rushed to the hospital. Tamsin’s heartbeat was faint, but the doctors were also concerned for the life of her mother. The baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen and was in distress.
My sister’s last words were, “Save him. I know I can’t make it. He can.”
She thought Tamsin was a boy, and that he would live.
She got one thing right. The important part.
Kathleen was pronounced dead shortly after Tamsin was delivered—close enough that she didn’t get the chance to hold her daughter in her arms. Because of the impact caused by the collision with the truck, Tamsin was born with spinal damage and had to undergo a complicated operation when she was barely old enough to see shapes. Mal shelled out some serious cash to make sure his daughter was given the best medical treatment. Experts were flown from all over the world. He’s been writing and selling songs ever since, never looking back or stopping to consider what he wanted for himself.
The first songs he sold were about me.
He was furious with me. He blamed me for the argument leading to Kathleen’s death. He became a single father before he’d even turned twenty-four. And for what? A girl who’d allegedly had an abortion with his baby and told him to stop writing to her after he confessed his family was falling apart.
On our way back to the cottage, while we are both in too much shock to touch the Kathleen subject, Mal opens up about Maeve.
“Her husband, Sean, was the lorry driver who collided with Kathleen. We were friends, before…” He looks up and shakes his head. “We were mates once. But when the accident happened, when he was bursting with adrenaline, his truth came out. He told me I never deserved my wife. That I never truly loved her. He screamed that she died because of me.”
I wince. The truth has a way to hit you harder than any lie. It’s what you need to face when you look in the mirror every day.
Sean had reminded him he was unworthy of his wife.
So Mal reminded Sean he wasn’t worthy of his either.
“I took Maeve as a lover to prove she didn’t love him, just like I didn’t love Kiki. I paraded her around Tolka as retaliation, making a point of doing it openly. I kissed her in public places, pinched her arse in the queue when we were at the bank. In short, I was a cunt. I hurt so much, I wanted to hurt others. I’m just grateful you weren’t around when I was at my worst.”
“Then you took other women to bed, too? Why?” I ask, my voice barely audible.
“Being with Maeve gave my loneliness a kind of…I don’t know, a stubborn quality. She was in it because she thought we had a future and she wanted her hands on whatever money she thought I had, but I was in it for revenge. What finally made me stop was hearing her kids were being bullied at school because everyone knew their mam was sleeping with a man who wasn’t their dad. I couldn’t stomach it. I broke it off and wrote Maeve a check to send them to a school where no one knew them and they could start fresh. Then I tried to erase the aftertaste of Maeve with an ever-growing line of women who knocked on my door. But the longer the line became, the shorter my attention span grew. In the last few years, I’ve been solely focused on Tamsin. She’s the only thing that’s kept me sane, the only person who’s mattered. Until you.”
I say nothing to this, because even though I’m flattered, I can’t help but also feel angry.
“When I saw your name on the back of that cover, I had a Pavlovian response,” he continues. “I picked up the phone and accepted the job Ryner had offered me months before. I laid down my ultimatums, and one of them was doing things my way—demanding you as the photographer. Ryner desperately needed a hitmaker for Richards. He agreed to all of my requests, including this crazy one to transport you here. It’s amazing what you can get away with in the name of the creative process. I could’ve told him I needed the entire Victoria’s Secret cast and ten kilograms of cocaine to write this album and been the happiest pig alive.”
I swat him when he says that, and can’t help but laugh because he could have said it, and still, it’s me