Now I'm afraid you're going to have to excuse me, Aunt Pauline, I have guests.'
'Guests? Who?'
'I'll call you tomorrow, Aunt Pauline.'
'Now hold on one minute—'
'Goodnight, thanks for the call.' Dee put down the phone and went back into the kitchen. 'Sorry about that. It was my aunt.'
'Pauline?' Neil gave a short laugh. 'Did you tell her I was here?'
'What do you think?' Peggy hadn't poured the tea and Dee lifted the pot, shooting the silent woman a questioning glance.
'I remember sitting here the night of your father's funeral,' Neil was saying. 'Pauline was furious with me because someone made a joke and I laughed out loud.'
'You weren't her favourite person.'
'Can we get down to the reason we're here, please?' Peggy broke in, her voice sharp.
Dee, taken aback at her grim expression, nodded. 'Of course. Are you okay, Peggy?'
'Fine.'
'Okay then, shall I start?'
Peggy's eyes moved from Dee to her son. 'No. I think I will. I have some questions I'd like to ask Neil.'
Her son rolled his eyes at her, grinning. 'You're not going to shine a light in my eyes, are you, Mother?'
Peggy didn't return his smile. 'Tell us about the car, Neil.'
'What about the car?'
Peggy shrugged. 'Where you bought it, how much it cost, that sort of thing.'
Neil looked from his mother to Dee. 'You know all of this, and I don't see what that has to do with Sam—'
'Humour me,' Peggy said, not taking her eyes off him.
'We just want to know a bit more about you and your life, Neil,' Dee said. 'It's not a problem, is it?'
He shook his head. 'No, of course not. I bought the car from McCarthy's garage out beside the airport. It was seventy-eight thousand euros.'
'Liar.'
Neil stared at his mother. 'Excuse me?'
'You're a liar. You didn't buy that car, you're leasing it,'
'So what?'
'Why lie, Neil?' Dee asked.
'It's not a lie, for God's sake! I wasn't sure how long I'd be staying in Ireland and the dealer said that if I sold it again so quickly I would lose out. He suggested a lease instead so that's what I did.'
'So why lie?' Dee repeated.
'I just wanted to impress you, okay?'
Dee looked from him back to Peggy. 'Anything else?'
Peggy nodded and reached into her bag for a photocopy of one of the documents she'd found in Neil's room. 'Can you explain this?'
The two women watched as Neil took the document from his mother. 'Where did you get this?'
'I found it in your room,' Peggy said calmly.
'You had no right,' he said angrily.
'I had every right,' she shot back. 'If you want to come back into our lives you have got to be honest with us. Once I knew the car was a lie I decided to see what else you were hiding.'
Neil tossed the page on to the table. 'It's in the past, it doesn't matter any more.'
'So you don't owe that money?' Dee asked hopefully.
'No, not really.'
'Either you do, or you don't, Neil, which is it?'
'Life isn't always so black and white, Mam,' he said tiredly.
'Isn't it?' she said. 'Well, I wouldn't know what your life's been like, Neil, because you've never told me. All I know about you is that you stole from Dee and you've been lying to us about money. That would suggest to me that you haven't stopped gambling at all. For all I know maybe the only reason you're here is to con me and Dee out of more money.'
'No!' He slammed his hand down on the table making Dee jump.
'Why did you come back, Neil?' Peggy went on. 'You never did say, did you?'
'To see you,' he said quietly.
'Oh, please, you've hardly spent more than ten minutes in my company since you got back. You're out most of the time and you never tell me where you go or why.' She threw up her hands in frustration. 'And then you expect Dee to let you meet Sam.'
'Enough!' he shouted, sitting forward in his chair, his face red.
Peggy backed away and Dee instinctively put a hand out to cover hers. 'Please don't shout, Neil,' she said quietly.
He stood up and went to the sink. 'I'm sorry,' he said finally, turning around and leaning against it. 'It was stupid of me to think I could get away with this.'
Dee stiffened but she said nothing, just watched him. Sweat glistened on his forehead, his breathing had quickened, and he was drumming his fingers nervously on the draining board. 'What is it you were trying to get away with, Neil?'
Peggy sat back in her chair, her shoulders slumped and a defeated expression on her face. 'Just tell us, love. Tell us everything. Please?'
He sighed. 'It's hard to know where to begin.'
Dee watched him for a moment. She should feel angry and if Conor was here, Neil would probably be out the door on his ear by now but she felt she had to know the full story. 'Begin at the end,' she suggested, surprised at how steady her voice was. 'Begin when we broke up.'
He nodded and came back over to sit down. 'I left Greece immediately after that. I went to Morocco and bummed around Marrakesh for a while but I soon got through the money. I decided to head back to Spain. I figured I'd pick up some bar work there easily enough.'
'Did you sell my ring and Dad's watch?' Dee asked curiously.
He nodded. 'I'm sorry. Anyway, I told you the next bit about how I came to stop gambling.'
'Did you tell us the truth?' Dee asked, holding his gaze.
'Yes, I did.'
'And the bit about working as a bus driver?'
'Yes, that was all true.' He stopped.
'But you didn't set up your own business,' Peggy surmised.
He shook his head. 'No. Continental Coaches was the name of the company I worked for. Like I told you already, I worked long hours and it kept me out of harm's way. Andrew, my boss, was very pleased with my work. I never took sick leave, never gave any trouble and I was always on standby if any of the other drivers let him down. As a result, nearly two years later when he decided to open another branch in Ibiza, he put me in charge of the Benidorm operation.'
Dee frowned. 'So when was this?'
He thought about it for a moment. 'It would have been November, 2004.'
'Go on,' Peggy prompted him.
'It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I had never been given that level of responsibility before and I loved it. I worked my butt off when Andrew went to Ibiza; I wanted to prove to him that he'd made the right decision and that he could trust me.' He gave a short, humourless laugh and took a sip of his tea.
Dee and Peggy exchanged glances but neither of them spoke.
'Then one day a customer gave me a tip for a horse, said it was a sure thing. I thought that it wouldn't do any harm if I put on just one bet.'
'And it lost,' Peggy said.
'No.' He laughed. 'If it had lost, I'd probably be still running the company today. No, it won and so I went to collect my winnings and thought, while I'm here, I may as well put on just one more bet,' he shrugged, 'and that was that. I went back day after day putting more and more money on and losing it all. I was earning quite a good wage by then but it didn't take me long to go through it all. Then I started to dip into the petty cash . . .' He shook his head. 'It went downhill from there.'
'But how on earth did you get away with it?' Dee asked.
'I didn't. Oh, I managed to cover my tracks for a few months but Andrew got suspicious and sent in the auditors. I was arrested soon after that.'
'Dear, God.' Peggy crossed herself.
'I went to prison for six months,' he continued, staring into his glass. 'I got out Christmas week.'
'What did you do then?' Dee asked.
'I got some odd jobs here and there but nothing that paid very well. Then I bumped into Andrew again and he gave me a job as a driver.'
Peggy shot him a look of pure disbelief. 'You robbed from him and then he gave you a job?'
Neil nodded. 'Amazing, isn't it? But it turns out his father was a gambler and he knew exactly what I was going through. He told me he'd take me on as a driver but that I'd never be any more than that. I would never get near any cash and I would be monitored constantly.'
'That must have been tough,' Dee said cautiously.
He looked at her and smiled. 'No, Dee, it was the happiest I'd been since our time together in the US. Andrew took away all of the temptation. Everyone knew what I was like and not to trust me and, I can honestly say, it was a huge relief.'
'So what went wrong?' Peggy asked.
'Nothing. I haven't gambled since I got out of prison.'
'But what about this?' Peggy held up the page that detailed the huge debt.
He looked her straight in the eye. 'It's not mine.'
'Oh, please!' Dee shot him an angry look. 'Do you think we're stupid? Don't try to hoodwink us just because it's in Spanish, we know what it says and we know it's yours.'
'No, you don't, Dee,' he insisted. 'It is a debt and I am paying it back, but it's not mine.'
'You're trying to tell us that you're paying off someone else's debt?'
He sighed. 'Yes.'
'How can we believe you?' Peggy protested, her eyes filling with tears. 'Who in their right mind would take on someone else's debt? You have to prove to us that this is true or else . . .' She shook her head.
He reached across the table and took her hand. 'I'm telling you the truth, Mam. I've done a lot of terrible things but those days are behind me now. I'm sorry I lied about the car, it was a stupid thing to do. I just wanted you to be proud of me. I thought if I came back looking wealthy and successful it would make you happy.'