She put her hands over her face. Even in the gathering darkness she could feel the heat of humiliation.
Had she been that desperate for human touch that she had been taken in by a shyster like Tommy? Was that what was wrong with her? Loneliness over Terry had left her so vulnerable she had not seen Tommy Rifkind for what he really was. Garry and Lee had murdered his child. Had she really thought they could be a proper couple with something like that between them? Was she losing her edge?
Now there was all this Irish involvement. She had dealt with them many times in the past and each time it had caused her heartbreak. It had to be the right moment to give it all up, hand over the reins and let herself have a life.
But what kind of life could she have at her age, with no husband, no kids, no nothing? What did she really have at the end of the day?
Nice houses, nice cars and nice clothes.
Nice friends?
She had a few good friends, especially Marge, and her child had been Carla though that was all over now. And Terry had been a husband and lover rolled into one. Since his death she had forced him from her mind, she had had to or the guilt would have driven her mad. Now, like Michael before her, she was finding out that it was all for nothing. That her whole life had been completely meaningless.
She felt the sting of tears and forced them away. Crying solved nothing; she had learned that the hard way. She struggled to sit up but the effort was too much for her. Instead she lay back and cried as she had never cried before.
It was a lonely and unsettling sound, one that came from the depths of her being and was all the more powerful because it wasn’t loud. It was a quiet desperate venting of her grief that wore her out with its intensity.
Finally she was spent. Dry-eyed, she lay on the sofa in the dark room and remembered Terry and how they had been together. How he had loved her in the darkness as if she was the only woman in the world. She thought of holidays together, meals shared. Remembered how he would always ask her about herself, her family. He had been there for her, and she had dragged them both back into her old life and in effect killed him.
If she had not answered the call from Roy to sort everything out they would still be together now. In their house, living their quiet life.
Yet she had been willing to turn her back on him for the family. It had always been the family who had been the crux of their problems. But what else could she do? They had needed her, like they needed her now. She was the voice of reason and yet she wanted nothing to do with any of it.
The living-room door opened and she saw a figure in the half-light. It was a woman, and seeing her outline Maura sat up abruptly.
“You’ve got some nerve coming here, Carla.”
Tony Dooley Senior was standing behind her.
“I tried to stop her coming in, Maura.”
She wiped a hand across her face; aware that once the lights went on the evidence of her tears would be there for them both to see.
“It’s all right, Tone. I’ll sort this one.”
He walked from the room and Carla said gently, “I’m sorry, Maws.”
Maura turned on the lamp by her chair.
“You’re sorry, are you? Is that supposed to make it all better then?”
“Of course not. I don’t know what came over me, Maws…”
“Tommy Rifkind come over you, didn’t he? In more ways than one.”
Carla looked as bad as she did herself and despite her anger Maura felt a flicker of sadness for her. Her niece had never really had the breaks. She shook the thought from her head. This was a conniving little whore who had slept with the same man as she and not thought twice about it. This was the girl who had lived off her for years and who had never once thanked her for it. Never, not even once. She had taken all Maura had had to offer as if she was entitled to it. She was family after all, and family meant everything, didn’t it?
Well, not any more.
“Please, Maura, let me try and explain what happened.”
She shook her head.
“Just piss off, Carla.”
Carla looked at her aunt as if she had never seen her before. The words were so heartfelt that she realised in no uncertain terms that Maura was not going to listen to her, no matter what she said.
“Please, Maws…” She tried her hurt little girl voice; it had worked in the past.
Maura put her hands up to her face and sighed.
“I said piss off. I meant piss off.”
The words were hard, cold, and Carla turned from her dejectedly. Until now she had thought of Maura as her aunt; now she saw she was dealing with Maura Ryan the head of the family, and it scared her. Everyone knew Maura was behind Geoffrey’s death. Suddenly Carla was really frightened. Like her Nana said, Maura was hard and she would never let anyone get the better of her. She went to leave then, her heart heavy and her world destroyed.
“And Carla The younger woman turned to her eagerly, hope on her face and in her heart.
“Don’t come back. You have a week to vacate your house.”
Carla was stunned.
“But what about Joey… my things?”
Maura could hear the shock in her niece’s voice and felt an urge to smile. It was always about her, everything was always about her.
“That, Carla, is your problem, love. You should have thought of that. Or did you see yourself lording it up in Liverpool with Tommy Rifkind?”
The truth of the statement hit her and she felt the sting of tears once more.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me, Maura.”
She looked so like Janine as she stood there, her face bunched up with distress and her gorgeous red-brown hair shining in the light. She was a beautiful woman and Maura still loved her even though she didn’t like her.
“Doing what to you, Carla? Was I supposed to let you shit all over me then? Just give Tommy to you like I gave you everything else?”
“I meant taking away my home.”
Maura snorted.
“Your home? My home, you mean. I own it and you lived there free. Gratis. I am just taking back what’s mine, darling’.”
“But what am I supposed to do?” The plaintive note in her voice was enough to make Maura laugh.
“Get a job springs to mind. Do you the world of good that would.
Working for a living.”
She laughed again.
“Maybe you should sign on. Not exactly the energetic type, are you, work wise that is. I even paid for your fucking cleaner or else the place would have looked like a shithouse. Or how about one of the hostess clubs? You certainly look and act the part. But no, you’re a bit long in the tooth for that job these days.”
She poked a finger at her niece.
“You are a lazy little whore and you had better sort yourself out now I ain’t doing it for you any more. Now go on, just piss off, you two-faced little mare.”
“You would really do this to me, Maura?”
“Yep.”
“Over a bloke? You’d split the family over a bloke?”
“Yep. I hope he was worth it, Carla.”
She laughed again and Carla knew she was lost. She tried once more to explain.
“I don’t know what came over me, Maura. If I could only turn back the clock…”
“Shut the front door on the way out, won’t you?”
She walked past her niece and went into the kitchen, where she began to fill the kettle.
Carla stood for a few moments before walking quietly from the house. Whatever she had expected tonight, indifference was not part of it. She would have taken anything; she had half-expected Maura to give her a clump, and in some ways would have preferred that. At least it would have been a normal reaction.
As she got into her car she heard footsteps behind her and, turning, took the full force of a bucket of cold water in her face.
Throwing the empty bucket at her, Maura snatched the car keys.
“Get a cab, sweetie. The car, I think you will find, like everything else belongs to me.”
Tony Dooley Senior watched and shook his head. Give him a man’s row any day of the week.
Vic’s mobile rang as he was watching Match of the Day. He answered it with a grunt.
“Wassup!”
He was laughing as he said it, knowing by the flashing name that it was his brother Justin.
“All right there, Vic?”
He sat up and pushed mute on the remote button.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s your worst nightmare, Vic. Listen.”
He could hear Justin moaning in the background and then he heard a gunshot and his brother screaming.
“You fucking bastard! I’ll fucking…”
The man was laughing at the other end of the line.
“Course you will, Vic. Hang on, I do believe his other leg needs a shot as well.”
Vic sat by helplessly as he heard another shot and another scream. He felt as if his heart was about to explode in his chest with shock and anger at what he was hearing. If anything more happened to Justin his mother would kill him stone dead.
“I am warning you, whoever you are, you’d better fucking start running, mate…”
The voice was sarcastic now and Vic was gritting his teeth as he listened once more.
“Oh, shut up, Victor, you big tart. Is your old mum still visiting Verderers Road, Chigwell? Or should it be fucking Murderers Road, considering you own the gaff, eh? Her sister is getting on her nerves a bit, I hear. You should check on her, mate. See how the poor old cow is getting on.”
The phone clicked off and Vic sat stunned, staring at the mobile as if it was a prehistoric monster that had just crawled out of his own ear.
Then he dialled his mother’s number.
No answer.
He was sweating now as he rushed through the flat and began to get dressed. If anything had happened to his mother or brother then there would be a blood bath in the south east and the Ryans would be top of the list.
On his way to his mother’s he phoned his cronies in England and Majorca. But deep inside, for all his bravado, he wondered what else the Ryans had up their sleeves.
Chapter Sixteen
“What am I gonna do, Nana?”
Sarah rocked her grand-daughter in her arms and whispered softly, “I don’t know, lovey. You’ll have to come back here, I suppose.”
In her heart of hearts Carla was the last person Sarah wanted living back at home. She was not an easy person to live with lately and the thought of Joey living here as well made Sarah feel almost depressed. His loud music, his queerness, made her skin crawl. Whatever her Michael might have been, at least he had been a man with manly ways. None of this mincing about. And on top of that there was the high-pitched squealing that seemed to be Joey’s only way of communicating.
She wondered if she should talk to Roy, but he had enough on his plate getting through the days without this pair driving him demented.
“I can’t believe she would do this to me, Nana.”
Carla’s self-pity was all too evident, and even though at times her daughter drove her mad, Sarah was with Maura on this one. What Carla had done to her was beyond bad and she personally thought that the girl had got off lightly.
“Well, you must have guessed she wouldn’t be happy, Carla. Surely you must have thought about her reaction if she found out?”
“It was him … he came after me, Nana.”
Carla really believed this now; she had a way of rewriting history when it suited her.
“Carla, stop it. Sure I saw the antics of the pair of you me self in this very house. Maura could sniff out something like this with a blindfold and her arms tied together. You were lucky to get away with it as long as you did, and that goes for the pair of you.”
“So you’re on her side as well?”
Sarah shook her head in consternation.
“There are no sides in matters like this. You should never have done what you did, full stop.”
“I am entitled to some happiness as well, you know.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have tried to get it at someone else’s expense, Carla. Maura was good to you, whatever you might think now.”
“That’s all I ever hear, how good she is. How lucky I am to have her. How kind she is to me.”
Carla sighed heavily. Tears nearly overcame her once more.
“But what about me, Nana? What about me! Sarah was rapidly losing the bit of patience she had left.
“What about you, Carla? You’ve been given everything a person could ask for and yet still you aren’t happy. I know that your mother was not the best she could be, but in fairness to Maura she was more than a mother to you and there was only a few years between you. She treated you like a little queen all your life. Helped with the boy, gave you everything you wanted. Didn’t you feel any kind of shame at the way you carried on with Tommy?”
Carla looked into her grandmother’s eyes and said seriously, “No. He wanted me, Nana, not her. If it wasn’t for all the trouble at the moment he would still be with me.”
Sarah looked at the beautiful woman before her and wondered if she was all the ticket. Surely she didn’t think that she could do what she wanted, take what she wanted, and never have to pay the price?
“She is acting like I am the bad person here, Nana, when all the time it’s her. She is the one everyone is terrified of, not me. She is the one who can’t accept that Tommy preferred me to her. She is the one who has left me and my child homeless.”
Sarah had listened to enough. She exploded. This wide-eyed poor old me act of her grand-daughter’s was getting on her nerves.
“Would you ever feck off and take responsibility for being a scheming little hoor who should be thankful she’s still able to walk, considering it was Maura Ryan you did the dirty on? Was you mad, child, to think you could get away with that! She can instill fear into the hardest of men, so what made you think you would walk away unscathed?”
“She’s got a point, Carla.”
Benny’s voice was soft, but it still made the two women jump.
“You are me own brother and yet you’re like all the others. It’s always her with everybody. She is the only person anyone is interested in.”
Benny smiled.
“That might be because she is an interesting person who’s achieved something in her life. Maybe if you had done something with yours instead of living off everyone else you might garner a bit of respect. As it is, Carla, you are well past your sell-by date and you still sound like a stupid teenager who can’t have her own way. Get a fucking life, woman. I tell you now, if you had done that to me I’d have seen you squirm in agony before I would have swallowed, so think yourself fucking lucky. A bucket of water in the boat is far better than a bottle of acid because that’s what you would have got from me, girl, sister or no sister.”