Winterland Read Free Page A

was having a drink with Paddy Norton and I just walked out on the man, didn’t look back.’
    ‘Understandable, Noel.’
     
    ‘Yeah. Listen. Thanks. Anyway, I’m heading out to my sister’s now.’
    ‘Right.’ There is a pause. ‘Pass on my condolences, will you?’
    ‘Sure. I’ll talk to you again.’
    Noel hits End. As he holds the phone in his hand, something occurs to him. He left his folder sitting on the hotel bar.
    Shit.
    What does he do now? Call Norton? Arrange to swing by his house later to pick it up? He’ll have to. He’s got that conference call in the morning with head office in Paris.
    Shit .
    But he can’t be thinking about this now. He can’t . He puts the phone back into his pocket.
    A couple of minutes later, he’s turning off the South Circular, then crossing the canal, and once he’s on Clogher Road, at this time of night, it’s a straight run all the way out to Dolanstown.

3
    Alone in the house, Catherine is reeling from the news. When the phone rang, she was sipping a vodka and Coke, but now she refills the glass with just vodka and takes a long hit from it. She puts the glass down and picks up her mobile. She phones one of her sisters, Yvonne, who lives nearby, and tells her the news. After the initial shock, Yvonne is all business. She says give her fifteen minutes, that she’ll call Michelle and Gina and then come over. Catherine also calls Mrs Collins next door, who says she’ll come in and sit with her until Yvonne arrives.
     
    The TV is still on. Catherine was watching a rerun of Friends , and even though she’s not watching it now, she can’t bring herself to turn it off – not until someone arrives, it’s company, and anyway holding the remote in her hand makes her feel like she’s doing something, like she’s in control. Through all of this – the calls, the standing around, the Friends – she continues crying, either in silence, with tears running down her cheeks, or at full tilt – all out and uncontrollable. At one point, she catches sight of herself in the mirror and gets a fright. Is she really that old looking? Is she really that old ?
    This all seems unreal to her, like it’s happening to someone else. Given what Noel was involved in, though, it’s not as if she hasn’t already pictured the scene a hundred times, on a hundred other nights. It’s just that the reality of it is, well … different.
    When Mrs Collins arrives Catherine immediately regrets having phoned her. The woman is kind, but too kind, you know, she’d smother you with kindness, and now five seconds in the door she’s already hard at it. After a while Yvonne arrives and takes over, thankfully – even though the first thing she does is whip the glass of vodka away from Catherine, saying a shot or two is fine, for your nerves, but you don’t want to overdo it. The cops’ll be here soon, she says, and you’ll probably have to go somewhere to identify the body, and anyway there’ll be plenty of time for drinking later. Then she puts the kettle on – the kettle, the fucking kettle .
    Catherine hates the kettle.
    ‘Yes, that’s it,’ Mrs Collins says, looking uneasily into the kitchen after Yvonne, ‘a nice cup of tea.’
    The ‘nice’ really grates on Catherine’s nerves. To distract herself, she glances over at the framed photographs arranged on shelves in the corner of the lounge. She stands up and walks across the room to get a closer look at them.
    She can’t believe this. She was eighteen years old when Noel was born, and just look at her. She was fucking gorgeous. Every bloke in the area wanted to ride her and wouldn’t leave her alone, so it was no surprise when she got pregnant – but of course it did have to be with a mad bastard like Jimmy Dempsey. Not that it mattered though. Once she had the baby, she didn’t care, and was even relieved when Jimmy fecked off to England. Noel was her baby. He wasn’t a Dempsey, he was a Rafferty – and a Noel Rafferty at that,