Before You Were Gone

by Sheila Bugler

  Looking forward to it x

  The reply sent, Dee put her phone back in her bag and spent the rest of the journey looking out the window and trying not to think about how soon it was until they left.

  To get to Annie’s house, Dee had to change trains at Whitechapel for the East London line to Wapping. But the gallery was close to Whitechapel station, so it made sense to go there first just in case that’s where Annie was this morning.

  Coming out of the underground station, Dee called Shay Flaherty.

  ‘Dee,’ he said. ‘Your message yesterday intrigued me. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

  ‘What would you say if I told you there’s a chance Kitty Doran is still alive?’

  ‘You think that’s a possibility?’

  Dee updated him on everything that had happened since they last spoke. When she’d finished, he let out a low whistle.

  ‘That’s some story you’ve got there, Dee.’

  ‘It’s only a story if Annie really is Kitty,’ Dee said.

  ‘I always knew something wasn’t right about that,’ Shay said. ‘I was never able to prove anything, but I felt it. If I’d stayed in Galway, maybe I’d have continued to look into it. But that was around the time I got the job at the Irish Times. Assistant political correspondent. My dream job, at the time. Twenty-something years later I’m still in Dublin, still writing about politics.’

  ‘You’re the political editor now,’ Dee said. She remembered seeing his job title on the paper’s website. ‘I’m guessing that means you know a thing or two about Robert O’Brien?’

  ‘Squeaky Clean O’Brien,’ Shay said. ‘Future leader of our great country, if you believe what people are saying about him.’

  ‘And you?’ Dee said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think no one’s as clean as O’Brien pretends to be,’ Shay said. ‘Although if he’s got any dark secrets, he’s done a damn good job of keeping them hidden. The country adores him.’

  ‘He married Kitty’s mother two years after Kitty drowned,’ Dee said. ‘How did he manage that if she was already married to someone else?’

  ‘Ireland’s no different to any other country,’ Shay said. ‘Even back then, O’Brien was well-connected. I assume he pulled a few strings and got the first marriage annulled. Word on the ground is they were seeing each other long before her husband disappeared. Although to be fair, that’s exactly the sort of thing people would say. I’ve never found anything to prove that’s true. Why? You think it’s relevant to what happened to Kitty?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Dee said. ‘I’m just thinking aloud. If Kitty really didn’t drown that day, then someone went to a lot of trouble to pretend she did.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Shay said.

  ‘You mean you’ll help me?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Fine Gael’s current leader will be stepping down next month,’ Shay said. ‘At the moment, O’Brien’s the number one candidate to take over. If that happens, and the party win the next election – which everyone thinks they will – then he’s in line to become the country’s next Taoiseach. I don’t like the man. I think he’s a fraud. So if I can find something that proves I’m right, about him and about what happened to Kitty, that would make me a very happy man indeed.’

  ‘And if I’m wrong?’

  ‘No shame being wrong,’ Shay said. ‘You could be right too, don’t forget.’

  ‘I’m going to try to speak to Annie today,’ Dee said. ‘I’ll let you know how I get on.’

  ‘Great. In the meantime, I’ll do a bit of digging this side. Lucy Ryan’s parents are dead, but her sister’s still alive. Maybe I’ll see if she’ll talk to me.’

  They said goodbye, and Dee ended the call. By now, she was on Deancross Street and she could see the gallery up ahead. When she went inside, it was clear from Claire’s frosty reception that she wasn’t too happy to see Dee back again so soon.

  ‘Annie’s not here,’ she said.

  ‘Any idea how I can get hold of her?’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Claire said. ‘Annie’s told me who you really are. You’re a journalist, aren’t you? If I’d known, I would never have let you anywhere near Annie. I genuinely don’t understand what you’re playing at. Don’t you think her family has already been through enough?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You can lie all you want,’ Claire said. ‘But if you’ve come here trying to get me to dish up gossip about Annie, you might as well leave. Because hell will freeze over before I tell you anything about her.’

  ‘Annie’s mother looked you up on the internet,’ Claire went on. ‘She found lots of Dee Morrisons, but none of them were you. But she also found a journalist called Dee Doran who’d been married to someone called Billy Morrison. That’s you, isn’t it?’

  Dee recognised a brick wall when she hit one. Leaving the gallery, she used her knowledge of the area to walk from Deancross Street through Shadwell into Wapping.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected when she got to Annie’s house. Maybe that Annie would refuse to open the door, or that there’d be no one at home and Dee would have to wait. But when she rang the doorbell, she hardly had to wait at all. The door was opened by a man in his thirties. Tall and thin with dark curly hair, heavy-framed glasses and a goatee beard, he looked like a typical east London hipster. Which possibly explained Dee’s instant aversion to him, before he even opened his mouth.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, looking expectantly at Dee.

  ‘I’m looking for Annie,’ Dee said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Annie Holden. She lives here.’

  The man frowned.

  ‘Annie? Sorry. You must have got the wrong house.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Dee said. ‘I was here yesterday in this very house talking to Annie’s mother.’

  ‘Hold on a second.’ He held up a hand, and Dee had to fight an urge not to slap it back down. ‘You’re telling me you were here in this house yesterday?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. I was here all day yesterday. I work from home, you see. If there was anyone else in the house, I think I might have known about it.’

  He had a strong Yorkshire accent. Vaguely, Dee remembered reading somewhere that people found northern accents more trustworthy than southern ones. Maybe so, but right now this guy was bullshitting her. Because Dee knew she wasn’t losing her mind, which was the only other explanation for what was happening right now.

  ‘These houses all look pretty much the same along here,’ Hipster Bloke said. ‘I’m sure if you try some of the others, you’ll find the person you’re looking for.’

  ‘No. This is the house. I’m sure of it.’

  Even as she said this, she was stepping back to take another look at the house, just in case she’d got it wrong. But everything was the same – the red front door; the stained glass panels in the front window; the purple flowers in the window boxes. This was the same house.

  ‘I think you should go now.’ He started to close the door but Dee put her hand on it, stopping him.

  ‘If you won’t let me in, then maybe you could pass on a message. Tell Annie she doesn’t need to be afraid of me. I want to help her, that’s all.’

  But Hipster Bloke wasn’t listening and was pushing the door closed again. Dee might have put her foot out, preventing him from shutting it fully, but a voice behind her made forget all about the door.

  ‘Dee?’

  She froze. The voice wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Which meant maybe none of this was real, either.

  ‘Dee. Is that you?’

  Slowly, she turned around. Scared of what she’d see, in case there was no one there and all of this was her mind playing tricks with her.

  But this wasn’t any trick. He was here. Standing on the street, frowning at her the way he did when she’d done something he disapproved of. Which, as it had turn
ed out, was a lot of the time.

  ‘Ed?’

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ he said.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  Ed Mitchell, a detective inspector with East Sussex Police. She hadn’t seen him since their break-up six months ago. Since then, she’d invested a lot of energy in trying hard not to think about him. And if she did still think of him from time to time, and imagined bumping into him, it was never like this.

  Twenty-seven

  ‘I’m going to England to meet Dee and find out for myself what’s been going on.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ Maeve said. ‘How can you trust someone you barely know?’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Emer said, ‘I don’t know who I can trust anymore. Until last night, I’d have said I trusted Robert.’

  She was walking with Maeve in the grounds of Maeve’s hotel in Clarinbridge.

  She’d driven here last night, unable to bear staying in the same house as her stepfather. She’d been halfway to Galway when she realised she had nowhere to go. There was no Nikki to run to anymore. So she’d pulled into the side of the road and called Maeve, who’d insisted Emer come straight to her cosy little house in the grounds of the hotel. This morning, after breakfast, they’d gone for a walk by the river while Emer tried to work out what to do.

  ‘You can still trust Robert, surely?’

  ‘He lied to me, Maeve. He told me he’d hired a private detective. Instead, he hired someone to pretend to be me so he could make contact with my cousin.’

  ‘You don’t know for sure that’s what he did.’

  ‘Robert knew what happened in London, and he knew I was thinking of getting in touch with Dee. Ursula didn’t want me to contact Dee. I don’t know why, but Robert did what he always does. He stepped in to fix things, making sure I didn’t do anything his dear wife didn’t want me to.’

  ‘But this is Robert we’re talking about. He’s one of the most straight-up men I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Maybe he’s just better at fooling people.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Maeve said. ‘You need to speak to him, Emer. He’s worried sick. I told you he called earlier, asking if I’d heard from you.’

  ‘You can’t tell him I’m here.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Maeve said. ‘I won’t say a word, even though I think you’re wrong. But before you make plans to run off to England, can we at least think this through together?’

  ‘There’s nothing to think through,’ Emer said.

  ‘Of course there is. You’ve decided Robert hired this woman, but what if there’s another explanation?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like Dee is lying to you. Or the woman she met has nothing to do with Robert. Think for a second. Who else did you tell about seeing Kitty when you were in London?’

  ‘Hardly anyone,’ Emer said. ‘Robert and Ursula. You. Nikki. That’s about it.’

  ‘So why not suspect me or Nikki?’

  ‘Because you didn’t know about Dee,’ she said. ‘You didn’t know I have a cousin who’s an investigative journalist. Robert, on the other hand, did. I’d told him I was thinking of contacting Dee, and he talked me out of it. He persuaded me to let him handle the whole thing. And because I trusted him, that’s what I did.’

  ‘What about Nikki?’

  ‘Why would Nikki have anything to do with this?’

  ‘You could ask the same question about Robert,’ Maeve said. ‘So tell me, does Nikki know about Dee?’

  Emer thought of the emails she’d sent. The ones that remained unanswered. She’d assumed Nikki was ignoring her. Was it possible there was another reason she hadn’t replied to any of Emer’s emails?

  ‘Nikki has nothing to do with this,’ she said.

  ‘You told me she’s living in London,’ Maeve said. ‘It would be easy for her to get in touch with Dee and pretend she’s you.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Emer said. ‘I don’t want to talk about Nikki, okay?’

  Maeve shrugged.

  ‘Your choice. If you say she’s not involved, then I’m sure you’re right. I’m just saying you need to consider every angle. It makes as much sense as blaming Robert.’

  ‘Not if Robert had something to do with Kitty’s disappearance.’

  ‘You think that’s possible?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  Maeve stayed silent for a moment, before shaking her head.

  ‘What reason could he have for doing that?’

  Again, Emer heard her mother’s voice.

  We didn’t have a choice. The girls were there that night.

  ‘He’d have done it if my mother asked him to.’

  Maeve started to say something, but Emer held her hand up.

  ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me about it. I shouldn’t have said anything because I may have got it wrong. We shouldn’t talk about it until we know the facts. That’s why I need to see Dee.’

  ‘How are you going to do that? I assume you didn’t bring your passport with you?’

  Good point. She’d brought nothing with her except her purse, her mobile phone and the clothes she’d been wearing.

  ‘I can go back and get my passport,’ she said. ‘And a change of clothes. My mother’s in Dublin for the weekend and Robert will be spending most of today at the golf club, like he does every Saturday.’

  ‘It’s nine thirty,’ Maeve said, checking her watch. ‘What time will he be heading to the golf course?’

  ‘Round about now.’

  ‘Okay.’ Maeve nodded. ‘You drive back home and pick up whatever you want. I’ll book the flights.’

  ‘Flights?’

  ‘That’s right. If you’re going to England, I’m coming with you. Don’t look so worried, Emer. I won’t intrude on your meeting with your cousin. I’m sure you’ll want to do that by yourself. But if Kitty really is alive, then I want to be there when you find her. Kitty’s my last connection with Lucy. She’s the only person who might be able to tell me what really happened to my sister.’

  ‘What about the hotel?’

  ‘The hotel will be fine without me for a few days. I’ve got a great team who are more than capable of running the place.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Emer said, ‘it would be nice not to have to do this by myself. Thanks, Maeve.’

  ‘You don’t need to thank me. I’m doing this for myself, remember?’

  ‘Last night,’ Emer said, ‘right before Dee called, I’d decided to let it go. I was going to focus on getting my act together and trying to move forward with my life.’

  ‘You can’t move forward until you know the truth. Neither of us can do that.’

  Before Emer could answer, Maeve’s phone started to ring.

  ‘A private number,’ she said, frowning. ‘Hang on a second. Let me see who this is.’

  She walked away from Emer to take the call. While she was gone, three white swans appeared around the bend in the river, sailing grandly past as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

  ‘A journalist,’ Maeve said, when she came back. ‘He says he wants to speak to me about Lucy. Said he might have some new information about what happened to her.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Emer said. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘He said he didn’t want to tell me over the phone. He’s asked if we can meet up this weekend.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I told him I’d see him when I got back,’ Maeve said. ‘If Kitty’s still alive, then the chances are she’ll know more about what happened to Lucy than some journalist who never knew her.’

  Maeve nodded at the swans.

  ‘Beautiful, aren’t they? They’ve been here almost two weeks already. We normally don’t see swans here until mid October. They’ll be here for the winter, but they’ll head north again around April.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be lovely?’ Emer said. ‘Imagine being able to head off wherever you w
anted when you got fed up of being somewhere.’

  ‘You think that’s what happened with Kitty?’

  ‘No. Kitty left because she was scared of something.’

  The girls were there that night.

  What if it was Robert her mother had been arguing with? That wasn’t how Emer remembered it, but she wasn’t sure she could trust her memory after all this time. She’d read stories of people with fake memories. The psychologist Jean Piaget famously remembered being kidnapped in a park as a small child. The memory had been created by a story his nanny told about the kidnapping, which subsequently turned out to be false. Is that what was happening here? Was Emer’s mind creating false memories to help her better make sense of her past?

  There was so much she didn’t understand. But there were four irrefutable facts. Fact Number One: Lucy Ryan disappeared one night and was never seen again. Fact Number Two: three weeks later, Kitty disappeared. Fact Number Three: two months after Kitty disappeared, Emer’s father walked out on his wife and remaining child. And finally, Fact Number Four: two years after her father abandoned her, Robert O’Brien got what he’d always wanted – Ursula Doran as his wife.

  Twenty-eight

  ‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on, or do I have to try to guess?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Dee said. ‘I’m happy to tell you what I’m doing here, but only if you’re going to do the same.’

  ‘Go on then,’ Ed said. ‘Because I’m really looking forward to hearing this one.’

  They were sitting on the terrace at the back of the Prospect of Whitby – the pub closest to Annie’s house. Or what had, until yesterday, been Annie’s house.

  The pub had been Dee’s idea. As far as she was concerned, they could have stayed in the street and sorted everything out. But she knew Ed Mitchell, and she knew the best way to get him onside was to buy him a cup of coffee and pretend she was taking his well-meaning, but so often patronising, advice seriously.

  The problem was, it was difficult to take him seriously when he spoke to her like that. As if he’d already decided to disapprove of her explanation, before she’d even got a chance to give it. So far, the best thing about this encounter was how it was helping her to remember all the reasons they hadn’t been right for each other. Which was a hell of a lot less painful than remembering those moments when she’d felt as if she’d finally found her soulmate.