Page 148 of The Missing Sister

‘Right,’ said Jack as he joined me downstairs for breakfast the next morning. ‘MK’s flight is already in the air, and what with all the stopovers and the time difference, she should be here sometime after midnight,’ he said as we sat down to eat.

‘The wonders of the modern age,’ I smiled. ‘All that way across the world in a day. How far we’ve come as human beings. In my childhood, that would have been regarded as a miracle.’

‘From what you told me yesterday, it sounds as though you had a very tough upbringing,’ Jack said tentatively as he stood next to me at the buffet and piled bacon and eggs onto his plate.

‘We certainly never had breakfasts like these, but we never went hungry either. Yes, life on the farm was hard and we all had to do our chores, but there was a lot of love and laughter too. I missed it so much when I went away to boarding school, even though there wasn’t pigs’ muck to be cleared out of the sty on wet winter mornings. I could never wait to get home for the holidays.’

‘Did your brothers and sisters not resent you for having a better education than them?’

‘No, not at all. I think they all felt sorry for me. I had to be careful not to come back from Dublin with any “airs and graces” on me, as they put it. It was Katie I missed the most,’ I sighed. ‘We were very close when we were young.’

‘It sounded like it, from what you said. Yet you haven’t kept in touch. You just dropped everyone from your past when you left. Why, Mum?’

My son looked at me, his blue eyes urging me to explain.

‘As I said, I will tell you everything, just not yet. Now, let’s go and hear what Ambrose has to tell me.’

‘Okay. I’m quickly gonna grab my mobile from my room and call Ginette at thecavein Provence, to tell her I’ll be away for a while.’

‘Please, Jack’ – I caught his arm before he left the table – ‘if you’re needed back there, I promise I can do this alone.’

‘I know you can, Mum, but the harvest isn’t for over a month, and this is much more important. I’ll meet you in the lobby in fifteen, eh?’

As we approached Ambrose’s front door, I had a premonition that he wanted to tell me something important – even life-changing. I rang the doorbell and felt a surge of trepidation run through me.

Ambrose welcomed us in, but as he led us into the sitting room, I thought he looked every one of the eighty-five years he’d spent on the earth.

Jack and I settled ourselves onto the sofa as we had yesterday.

‘Are you feeling well today? You look a little pale, Ambrose,’ I said.

‘I admit to not sleeping as soundly as I normally do, Mary.’

‘Could I make some coffee for you? Tea?’ offered Jack.

‘No, thank you. I have water, which, after the amount of whiskey I drank yesterday, should reinflate the vital organs that we’re all so reliant on. Putting it bluntly, I have no ailment other than a mighty hangover,’ he smiled.

‘Would you prefer us to come back later? Give you some time to sleep it off?’ I offered.

‘No, no. I feel that whilst I have breath left on this earth, and you are actually here, I should tell you the truth. The alternative being a letter sent by some nameless solicitor after my death. Which is what I was planning to do until you turned up on my doorstep,’ he chuckled.

I reached instinctively for Jack’s hand, and he squeezed mine. ‘Ambrose, whatever it is, it’s best said, isn’t it?’

‘It is, my dear. When I heard you speak so lovingly of your childhood and your family yesterday, I knew that what I had to tell you would be so very difficult, but—’

‘Ambrose, please, we’ve agreed, no more secrets,’ I entreated him. ‘I mean, there’s nothing that you could tell me or Jack that I don’t already know, is there?’

‘As a matter of fact, there is. When I gave you that ring on your twenty-first birthday’ – he gestured to my hand – ‘I’d sworn that I would tell you the truth about its provenance. But, at the last minute, I did not.’

‘Why? And why is the ring so important?’

‘I am about to tell you, but I rather fear that the story you told me yesterday about the people you believe are following you from hotel to hotel has something to do with it.’

‘I’m sorry, Ambrose, you’re not making sense.’

‘Try to understand that objects can become symbols of importance to different factions. These women who arrived on your daughter’s doorstep in New Zealand, talking of Mary-Kate being the missing sister of the seven, is not, I believe, directly to do with your time here in Dublin before you left.’

‘Ambrose, you can’t know that...’