Page 238 of The Missing Sister

I opened the wardrobe, wondering if all my clothes from the early seventies – mini-skirts, bell-bottomed trousers and tight, ribbed polo necks – would still be hanging there, but they weren’t. Of course they weren’t. I’d left decades ago, so why should Ambrose keep them?

Shivering suddenly, I sat down on the bed and my mind immediately sped back across the years to the last time I’d been in here and Bobby had arrived on the doorstep. He’d banged so hard and was shouting so loudly that I’d had no choice but to let him in.

With his long jet-black hair and intense blue eyes, along with his height and muscled torso, he’d been a handsome man. Some of my friends who’d met him when he’d gate-crashed our group having drinks in a pub had found him attractive. But to me, he was just Bobby: the angry, mixed-up but highly intelligent little boy I’d known since childhood.

As he’d pinned me against the wall, I’d felt the chill of steel pressing into my neck.

‘You’ll stop seeing him, or I swear I’ll kill you, Merry O’Reilly. And then I’ll go after him and his family, as well as yours. You’re mine, do you understand? You always have been. You know that.’

The look in his eyes and the sour smell of stale beer on his breath as he’d pressed his lips to mine would never leave me.

With my life under threat, of course I’d promised him that I’d stop seeing Peter, that I’d join him in his terrorist crusade against the British.

I’d been terrified out of my wits, but at least I knew how to calm him down – I’d had years of practice after all. Finally, he’d removed the gun from my neck and let me go. We’d agreed to meet the following night and I’d just about managed to stop myself from vomiting when he’d kissed me again. When he eventually walked towards the door, just as he was about to open it, he turned round and stared at me.

‘Just remember, I will hunt you down, wherever you try to hide...’

It was after he’d left that I’d decided I had no choice but to leave. And I’d come down here to my bedroom and begun to pack...

‘It’s all over, Merry, Bobby can never hurt you again,’ I told myself as I tried to quell the familiar panic attack symptoms that had begun automatically for thirty-seven years every time I’d thought of him. I was sure, given the hundreds of times I’d relived that moment, that a psychiatrist would tell me that I was suffering from post-traumatic stress. I had no idea whether coming back to where it had happened would actually help, but I had to believe that one day, I’d manage to convince my brain that it was all over and I was finally safe.

I heaved the large suitcase I’d brought with me on the Grand Tour onto the bed, opened it and tried to concentrate on what to wear to my ‘meeting’ tomorrow.

Not that it matters, Merry...

I pulled out some clothes. Should I look sophisticated? Casual? I just didn’t know.

In the end, I plumped – as I usually did when I wasn’t sure for my favourite green dress, folding it carefully into my holdall, alongside my black court shoes. After changing into my usual travelling attire of jeans, a shirt and a Chanel-style bouclé jacket that added a touch of class and just seemed to go with everything, I packed my washbag, some clean underwear and a book for the train, then zipped up the holdall.

Back upstairs, I left it in the corridor and went into the sitting room to say goodbye to Ambrose.

‘I’ve left my big suitcase downstairs, along with a pile of laundry which I’ll sort out when I’m back tomorrow. I hope that’s okay?’

‘Of course it is, dear girl. It means that you must return to collect it, though given you left a wardrobe full of clothes last time, I suppose that’s no guarantee. They’re all here, by the way.’

‘What are?’

‘The clothes you left behind. I packed them into a suitcase and put it in the bottom of one of my wardrobes, just in case you might be passing one day.’

‘Oh Ambrose, I’m so, so sorry.’

‘Don’t be.Je ne regrette rien, as the French say so succinctly. You are back now and that is all that matters. Oh, and with everything that has happened recently, there’s something I keep forgetting to tell you. I’ve read Nuala’s diary. Your grandmother was a very brave young lady.’

‘Yes,’ I said as I watched him tap it gently on the round table next to his leather chair. ‘She was.’

‘It was a struggle to make out some of the misspelt words, but goodness, what a story. It moved me to tears at certain points,’ Ambrose sighed. ‘One thing I must tell you is that Nuala writes about the parlour maid, Maureen.’

‘The one who betrayed her?’

‘Yes. Now then, you remember Mrs Cavanagh, James’s famous housekeeper? He told me she worked at Argideen House before she kept house for James. Guess what her first name was?’

‘No, Ambrose...’

‘Maureen. Maureen Cavanagh. One and the same woman who betrayed young Nuala, and who also betrayed myself and James years later.’

‘Oh my God,’ I breathed.

‘What a sad, bitter woman she was. Poor James told me he had the job of presiding over her funeral. He said that only three people attended, and you know how many people usually turn up for such events here in Ireland. She lived alone and died alone. And perhaps that was her punishment.’