Page 110 of The Missing Sister

He left and I picked up the tea he’d poured and drew one of my spare teabags out of my holdall to add it to the pot. I’d decided hotel tea was watery no matter where you were in the world, but then again, I’d grown up with a brew so strong, it could strip the skin from your hands, as Jock had liked to say about the way I made it.

Back on the bed with my teacup, I thought how much I’d wanted to come out of hiding the moment I’d arrived on Irish soil. At passport control, I’d longed to announce in my broad childhood accent that I’d been born here and once held an Irish passport, but that everything about me and where I’d come from had been stripped away on purpose to protect myself and those that I loved.

Well, here I was, with a different name and nationality, returned to the land which had birthed me – and given me all the troubles that had sent me flying away from it...

So today, I was going in search of the one person in the world whom I trusted more than any other, but whom I’d been forced to leave behind too. I needed his help, and in light of the pursuers who had hunted me since I’d left New Zealand, I had nowhere else to turn.

I looked down at the ring my dear Ambrose had given me on my twenty-first birthday. Who would have known that something so small and beautiful and given out of love could have caused all this, simply because it identified who I’d once been?

At least, Ibelievedit had been given out of love...

No, Merry, don’t start doubtinghim,because if you do, then you’re really lost, I reprimanded myself.Now then, my girl, time for a shower and then we’re going for a walk around the corner.

At noon, I was standing in Merrion Square outside the tall, elegant town house that used to contain Ambrose’s ground and basement maisonette. I checked surreptitiously through the window and saw the curtains, the lamp and the bookshelves looked exactly the same as they had when I’d last seen it.

The worst-case scenario would be that he was dead, and either a relative or a new buyer or renter had taken over his home without bothering to change anything.

‘Just walk up those steps and knock on the door, Merry,’ I told myself. ‘He’s eighty-five, so he’s hardly going to shoot you where you stand, is he?’

I climbed the steps and pressed his bell, which struck the same two notes I remembered from all those decades ago. There was no answer for a while, but then a voice – a dearly beloved voice which I knew so well – spoke to me through a speaker grille above the bell.

‘Ambrose Lister. Who is calling?’

‘I... it’s me, Mary O’Reilly. The girl from years ago. Ambrose, it’s me!’ I entreated, and by this time, my lips were virtually kissing the grille. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Mary? Mary O’Reilly?’

‘Yes, ’tis me, even if I’ve lost my accent a bit, Ambrose. ’Tis me.’

Silence reigned as I gulped back tears caused by the few seconds I’d spent being who I’d been back then, and by the thought of seeing him again. Then the door opened and he was there.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ I gasped. ‘I’m sorry, I’m crying.’

‘Goodness, in eighty-five years I haven’t been so surprised. Please come in, so that we don’t disgrace ourselves on this very public doorstep.’

Ambrose ushered me inside and I saw that even though he now walked with a stick, and had less hair (which hadn’t been much back then) he was still completely who I remembered him as. Dressed in an old tweed jacket and a checked shirt with a dark green bow tie, his kind brown eyes seemed owlish behind thick round glasses. He was the only one to ever call me Mary rather than ‘Merry’, and my heart swelled at hearing my name spoken in his clipped accent again.

Once the front door was closed, he led me along the hallway and into the sitting room. The desk in the window and two leather chairs situated opposite each other in front of a marble fireplace hadn’t changed. Nor had the now threadbare sofa that sat against the wall, facing the overflowing bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. He closed the door, then turned around to look at me.

‘Well now, well now...’ was all he could manage.

I didn’t do much better as I tried to gulp back my tears.

‘I believe, even though it is only eleven o’clock, that some strong medicine is called for.’

Ambrose walked to one of the bookshelves and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, plus two glasses from the cupboard beneath it. As he placed the three items on his desk, I saw that his hands shook unsteadily.

‘Shall I pour?’ I asked.

‘If you would, my dear. I find myself quite at a loss.’

‘Sit down, and I’ll sort us out.’

As Ambrose lowered himself into his favourite chair, I poured two generous measures, and handed one to him. Then I sat down in the chair opposite him.

‘Sláinte!’

‘Sláinte!’