Oh, she was drunk.
She looked around her and Rufus wasn’t there any more, he’d gone outside again.
And Rufus was right: drunk was good.
Whatever happened now, she wouldn’t feel it very much at all.
That was when the door opened.
It wasn’t Rufus who’d come in. Was this what happened when you were drunk – and Annie was very drunk indeed – did you start to hallucinate? She’d heard of the DT’s, had seen her mum in the grip of it once or twice.
So yes, she was imagining things. Because there was no way that Redmond Delaney could be standing there. He’d died in a plane crash. He couldn’t be alive.
Could he?
This was weird stuff. Seriously weird. Annie squinted at this thing that must have been conjured up by all the whisky she’d had shoved down her throat. There was no way this could really be Redmond. But… he looked older. He was still pale, still handsome, those jade-green eyes set in that long, sober, ascetic face, but there were a few wrinkles now, and his hair was a little less brilliant in its redness even if it was still neat, close-cropped to his skull.
Of all the Delaney clan, Redmond had always been the neat one, with an ingrained elegance. Pat had been a great untidy, shambling brute, Tory had been much feared before someone decided to shoot him dead, Kieron had been the pretty one, the baby of the family. Annie didn’t think that any one of the others could hold a candle to Redmond for sheer good looks – or the devastation he could wreak when he set his warped mind to it.
This isn’t Redmond, she told herself. This is the drink. That’s all.
‘Mrs Carter,’ he said, seeing her sitting there at the table.
Annie recoiled. Was she imagining this? Somehow her brain had furnished her with an older image of the Redmond she remembered. And now the thing was talking to her in Redmond’s voice.
Oh shit, what is this?
Annie’s eyes slid down. Oh, now this was the weirdest thing of all. This imaginary drink-induced Redmond was wearing a white collar, a bright gold pectoral crucifix, and a long dark robe. A soutane, wasn’t that what they called it? She wasn’t sure. She felt terror shake her then, felt like a rat when a terrier has it caught helpless in its jaws. Drink-sodden or not, this was real enough to feel like the worst threat she had ever faced.
‘God bless all in this house,’ said Redmond, his green, green eyes smiling with all their old cruelty and cold calculation straight into hers. He made the sign of the cross in the air.
This Redmond Delaney was a priest.