The Liar's Girl

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  The thing was, Sharon was really Liz’s friend. They played hockey together. I didn’t know Sharon well enough to go along by myself, so Liz flaking out on tonight’s plans left me out of them as well.

  “Go back to sleep for a while,” I said. “I’ll call over in a few hours. You might feel different then—”

  “I won’t.”

  I was about to repeat that I was sure she’d get something at St. John’s in the second round, and that to ignore this first offer, that we’d be laughing about this next week when—

  Beep-beep-beep.

  She’d hung up on me.

  It was only when I turned to go back inside that I realized she’d never asked me how I’d got on.

  * * * * *

  Liz was mostly MIA for the next week. We talked on the phone a couple of times and on Sunday night I did manage to coax her out to go pick up some McDonald’s, but she was sullen and snippy for the whole hour and I was relieved when she dropped me back home.

  It was only then the subject of what course I’d got came up, and the conversation was brief. She said, “So you got English lit, then?” and I said, “Yeah,” and then she started talking about something else.

  The following morning, two girls from our class came into the cafe where I had a summer job helping out in the mornings. We talked about where everyone was headed—one of them was going to Galway, the other had found out months ago that she’d secured a place to do something somewhere in the UK—and what we were wearing to our Debs ball, which was coming up.

  “How come you didn’t go to Sharon’s party?” one of them asked me.

  “Oh …” I didn’t want to say it was because of Liz, because that would be inadvertently revealing that she’d failed to get the college course she wanted and that I wouldn’t go places without her in tow. “Something came up at the last minute. How was it?”

  One of them, Fiona, started laughing. “Brendan Richards drank some insane amount of vodka and went berserk. Didn’t Liz tell you?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Liz?”

  “Yeah. She had, like, a front-row seat for the projectile vomiting. I think some of it even went on her shoes.”

  So Liz had gone to Sharon’s party. Without me. Without even telling me.

  She wasn’t avoiding the world because she hadn’t gotten into St. John’s. She was avoiding me because I had.

  To make matters worse, there was bad news waiting for me at home.

  “This letter came this morning,” my mother said, handing me something official with a St. John’s College logo stamped on it. “They’re saying you never confirmed your campus accommodation offer and now, if you still want it, you’re going to have to go on the waitlist and hope something comes up.”

  I scanned the letter. “What do they mean, never confirmed?”

  Mam frowned. “It says something about an online portal.”

  “I got a message from them, yeah, but I’m sure I clicked ‘confirm.’”

  The doorbell went.

  “You get that,” my mother said. “Give me the letter. I’ll call them and find out what’s going on.”

  It was Liz at the door.

  I’d spent the whole afternoon alternating between being mad at her for going to Sharon’s party without me, and trying to dredge up some sympathy for her because I could imagine how disappointed she must be about not getting to go to St. John’s, and I understood how the last thing she needed on the day she found that out was to be around someone who was celebrating the fact that she was getting to go.

  But the first words out of her mouth were, “Ali, I’m so sorry. I’ve been a right bitch, I know. I know.” And then she swung a pink gift bag out from behind her back. “This is me making up for it.”

  She handed it over.

  It had a handwritten note tied to the handle that said, “College Starter Pack.” Peeking inside, I saw a pair of fluffy socks, a shower cap, a box of Berocca, a box of star-shaped fairy lights, and a framed photo of Liz and me, taken at her birthday party last year.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “Oh, wait.” She reached in and pulled out the photograph. “You won’t be needing this”—her face broke into a wide smile—“because I’ll be there in person!”

  I looked at her blankly, not understanding.

  “I got into St. John’s! I got an offer in the second round. Came through this morning. You were right.”

  “I … Oh, my God. That’s great!”

  We hugged, which was awkward with me holding the gift bag.

  “Sorry for being such a bitch,” Liz said. “I’ve been living for us moving to Dublin. College just wouldn’t be the same without you.”

  I was still wondering how she managed to get over this for the duration of Sharon’s party, but Liz’s moods could change so fast, I didn’t want to initiate a change back right now.

  It was just a party. No big deal. Think of what I’d done to her on holiday. What she’d done for me.

  I could hardly hold this small infraction against her.

  And anyway, now we both had something to celebrate, we could do it together.

  “Not to put a damper on things,” I said, “but I just got a letter from them saying I’ve been waitlisted for campus accommodation. Some issue with my online portal or something.”

  “Well, I’m definitely on the waitlist for it. All second-round-place people are.” Her eyes widened. “Maybe we can just find a place to move in to together? Someplace off campus. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

  “And expensive,” I said. “This is Dublin we’re talking about.”

  “But there’d be two of us, and think of how much we’d each be paying to stay in Halls anyway.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know.” In all my college-days daydreams, I’d lived on campus. I wasn’t sure I was ready for independent living in a capital city. One massive life change at a time, please. “I’m still holding out hope that we’ll both end up in Halls …”

  “Oh, me too,” Liz said. “Me too. But we should probably look at other options, just in case. Go up to Dublin for a weekend, view some places. I mean, it can’t hurt, right? What are you doing Saturday?”

  alison, now

  When my alarm woke me the next morning, my eyes opened to black.

  My own bedroom at home in Breda had a skylight with no blind, ensuring I always woke up to daylight or, if it was still dark outside, at least the amber glow of streetlights. I knew I wasn’t at home then, but for a second I had no idea where I was. Then I remembered: a two-hour drive north in Malone and Shaw’s rental car followed by a bumpy flight from Schiphol, the plane descending into the curve of Dublin Bay just before midnight, the coastline separated from the black sea by tributaries of city lights. Garda uniforms at Passport Control. An assault of Irish accents echoing off the walls in an over-lit Arrivals Hall. Malone steering me past the reception desk at some nondescript chain hotel, my room key in his hand, arrangements already made.

  All the while asking myself why I would agree to return to Dublin.

  Every so often, with a little shock, realizing that I already had.

  I was armed and ready to blame Detective Malone. He’d guilted me into it, made me feel like I’d have those girls’ blood on my hands too if I didn’t fly back here and talk to Will.

  And coming here was the right thing to do. Wasn’t it?

  I’d tossed and turned for most of the night wondering whether it was.

  I hit the silencer on the alarm now, wishing there was a similar button for my brain. It was 8:15 a.m. I rolled over to face the room’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Slivers of gray light were pushing through the gaps in the black-out curtains.

  Sal had sent me a message late last night. She was wondering if I wanted to come over and watch a movie tonight. Normally, I used Sundays for
boring stuff like laundry and oven-cleaning, and Sal used them to drag Dirk around various home décor stores against his will. I thought I was safe. But of course this Sunday, of all Sundays, she wanted to meet up. Murphy’s Law. I didn’t know how to explain why I was suddenly in Dublin, so instead I replied saying I had cramps and that me and a box of codeine tablets were going to spend the day in bed together.

  I felt awful about lying to her, especially when a night spent on her couch talking and laughing our way through a movie until we’d both lost track of the plot sounded like just what I needed right now.

  I showered, then pulled on the clothes I thought most suitable for the occasion: black jeans, a white T-shirt, my black leather jacket, and a huge, woolly scarf. Plain and dark. Layers, an armor of sorts. I applied the same light makeup I did every day and opted for glasses over contacts. Didn’t bother with jewelry or perfume, or much hairstyling. The last time I’d been to the hairdressers I’d gone sun-kissed blonde and had it chopped clear off my shoulders; it had just grown back to the point where I could pull it into a ponytail. I did that, looked in the mirror, then took it down again.

  Trying to ignore the undercurrents running beneath every step.

  What will he think when he sees me? What do I want him to think?

  Why do I care?

  Just before I left the room, I pulled the curtains back. It had been dark and raining when they’d dropped me off, so I had no idea where in the city I was. I’d avoided looking out the car’s windows, uninterested in whatever was out there. I’d long been inoculated against nostalgia for my brief Dublin life.

  Now, the sun was shining and the street outside quiet. Three cars queued at a set of traffic lights. The footpath in front of the hotel, slick with rain and sodden leaves, was deserted but for a handful of pedestrians. Joggers and tourists, it looked like. Across the street, a line of towering trees, their bristlelike branches bare. And beyond them, the blue of the sky reflected in its mirror-still waters, was the canal.

  The canal.

  Five minutes later instead of, “Good morning,” I greeted Malone with, “I have a canal view.”

  We’d met in the lobby, as arranged. He was dressed casually in jeans, Converse, and a navy-blue rain jacket so similar to the one he’d been wearing yesterday I thought they must be standard Garda issue. His hair was wet. One white earbud was tucked in his left ear, the other one dangling casually from the matching white cord, the cord disappearing inside his jacket. He was holding a takeaway cup of what smelled like coffee with what might have been Mike scrawled on the side, which he promptly handed to me.

  He looked at me. “You have a what?”

  “My room,” I said. “It overlooks the canal.”

  “Everything around here does. We needed you near the station, and this was the closest place that had a room on a few hours’ notice on a Saturday night.” A pause. “That’s all.”

  His unmarked car was parked by the valet stand. The air was warmer than I’d been expecting, and I immediately began to feel clammy and uncomfortable. Once inside the car, I lost the scarf, folding it in my lap.

  For the first five minutes of the drive, I silently drank my coffee and let the noise of a local radio station fill the car while the Dublin suburbs flew past outside. Georgian terraces lining busy thoroughfares gave way to red-brick mansions on quieter, leafy streets, which then gave way to newly built three-bed semis and apartment blocks. Nothing more than three or four stories high; in most places, the trees reached above the rooftops. We passed a strip of shopfronts where tacky, plastic signage competed for attention, and what looked like a restaurant with a large number of chrome tables and chairs outside. I admired their optimism. The rain may have stopped, but the sky promised it’d be back again soon.

  I recognized nothing from before, but still I felt the pull of the past. From the green of the street signs, the as Gaeilge translation in italics beneath the English names. The license plates on the other cars—every one had a code representing an Irish county, and guessing them had kept me amused in the back seat on many a long drive as a child. Even the voices on the radio, all those Irish accents …

  My chest tightened and the sensation brought back one particular memory with a cold, sharp shock: what it was like to have a panic attack. It’d been years, but there was no mistaking the early warning signs. I knew that if I didn’t get control, dizziness, shaking hands, and shallow breaths would come next. I inhaled as deeply as I could, held it in while I counted to five. Imagined my pulse slowing. Let the breath out. Did it again.

  By the fifth time I started to feel a little better, like I was edging my way back into my body.

  I felt Malone looking at me. “Are you all right?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I looked at him. “If I said no, would you turn the car around?”

  “Yes.”

  A van overtook us on the right side, blaring its horn, clearly unaware that this was a stealth Garda car.

  I asked if Will knew that I was coming.

  “We haven’t told him, no.” Malone had two hands on the steering wheel. No rings, digital watch. “But we were only there Friday. By now he’ll know he has a visitor coming, so he’ll probably put two and two together.”

  “Won’t he just think it’s his mother, or something?”

  “Not on a Sunday, no. There’s no visiting hours on Sundays. And, ah, I don’t think his parents visit very much, actually.”

  I’d only met Will’s parents once. It hadn’t gone well. They’d both struck me as cold, unpleasant people. The opposite of Will.

  Or at least, Will as I knew him at the time.

  I mean, thought I knew him.

  Malone asked me what had changed my mind.

  “It’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?” I turned to look out the passenger window. “Will I be alone with him in there?”

  “No. There’ll be a member of CPH staff in the room with you, and a Garda right outside.”

  “Is it, like, through glass or …?”

  “There’ll be no barrier. We’ve commandeered some kind of meeting room, I’m told. Lots of tables and chairs. You’ll sit at one opposite him. The staff member will be on the other side of the room, close enough for you to feel safe but far away enough to permit a private conversation. Well, as private as Will gets to have. Semi-private, I suppose you’d say.”

  “But don’t you need to hear what he says?”

  “All that’s happening here, Alison, is you are visiting a patient. We can’t use the facility’s visitors’ room because we’re trying to keep this quiet, and we’ve had to get special permission from the hospital director to do this on a Sunday, but other than that, it’s just a normal visit.”

  “Can anyone visit him, then?”

  “All visitors have to be approved by the hospital director, just like in prison.”

  I saw a sign for the Central Psychiatric Hospital. We must be close.

  I felt like I was hurtling toward something at full speed but had no idea how to pull on the brakes now.

  “Why did he ask for this? I mean, why me? Why not just tell you guys what he knows?”

  “I think he just wants to see you,” Malone said. “Whatever he knows—if he knows anything—it’s a bargaining chip. Leverage. So he says, yeah, I’ll give the information to you, but I’m only going to tell it to Alison.”

  “What if he doesn’t know anything?”

  “At least we checked.”

  “But why would he want to see me?”

  “We’re about to find out.”

  The car slowed, then turned left into a large driveway that sloped uphill. We were facing two towering concrete pillars, between which hung a foreboding set of metal gates. Chain-link fencing filled the spaces between the railings, spiky razor wire curled acros
s its top. Imposing gray walls stretched into the sky and away from the gates on either side. A sign with red lettering warned that all visitors must report to reception.

  As Malone nudged the nose of the car forward, the metal gates began to shudder, then slowly retract. We moved through them and up the driveway, until we reached a nondescript, three-story concrete block. The only clue as to what was housed inside were the metal grates fixed over every window and the heavy, gun-metal gray gate blocking access to the front door.

  All I could think was, Will lives in there. He’s not allowed to leave. This is the extent of his world.

  I remembered the spring of youth and limitless potential I’d seen—thought I’d seen—in him back in our St. John’s College days, the bright, happy future I’d imagined for us, the one I thought we’d spend together.

  How did we end up here?

  I’d had ten years to think about it and I still didn’t know. Probably because I mostly tried not to think about it.

  Malone parked as close as he could and cut the engine. “You ready?”

  No. “Yes.”

  We got out and started toward the entrance.

  The tightness in my chest came back. I felt strange, as if at any moment everything in my field of vision might start to warp and slide away, as if it wasn’t real, as if I wasn’t. It all seemed far away, like I was seeing reality through a pair of binoculars.

  Why am I doing this?

  A buzzing noise, a clang of metal against metal. It was dark, then bright with florescent light. Yellow floor tiles, curling up at the edges. Hospital smells, rushing into my senses: bleach, stale air, antiseptic.

  Because you might manage to save a life this time, instead of being responsible for the taking of five because you were too stupid, too naïve, too in love to see that the boy in your bed was a murderous psychopath.

  We descended stairs into a long corridor whose pockmarked walls were the color of melted butter. Came to a security guard on a folding chair outside a thick, heavy door. A click and a beep. Another metallic clang. Down another corridor. Around a corner.

  Malone said, “Here we are.”