The Hideaway Read online

  Chapter 3

  ‘Have a great time.’

  Those were the last words I’d said to Brad when I said goodbye to him before he went on holiday. I’d repeated it after he’d kissed me goodbye – a warm, passionate kiss in the car park of the hotel where he’d stayed the previous night. Brad divided his time between the hospital in Belfast where he was employed and a private clinic in Dublin in which he had a share. He was more ambitious and more successful than me. Well, of course he was. As a consultant radiologist he was also a fully qualified doctor. Despite my additional qualification in emergency medicine, I’m not.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ he said. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go.’

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to go either.’

  ‘I’ll text when I can. The bloody signal isn’t great there but I’ll do my best.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll get the chance to go on holiday together soon,’ I said.

  ‘Of course.’

  He sounded wistful. I was feeling a bit wistful myself. I didn’t want him to go to Italy without me but the holiday had already been planned. He had family there, he told me. He couldn’t not go. And he was sorry but he couldn’t ask me to come. Not until I’d met them in different circumstances.

  I’d said that I was fine with it – although, to be honest, I thought meeting the Italian side of his family in their Umbrian villa would have been perfect. I don’t know Italy well, but even saying Italian names makes me feel sexier. I said this to him, and he laughed and kissed me again and told me that I was the hottest Irish woman he’d ever met and that I didn’t need to be in Italy to be sexy. And then he said ‘ti amo’ in a way that made my knees buckle with desire.

  I couldn’t help thinking that, if I had Italian relatives, I wouldn’t be working in Ireland at all, but Brad reminded me that he’d been born and bred in Carrickfergus, a short drive from Belfast, and that Italy was lovely but it wasn’t his home. Then he murmured that he was wondering if Dublin, not Belfast, should be his home in the future, and my knees buckled even more.

  When he got into his car and rolled down the window I told him to have a great time, because I didn’t want him to think that I was a clinging girlfriend – even though I was dreaming of us living together, and he’d given me hope when he’d talked about Dublin as a place where we might do just that. But after Sean, I was playing things very easy. All the same, when I got back to the apartment that evening I had to get into the shower to cool off because I was still a hot mass of quivering desire.

  I thought about him every day for the next few days, and although I was too busy to have hot quivering thoughts at work, I was missing him more than ever at night. He sent me regular WhatsApp messages with photos of the stunning Italian countryside and the medieval town of San Alessio, which looked like something out of a history book. I couldn’t quite believe people actually lived there, but Brad assured me that they did.

  The final message I got from him was on the fourth day of his holiday, the message that had nearly caused me to collapse in the queue for the rental car.

  Tonight’s dinner location. Joining them shortly. Love you. Miss you. Bxx

  The photo showed a burnt-sienna building with some lattice tables and green sun umbrellas outside. It looked perfect. I wished I’d persuaded him to take me with him. I sent a message with the same words I’d spoken when I’d said goodbye.

  Have a great time.

  And then I’d gone to the pub with Saoirse and Cleo and had a good time myself.

  It wasn’t until the following evening that I heard the news. It had been a busy day at the hospital and I’d been far too occupied to fret over the fact that I hadn’t got a text from him that morning. In fact, I didn’t really think about him at all until I got home and was making myself some beans on toast. I realised then that he hadn’t been in touch, so I sent him a message, asking if he had another achingly gorgeous location for that night’s dinner and attaching a pic of my single-portion can of beans. I was hurt that he didn’t reply straight away and resented the fact that he was probably lounging around somewhere with a glass of Chianti, living the life and ignoring his phone – and me.

  And then I switched on the TV.

  ‘The earthquake measured 5.9 on the Richter scale,’ a news reporter was saying. ‘Buildings have been severely damaged, many are destroyed and there are reports of multiple casualties.’ The reporter was standing in front of a building which looked like it had been demolished by a wrecking ball.

  ‘There are a dozen confirmed dead but the death toll is expected to rise.’

  Then, in the scrolling headline below him, the words: Earthquake strikes Italian region of Umbria.

  ‘Residents of the small Italian town of San Alessio, closest to the epicentre, are in shock,’ continued the reporter.

  I dropped my toast on the floor.

  Brad was in San Alessio.

  I ignored the toast on the floor and took out my phone.

  Heard news. Are you all right? I texted. Call me.

  There was no reply. But, I reasoned, in a place where the mobile signal was already patchy, there could be even worse problems with communications after such a terrible event. Masts could be damaged. The network might be overloaded. It wasn’t an ominous sign that he hadn’t got in touch. Besides, Brad was a doctor. His first instinct would be to help people, not to call me. All the same, I would’ve liked a text to put my mind at rest. But perhaps he’d sent his first text to his parents. That’s what Irish people did. They called home. And I wasn’t part of Brad’s home. Not yet.

  I picked up the toast and threw it in the bin. The microwave was beeping to tell me the beans were done. I left them in the bowl and sat in front of the TV.

  Saoirse came home at about eleven to find me obsessively switching between news channels.

  ‘Oh my God, Juno!’ she said when I told her. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine, of course I’m fine. It’s Brad I’m worried about.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s OK too.’ She put her arm around me and gave me a hug. ‘He’s probably helping out at one of the shelters.’

  I nodded.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘He’ll message you when he can,’ Saoirse assured me.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But it’s still a concern,’ she conceded.

  ‘Yes,’ I said and switched channels again.

  I couldn’t help but worry. But I was also sure that I’d have sensed it if something had happened to him. Which was a bloody stupid thought for someone who needs proof to believe in anything.

  It was lucky that I didn’t have work the next day, because I spent all night in front of the TV. The faint light of dawn was creeping over the horizon when the report finally came in.

  ‘A Northern Ireland family has been confirmed as being among those caught up in the earthquake which struck central Italy yesterday.’

  The male reporter was standing at the edge of a street that had been reduced to rubble.

  ‘The family has been named as Brad and Alessandra McIntyre and their three-year-old son, Dylan.’

  The photograph flashed up on the screen, and I stared at it soundlessly.

  ‘Brad and Alessandra have been confirmed as dead, while Dylan has been brought to a local hospital for treatment to his injuries, which are not life threatening.’ The reporter glanced at his notes, then continued. ‘The McIntyres have been described locally as a well-liked family who visit the town every year. Alessandra’s grandparents come from this area, although they moved to Belfast to open a restaurant there in the 1960s. The restaurant is now run by Alessandra’s father and is very popular.’

  He kept talking but I didn’t hear him. I was transfixed by the photograph that showed Brad – my Brad, tall and blond and beautiful – standing behind a stunningly attractive woman wearing a bright-red dress, her dark hair curling around her heart-shaped face. He had one arm around her shoulder and was holding a small boy in the other.
<
br />   I was struggling to process what I was seeing. Something was horribly wrong. It had to be. Brad wasn’t married with a family. He was my boyfriend. The man I’d hoped to marry one day. There’d been some kind of mistake. They’d confused him with someone else. And then it registered with me that the reporter had said the man in the photograph was dead. So if the photo was real, it meant my Brad was dead. That simply wasn’t possible. My head was spinning. I couldn’t think straight. I was in complete and total shock.

  I could still hear the reporter speaking – he’d moved on to someone else’s story now – and I could see the images on the TV, but I seemed disconnected from everything around me. Nothing was real, nothing was solid. I couldn’t move. My legs weren’t working. My body seemed to be separate from the rest of me. I was stuck to the sofa, hardly able to breathe.

  About fifteen minutes later, they returned to the story of the earthquake. They showed the photo of Brad and Alessandra again. They repeated that they had both died. I still couldn’t process it. But this time it seemed more real. I started to cry.

  I was still crying when Saoirse came out of her bedroom shortly afterwards. She’d stayed up with me until about half past one, but had been falling asleep by then. I’d told her that I’d be fine on my own and that I was sure Brad would call in the middle of the night. Now she was looking at me, concern etched on her face.

  ‘Juno?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘He . . . he . . .’

  ‘Oh, Juno!’

  She was beside me in an instant, her arms around me. The report had moved on to other people’s stories – a miraculous escape for a teenage girl, a dog freed from beneath the rubble, a woman who was still trapped in the ruins of her home, a missing father of three. Stories of triumph and of tragedy. All meaningless to me.

  Saoirse was telling me that she was so, so sorry but she didn’t yet know that there was more to it than she thought. She had no idea about Brad’s . . . well, what? What, I asked myself, had happened? What was the truth? Was it possible that there were two Brad McIntyres in Italy? One with a wife and son, and the other the man I loved? It was highly unlikely, but unlikely things did happen. I knew that from my work at the hospital. And then I remembered that they’d put up an actual picture of Brad with another woman and a young boy. And that the adults were dead, while the boy was in a serious but stable condition. There was no other family. Only this one.

  ‘Did you get a message?’ Saoirse asked. ‘Or did you see something on the news?’

  I didn’t reply. Now that I’d started crying I couldn’t stop. I knew that I was getting hysterical but there was nothing I could do about it.

  ‘Juno!’ She began to shake me by the shoulders. ‘Come on. Snap out of it. I realise something awful has happened, but you need to get a grip on yourself or you’ll make yourself sick.’

  ‘I . . . I know.’ I hiccoughed. ‘But it’s so . . . so . . .’ And I dissolved into tears again.

  It wasn’t me who told her what had happened in the end but the news reporter, whose clip from in front of the ruined building was on a loop. I heard his words, I knew the photo was being flashed on screen, but my head was buried in my hands and I didn’t look up.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said, after he’d finished. ‘What the hell, Juno?’

  I looked up. Her expression was concerned and bewildered all at once.

  ‘I don’t know.’ They were the first coherent words I’d uttered since she’d come into the room. ‘I don’t know what it’s all about. I don’t know what to think. But he’s dead, Saoirse. Dead. He went on holiday and he died.’

  She nodded slowly.

  ‘They’re saying a Northern Ireland family,’ she said. ‘Did he—’

  ‘No!’ I cried before she could finish. ‘No, of course he didn’t say anything about a family.’

  ‘He must be separated,’ she said. ‘Or divorced.’

  Why hadn’t I thought of either of these options? Relief, mingled with even greater grief, flooded through me.

  ‘Of course,’ I breathed. ‘Of course he was divorced. They went on holiday because of their little boy. He didn’t tell me because he didn’t want to hurt me. Or because he was afraid I wouldn’t understand. But I would’ve understood because I loved him. And now . . . now . . .’ I started to cry again.

  Saoirse allowed me to weep for a while and then she went into the galley kitchen, where she made me a cup of tea and insisted I drink it.

  ‘Have you heard anything from anybody?’ she asked.

  I sipped the tea, even though I didn’t want it, and then shook my head.

  ‘Do you have a number for anyone close to him?’ she asked.

  I shook my head again.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I know how much you loved him.’

  ‘And he loved me.’ My voice was shaky. ‘He said so, Saoirse. Loads of times. He loved me, and it’s all become complicated because of his first marriage and . . .’ I knew the shock of knowing he’d been married was somehow distracting me from the fact that he was actually dead. It was as though thinking about his family meant I couldn’t think about how he might have died. What might have happened to him.

  ‘Maybe one of the staff at his hospital will get in touch with you,’ said Saoirse. ‘I know you went to Belfast once or twice. Where did he live?’

  ‘We never actually stayed in Belfast itself,’ I said. ‘We went to a hotel outside the city.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘He wanted to treat me!’ I cried. ‘He wasn’t keeping me a secret or anything.’

  But even as I said the words I couldn’t help thinking that I’d never met any of his friends. Or his family. And that we’d never gone out as a couple in Belfast. In Dublin we’d gone to the cinema and eaten out, but never with any of my friends either. The only person who’d actually met him was Saoirse, and that only briefly when we’d arrived back at the apartment before she’d gone out herself. People at work knew I had a boyfriend, but that was it. I’d never even mentioned his name.

  ‘I liked him,’ she said. ‘He seemed a pretty straightforward guy to me. But . . .’

  ‘But what?’ I demanded.

  ‘But nothing.’ She looked at me with sympathy. ‘It’s awful, Juno. Absolutely awful.’

  I turned my eyes to the TV screen again. The pictures were heartbreaking. Ruined homes, ruined buildings, a ruined city. And ruined lives.

  Including mine.

  Twenty-four-hour news with its scrolling headlines and repeated stories had always irritated me before, but I spent the rest of the day in front of the TV watching the same reporters say the same things, over and over again, in the hope that I’d get more information about Brad. However, it wasn’t until I turned on the RTÉ news that evening that I did.

  ‘Brad McIntyre was a consultant radiologist who, as well as working in Belfast, had a stake in a private clinic in south County Dublin,’ said the newsreader. ‘He was popular with his colleagues and everyone speaks highly of him.’

  The report cut to a picture of the Belfast hospital where a clinician was talking to camera.

  ‘Brad McIntyre was a brilliant radiologist,’ he said. ‘He was wonderful with staff and patients alike and had a warm manner that endeared him to everyone.’

  And then a piece outside the Dublin clinic.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ a young nurse was saying. ‘He was here last week talking about new equipment and . . .’ She shook her head. ‘It’s a terrible tragedy. And his beautiful wife too – that poor boy. To lose his parents like that.’

  Finally, another piece from Belfast.

  ‘Our family has lost a treasured member in Brad.’ The man speaking was tall and well built, with fair hair and slate-grey eyes, his accent a little more southern than Brad’s. He was wearing a black suit and his voice was steady as he spoke. ‘He was always part of everything we did, along with his amazing wife, Alessandra, and their beautiful boy, Dylan. We have been broken by what has happened and w
e pray with all our hearts that Dylan will make a full recovery. Brad and Alessandra had gone to San Alessio with their son, as they always did around this time of the year, to be with her extended family. Brad really connected with the town, where he was well known and liked. He regarded his visits to San Alessio as an essential part of his life. I want to pay tribute on his behalf, and on behalf of Alessandra, to the actions of the first responders in Italy who tried so hard to save them. I would also like to thank them for their prompt treatment of Dylan. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them and to the other people who have suffered in this appalling tragedy.’

  I stared at the screen long after the news had moved on to something else.

  Brad was dead.

  So was his wife.

  His son was critically injured.

  And I was still here. The woman nobody knew anything about. The woman he hadn’t told anybody about. Because he wasn’t divorced. He was married.

  I wasn’t a girlfriend. I was a mistress. And I hadn’t known that either.

  Chapter 4

  I finished my circuit of the Villa Naranja and walked back inside through the kitchen door. As I’d walked around I’d noticed, even though my head was somewhere else entirely, that there was an entrance on the other side of the house too, through double doors which led directly into the living room. Walking into it now from the inside and opening the shutters (proper wooden ones, like those upstairs, and equally creaky), I realised that it had probably been the main entrance at one point. I opened the door and allowed the ever warmer air to circulate through the room.

  Behind me, I heard a faint noise and I whirled around. I’d left the kitchen door open and I suddenly felt very vulnerable. There was a scurrying sound and I rushed into the kitchen just in time to see a silver-grey tail disappearing outside. I followed it. Sitting beside the empty fountain, a plump cat observed me from amber-flecked eyes.