She left him with something to think about while she made her way in the cool night, the vinegar chips making her mouth water. Passing Archie’s flats she saw a boy cycling a familiar bike. She stopped, looking around to make sure he had no one to back him up. The crowd that had been hanging around were now gone, either on to a new destination, inside to their homes or were lingering in the shadows.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hey,’ she heard a voice imitate her four floors up.
Both her and the boy looked up to the source of the sound and then back at each other again.
‘That’s my bike,’ she said.
‘That’s my bike.’
The boy cycled up the kerb to the footpath and circled her. He couldn’t have been older than thirteen yet he intimidated her.
‘If it’s yours, how come I have it?’
‘Because you stole it.’
‘I didn’t steal anything.’ He continued circling her.
‘I left it locked on the railings on Friday. Somebody took it.’ As soon as the words started coming out of her mouth they were immediately repeated by the freckled face boy on the basketball. He was speaking over her so that she could barely concentrate on what she was saying.
‘Must have been a shit lock.’
‘True.’
‘True.’
He went down the kerb to the road, stood up on the pedals and braked hard, causing the back wheel to lift. He did a few more moves in the middle of the road.
‘Do you want it back?’
‘Well, of course. Yes.’
She heard, ‘Well, of course. Yes.’
He stopped abruptly and hopped off the bike. He stood a few yards ahead of her, holding the bike upright by the handlebars. ‘All you had to do was ask.’
She looked around, thinking there must be a catch, that a crew were somewhere ready to jump out at her.
She slowly walked towards him, her burger and chips in hand, the light an orange glow from the streetlight. She reached the bike and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. She took the bike by the handlebars and the boy walked away.
‘Thanks,’ she said, hearing the surprise in her voice.
‘Thanks,’ she heard the patronising echo back at her.
All she had to do was ask.
Kitty was about to get on her bicycle when she had an overwhelming desire to do something. ‘Hey!’ she called out.
‘Hey!’ she heard the voice repeat.
‘You up there on the basketball,’ she said, and there was no response, just a little head appearing above the wall. ‘Want to play?’ she asked.
He didn’t repeat her. The head disappeared instead and she heard his steps coming down the flights of stairs. On the basketball courts beside the block of flats, Kitty was brought back to her youth as she and the young boy battled it out in the dark, neither of them saying a word.
When she got home she was so busy concentrating on carrying her bike up the stairs that she got a fright when a figure at the top appeared in her eyeline.
‘Jesus.’ She dropped the bike, thinking it was Colin Maguire’s crew ready to pounce on her. She might have preferred that because facing her was Richie, evil tabloid journalist. She would have slapped him across the face right then had his eye not resembled a rotten plum, half-closed and purple, and his lip was busted. She wasn’t sure what to say. All of her preprepared nasty comments went out of her head.
‘What happened to you?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know,’ he said bitterly. ‘Just give me my jacket and I’ll get out of here.’
Her blood pumped. ‘Excuse me?’
‘My jacket. I came to collect it. The fella downstairs says you have it.’
‘Your jacket,’ she repeated. ‘And what about an apology? Hello, Kitty, I’m sorry? I’m sorry I was a lying scumbag rat dickhead?’ She didn’t bother trying to control her rage – it all just came tumbling out.
‘Ah, come on, don’t get like this.’ He held his hands up. ‘You know how this game is, you know how it works. I was sent to get the story from you and I did my job.’
‘You did your job? Sleeping with me was part of your job?’ She had her hands on her hips now and was so close to his face she could see her spit landing on his skin with each word. He had the audacity to look slightly embarrassed about that.
‘Look that, that wasn’t … I had too much to drink. That shouldn’t have happened.’
She couldn’t believe her ears. So many times she had played this conversation in her head, how it was supposed to go, her being extremely angry but incredibly eloquent in her insults and also having life-changing effects on Richie, he hanging his head low, so sorry, so very disgusted by his behaviour that he could barely express it, yet he did, in equally eloquent language. But here she was, in reality, listening to somebody who could barely apologise and, when pushed, the only thing he was sorry for was sleeping with her. The sex had been the only decent – well, half-decent – thing that had occurred that night. Her rage was so great she felt her body shaking. She just didn’t want to cry, anything but show this insensitive little shit how much he’d hurt her. She tried to think of the most hurtful thing she could possibly say to him, she racked her brains, conscious of the time that was passing her by as she stared at his beaten face and she realised he was talking.
‘But that was still no reason to send your bodyguard after me. That was ridiculous, Kitty. You’re lucky I didn’t press charges or tell anyone who was responsible for this because, believe me, you could be in a whole lot more trouble.’
‘Bodyguard? What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t “send” anyone after you. I would have been far more than happy to do that to your face myself so you can stop accusing me and start thinking of the numerous amount of people you have managed to insult doing your dirty little job.’
He actually smiled and when his lip stretched and fresh blood drew from the cut, he immediately stopped. ‘First of all, my dirty little job, as you say, is exactly the same as the one you have, so we’re in the same boat, Kitty Logan. And secondly, bodyguard or boyfriend, I’m not sure which, but did our night out get you into trouble, Kitty?’ he said smugly. ‘The last time I annoyed Steve Jackson was when I accidentally knocked his pint over you in the college bar so you can be sure I know exactly who it is that came after me and why.’
‘Steve? Steve did this to you?’
‘Are you going to pretend you didn’t know about that like you pretended you didn’t know a whole pile of other things on Thirty Minutes? I don’t have much more time to waste on this so, my jacket?’
Kitty wanted to punch his other eye but she was so shocked by his behaviour and the revelation that Steve had hit him that she simply unlocked the door, retrieved his jacket from the couch where she’d thrown it and brought it back to him.
‘Never come here again,’ she said firmly as she handed it back.
He gave her an amused look as he slithered down the stairs. ‘Hold on,’ he paused and came back up the stairs. ‘My USB, where is it?’
‘What USB?’
‘It must have been in my pocket. It’s what I’m here for. My novel is on it.’ He suddenly came over all worried little schoolboy as he stood before her, checking the pockets in a panic.
‘Well, I don’t have your USB so perhaps you should ask the dry-cleaners about it. Maybe they put it through the steamer for you.’
He genuinely looked panicked about that. ‘Seriously, have you got it? It’s the only version I have.’
‘Well, you should have backed it up.’ She folded her arms, enjoying watching him suffer.
‘That was my back-up, my computer crashed … shit! Kitty, have you got it?’ he asked desperately. ‘Seriously, have you got it?’
‘No,’ she said firmly, the anger returning. ‘I do not have your stupid novel, nor do I want it. Please do not come one step near me ever again or I’ll call the police,’ and she slammed the door in his face.
She sat at the kitchen table, head in her hands, taking in deep breaths, slowly in and out, going over their conversation so many times that she wanted to open the door and challenge him once again, properly this time.
Finally she had a moment of clarity. She walked to the couch where she had thrown Richie’s jacket before leaving to stay in Sally’s house, and she searched around the floor, then the couch, then, when she didn’t find anything, she felt around the cushions. Her hand hit something. She pulled out the cushion and laughed as she was faced with Richie’s USB.
‘Payback time,’ she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Kitty and Archie sat in the Brick Alley Café in Temple Bar in silence. He held a cup of tea in his hand, she a mug of coffee, and they sat half-turned in their stools, facing one another so that they could see the rest of the café behind them. The mousy woman arrived a little after 8 a.m., on cue as usual, stayed for twenty minutes, drank a pot of tea and ate a fruit scone with butter and jam, as she always did, and then she paid and left. Kitty was the first to hop off her stool. Archie was a little more hesitant.
‘Come on,’ she said, and he grudgingly stood as if a child scorned by his mother. ‘Hurry.’ She rushed him along out of the café and on to the street while he shuffled his feet behind her. ‘We’ll lose her.’
By the time they got outside with all of Archie’s faffing around there was no sign of the woman either end of the street. ‘Ah, Archie, we’ve lost her. You did this on purpose. I should have made you approach her inside.’
‘You can’t make me do anything,’ he said firmly. ‘And we haven’t lost her.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned left, walking without purpose up the road, as if he had all the time in the world.
‘But she’s not here. What do you mean, we haven’t lost her? Why are you walking like that? Archie, believe me, I have enough going on in my life right now without having been dragged here to be fooled.’ She continued her rant while he walked and eventually she fell into a silence and just walked with him, thinking of all the things she could have done that morning that would have been far more beneficial. When they took a sharp right and another right on to the quays they saw her crossing the Halfpenny Bridge.
‘There she is!’ Kitty exclaimed, grabbing his arm excitedly.
Archie didn’t seem at all surprised.
‘You’ve followed her before,’ she accused him, eyes narrowing.
He didn’t respond.
‘How many times?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘Where does she go?’
‘See for yourself.’
They crossed the bridge over the River Liffey and arrived on Bachelor’s Quay. The woman disappeared inside a church. Archie promptly stopped.
‘This is as far as I go.’
‘Let’s go in.’
‘No. I’ll wait here.’
‘Why? We’ll see what she does in there.’
‘What do you think she does? It’s a church. I’ll stay here, thank you very much.’
‘She could go to confession, she could meet somebody in there, pass a briefcase or two, she could sing or cry or strip naked and cartwheel across the altar, for all we know.’
He looked at her intrigued. ‘The way your mind works.’
‘I’m more interested in yours. If you hear prayers like you say you can, maybe there are more people in there that you could help.’
‘Are you doubting me?’
‘I am now, yes,’ she replied truthfully.
He thought about it and then went inside the church.
Kitty watched Archie’s face as he entered. The church was quiet, with a dozen or so people scattered across the pews. It was silent but for the occasional cough and sniffle, which, when started, seemed to flow like a tidal wave through the small gathering and then silence again. Archie closed his eyes and tilted his head to one side, seeming pained. He finally looked around, studying each person. His eyes rested on the mousy woman. She was lighting a candle, then she moved to a pew and kneeled. Archie slowly made his way down the left-hand side and self-consciously shuffled into a row to sit behind her. Kitty stayed where she was at the back. She did this for a few reasons – she wanted to give Archie space, she wasn’t entirely comfortable in churches but mostly because, on the rare chance that Archie did possess the ability to hear people’s prayers, she didn’t want him to hear hers. Kitty hadn’t been lying when she said she didn’t believe in God. She had been christened Catholic but, like most Catholics she knew, didn’t practise her religion. Church services for her were confined to weddings and funerals. She didn’t pray either, not in the sense of getting down on her knees by her bedside each night in a ritual, but occasionally when she felt lost she prayed for whatever crisis she was in to pass quickly and never gave any thought as to whom exactly she was sending these thoughts to. She understood that Archie believed he could hear people’s prayers, that after spending time thinking nobody was hearing his prayers for his daughter he had to somehow manifest the idea that somebody somewhere, if not a god, might have heard him and now he was that person. Perhaps this was to help him believe his prayers weren’t wasted, but that whoever heard them was powerless, just as he was, to act on them. Or perhaps he was simply bonkers. Kitty tried to think of anything but her prayers as she stood down the back of the church, but it was difficult. She had much on her mind, much to worry about. It was so quiet, so peaceful, that the silence was like a wave on a shoreline, pulling her into her mind.
She was worrying about Pete, about Richie, about thinking Steve had been ignoring her instead of the fact he had been defending her honour and how that made her feel, about her story presentation on Friday and then, if approved, having a mere weekend to write it, about having to find a new place to live by a fortnight’s time, about the upcoming job interview, about possibly being involved in the theft of a nursing home bus. But mostly what occupied her mind was how she was ever going to figure out how to apologise to Colin Maguire. At least she was confident on one thing. She had found the way to write Constance’s story and, with or without Pete’s permission, she was going to write it.
After fifteen minutes the mousy woman stood and exited the church. She didn’t glance at Kitty, showing no recollection whatsoever that they had been in the same café three mornings. Archie stood up and left too, passing Kitty and walking towards the bright light of outside existence. They both squinted in the sun.
‘Where does she go now?’ Kitty asked.
‘Don’t know, I never lasted this long.’ He sighed. He seemed weary.
‘How was that for you?’ she asked gently.
‘It’s one thing being in a crowd or on the bus – you hear the occasional thing that someone’s praying for, like people not wanting to be late, praying for good results in school or college, praying for something to happen at work or a mortgage or loan to be approved – but in there …’ he blew air out of his mouth ‘… it’s pretty hardcore.’
‘What did you hear?’
He looked at her uncertainly. ‘It’s kind of … private, isn’t it?’
‘I have to know this stuff,’ Kitty said simply. ‘Otherwise how can I write about it? And it’s not like you have some priestly confidentiality clause that says you can’t tell anyone.’
‘Still,’ Archie shrugged. ‘I’d rather not. It wasn’t exactly pleasant. People don’t usually pray when they’re happy. And if they do, they don’t go in there at nine in the morning on a weekday to do it.’
They stopped walking on the Liffey boardwalk, a promenade hanging over the river, a south-facing set-up for al fresco lunch and coffee. The mousy woman went to the coffee kiosk next to O’Connell Bridge and started setting up for her shift.
‘What do you think I should do?’ Archie asked.
‘I think you should help who you can. I think it will help you. And I think you should start with her.’
They watched her.
‘People are going to think I’m cra
zy when this comes out.’
‘Won’t it be better than what you say they think of you now?’
He pondered that, then watched for a gap in the traffic and hurried across the road to the kiosk.
‘I just think you should give her another chance,’ Gaby was saying to Kitty over her second espresso in the Merrion Hotel in Merrion Square.
Kitty had called her the previous night to arrange a meeting, Gaby had chosen the venue and so far had done all the talking, and Kitty was hoping Gaby planned on picking up the tab too for what seemed like the most expensive coffee she’d ever drunk. They were sitting outside in the garden, meetings going on all around them, and Gaby had one eye and ear on everybody else’s conversations and the other on her and Kitty’s. She lit up another cigarette. Gaby appeared to be under the illusion that Kitty had the intention of dropping Eva from her story and had launched into a tirade of Eva’s career history, starting with celebrity clients and magazines she had been featured in, and while that was partly correct, as Kitty was reluctant to waste more of her precious time on Eva after being fobbed off with the My Little Pony present response, this wasn’t actually something she had yet shared with either Eva or Gaby. However, they weren’t foolish women. Kitty had turned down an opportunity to meet Eva twice over the past few days, unsure that she was ever going to get anything from Eva about herself as a person as opposed to her business. Kitty simply didn’t have enough time to spend with such a closed book.
‘She’s been mentioned in Vogue on their “Who’s hot” list and was in Cosmopolitan’s “Young and Happening” slot. She really is incredible.’ She shut her eyes and squeezed her entire body to emphasise the word, then opened her eyes and took another puff of her cigarette.
‘She’s a closed book, Gaby. Each time I ask her a question she either refuses to answer or she brings it back to work. I know that she is a hard worker and that she is passionate about her company ethos but I have to have more to run with than that. The other people that I’m interviewing are more …’ she tried to think of a polite way of saying it but realised it was Gaby she was speaking to and politeness counted for nothing ‘… substantial. They intrigue me. I want to find out more and when I dig a little deeper, I discover more. Eva isn’t willing to open up to me and I don’t want to force her into talking about anything she doesn’t want to talk about. That’s not the kind of journalist I am.’
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