by Liz Nugent
I followed him blindly out of the park on to Grafton Street. He took my arm and guided me gently towards the pub, asking no questions while I tried to compose myself. He gave me a freshly laundered handkerchief. In the pub, Laurence installed me in a corner and went to the bar. By the time he came back, Bridget had arrived.
‘Who was he?’ said Bridget.
‘Karen doesn’t have to say if she doesn’t want to.’
‘He … he’s a detective who was supposed to be investigating my sister’s disappearance, but he never gave a damn about her …’
Throughout my marriage to Dessie, we lived in a kind of a bubble. We hardly hung out with other people at all. We were content just being the two of us, and sometimes going for a drink with the couple next door. Dessie didn’t like me to go and meet friends in town at night, because he didn’t think it was safe, and on the rare occasions that I did, he would collect me at ten o’clock, when the night was just getting going. So after a while, my friends stopped inviting me out. When I left him, I realized that I no longer had friends of my own. The girls I had been pally with in the dry-cleaner’s still worked with Dessie, and I hadn’t really kept in touch with them since I’d started working with Yvonne. That was my fault. So really, I had no one to talk to. But now, here in front of me in this pub were two people my own age who were good company and decent types. Laurence seemed a good bit grander than Bridget, but it obviously didn’t bother him. She was just an ordinary girl like me, with an office job, hoping to make something out of her hobby. I felt that I could trust them, so I told them everything.
I watched their faces as I told them the story of Annie. Her learning difficulties in school, her pregnancy, and St Joseph’s taking baby Marnie away from her, her drug addiction and prostitution, her disappearance and probable murder, O’Toole and his disgusting attitude, my investigation into the old car, and Mooney’s impression that the murderer was a high-profile man who had died shortly afterwards.
Bridget was utterly horrified, her mouth hanging open and her eyes widening, but Laurence’s reaction surprised me. At the beginning of my story he just stared into his pint, but as I continued my sorry tale his shoulders began to shake, and when he looked up at the end, his eyes were wet with tears.
‘Oh my God, that is just awful!’ Bridget said, hugging me. ‘I’ve never heard anything so bad. I don’t know how you can have coped all these years. Oh my God!’
Laurence simply said, ‘I am so, so, sorry. It’s … horrendous. I am so sorry.’
‘Please,’ I said, ‘it’s not your fault. It’s a tragedy, but I can’t let it go. The guards are not interested in helping me, so I have to do it myself.’
‘Oh God, we’ll help you, won’t we, Laurence?’ said Bridget. ‘We have office phones, we can ring around all the other garages at lunchtimes, can’t we? And, Laurence, you’re always at the library – couldn’t you find out how to look up newspaper archives and see what important people died in the weeks after Annie disappeared?’
I hadn’t even thought of doing that. Laurence nodded and got up to go to the bar again.
‘He’s pretty sensitive, don’t mind him. But we’ll help you, I promise. I can’t believe that detective spoke to you like that, as if you were …’
‘A prostitute?’
‘What an absolute bastard. You should complain about him, or write to the papers – something, you know?’
‘I did at the time. He got promoted. And now my agent thinks it would be bad for my career if I were to go public about any of this, but if you two could help like you say, that would be amazing!’
‘Of course we will.’
Laurence came back with drinks. I toasted Annie and they joined me. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I had friends, allies.
13
Lydia
‘He can’t have recognized you. You were three stone heavier and five years younger then.’
‘He couldn’t place me, but he knew me, I know he did!’
Laurence had been keeping secrets from me. It was profoundly disturbing. He arrived home one night pale-faced and shaking, having been out with Bridget. He admitted that he had made a friend out of the dead whore’s father and, worse, her sister, who, he insisted, was investigating Annie Doyle’s disappearance herself. Laurence was petrified that she was close to the truth.
‘She’s going to find out it was Dad. She knows a lot of stuff already.’
He had left Bridget and the girl behind in the pub. I tried to ascertain what she knew. Laurence had just met the same detective, O’Toole, who had questioned him at the gate of Avalon all those years ago. It seems his sidekick, Mooney, had suspected Andrew but the whole matter had been dropped when Andrew died.
‘But how did you even meet this girl, or her father? And why didn’t you keep away from them? They are not the sort of people you should be mixing with.’
Laurence was taken aback, and I realized I had to check myself.
‘Mum, don’t you see? We should be doing everything we can to help Annie Doyle’s family. Dad killed her and she is buried behind our kitchen wall and I put a concrete shelf and a bloody bird bath on top of her grave. I try to forget about it, and most of the time I’m fine, but over a year ago Annie’s dad came to sign on in my office and I recognized him. I got to know him a little bit, and he’s a decent man, Mum.’
I handed Laurence a glass of whiskey.
‘Darling, you really should not consort with these people, drug addicts and prostitutes, they are beneath us. Do you understand?’
‘And what about murderers? Are they beneath us?’
I would have loved to have explained to Laurence that his father was not just a common murderer, that he had merely made a mistake under pressure and that the girl was of no consequence. If she had lived, she would have made no contribution to the world. Her family were obviously layabouts too, if the father was on the dole. Of course I am not saying that she didn’t deserve to live, I’m not saying that at all, but who really missed her?
‘Laurence, whatever happened, you must remember that your father was a good man. I’m sure it was a silly accident that led to the death. I very much doubt that your father would ever have gone with a prostitute. He just wasn’t the type, and he loved me, you know he did. You must not think of him as a murderer. Who knows what type of trouble that girl was involved in? Wasn’t she a heroin addict? Heroin is a terrible, terrible drug. It is quite possible that your father was trying to help her. He often helped people but he kept his charity work very quiet. I’m sure he was only trying to help her when she died, perhaps of an overdose, and to avoid a scandal he just buried her here.’
Laurence sat looking at me. I know he was thinking that I was in denial, I know he didn’t believe a word I was saying, but I also knew that he would go along with it for my sake.
‘But this girl Karen, Annie’s sister, she’s not giving up, Mum. She’s going to find out. And she is so –’
‘You must find a way to stop her.’
‘Bridget has said that we will help her.’
‘Well then, you’re in the perfect position to find false information and throw her off course.’
‘Mum!’
I raised my voice in anger. It is something I do very seldom. ‘Laurence. I am trying to protect you. If this gets out, you will go to jail.’
He shut up then, realizing I was right. I used softer tones.
‘Darling, let us think about this. Annie Doyle has been missing for nearly six years?’
‘Five and a half. Yes.’
‘But there is absolutely no proof she is dead?’
‘Not that I know of, but one of the guards thought that Dad –’
‘Never mind about that. Did she have a bank account or a post office savings account, do you know?’
‘I don’t know. Why?’
‘Because we can bring her back to life. Send the mother a letter from her.’
‘What?’
Ev
en as I said the words, an idea was forming. Annie was not dead. Perhaps she decided to clean up her life and get off drugs and move away where nobody would know her, start afresh. She was living a normal life down the country but did not want to be contacted and reminded of her old life. It was alarmingly simple. When Laurence calmed down enough, he saw the wisdom of the idea, although he said it was cruel. Not as cruel as what Annie Doyle had done to us.
‘But, Laurie, won’t it be so much better for them to think that she is alive? It will be such a huge relief to them. We will be giving them back their daughter. It’s an act of mercy. She will write to them.’
I changed my mind about Laurence befriending the Doyles. Keep your enemies close, isn’t that what they say? I encouraged him to engage with them, gain their trust, find out as much as he could about Annie before we put our plan into action, and in the meantime he could feed them misinformation. He had already agreed to look up death notices in the Irish Times office for the weeks after 14 November 1980. He could conveniently omit Andrew’s name from the list of his findings. He should take control of Karen’s investigation, be sympathetic, but not too enthusiastic. Perhaps he could pretend to develop a personal interest in Karen.
But he seemed uncomfortable at the suggestion.
‘I can’t do that. She’s Bridget’s friend. And Bridget keeps asking me when she’s going to meet you, and when I’m going to Athlone to meet her parents.’
‘Athlone? God help us.’ And then it struck me. ‘Actually, I think you should go. You can post the Annie letter from there! Athlone is perfect – a letter posted from there could have originated anywhere. It’s slap bang in the middle of the country.’
He winced at this. I was terribly excited. This was a project that Laurence and I could work on together. It could only bring us closer.
Over the next few weeks, Laurence and Bridget and Karen met up regularly to go over all the information she had about Annie. I encouraged Laurence to bring home whatever he could so that we could combine our wits to decide how best to use it. As I suspected, Annie had no savings accounts in which money might have remained untouched if she was dead. There was no proof at all that she hadn’t picked up her life and moved away. We had to make it look like she’d gone in a hurry. One of the most crucial things Laurence brought home was an old diary in her appalling, childlike, semi-literate handwriting. I could see Annie had entered the payments from Andrew, which she listed under J, presumably for Judge. The little bitch had probably known all along who he was. Karen had entrusted the diary to Laurence so that he could check out the addresses and phone numbers. There was a letter in it to a child that she gave up for adoption, and when I saw that, I lost any sympathy I might have had for her. She had been pregnant before, by accident. She knew Andrew and I were desperate and willing to pay for a baby, and she had already given one away. What a truly pathetic creature she was.
But that book gave us everything we needed to construct the new Annie Doyle. I started to write the letter from Annie, using her typing and grammatical errors, but found I couldn’t get the shape of the words convincingly. With a heavy sigh, Laurence took the pen from my hand. Laurence was an excellent forger, it turns out. He said that Karen referred to her mother as ‘Ma’, so assumed Annie must have done the same. I dictated the note.
Dear Ma,
I am really sorry if you wore wurried about me over the last few years but I got in a bit of trouble with a lone shark and druges and stuff and I had to get away in a hurry to a kwite place to start my life agan. I know the cops was loking for me and all but I was in a bit of trouble with them too. So I bin laying low for a few years now but I have my act together ma and im living a good life and youd be proued of me if you saw me. I was to sad after the baby and all and I tried to ferget about her but you now What it was like with da. he was ashamed. I hope hes all rite. Tell him not to worry about me now and that im sorry for all the hasel. tell Karen I love her too. i love you all but my life is bettur her. dont come loking for me couse theres no pont. Im not coming back ma but im very happy here.
Love from your Annie
I have a diffarant name now.
Laurence baulked at some of it. He was dead set against the reference to her father’s shame, but it had to be realistic. The loan shark references were my idea. It would suggest that the large sums of money noted in the diary were sums owed rather than payments to her from Andrew. The guards had apparently made lewd suggestions that a client could have paid her large amounts for perverted reasons. Laurence wanted the letter to be written to Karen, but that didn’t make any sense to me. Every child is closer to his mother than to anyone else. He wanted more about Karen in the letter, but I pointed out how illiterate Annie was, how much of an effort writing must be. She wouldn’t write a word more than she needed to. A declaration of love should be enough to satisfy the sister.
I could tell that Laurence was quite stressed by all of this. I reassured him and told him that we were doing a very kind thing and that he was a good man. He had turned into the most handsome young man one could ever see, like a younger version of his father. Everything was going to be fine, I told him. This was just another of life’s hurdles that we would have to get over.
14
Laurence
I was in love. For the first time, head over heels in love. I will never know if it was because of her relationship to Annie. I’d like to think I would have loved Karen anyway. The very first time I saw her in Scanlon’s with her father, I felt a lurch deep in my chest as if my heart had swung out of position. She did not at all resemble the girl I knew well from the press cuttings, hiding behind a veil of unkempt hair.
She was delivering bad news about Annie to her father, as it turned out. I was struck by the way she spoke to him so tenderly, concern in her eyes. I sat beside Bridget in the corner of the pub, watching this amazing woman, wondering who she was.
When Gerry introduced her as his daughter, my insides lurched again. How much suffering had my father caused her? She looked up at me and smiled, and I have no idea what we said to each other. That night I followed them home to Gerry’s house and was nearly caught by Karen, staring up at her through a window.
Karen and Bridget quickly became close friends and that made it harder. I had constant news of Karen – where she was going, what she was doing. Bridget was incredibly flattered that Karen took an interest in her, and I was jealous. Of Bridget. I found it impossible not to compare the two women, and while I stayed with Bridget, the true reason was that, without her, I wouldn’t have seen Karen. But I became short with Bridget, impatient with her, though never in front of Karen. When Karen was around, I was the perfect gentleman. I hung around them like a lapdog, knowing full well what caused flashes of pain to occasionally cross Karen’s face. I understood her hidden grief; I recognized her loss.
I discovered from Bridget that Karen found her own modelling career faintly ridiculous. She was grateful for the income, but didn’t feel beautiful. That was so strange to me. She was stunning. When Karen and Bridget were sitting side by side, I couldn’t help thinking of Beauty and the Beast. Karen had no airs and graces about it at all. She had recently separated from her husband, Dessie, but still used her married name. I was surprised that a girl my own age could already have an ex-husband. According to Bridget, Karen thought she had married too young. She didn’t resent her ex-husband, but wished he would stop calling her and trying to rekindle their relationship.
And then one day we had that picnic in the park after Bridget’s photo shoot and Detective Sergeant O’Toole walked past and insulted her in front of us, and she told us the whole story about Annie, more than I had ever known before. Now I knew why the bracelet was inscribed ‘Marnie’. Karen was dangerously close to the truth, and when Bridget promised her that we’d help her, I felt like throwing up. I panicked. I had to tell Mum.
My mother had solutions to all these problems. She was clearly in complete denial of what Dad had done, but Mum’s primar
y focus was to protect me. Her plan to make Karen and her family think that Annie was alive horrified me. It seemed so dishonest and cruel, but Mum was neither of those things and I hoped it would bring them some comfort. And that it would keep me out of jail.
My old forgery skills were put to good use. I couldn’t tell Mum that I was in love with Karen. Social class meant so much to my mother. I’d never even brought Bridget to meet her.
The idea of posting the Annie letter from Athlone made sense, I suppose. If they went looking for Annie after receiving it, her family would have an extremely wide hinterland to search.
Bridget had given up asking me to come and meet her family, so when I was the one to suggest it, she was delighted. The preparations started weeks in advance. The date of the visit was coincidentally set for Annie’s birthday in July. Bridget and her mother exchanged letters daily on the upcoming ‘arrangements’ to be made. Bridget had two younger sisters who both lived at home in their three-bedroom house. For my two-night visit, they would share a room while Bridget slept on the sofa downstairs and I would have Bridget’s childhood bedroom. Bridget said we were to pretend to be virgins. Her mother was apparently in a knot of anxiety. Did I eat fish? Because they always had fish on Fridays. They were changing the curtains to fix the draught in the bedroom. Would I attend Mass with the family on Sunday morning? Would I go with Bridget to visit her granddad in the local nursing home? There were protocols being put in place. I was being treated like visiting royalty. I don’t know what Bridget had told them, but it was clear that my impending arrival was the cause of much fuss. I hate fuss. I tried hard not to be irritated by Bridget’s excitement.