The Perfect Sister

by Zoe Miller

Genres: General Fiction; Siblings; Romantic Suspense; Suspense

Synopsis

Once inseparable, years of resentment and jealousy have driven Alice and Holly apart. But, though they barely speak these days, Alice knows her sister is hiding something.
When she hears that a discovery at a soon-to-be-demolished apartment building has led police to re-open an 'accidental death' case, Alice thinks nothing of it. She's distracted by a recent chance encounter with a charismatic man named Damien, and the possibility of romance when she had given up all hope. Until someone knocks at her door, with questions about Holly.
Alice doesn't believe her sister is capable of involvement in anything so sinister. But when she tries to contact Holly, she can't be reached...
Forced to dig through the past in order to uncover the truth, Alice starts to uncover years of Holly's secrets - and to doubt her innocence. As the evidence mounts up, Alice has a choice to make: does she want to help her sister clear her name, even if the price is her own future with Damien?

Release date: October 1, 2020

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 325

Sample

Holly

ON A WET WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN FEBRUARY, THE past I’d struggled in vain to put behind me detonated without mercy, exploding its dark menace across the living room of Rose Cottage.

It began as the most innocuous of moments. Luke was channel-hopping, searching for the post-match analysis of a soccer fixture. Then, in an instant that stopped my breath, the television screen was filled with an image of Liffey Gate. Despite the words of protest flapping inside me like caged birds, and the scalpel-sharp pain that sliced my stomach, I reached out and stilled Luke’s hand on the remote control.

I think because he was so startled, he didn’t object.

‘Once heralded as the ultimate experience in dockland living,’ the female reporter was saying, ‘and brought to market in a blaze of high-octane, champagne-filled publicity, now, fifteen years later, a succession of fire-safety examinations have identified so many problems and lack of appropriate standards that the only option is demolition.’

Demolition? Icy fingers clawed at my spine.

Her voice oozed about me like a malignant force. ‘Liffey Gate,’ she went on, ‘is the latest example in a long line of Celtic Tiger apartment blocks to suffer problems as a result of being constructed with scant regard for rules and regulations. Major defects have now been identified in many of these …’

I wasn’t interested in other apartment blocks. Only the one we’d lived in.

‘… Liffey Gate residents have had their tenancies terminated,’ she continued, ‘and legal proceedings are proving complex due to the apartment block being owned by a group of several investors, the original developer now declared bankrupt.’

She spoke about Liffey Gate’s enviable dockland location, the camera panning across the river, the choppy surface glinting with sunshine. It skimmed over the Convention Centre and onto the grey, harp-like cables of the Samuel Beckett Bridge, before it panned back to the south side of the quays, fastening on the apartment block where we’d once loved and laughed and lived with no heed for tomorrow.

But all was changed.

Hoarding covered the lower floors, plastered with lurid-looking safety warnings. Above that, the top two storeys of the six-storey block had already been stripped to a skeletal framework of concrete floors, bone-bleached pillars and redundant lift shafts. Steel tangles protruded from the top of the ghostly structure like mocking limbs.

From high-octane celebrations to an inglorious destruction: a perfect metaphor for our lives.

I could just about make out the third-floor apartment where we’d partied until dawn, coming out onto our tiny balcony to see the sunrise streaming up Dublin Bay. Then later, the partying days over, the sleepless nights, and later again, near the end of it all, when Luke had smashed a set of china mugs against the balcony door, cracking them one by one into a million pieces, cracking my heart into smithereens as he sat on the floor afterwards, put his head into his hands and wept.

‘Did you know about this?’ I asked Luke, my voice hoarse.

‘No … no, I’d no idea.’

I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Had he known, he surely would have done his best to keep this disaster from me. Liffey Gate being demolished meant walls, floors and ceilings being taken apart, and if the building was harbouring any secrets, the demolition could uncover them. A ripple of foreboding ran through my veins.

‘You think you’re clever, getting rid of the evidence …’ Jay had snarled that snowy, fateful night, ‘You won’t get away with this, Holly.’

I tried to prevent my imagination from exploding in a billion directions, to convince myself that there was nothing to worry about, least of all the threatening words Jay Slater had thrown at me. I told myself it had all been over seven years ago. I’d watched the late-night news footage coming from Grand Canal Dock where divers had brought up his remains from the murky depths of the water, the area shadowy and dark save for pools of light picked out by temporary arc lamps. By the following night the media had moved on to other tragedies, Jay’s sad time in the spotlight fleeting and temporary. But our lives had never moved on, even though we liked to pretend they had. His ghost still stalked the emotional rubble in my head, blasting out pockets of anxiety, sometimes jolting me into rude wakefulness at three in the morning.

‘I’m not watching this shit,’ Luke said, channel-hopping again until the screen filled with soccer pundits arguing about whether or not a goal had been offside.

I rose on shaky legs, went into the bedroom and took a pill I kept for emergencies. Outside, there was nothing to see except a blanket of dark Kilkenny countryside staring in at me through the rain-streaked window pane. I pulled down the blind. Even though I was in my mid-thirties, the impenetrable pitch black of the night still scared me. I closed my eyes and willed myself to dive down into that place deep inside me where nothing at all existed except a pool of dark stillness. No past, no pain, no hurt. But most of all, no Jay Slater.

Alice

ON THURSDAY MORNING, WHEN SHE SAW THE February date on the calendar and felt the cold shadow of his absence rippling silently across the kitchen, Alice Clarke picked up the glass vase that had sat for years on the windowsill and dropped it into the sink so that it cracked.

Thirty-six years was too long to be filling a vase with early daffodils as a sort of magic spell to draw her father home and make him stay. Her six-year-old self had begun that tradition because she knew he loved their beauty and symbol of new beginnings after a cold, dark winter, but he’d never come home to see them.

Distracted, she left the house without an umbrella, and as she joined the throng of commuters swarming out of the Dart station on Westland Row, dark clouds opened and sheets of rain bucketed across the city centre streets. Juggling her tote bag, which was weighed down with her packed lunch and a hard-backed novel, she freed the hood of her coat from its zipped compartment. Dodging as many umbrella spikes as possible, and veering away from sprays of dirty water churned up by passing traffic, it took her ten minutes to reach the staff entrance of Abbey Lane Library. Thankfully, the steel shutters were already open. She keyed in the code for the door release and stepped into the passageway, dripping a trail of fat raindrops across the tiled floor as she dashed to the bathroom. Her hood was sodden, her shoulders wet through and her fine dark hair stuck flatly to her head. She peeled off her coat, eased off her boots and slid down her leggings, hanging them over the back of a chair.

From the depths of her bag, her mobile chimed. She was tempted to ignore it, but in case it had anything to do with her daughter Chloe, who’d been brought to school that morning by her childminder Maeve, she wiped her damp hand against her jumper and fished it out. Just as well. It was Ronan – he who must not be ignored.

‘Yes, Ronan?’ she said, glancing at her reflection in the mirror. Besides her saturated hair, mascara slid down her cheeks like matted tyre tracks. Just as well he couldn’t see her because her ragged appearance would be further ammunition in his artillery of unfit-motherhood bullets, which he regularly fired off in his attempts to have more access to Chloe. Ronan had already told her he wouldn’t be happy until he had main custody of their precious daughter.

‘You haven’t forgotten this evening?’ he said, his voice disjointed as though he was on the move. She pictured him marching across the floor of his office, barking the reminder to her in between commands to his staff.

‘No, I haven’t,’ she said. ‘Chloe will be ready.’

‘I’d better get parking outside,’ he said. ‘Your road is mental at rush hour.’

A flat tone in her ear told her he’d terminated the call.

Of course he’d get parking. Ronan was quite capable of bulldozing his way along Victoria Row in his tank of a Merc and commandeering an undesignated spot, or double parking if needs be, with scant regard to cycle lanes or double yellow lines. Chloe was always ready for a quick handover, because the less Alice had to see of Ronan, the better. Most of the time what Ronan said or did was filtered through a huge safety net – Alice had some ammunition tucked away. Compromising to say the least. Still, as he had pointed out, if she tried to use it against him, he had friends in high places. Ronan L. Russell hadn’t cemented his reputation as the brainchild behind one of Dublin’s most successful corporate law firms without having plenty of contacts in judicial positions, as well as high-powered business contacts across the city. The sooner their divorce was finalised, the better.

But whatever about the disintegration of relations between them, Ronan had never taken any of his annoyance out on Chloe. He adored his daughter. Ronan spoiled her rotten as some kind of compensation for the harrowing fact (his view) that Chloe was being raised by a separated mother and a dad who only saw her on Sundays unless there was a special occasion, such as this evening, when he was bringing her to his young nephew’s birthday party.

All Alice’s fault, of course. Nothing whatsoever to do with Ronan.

Alice turned towards the wall-mounted hand-dryer to dry her hair. There was nothing but an oblong of lighter-coloured paint indicating where it had once sat. She’d forgotten it had been replaced last week by a new waist-level air-blade model that only pumped hot air when your hands were inserted. It would work for drying off her leggings, so her lower half was sorted, but her hair was the biggest problem. Putting one hand into the innards of the dryer, she bent her head as far as she could, hoping to catch an upwards drift of warm air. No such luck. Today, she would just have to brave the world with the less-than-well-groomed Alice Clarke mask. When she went out onto the library floor, her leggings still slightly damp, she hoped it would work its magic on her rising irritation.

Abbey Lane Library, in an earlier incarnation, had been a small, perfectly proportioned grey-stone church, the only surviving part of an old south-inner-city Dublin abbey. The library incorporated a lot of the church’s former glory, and Alice liked to think that reflections of the still, calm ambience lingered in the beautifully arched doorways, the smooth wooden shelves offering books to satisfy every need and the soft glow that flickered through high stained-glass windows, even on dull days.

Finbarr, the senior librarian, was over at a table with Ralph, the library attendant, who was putting reference stickers on that morning’s newspapers before slotting them into a holder behind the counter.

‘Morning, Alice, quite a bad one out there,’ Finbarr said.

‘If there was anyone waiting outside, I’d open the public door early,’ Ralph said, ‘but it’s all quiet.’

‘Not surprised, with that deluge,’ Alice said.

The library was open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Saturday, with late-night opening until 7 p.m. on Thursdays. Alice worked four days a week.

Gwen arrived in, bundled into a huge plastic raincoat, breathless from having hurried from the Luas stop on Dawson Street, followed by Julia, equally muffled up. There was no sign of Sharon, even though she was rostered for counter duty that morning, so Alice would have to stand in and show her rain-sodden face to the customers, although she’d planned to go through the boxes of new books delivered the previous evening. It was her favourite job, inhaling the new-book scent, feeling the heft of them in her hands, anticipating the mysteries within. Ralph and Finbarr were setting up the computer room – a volunteer from Age Action was coming in that morning to put some pensioners through their internet paces. Gwen was looking after the tiny tots’ story-time.

Sharon eventually arrived, forty-five minutes late. The rain had stopped and she swanned in through the main entrance brandishing an unopened golf umbrella, wearing pristine silvery boots, a pair of white jeans and an emerald jumper under her open cream trench coat. Her blonde hair fanned about her shoulders in a cascade of waving perfection. At twenty-one years old, she was half Alice’s age and the newest member of staff. Sometimes Sharon was so dazzling and immaculate and beaming with sunshine that she reminded Alice of Holly, her younger sister, and made her feel drab and dull by comparison. This morning was one of those times.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Sharon said, giving everyone the benefit of her brilliant smile, ‘the weather was so bad that I waited to get a lift from my dad.’

‘’Tis far from lifts by adoring dads that you or I were reared,’ Julia said under her breath as she elbowed Alice.

Adoring dads.

Alice lifted a stack of returned books so hurriedly that most of them slipped from her grasp, slid across the counter and toppled to the floor.

♦

By lunchtime, Alice’s hair resembled a crumpled sheet of frizz. She sat in the kitchen with her sandwiches and fruit while Sharon picked daintily at a mixed salad bowl, bought at some expense in the artisan deli down the road.

‘I won’t be doing this too often,’ Sharon said, noticing how Alice’s eyes strayed to her bowl. ‘I think I’ll copy your sensible example and bring in my lunch.’

Sensible. Sharon was right and it stung.

‘Anyway, I’m saving hard,’ Sharon went on.

‘Are you?’ Alice felt obliged to ask.

‘Yes, I feel I can trust you, Alice, but not a word to the others for now,’ Sharon confided. ‘I’m going to spend a year trekking around the world, with my best friend Emma. Just us and our backpacks and the stars at night. It’s going to be a wonderful adventure.’

Sharon lived for excitement. Her weekends and days off were filled with new experiences. The previous weekend she’d gone zip-lining in Tibradden, in the Dublin Mountains. Everything about her life seemed to be a glittering adventure of sorts.

Echoes of Holly.

Let me breathe, she’d said.

Let me have a life of adventure.

And for God’s sake, keep out of it.

Alice’s apple tasted sour.

What happened, Holly? Why are you hiding away in the depths of the countryside?

‘I’d hate to end up like Finbarr,’ Sharon said. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she leaned forward, her big blue eyes earnest, ‘I love Finbarr to bits – he’s an absolute dote – but almost forty years in the exact same job? And he goes to Benidorm on holidays every single year. Jesus – how boring is that?’

A lot of people would feel blessed to hold down a permanent, pensionable job with a guaranteed income for the span of forty years, and have an annual holiday in Benidorm, Alice wanted to say. Apart from a three-year career break during which she’d married and had Chloe, she’d been in the library service since she’d left school, and she fully intended staying there in her role as senior assistant for the next twenty years. She counted herself lucky to have an annual holiday in Majorca with Chloe. No doubt Sharon would consider her lifestyle to be as boring as Finbarr’s.

‘You’d think Finbarr would do something more exciting with his life,’ Sharon said.

Alice could have told her that excitement often came with a sting in its tail. She’d had her thrill ride into the danger zone when she’d met and married Ronan. Never again. There was a lot to be said for a humdrum, sensible life.

Wasn’t there?

After lunch, Alice stayed back, channelling a vague irritation with herself into tidying the kitchen; even so, when she went out onto the library floor, Sharon’s remarks were still darting under her skin like pinpricks. The library hummed with activity, students grouped around study desks, others working in the computer room, Ralph looking after printing and photocopying requests. Mr Woods, a pensioner whose wife had dementia and who escaped into the library for an hour every day when their home help came in, was relaxing with the newspapers in his usual armchair in the reading area. Finbarr was going through the range of online resources with a customer. A man was standing at the front desk, looking in Alice’s direction, smiling in expectation.

‘Here’s Alice Clarke now,’ she heard Sharon say, with a laugh in her voice. ‘She’ll sort you out. Alice is the dedicated one with years of experience – I’m still the newbie.’

‘HI, ALICE,’ THE GUY SAID, ‘I’D LIKE TO BOOK A place at this evening’s author event.’

He was medium height with a pleasant face. Neat dark hair. Mid-forties-ish. Well educated, with a successful career, Alice guessed, judging by his beautifully cut suit and expensive tie, the intelligent expression in his hazel eyes.

‘Please?’ he added, with a confident smile.

The library was hosting an event that evening with Ian Donohue, an American bestselling science fiction author. Ian was holidaying in Ireland, exploring his family roots, and he was giving an informal talk in the library because it was close to the inner-city area his great-grandparents had hailed from. It had booked out swiftly.

‘It’s fully booked,’ she said, wondering why she was being unusually abrupt with a customer. She even sensed Sharon glancing at her quizzically.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked. The guy smiled at her as if she’d be able to conjure up a place especially for him, simply because he’d asked her in the nicest way possible. But charm offensives didn’t cut any ice with her, no matter how well presented. Ronan had oozed charm, in the beginning.

‘I’m positive,’ she said.

‘Do you not need to look up the thingamajig?’ he said, his gaze flickering expectantly to a computer screen behind the desk.

‘No. I do not need to look up the thingamajig.’

‘I told you Alice was super-efficient,’ Sharon said in a slightly apologetic voice.

‘I’ve been away,’ the man went on. ‘I only heard about the event at lunchtime. I’m a huge fan.’ He smiled again. ‘Could you squeeze in an extra chair? Or I could bring a fold-up stool. I could stand. Better again …’he paused, ‘I could bring chocolates.’

He sounded mannerly. His eyes, when they rested on Alice, were kind and considerate. She was conscious of her frizzy hair and hurriedly repaired face. Then she understood why she had been so abrupt with him. In another kind of life, where Ronan and the impending divorce didn’t exist, or even before him, in a life where a younger Alice might have felt stronger, more confident on the inside, this was the kind of man she would have been drawn to, the kind of man who might have loved and cherished her and shared a full life with her, but it was too late now and she was quietly angry with herself and her lost opportunities.

‘Oh, don’t tempt me with chocolates.’ Sharon laughed. ‘I’m minding my figure, but Alice would enjoy them.’

‘I’m sorry, but we can only accommodate a certain number of attendees,’ Alice said, striving to be polite. ‘Health and safety.’ He looked like a thoughtful person who’d respect such regulations.

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘And, officially, we’re not allowed to take gifts from the public,’ Alice went on, realising she sounded ridiculously prim and proper.

‘No way,’ the guy said, laughing easily.

‘Don’t mind Alice,’ Sharon said. ‘She’s far too inclined to play by the book. Haha, library book.’

‘Could you take my name in case there’s a cancellation?’ he asked.

‘We can add you to the waiting list,’ Alice said.

‘Thank you, Alice,’ he said. ‘I appreciate that. My office is nearby. I can come at the last minute.’ He took out his wallet and extracted a business card, handing it to her. She glanced at the details. Damien Maher. Senior Analyst, KLW Investment Management.

‘Well then,’ he said, backing away, ‘enjoy the rest of your day. It must be lovely to spend it in this environment instead of looking at double computer screens.’

‘That all depends on what’s on the screen,’ Sharon said with an infectious giggle.

He left then, an unsettling energy rippling in his wake.

‘I’d have squeezed him in,’ Sharon said, staring after him. ‘He’s gorgeous, for a middle-aged man.’

Middle-aged? Alice had to forcibly remind herself that when she’d been twenty-one anyone over forty was getting on in life.

‘So you would have flouted health and safety?’ she said sourly.

Sharon laughed. ‘Chill, Alice. You’re far too serious at times.’ She drifted away, examining her nails before she began to sift through the books on the returns trolley, mindful of her shellac.

♦

Ronan didn’t come into the house when he dropped Chloe home that night. He waited out by the kerb, the engine of his gleaming Mercedes purring like a sleek black panther, keeping out of Alice’s hair because he knew he’d had Chloe out late on a school night. As soon as Chloe was safely through the hall door, he gunned the engine and roared off.

Chloe had the fidgety look in her blue eyes of someone overdosed on sugar, and sticky streaks ran up her flushed cheeks. She was just seven years of age. At times Alice wanted to weep at the way the innocent baby and toddler years had flashed by in the blink of an eye, but she was grateful that Chloe seemed to be growing up happy and healthy, and turning into a well-adjusted person in her own right. She hadn’t botched things entirely with her daughter.

‘Daddy’s in a hurry,’ Chloe said, clutching a goodie bag and playing imaginary hopscotch as she skipped down the hall, her auburn hair loosened from her ponytail. ‘He has to go back to his friend.’

His friend. ‘You mean Amanda?’

‘Yeah, Amanda. She’s nice.’

Alice had lost count of the women Ronan had taken up with after the break-up of their marriage, details of which she’d gleaned from the weekend supplements, with the commentary that they were helping Ronan come to terms with his heartache and move on in the aftermath of his separation. Chloe had not seemed aware of any of them, until Amanda.

‘He asked me again if you have any friends that call here, but I said no,’ Chloe said, oblivious to the connotations of the question.

Friends? She’d lost contact with a lot of her schoolmates, drifting apart over the years thanks to the way her life had mainly revolved around Mum, Holly, her job and Victoria Row. Then later, any tenuous friendships she’d held on to had been severed when Ronan had come into her life. She avoided social media whereas Ronan revelled in his Instagram account. According to him, he had thousands of followers who loved being updated with details of his social life, his golf and his favourite eateries. Alice stayed close to home most evenings. Ronan had a habit of calling the land-line two or three times a week, ostensibly to say good night to Chloe, but also checking on Alice, making sure she was there, preferably alone. Any sign of her wavering off the straight and narrow path would be ammunition in his ongoing battle for main custody of Chloe.

As it was, he only saw Chloe on Sundays, preferring to have his Saturday nights free for socialising. He wanted full weekday access, with Alice being relegated to the weekends. She was determined to retain her existing custody rights and see through the next six months as quietly as possible, until their divorce was finalised.

He resented his daughter going to the local school and being ferried there and back by Alice’s cousin Maeve, who looked after Chloe along with her own young children when Alice was at work. He would have preferred Chloe to attend the fee-paying school in his privileged south Dublin enclave and to have had a personal nanny for her. Chloe was his. She even looked like him. He insisted he could give her a far better lifestyle than Alice could. When Alice tackled him about his ‘friends’, he glibly informed her that it was his way of finding out who was the most suitable in his efforts to set up a stable home base with a mother-figure for his daughter, seeing as Alice hadn’t cut the mustard. However, as far as Ronan was concerned, the same rule did not apply when it came to Alice having men friends.

‘If there’s even a hint of another father-figure sniffing around, thinking he can step into my shoes with my precious Chloe,’ he’d said, ‘I’ll … I’ll …’

‘You’ll do what, exactly?’ Alice had asked, raising her chin, giving him the look that reminded him she had something in her back pocket that could be used against him, even though she knew she hadn’t really got it in her to stoop that low.

‘You don’t want to go there,’ he’d blustered.

In dark moments, she asked herself how she’d ever become involved with Ronan in the first place.

FRIDAY EVENING BROUGHT MORE HEAVY RAIN, and when Alice came out of the library the sky was a low, leaden-grey bowl, the city centre gridlocked with traffic, pavements clogged with pedestrians wielding dripping umbrellas. She went to dash across the road close to the pedestrian crossing, before the amber light flickered to red, but was so intent on avoiding the onslaught of people rushing towards her that she misjudged her step and tripped, her bum hitting the kerb as she fell, landing on her back. Pain shot through her lower back and her hips. Dazed, she blinked up at a forest of wet raincoats and jackets and curious faces, sheets of rain beating down on her upturned cheek. Voices drifted down to her.

‘Are you okay?’

‘What happened?’

‘Don’t try to move – you could have broken something.’

Some of the circle shifted and separated as onlookers moved on, their curiosity satisfied. Someone had stopped the oncoming traffic and car horns blared, drivers up ahead unaware of what was causing the hold-up. Then a man bent down, blotting out the spitting rain and dark grey sky.

‘Alice? It is you, isn’t it? What happened? It’s Damien,’ he said. ‘I talked to you in the library. Yesterday. Where does it hurt?’ he asked, his dark hair and face beaded with raindrops.

‘I’m perfectly fine,’ she said, unable to pinpoint the exact source of the waves of pain, embarrassed at the undignified sight she must make lying there, legs splayed, her hood askew and hair soaked with the rain.

‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ he said, taking out a mobile.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll be grand in a minute,’ she said, deciding not to attempt the ungainly job of getting to her feet while he was there to witness it.

‘I’m sure you will be,’ he said pleasantly, ‘but in the meantime you need to get checked out.’

‘I can move,’ she said feebly, flexing her legs and lifting her head. ‘There can’t be much wrong. Just bruises. Go home.’

‘You could have slight concussion,’ he said. ‘Hold on a minute …’

He stood up and she heard him talking to another man, an answering reply. Then he bent back down. ‘We’re going to see if you can stand up, Alice. There’s a taxi right here and we’ll get you to the nearest hospital. It’ll take a while for an ambulance to arrive in this traffic.’

‘I’m fine, honestly.’

‘Of course you are.’

Gently and slowly, Damien and another man levered Alice to her feet. Alice glared at the remaining onlookers and more of them drifted away, satisfied that the drama was over.

‘My bag …’ Alice looked around. Her tote was on the pavement, some . . .