Jimmy spots her straightaway, and it’s the weirdest thing: she’s unmistakably Susie Monaghan’s sister – same posture, same shape, same bone structure even… but she…
What is it?
She didn’t get that extra little shuffle of the genetic deck that Susie obviously got. There’s nothing wrong with her. You just wouldn’t put her on the cover of a glossy magazine.
Is that unfair?
Jimmy doesn’t mean it to be.
No one would put him on the cover of a magazine, glossy or otherwise.
He moves away from the revolving doors and starts crossing the lobby. Maria is on the far side of it, standing by a large potted palm tree. She’s wearing a conservative business suit – navy jacket, skirt, flat shoes – conservative but also very stylish and expensive-looking. Her hair is dark and short. She’s glancing around, and doesn’t seem very comfortable.
Jimmy approaches her with his hand outstretched.
‘Maria? Jimmy Gilroy.’
She turns and looks at him. She shakes his hand. ‘Maria Monaghan.’
The next few minutes are awkward. They find a table in the lounge and as they are getting settled a bar girl appears.
Jimmy orders a coffee, Maria a glass of white wine.
The bar girl moves away.
‘So,’ Jimmy says. And waits.
Sitting on the edge of her chair, eyes down, Maria smoothes out a wrinkle in her navy skirt. ‘OK,’ she says eventually, eyes still down. ‘Let me make one thing clear. I’ve agreed to meet you, but I haven’t agreed to anything else. I haven’t agreed to co-operate, whatever that might involve, or to go on the record. I’m just meeting you because you’ve been so bloody persistent.’
‘Yes. Sorry about that.’
She looks at him. ‘Sure you are.’
He holds up his hands. ‘How else would you have agreed to meet me?’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘See? But that doesn’t have to mean I’m hustling you, does it? The thing is, if I do this book I want to do it right. I want to be fair.’
She leans forward slightly. ‘That’s easy to say, but what does it mean?’
‘It means I want to tell your sister’s story as truthfully as I possibly can.’
‘Right,’ she says, and nods. ‘So where the hell were you three years ago?’
Jimmy hesitates. He doesn’t have an answer. He sits back in his chair.
The media had a field day when it came to poor Susie. They were having one already before the accident, but afterwards it was extreme. In the previous few months, they’d crawled over every aspect of her life, like maggots, and now they had her actual corpse, twisted and torn, to gorge on.
They.
Jimmy sits up. ‘We didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory, did we?’
Maria snorts, but doesn’t say anything.
‘For what it’s worth,’ Jimmy goes on, ‘I was little more than a trainee at the time. I didn’t even -’
‘For what it’s worth, Jimmy,’ Maria interrupts, ‘little Susie Monaghan loved every minute of it. Right up to, and possibly including, the very end.’
Jimmy nods.
What did she just say?
The bar girl arrives and as she’s transferring the coffee things and glass of wine from her tray to the table, Jimmy studies Maria closely. He remembers reading that she was two years older than Susie, which would make her twenty-eight now, or twenty-nine.
His age, give or take.
Though she seems older in a way, more serious.
Maria picks up her glass of wine and takes a sip from it. Jimmy pours milk into his coffee.
What was that, up to and including? He wants to ask her to explain this, but he needs to pace himself. He doesn’t want to scare her off. What he says instead is, ‘What do you do, Maria?’
‘I’m an administrator. At the Fairleigh Clinic. Not very glamorous, I suppose, but at least I’m still alive.’
Jimmy nods again. Doesn’t seem like she’s going to let him pace himself. He leans forward in his chair.
‘I’m sensing a little resentment here, Maria.’
‘Oh you are, are you?’
She looks as if she’s about to tear strips off him, but suddenly her eyes well up. She puts her glass down and stifles a sob. After a moment she produces a tissue from her pocket. She dabs her eyes with it and then blows her nose.
‘Sorry.’
Jimmy shrugs. ‘For what?’
Maria holds up the tissue. ‘This,’ she says, and shrugs too. ‘I don’t know. But you’re right about one thing. I do feel resentment. A lot of resentment.’ She tucks the tissue into her sleeve. ‘When I was younger I resented Susie. I resented her looks and her success. Then I resented the way she squandered her success and didn’t seem to care, didn’t even seem to notice. I resented the media, and the cops, and her friends, anyone we had to deal with after the crash. I resented the fact that Mum and Dad had to suffer so much, and not just the grief, but the indignity, the intrusion. Now they’re both dead and for some reason I resent them, too. Don’t ask me why. And of course I resent you. But you’re easy. You want to revive the whole thing, drag me into it, get me talking. So what do you expect? In fact, if you’re not careful I might pile all my resentments into one big basket and slap your name on it.’
Looking at her now, listening to this, Jimmy already sees a different Maria from the one he spotted out in the lobby only a few minutes earlier, a different Maria from the one he pictured in his head through all those phone calls and e-mails. For one thing – and he can’t believe he’s only seeing this now – she’s actually very attractive. Not in the way Susie was, but in her own way. She’s tough, and she’s vulnerable, and there’s a light in her eyes, a spark of something, of spirit, of real intelligence.
‘I get that,’ he says. ‘I do. It makes sense. But you have to understand… a lot of people are interested in your sister, still interested. She struck a chord.’
‘Oh bullshit. She was a celebrity, and one of the best kind, too, the kind who dies.’
Jimmy raises an eyebrow at this.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Maria goes on. ‘I loved my sister. I just wish things had been different.’
‘In what way?’
‘Between us. For her. In every way.’
‘Right.’
Jimmy has a sense that this isn’t going to be easy. As usual with a human-interest story you talk to someone, look them in the eye, and what happens? Things get knotty, ambivalence creeps in, black merges with white and you end up with an amorphous headachy grey.
‘Susie loved being famous,’ Maria says, reaching for her wine again. ‘She really wanted it, always did, but it gnawed at her soul that that was all what she wanted… because she knew on some level… she knew it was nothing.’ Maria takes a sip from her glass. ‘And that made her do reckless things, made her be reckless.’
Jimmy hesitates, then says, ‘That’s a whole narrative right there, Maria. It’s a perspective no one’s heard before. People will be interested in that.’
Maria looks alarmed. ‘Yeah, but they won’t be hearing it from me. I’m just shooting my mouth off. Being a little reckless myself.’ She takes another sip of wine. Then she furrows her brow. ‘Is this some technique you’re using here? Getting me to talk?’ She pauses. ‘You have a sympathetic face. Maybe that’s it.’ She pauses again. ‘But I suppose the real question is do you know you have a sympathetic face and use that fact, or is it just -’
She stops, looks away, shakes her head.
‘Jesus, listen to me. This is why I didn’t want to meet you, you know. I’m a talker. I talk. And what happened to my sister is something I haven’t talked about in a very long time, to anyone. And the thing is I want to. So you’re probably the last person I should be sitting in front of.’