‘Not to worry. Must be a mix-up. Sorry for waking you. He’ll be here in a minute . . . Of course I’ll let you know.’
She hung up and, abandoning all hope of going to sleep, got out of bed again and went to reboil the kettle, just to give herself something to do. She bumped into the chair on her way, dislodging it slightly, the ends of its legs leaving darker indentations on the light pink carpet. She would curl up in it when she’d made her tea, wrap her hands around the mug, trying to keep warm while she stared out of the window. Portrait of a mother going out of her fucking mind.
There had been only one time in the last horrific year when Eileen could truly say her son had been happy. She had been on a night out, a leaving do from work. She hadn’t wanted to go, but Alan had encouraged her. He wasn’t thinking of her, she thought belatedly. Rather, he wanted a rare night in the hotel room on his own. So, she’d gone and, to her complete surprise, had enjoyed the evening. It wasn’t the wine, she’d had only two glasses, it was the freedom of being out and away, the joy of spending a few hours talking about soap operas, inconsequential, fluffy, non-stressful things that had lightened her mood. Her good form lasted as she caught the last bus and stayed with her as she rose in the lift and got out at their floor. As she walked down the corridor towards their room she heard what she thought was a television, then realized it was Alan playing his guitar, out loud the way he never did any more. Quietly she slid the key card in and let herself into the room. Her son was sitting on the bed, head bent over the neck of the instrument, the light from the streetlamp outside the only illumination. He was playing a tune she had never heard before, a jaunty, lilting thing, and as she watched him, his fingers danced on the fretboard. As his other hand began to strum faster and faster, the very air around him hummed. He threw his head back then and grinned at her – he had been aware of her presence all the time, she realised – and they stayed like that for a moment as the music filled the room. The smile on Alan’s face was both his father’s and utterly his own.
The rap on the door came three times before they heard it. The night manager was sorry, he said, but one of the guests had complained. If it was up to him – but it wasn’t, and she knew it, and Alan knew it as his fingers stalled and he pushed his guitar back into its case. He shoved it into the back of the wardrobe, the case clanging against the cheap plastic-covered wood. She hadn’t seen him play it since.
At half past four Eileen rang the guards. It was late enough now, she thought, for them to take her seriously, for her not to come across as just another over-anxious mother who hadn’t understood how quickly her son had grown up. The young man on the phone was friendly enough and asked if she wanted to come in and talk to someone. She was afraid to leave, she said, in case Alan came back in the meantime and she missed him. ‘Sure, come in in the morning,’ the guard said, his voice soft and reassuring. ‘Although he may well be back by then.’ Eileen knew he wouldn’t, but she settled back to wait anyway, and stayed on her chair, looking out of the window as the night filtered into day.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ah, here now, this was going a bit far. Daly, the poor bastard, was so het up about his kid that he was imagining things. Thinking he could hear the baby crying in an empty doctor’s surgery, for God’s sake. It was absolutely ridiculous. But, thought Philip Flynn, seeing as they’d come this far, he might as well humour him. He took a step back from the door of the surgery, then looked up and down the street. Yeah, sure, he could hear something. It could be a kid crying – could be a cat mewing for that matter. There was no guarantee it was coming from inside the building, even. He turned his attention to the locked and bolted door again. The place looked exactly what it was supposed to be: a surgery closed for the afternoon. There was nothing strange about it. But Daly shoved him aside and flattened his ear against the door.
‘It’s Anna. I know it is. I’d know her anywhere.’
Deciding he’d swing for Boyle when they finally did find her, Flynn gave Anna’s father what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
‘Why don’t I take a look around so, yeah? I’ll see is there anyone out the back way.’
Without waiting for a response, Flynn headed down the lane at the side of the surgery. The ache in his side wasn’t the only thing that made him choose his steps carefully. The lane was much grubbier than the main street and he shuddered as he spotted a used condom lying beside a couple of scrunched-up Dutch Gold tins. Last of the true romantics. The lane opened into another street at the back of the shops, but this too was deserted. He moved forwards, craning his neck to see if he could spot which building housed the doctor’s surgery. Then his foot struck something on the ground. He looked down. Not another beer can, anyway. He bent over and frowned at a plastic baby cup, a fairly new one. And then a sound wafted through the air and he realized, with a sickening thump, that Daly hadn’t been imagining things after all.
That wasn’t a cat.
‘That’s hers! It’s Anna’s cup – it has her name on it! Look!’
Daly had reached his side without him noticing and, before Flynn could stop him, he had picked up the cup and pointed to the neatly printed sticker: Anna Daly, it said, in curly black writing.
‘The childminder makes us label everything. Oh, Jesus Christ, Philip – what’s going on?’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Eileen, 2014
Eileen went to the Garda station at 8 a.m. She could have gone much earlier, of course – she hadn’t slept at all. She had lain down on the bed for a while around five, but got up again ten minutes later when the pressure of the unshed tears at the back of her eyes became too much to bear. She spent the rest of the night staring out at the city, willing it to send her son home to her. But she held off on going to the guards until a respectable hour: she was afraid that if she went too early they would not take her seriously. And they had to take her seriously. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if they didn’t.
In the end the female officer behind the desk was kind to her, which nearly destroyed her.
‘Of course you’re worried – you must be exhausted. Why don’t you come into the room here and tell me what’s happened?’
Nerves shredded from tension and her sleepless night, Eileen had burst into tears at the kind words. She was barely aware of her surroundings as the young woman led her into a small, windowless room, where three chairs had been placed haphazardly around a cheap melamine table.
‘Would you like a cup of tea? Sugar? Milk?’
‘Just milk, please,’ she managed, and only drew a full breath when the young officer left the room. She had to hold it together. After all, this was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To be taken seriously, to have a search for Alan started straight away? But the woman’s obvious concern only heightened her own fears. Her boy was missing. Alan was missing. Anything could have happened to him. And Eileen was increasingly convinced that something terrible had.
The guard re-entered the room, placed a Styrofoam cup on the table and slid it towards her.
‘There you go now. I can’t guarantee it tastes decent, but it’s hot. Do you feel ready to have a chat now?’
Eileen picked up the cup and took a tentative sip. The tea was like dishwater, but the very act of swallowing calmed her, which had no doubt been the intention. The officer waited patiently, sipping from a bottle of water. Finally, Eileen dragged her hands across her face and gave her a watery smile.
‘I’m sorry, I was up all night. I think it just all caught up with me.’
‘That’s okay.’
The guard had dark hair, pulled back in a messy bun. There was something wholesome about her, Eileen thought, like a Rose of Tralee contestant from the 1970s, or her late father’s fantasy of what a female garda should look like. She looked far too young to be in charge of anything as important as finding Alan, but she was the best hope Eileen had.
‘I’m just going to take a fe
w details, okay?’
The woman uncapped her pen and gave Eileen a brisk but warm smile.
‘Tell me a bit about Alan: what age he is, what he looks like.’
Eileen closed her eyes for a moment.
‘He’s seventeen. He has blue eyes and dark hair. He’s growing a beard.’
He’s seventeen, he has blue eyes and dark hair and he’s growing a beard. He’s my only child. He’s the only person in the world who matters to me. He started needing to shave when he turned fourteen and when he asked me if that was early or late or just normal I couldn’t answer him. My own father was dead years at that stage and we had no one else to ask. I found him scraping at his face with the razor I used for my legs and he gave himself such a long deep graze on the chin that he didn’t leave the house for three days. But it didn’t leave a scar. He has a beautiful face. He hates it when I tell him that, so I don’t say it any more. But it’s true.
‘No, no scars or anything like that. Nothing unusual. He’s five foot eleven.’
He’s five foot eleven, but he looks shorter because he doesn’t stand up straight. He started slouching after he went through a growth spurt at the age of thirteen. I used to walk behind him, poking him in the back and telling him to straighten up, but I was only embarrassing him so I stopped. I’m hoping he’ll find his full height again when he’s a bit older. He’ll be a gorgeous-looking man. When he gets through this awkward stage.
‘And what was he wearing when you last saw him?’
‘I’m not sure, I’m afraid. Jeans, probably, and I think his grey hoody is missing. I wasn’t – I wasn’t in the room when he left.’
I wasn’t in the room because we’d had a blazing row, yet another horrible, heated row and I’d gone into the bathroom to give him some space and time to cool down. That’s all we have, a bathroom and a bedroom. There is nowhere else to go. So it’s no surprise that he wanted to go out last night. But he’s never stayed away the whole night before. His name is Alan and he is seventeen and he has never stayed out all night before. I’ve never not known where he is before.
‘He has never done anything like this before.’
‘It’s okay, Miss Delaney, you’re doing great. Take a moment, okay?’
Eileen looked at the guard and realized she was crying again. She blew her nose and dredged her memory for more details. They wanted a photograph and she emailed the one she had on her phone, the one she had taken the previous year of Alan playing guitar. She thought she saw the guard smile when she looked at it. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? That she connected with him in some way?
The woman scribbled something else in her notebook and then looked straight at Eileen.
‘Does he go online much?’
‘Yes. A normal amount, I suppose.’
Of course Alan went online all the time. Didn’t everyone? Mostly to play games against fellas from school, chaps he knew in real life anyway. Or so he told her. He sat in the internet café across the street for hours every evening. Eileen hated the look of it, a small dark cave with a sign outside offering money-changing facilities, and inside, rows of silent tap-tapping men, their faces green in the reflection of the screens. You wouldn’t trust the kind of fella you’d meet in a place like that. But she had to let him go in there. What option did she have? There was no WiFi in the hotel and she couldn’t afford for him to keep topping up his phone.
The guard nodded and made another note.
‘And does he use social media? Have you checked his accounts this morning?’
Eileen looked at her blankly.
‘He uses Facebook, a little. I’m his friend on it, but he doesn’t go there much. A few posts when he goes to the cinema, that sort of thing. Here . . .’
She pulled out her own phone, tapped at the screen, brought up his page. It was about as bland as you could imagine, with an old school photo as his profile, nothing in the header picture. The last entry said he’d been at the cinema in Parnell Street a month before.
The guard nodded calmly.
‘We’ll get on to it. By the way – is there someone at home now? In case he phones there, or comes back?
Eileen swallowed, but there was no way to fudge the truth.
‘I – we don’t have a home. At the moment. We’re on a list. We’ve been living in a hotel for the past six months. I asked the girl on the desk this morning to call me if she sees him . . .’
Her voice trailed off as she saw a tiny flicker cross the guard’s face and imagined she knew what she was thinking. Ah, a homeless kid. That was a whole different story. Eileen’s temper flared.
‘It’s not what you’re thinking! Alan’s a great kid – we’ve just had a few tough years, that’s all. It’s not, like, sleeping-on-the-streets homeless, we just . . .’
But what was it if it wasn’t that? And what was Alan, anyway, if he wasn’t just another homeless kid causing trouble?
Her voice failed and she was left staring at the guard while the woman wrote another few words, then closed the notebook and smiled at her across the table, too brightly.
‘He hasn’t been missing very long and there’s a strong chance he’ll turn up soon. That’s the good news. But he’s under eighteen and you say this is out of character. So we will put a number of procedures in place.’
A memory flashed across Eileen’s mind, other parents, on the news, other terrified, desperate people.
‘Should I put posters up? You know – you see them on the lampposts. Is that a good idea?’
The guard shrugged.
‘You can if you like. We’ll circulate the photo on our social media accounts, but, yes, certainly if your friends or family want to help out, that’s one way of doing it. And you can share the photo online yourself too, and get others to share it. We find that’s most effective, these days.’
‘I don’t have many friends who can do that.’
There was no point, Eileen decided, in saying otherwise. She needed to be honest now, didn’t she? To give Alan the best chance she could.
‘It’s just the two of us.’
‘Okay, then.’
The guard sighed and put down her pen. When she spoke again she seemed older than Eileen, capable and in charge.
‘Look, he’s seventeen. He’s not legally an adult yet, but he probably thinks he is, am I right?’
Eileen allowed herself a flicker of a smile and the guard returned it.
‘All I can tell you is, this happens more than you think. I know he’s your son and you’re up the walls worrying about him but it happens. Seventeen-year-old fellas think they’re the bee’s knees and the one thing they don’t think about is their parents and what they might or might not be thinking. Do you understand what I’m getting at?’
Eileen nodded, but that description didn’t sound like Alan. She frowned.
‘So have I been wasting my time, coming here?’
The guard shook her head.
‘Not at all, Miss Delaney. You’re clearly worried and that’s perfectly understandable. Your son is still a schoolboy, no matter how grown-up he thinks he is! You’ve done the right thing. All I’m saying to you is, you hear some dreadful stories, and I’m sure you’re thinking of many of them right now. But there are also the stories you don’t hear. Many seventeen-year-olds wander back in the next day, hung-over, a bit remorseful, looking for a feed and their bed. There’s as much chance that Alan is one of them as . . . well, that anything else has happened. You’ve done everything you can, and you’ve given me loads of information to be going on with. I can see how worried you are. Even if he shows up in the next few hours – and he may well do that, lads of his age tend to get over whatever is bothering them when they’re hungry – don’t ever regret coming in here. That’s what we’re here for. And in the meantime I’d advise you to ring around his friends, get the word out that you’re looki
ng for him. You know what teenagers are like – it won’t take long for one of them to find him, tell him he’ll be in trouble if he doesn’t call you. Honestly, now, you have to trust me. Nine times of out ten the fellas just stroll in the next afternoon and they don’t even know people were worried about them.’
And the tenth time? Eileen wanted to say. But the young guard, Della she’d said her name was, had been so nice to her and had taken her so seriously that she was afraid of hurting her feelings. Instead she nodded and conjured up a smile from somewhere and thanked her for her trouble. Told her she’d head home – there was that word again – and they would contact each other if there was any news.
When Della did call, shortly after two o’clock, Eileen heard a difference in her tone straight away. There was a new seriousness to it now, and a layer of sorrow. She had some information, she told her. But before they talked, did Eileen have anyone with her? Was there someone she could call? No, Eileen said, she didn’t and there wasn’t. But please, Della, tell me anyway. Anything would be better than knowing nothing at all.
Alan had posted a message on Facebook, Della told her, and it had made them a little concerned. But he couldn’t have, Eileen protested, she had checked his page . . . The young guard spoke over her as gently as she could and Eileen felt sweat break out on her forehead. How stupid she’d been. Of course Alan had a second account, a real account, and of course he hadn’t told her about it. Alan barely spoke to her in the real world, why would he talk to her online?
I’m sick of this shit.
The Facebook page was in the name of Alan Ó Dubhshláine, a version of his own name in Irish, and the Facebook post had been made at 2.20 a.m.
I’m sick of this shit.
Did that, Della asked gently, sound like something he would say? Eileen couldn’t deny it. She had heard her son say that sentence, or very similar, several times over the past twelve months. And there was something else, Della said, almost tentatively. Did the name Marc Gilmore mean anything to Eileen?
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