When Your Eyes Close

by Tanya Farrelly

  He tapped the search engine on his phone, typed in the obituary details for Maurice Davis, and checked the name and location of the small cemetery in Castleknock. When he closed the app, he sat staring at the photo on the screen, a snap of himself and Michelle, windswept and grinning crazily on a weekend away in Galway. It made him wish for the millionth time that he could press rewind and erase the last few weeks. He sighed and started the car, the sooner he got to that cemetery, the sooner he would know.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Caitlin

  Caitlin had stayed late in the office the previous night so she wouldn’t have to go in so early today. She had a meeting with the girl who’d written the article on homelessness at twelve o’clock in a coffee shop, but rather than staying in bed late, she’d got up at eight and had gone for a run. As she ran, she went through all the things that had happened since the phone call. There was the man in the park, which may just be paranoia, then the messages from Dar Bryan, which may be simply a coincidence. The Twitter page set up in David’s name had been done to freak her out, that was something that couldn’t be dismissed, but whoever was doing it, she wasn’t about to let them control her life. She’d get on with things but remember to be vigilant.

  The girl hadn’t yet arrived when she got to the coffee shop, but she was early, so she sat by the window and ordered a cappuccino. She was glad to be out of the office for once – wondered if she should maybe take a holiday. She hadn’t gone anywhere since her trip to Romania with David. They’d spent ten days travelling by train around the region of Transylvania – they’d gone bear watching and trekking in the hills as well as visiting old medieval towns and castles. It had been one of the best holidays they’d been on. That had been almost three years ago. And apart from a few days she’d taken off after David’s disappearance, she’d worked right through, making sure she hadn’t had too much time to think, because she knew if she had, she’d have been completely useless.

  ‘Caitlin?’

  She started and looked up to see a pretty blonde girl with a notebook standing by her table.

  ‘Yes.’ She stood up, and the girl extended her hand and smiled, though she looked nervous.

  ‘I’m Michelle, thanks for agreeing to meet me.’

  ‘Not at all, happy to. Do you want to get yourself a coffee before we get down to it?’

  ‘Sure. Can I get you something?’ Michelle put her stuff down on one of the chairs, unwrapped her scarf, shrugged out of her jacket and hung both on the back of the chair.

  ‘No, I’m good, thanks,’ Caitlin said and watched as Michelle made her way up to the counter.

  Michelle’s article had really struck a chord with her, particularly the part that touched on why people ended up on the streets. It wasn’t that the reasons she’d cited were new, it was that people often dismissed them. She’d begun to wonder how many people there were out there whose families knew nothing about their whereabouts. Mental illness was a factor that was often overlooked. She admitted that she herself had often walked by a homeless person who looked able-bodied and hadn’t given them money because she couldn’t see a reason why that person couldn’t find some kind of work. But mental illness wasn’t always visible.

  These were the people who Michelle talked about falling through the cracks. When Caitlin had read the article, she’d wondered again about all the cases of the missing. She’d said it to Andy at the start: what if something had happened to David, what if he’d had an accident and couldn’t remember who he was? What if he’d ended up just another one of the hundreds of anonymous people sleeping in doorways in the city? Andy had said that would never happen. That if David had had an accident, he’d have been brought to a hospital – and they’d phoned around everywhere, hadn’t they? Caitlin had said she wasn’t convinced, and there was no guarantee they’d ever come across David if he was sleeping rough. No matter how small the city was, it was vast when it came to its homeless.

  Michelle returned with her cappuccino and sat opposite her. ‘I’d really like to thank you for agreeing to print my piece,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. It’s fantastic. Have you published many articles?’

  Michelle blushed. ‘No, that’s the first.’

  Caitlin smiled. ‘In that case, I’m glad you sent it to us. How long have you been working with the Simon Community?’

  ‘Just going on two years. In that time, I’ve seen things go from bad to worse. I’m sure you know yourself, you can’t walk ten paces without coming across a homeless person in Dublin. The government isn’t doing anything about it. They talk all right; do you remember two years ago, the Taoiseach swore he’d have every homeless person off the streets in the next few years? Instead, twenty families presented themselves to police stations in the city last Tuesday night. I had to write about it. If we don’t keep bombarding people with the facts, the government is never going to take it seriously. Although, they can’t turn a blind eye now, not with Dan dying right under their noses.’

  ‘Dan?’

  ‘You must have heard about it? He’s the homeless man who died outside the government offices recently.’

  Caitlin nodded. Michelle was passionate when she talked; what she’d written had come from the heart. ‘Did you know him?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. He was lovely. To look at him, you wouldn’t think anything was wrong, but I think he had Asperger’s, and was bipolar, I think, too. He didn’t have any family; his parents had died a couple of years ago. The council wanted him out of the house. He’d been sharing a flat before, but it hadn’t worked out and he’d moved back in with the parents – this was before they got sick. They hadn’t got around to putting his name back on the rent, then his mother got cancer, and nobody thought of it. There were more important things to worry about. She died four months after she was diagnosed, and a year later the father died – massive heart attack. Now they’re all gone; the whole family wiped out.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s awful. Do a lot of the people you meet tell you their stories?’ Caitlin asked.

  Michelle nodded. ‘You get to know them. Some people are so glad to talk – all day people walk by them. It’s like they’re invisible. All they want sometimes is to tell someone their story, who they are. They’re people – people whose luck turned for one reason or another. What we need is for more people to care.’

  Caitlin nodded. ‘A year ago, my husband went missing. He went out to work and never came back. People don’t want to hear about it. I’ve got friends who just stopped calling, who couldn’t bear listening to me crying and talking about David all the time.’ She had no idea why she’d said that. It wasn’t that she wanted Michelle’s pity. Sometimes, she just had a macabre need to talk about it. She couldn’t help it.

  Michelle looked startled. ‘My God, I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  Caitlin nodded, reaching for her bag, taking her phone out and showing Michelle the picture she still kept there. Michelle took the phone from her, and Caitlin watched as she looked at David’s face and handed it back to her. ‘I can’t begin to imagine what that must be like,’ she said. ‘And the police turned nothing up? No leads?’ Michelle asked.

  Caitlin shook her head. ‘It’s like he just vanished off the face of the earth. Reading your article, it got me thinking, I wondered how many people are out there and no one knows where they are.’

  ‘Quite a few, I’d say.’

  Caitlin liked this girl, she was concerned about others – wanted to help. She wasn’t the type who would walk out on someone with a hard-luck story. ‘So, you’d be on for doing another article then – to tell some of the personal stories of the people you meet?’

  Michelle nodded. ‘I’ve already started, in fact. I talked to a few people the other evening, heard some diverse stories. I want to show that these people are not just statistics, they’re human beings.’

  ‘Great. Just make sure you don’t name the people involved, obviously.’ Caitlin reached into her pocket and gave Michelle her car
d. ‘Do you think you could have it written for next week’s edition?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Great. You can send it to me directly; my email address is there. Now, I don’t know if you’re in a hurry, but you said you had some other ideas, could you tell me about those?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Michelle

  Michelle couldn’t believe how well her meeting with Caitlin had gone, and not in a forced way either. They had clicked as soon as they’d begun talking. When she’d told Caitlin about her idea to write an article about health and fitness, she’d shown enthusiasm, asking her about her day job, and by the end of the conversation Michelle had talked her into trying a couple of Zumba classes gratis. She didn’t know if Caitlin would show up, but either way she had her next article on the homelessness crisis to submit to her in the next few days.

  Caitlin’s story about her husband’s disappearance was shocking. She wondered how Nick would take it and hoped that it didn’t add to his guilt. The woman had lost first her parents and then her husband; her path until now had been far from an easy one.

  She’d been bursting to call Nick when the meeting had ended, but he’d already told her that he had a session with the hypnotist in the afternoon, and so she texted him instead:

  Went well. Call me when you get a chance xx.

  She went home and practised choreography for her classes for the rest of the afternoon.

  Nick called just after six o’clock. She began telling him about her meeting with Caitlin, but he interrupted, saying that he wanted to hear everything in person, that he had things to tell her too, and that he’d like to take her out for dinner.

  They met in Toscana, her favourite Italian restaurant in Dublin. She arrived first and perused the menu. When Nick arrived he looked tired – there were purple crescents beneath his eyes – but Michelle didn’t comment. The sickness had started to show more and more. If she thought about it, she’d begun to notice it a few months back. He’d lost weight without explanation, and when she’d mentioned it, he’d laughed about it. Said it wouldn’t do him any harm, that he’d been forming a gut as he got closer to forty. He seemed edgy today, too, and she wondered if he was craving a drink. His hands shook as he hung his jacket on the back of the chair.

  ‘So, it went well?’ he asked. He’d sat down, forgetting to kiss her first. She put it down to his eagerness to hear about Caitlin.

  She nodded. ‘She’s really nice. We talked non-stop for more than an hour. And she’s given me a deadline for another article, so I’ll definitely get to meet her again.’

  ‘That’s great,’ he said. He picked up the menu, distractedly, and began to scan it before the waiter arrived. Michelle had already decided what she would have. She thought she’d better get the worst out before she got any further. There was no point in making small talk about how nice Caitlin was and then landing the punch.

  ‘Nick, Caitlin told me something terrible. A year ago, her husband went missing. Went to work and never came home.’

  ‘What?’ Nick put the menu down, focused at last.

  ‘I know, I couldn’t believe it. Imagine what she’s going through.’

  ‘Jesus. Poor Caitie.’

  Michelle looked at him. Caitie. Was that what he’d called his little girl?

  ‘Maybe we can help her,’ he said.

  ‘Help her? How?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know … if we could find out more about her, about her husband … The Garda won’t do anything on a cold case like that. The number of people missing in Ireland runs into the thousands. Every day there’s a new poster up. Most of these people, and not just women but men too, they’re never found.’

  The waiter came and took their order. Michelle leaned forward, took Nick’s hand. His fingers trembled under hers. ‘Come on, Nick. What can we do? We’re not private investigators.’

  ‘No. But we’d probably make a better fist at it than some. You can bet half the families of missing people have gone down that route, and to no avail. There are some who must have spent everything they had and have nothing to show for it.’

  ‘What about the people who don’t want to be found though,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘There is that. The ones that just walk out on their lives. But if I could do something … I owe it to her, Michelle. I need to find some way of … not undoing it, I can never do that, but making up somehow for what I did.’

  Michelle nodded. She knew he was in earnest. More than that, he was determined. He would try everything he could to find his daughter’s husband. ‘Nick, did you find out anything … about the boy?’

  He nodded. ‘I went out to the cemetery, it’s a tiny place at the back of a church. You should have seen me wandering around in the dark like a ghoul … but it was there alright, Luckily, I had a flashlight in the car. On the headstone it said: Maurice, his wife: Celine and at the very top: Daniel – two years old, he died in 1980.

  Michelle leaned forward. ‘I’m so sorry, Nick, but you don’t how the child died; it might have been natural causes … At least you know that whatever happened to him, it isn’t related to the incident with Rachel. It would have said in the news articles if there was another child involved.’

  ‘You’d hope so … anyway, I’ll know soon enough. I got in touch with my friend Gary, you know how he works in the office of Births, Deaths and Marriages? He couldn’t give me a copy of the certificate, it would be more than his job was worth, but he did say he’d access the file and check the cause of death.’

  Michelle glanced at him, worried. She was about to ask him whether he thought it was a good idea, and whether he’d told Gary why he wanted this information, when the waiter arrived with their meal. As soon as the waiter had left, Nick took her hand again.

  ‘Listen, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about … don’t worry, it’s nothing bad. In fact, the opposite I hope … What would you think about moving in with me? You stay over most nights anyway and you’re spending a fortune on that flat …’

  Michelle looked away so that he wouldn’t see the tears that sprung to her eyes. She’d been hoping for this for the past few months, before he’d told her anything about his diagnosis. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked softly.

  He leaned in and touched her face. ‘I don’t ask these things lightly, you know that.’

  She nodded and squeezed his hand, not trusting herself to speak.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nick

  That night, Nick lay in bed turning everything over in his head. During the hypnosis sessions, he often slipped between lives. Susan, his ex-wife, would become Rachel, a metamorphosis so smooth he didn’t even notice the jump cut between scenes. In some ways, it felt as though his two lives were linked, that Susan, the miscarriage, and the demise of their marriage all happened as a result of the violent killing of Rachel, and now possibly, Daniel.

  He lay on his back sleepless, thoughts tumbling round his head. Michelle was snoring lightly. He felt a pang as he watched her sleep. He wished that he’d met her sooner. Maybe he wouldn’t be in the predicament he was in now – maybe he’d have been happy and wouldn’t have destroyed his body with alcohol. He was glad he’d asked her to move in. She could leave that one-bedroom apartment she spent half her salary renting. He’d worried about whether it was fair – to ask her to do that when he might not be around in a year’s time? If it was asking too much of her? He knew he preferred it when she was there, though. He’d already been thinking of asking her to move in before he’d got the diagnosis. He’d begun to hate it when she wasn’t there, when it was just him and Rowdy.

  For the first time, he thought about whether he should make a will. He could leave the house to Michelle; that way, at least if something happened to him, she would be comfortable. He could give her that at least.

  The next morning, Nick was up early. Michelle was still sleeping by the time he finished his coffee. He eased open the bedroom door, leaned over and ki
ssed her lightly. ‘I’m off to work,’ he said. ‘Stay as long as you like.’ Michelle stretched and pulled the covers up, looking at him sleepily. ‘Will you be here when I get back?’ Nick asked.

  Michelle smiled. ‘Depends what time you get in. I’ve got the soup run later.’

  ‘Well, come back here after. It doesn’t matter what time, okay? Let yourself in.’

  ‘Okay.’

  For the rest of the morning, Nick lost himself in the new design he was working on, drawing out the plans that he and the client had discussed. After lunch he went out to view the site again. It was a plot of land out in Greystones in Wicklow, and he enjoyed the spin out of the city and along the south Dublin coast.

  On the way back, he took a detour, turning off the N11 for Shankill and following the coast road to Dalkey. He intended just to see the house, to pull in on the road at the bottom of the hill and think, but he found himself taking the small fork in the road that climbed steeply up to the hexagon. He stopped the car on the gravel driveway and got out. The house was just as it had been when he’d left it two years before. If he walked round the first of the five walls, he’d see directly into the bedroom that he had shared with Susan – he’d built it so they’d have a clear view of the sea from all the rooms at the front of the house without compromising their privacy. The house was at such a height, though, that anyone who wanted to see through the windows would have to drive up there. That was one of the advantages of such elevation; that, and the view of the coast.

  As Nick stood in front of the house, the scene between Johnny and Rachel instantly came back to him. It was in that exact spot where they’d picnicked and he’d said they’d live here some day when they had the money. It was strange to think that his soul had returned there and done just that, that as Nick he had carried out the wish of his former life.