clear – Liam. Danny’s kid brother was twenty-eight, partially sighted, and suffered from learning difficulties.
‘They had kids late; Mam was well into her forties when Liam was born, although maybe that had nothing to do with his problems, who knows,’ Danny had told me on one of those early, getting-to-know-you dates. ‘He’s always lived at home – he’s not able to work; he can’t even look after himself, not really. I mean, he’s a good lad, and he tries – he can just about make a cup of tea, but he can’t be trusted with the cooker or anything. Combination of his learning difficulties and his eyesight. I worry, you know, about what will happen to him when Mam and Dad die. I suppose it will work itself out though. Maybe I’ll be in a position to look after him by then, or there are some good residential units nowadays. It’s not like the old days in Ireland, when those places were like the kind of prisons you’d see in your worst nightmares.’
Having heard so much about him, I’d been looking forward to meeting Liam, but it seemed that Danny was the only O’Connor blessed with warmth and a sense of humour. Liam was definitely more like his parents in personality, and although he threw his arms around his brother, clearly delighted to see him, he barely acknowledged me, grunting a sullen ‘Hiya,’ when Danny insisted he say hello to his new sister-in-law-to-be. I noticed, though, that Liam was the only family member who seemed to actually like his father, patting Donal’s hair as he passed him, Donal yelling: ‘Will ya STOP!’ but with a hint of a smile.
‘Yeah, they’ve always got on,’ Danny said when I remarked on the fact as we’d snuggled together in bed later that night, trying to get comfortable in rough cotton sheets and scratchy blankets. ‘Dad’s a miserable bastard, but he’s always had a soft spot for Liam. About his only redeeming feature.’
I didn’t ask any more questions. Donal was, it seemed to me, simply an unpleasant man who ruled the house with an iron fist, and Bridget, while clearly unhappy, seemed to have a heart of stone. But if Danny didn’t want to rake up the past, which he very obviously didn’t, then that was fine. Some things were better left alone, I thought, and if Danny had had a tough time at home growing up, well, that was a long time ago and he seemed happy enough now. It wasn’t as if we’d be seeing his family regularly, and it was all about the future now, about me and him. That was all that mattered.
Even so, a few weeks later when the news came in the early hours of a cold February morning that Donal had died from a massive stroke, it seemed to hit Danny hard. For weeks afterwards, in the run up to our wedding, he seemed grief-stricken. I never saw him cry – that wasn’t Danny’s style – but he was quieter, sadder, needing more time alone or, when we were together, regularly becoming lost in thought, his face rigid, fists clenched, relaxing only when I wrapped my arms around him, muttering soothing words. That was why I’d been so surprised when he’d announced that we wouldn’t be going back to Ireland for the funeral.
‘No point,’ he said. ‘I said goodbye to him when we were there last month. I don’t need to go back again just to see his body being put in the ground. And Mam will be OK, she’s got Liam, plenty of extended family. And you know how things are between us, she’d probably prefer it if I wasn’t there anyway. I’d be a hypocrite if I went and cried at his funeral, Gem. He’s no big loss.’
And so we didn’t go, but despite Danny’s cold words I could see that the loss of his father had affected him deeply and that it continued to do so, even more than a year on, the same anguish still flashing across his face at odd moments. They’re complicated sometimes, family relationships, aren’t they? Love and hate, hate and love, so tightly entwined that they almost become one.
None of this was helping me work out where Danny was now though, and with a sudden new sense of resolve I climbed out of the shower and started to towel myself dry. I’d blow-dry my hair, maybe even put on a little make-up, some clean clothes, and then Eva would