Michael took Sybil’s hand with complete trust, and Katie and Marek were left sitting side by side on the stairs. She went to pull herself up, but he held her.

‘One minute, Katie. I spoke to him, this man, when he is leaving. He said to give you some time to think. Then he said, he like to see you. If you like too, he will meet you – next Saturday.’

Katie stared into his face, searching it for help. ‘I don’t know what to do – or feel. What should I do?’

A nerve in Marek’s cheek twitched, as if some pain was being registered.

‘Perhaps you should think for some days. But he is your father. That he is alive is good – no? Perhaps you should meet with him.’

‘Yes,’ she said slowly. She stared ahead of her.

‘Katie?’

‘Umm?’ She looked round, dazed, into that beautiful face.

Marek couldn’t seem to speak, except with his eyes. They drew closer together, and lovingly, gratefully, she allowed herself to be drawn into his arms again and their lips met, both warm and searching.

Fifty-One

Of all places, Michael O’Neill had suggested that Katie meet him in Lewis’s that Saturday morning.

By the time she was on the bus into town, leaving Michael with Sybil, she had been through a week of stormy and conflicting emotions. It had been difficult to concentrate at work, and there was scarcely a moment in the day when her father’s sudden presence in her life didn’t batter at her thoughts. At first there was the sheer shock of finding out that he was alive, yet had not seen him from that day to this. Even more bewildering was that nothing in her family was as she had believed. As her thoughts spun round and round, this realization was followed by a rage that took her over to such an extent that it had sometimes forced her from her chair or bed to pace up and down the room.

They lied to me – the pair of them! Just lie after lie! the voice roared in her head. He just buggered off, abandoned his wife and child without a word, no help, no money – just turned his back on us without a care!

Yet she felt just as furious with her mother. Vera’s hurt pride at being deserted by her husband had made her concoct all these self-pitying stories – lies, call them what they were! And, for her own comfort, she had turned her absent husband into a dead saint. God, what a pair they were!

Some nights Katie actually punched her pillow to let out some of her anger. All those years she had spent trying to keep Vera happy, feeling sorry for her, doing her bidding and bowing to her moods – only to have her reject her own daughter so violently when she had got into trouble herself, had made one mistake . . . Once again, the only person who came out of the situation in innocence was Uncle Patrick, who clearly believed his story that his brother was dead and had been sent back to Ireland for burial. Patrick had still been in Africa when Michael ‘died’.