Chapter One

Alice placed the white rose on top of the coffin, watched the men lower the casket carefully into the ground. There was a reverence to their actions, but she guessed that was part of their job. They’d be like that with everyone. They hadn’t known her mother, but they would have liked her. Everyone did. She was a woman of grace.

And now what? Now Alice Larkin was a boat that bobbed on a stormy sea, at the mercy of weather and tide. Anchorless. She had once been so sure of everything, where she was going, what she wanted, and most important of all, who she was. That had all ended now. All surety had gone when the earth was thrown on top of her mother’s coffin.

First her father, now her mother. Not that she lived with them anymore. She had her own life in London. Her professional whirlwind of a life. She was twenty-eight years old, an adult; used to looking after herself. But it was the end of something important. And the beginning of a momentous, life changing journey. For now, she was finally free to search for her sister.

She made her way to the waiting car.

“Where to, Miss Larkin?”

Darren had given her a company car, a chauffeur. The man had driven her all the way down to Cornwall, had waited patiently outside the small churchyard of St Euny. It was a pretty church, built in the shadow of Carn Brea Castle, Redruth. The whole area was steeped in history, from the 14th century Gothic pile of the castle, to the surrounding tin mine workings that pockmarked the land with their tall chimneys. Now both her mother and father were here, side by side once more. Back to their Cornish roots. Buried in Cornish soil.

“Back home, is it Miss?” The chauffeur tried again. He figured the woman was in shock. She’d just buried her mother; couldn’t be easy. “Or should I look for a hotel? Boss says there’s a good one in Truro.”

“A hotel?” she said, distractedly. It might be an idea, for she suddenly felt bone tired. Couldn’t face the journey back to London, the need to be cheerful for Darren. To be the normal, self-possessed woman in charge that he was used to seeing. Used to dating.

Her mobile rang. She must have left it switched on during the service. How bad was that? It wasn’t like her. She normally had things pinned. Friends said she was a perfectionist, though she couldn’t see it herself.

“Darren?”

“How’s it going, babe? Couldn’t be much fun.”

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.” She supposed he was trying to help, but she didn’t want to talk now. And fun? But that was Darren for you. He wasn’t one to sugar coat stuff, or look for the right sensitive words, like normal people did. He was a giant success. Ordinary rules didn’t seem to apply to him.

“Knew you’d be in the thick of it. So sorted out a hotel for you. For both of us.”

“Both?” she said.

“Yeah, I came down on the chopper. Just got here. Get Bill to drive you over to The Alverton, nice place in Truro; four star but you can’t have everything,” he laughed. Darren was a five star man. He was also a supportive man, she’d thought. But lately Alice had started to wonder if her girlfriends might be right. Controlling. Maybe that’s what he actually was. He was used to getting his own way, sure. But then the man ran a successful company.

“Think I’ll just head back to London,” said Alice. “I’ll go to my flat. Need to see familiar things around me.” It was an excuse, but she couldn’t face Darren right now. His in-your-face optimism. His slam-bang attitude that it was his world and everyone else was just living in it.

“Put Bill on,” he said, and there was a waspish edge to his voice.

She tuned out Bill’s conversation. Looked around at the Cornish granite of the church behind them, the Tudor tower with its gargoyles. The Judas Gate. The wild flowers growing up amongst the ancient headstones. Life in the middle of death. Her mother had liked this old church, had come down here from London once a month to put flowers on her husband’s grave. That was loyalty and love for you, thought Alice. And now they were both together at last, lifelong lovers who even death couldn’t separate.

She touched the side of her face; it was something Alice did automatically when she was thinking. The scars weren’t as livid as they’d first been years ago. But they were still there, a faint criss-cross lattice work that stood out against the rest of her face when she got tanned. It was why she didn’t go out in the sun much.

She didn’t want to face the journey home. She’d lied to Darren about that. What she really wanted was to go somewhere and look at the ocean. The wild Atlantic Ocean that pounded the Cornish shoreline on a windy day like today.

“Right.” The chauffeur handed back her mobile. “That’s sorted then. I’ll take you over to the hotel. Boss is waiting,” he said and smiled. “And you know how he don’t like to be kept waiting.”

“It’s time he got used to it then.” She set her face rigidly and marched over to the car.

Bill puffed out his cheeks in relief. He’d been ordered to bring the boss’s girlfriend straight over to the hotel, and hadn’t fancied being left holding the can if the woman had been pig-headed. Alice Larkin was known in the company for her feisty attitude once she’d made her mind up about something. She was head of H.R. and had often stood up for both her principles and staff who were being unfairly treated. She wasn’t a company lackey. Bill reckoned that was good. But then it was easy to have principles when you were shacking up with the boss. When your job and your ass were covered.

*

Alice sat on a rock and made large swirls in the damp sand with the stick she’d rescued from the ocean. She wrote her name in fancy curling script: Alice Larkin. She got up and scrubbed out the name with her shoe. That wasn’t her name, though, was it? Not her real name. Oh, it was the name she’d taken when her new mother and father had adopted her. It was their name, Larkin. Not hers.

Still, they’d both been fine people, good parents. Had taken her on when no one else would. A troubled, difficult ten-year-old, with a chip on her shoulder. But still they’d loved her. Given her the confidence to face a sometimes hostile world.

They’d taught Alice to follow her heart. To listen to her inner self and do what she wanted in life; she could do anything she set her mind to. They gave her the confidence for that. They’d taught her decent values, and about music and books, how to laugh again and take life on the chin.

Though Alice figured she’d already learned that last lesson long before the Larkins had taken her home with them. In the children’s home. And in the accident that had killed her mother, her real mother, and left her with facial scars, a new plastic cheekbone and a right eye that didn’t work too well.

She moved the stick thoughtfully around the sand, forming letters of another name, a whisper from the past. It was a true Irish name, and she was proud of her Irish heritage, for she was descended from Gaels. Not that she spoke The Gaelic, or had the fair skin and red hair of the Colleen.

Alice had hair as black as coal and the dark, swarthy look said to come from the intermingling of Spanish sailors from the Armada with her Irish forefathers. It gave her that brooding Irish air and brown eyes, like liquid chocolate. Eyes that could flash with sudden anger, anger that was short lived. And there was a twinkle in them that came from a deep vein of mischief – she’d inherited that from her mother.

Her birth-mother had been a woman with heart and guts and sometimes laughter. She told bedtime stories that left you mesmerised, and she had the voice of an angel, singing soft, haunting Irish lullabies to her children. Alice could still remember the words to The Spinning Wheel. But she never sang them. It made her sad.

She looked down at the name she’d written in the sand: Ailis Eily Mulcahy. She hadn’t used it since she was ten, but it felt like an old friend. Ailis was the Irish version of Alice, and was pronounced Aylish. And Eily? Well that was short for Eileen.

Still, she’d been happy to take on her ‘English’ name. Not because her new parents had asked her to, for they’d asked nothing of her. Only given. They hadn’t wanted to change a thing about her. Treasured her as she was. But she’d thought of it as a kind of gift to them. A new beginning. Alice Larkin.

But now, now that they’d both gone, it didn’t seem right. Now she could be free to be herself. The one whose mother, Annie Mulcahy, had been brave enough to leave Ireland on her own when she was only sixteen. Step off the boat in Liverpool without knowing a soul. Make her way to London with a burning ambition to become a nurse. Like many young Irish women before her.

Her mother, Annie had worked hard and earned herself a reputation as a kind and willing nurse and life had been good to her, apart from the homesickness. That was why she’d gone to the social club, The Gary Owen. It was an Irish home-from-home where she’d met the charmer, the bastard that got her pregnant and then ran out on her. Annie Mulcahy had let him back into her life again a year later, thinking he’d changed.

He’d fathered another child, her younger sister, Mary. But he’d never married their mother, or helped put food on the family table. And where was this father, the handsome charmer Séan Doyle, when she and Mary needed him most? Why wasn’t he there after the accident when their mother had died, and Alice had to endure months of painful surgery?

Her little sister Mary had been traumatised. She was only eight when both her mother and sister had been brutally taken from her; her mother to a pauper’s grave, her sister to a hospital bed. Mary had come only once to visit Alice in hospital, shepherded in by a severe woman with a grim face. But Alice had been in so much pain that she remembered little of it, except the tear stained face of her baby sister – pleading to stay with her.

And then suddenly Mary was gone. Ripped out of Alice’s life as if she had never been. Adopted was all anyone would tell Alice - who was only ten and had no idea what adopted meant. All she knew was that someone had stolen her sister. She thought her mother would have been angry with her. For years she believed that. For she was the older one. It was up to her to look after her little sister. And that’s when the guilt began.

The intrusive ringtone blasted out from her pocket. Alice reached in to silence the mobile.

“Where are you?” Darren’s voice was harsh.

“I’m on a beach,” she said.

“What in God’s name are you doing on a beach? I told Bill to bring you here.”

“And everyone always does what you tell them, right?”

“Alice, what the bloody hell are you going on about?”

“I don’t know. My mum just died.”

“Look, I know. That’s why you need to get yourself over here. We’ve got things to discuss.”

“What things?”

“You need to move in with me. It’ll be easier all round.”

“I don’t want to move in. I’ve got my own place. My own life.”

“You’re being stupid. Get yourself in a taxi and come over here right now.” Darren’s voice was firm. Maybe even hard, she thought.

“I need time out,” she said. “Time to myself.”

“This offer won’t be open forever, Alice. Plenty of women would jump at it.”

“Fair enough. Why don’t you get them then?”

“Let me get this clear,” said Darren, his voice pure ice, “You’re saying you won’t move in?”

“I’m saying I need time to think about it.”

“Oh? As I recall, you didn’t need much time to think about our trip to Paris when I picked up the tab,” he said angrily.

“You calling me a gold digger?” asked Alice. She felt a tremble begin in her legs and work its way through her, until it was hard to keep her voice from shaking. Is that what she was? Did he see her as just some greedy little user who was only interested in money?

“Maybe you should be a little grateful, is all I’m saying. Not every guy would take on somebody like you.”

“Somebody like me? What’s that mean?” But she knew what it meant of course. Somebody with flaws. Was that it? Did he just want a woman who’d be grateful to him? Had she been wrong about Darren all along? We see what we want to see. And in a flash of insight, she saw it. Written in neon letters fifty feet high. How she’d allowed herself to be manipulated. How stupid and naive she’d been. It was her fault, not his.

“So?”

“What?” said Alice.

“This is my final offer, Alice. You get yourself over here now and we’ll talk about when you move in.”

“I don’t want to move in.” She said it quietly. “I like my independence.”

“So. . . are we calling this your resignation? I’m wondering how independent you’ll feel when you don’t have a job.” The ice had returned to his voice and it sent a chill through her.

She cut him off. How many people had cut off the great Darren Appleby in the middle of a phone call? Maybe she was the first. The bastard. How could he do that to her? And on the day she buried her mother. No job, if she didn’t move in with him.

He made her feel like a whore. She stared at the name in the sand by her feet. An old name, but a new beginning. She was Ailis Mulcahy and she was going to find her sister.

Chapter 2

“You remind me of someone.” The young man smiled. He had an open face and the large innocent grin was infectious. Ailis wanted to smile too, but she was here for a serious reason.

“Really?”

“Don’t prompt me,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

“Look Mr Ellis, I don’t mean to be rude, but can we get on.”

A shadow passed across the man’s face. He had a good looking face, thought Ailis, and an easy smile. A face she felt could be trusted. But time was marching on.

“’Course,” said Martin Ellis. “You’re anxious to find your sister. I understand.”

“It’s good of you to try and trace the records,” she said.

“Long as you realize we could be following a dead trail with this one, but I’ll do my best. Don’t forget your tea,” he said. “It’s going cold.”

“Thanks.” She sipped it to be sociable. It was tepid.

“I’ve got it,” Martin said. “Enya.”

“What?”

“Enya, that Irish singer. That’s who you look like.” He waved his pen at her and his face had a triumphant look, like he’d won some sort of prize.

“I’ve been told that before,” said Ailis. “It’s the Irish colouring and the short dark hair.” She felt herself redden. Which wasn’t good, for it meant her scars would become white in contrast. Become even more dramatic. Her hand automatically strayed to her face.

The man’s eyes followed her hand, but he didn’t look away in embarrassment like some people did.

“Sorry.” Martin coughed. “Didn’t mean to get personal.” He squared up the papers on the desk in front of him and moved his nameplate off to one side, like he was getting rid of any barriers between them. The polished plate read: Martin Ellis, Senior Practitioner, Children’s Sector.

Ailis hadn’t met a social worker in years. And the ones she remembered from her youth had looked nothing like this. The man was not like the stiff, unyielding people from the council home that she remembered. Or the woman with the hard face and dull eyes that looked straight through you. The woman had come to see her in hospital when her mum died. Had tried to explain about the future, and how Ailis and her sister would be dealt with. That woman didn’t even seem to like children.

“So . . .” she said.

“Right. Well, I’ve got your contact details Miss Mulcahy.” Martin Ellis stretched across the desk to shake hands.

“Ailis. Call me Ailis, rhymes with Hamish,” she said. For God’s sake, why had she said that? Pathetic. But the man had put her on the back foot when they’d touched hands like that. It had felt more than just a handshake, more intimate.

When she’d first stepped into his tiny office, she’d been surprised. She hadn’t expected anyone so friendly, or - let’s call a spade, a spade - so good looking. Some school marm type with flat shoes and a clipped, no-nonsense voice; or a bloke in his fifties with a rumpled suit and a harassed look on his face.

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you then,” she said and laughed.

“I look forward to calling you, Aylish,” he said.

And he sounded like he meant it, plus he’d got her name right. Ailis figured he was intelligent as well as good looking. That was good, of course; for it meant that maybe he could find Mary.

She left his office. Headed home to plan her campaign. And as she came out of Hampton Wick station, she didn’t notice the man standing in the shadows. He’d been waiting a long time, for he knew she’d come back home eventually. He sneered. She seemed like a rich little bitch, lived in one of them fancy waterside flats on the River Thames. Why would she need any more money? And he figured she’d have quite a bit coming to her. Them pair that adopted her had been well off.

Yeah, the snotty little tart was about to become a whole lot richer once the will was sorted. And he intended to be here when that happened; this man in the long, scruffy trench coat, the thin pinched face, and the shoes that were wearing thin now. Death brought the vultures out. And he was happy to be one. 

Ailis unlocked the front door of her small studio apartment. She was suddenly weary, the trauma of the last week finally catching up with her. A week when she’d said goodbye to her mother, lost her job and her boyfriend. He hadn’t turned out to be much of a friend in a crisis, but in her heart, she’d always known that Darren Appleby only cared for one person.

He’d given her a generous cheque. Only because he didn’t want to be sued for wrongful dismissal, she guessed. But she’d never have done that anyway, she had her pride, she just wanted the man out of her life.

Ailis made herself a cup of tea, with a teabag, none of this fancy Lapsang Souchong of Darren’s. It was a relief to be on her own again, not to have to think about his moods or fight him over some professional issue in work that she felt strongly about. He didn’t care much about his staff, but she did, and they’d had a few heated arguments, when she’d stood her ground. He’d wanted a lap dog. Ailis wasn’t one.

Of course, that was all very well. But now she had no income and had to find rent for a flat that was up there in the ‘ouch’ bracket. That had been fine when she’d been earning a large salary, but now it was unrealistic. She had a little money saved, but not enough to keep this apartment on indefinitely.

She loved the place. On a warm day she’d sit out on the tiny balcony, high above The Thames, and watch the parade of small boats that made their way up and down the river. Sun dappling the water. Its light shimmering and scattering through the wake thrown up by the flotilla. Ailis liked to watch the antics of the ducks as they came in for a landing, trying to live in harmony with the river, the land, and man who made it almost impossible for them with his pollutants.

She sighed. She’d have to find another place soon, a much cheaper one and she’d miss the water. She loved to be near water, whether it was the ocean, a river, a lake – even a duck-pond would do. But that wasn’t practical right now.

She’d end up in some cheap, run-down bedsit. Or even worse, one of those HMO places. A multiple occupancy house where you had to share your life, your kitchen and worse still, your bathroom. She’d end up cleaning the shared areas, she always did. Maybe her friends were right. Maybe she was meticulous; a perfectionist. Too fussy! But you had to keep stuff clean. That was only normal, right? It’s not like she was obsessive or anything.

But right now only one thing was important. Ailis had a dream. And she had to follow it. She had to find her sister, Mary. Reunite her family. She just knew Mary was out there waiting; she could feel it somewhere deep. For Mary and her had been like one person.

Ailis went over and touched the precious photograph. Ran her hands across the glass. Sometimes she needed the comfort, the assurance that her sister had really existed, and that her mother had been more than a wraith without any real substance. The three of them were in the picture; a day out at the zoo. All of them laughing, and her mother looking carefree, long shining black hair, smiling Irish eyes and her arms wrapped around both her girls, like they were truly loved.

She wondered who took the photograph, not their father, certainly. He never went anywhere with them. He was a lazy bastard who didn’t work, but expected mother to put food on his plate at the appointed hour, and wash and iron his clothes for him so he could go out with his cronies to the club. Drinking, that’s what he was good at – and using his fists. And it was so unfair, for it gave the Irish a bad name. They weren’t all like Séan Doyle.

*

The man in the grubby trench coat moved off. He was a tall man with a long loping stride, but his angular face and body had seen better times. In his youth he’d been a real looker, before life had ganged up on him. The reddish brown hair that had once been wavy and luxurious, was now unkempt; bedraggled and wispy. So thin in places that you could see the scalp. And the handsome face had changed. Now he had the face of a bitter man. And the tangle of broken veins in his cheeks, the redness of his nose, said he was a heavy drinker.

He looked back at the flats. No need to stay there now. He’d seen enough. And he didn’t have to follow her, for he knew where she was going. What she was up to. Think herself clever did she? That was the trouble with this social network stuff, the eejits didn’t realize how vulnerable their blogging and tweeting made them. All you had to do was sit in a feckin’ Internet Café and you could learn the secrets of their lives. This one blogged all the time. A chatty, revealing diary of her life. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Did they not see how dangerous it was to put their lives out there for people like him to pick through. Happy days. It just made his job easier.

He’d go and get hisself an Ulster Fry and a mug of tea. She wasn’t going anywhere, at least not yet.

He went to his usual greasy spoon caff; it was a place where a few from the Auld Country got together for the grub and the crack. The craic – a mixture of good company and that special Irish wit. It was something them heathen English bastards knew little about.

He ordered his Ulster Fry, the sort of breakfast that stuck to your ribs. But it wasn’t just any old fry-up. It was the soda farls and taty bread that made it, and they’d be fried up in all that bacon fat, nice and crispy like. Over dose of artery-clogging cholesterol, but you had to die of something.

“All right, Paddy?” The bloke, who put the oversize plate in front of him, nodded and grinned. “You been on a late shift? You look like shite, mate.”

“Well, I wouldn’t wanna stick my tongue down your throat neither, mate,” he said and grinned back. They had an understanding between them. They were both from Belfast. Two of the lads. Even so, he never shared more than a laugh with any of them in here. You never knew who you could trust, Auld Country or not.

He answered to the name Paddy. Always had done in here, even though that wasn’t his name. Safer that way, for there were some out there would like to find him. Some he owed money to. Some whose skulls he’d cracked open. Revenge is an awesome thing, he thought.

The man sipped his tea. It was strong, looked like the cook had washed his socks in it, but it was the stuff to give a bloke who’d been out in the open all night. Standing in the shadows by the River Thames. Surveillance, that’s what them fancy private eyes called it. He called it getting his own back. Having his revenge and what was his by right.

That cow Annie had thrown him out. Thrown him out of his own house. Not that he paid the rent on it nor nothing, but the principle was the same. He was the head of the household and she’d given him an ultimatum.

Ultimatum if you please, and her just a bloody slip of a girl, not even a bloke. Get a job or get packing, she’d told him. No way to treat the head of the family. Of course he’d gone off. You didn’t need that kind of grief in your life, a slip of a thing ordering you about, telling you to get your feet off the furniture she’d polished and go out and get yerself a bloody navvy’s job. He was better than that. Still, she’d got hers all right, so she had.

Like natural justice, it was - the car going up the pavement like that. Smacking into the pair of them. Her and that stuck up little brat of a daughter. Look at the face. Who could go for that, eh? It would be the bag-over-the-head-job. Still, that would do. All cats were grey in the dark, they said. He laughed at his own joke. She was a tall one, took after him. And she had a right little body on her. Worked out in a gym like some of them other fancy-pants city types. Wasn’t right, though. Women earning all that money, when there were men out there, men like him who couldn’t get theirselves a break. Had to get by on the old social and the odd bit of dodgy dealing.

But that would all change soon, so it would. He’d get hisself one of them three piece silk suits like the city bloke who’d dated that daughter of his. Get a hot towel shave like that bastard used to all the time. He’d watched him from across the street. Sitting there with his pink Financial Times and his hand made Italian leather shoes. Ponce. Anyone could look like that with the money. Fancy house. Fancy kecks. Fancy car. And he’d be there soon. God, but it was a grand old world and no mistake. And he’d have his revenge on that high and mighty Annie Mulcahy; see if he didn’t - even if it had to be done second-hand through her precious bloody brat of a daughter. Séan Doyle, he said to himself, you’re the man.