With Our Blessing

by Jo Spain

  Noreen tucked her handkerchief back into her sleeve, the same manic smile on her lips.

  Had her son noticed the illness? Laura wondered. Or had he been blinded by pity and love?

  ‘I would have killed both of them, if I hadn’t found my family. It took me on a different path. I lost years of my son’s life. I can’t lose any more. Those nuns sat on the high moral ground, brides of Christ, and looked down at us as if we were prostitutes. Well, they were the whores. Satan’s whores.’

  Laura flinched.

  How many times had Noreen repeated those words to a vulnerable Ellie? Was Ellie unstable before she met Noreen, or had the woman manipulated the young woman’s emotions to the point of insanity?

  Noreen sniffed. ‘Anyway, I imagine you can charge me, but can you make it stick? I didn’t kill anyone. I thought the girl was a fantasist. That’s what I’ll say in court.’

  Laura felt rage surging through her.

  ‘So you think you’re going to get your revenge and the happy ending?’ she challenged Noreen. ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’

  The other woman looked as if she was about to reply, but didn’t. Instead, she smiled enigmatically and twirled one of the Christmas tree ornaments.

  Laura, disturbed, looked at the decoration.

  It was a globe hanging on a piece of red ribbon. Inside was a little grey house, snow falling all around it.

  Chapter 57

  Ellie had moved to one of the window sills. She held her hand out and laughed when snowflakes landed in her palm.

  She was so beautiful, Ray thought, and his heart lurched. A snow princess. But now he saw her in a new light. Instead of a confident, attractive woman, he saw what she had once been – a frightened little girl, dragged from pillar to post, abused, mistreated, abandoned.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it.

  ‘Aren’t you going to get that? It’s good to talk.’ She laughed again.

  He shook his head.

  ‘You look so sad, Ray.’ Her smile changed to a pout. ‘What’s the matter? Isn’t it beautiful here? The snow . . .’ She perched on the sill now and caught some more. Her laughter was as pure as the icy flakes. ‘It’s just perfect. How cold it must have been for the girls all those years ago, though. You know that’s something the nuns used to do as a punishment? They’d leave the windows up all night so the girls would be freezing.’ She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself.

  ‘Ellie,’ Ray said softly. ‘You’re cold. Come away from the window.’

  ‘No. I don’t think I will, Ray. You want me to come over there so you can warm me up, do you? Tut tut.’ She winked at him, coquettishly.

  He recoiled at the tone of her voice. Instead of flirtation, now he heard a forced sexualization. He took a step towards her.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, her voice normal again. She tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘I know you know.’

  He stopped, inhaled deeply.

  ‘I don’t know how, but I saw something register on your face downstairs. I knew you’d figure it out eventually. Maybe not you, but Tom. He’s renowned, isn’t he? So handsome, too. I like the older men. Like Emmet. So easy to manipulate. Tom, not so much. I researched everything I could about him but I hoped that I could do what I had to before he found me out.

  ‘And then at some point, I started to think, maybe they won’t figure it out. You were so intent on it being one of those nuns. I really thought my luck was in. And I wasn’t finished.’

  Ray took another step.

  ‘Tom was on to something,’ he said. ‘He told me to keep an eye on you and a couple of others. I realized he was right when I saw you downstairs. I’d seen a photo of your mother in one of the boxes earlier.’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked shocked, upset. ‘I didn’t see any photos. I went through lots of those boxes. I had to stop when the two nuns started going into those rooms at night. I had no idea what they were up to. Fair play to them, I guess. A bit too late, though. Laura said more or less the same when Concepta helped find her aunt’s file. How considerate the nuns are . . . now.

  ‘So, you know something I don’t know. You know what my mother looked like when she was young. I don’t. I only ever saw her in the hospital, and she wasn’t herself then.’

  ‘The first time I saw the picture, I knew there was something in it speaking to me,’ Ray said. ‘I didn’t know what it was until I passed you in the hall earlier. Your face . . . your mother looked like she’d lost something. Sad, but still so beautiful. You’re always smiling, so I didn’t see it straight away, but downstairs you had that same look. When she smiled, she must have looked like your twin.’

  ‘When she smiled,’ Ellie said. ‘I can’t imagine that was too often. You know she died in a psychiatric hospital? I didn’t go in to see her much. It was too hard. She didn’t know who I was. I tried so hard to make her understand. When I read her diary, I knew she’d been in one of these places and then I found out she’d had to give me up.

  ‘It’s funny, because before that, I hated her. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to find her. I fought so hard to make a good life for myself, and she had given me nothing. I didn’t know single women were forced to give up their babies, back then . . .’ Ellie paused. ‘They say a tiny percentage of people are adopted, but a huge percentage of adopted people end up in institutions. We have addictive personalities, apparently. Always trying to find something to fill the hole inside us. Believe me, the void in me is huge, Ray.

  ‘The nuns claim they were doing us a favour. It’s the only trauma you’re supposed to be grateful for. You’re supposed to be thankful for your adoptive parents. You’ve no idea what I had to go through in my life. Oh!’

  Compassion filled Ray’s face. Ellie looked at him with a dawning realization.

  ‘You do know. You seem to have figured out a lot about me, Ray. Do you always do this much research on potential girlfriends?’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, sadly.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t make jokes. You don’t have to. I understand.’

  ‘Understand? Are you kidding? You understand what it’s like to be ripped from your own mother? A pain so bad that it drives her insane and eventually kills her? To find out that you’re the result of rape – and not just any kind of rape, but the rape by a priest of a young girl in his care? And to spend your childhood being pulled from one house to the next and being labelled trouble because you can’t settle and won’t stay quiet when the bad man hurts you?

  ‘My my, I underestimated you. It seems you have no end of talents if you can understand all that. I was only seven when my foster father started raping me. I didn’t even know what he was doing. Like mother like daughter, he used to say.’

  Ellie’s tears flowed freely now.

  Ray’s chest ached looking at her. He wanted to put his arms around her. He didn’t see a killer. He saw a little girl, wounded beyond repair. He saw a daughter and her mother, destroyed.

  ‘You told me you had parents,’ he said, trying to stay focused. ‘I asked you if they minded what you did.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m an excellent liar, Ray. Honestly, you’d think you would have figured that out by now. Always use a smidgeon of truth, though. I had good foster parents later on. They were lovely people, and I was with them until I went to college. They’re very proud of me. I’ve no real family, though. When I found Margaret, I researched her background to see if I had any relatives. There’s no one. I didn’t bother with that pervert. There’s no one left, Ray. I come from nothing.’

  Unconsciously, he was walking towards her.

  ‘No,’ she shouted.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, halting abruptly.

  She shook her head. ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Ray. You’ve shown me a lot of kindness. I know you’re a good man. I don’t want you to come closer because I’m trying to protect you.’
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br />   She reached down to the floor beside the cupboard and the object that lay there.

  He saw the glint before he realized what it was. A knife.

  His head snapped back.

  She looked up at him calmly, the tears no longer flowing. ‘You think I wouldn’t use this, Ray? I already have.’

  He stared at her, then at the knife. ‘That was the—?’

  ‘Yes. Attracta. She was the one who took me from my mother. I have no memory of it. Obviously.’ She snorted. ‘I was only a few minutes old. My mother swore revenge on her. A woman who was here at the time told me everything. How my mother would literally repeat that over and over, that she would kill the people who had hurt her and taken me. So I had to do it for her, you understand? I had no choice. You want to know how I did it?’

  Ellie was holding the knife up in front of her, its tip resting precariously against the index finger on her other hand.

  Ray shook his head. ‘There’s time enough for that, Ellie. Please, come downstairs with me. We’ll get you a drink and you can warm up.’

  In his head, the words ‘you have the right to remain silent’ repeated themselves.

  ‘No, Ray, I need to tell you now.’ Her voice was desperate.

  He didn’t know what to do. A confession up here was useless. They were on their own. But she’d started talking already.

  ‘It was Emmet McDonagh who showed me how to find her, actually. Do you know he’s adopted, too? He had no luck finding his mother, though. Too long ago, the poor man. I told him I’d no interest, just to get him off my case, but I was already searching. I did what he wouldn’t do – I hacked into adoption records and found my original birth certificate. Do you know my mother gave me the name Elisa? It was the only thing she was allowed to give me.

  ‘I wrote to this convent then. To Attracta. I asked her about my mother. She said there were no records left and she didn’t remember Margaret Downes. Lies, Ray. I knew she was lying, so I broke in here to prove it. I found the records.

  ‘When I met Noreen Boyle and realized what had happened to my mother, I tried to do things right. I rang Kilcross garda station. I used my real surname. I’m Lis Downes, you see. Lis was my name growing up, but I’ve been calling myself Ellie since I started college. I wanted to leave Lis behind.’

  She sighed. ‘The guards paid no attention to me. Then I rang the priest and told him I knew. He just roared at me and hung up. So I started watching the convent and his house. I even rented the house next door. I’m Catherine Farrell. A woman of many names.’

  She giggled, then composed herself. ‘I had to break into the convent a few times to familiarize myself with Attracta’s routine, but all I had to do with the priest was befriend him. I was always careful to make sure no one else saw me, but Father Seamus and I became quite the best of pals. I wore a red wig as part of my get-up. It was a lucky pick. He loved the redheads.’

  Her face showed the distaste Ray felt.

  ‘He was vile. I’d rap on his back door when he was there alone on the pretext of going in for a cuppa. I told him I was a famous writer hiding out incognito. Said I couldn’t handle dealing with the plebs in the village but his intellect stimulated me. Played up to his arrogance. He’d be all flirtatious . . . disgusting. No idea who I was. His own daughter.’

  She covered her mouth, looked like she was going to vomit.

  Ray put his hands behind his head and groaned. He felt so angry he wanted to smash something.

  ‘I was furious on Wednesday when he wasn’t in the bloody house. There was no pattern to those squalid little visits to Dublin. In the end, it didn’t matter because Emmet sent me down, like I knew he would. I appealed to Mark’s ego, told him this was just a kidnap scene and his many skills were needed in Dublin. I’d never have been able to prevent him spotting things. Jack leapt at the chance to come down, and he’s so bloody useless I knew he wouldn’t cause me any problems.

  ‘Anyway, I went to the priest’s house yesterday. I climbed over the back wall and banged on the back door for ages, but I had to ring him in the end. I was so nervous with you standing out front. I told him it was urgent. He arrived down after a couple of minutes, all flustered. He’d been up in his dirty little hovel, but he still found time for little old me next door.’

  She smiled. ‘You can’t imagine how exhilarating it was. I told him I had something I’d been meaning to tell him, as I twirled my lovely red hair. By the way, those footprints Tom found. I borrowed Jack’s boots. They’re in the back of the van.

  ‘So, priesty-beasty was a bit on edge, but being up in that attic must have got him excited. God, he was thrilled when I leaned into his ear. And I whispered, “You know how you were saying I remind you of someone? Well, actually, I’m your daughter.” He was so shocked, he just stared at me as I rammed the needle into his neck.

  ‘He could barely react, standing there, clawing at me. He scratched me a little.’ She pointed at the bottom of her neck, under her sweater. ‘I tried to get everything out from under his fingernails, but you lot were standing there looking at me. I watched you out the window for a minute, you know. I thought you were looking right at me at one point.’

  ‘Does the glass fragment Emmet found in the hall table have your DNA on it, too?’ Ray asked.

  She frowned. ‘I didn’t know about that. I don’t know how I missed it. Stupid, stupid girl.’ She shook her head vigorously, before rolling up the sleeve of her sweater.

  Ray saw cuts dotted all over her right arm.

  ‘Hazard of the job,’ she said, her voice light. ‘Emmet grabbed my shoulder earlier, I thought I’d scream with the bloody pain.’

  ‘Why did you cut out Attracta’s tongue?’ Even as Ray asked the question, he couldn’t believe he was directing it to Ellie. ‘Why the carving and the crucifixion?’

  Ellie sighed. ‘I just wanted her to say sorry. I was going to kill her anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered, but I wanted her to apologize. But she got quite fatalistic when she realized she was going to die. She went from being frightened to laughing at me. To laughing at my mother. When I told her I’d been abused as a child, do you know what she said? “Oh, really?” Like I was making it up. You can’t imagine what I felt when I heard that.’

  ‘No, I can,’ Ray said. ‘I imagine you felt just like your mother did when she told Attracta that Father Seamus had raped her, and wasn’t believed.’

  Ellie nodded emphatically. ‘Yes. I was furious. So I told her what I was going to do to her. I told her she wasn’t a bride of Christ, that she was a whore – worse than a whore, because she’d been like a pimp for that man, giving him access to all those young girls. Her and that Theresa bitch who was in charge at the time. God knows how many he raped. And when the girls reported him, Attracta and the others told them they were liars.

  ‘The priest did her favours. Got her elected as head of this snake pit. It was meant to be the other one, Clare. I found Clare’s diary, too, when I went through their bedrooms. Egotistical maniac, that one. She was another one responsible for taking the babies away.’

  Ray was terrified. Ellie’s voice wavered between maniacal and light, happy and sad. It was as if there were different people speaking out of her mouth.

  ‘I told Attracta I’d kill her and crucify her like the martyr she thought she was. I said I’d carve those words into her. I slapped her to make her listen to me, but she just laughed. So I said I’d nail her to a tree where perverts went and I hoped they’d vomit on her when they found her. I guess you kind of did.’

  ‘Ellie!’ Ray exclaimed.

  ‘Sorry. Bad taste. The point is, nothing scared her. You know what she did? She spat at me. So I pulled out her tongue and cut it off. It was so easy, you wouldn’t believe. Just a quick slice. Then she was scared. Jesus, was she scared. She must have seen that look so often on the faces of the girls in her care. And then she realized I was going to make good on my promises.’

  Ellie was composed now. Her voice was sad, but cal
m. ‘I held the knife to her heart and just plunged it in. I stabbed her again and again. It wasn’t necessary, but I was so angry.’ Ellie’s eyes glazed over as she relived the moment, her face horrifically intent and satisfied.

  Ray shivered.

  ‘I wanted people to know what she’d done,’ she continued. ‘That’s why I left her in the park – that, and I wanted to make sure I could be down here to deal with the priest and the other nun. I couldn’t rely on being “Catherine” again, not with you lot here.

  ‘That’s all there is to it. I mean, there’s lots more, but I think you’re big enough to figure it all out after. You know, I am a little sad that we won’t get to go on our date. You’re very handsome. We’d have made beautiful children.’ She grimaced. ‘But I’m too damaged for you, Ray. I was damaged before I did what I did. Now . . . I’ve killed three people. There was a sort of symmetry to all their deaths, even though only the nun’s went to plan. Attracta was left exposed. Seamus was hidden away like his disgusting obsession. And Clare – you’ve yet to find her, but she’s as frozen now as her heart was towards all those girls who asked for her help.’

  Ray edged towards her.

  She had placed one leg out the window.

  He shook his head. He knew now what she planned to do, and why she’d felt the urge to confess.

  ‘Stop, Ellie,’ he said. ‘I can’t let you do it. You’ve done terrible things but I understand why you did them. And if I understand, others will, I promise you. You need help. But I will be there for you.’

  He didn’t want to say he’d found Sister Clare in time. He’d no idea how she’d react to that. He’d gone from wondering what was keeping the ambulance for the nun to praying that it wouldn’t have its sirens blaring when it arrived.

  ‘Oh, Ray. I have to do this. It’s over. I know, when people find out what happened to me, I won’t go to jail. I’ll go to an institution. Do you think I can go somewhere like that after what happened to my mother? You see how beautiful I am? My mother looked like me once. Noreen told me, and you said it yourself. But she didn’t look like me when I met her. She didn’t even have her hair . . .’