The One I Love Read online

  Jane explained her sister’s inexplicable passion for the man who had mistreated her from the day they’d met and how, having an inexplicable passion of her own for the father of her child, she understood and sympathized with her sister’s misguided love. “You can’t choose who you love,” she said.

  Leslie thought about it – it made her crave more cake. After that Jane explained that whenever things got on top of Elle she would hang the “Gone Fishing” sign on her front door. It signalled that she needed peace and quiet, time away from everything and everyone, and until she was ready to face the world again she would be off the radar. Leslie was aghast that Elle would just disappear like that and couldn’t understand why Jane indulged her. “That’s extremely selfish,” she said. “What if you need her?”

  “I leave a voice message and hope she picks it up,” she admitted, before dismissing Leslie’s concerns, noting she was simply happy that Elle gave her a clear indication of what she was up to so that she didn’t have to worry. Although, of course, she did worry but not as much as if Elle disappeared without warning.

  It took Leslie a few minutes to grasp the significance of Elle’s latest fishing trip and it only became clear when Jane recounted the time two years earlier when she had failed to return for two months.

  “Will she paint while she’s away?” Leslie asked.

  “She hasn’t before.”

  “But the Missing Exhibition is scheduled for April!”

  “She’ll be home – it’s important, she’ll get it done,” Jane said, but Leslie could tell she wasn’t convinced.

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “Well, we’ll just have to find Alexandra in a club in March,” Jane said, and knew her proposal sounded weak.

  “It’s not her,” Leslie said, “and even if it was it doesn’t mean she’s going to turn up in the same place again.”

  “Don’t be so negative.”

  “Can’t help it – it’s my factory setting,” Leslie said, and smiled.

  “Elle will come home,” said Jane. “Hopefully in time to deliver twelve stunning paintings and, if not, we’ll sort it out. I’ll sort it out.”

  “I should warn the Jack camp.”

  “No, don’t say anything – please just give it a week. Let’s get over this exhibition first and then we can worry about what happens in April.”

  Leslie nodded, and after that she wondered how Jane would cope if Elle didn’t turn up to her own exhibition.

  “Actually, sometimes it works out better,” Jane told her. “In case you hadn’t noticed, my sister can be a bit of a handful.”

  Leslie had noticed so the conversation ended there. It was too late to get her hair done so she phoned the hairdresser to reschedule while enjoying a brisk walk through the park to undo some of the damage Jane’s cake had done to her hips.

  Tom’s business was suffering and not just because he’d lost interest in it. His company had completed a large development in south Dublin in mid-2007 and he’d been looking for more land but planning was getting tougher and, if he was honest, the houses he’d just finished hadn’t been as quick to sell as the previous two. He had decided to bide his time and wait for the right project. Then Alexandra had disappeared, and after that, the only thing he’d been looking for was her. He’d lost most of his building staff in the second quarter of 2007, only retaining a few men for snagging. The plumbers and electricians he’d contracted had moved on to work with others, and by the time he’d got stuck in a lift his company was reduced to himself and Jeanette in the office. It was quite clear that the business was dead and eventually Jeanette received her severance pay.

  The risk-taking and swagger that were needed to build and preside over the once-successful business he’d built from nothing had left with Alexandra and, in an environment where the clouds of recession were gathering, Tom Kavanagh had simply lost his nerve. After ten years of blood, sweat and tears, when the doors of his company finally closed in Christmas week Tom walked away without looking back once. His only focus was finding his wife. He spent hours on-line on her website, blogging and adding pictures as Leslie had shown him. He looked at missing-person sites every day and made calls to shelters all over Ireland and the UK and sent them emails with Alexandra’s face attached. He ensured that Interpol had all his wife’s details and insisted on following up every tiny little piece of information the police were investigating. He was so hands-on that in the end his liaison officer, Patricia Lowe, had to tell him in no uncertain terms to back off. He still handed out flyers and tacked them to posts and trees.

  When he wasn’t searching he visited Breda and told her about all the things that people were doing to find Alexandra.

  “You’re a good man,” she’d say, “and we will get her back.” Breda was sure that Alexandra was alive and well, just a little lost. She knew this because she’d prayed to God to keep her daughter safe and in sixty-odd years God had yet to let her down. Tom hadn’t believed in God until his wife disappeared but afterwards he found his mother-in-law’s trust and hope comforting.

  “She’s not alone, Tom,” she said, over and over, “she’s never alone.”

  Alexandra’s father didn’t talk about God or anything at all. Instead he sat in the garden and smoked one Marlboro after another. In the evenings he went out to the pub with his friends and they talked about football and politics, the state of the world and anything but his missing daughter because every time he thought about her his guts twisted, his head ached and his heart threatened to stop dead.

  Tom would always make it his business to go into the garden and say a few words to him, and he was polite but a little cold in his response.

  “How are you doing?” Tom would ask.

  “Fine.”

  “It’s freezing out here. Are you sure you wouldn’t be better off inside?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Breda seems good today.”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “You’re doing all you can.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Tom ended every short interlude with his father-in-law saying, “I’m sorry”, and every time the man would nod and say nothing.

  In the car on the way home from Jane’s, Tom wondered whether or not he should call into his in-laws with the good news but then thought better of it. He’d wait and maybe in March he’d be bringing his wife home. He knew in his heart that Leslie was right to be cautious and that the likelihood of finding Alexandra in a club in London was a million to one, but he didn’t care because a million to one was better odds than a million to none.

  Tom had never been much of a drinker but since his wife had vanished he drank every night because he couldn’t sleep unless he was intoxicated and even then his sleep was disturbed and he was restless, kicking and sometimes yelling out. When he didn’t drink he’d lie in bed afraid to close his eyes because when he did he’d go to the dark place. The scenarios were always different and yet they were the same: his wife was hurt, she needed him and he wasn’t there. In one Alexandra was tied up and dirty. She was face down on the floor and her arms were twisted behind her back. Her face was streaked with dirt, blood and tears, she had a hole in her head that was caked in blood and she was crying out, calling his name, and over her a shadow loomed, a monster playing with a knife, and she would beg Tom to find her before the monster cut into her again. In another he’d see her in a tiny windowless room; she was surrounded by concrete walls and a black steel door with a tiny flap at the bottom. She was in the corner hugging the wall and there was nothing but silence and a tray of slop that she couldn’t eat. She was so thin that her bones stood out and she’d call to him that if he didn’t find her soon she’d be gone. There was the one where she was drugged and tied to a bed and men were coming and going, screwing her, and her head would roll and her eyes, red raw, would call to him to save her, but he couldn’t because he couldn’t see where she was. He’d claw at his face and hit the sid
e of his head and roar and bawl and scream and rock until he was so tired that all he could do was lie very still and stare at her smiling picture hanging on the wall. And with each night that passed he’d live another, more twisted and painful nightmare.

  Since Tom’s secretary Jeanette had lost her job she had called in on a number of occasions to check up on him. The first time she had appeared he was drunk and wearing what appeared to be uncomfortably snug tracksuit bottoms. “I didn’t know you even owned a tracksuit.”

  “I don’t. They’re Alexandra’s.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to walk a mile in her shoes but they didn’t fit.”

  “How drunk are you?”

  “Very.”

  She’d come into his house and run a bath, and when he refused to get into it she’d insisted. Her insistence and freakish upper-body strength ensured that ten minutes later he was soaking in bath oil while she cleaned his kitchen and sitting room of takeaway cartons and empty bottles. He’d fallen asleep and she’d woken him, and when he realized he was naked and in the bath he became embarrassed, but she made light of it and handed him a towel. “I’ve seen worse on site,” she said, and she wasn’t lying: she’d caught a plasterer taking a dump behind a tree and when she closed her eyes she could still see arse-hair and excrement. She’d also walked in on brickie Barry Brady receiving a blow-job on his lunch hour, not once but twice, and he was a pig about it, winking at her and asking if she wanted to join in. Even thinking about it made her want to go back in time and punch him.

  Tom asked her to leave the bathroom while he covered himself up and he briefly wondered how to dissuade her from coming to his house again.

  Jeanette had worked for Tom for four years and she’d developed a crush on him within a week of joining his company and, of course, he knew it. Before Alexandra had gone missing, Tom had been warm and funny. He was the kind of man and boss who didn’t need to feel superior to those working for him. He’d drop a coffee on her desk as he was passing, always remembering how she took it, no milk, one sugar, and every now and then he’d bring her something sweet. It wasn’t just her, he’d do it for the others too. In fact, when she thought about it, for a man who ran a profitable company he spent a lot of time making coffee. He would listen to her when she spoke and he’d tell her what a great job she was doing. He wasn’t available back then, he wasn’t even looking for sex, more was the pity, because Jeanette would have done him on the photocopier in week one if he’d asked her. At least, that was what she’d told her pals Lily and Davey in the pub the night before she’d decided to visit him at his home that first time.

  “Uncomfortable,” Davey said, “and technically impossible. He’d be the one doing you and you’d only be leaning on it. But I suppose you could say that you’d invited him to do you over the photocopier.”

  “Shut up, Davey!” Lily said.

  “I was only saying.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t say. Go on, Jeanette, you’d have done him on the photocopier in week one …”

  “Well, that was it, really.”

  Lily punched Davey in the arm. “You always do that! Interrupt someone when they’re saying something interesting just to say something totally boring, throwing off the person who actually has something to say!” She punched him again.

  Davey rubbed his arm and then he said something interesting. “Okay then, elephant in the room, he offed his missus.”

  Jeanette didn’t believe it possible. “No way.”

  “Of course he did. Nobody just disappears.”

  “People disappear all the time, knob jockey!” Lily said.

  Jeanette shook her head from side to side. “Nothing could make me believe that he did anything to her.”

  “Well, my advice to you would be to stay away until we know that for sure,” Davey said.

  Lily nodded. “He has a point. Better safe than headless in a suitcase floating down the Dodder.”

  Jeanette had no intention of staying away and, even though the sparkle in Tom’s eye had been replaced with a terrible sadness, God help poor Jeanette, she fell deeper in love.

  She waited for Tom to emerge from the bathroom, and when he did and he was clean and his house was clean and there was real food cooking in his oven and she was talking about the job interview she’d just had and looking for some music, he felt normal and calm and it was nice, if only for a while. When he’d sobered up she poured some wine and they sat together and ate. When they’d polished off the bottle and were halfway through the second, and after she’d served a dessert that neither of them ate, she gazed at him across the table and slowly, hesitantly, took his hand in hers. “What more can I do?” she asked. While retaining his hand, she walked around the table and sat on a chair at his side. Now he was facing her, his hand still in hers, and her other hand was sliding up his thigh. His pulse raced, and her heart was racing too, as she asked him again, “What can I do?” and he was staring into her face and eyes and the kitchen fell away as he reached for the back of her head and pulled her into him and they kissed.

  The next night in the pub she’d re-enacted it for her pals Lily and Davey.

  “Jesus, that’s like in a film,” Lily said.

  “Exactly like in a film,” said Jeanette. And she believed herself.

  Davey was less impressed. “You’re playing with fire.” But he was ignored.

  “What happened then?” asked Lily.

  Tom had pulled Jeanette onto the floor and they’d kissed again and her pants were off before she could say, “Take my pants off,” and his were around his ankles and he was on top of her and inside her and their tops were still on and it was over quickly, which was a good thing because the tiles were freezing. When he was done she could see his regret and shame so she acted fast – before he could ask her to leave and file their encounter under “mistake”. They both pulled up their pants. She took two cigarettes out of her bag and lit both of them. She asked him to sit next to her on the floor. He complied out of a combination of guilt and a genuine desire for a cigarette, despite having been off them for five years.

  When he was sitting and puffing, she straddled him. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “You’re thinking, Jeanette is a nice girl and I’m grateful for the tumble, which was badly needed, but how the hell do I get her out of here without making her cry?”

  He shook his head, and she smiled. “Something like that,” he admitted.

  “I like you,” she said.

  “I’m a mess.”

  “I know. I’m not blind.”

  “I’m married.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Please go home,” he said, and she knew she’d spoken out of turn.

  “Okay.” She nodded. “I’m sorry.” And she was sorry. She was sorry he was so sad and she was sorry for poor Alexandra and she was sorry for herself because although she was desperate for him to love her she knew he never would. I had to try, she thought, as she closed the door behind her.

  “Jesus, you could have waited,” Davey said the next night.

  “He’s right,” Lily agreed.

  Jeanette knew she’d blown it so a phone call from Tom came as a shock. He rang her from his car on the way back from Jane’s.

  “Tom?”

  “Good news,” he said. “I have a lead on Alexandra. It’s not much but it’s something.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” she said, and brightened. “I hope it works out.” She meant it.

  “Look, I wanted to apologize for that night,” he said. “I should never have done that.”

  Jeanette thought about how kind he was to call. After all, she had preyed on him – he was vulnerable, lost and drunk and she’d seduced him. God, I love you. “It wasn’t you, it was me,” she said, “and I appreciate you apologizing but you’ve nothing to apologize for.”

  “I wasn’t that drunk.”

  Jeanette’s heart leaped a little.


  “Could we be friends?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, “I’d love that.”

  “Would you like to come over tonight?”

  “I’d love to.”

  When she put the phone down she jumped around the place because even if Tom genuinely thought he was looking for a friend he wasn’t, and he might be naive enough to think the night would end with a kiss on the cheek but she wasn’t.

  I need to shave. Whoohooooooooo!

  Jeanette arrived soaked to the skin. It had been raining on and off since six o’clock and she had left her second umbrella in a month on the bus. Tom opened the door smiling. She shook herself off in the hall before noticing that he was wearing an apron. “What’s going on?” she asked, following him into the kitchen.

  “I cooked.” He put on a glove and grabbed a large fork, opened the oven door and turned a roasting leg of lamb.

  “I can see that,” she said, sitting at the counter while he opened some wine. She poured it into two glasses and handed him one.

  He clinked his glass against hers. “I’m going to find her,” he said.

  “Alexandra?”

  “No – Amelia Earhart,” he said, and grinned the way he used to grin before he lost his wife.

  She wondered who Amelia Earhart was while he attended to the vegetables.

  Jeanette drank from her glass until it was empty, then held it out for more. Tom topped it up.

  “I’ve met these women,” he said, “and they’re amazing – they’re helping me. I don’t even know them.”

  “That’s weird. Why?”

  “Jane was Alexandra’s best friend years ago when they were kids and her sister Elle is an artist and she’s going to do an exhibition. She’s painting the faces of missing people. She’s already painted Alexandra and it’s really beautiful. And Leslie’s set up an incredible website and they’ve got Jack Lukeman on board and now this lead in London –”

  “Jack Lukeman the singer? What is he? A part-time private eye?” She was being sarcastic but although Tom noticed he didn’t care.