‘She doesn’t like me,’ Orla whispered. ‘She treats me like I personally opened that café. I mean, I just work there. And I actually asked her if she’d anything going in here before I went over there.’
Seanie could feel the juices in his stomach gearing up for a growl. He was trying not to look at the stew but his nostrils were filled with the smell of it.
‘So,’ he said. ‘What is it you wanted to tell me?’
Orla looked around. Out of the corner of his eye, Seanie could see that Jimmy Sutton had put down his newspaper and was openly watching them like they were his own TV screen.
‘The woman,’ Orla said, keeping her voice low. ‘I rang the number like the thing said but no one’s called me back, but that reporter came to speak to me this morning and – actually, she’s the one who started me thinking about it – maybe I should tell you, because it was here?’
Seanie wondered if the smell of the stew was muddling his brain, because he didn’t have a clue what Orla was telling him.
‘Natalie O’Connor,’ she clarified. ‘I saw her. Here. We talked. She was staying up at the cottages. After they say she disappeared.’
Now the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle turned and slotted themselves into place.
‘And,’ Orla took another scan of the room, then leaned in close enough for Seanie to see the streaks of brownish make-up on her chin, ‘Richard Flynn said he never saw her, but she told me he talked to her down at the beach. And that he was totally creepy.’
Stew forgotten, Seanie reached into his jacket for his notebook and withdrew the folded pages he’d tucked inside. He opened the photo of Natalie by herself and showed it to Orla.
‘I don’t need to see a picture,’ she said. ‘It was her. I know her. I follow her. On Instagram. She gave me her card.’
‘And this was when, exactly?’
‘Last week.’
A piece fell out of the jigsaw puzzle.
‘Last week? Are you sure?’
The charge on the credit card – which Andrew was denying had come from him, but it must have – had happened before that. Had the missing wife somehow arranged that, in advance of her coming to stay here? Was that a deposit or pre-authorisation for a booking she’d made? Andrew said no but Seanie didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him.
‘Positive,’ Orla said. ‘Tuesday of last week. She’d arrived the night before, I think.’
A violent buzzing started then, followed swiftly by a shrill electronic ringing: Seanie’s phone.
The screen flashed with DS O’Reilly’s number.
At long last.
‘Give me a second,’ Seanie said. ‘I have to take this.’ He grabbed the phone and hurried outside.
‘Detective?’
‘Sorry, Sergeant. I meant to call you back earlier. But we’re—’
‘She was here,’ Seanie blurted out.
A car whizzed past and he spun back towards the pub door, ducking his head against the wall, trying to shield his phone from the noise.
He only caught the end of what O’Reilly said next.
‘…why I didn’t call back.’
Seanie stuck a finger in his other ear. ‘Sorry, what was that?’
‘I said I know. We have an Irish Rail ticket and the mobile phone data. Heuston to Kent last Monday afternoon, then the phone was switched off in Shanamore a few hours later. How do you know, though? Do you have a sighting?’
‘At least one,’ Seanie said. ‘And I think she might have stayed at those cottages, where the credit card charge came from.’
‘Hold that thought, I’m almost there.’
Seanie frowned. ‘Where?’
‘Shanamore,’ O’Reilly said. ‘We’re just passing Midleton now. We’ll meet you at the station.’
And then, one day, Caroline came back.
It was in the weeks after the Leaving Cert, four years after she left. Andrew was down on the Front Strand, walking by himself in the last hour of daylight, when he’d spotted her flowing yellow-blonde hair and favourite red headband a little bit further down the beach.
He’d stopped short, blinked, stared. Surely it couldn’t be.
But when he called out her name, she turned and looked at him.
They’d met at the water’s edge, almost at the exact same spot where Andrew had last kissed her. His heart was fit to bursting; his lungs painfully tight in his chest. He’d waited so long for this moment, and he had so many questions – but now that she was here, that he could reach out and touch her, he found himself practically paralysed.
Their conversation was stilted and awkward at first, as if they were meeting as strangers. He supposed that, after all this time, allowances would have to be made. So they talked about Shanamore and plans for their summers and Andrew swallowed back all the questions he had for fear the answers would spoil things, if not the mere act of asking them.
She didn’t even mention Germany and neither of them referenced the past. Minute by minute, the world shrunk until they were the only two people left in it. Andrew would’ve been happy to never see anyone else ever again.
He had two beers left and he let her have them. She’d hated it before but seemed to like it now.
Andrew was already drunk, warm and cocooned, fortified and confident.
No bad consequences. Not now, not tonight.
The evening light was faltering when he took her hand and led her to their special place, the spot they’d so often retreated to when everyone else’s voices got too loud, where they’d spent so many hours lying on their backs, looking at the stars, hands reaching under clothes for warm summer skin.
But this time she let him explore places he couldn’t see, secret places he hadn’t felt before. Afterwards he held her tightly against him while she dozed, and he wondered what he might say to her to get her to stay and never leave him again.
Then:
‘Aoife!’
It was completely dark now, the waterline marked only by the broken shards of moonlight shimmering on its surface. The half-moon had turned everything else to indiscriminate shadows and the temperature had dropped dramatically; Andrew suddenly became aware of the fact that he was freezing.
‘Aoife!’
The warm body in the crook of his arm started to stir and move.
His nose was in her hair. It smelled of the sea and cigarette smoke, her breath of beer.
He thought, But Caroline doesn’t smoke. She hates smoking. When did she start?
‘Aoife!’
The voice close now, almost upon them.
‘Caroline,’ Andrew whispered. ‘Someone’s coming.’
‘Huh?’ she said into his chest. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know, but—’
‘Aoife!’
She lifted her head and spat, ‘Shit.’
Caroline never used to swear either.
Just then, a levitating circle of white light appeared on the crest of the dune above them: a torch. It swung around and then down, on to them, burning Andrew’s eyes with its brightness. Instinctively he put a hand to his face to protect them against it while also trying to see around it.
Who was there?
‘What the fuck?’ a new voice said.
And then another one: ‘Jesus Christ …’
Caroline was scrambling to her feet, pressing one hand painfully into Andrew’s ribs in a hurry to do it, turning this way and that, looking for – ‘My shoes. Where are my shoes? Where are my shoes?’
The voice that had swore said, ‘Get up.’
‘Seanie, for God’s sake,’ Caroline spat then, towards the light. ‘Why don’t you mind your own business?’
‘You, go with Dave. Right now. You, get the fuck up.’
Andrew’s head was clouded with confusion. Who were these people? Who were they talking to? Why were they so mad? Why were they here at all? He turned to look to Caroline for the answers and saw her face, illuminated in the torch’s beam.
And realised that it wasn�
�t Caroline at all.
The boy shouting things at Andrew looked to be younger than him, but he was taller and broader, squaring up as if for a fight.
Andrew just sat there in the sand, stunned, as the clarity of the bitter cold sparred with the warmth of the alcohol in his system, neither of them winning, leaving him dulled and confused and lost as to what was happening, here in the dunes of Front Strand.
Someone else was shouting now, too: the girl who wasn’t Caroline. She was stalking off, arms folded across her stomach, spitting expletives at the boy who was shouting at Andrew.
The fists came from above, pummelling the sides of his head, and then came the kicks to his stomach, and the world got smaller and smaller until there were only two things in it: the inside of his head and the pain.
The whole time his attacker kept shouting:
‘She’s only thirteen, you sick fuck. She’s only thirteen!’
_________
The next time he knew better than to try it with a local girl. The next time, he met her online.
She told him she liked watching Friends and she had one brother, younger, and she was wearing a Harry Potter T-shirt in her profile pic. Her hair was darker and cut to the tips of her shoulders, but Andrew actually liked it better that way. She asked him lots of questions about what his life was like now but he was too embarrassed to admit the truth: that there was nothing to report except wasted time and family tragedies, that he’d never left Shanamore for anything other than brief trips to somewhere else and back again. So instead he told little white lies and gave her the answers he knew she was hoping to hear.
Andrew let months pass before he suggested that they meet in person. She didn’t know his real name but, still, he had to be certain before he could even ask.
She didn’t react as enthusiastically as he would’ve hoped, at least not initially. There were a few days of radio silence. She was afraid and he understood that, because he was afraid too. Maybe the end of this was him as raw with pain as he had been when Caroline had left the first time. Maybe the end of this was the end of all things.
But she was worth the risk.
He assured her that they could go at her pace, that he wouldn’t pressure her into anything, and he provided a route around every obstacle she raised. Some personal, yes, but mostly logistical.
He reminded her how much he loved her, over and over and over again. He was gently persistent.
One night she said they could move from messages online to a telephone call and when he – finally – got to hear her sweet voice, it was telling him that she wanted to meet.
Her voice was different, both in sound and accent. But if Andrew closed his eyes, he could still hear Caroline.
It would have to do.
He waited for her at the bus station on Parnell Place. They smiled nervously at each other for a moment before Andrew asked if it was all right to give her a hug. She said yes, although the ensuing embrace was stiff and awkward, but that was okay. Baby steps.
Physically she felt just like Caroline had that first time, that first summer. He was pleased. He had made a good choice.
She pointed at her red hairband and said, ‘Can I take this off now? I recognised you straightaway.’
He asked her to leave it on.
She had a little bag; Andrew offered to carry it. She called him by someone else’s name. She wanted something to drink so they stopped at the nearest café. Andrew was anxious about this unexpected detour, but he wanted to please her. He led the way to a table near the back, as far away as they could get from the window, half-hidden by a display of cakes and pastries.
The man pulling levers on the coffee machine followed them with his eyes.
‘Where’s your car?’ she asked.
‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘I didn’t bring it.’
‘But I thought we’d go to Shanamore.’
This surprised him. ‘I didn’t think … Do you want us to go there?’
‘I thought we were going to your place.’
He had to admit it then, that he’d booked a hotel room. Here, in the city centre.
She seemed stunned at first, maybe even frightened. Was it too much, too soon? But he assured her, repeatedly, that she was in charge of today. She could stay at the hotel alone tonight, if she wanted.
No, she said. That was okay.
But as they approached the hotel, he began to worry. It was a shabby outfit across the river, near the train station. The décor was outdated and the rooms small and, despite the slight chill in the air outside, the whole building felt like it was slowly suffocating in a stifling heat. But the hotel had two entrances, one at the front and one at the side. They could enter separately and not be seen together, so long as they were careful.
If she was disappointed, she didn’t say.
He’d brought two bottles of wine with him. It was lukewarm now and he’d forgotten to bring glasses, so they sipped it from the soft plastic cups they found by the sink in the bathroom. He could tell by the way she wrinkled her nose that she didn’t like it, but she drank it anyway.
She set the empty cup down on the nightstand and turned to smile at him, clearly nervous.
He smiled back.
And then he reached for her hand.
Her underwear was pastel pink with large, cartoon cats on them, trimmed in blue.
A bit childish for a thirteen-year-old, he thought.
_________
‘Did I tell you someone’s coming to look at the house next Tuesday, Andy?’ It was late on a Friday evening and Andrew and his mother were at home, sitting in their respective chairs. Hers was the scuffed leather armchair closest to the fire; his was the overstuffed one covered in splotchy red upholstery that looked deep red in his childhood photos. The Late Late was on. She needed to be close to the television because her hearing wasn’t great and Andrew didn’t like being in the heat of the fire, so the chairs were staggered across the floor like same colour squares on a chequerboard. He couldn’t see her face around the edge of her chair and she couldn’t see his because he was behind her. Conversation was a disembodied but nearby voice that came with no face to read. ‘Did I?’
‘You did,’ Andrew said.
On screen, some young fella was playing guitar. Country music.
‘Did I?’
‘You did.’
‘You’d want to get that upstairs sorted, Andy love.’
‘Mmm.’
‘I said you’d want to get that upstairs sorted.’
‘I heard you the first time.’
The song ended and the studio audience erupted in applause.
‘You heard me, yeah,’ his mother said. ‘So what did you do about it? I told Michael over the road we might take a skip off him tomorrow.’
Andrew rolled his eyes. ‘Mam, we don’t need it.’
‘Sure we can’t let them see the place like this, now, can we?’
‘They don’t care,’ he muttered.
‘What’s that?’
‘I said they don’t care.’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘They want the land, Mam. That’s all they’re interested in. They’re not coming to see the house.’
Now the singer was crossing the set, waving to the audience. The host met him on the main stage and directed him to sit on the couch.
‘Who’s that now there?’ his mother asked. ‘Is that the fella who was in the pub in Castlemartyr that time?’
‘No, Mam. That’s the guy who sang the song before this.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh, ’tis. Yeah. You’re right.’
The singer started talking about making his new album and then told a long, convoluted story about recording some of it in Marrakesh. The punchline was him running into another Irish musician in a hotel out there, one much more famous than him, which just came off as name-dropping. There was an awkward moment when he paused for applause but only a smattering came. The host hurriedly steered h
im on to another topic and the singer launched into that.
At least a full minute after she’d last spoken, his mother said, ‘We might take the skip off him. Michael over the road.’
Andrew was used to this, her picking up conversations and dropping them again like threads. He could never be sure if this meant her memory had begun deteriorating along with the rest of her, staining these gaps with blankness, or if this actually meant that her synapses were firing as well as ever, ready to pick up wherever she’d left off.
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘They won’t be coming in.’
‘Ah, we’ll have to ask them in.’
‘They don’t care. How many more—’ He stopped, took a deep breath. ‘They’re coming to see the site. That’s what the agent said. A site visit. They don’t care about the house; it’s getting knocked down the second we clear out of here.’ He snorted. ‘They might not even wait until then.’
‘I’ll still have to offer, Andy love.’
‘Mam,’ he snapped. ‘Seriously. Don’t.’
On the TV screen, the talk show had gone to a break and now someone was falling asleep on the train across from someone else who’d fallen asleep on the train.
Andrew closed his eyes and toured the ground floor of the house, trying to see it through the eyes of a stranger, trying to see what he and his mother had long stopped seeing for themselves. Her sunken bed that he’d dragged downstairs and wedged in between the three-piece in the living room next door, the living room that had had to become a makeshift bedroom, first for his father and now for her. The soiled dishes and plates piled precariously in the kitchen, pots left on the range with thick, black grease congealing on the handles. The mountain ranges of old newspapers and folded clothes, the piles of boxes of VHS tapes, Christmas decorations and car boot sale china that were reaching for the cigarette-smokestained ceiling on every square foot of floor space. He breathed in deep but he couldn’t detect the smell he knew was here, knew must be here, but which he was apparently impervious to. Now he imagined that those strangers were the estate agent and the developers who wanted to buy their land – a father and son team, he’d heard – and his cheeks burned at the mere thought. No one could come in here.
The best thing for this place was to raze it to the ground, which is exactly what would happen if they managed to get the sale through. They needed it to happen; they needed the money. Andrew picked up odd jobs here and there and he had work down at the hotel during the season, but that was it and it wasn’t enough.
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