Free What She Never Told Me by Kate McQuaile Page A

museum that’s housed on the top floor. It’s tiny and crammed with photo boards showing the life of the brewery over the decades and the lives of the people who worked there.
    I scrutinise the black-and-white photographs, in particular those that appear to be from the time my mother worked there, but I can’t find her face among them. I approach the woman who seems to be in charge of the museum, telling her that my mother once worked here as a secretary and asking whether it might be possible to talk to anyone who had worked at the brewery in the 1960s.
    ‘There are still a few old timers who pop in, but we never know when they’re coming. You can always leave me your name and a phone number and I may be able to get someone to call you. I’m not promising anything, though,’ she says.
    I write my name and number down on a piece of paper and hand it to her, but the disappointment I feel must be written all over my face because she then suggests that I might like to come back later in the day.
    ‘That’s when the oul’ fellas tend to turn up. They can have a cup of tea and a biscuit and reminisce about the good old days,’ she says. ‘Though, if you ask me, I’m not sure what was that good about them.’
    I wander outside and consider going back towards the centre of town, perhaps doing some clothes shopping around Grafton Street. But I don’t want to be away from here for too long and I decide instead to walk around the neighbourhood and explore the same streets my mother walked along every day for years.
    I try to imagine her going to work in the mornings, perhaps smoothing her hair or having a last-minute check of her dress to make sure it wasn’t creased. I think about her leaving the office in the evening, saying goodbye to her boss, making sure she didn’t call him by his first name, being the perfect secretary so that nobody would suspect their relationship, and then waiting for him to turn up at her flat or room.
    Was it romantic? Maybe it was in the beginning. And then, as time went by, maybe it became more frustrating than romantic. Maybe they had rows because he wouldn’t leave his wife. Did she become pregnant with me because she wanted to force the issue? Was he the love of her life? And, if so, was Dermot some kind of consolation prize? When I think of Dermot, who became more of a father to me than I might have imagined when we first met him, I feel a twinge of guilt about having embarked on this search that may turn out to be, at best, a wild goose chase. At worst, it may bring the kind of heartache I’m not sure I can cope with. But what else can I do?
    I don’t know this part of the inner city, but I feel relaxed here. It has a small-town feel about it and there are children playing in the streets outside the houses. I find this reassuring, even in a fairly compact city like Dublin. My nerves have stopped jangling, probably because I’m actually doing something rather than just playing out imaginary scenarios in my head.
    I wander into a square behind the brewery. According to the leaflets I’ve picked up at the museum, it was built to house some of the workers and their families. It’s called Walter Square and it’s typical of the other small estates built by Tennyson’s, with four redbrick terraces laid out around a garden square. But the expensive-looking cars parked here suggest that previous generations of workers have long gone and have been replaced by bankers and doctors.
    Oddly, there seems to be something familiar about the square and the houses, although I don’t recognise anything in particular. It’s possible, even likely, I think, that my mother brought me here as a small child and I have somehow retained a memory of it.
    Lost in my thoughts, I don’t notice the postbox until I’m in front of it, and all of a sudden I’m aware of that misted, shrouded image of the little arm clutching the envelope, reaching upward. The memory is so vivid and pushes so far forward that