No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [83]
Dick was as blind as a bat and deaf in one ear. Paula directed Ivan to the old man’s right side and Ivan reminded Dick of who he was before he introduced him to Sam.
“Sullivan, you say?” Dick shouted at Ivan.
“That’s right,” Ivan agreed.
“Which Sullivan?”
“He’s not from around here. His granny was a Breslin.”
“Ah, Lena!” he said immediately, and Sam’s heart skipped a beat.
“That’s right!” Sam roared.
“Ah, Lena,” he repeated, “my good friend David’s sister and the best-looking girl in the town!” He smiled, revealing a mouth empty of teeth. “She was a rare one.”
Sam didn’t know how to respond, but the old man was grinning madly at the memory of a young beauty.
“I’m glad she escaped,” he said, after a moment. “That fire, what a terrible thing! No one survived. My good friend David – I hope he slept through it. ’Twas a terrible thing to see.” The old man had tears in his eyes now. “The smell was the worst of it.” He covered his nose as though he could smell it still. “I’m glad she escaped it.” He paused. “They’re all ghosts now. Laid to rest. They were lucky in their sleep.” He laughed a little to himself.
Later, as Ivan and Sam walked down the pathway to their cars, under Paula’s watchful eye, Sam admitted that maybe it was time he, too, laid his grandmother to rest. He hadn’t found her inscription on the hundreds of trees he had tagged and now, on a bright spring day, the task seemed impossible. After all, his grandmother’s graffito had been the work of a bored teenager and hardly a message from the grave to her adoring grandson. Ivan had patted Sam on the back and mentioned that perhaps when he’d arrived in Kenmare he’d needed a project to fill his time and now he’d enough to do without it. Sam nodded at his astute friend because he was right. It had occurred to him that during the hours he’d spent tagging trees he’d been able to work out many of the things he’d refused to touch in therapy. In the woods, he’d allowed his mind to wander into times gone by, and when Mary had joined him he’d rediscovered comfort in the company of another human being.
That afternoon, with the warmth of the sun on his back, he left Dick Dogs and the ghost of his grandmother in a home on a hillock sweeping towards green crystal water overlooked by a cartoon blue sky.
It had been a long day for Penny. First there had been her awkward encounter with Mary and then an unexpected and deeply unpleasant phone call with her editor, who had called to advise that he had sold the story on to a daily tabloid newspaper that would run it the very next day. Penny was appalled. Her editor informed her that the money they’d receive would pay her salary for the next two years and that they just didn’t have the power to break such a story. He explained that the daily had enough contacts to check Penny’s facts and a legal team behind them to fight any action Mia Johnson might wish to take.
“We’re just too small,” he said.
“You mean we’ve got no balls!” she had said angrily.
“You still get credited but not as the writer.”
“So I’m the source? The sell-out, the fucking nark?”
“It’s a tabloid story and we’re not a tabloid.”
“It was my story,” she said, battling to hide the shake in her voice.
“Not any more,” he said, and hung up.
And there it was. Penny’s pet project had blown up in her face. Not only had she not told her best friend she was working on it but now it was being retold by another writer who, no doubt, would subvert every element so that only poison would emerge. Penny was not Sam’s biggest fan but she wasn’t stupid either and, despite her inexplicable distaste for the man, her better self had ensured that the second draft of her article had been balanced. Now the story was out of her hands