Her heart raced, and her skin prickled with cold sweat. She reached to switch on her lamp and sat up. No child in the room. Everything normal: the tangled mess of clothes on the carpet; the ancient PC still asleep; her guitar leaning in the corner; Kurt Cobain and Lady Gaga still gazing down.
She got out of bed and went to the window, opening it to listen. A thin yellow rectangle of light stretched out from behind her, pointing its way along the fairy road; her shadow was long and narrow on the grass, overlaid by the flickering movement of the ash tree. Something rustled in the hedge and a young fox strolled out across the lawn, appearing and disappearing as it moved in and out of the light. The dark breeze from the mountains plucked at Aoife’s T-shirt and ran across her skin like cold fingertips.
‘Find me.’
Heart hammering, she slammed the window shut. Without knowing why, without even thinking first, she wrenched open her jewellery drawer. The rabbit lay bundled in the back. She took it out and unwrapped it from the T-shirt. The stench of rotting hawthorn was sickening.
‘Come to me.’
Aoife dropped the rabbit on the floor. She thought now that the faint voice was coming from somewhere inside the house. Think straight. Had the television or radio been left on downstairs? She moved cautiously across the messy room, trying not to step on anything that would make a noise by breaking, like a DVD or a biro; she turned the handle of the door very slowly; she stepped out onto the landing. Dead silence from below. Across the way, her parents’ door stood ajar. Maybe one of them had been talking in their sleep? She flicked on the landing light and peered through the crack.
The two of them lay humped back to back under the duvet, silent. Aoife felt a sudden weird and terrible certainty that if she stepped into their bedroom she would find the ghostly little girl from the bog – the sheóg – perched on the sugán stool by their bed, watching over her parents as they slept. She braced herself, and thrust wide the door. Nothing. Her father snored briefly, then settled.
The bedroom was small and low-ceilinged, and packed tight with old oaken furniture left from her grandparents’ time: the big double bed with a patchwork quilt thrown over the duvet; a double-fronted wardrobe with a curly carved top, like a fringe; the oak press with two small drawers and three long ones; an old-fashioned dressing table with a hole for a china bowl, long broken; the sugán stool.
‘Come to me!’ Very faint; frighteningly near.
Acting on the same helpless impulse that had driven her to unearth the rabbit, Aoife went straight to the chest of drawers and crouched down. The long bottom drawer was slightly deeper than the others. It was locked, as it always was, because this was where Maeve stored her clients’ accounts. (Or so she had told Aoife, when Aoife had asked about it in the past. Except, of course, now Aoife actually thought about it, that was a lie – the few files were always in the kitchen, and stored in nothing more secretive than plastic shopping bags. So why had her mother . . .?) She touched the lock, and heard the brass mechanism click.
It was as if there were someone in there willing her to find them; someone who had just turned a key on the inside. It took her several long seconds to get up the courage to slide out the drawer. A terrifying image had come into her mind of what she might find: a little girl lying on her back, eyes closed, hands folded on her chest— Stop. Madness. She yanked out the drawer.
No child.
No accounts, either.
Just a ‘Baby’s First Year’ photograph album bearing Aoife’s name and date of birth, and stacks of green envelopes stuffed with old photos. Video cassettes from another era, and the ancient video camera with which they had been filmed. And the locket, stored in a small plastic bag of the type banks use for coins. So this was where her mother had been keeping the necklace.
Her mother grunted something incoherent in her sleep. Aoife held her breath, keeping very still. Too weird to be found creeping around her parents’ bedroom, looking in places she was clearly not supposed to look. She pushed the drawer back in, slowly and carefully, so that it didn’t scrape.
Then pulled it open again. This was crazy. Years ago, when she had asked Maeve were there any pictures of their time in Dublin, her mother had told her that all the family photographs had been lost in the move to Kilduff. Yet here was her own baby album, and envelopes of photographs dating from years ago.
Maeve turned over in the bed, and a pillow fell to the floor.
Sliding the drawer all the way out of the press, Aoife carried it into her own room and dumped it on the bed. She was shivering now and pulled on a hoodie over her Nirvana T-shirt, and then a pair of trackies, before kneeling on the rug to sort through the photographs. The plastic bag containing the locket was the first thing she took out; she made to set it aside, but then shook the necklace out onto her palm and thrust it into the pocket of her hoodie. Why not? It was hers. She jumped up and went back to the window, pushing it open again. The moon was rising over the mountains, casting a wide silvery line across the fields, across the garden, right to the foot of the ash tree outside her window. She had a sudden urge to climb down the tree . . . To run away, far away, through the cool, silvery night . . .
It felt like an effort to return to the photographs.
The ‘Baby’s First Year’ album had a padded white cover printed with curly gold lettering – Eva Sarah O’Connor – her own full name, in its original form, as it was written on her birth cert. The date of her birth was written underneath the name. Why had Maeve told her these pictures were lost? What could possibly be secret about Aoife’s own baby pictures? Stapled to the first page was a black-and-white scan, dated six months before Aoife was born. The white comma-shape must be a barely-begun Aoife in her mother’s womb. Extraordinary to see herself unborn. The next pages featured the baby from the locket, squash-faced and bald, looking like every other baby ever born. Here was her mother, gazing at the drooling identikit blob like it was uniquely beautiful. Here was her father, looking like he’d won the all-Ireland Gaelic football final. The rest of the album documented Aoife sitting, crawling, standing, and ended up with her smeared in cake at her first birthday party. In the party photos, her parents were pictured together for the first time; someone else must have been holding the camera. There were other grinning adults in attendance, none of whom she recognized, all eating cake and drinking wine in a small city garden surrounded by a high stone wall.
Had Maeve forgotten about these pictures? Had she maybe lost the key to the press and misremembered what was in there? No, because she’d hidden the locket in the drawer.
Aoife inspected the video camera, but it needed batteries.
She took one of the green envelopes and eased out another photograph. She was about two years old in this one, and her shoulder-length hair was still blonde, not red-gold, her eyes a very pale blue, not the greenish blue they had become. In the next photograph, she looked another year older and her soft blonde curls were very short. She was wearing a lacy fairy dress with small stiff wings; she was sitting on a new swing in the same small garden, and her father was standing behind her, smiling down at her, the way he had always smiled at her when she was little, when he was about to tell her that he loved her.
Then there was a posed studio shot. Aoife’s parents were side by side on the photographer’s sofa with their arms around her. Aoife’s dress was blue velvet, her shoes white, and she was wearing a matching blue velvet beret, completely covering her hair.
In the next photo she was wearing the same beret, but apart from that was dressed in a Sleeping Beauty nightie, sitting cross-legged on a rug in a room of stripped-pine furniture. In her arms was a well-worn toy rabbit.
Aoife threw an astonished glance at the grey rabbit flopped on its side in the middle of her floor. Identical. How was it possible that her childhood toy had got lost out on the bog? No, it must be just one of the same make—
‘Aoife?’ Her mother was standing with her hand on the bedroom door. ‘Are you . . .?’ Her gaze fell on the p
hotographs, and her question trickled away to nothing. Aoife remained kneeling speechless by the bed, holding a picture of herself cutting a cake with four candles, surrounded by the same grinning adults who had been at her first birthday party. Her mother came further into the room, stooped to pick up the rabbit and pressed it lovingly to her cheek. She said in a low, trembling voice, ‘Hector.’
Aoife found her voice. ‘Hector?’
‘Where did you find him, Aoife?’
‘How did I even lose him? I don’t understand!’
‘Is everything all right?’ Her father was standing in the doorway, tousle-haired in his paisley pyjamas, yawning, awkwardly putting on his glasses. Once they were on, he took a moment to absorb the scene: the bed covered in Aoife’s childhood pictures, his wife hugging the toy. His eyes settled on the rabbit, and he went deathly pale. ‘Hector.’ His voice was choked. He came forward and took the rabbit from his wife. And kissed it tenderly. Just as Maeve had kissed the baby photo in the locket – although at the time, Aoife had assumed that this was because it was the only picture of herself as a baby in existence.
Not true.
Despair welled in her heart. She’d always thought her parents were ordinary, normal people, like everyone else’s parents. Yet they’d clearly been keeping some terrible secret from her – something about her childhood, before they’d moved here from Dublin, away from their house, their friends, their jobs, their everything. And never gone back. She jumped angrily to her feet, flinging the birthday photo down among the rest. ‘What was the big emotional deal about my finding the baby locket, when you had all these pictures of me already?’
‘Aoife, sweetie—’
Fists clenched, cheeks burning, she cried, ‘Don’t sweetie me! I don’t want to be comforted! I want to know why you locked away all the photos of me as a baby and told me you’d lost them!’
Her mother had her face in her hands, shaking her head from side to side. ‘I’m so sorry—’
‘Did I do something terrible when I was a kid?’
Maeve dropped her hands, horrified. ‘Of course not!’
‘Then why do we never go to Dublin? You had loads of friends – they’re in the photos of all my parties. Why aren’t you in touch with any of them any more? It’s like you ran away from something. What happened?’
‘Aoife—’ Her mother was coming towards her, trying to pull her into a hug.
‘I told you, I don’t want comforting! I just want you to tell me the truth!’
But Maeve wrapped her arms around her anyway. Keeping her own arms rigid by her sides, Aoife twisted to stare fiercely at her father. He was sitting slumped among the photographs, still cradling the rabbit to his chest. ‘Dad. You tell me. What happened?’
He said in a breaking, haunted voice, ‘This isn’t fair on her, Maeve. I think we have to tell her.’
‘But what about the promise—’
Aoife, feeling sick, broke out of her mother’s embrace. ‘What promise? Tell me! I have a right to know! Tell me!’
‘Darling, we love you—’
‘Dad! Tell me!’
Her father sighed and wiped his face, and laid the toy rabbit on the bed, stroking its head as if he were hushing it to sleep. Then stood up and put his own arms around his wife. ‘We were always going to have to tell her sometime, my love. And I think she knows already, in her heart.’
‘Knows what?’
‘Oh, James, I can’t do it . . .’
He sighed and kissed his wife’s dark blonde hair. ‘Then let me tell her.’
CHAPTER NINE
It was peaceful in the west of Ireland, and it was spring, and so it seemed like the right place for the O’Connors to bring their daughter. Eva loved all baby things – fledglings, calves, lambs. Maybe a country holiday away from Dublin could make her happy, and create one last sweet memory of her for themselves.
James O’Connor’s family home had stood empty for the last two years, since his parents had gone to visit his sister Aileen in Australia and had found the sun so good for their bones.
Maeve pushed the leather couch over to the window of the back room so that Eva, who was very sick, could see Declan Sweeney’s lambs bouncing around the field like white balloons. The only trouble with having lambs nearby was that foxes were on the prowl. That first night, a vixen cried in the garden for hours. Maeve and James couldn’t sleep for the racket, although their daughter lay in a deep drugged sleep with Hector tucked under her chin.
The next morning in the shop, James overheard old John McCarthy – whose nephew was the owner – talking to the farmer who rented the field across the lane. They were discussing how the banshee had spent last night wailing outside the O’Connor house, just as it had ‘when poor young Michael passed on’ – Michael being James’s unmarried uncle, who had died in his seventies of a heart attack.
‘So I hear Jimmy and Nancy’s lad has a wee girl who is sick?’
‘Cancer, they say.’
‘God send them a miracle, then. The banshee means no good.’
The woman behind the counter sold James the paper with an expression that declared she had heard nothing and didn’t have an opinion on the subject either way.
That evening, three visitors came to the house.
The first was Declan Sweeney, the young farmer who owned the sheep. He had a tiny newborn lamb with him, wrapped up in a blanket. They couldn’t let him into the house in case of infection, but Maeve brought the lamb to the doorway of the back room for her daughter to see.
The second was Father Leahy, who was the one person they did let into the house – banking on the power of prayer to outweigh the risk.
The third visitor came to the house after dark. It was a tall woman, very beautiful, wrapped in a red hooded cloak; in the shadow of the hood, her eyes were so black they were like the space between the stars. She had a small child by the hand, a skinny little weather-browned thing in a simple purple dress and bare feet. She said to Maeve, ‘Well, now, I’ve come for the little girl.’
Maeve said, ‘I’m sorry, she’s asleep and she can’t have visitors anyway, because she’s ill.’
The woman said, ‘I might come in.’
Maeve said, ‘No – you see, the doctor says that she’s not allowed visitors, in case of infection.’
The woman said, ‘Do you not want her to get better?’
And Maeve said, with a catch in her throat, ‘You’re very good to offer a cure, but the doctors said definitely no visitors.’ And she closed the door, then went to the window and watched as the woman walked away down the garden path; the moon caught her in a flickering spotlight as it moved in and out between fast-moving clouds. The tiny girl broke away from her mother and leaped right over the hedge into the narrow boreen, even though the brambles were as high as her head. Instead of being amazed, Maeve found herself thinking angrily: Why is that child so alive, when mine is dying? Unfair, unfair. She stormed into the back room, where Eva was still asleep on the couch.
James said, ‘Who was that?’
Maeve snapped bitterly, ‘Some traveller woman, selling cures. She must have heard there was a sick child in the house.’
‘Unbelievable.’
‘She asked me did I want her to get better. As if I might not. Oh, it’s cruel, what some people will say.’ They both looked over at their daughter, whose short hair framed her sleeping face. Gripped by a crippling self-doubt, Maeve said, ‘But what if that woman really knows of a miracle cure . . .’
James said, ‘She doesn’t. You know that. No more than all the other hundreds of quacks out there. We’ve gone down that road enough. I refuse to force one more vile-tasting potion down my daughter’s throat.’
Outside, the vixen started up again very close to the house, wailing like a broken-hearted woman. By midnight, James had been driven so demented by the noise that he decided to see if could he frighten the fox away. He got a torch and unlocked the kitchen door. When he opened it, the woman was standing facing hi
m on the step. ‘Jesus Christ . . .’ He grabbed hold of the doorframe; he thought for a moment he was going to drop dead of a heart attack, like his own uncle.
‘I might come in,’ said the woman in the red cloak. She still had her skinny child by the hand.
‘It’s nearly midnight! Go away!’
‘I am here for your little girl,’ said the woman.
‘No!’ And he shut the door – slammed it – although he felt bad about leaving the child outside, because the night was cold and a needle-sharp rain had begun to fall. He hurried back to Maeve. ‘That woman you were talking to earlier? She was on the back step when I opened the door.’
‘No!’
‘Yes, and she still had the child with her.’
‘Oh God – at this time of night, in this weather . . . Should we let them in?’
James hesitated. Somewhere deep inside himself, he knew that this was no traveller woman. ‘No . . . She’s gone now and hopefully that’s the end of it.’ The vixen was off again, wailing. The next moment there was a furious banging at the front door.
Maeve cried, ‘Look, maybe she’s just after money. I’ll give her twenty euros to leave us in peace.’
‘Don’t let her in!’
But Maeve was already at the front door. The beautiful woman seemed pleased to see her and gave the child a small push forward into the light of the porch. She said: ‘I might come in.’
Maeve thrust out the twenty-euro note, at arm’s length. ‘Look, this is for you. Now, please, leave us alone.’
‘I’ve come for your daughter, Mrs O’Connor.’
‘I’ve told you already, we don’t want your help! Please, take the money . . .’
‘Don’t you want her to live? Where I come from she will never grow old.’
‘Leave us alone!’ She tried to close the door, but the woman slipped her red shoe in the way. Maeve shrieked: ‘James, call the guards! Now!’
But the woman looked straight past Maeve at James, who had followed her into the hall, and said, ‘Mr O’Connor. Look there in the boreen.’
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