Takes me ages and a lot of U-turns to finally find the number I need, but finally I hit on the house I’m looking for and thank God, there’s a car with a taxi plate on it parked right outside. Which means, with a bit of luck, that there’s someone home. I hop out of my car and ring the doorbell. And wait. Sounds of the TV blaring from inside the front room window beside me; some daytime TV show, Cash in the Attic or similar.
I ring again. Wait. And again. Then suddenly start wondering about what in hell I’ll say to him if he’s home and opens the door to me.
Hi there, you don’t know me, but I’m the mother of your child? Ehhh, no, don’t think so. Hi there, approximately four years ago, did you by any chance go to a sperm bank and leave a deposit? Because in that case, have I got news for you …
Have I really thought this through? I suddenly start to fret as beads of inconvenient worry sweat starting to leak right down to my ribcage. Because all I know about this particular Billy O’Casey is what I got on the office database. I know what his social security number is, I know that he’s got four penalty points on his driving licence and I also know that he once got out of jury service on account of an elderly relative he had to take care of.
Me, who’s famous for having plans and more plans and five year plans and plans within plans. Now here I am, standing on a total stranger’s doorstep feeling like I’m carrying the third secret of Fatima and I haven’t the first clue how I’m even going to phrase what I have to say to him.
All I know is that the conversation I’m about to have with him is bound to come as a shock. God almighty, he’ll probably think I’m here to demand maintenance money and back payments on three years of child support. But on the principle that I’ve come this far and have precious little to lose, I give the door one last and final hammering. Still nothing, just the sound of some TV show going on about a vase from the nineteen fifties that’s now worth a life-altering eighteen euro. I’m just about to turn on my heel and leave when an upstairs window is opened from right above me and I hear a man’s voice yelling down.
‘Ah here, what’s all the bleedin’ racket down there?’
I look up and see a guy about my own age with his head half stuck out a bedroom window, wearing just a vest and not much else.
‘Ehhh, sorry to bother you,’ I yell back up at him, ‘but I was wondering if you could help me?’
‘What, like now? This minute? Give us a bleedin’ break, would you? I’m not long off my shift, I’ve been out in my taxi since two this morning, love …’
I know I’ve only got a moment before he snaps the window shut and heads back to bed, so I go for it.
‘I’m looking for a Billy or Bill O’Casey. Any idea where I can find him?’
‘You’re talking to him.’
‘I’m sorry, you’re Bill O’Casey?’
‘Yeah, what’s it to you?’
Okay, in that case this is absolutely, definitely not him. No DNA test required here, this is one hundred per cent not Lily’s Dad.
‘Emm … Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No problem at all, my mistake entirely. I’m terribly sorry to disturb you, but I’m afraid I’ve got the wrong address. My own stupid fault, please forgive me, so sorry to have disturbed you …’ I mumble up at him, backing out of there and inching towards my car.
‘Does that mean I can go back to sleep now?’ he growls back down at me sarcastically.
‘Yes of course, and apologies again …’
I hope back into the car and reverse out of there, feeling deflated, but not defeated. Not yet. A text comes through from Helen, anxious to know how I’m getting on, so I call her.
‘Well?’ she says hopefully, having to raise her voice over the sound of Lily bashing away at the piano in the background. Then as soon as she realises Auntie Helen is on the phone to me, I can hear her asking in her little-angel voice, ‘has she found my daddy yet? Is he coming to see me soon?’
It would stab you right to the solar plexus, it really would. My heart aches with an indescribable pain just wondering what’s going through the poor child’s head right now.
‘Shhh darling, let me talk to Mummy for a minute.’ I can hear Helen soothing her and giving her big mwah, mwah kisses on her tiny head.
Ordinarily I’d get another stab just at hearing this, usually one of pure jealousy, to my shame. That someone else was mothering Lily right now, while I’m stuck like a gobshite on a housing estate in deepest Darndale, on a possible fool’s errand.
But not now. Not when the person I’m doing all this for is Lily.
Besides, I’m now working to a clear-cut plan. Because who knows, maybe I can help this guy, whoever and wherever he is? Give him some kind of leg up in life, so that when the day inevitably comes when Lily does get to meet him, he can be someone she’s actually proud of, with a job and a car and a mortgage and healthcare and a pension plan. Not some flake who changes his name and skips off without paying back money he owes. I haven’t exactly done a huge amount of good for other people in my life, but there’s no reason why that can’t end here and now, is there?
And there’s something else too, something that’s really taken me by surprise. Because tedious as this is; rough, even scary as it is; somehow doing all the plodding footwork is reminding me of another lifetime ago, when I first started out as a rookie reporter and was constantly sent off on humble doorstepping jobs like this. Long, long before I started fast-tracking my way up to the glorified heights of the editorial suite on the executive floor, that is.
Most journalists look down their noses on and despise that kind of work, but it’s seen as a sort of apprenticeship; necessary flames you’ve got to walk through before you get to sit behind a cushy desk and bash out stories from there. And in the weirdest way, I hadn’t quite realised how much I missed those days, which almost seem carefree now when I think back. The sheer adrenaline rush of chasing down a story, of trying to coax people into going on the record, of racing back to pass your story by your editor before the deadline, then the thrill of seeing it in print with your name attached, up beside an ‘additional reporting by’ tagline.
Course back then, like just about every other hack in town, I’d gripe and whinge about the interminably long days and even longer freezing nights spent shivering outside housing estates where I was waiting on some suspected drug baron to either fall in the door drunk (whereupon I’d smile sweetly at him, shove a tape recorder under his nose and get whatever incriminating statements he slurred on record), or sometimes even better, an off-the-record interview with a wife or girlfriend, many of whom liked to say far more than their prayers and would happily jabber away to me, blissfully unaware that it would all appear in print the next morning.
But when I cast my mind back and compare it with the treadmill of stress that my life is now, I think, ahh, those were the days. Didn’t know I was born. Sometimes it’s not being at the top that’s the truly joyous part of success, it’s getting there.
‘No sweetheart,’ I hear Helen tell Lily soothingly down the phone, ‘no chocolate fudge till after you’ve eaten up all your pasta, good girl. Eloise, are you still there? Sorry about that,’ she says, her voice less muffled as she comes back to me. ‘So what’s happening where you are? Any sign?’
‘No go,’ I sigh, ‘forget it, I’m out of here.’
‘What do you mean? Were you not able to find Bill O’Casey?’
‘No, I found him alright. But he’s the wrong guy.’
‘How do you know? Did you ask him? Was he the right age and height and eye colour and all that?’
‘Oh yeah, he ticked some of the boxes alright, but trust me, he’s definitely not Lily’s father.’
‘How come you’re