Perfectly Preventable Deaths

by Deirdre Sullivan

  ‘Or message them twenty-five times in an evening.’

  ‘Shut up, Fiachra.’

  The conversation shifts. I’m still no wiser. I listen to the hum and dip of talk, and think, I know so little about these people. Their motivation, history. It’s new to me, but it is far from new.

  And there are secrets, big and small, they’re keeping.

  Her name was Helen.

  What did Fiachra mean with his exactly? They might have known her, Helen Groarke. Who moved away and came back as a corpse. I suddenly feel cold. Lon is only nineteen. He would have been fifteen. When she was found. A little younger than she was. But still … it’s the same age difference between him and Catlin, pretty much. It could be, could have been. I try to slow my heart and parse my thoughts.

  There are things you should be wary of …

  I think of the first time we met Layla, when Catlin brought up the corpses in the hills. I look at the bodies of my classmates, hearts beating, eyes blinking, muscles tensing and relaxing, and scroll through my phone and start to type a message. How to put it …?

  ‘Did u know …’

  ‘Lon’s ex-girlf …’

  ‘We need …’

  But nothing that I want to say is right. I feel a sickness creeping up my throat. A dull sick ache that’s creeping like a vine through me. There is ivy on the walls of the castle and it ferrets through the rock and brick, it curls in everywhere, invading space and causing problems, cracks. Brian says it shouldn’t have been planted there, not in the first place. Once it’s introduced, it’s hard to kill.

  I close my eyes.

  I blink.

  The room is loud.

  The voices, rising, falling. I feel like I am watching on a screen. I amn’t one of them. I don’t belong here. I wish that I could leave. I cannot go.

  I take a breath. My hands inside my pockets, fingering at lavender and bark.

  ‘Where’s Oona?’ Charley asks. ‘I thought that she was coming?’

  ‘She will.’ Eddie blushes. ‘She’ll be a little late. Her dad was being grumpy about lifts.’

  I look at him. His face is red, and smiling. I don’t like it.

  ‘I … er … messaged her to ask.’ A little grin. I’ve never noticed before how much his face needs smacking. Those cheeks and eyes.

  I bite down on my lip and check my phone. Three messages.

  I smile.

  And something crystallises here, inside this room, looking at the boy who likes the girl that I might be in love with.

  As close as I have come to love, at least.

  Eddie is still saying things. I take a break, and venture down the stairs to the grimy little bathroom. The walls are old and once white, and covered with writing. Scraps of poems, and people’s names entwined in marker hearts. I scan the wall for names I recognise. I don’t see Lon, but Helen’s there. The second name scraped out, gouged through the paint.

  I put my hand over the writing, close my eyes and try to do the thing I did with Lon. The hard stare. It doesn’t work. I’m just a girl, leaning on a wall.

  A useless creature.

  When I go back up, Cathal is talking about a dirt-jumping competition he won this summer. I’ve just worked out it’s mountain bikes when she arrives. Dressed in jeans, a little black T-shirt. A necklace made of copper wire and smooth green sea glass. Her hair is scraped into a tiny little ponytail. It’s really cute. I smile at her, she says hello and comes in for a hug. She kisses my cheek on one side and then the other. I freeze.

  Every part of me is waiting for more.

  ‘Excuse,’ she says. ‘I forgot and did the bises. In France, when we say hello, we do a kiss.’

  I nod. I’ve heard of this. It is a thing. I smile at her. Her eyes meet mine. I see the little flecks of palest blue. For a second they seem to move around, silver fish inside a deep brown pool. I’m conscious that I’m staring. I lower my gaze.

  But when I look back up, she meets my eyes.

  ‘Come outside with me,’ she says. ‘I want to show you something.’

  ‘I need to get my coat,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  On the way to get it, I grab Layla. ‘I’m going out for a bit,’ I say.

  ‘With Oona? Say no more.’ She grins.

  ‘Yeah … Would you mind, keeping an eye on Catlin?’

  ‘Madeline,’ she says, ‘we’re all below. She will be grand. Go. Chat.’ She takes a sip from her pint glass. ‘I mean, we hate him. But she’s safe. Go on.’ She nudges me, as though I were a domino. ‘You can worry tomorrow.’

  And I will. But, as I reach the door, I feel something like hope.

  I put away the things I should be scared of.

  And venture out with Oona, in the night.

  23

  Deer’s Tongue

  (to draw a woman to a woman)

  We walk through the village, past the lit-up places, into darkness, and it doesn’t feel dangerous, but quickens my breath. Oona’s moving at a faster pace than normal. Even with my slightly longer legs, I have to trot to keep up with her.

  ‘Come,’ she says. I follow her through trees and over rocks.

  We walk for ages till we reach the lakeside, water flat and dark. The water’s moving. I can barely see it but I hear it, see the little tilt of moon on flow.

  ‘Here,’ she says, ‘is where I swim each morning. It is like my church, a sacred place.’

  I smile at her and see it’s not a joke. She places the flat of her hands against the water.

  ‘I wanted to come back to it with you.’

  My heart is beating so quickly.

  ‘Today,’ she says to me, ‘has been so hard. I need a friend.’

  I ask her what is wrong. And so she tells me. I hear it but there’s something else as well, a kind of panic rising and then dulling.

  Oona is worried Claudine might be losing interest. She hasn’t been replying to her messages. She’s worried that she’s met someone else. I can feel my heart beat in my chest, can feel my ribcage opening. Widening to let in loss and hope.

  ‘I was always the one who was more in love,’ she says. ‘I knew this.’

  Her tilted chin. I know it too, I think. I tell her that it’s hard and that I’m sorry and that I’m here. She smiles at me, and tells me that she knew I’d understand. She turns out towards the dark and shining water, as though it were a friend who could explain. I try to think of something else to say or do. A helpful thing.

  She pulls her top off, over her head, and smiles that half-moon smile. So soft and bright. I want to tell her that she’s mad, it’s freezing, but it’s like I’ve been put on pause. I want to be her friend. I want to kiss her.

  I don’t know what to do. Or how to move.

  She is wearing a little lacy bralet. It is green. Her panties are brown. Her skin is brightly dappled in the moonlight, like the water in a swimming pool.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, and runs into the lake. She doesn’t look to see. She knows I’ll come.

  I take a breath, remove my coat, and pull my dress over my head. It is exactly as cold as I thought it would be, but I try not to show it. I’ve never really liked the sensation of being surrounded by water. Swimming is an awful lot of work. I’m wearing a sports bra and black boy shorts. It looks like a bikini, I tell myself. I always worried when we went swimming. That people would look at me, compare. And find me wanting.

  I am wanting now.

  Catlin didn’t mind as much as me. She’s very unselfconscious. Oona’s pretty unselfconscious too. And that makes sense. She’s perfect. She looks like the title character in a film about beautiful people. I look like the title character in a film about a girl who has a spot the size of a hillock on the corner of her chin.

  I peel my tights off.

  Where has Oona gone?

  And suddenly I see her head rise like a tiny Loch Ness monster in the middle of the pond. She moves so quickly, flicking and twisting like a beautiful eel. I put a toe in.


  ‘It’s freezing,’ I say into the silence. I don’t think I’m expecting a reply. I swallow. Nothing worth doing in life is easy, is a thing that Mam says sometimes. And it isn’t always true. And I don’t think that she meant it for right now. But I say it and it makes me braver. I take a step. I take another step.

  Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

  And I’m submerged. I can feel my skin goose and pucker. I can feel my teeth begin to shake. I kick my legs and close my eyes so tight and power through it.

  And suddenly her body’s next to mine. She grabs my hands and loops them round her neck. She’s stronger than I thought. And she is swimming, pulling me along. My breasts and ribcage pressed against her back. I can feel the strong flick of her legs. The sureness of her body, in the water.

  I sense her smile. I hope she senses mine.

  She pulls me under.

  24

  Yarrow

  (for the wounded)

  Catlin is furious with me for going off. Of course she is. Everything in the world is all about Catlin. Before anyone makes a decision, she must be consulted or everything will crumble into dust. It is the way of things. It was foolish to rock the boat by making choices. I understand this, but she’s also wrong.

  ‘You weren’t even around most of the night,’ I say. ‘You were hooking up with Lon the whole time.’

  ‘Not the whole time. Not while you were gone,’ she says, all pale and tense and doing that thing where she over-enunciates words to show how calm she is. How reasonable she’s being.

  ‘So it’s OK for you to go off with Lon and leave me alone, but it’s not OK for me to go for a walk with Oona?’ I ask, although it’s not a question. Not really.

  Catlin glares at me, and wipes down the surface of a battered steamer trunk with a J-cloth. It looked pale grey, but it was really black. We’re cleaning out the unused rooms for Mam. To ‘surprise Brian’, when he comes back from yet another work trip. As if we need more secrets in this place. How much will Brian tell me, if we get the chance to speak before he’s off again? I wonder what he’s told Mam about it all. I spray some glass cleaner on an old foxed mirror. The veins and stains of ancient rotting glass. I peer at Catlin’s reflection. She’s sitting on a dusty ottoman, waiting, but I’m waiting too. For something.

  I can’t explain myself. I am voiceless. Full of wanting things I cannot have. I don’t know what, but some of it is Oona.

  The moon was fat on our way back to Donoghue’s. We didn’t speak. Outside of the water. But we held hands and everything was charged, and I could feel the distance between my body and her body, as though it were another part of me. A phantom limb.

  As we walked in, she let go of my hand.

  Catlin was bright with anger as we arrived, the others talking quietly among themselves. Clearing up. Fiachra and Cathal drained the cans before they binned them. Charley washed the glasses, Layla swept. They’re all so good, I thought. Even when they’re drunk, they tidy up. The grumpy man behind the bar was gone.

  ‘I rang and rang,’ Catlin yelled at me, performing her rage for an audience of everyone in the pub but mainly Lon. ‘Mamó is looking for you on the road. I thought you were missing, like those girls.’

  I met her eyes.

  Helen Groarke.

  Amanda Shale.

  Nora Ginn.

  Bridget Hora.

  Ghosts passed between us. And I could sense her almost move to hug me, but Lon put his arms tight around her. He met my eyes and smiled behind her back. I felt a hint of something dark in him. A little scare that ran right up my spine.

  Her name was Helen.

  ‘You were wrong to scare your sister like that, Madeline,’ Lon scolded.

  Because, apparently, he is my dad.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lon?’ I said, doing my best to pronounce his name the same way Mamó did.

  I see you, Lon, I thought. For what you are.

  I looked over at Oona. She was helping Charley tidy up the cans into a bin bag.

  ‘Where were you?’ Catlin asked.

  I didn’t say. I think that I was waiting for Oona to say something. She was with me. It wasn’t all her fault.

  That kind of thing.

  And then a beep.

  Our lift was waiting.

  Mamó’s little red car carved our way home through the forest. The beams of light the only bright thing in the deep and dark. I played what had happened over and over in my brain. What it meant, and all that it could mean. And all it didn’t.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask her where she was?’ Catlin spluttered.

  ‘No. I’m not her keeper,’ Mamó told her.

  Our eyes met in the mirror, grey and green.

  She wants to be.

  We parted ways, and Catlin stalked in silence to her bedroom. I knew she felt betrayed.

  And I did too.

  By my own stupid feelings.

  When we left, Oona didn’t look at me.

  I don’t like this. This feeling in my gut like she might want me, but she might not want me. The lurch of that.

  If I told Catlin about Oona, she’d forgive me. It would be bigger than the grudge she holds. I know this, but the silence stretches longer.

  A cavern yawning wide between us both.

  A crush seems like such a reductive word, but it is one. What I have.

  And I am crushed.

  Why would she ignore me like that? I feel my eyes well up. A tear drips on the hard pine attic floor.

  I think of Mamó, her jars and bottles. The people piling in to ask for help. I wish there were a treatment for this sort of thing. A lure, so I could bring Oona near to me and keep her close. I want her head to nestle in the crook of my arm. I want her on my stomach, on my hips. I want her skin on mine. I want to fall asleep beside her, wake up smiling. I want, I want, I want.

  I’m sick of wanting things I’ll never have. I’m sick of almost everything about me. I wish I were a ghost and not a girl. Then looking never acting would be fine. I spend so much time stopping my arms from reaching for the things I want and know I’ll never get.

  I wish that I were good enough for Oona.

  I wish that I were better than I am.

  Catlin wraps her arms around my back. She presses her face between my shoulder blades.

  ‘It’s OK, Mad,’ she says. ‘It’s just you scared me. I amn’t used to being the sensible one.’

  She smiles at me. I smile a little back.

  ‘You look so sad.’ She passes me a clean duster. It’s yellow and it’s soft. I wipe my face.

  And I could tell her now, if I wanted to.

  If I was feeling brave.

  But I can’t, not yet. It’s like a stone I’m holding in my mouth and I want to spit it out but if I did it wouldn’t be my stone.

  And so I say, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine, Mad, really,’ she says. ‘It’s just this place. It gives me the creeps. All this murder underneath the surface. The mountain where you were last night is where they found a lot of them, you know.’

  I do know. But last night I didn’t think. My heart too full.

  ‘I dream about the girls sometimes,’ she tells me. ‘I’ve been reading about them, lighting candles, saying little prayers. It’s not that I’m being morbid. It’s just …’

  She sits down on the floor beside me. Her fingers scratch a stubborn floorboard stain.

  ‘It’s the history of this place, I mean. It’s fascinating. But it’s also real. The fox we found. Those girls – they have stories, but they’re not a story. And I’ve been acting almost like they are, and then last night you were gone. And part of me knows that you were off with Oona, for whatever reason …’

  She looks at me pointedly. I stare at my toes.

  ‘… and you being gone made everything feel real. And I was there with Lon – Laurent, I mean – but I didn’t want him near me. I thought of the fox. The body like that. I just wanted to run outside and find you and make ev
erything OK. Whatever it was …’

  I tell her that I get it and I say I’m sorry and I mean it this time. It must have been weird for Catlin, waiting for me. She’s normally the one who has adventures. The one who’s fun enough for both of us. But we won’t be living in each other’s pockets forever. We’ll go to places and we’ll build our lives. And that’s what I want, but I am worried about it too, that when it happens I will be bereft, missing the part of me that has friends. But I’m realising that’s not true.

  ‘Maybe that’s why I don’t like Lon,’ I tell her. ‘Because he’s taking you away. I mean, I see you all the time, but not as much.’

  ‘Laurent thinks that too,’ she says, and smiles at me.

  Of course he does. The sly prick.

  ‘Did you tell him that you loved him?’ I ask.

  ‘I tried to,’ she says. Her hands gesture in the air, reaching for something I can’t see. ‘But the words just wouldn’t come. I looked at him and I thought iloveyouil‌oveyouiloveyou but I didn’t want to say it too soon, or have him see me as needy or anything.’ She looks towards the wall, twisting the red and yellow duster in her hands, wringing it as though it were heavy with fluid. ‘I want to make it easy for him to love me, Mad.’

  ‘It is easy to love you,’ I tell her. ‘You don’t have to say it to feel it. Maybe wait a while. Until he says it, or until there’s a perfect time. Maybe at the party, with other people there, it was too much pressure.’

  She seems to take that on-board.

  ‘Catlin?’ I venture. ‘You know Lon’s ex? Helen.’

  ‘What?’ Her voice is sharp. ‘Where did you hear that name?’

  ‘Just at the pub,’ I say. ‘And … do you not think it’s a bit weird that she had the same name as the dead girl?’

  ‘Not really,’ she says. ‘It’s not an unusual name, I mean. Helen.’

  ‘Yes, but Ballyfrann is tiny.’

  ‘It is,’ she says.

  I feel my guts tangle and stiffen, heavy like wrought iron.

  ‘Was the Helen his Helen, Catlin?’ I ask.

  She looks at me. ‘How do you compete with someone who isn’t there any more?’ she asks. ‘I mean …’ She sounds wistful, sad, but I’m jarred into horror, and my voice is sharp.