I’m not the imposter here, they are. Cillian Burke, and the rest of them. Marching in memorial parades, in ski masks and mirrored sunglasses, like we’re meant to be proud of them.
“How’s your wee one, Tessa?” asks Bridget, but then a cheer goes up from closer to the chapel, and we toss our confetti in the air.
When we reach the Balfour, I look up at the red lights of the utility towers on the mountain ridge, then follow the crowd inside. The smell is instantly recognizable, unwashed carpet and whiskey. Waiting inside are the guests who couldn’t attend the ceremony. Because of Cillian, the police will have been monitoring the chapel. They will have used long-range lenses to photograph every guest. The ones waiting at the hotel are IRA members, trying to stay underground. They’re safe here, though. The police have never raided the Balfour. Too dangerous, presumably. Marian is standing among them, in a blue crêpe dress, the only woman. When she sees me, she breaks away from the group and comes to hug me.
“What are you drinking?” she asks. “Want to try mine?” She hands me her old-fashioned, and I take a long swallow, the bourbon settling my nerves a little. “Come meet my friends,” she says. My pulse is racing fast enough that they might see the vein jumping in my throat. “Lads, this is Tessa.”
They greet me like I’m their sister, too. Damian brings me into the circle, his arm around my shoulders, and Seamus and Niall smile at me. They seem uncanny. I’ve spent months picturing them, and here they are, exactly as they were in my head.
I shake hands with them, feeling slightly hysterical, like I want to let them in on the joke. I had some parts wrong, though. Niall seems younger than I’d imagined, a young twenty-six, his pale ears sticking out from his head. And Seamus doesn’t come across as threatening. He has on a beige suit with wide lapels, his red hair brushed to the side. He looks, in that suit, with his faded red hair, vaguely silly, like a lost member of Monty Python, which must make him more effective as a recruiter.
Marian starts to tell a story about us and Aoife as girls, and the three men listen. They don’t suspect her. You can tell from their faces that they adore her.
I spend a while talking with Damian about cooking. He’s tall and handsome, rocking his weight back on his heels, leaning forward to hear me when the crowd becomes too loud. He seems completely at ease, despite having participated in a felony robbery last week.
When Aoife and Sean enter the room, we break our conversations to cheer. They start to circulate among the guests, and the crowd at the bar grows louder. One of our neighbors from our estate, Michael, appears at my shoulder. “Tessa Daly, how are you keeping yourself? Still at the BBC?”
“I am.”
“How can you do it?” he asks, and I’m aware of Seamus turning to listen.
“You can’t change it unless you’re in it.”
“Sure, sure, but tell me this—where’s your boss from?” asks Michael.
“He’s English.”
“And his boss? Is he English?”
“She’s from Manchester.”
Michael nods gravely. “They’ll let you work for them, but you’ll never run the gaff.”
Another of our neighbors walks past and says, “Hiya, Michael.” He holds up his hand. “Gerry.”
“Where do you get your news, Michael?” I ask.
“Al Jazeera,” he says. Behind him, Seamus smiles into his glass. “Serious, love. I can’t be doing with the shite in the news here.”
After Michael makes his way to the bar, Seamus comes to stand with me. He says, “Is Finn here?”
My chest tightens. He knows my son’s name. “No, he’s with his father.”
Tom is away for work this weekend. I shouldn’t have lied, but I don’t want Seamus to know that my baby is home alone with a babysitter.
“It’s for the best,” says Seamus. “He shouldn’t have to see this.”
I can’t tell if he’s serious. The crowd is already getting leathered, and we’re only in the first hour, we haven’t even started on the bottles of wine and prosecco with dinner. Aoife told the bartenders not to serve shots, so guests are ordering vodka, up, in a rocks glass.
White balloons nudge against the ceiling, their long strings dangling an inch above the floor. Niall and Marian are ordering drinks, Damian is behind us talking to a woman in a dress with black feathers on its shoulders. As she laughs, the feathers move a little. I’m aware of Cillian Burke behind me, like he’s a magnet and the back of my skull is covered in iron shavings, all of them standing on end.