The Mystery of Mercy Close (54 page)

‘They’ll be on soon,’ I said.

‘What if they’re not?’ Bella began to sob. ‘What if they don’t come on?’

‘They will, they will!’ Vonnie and Iona shifted themselves to comfort her and Mum used the diversion to insinuate herself into Vonnie’s spot, then turned and gave me a smug that’ll-show-her smile.

I realized people were at breaking point. They couldn’t take much more anticipation.

Without warning the lights dropped, the stadium was plunged into complete darkness and the screaming, already at fever pitch, suddenly sounded like fifteen thousand wolves had just got their paws caught in a trap.

‘They’re coming!’ Claire dashed her knuckles against her face. ‘Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.’

Kate was running on the spot, the adrenaline-rush proving too much for her.

‘I’m going to puke,’ Mum said. ‘I am. I AM.’

A deep mournful cello chord sounded through the speakers; the floor, the walls and the ceiling seemed to vibrate with it. The screaming intensified as a lone spotlight clicked on and into the circle of light walked … John Joseph.

‘JOHN JOSEPH, JOHN JOSEPH, JOHN JOSEPH!’ Mum was howling and shrieking, waving her arms in the air. ‘OVER HERE, OVER HERE, OVER HERE.’

John Joseph, wearing a soberly cut dark suit, stood with his head bowed, unmoving.

The slow sombre cello playing continued and after several seconds, when people were holding their breath without realizing it, another spotlight clicked on and into the circle walked … Frankie.

‘Frankie, Frankie, Frankie!’

In the rows beneath us, people were crying uncontrollably.

Frankie assumed the same stance as John Joseph, standing as still as a statue, his head bowed.

‘Who’s next? Who’s next? Who’s next?’

The audience fell silent, the only sound was that of the cello and the stadium became so quiet that I actually heard
the next light click on, and into the circle of light walked … Roger.

‘It’s ROGER.’ People were turning to their companions and roaring right into their faces, ‘It’s ROGAAAAIIIRR. It’s ROGAAAAIIIR.’

Roger stood unmoving, with a bowed head. Eventually the howling died down and, while the portentous cello chords played on, an almost unbearable anticipation built.

When the click of the spotlight finally came, the stadium erupted in a massive exhale of breath. ‘IT’SWAYNEIT’S WAYNEIT’SWAYNE!’

And into the circle of light walked … Docker.

The screaming dipped in confusion. ‘It’s not Wayne. It’s not Wayne. It’s not Wayne.’ Then the screaming started up again, getting louder and shriller as people realized what was happening.

Mum twisted her head to me and shrieked into my face, ‘It’s Docker, it’s Docker, it’s FUCKING Docker!’ Her jaw was so extended I could actually see her tonsils.

There was a split second when everyone’s thought was, ‘They’re back together, all FIVE of them.’

Then neon lights burst into dazzling, blinding colour, the music exploded at a deafening pitch, and the four boys launched into ‘Indian Summer’, a super-jaunty, upbeat number, one of Laddz’s biggest hits.

Suddenly everyone was dancing. Blue and pink laser beams were playing over the audience and the atmosphere was transcendent, almost like a religious experience. Everything was so overwhelming and seamless that no one could hang on to the fact that Wayne wasn’t there and Docker was.

After ‘Indian Summer’, they segued into ‘Throb’, another dancey one, then ‘Heaven’s Door’. I was probably the only person of the fifteen thousand who noticed that Docker’s dancing might not be as polished as it could be, that he was
one second behind the rest of them and that sometimes he forgot to twirl. But, in fairness, he never forgot to smile.

After the fourth dance number in a row, they finally stopped for breath. ‘Hello, Dublin!’

‘As you can see, Wayne couldn’t be with us tonight,’ John Joseph said.

‘He sends his apologies,’ Roger said.

‘And I hope I’ll do instead,’ said Docker. ‘This one’s for Wayne …’

Out in the church hall car park business was brisk. Christmas trees were being wrapped in chicken wire and loaded into the boots of hatchbacks, and money was changing hands at a fast rate.

Inside the hall tinsel was Sellotaped to the walls and Christmas carols were playing, but luckily the speakers were so old and crappy that you could hardly hear them.

The usual stalls were in place, peddling their tantalizing wares. I stopped at the tombola, marvelled at the woegeousness of the prizes – a small bottle of diet Sprite, a box of Panadol, a tin of kidney beans – and bought a row of tickets. Sure, why not?

The woman in charge of the knitting table was sitting on a high stool overseeing her realm. She was knitting with a tight, barely repressed fury, sparks of anger seeming to fly from her needles with every click. Arrayed in front of her was a high number of dark-red, itchy-looking balaclavas; it looked like she was planning a revolution. ‘Yes?’ she snipped at me.

‘Have you anything for a baby?’

‘Girl or boy?’

‘Girl.’

‘How about a balaclava?’

I moved on. New this year – and proving highly popular – was a stand featuring felted goods.

Perhaps that was why Mrs Knitting was giving off such rage? I pushed my way to the front of the stall and found a pair of tiny pink bootees. Perfect. Except that one was significantly bigger than the other.

‘Fiver,’ the woman in charge said to me.

‘But … they’re different sizes.’

‘Present, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it’s the thought that counts. Fiver.’

‘Any chance you’d gift-wrap them?’

‘No. Where do you think you are? Barney’s?’

‘How would you even know about Barney’s?’

‘Oh, I know plenty.’ She gave me a little wink and shoved my fiver into her already bulging purse.

The cake table was next. I stood and admired the baked goods for some moments before engaging the stall-holder, a short, roundy type, in chat.

‘What’s that?’ I pointed at something.

‘Marmalade tart.’

‘You’re joking?’ What an appalling idea. ‘Have you any … 
normal
cake?’

‘What about this lovely coffee and walnut sponge?’

‘Coffee?’ I said. ‘And walnut? I’ve people coming over. I’m having –’ I paused to try out the word – ‘
guests
. I want to welcome them, not insult them. What’s that?’ I pointed at a lopsided brown square.

‘Chocolate biscuit cake.’

‘Grand, I’ll take that.’

‘How about some cupcakes?’

‘
Me?
’ I demanded with hauteur. ‘Do I look like a cupcake sort of person?’

‘Look at your little face,’ she said. ‘And you all decked out in your chic coat and your high heels, and that’s a lovely handbag you’ve got. New, is it?’

‘Yes …’ I said faintly, even though the bag wasn’t mine; it was Claire’s and I’d ‘borrowed’ it.

‘Being honest,’ she said, ‘you’re a cupcake cliché. You’re textbook.’

‘I’m not,’ I said earnestly. ‘I’m really not. But, all the same, I’ll take a dozen.’

Then, for old times’ sake, I
had
to visit the bric-a-crap stall. Fondly, I foraged among the goods: three scratch cards (already scratched); a single silver sneaker (size 39); a brochure for a Stannah stairlift; a cracked flower vase; half a bottle of Chanel No 5 (and there was something about it that made me certain that the perfume had not been dabbed on, but drunk).

The woman sitting behind the table – a different one from last year, I was fairly sure – was so cowed that she didn’t even bother looking at me.

‘What did you do wrong?’ I asked with compassion. ‘To be put in charge of this array of cack?’

Startled, she looked up. It took her a while to find her voice; clearly no one had spoken to her all morning. ‘I, ah, well … the chairwoman of the committee, she who must be obeyed …’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘My hyacinths came out before hers, a good fortnight.’

‘And that was it?’

She nodded. ‘My life has been a living hell ever since. To be honest, I’m thinking of resigning from being a Catholic. I’ve been investigating other faiths. I’m thinking of becoming a Zoroastrian, they seem like a nice bunch. Or a Scientologist. I’ve loved Tom Cruise since
Risky Business
.’

I drove home, let myself into my navy-blue hallway and felt gratitude wash over me. My prodigal apartment. Isn’t it ridiculous that you have to lose something in order to truly appreciate it? What kind of sicko makes the rules in this strange universe that we inhabit?

What had happened was this. It was a Tuesday morning in July, perhaps a month after the Laddz gigs. In the end there had been only four gigs – the original three plus the overflow demand for a fourth. By then Docker had done his bit, he had repaid his karmic debt to Wayne, and he needed to be off to pester some subsistence-farmers in Ecuador. And there was no way Wayne was able for any performing.

But everyone had done well out of it. They’d all made money: the promoters, Harry Gilliam, Jay Parker and the Laddz. (Unsurprisingly, Docker hadn’t taken a penny for his performances; he’d signed all his earnings over to Wayne.) Then the Laddz backlist began to sell – and sell and sell. And kept on selling and a DVD of the first gig had just been released for the Christmas market and sales – worldwide! – were already massive.

So like I said, one Tuesday morning in July, I was in Mum and Dad’s ‘office’ and I was actually doing some work. It was about a week since I’d been discharged from St Teresa’s and I’d had an email from a US citizen of Irish descent who wanted me to compile his family tree. It was the sort of stuff I’d already done – in fact my new client had got my details from someone I’d previously worked for. It was dull work, which would involve several visits to the dusty recesses of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registry. But dull was what I needed.

Next thing, Mum comes flying into the room. She looked worried. ‘Jay Parker is here.’

‘What!’

I hadn’t seen or heard from him since I’d got Docker to step in for Wayne to do the gigs.

‘What does he want?’ I couldn’t be doing with upheaval. I was starting to normal out; I was just starting to feel like myself again.

‘Will I tell him to go away?’ Mum asked.

‘Yes.’

‘It’ll only take a minute.’ His voice shouted up from the bottom of the stairs.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I said. ‘All right, come up, but be quick.’

‘Will I stay?’ Mum asked.

‘No, no, it’s fine.’

Warily Jay entered the room. ‘I just wanted to give you this.’ He slung me a black bin liner. ‘Look inside.’

I took a peep. There seemed to be small bundles of paper in there. Bundles and bundles of them, bound together with elastic bands. They looked almost like money.

‘What’s this?’ I asked.

‘About thirty grand.’

‘Thirty grand what?’

‘Thirty grand euro.’

After a long, long silence I said, ‘Parker, what the hell’s going on?’

‘It’s your cut of the door.’

I looked at the door of the room we were in. It wasn’t cut. There was nothing wrong with it. What was he talking about?

‘I mean it’s your share of the box-office take from the Laddz gigs. Remember? The contract I gave you?’

I had the vaguest memory that, in the middle of the search for Wayne, Parker had given me some crumpled piece of paper, which said that he’d give me some percentage of some percentage if the gigs went ahead. I’d discounted it instantly because I was convinced not only that I wouldn’t find Wayne but that Parker could never be trusted.

I reached into the bin liner and took out a lump of fifty-euro notes and weighed it in my hand. ‘Is it real?’

Jay laughed. ‘Of course it’s real.’

‘Not fake?’

‘No.’

‘Or stolen?’

‘No.’

‘So what’s the catch?’

‘There’s no catch.’

‘You’re just going to come in here, give me a bin liner containing thirty-thousand euro, which you swear is legal tender, and you’re going to ask for nothing … just walk away?’

‘Exactly.’

And that’s exactly what he did.

I didn’t know what to do with it so I stuffed it under the bed. Now and again I pulled out the bin liner and held the bundles, then gathered them up and put them away again. It took me about four days to realize – to
really
realize – that it was money. And that I could spend it.

My first thought was scarves. A person could buy an awful lot of scarves with thirty grand.

But then something else occurred to me … I still had the keys to my flat.

I thought it was pretty unlikely I’d be able to get in. I was fairly sure that someone else would already be living there. At the very least I expected that the locks would have been changed by the mortgage company.

But when I went back I found that everything was untouched – it was exactly as I’d left it, a month or so earlier. The reason? Throughout the country, thousands upon thousands of people were in mortgage arrears and my outstanding amount was, relatively speaking, so insignificant that no one had got round to doing anything about it yet.

I rang my mortgage people and asked whether, if I paid them some wedge, I could start living there again. I was sure they would tell me to hop it – you know what these bureaucrats are like – but they hadn’t even known that I’d moved out.

So, tentatively, feeling as though I was trespassing, I moved some clothes back into my wardrobe. Then I paid my electricity bill and the reconnection fee. Next, I paid my outstanding bin collection charges. I got my cable reconnected. Things gathering pace, I rang the credit card people and tidied up the situation with them. I even managed to get my Mother Superior bed back. I bought a new couch and chairs and retrieved my few remaining sticks of furniture from the giant storage place out past the airport.

I kept waiting for something to stop me, for someone to pop up with some legal impediment, but nothing happened.
However, it took a long time for me to feel secure, to feel like the flat was mine, that I truly belonged here.

I arranged the cupcakes on a plate, cut the chocolate biscuit cake into slices and tore the cellophane off a box of teabags. Christ, did I ever think I’d see the day that I’d be having people over for tea!