Winterland Read Free Page B

just like her brother.
    The photos are arranged in order and she gazes at each one of them in turn.
    Oh God, she thinks, biting her lip – the little fella . Look at him there – as a baby, a boy, a teenager. That’s his life … all of his life now.
    Starting to sob again, she turns away. Yvonne approaches her with a cup of tea. Catherine wants to say Fuck off, would you, I don’t want tea , but she doesn’t, she takes it.
    The doorbell rings.
    Noel .
    As he comes in through the hallway, Catherine rushes out from the lounge to meet him. They stand there locked in a tight embrace for up to a minute.
    Catherine has always adored her brother, even though in recent years they haven’t seen each other as much as they used to, or anyway as much as she’d like. Noel has been up to his eyes with work, spending every waking hour, it seems, locked away in meetings, off on foreign junkets or just stuck on building sites. However, there’s more to it than that, and it hits her now, what she’s known all along but hasn’t ever wanted to admit.
     
    With her son’s growing profile, mentions in the paper and so on … had he become something of a liability as far as her brother was concerned, a potential embarrassment?
    Meaning what?
    Catherine doesn’t know, but in her confusion she allows the thought a little space to breathe. As she stands there in Noel’s arms, stroking the silky texture of his suit and losing herself in the haze of his cologne, she wonders if maybe, at some level, he isn’t relieved to have his young nephew permanently out of the picture.
    But once the thought is formed, she flinches from it, and confusion quickly gives way to shame.
    Noel is the first to extract himself from the embrace. He then holds Catherine’s face in his hands and stares into her eyes.
    ‘I’m so sorry, Catherine,’ he says.
    Her face crumples again and they re-embrace for a moment. Yvonne comes out from the kitchen. She and Noel acknowledge each other with silent nods. Somehow, they all move into the lounge and end up sitting on sofas. But it feels weirdly polite, like it’s some kind of formal occasion. There’s a tension in the room, and no one seems to know what it is.
    Then Mrs Collins stands up and it becomes clear.
    ‘I’ll just slip away,’ she whispers, nodding at Yvonne and then at Noel. She glances at Catherine and cocks her head sideways. But suddenly she’s gone and it’s just the three of them.
    Family.
    But this doesn’t last very long.
    The doorbell rings again and Catherine’s heart lurches. She thinks maybe it’s Michelle or Gina.
     
    As Yvonne goes out to answer it, Catherine and Noel remain still, looking across the room at each other in silence, listening.
    The door opens.
    ‘Good evening, ma’am.’
    It’s a deep voice, an accent – a fucking culchie.
    Noel stands up. ‘The guards,’ he says quietly.
    He goes out.
    Catherine listens to the shuffling in the hallway as two or maybe even three of them come in. Not much is being said. She imagines some pointing going on, faces being made, heads nodding. Then comes the moment she dreads. She looks up as two uniformed guards step into the room. Over their uniforms they have on those yellow reflective jackets that make them look like Teletubbies. They both have hangdog expressions on their faces, and are followed by a plainclothes detective, a shorter, older man in a navy suit. This isn’t the first time the guards have been to the house, but it’s the first time they’ve ever been let in the door. Catherine feels a flicker of indignation. She knows how Noel would feel about this. But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have the will. There are too many other things going on in her head, vying for her attention – memories of Noel, images, snatches of things he said. She’d love another hit from that glass of vodka.
    Where did Yvonne leave it?
    ‘Mrs Rafferty?’
    Mrs? She’s not even going to correct them on that one.
    She looks up.