Brothers & Sisters: A gripping psychological thriller that will have you hooked

By Adele O'Neill

What lengths would you go to protect the ones you love?


When the complex web of dark family secrets begins to gradually unravel, Tim and his sister Rose are consumed by trying to protect their 46-year-old secret, a secret that was never meant to be told.

Faced with an impossible dilemma, they must decide whether to tell the truth or face the consequences.

One thing's for sure, nothing remains buried forever... A gripping, highly emotive story of love, survival, dark family secrets and sibling loyalty. Perfect for the fans of Kathryn Hughes and Dorothy Koomson.

'Incredibly moving, beautifully written, this dramatic tale of dark family secrets is impossible to put down. I loved it' CARMEL HARRINGTON.

'Adele O'Neill explores the complexities of familial love and loss, loyalty and betrayal in a remarkable debut novel' MARGARET CARRAGHER, Irish Sunday Independent.

WINNER of the Annie McHale Debut Novel Award 2018.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781786696786

Adele O'Neill

Adele is a writer from Co. Wicklow who lives with her husband Alan and her two teenage daughters. Influenced by writers across all genres she has a particular fondness for fiction that is relatable and realistic. Her debut novel was awarded The Annie McHale Debut Novel Award for 2017 and is a character driven story of survival, dark family secrets and sibling loyalty, just like life. Her second novel Behind a Closed Door is another emotionally harrowing tale of impossible choices, loyalty and friendship. Adele writes overlooking the Irish Sea, which she credits for the tumultuous dynamics in the relationships and lives of her unsuspecting characters in her third novel, When the Time Comes, another dark tale that tests the lengths we go to protect the ones we love.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Monday Morning – 2016

Detective Tony Kelly stretched his arms over his head and pressed his weary shoulders against the black mesh back on his new office chair. Every muscle in his body ached and the unshaven black bristles on his face were an indication of another night spent crouching, crawling and scraping for traces of answers, beside another rotting corpse.

‘Ergo-fecking-nomical, my arse!’ he said as the padded armrest gave way and clunked heavily to the floor. Nobody flinched, which surprised him, considering it made such a din. ‘Who the feck put these together?’ No one answered, the four other detectives that shared the incident room preferred not to, for peace sake. He stood and kicked the chair aside; not so forcibly as to attract a response but enough to satisfy his simmering temper. It spun and whizzed before it stopped abruptly, teetered momentarily, and then plonked heavily on its side on the worn carpet tiles.

‘Tony,’ Detective Louise Kennedy was probably the only detective in their unit that was brave enough to refer to him by his first name. Much like the way a mother would a child, if he was in trouble. ‘Do you need some coffee or something?’ Her teeth remained clenched as she forced the corners of her mouth upwards and bent her head ever so slightly to the side.

Detective Louise Kennedy’s piercing stare and sharp tone left him in no doubt that it was an instruction, as opposed to an offer, the kind of instruction that only a sarcastic friend might get away with.

‘No I don’t need any fecking coffee,’ he paused, ‘thank you.’ Kelly’s bluster was his trademark as were the dark tropical centipedes he had for eyebrows. ‘But a chair that worked would be nice.’ He kicked it again for good measure, not wanting to relinquish his higher ground just yet.

Louise narrowed her eyes at his sarcasm and shook her head at his childishness. In the seven years since she had first arrived to the station in Kilkenny, he hadn’t changed so much as his shirt, never mind his personality, and even though they were equal in rank, he had an unspoken seniority to her in years of service.

Kelly picked up his chair and placed it carefully back at his desk; every movement deliberate and silent. He needed to pull his horns in; he knew that, he just couldn’t bring himself to raise his gaze. He could feel her brown eyes boring holes in his head. He shut down his computer and placed his phone in his shirt pocket.

‘Maybe, coffee would be nice.’ He finally mustered the courage to look back at her, knowing she would not avert her gaze until he reciprocated. ‘Would you like one yourself?’ He paused for effect and plastered a deliberate false smile across his stubbly jaw. ‘Darling,’ he added. The sarcasm dripped like molasses from his gritted teeth and a snigger escaped from one of the other desks; Louise couldn’t identify which one.

She stood, almost by stealth and scanned the room. She was sick of their feeble joke attempts at her expense, and if the truth was known, she was offended for Kelly also. Being the only female in this division had its drawbacks; being the only other detective that Kelly trusted was an occupational hazard.

‘If one other person,’ her voice raised slightly, just enough so that no one could mistake the intention in her tone, ‘so much as thinks about calling me, darling, or refers to me as his work wife, again, I will personally hand you your balls in the same envelope as your P45.’ She paused triumphantly. ‘Clear?’ None of the three other detectives that hid behind their computers looked up, they knew not to. Detective Louise Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with; as headstrong as her male counterpart but infinitely more tactful and correct, she wouldn’t hesitate to follow through on her threat, and although she might not have literally handed them their balls, she would have made them feel as though she had, and therein lay her power.

‘I’ll join you,’ Louise said, glaring around the room, daring any one of the three to answer. They didn’t – not out loud anyhow. She led Kelly to the break room and closed the door behind them. ‘What the fuck?’ she hissed at him. ‘What’s with the hissy fit?’

‘Just tired.’ Kelly poured two cups from the coffee pot, scrambling for a better excuse to give her. He sipped slowly, buying some time. If he knew Louise Kennedy well enough, he knew that, if nothing else, she was relentless. He sighed heavily and continued, ‘I was up at Fitzpatrick Estate for most of the night. Forensics will be finished with the scene before lunch, they reckon.’

‘We only caught this case yesterday evening, give yourself a chance; Jesus, give me a chance, would you?’ Louise wasn’t the type to follow but somehow, since she was stationed at Kilkenny, she found herself content to be in his shadow, it helped that she was secretly in awe of his rebellious nature, even if he was the one who got on her nerves the most.

‘Mmm, maybe.’ Kelly wasn’t convinced. Something was niggling at him. He had stayed at the scene right through the night, accepting copious cups of tea, a wee dram of whiskey and a bellyfull of buns from Marie McGrath, one half of the couple who were the new owners of the Estate.

‘Who you interested in?’ Louise could tell he was grinding his theories hard to see what flavours remained.

‘I want to talk to Timothy Fitzpatrick, landlord extraordinaire.’ Kelly had been strategic in accepting the McGraths’ hospitality; people talked more over a country cup of tea, he had said to her. ‘The McGraths tell me they only bought the Estate four months ago, after years of putting in offers.’ He stood against the countertop with one hand lodged in his dark unwashed jeans and the other around his mug. ‘From this Timothy Fitzpatrick, one of the original owners, last in a long line of Fitzpatricks, apparently.’

‘Should we not be concentrating on the body, identifying that?’ Louise topped up her coffee and spooned in another lump of sugar; after the run she did that morning she needed the boost.

‘If anyone cared who the body was, we’d already know by now.’ Kelly shook his head. ‘We need to know how he got there. That’s where the key is.’

‘Maybe…’ Louise said but Kelly interrupted her.

‘And why, all of a sudden, after ten bloody years, was it time to finally sell the place – that’s why I want to talk to Timothy Fitzpatrick.’

‘I take it there’s no one on the Missing Persons Register that matches.

‘Haven’t found anyone yet.’ Kelly ran both hands through his black wavy hair and rubbed. Speckles of dandruff spilled onto his shoulders and disappeared like snowflakes landing on wet grass. ‘Won’t get the pathologist report till tomorrow either, but from the preliminary investigations, the pathologist thinks we should start our search back as far as 1970.’

‘I heard that, what’s that about?’ Louise’s frown made a thick line across her forehead, deep enough to do a tyre test with a ten cent coin. At thirty-five years of age, she was beginning to realise that she shouldn’t have dismissed her glamorous aunt’s advice on moisturiser.

‘Something to do with the acidity of the soil, or wetness,’ Kelly slurped and sighed as he downed the black coffee. ‘Something like that. The pathologist said the conditions…’ A waft of his own stale body odour exploded up his nose as he lifted his arms. He looked at Louise and hoped she hadn’t noticed. She was standing next to him cradling her mug in her hands. ‘The soil conditions sort of preserved the remains.’

‘Right, I’ll have another look.’ Louise dropped her nose into her scarf, creating a barrier between her and the stench. ‘Have you not been home yet then?’ She stood just to his left a bare sniff away.

‘No, not yet.’ Kelly’s cheeks flushed as he realised she had smelled him.

‘You need a shower, Kelly.’

‘I know, I know.’ His cheeks flushed even pinker.

‘Seriously, Tony, go take a bloody shower.’

‘If you keep talking to me like that, they’ll…’ he said quietly, motioning through the break room window at the detectives in the other room. ‘If you think wife is bad, wait till they start calling you my mother.’

‘More like your daughter. For fuck’s sake, I’m half your age,’ Louise said.

‘Cop on to yourself, fucking half my age.’ Kelly sniffed at her remarks, his pride a little dented. ‘You’re thirty-five, there’s a big difference between half my age and twenty years younger than me, or was maths not your strong point either?’ Kelly answered, half joking, whole in earnest.

‘Jesus, someone’s a little touchy,’ Louise answered, feigning innocence at her own remark. She was only too aware of Kelly’s sensitivity to his age, which was why she was getting such a kick out of tormenting him. ‘I was exaggerating for effect,’ she began to spell out her intentions, knowing full well that this would aggravate him even more. ‘Saying that, it would be more likely that I’d be your daughter, seeing as you are,’ she looked away from him, stifling the smirk that was edging her bowlike lips towards a toothy smile, ‘twenty years older than me.’ She continued as she walked towards the breakroom door, hiding the grin on her face.

He smiled in response, but not while she could see him.

‘I’ve been looking into the McGraths as well, Michael and Marie,’ Louise said as she returned to her desk. Kelly followed. ‘I’d love to know what possesses a couple in their forties, well, Michael McGrath is in his forties, the wife, Marie is in her thirties, to leave the big city lights and take over an old derelict estate two hours from Dublin. It just doesn’t make sense to me.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t,’ Kelly said.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Louise answered. Their exchanges, to anyone a safe enough distance away to observe, were like a tennis match in the Wimbledon singles final on centre court; each equally capable of winning but, more importantly, neither willing to lose.

‘You being a city chick and all that.’

The smirk on Kelly’s face as he said it bothered her. She could have settled as a beat cop and remained in Dublin with her family and friends close by but she was too ambitious not to pursue the promotion when it came up.

‘Says the man who thinks he needs a passport to go beyond the county boundary,’ Louise said. She had every intention of rising through the ranks and, unlike Kelly, she was prepared to relocate for her ambition, and besides, two hours south of Dublin to the medieval city of Kilkenny that was steeped in Irish history was hardly the other side of the world. ‘And by that token, the McGrath’s were city chicks too.’ Louise was quick to answer. ‘So that just adds to my point.’

‘Ah but, farming was in Michael McGrath’s blood. You don’t know what it’s like to want to come home to the land,’ Kelly said.

‘And neither do you, sure you never left.’ She smiled.

‘What about you, then?’ Kelly wasn’t about to let her away with that one. His reasons for staying in Kilkenny and passing up promotion opportunities over the years were his business and while he knew the general consensus amongst his peers was that he was unambitious or disinterested, it bothered him to think that Louise thought the same. ‘There was obviously a reason that you left Dublin,’ he said. ‘Perhaps something you wanted, that you couldn’t get there.’ Louise nodded. ‘Well then, can’t we use the same premise for the McGraths?’ he asked. ‘There was something in Kilkenny that they couldn’t get in Dublin, in their case, a farm, a return to Michael’s home place, his brother and a better life for their family than they would have had in Dublin.’ Kelly smiled smugly; as far as he was concerned, it was that simple.

‘I suppose,’ Louise answered. She decided to bank the thinly veiled insult about Dublin for later. Even though there were so many similarities between the cities, it was a one-upmanship that they bantered about frequently. Whose city had the bigger castle? Which city attracted the most tourists? Where was the best nightlife? They could tit-for-tat for days about it. Sometimes she suspected that Kelly might be a descendant of Strongbow himself when it came to the passion he displayed for Kilkenny and his reluctance to leave it.

‘Did you know that they leased the farm before they bought it in January?’ Kelly said.

‘Yeah, I did, they’ve been there ten years apparently,’ Louise answered.

Kelly wheeled another chair from an empty desk and pushed the new broken one aside. Nobody commented.

‘Apparently Michael’s a local. He left years ago.’ Kelly was cautious as he dragged the new chair towards his desk; he checked the armrests twice. Louise couldn’t help but smile. The bolts seemed secure. For the first time, he considered that maybe the bolts on the last chair were tampered with deliberately. He threw a glance around the room. ‘He was lecturing in University College Dublin.’ He checked his notes. ‘Agricultural Science, no less. Came home then, when he had himself a wife and children.’

‘And what about the Fitzpatricks?’ Louise had brought her coffee back to her desk. She wet her thumb and wiped the droplets from the outside of her mug. Had she been at home, she would have licked them directly off.

‘There’s Timothy Fitzpatrick, in his sixties, living in Dublin since the seventies. Fitzpatrick Estate was in his and his sister’s name up until January this year.’ Kelly concentrated on his scrawl in his black notebook, ‘There’s the sister, Rose Fitzpatrick, now O’Reilly, who’d also be in her sixties, also living in Dublin, and then there’s both of their parents up in St. Peter’s cemetery.’ Kelly had walked the cemetery himself with the intention of reading every headstone until he had found them. Trusting his hunch, he had checked the more ostentatious plots first. There was no way a family with an estate the size of Fitzpatricks’ wouldn’t have a plot to match it. As usual, his instincts were right. ‘There were only the two of them buried up there.’ Louise listened. ‘Maeve and Liam Fitzpatrick buried within a year of each other, 1986 and 87.’ Kelly double-checked the years in his notebook.

Louise scratched a line through the first item on the list in front of her.

‘Although, you’d think by the size of the plot, they’d have breed, seed and a generation of Fitzpatricks up there with them,’ Kelly added as he leafed through his pages.

‘Sure, how else were they going to let people know that they were better than everyone else?’ Louise said, watching his hands as they turned the well-crumpled pages. She imagined a tumbling tower of old battered notebooks stacked in chronological order beside his bed with every case he had ever caught, documented in his scrawl; starting with his first notebook thirty years ago and ending with this one he had in his hands. ‘There was another Fitzpatrick, you know,’ Louise added, realising now that Kelly hadn’t discovered it yet. He didn’t answer. ‘According to the locals, there was a Patrick, or Pat Fitzpatrick,’ Louise looked across from her notes at his expression. ‘Never married, he may have left for Liverpool, in the seventies, I’m told,’ Louise added.

‘How did I not know that?’ Kelly said, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. ‘How’d you find that out?’

‘I have my ways.’ Louise grinned, delighted to get ahead of him. She hadn’t verified her information yet, but the old fellas in the local pub were as much an information source as a government census form; small towns with generations of families living in them was one thing that her Dublin City didn’t have, but she wasn’t about to tell Kelly that. ‘Would have been an uncle to your, Timothy Fitzpatrick?’ Louise waited for him to reply. She tried her best to suppress a smile that was forming as she watched his notebook ritual of straightening up loose pages, smoothing down the crumples and stretching the frayed elastic band around its middle.

‘Well, if he was still alive he would,’ Kelly answered. He calculated quickly in his head. ‘He’d be in his late nineties. I’ll do deaths register, first here and then Liverpool,’ Kelly said.

‘He’s not buried up in the plot?’ Louise questioned. She knew Kelly would have been thorough, but when he didn’t know he was looking for the uncle, he might have overlooked it.

‘He wasn’t in the family plot.’ Kelly answered. ‘Nor anywhere close,’ he added. ‘I have Timothy Fitzpatrick coming down this morning. I might get a few answers out of him.’

‘Right,’ Louise said. Every new investigation started for her like a new book. Shiny covers, fascinating blurb and surprising endings, promising gripping detail with twists and turns. She couldn’t wait to delve in, crack the spine and devour the clues.

‘Grand, I’m going to grab a shower at home and then head back up to the estate,’ Kelly said.

Louise pulled back her black hair into a tight ponytail and drained the remainder of her coffee, she rubbed her nose, remembering the body odour from moments earlier.

‘You do that,’ Louise said.

Chapter 2

Monday Morning – 2016

‘Tell me again why I never came to Kilkenny with you before.’ Robert admired the rolling patchwork fields as they rounded the last few roads on their journey.

‘I honestly don’t know.’ Tim liked to be honest, but when it came to Kilkenny, Fitzpatrick Estate and anything to do with his past there, it was safer to be silent. That was how it was. There were far too many things left unsaid, and those that were said, hurt deeply. He had never actually told his father or his mother that he was gay, he didn’t need to, his father’s cutting remarks about his fanciful city ways demolished any chance of acceptance and consequently his visits home were brief and infrequent when his parents were alive. ‘It’s been quite a while since I’ve been here myself.’ His shoulders stiffened and his hands gripped the steering wheel, almost a little too tightly; Robert noticed. Tim shuffled in his seat and stretched forward over the steering wheel to stretch his back. Long journeys played havoc with his sciatica. ‘I really don’t like the sound of this Detective Kelly fella,’ Tim said. Robert hadn’t needed the explanation. ‘The message he left was a little…’ Tim struggled to articulate what he was feeling; the words he wanted to use were much more vulgar than he would care to admit. ‘A little smug, or something, you know?’ he added. ‘As though, this dead body is something to do with me.’

‘They have to talk to everyone, I suppose.’ Robert felt for him, he couldn’t remember ever seeing Tim this agitated. That first day that Tim had walked into his office, all those years ago, he had known that they were kindred spirits, two peas in a pod. It helped of course that Tim, the young budding architect, needed Robert, the young budding engineer, to make his design work and, for the past forty years, that was pretty much how their relationship had continued to work. ‘You know, to rule you either in or out.’

‘Mmm,’ Tim answered, opting for silence as his response. ‘Every year for the past five years…’ He stalled at a junction two miles from the estate, while he considered which road he would take. Nothing looked familiar. ‘Jesus, everything looks a whole lot different, I’m not sure if it’s this crossroads,’ he swung his head from left to right, searching for familiarity, inching the car forward, ‘or the next, for my left turn. I don’t remember any houses being on these roads.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ Robert said, fumbling for his phone. Urban sprawl was one of his pet hates. ‘I’ll do Google Maps, just to be sure.’

‘No, no need,’ Tim said. ‘It’s the next junction I think.’ He edged across the road, unsure with his decision but reluctant to rely on a map to get him to his home place. ‘What was I saying?’

‘You were saying something about the past five years.’ Robert was holding his phone at arm’s length. ‘It really is a sign of old age when your arm isn’t long enough to read your phone.’ Robert chuckled at his own joke, Tim joined him, albeit tentatively.

‘I was saying, these are the tenants, or should I say, the new owners, that have emailed me for the past five years asking me to sell and it was a lot easier to ignore all those emails, knowing that I would never have to meet them,’ Tim said. ‘You know, this place is cursed. Nothing good has ever come of it.’ Tim shook his head, partly to show his disappointment and partly to shake away the memories. ‘The last thing I thought I’d be doing when I finally signed the papers to sell the place a couple of months ago was being summoned back here to answer questions about a discovery of human remains. I mean seriously, talk about rotten luck.’ Impatiently Tim increased his speed.

‘Do you think they’ll want to speak to Rose?’ Robert asked.

‘I hope not, but,’ Tim paused, ‘I mean, if she has to come back down, she will, I just hope she doesn’t have to.’ He paused again. ‘And what’s worse is,’ his annoyance danced from his mouth, ‘this, Detective Kelly, said in his message to meet him up at the farmhouse, I would have much preferred meeting him in the station. So it looks like I have no choice but to meet the new owners,’ Tim paused and drew a deep breath. ‘And see the old house,’ Tim added, his face darkened at the thought of it. ‘The charm of Fitzpatrick Farm,’ he sighed.

‘You’ve got that face again. Are you all right?’ Robert paused. ‘Actually don’t answer that platitude. I know you’re not.’ Robert was sympathetic. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Try as he did, Robert knew that there were some things that Tim could never articulate. Tim’s loyalty to his sister, Rose was immeasurable and Robert had accepted that it wasn’t Tim’s story to tell, whatever the story was. His curiosity through the years had never bettered him, even though he had his suspicions, and today of all days he wasn’t going to change that. ‘That’ll do for now.’ Robert rubbed his shoulder. ‘We’ll be back on the road before you know it; we might even call into Rose on the way back home,’ Robert said, trying to appease him.

‘That’s the start of the land there now.’ Tim was relieved he had found his way. Their silver Passat swallowed up the remainder of the road as they reached the next junction, the junction Tim was hoping to meet, O’Connor’s Corner. Four police vehicles lined the ditch that bordered the land and a Garda checkpoint flagged them down.

‘I’m to meet Detective Kelly at Fitzpatrick Estate,’ Tim volunteered the information as the Garda approached.

‘What’s the name?’ The Garda placed his hand on the roof and bent towards Tim’s open window.

‘Timothy Fitzpatrick.’

‘Is that so?’ One of the Garda’s eyebrows raised slightly higher than the other one, Sean Connery style. ‘I suppose, you’ll know where you’re going so.’

Tim pressed his automatic window to close and drove through the junction under the watchful eyes of uniformed people in high visibility jackets. Rounding the bend, Tim was surprised by the beautifully crafted iron gates swooping from the tall pillars. A large metal plaque with ‘Fitzpatrick Estate’ engraved, hung from metal rings. It hadn’t looked like that in his day.

‘Impressive,’ Robert stated, as the gates slowly opened to a curvy drive that was bordered by an impeccably groomed, waist-height hedge.

‘Pretentious, more like,’ Tim answered. ‘We only ever called it The Farm, never The Estate.’

‘Those who have money say they don’t, and those who don’t say they have,’ Robert teased.

The drive wound its way up to the gravelled courtyard and stopped at the entrance to the old farmhouse.

‘This hill was hell on a bike,’ Tim said softly as his engine revved in the wrong gear.

‘Bloody hell, it’s like Downton Abbey,’ Robert exclaimed as the tyres crunched to a standstill to the side of the imposing granite house.

‘Exaggerate much,’ Tim kidded at Robert.

‘Well, maybe not Downton, but you have to admit, it’s pretty impressive,’ Robert said.

‘It never looked like this when I was here, I can assure you.’ Tim scanned the surrounds looking for clues of his past, and even though he knew he shouldn’t, he scanned for clues of the present. His memory of the farm was far greyer than the technicolour picture that stood in its place.

‘Did it smell like this?’ Robert joked as the whiff of slurry poured through their open doors.

‘Worse,’ Tim said. ‘It looked and smelled much worse.’ His voice wasn’t jovial this time. His eyes darted to the side of the sheds. He couldn’t tell, with the hedges along the pathway grown, whether the cottage below still stood.

‘Hello.’ Tim quickly turned as Marie McGrath, the owner of the house, approached.

‘Timothy Fitzpatrick.’ He outstretched his hand.

‘Marie McGrath. It’s lovely to finally meet you.’ She ran her fingers through her greasy hair in an attempt to appear a little more presentable than she felt. The gentlemen that stood in front of her were so well-groomed and handsome, she felt somewhat inadequate in her jeans, fleece jumper and wellingtons. ‘You’ll have to forgive our appearance; it’s all hands on deck at the moment, we haven’t had much time for anything, since, well, since everything happened.’ She glanced in the direction of the bottom field, drawing Tim and Robert’s attention there also. ‘Michael is just out on the farm. He’ll be in shortly.’

‘I think they want to see me below.’ Tim was anxious to get closer to the scene. He had no intention of meeting Michael McGrath, if he could avoid it, and even less intention of stepping foot inside the old house, although there was a small spark of curiosity as to what it may have looked like inside.

‘Oh, they’ll know you are here.’ Marie waved towards the activity in the field below. ‘You may come in for a cup of tea first.’ Marie motioned them to follow her inside. ‘The state pathologist is still at the scene.’ She spoke as though it was a common occurrence in these parts. Detective Kelly isn’t down there yet either, and anyhow, he’ll call up here first,’ Marie said. Marie’s children, Jack and Eve appeared on the steps behind her.

‘Will you run down for Daddy, Jack?’ Marie pointed towards the sheds. ‘Evie, come and say hello.’ Both Marie’s children hovered around her.

‘Oh please, don’t interrupt him,’ Tim said awkwardly.

‘Nonsense.’ Marie had a relatively assertive but kind voice. A voice that was familiar with directing children. ‘We are delighted to have visitors, aren’t we Evie?’

Eve nodded in agreement as she flashed the guests a front toothless smile. Her long curly blonde hair bounced rebelliously across her eyes and with her pudgy hand she pushed it away.

‘If you are sure we are not imposing,’ Robert said as he threw Tim an uneasy look.

‘Not in the slightest, please, Michael is on his way.’

Reluctantly, Robert and Tim followed her as she ushered Evie ahead of her, Jack had run diligently in the direction of the sheds.

‘Your boots, Eve.’ Marie’s voice was firm. ‘Leave them outside.’

Eve stopped still. It wasn’t the first time she had to be reminded.

‘Oops, Mummy, I forgot.’ Her eyes were wide with amusement as she giggled at her mistake, then she turned and directed her next question at Tim. ‘Do you want to take off your shoes too?’ Eve shook her leg to dislodge the mucky boot as she waited for him to answer.

‘Oh you scamp.’ Marie laughed. ‘Our visitors haven’t been playing in the fields. Their shoes are perfectly fine.’ She mouthed sorry to Tim and led her visitors to the kitchen. ‘So, this is your first time back in a good number of years then,’ Marie said.

‘It is,’ Tim answered, resigning himself to the fact that he couldn’t avoid going inside. It had been decades since he last stepped over the threshold and his shoulders stiffened as he imagined himself, a teenager again. There had been a reason neither he nor Rose had any desire to be back. ‘There hasn’t been any need to come down; really, the management company have looked after everything,’ he said.

‘Well, it’s lovely to finally have you both here,’ she smiled at Robert, ‘even if it is in such bizarre circumstances.’ Marie paused, brushing her white shoulder-length hair from her eyes. She didn’t want to make a wrong impression, it had taken them numerous years to get Mr Fitzpatrick to agree to sell and she didn’t want him to leave, regretting his decision. ‘Eve, love, will you pop up and brush your teeth.’ She pulled out a kitchen chair and gestured for Tim and Robert to sit down. Robert sat at the head of the oak table and Tim took a chair beside him.

Eve wasn’t fooled; she knew her mother wanted to talk about adult things, so she stalled as long as she could.

‘How old are you?’ When standing, Eve’s elbows rested comfortably on the table top and she leaned her chin on her hand waiting for Tim to reply.

‘Eve!’ Marie exclaimed.

‘No it’s a fair question.’ Tim smiled at Eve across the table, she was beginning to remind him of his niece when she was younger. ‘I’m sixty-two, and Robert is sixty-five. How old are you?’

‘I’m eight and Jack is eleven. My mum is twenty-one.’ She widened her eyes and lifted her eyebrows for effect; she had seen her daddy do it often. Marie shook her head and smiled and even though Eve’s charm was hard to deny, she threw