There’s No Place Like Here

by Cecelia Ahern

  “What are the chances of that?” I asked, feeling hopeful again.

  “I won’t lie to you, Sandy. The majority of the Irish community are in this village,” Helena explained. “Five to fifteen people, at most, arrive each year, and because there are so few of us we tend to stick together.”

  “So Jenny-May Butler must be here,” I said forcefully. “She has to be here.”

  “What about the others on the list?” Joan said in a quiet voice.

  I scanned it quickly, Clare and Peter, Stephanie and Simon…I had sat with their relatives long into the night, thumbed through photo albums, and wiped tears through promises of finding their children, brothers, sisters, and friends. If they weren’t here then it meant I could only suspect the worst.

  “But Jenny-May.” I started digging into the facts of the case I’d stored in my brain. “There was no one else. Nobody saw anything or anybody.”

  Joan looked confused; Helena sad.

  “She has to be here. There was nothing sinister at all about her disappearance,” I rambled on to myself. “Unless she’s hiding, or else she’s in another country; I didn’t look into other countries.”

  “OK, Sandy, why don’t you just take a seat now? I think you’re burning up,” Helena interrupted.

  “I’m not burning up.” I swatted her hand away. “No, she’s not hiding and she can’t be in another country. She’s my age now.” I looked to Joan and everything was clear. “You have to find Jenny-May Butler, tell everyone that she’s my age. She’s thirty-four years old. She’s been here since she was ten, I know it.”

  Joan nodded her head quickly, almost afraid to say no. Helena held out her hands toward me, afraid to touch me yet afraid to move away. I noticed the faces of the two women as they watched me. Worried. I quickly sat down and drank from a glass of water Helena had thrust into my hands.

  “Is she OK?” I heard Joan ask Helena as they moved away.

  “She’s fine,” Helena said calmly. “She just really wanted Jenny-May for the play. Let’s do our best to find her, shall we?”

  “I don’t think she’s here,” Joan whispered.

  “Let’s look anyway.”

  “Can I ask why I was given a list of thirty to find? How does Sandy know they can act? When I contacted them all, they were very surprised. Most of them have never been involved in amateur dramatics. What about all the others who are interested in taking part? They’re still allowed to audition, aren’t they?”

  “Of course, everyone’s allowed.” Helena pawned her off. “The people on the list were just special, that’s all.”

  Of the two thousand people reported missing in Ireland every year, between five and fifteen will never be found. The thirty people I had chosen were the ones I had spent my entire working life obsessed with finding. Others I had found, others I could give up looking for, knowing something sinister was involved, that harm had sadly come to them or that they’d merely walked away of their own accord. But these thirty on the list, they were the ones who had disappeared without a trace and without reason. These were the thirty who haunted me, the thirty without a crime scene to examine or witnesses to question.

  I thought of all their relatives and of how I’d promised I’d find their loved ones. I thought of Jack Ruttle, of how only last week I had made that promise. I thought of how I had failed to show up at our meeting in Glin and how now I had once again failed.

  Because according to the list, Donal Ruttle wasn’t here.

  24

  On Tuesday morning, exactly two days since Sandy’s no-show, Jack, who had not long returned home with Sandy’s file on Donal, stepped out into the fresh July morning air and closed the door to the cottage quietly behind him. Around the town, preparations were being made for the pending Irish Coffee Festival; banners were rolled up beside telegraph poles ready to be hung and the back of a truck had been opened up as a makeshift stage for the outdoor trad-band performances. The town was quiet now, though, everybody still in the comfort of their beds, dreaming of other worlds. Jack started his engine, the noise of it loud enough in the quiet square to wake the entire town, and he made his way into Limerick city where, hopefully, he would meet Sandy at Donal’s friend Alan’s home. He also wanted to pay a visit to his sister Judith.

  Judith was the closest of his siblings. Married with five kids, she was a mother from the moment she arrived kicking and screaming into this world. Eight years older than Jack, she had practiced her skills of obedience training and nurturing on every doll and every child that lived nearby. The common joke on the street was that there wasn’t a doll in the city that didn’t sit up straight and shut up when Judith was around. As soon as Jack was born, she turned her attention to him, a real baby whom she could mother and often smother from that day until now. She was still the one he ran to for advice and she still always found time between school runs, diaper changing, and breastfeeding to lend an ear.

  As he pulled up outside her terraced house, the front door opened and the wail of a thousand banshees flew past his ears, almost blowing his hair.

  “Daaa-deee,” a banshee yelled.

  The banshee’s father appeared at the door in an off-white creased shirt with an open top button and a loosened tie in an uneven knot. He held in one hand a mug that he clung to for dear life and gulped on with bulging eyes. His other hand gripped a tattered briefcase while the banshee with white-blond hair, Power Rangers pajamas, and Kermit the Frog slippers clung to his leg.

  “Dooon’t gooooo,” she yelled, wrapping her limbs around one of his legs as though her life depended on his staying.

  “I have to go, sweetie. Daddy has to work.”

  “Nooooooo.”

  An arm appeared from inside the door, thrusting a slice of toast in Willie’s direction. “Eat,” said Judith’s voice over more wails from a second source.

  Willie took a bite, slugged down some more coffee, and gently shook Katie from his leg. His head disappeared from the doorway, kissed the owner of the arm, shouted, “Bye, kids!” and the door was slammed. The screams were still audible, yet Willie kept a smile on his face. It was eight A.M. and he’d already been through an hour or two of what Jack would consider pure torture. Yet he smiled.

  “Hiya, Jack.” His moon-shaped face beamed.

  “Good morning Willie,” Jack said, noticing how his shirt buttons strained at his gut, a coffee stain decorated his shirt pocket, and there was toothpaste on his paisley tie.

  “Sorry. Can’t talk. Escaping,” he said with chuckle, patting Jack on the back and squeezing into his car. The tailpipe let out a bang and off he sped.

  Jack looked around the housing estate of tightly packed gray houses and noticed a similar scene occurring on each doorstep.

  He opened the door tentatively, hoping the madhouse wouldn’t swallow him whole. He stepped inside and saw fifteen-month-old Nathan running off down the hall, with a bottle hanging from his lips and naked but for a bulging diaper. Jack followed him. Four-year-old Katie, who only seconds ago had clung to her father as though her world was going to end, was sitting a foot away from the television, cross-legged on the floor, a bowl of cereal spilling onto the already stained carpet, completely captivated by dancing bugs singing about the rainforest.

  “Nathan!” Judith called pleasantly from the kitchen, “I have to change your diaper. Come back in here, please!”

  She had the patience of a saint, while around her, chaos ensued. Toys cluttered every surface, scribbles and drawings were either pinned to the walls or directly on the walls. There were baskets of dirty clothes, baskets of clean clothes, clotheshorses with drying clothes lining the walls. The television was blaring, a baby was wailing, pots and pans were being banged. It was a human zoo; three girls and two boys, a ten-year-old, an eight-year-old, a four-year-old, a fifteen-month-old, and a three-month-old, all running riot and demanding attention, while Judith sat at the kitchen table, dressed in her stained robe, hair wild and unwashed, things just everywhere, cluttering every
surface, and her face a picture of serenity.

  “Hi, Jack.” She looked up in surprise. “How did you get in here?”

  “The door was open, and I followed your doorman in.” He nodded at Nathan, who had taken his position on the floor, stinky diaper and all, and had resumed banging pots with a wooden spoon. Three-month-old Rachel was shocked into silence, her eyes widened and her lips parted, ready to release bubbles. “Don’t get up.” Jack leaned over Rachel in her cot to kiss Judith.

  “Nathan, honey, I told you not to unlock the door without Mammy saying so,” Judith explained calmly. “He keeps turning the lock,” she explained to Jack.

  Nathan stopped banging and looked up at her with big blue eyes, a double chin with drool dripping from it. “Dada,” he gurgled in response.

  “Yes, you do look like your daddy,” Judith replied, getting to her feet. “Can I get you anything, Jack? A cup of tea, coffee, toast, earplugs?”

  “Tea and toast, please. I’ve had enough coffee,” Jack replied, rubbing his face wearily as the banging of saucepans became almost unbearable.

  “Nathan, stop,” Judith said firmly, flicking the switch on the kettle. “Come on, let’s change your diaper.”

  She lifted him onto a diaper-changing facility in the kitchen and got to work, giving Nathan her house keys to amuse himself with.

  Jack looked away, no longer feeling hungry.

  “So why aren’t you at work?” Judith asked, holding two pudgy legs together at the ankles as though she were about to stuff a turkey.

  “I took the day off.”

  “Again?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I spoke to Gloria yesterday and she said you’d taken the day off,” Judith explained.

  “How did she know?”

  Judith pulled a baby wipe from a container. “Now is not the time to start thinking your intelligent partner of eight years is stupid. Oh, what’s that I hear?” She held her hand to her ear and looked off into the distance. Nathan stopped jangling the keys and watched her. “Oh, no, I don’t hear it anymore but I used to hear the sound of wedding bells and the pitter-patter of tiny feet.”

  Nathan laughed and continued jangling his keys. Judith popped Nathan back on the floor again, the sound of his feet on the tiles like a duck stepping on puddles.

  “Gee, Jack, you’ve gone awful quiet,” she said sarcastically, washing her hands in the kitchen sink, he noted, over a pile of dirty dishes and cups.

  “It’s not the right time,” Jack said tiredly, taking the wooden spoon from Nathan, who in turn started screaming, which woke Rachel, who started screaming, which caused Katie to turn up the volume of the television instantly in the living room. “Besides, this place alone is enough of a contraceptive for me.”

  “Yes, well, when you marry a man with the name Willie you pretty much know what you’re getting.” In less than one minute Judith had calm again, a cup of tea and a slice of toast on the table before Jack. She finally sat down, removed Rachel from her cot, moved her bathrobe to one side and began breastfeeding while Rachel’s tiny fingers opened and closed in midair, playing an invisible harp with her eyes closed.

  “I’ve taken the week off work,” Jack explained. “Arranged it on the way here this morning.”

  “You’ve what?” she took a sip of tea. “They let you have more time off?”

  “With a bit of persuasion.”

  “That’s good. You and Gloria need to spend more time together.” But she could tell by his face that that wasn’t the intention. “What’s going on, Jack?”

  He sighed, wanting so much to tell her the story but afraid to do so. “Tell me,” she said gently.

  “I came across someone,” he began. “An agency.”

  “Yes?” Her voice was low and questioning, like it used to be when he came home from school after being in trouble and was forced to explain such things as why they’d stripped Tommy McGovern naked and tied him to the goalposts in the yard.

  “It’s a missing persons agency.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she whispered, hand flying to her mouth.

  “Well, what harm could it do, Jude? What’s the damage in one more person having a look?”

  “This is the damage, Jack. You, taking one more week off from work, Gloria ringing me looking for you.”

  “She rang?”

  “Ten o’clock last night.”

  “Oh.”

  “So go on, tell me about the agency.”

  “No.” He leaned back in his chair, frustrated. “No, I couldn’t be bothered now.”

  “Jack, don’t be such a child and tell me.”

  He waited to cool down before speaking again. “I came across the ad in the Yellow Pages and I gave her a call.”

  “Who?”

  “Sandy Shortt. I explained the case to her and she told me she’d solved cases like this before. We spoke on the phone until late every night last week. She used to be a garda and she got her hands on a few reports we’d never seen.”

  Judith raised her eyebrows.

  “She wasn’t asking for a penny, Judith, and I believed her. I believed she wanted to help and I believed she could find Donal. She was legit, there’s no doubt about it.”

  “Why are you speaking about her like she’s dead?” She smiled and then stopped quickly, looking alarmed. “She’s not dead, is she?”

  “No.” Jack shook his head. “But I don’t know where she is. We arranged to meet on Sunday morning in Glin, we passed one another at a petrol station but I didn’t know it was her until after.”

  Judith’s forehead wrinkled.

  “We’d only ever spoken on the phone, you see.”

  “So how do you know it was her?”

  “I found her car down by the estuary.”

  Judith looked even more flummoxed.

  “Look, we were supposed to meet and she left a voice message the night before saying she was on her way over from Dublin, but she didn’t show up. So I looked around the town, asked for her in all the B &Bs and when I couldn’t find her, I went for a walk by the estuary. That’s when I found the car.”

  “How can you be sure it was her car?”

  Jack opened the bag beside him. “Because this was on the dashboard.” He placed the file on the kitchen table. “So was this,” he said, and placed her diary down. “And this.” Her charged mobile phone. “She labels everything, absolutely everything, I went through her bag, all her clothes, her socks, all labeled. It’s like she’s afraid of losing things.”

  Judith was quiet. “You went through her bag?” She shook her head, confused. “But how did you get these from the car? Maybe she was just taking a walk, Jack. What if she returns to her car and all her stuff is missing? Are you crazy taking all this?”

  “Then I’ll have some apologizing to do, but it’s been two whole days. That’s a long walk.”

  Silence while they both remembered how their mother had been desperately worried after two days of Donal’s silence.

  “I rang Graham Turner.”

  “What did he say?” she asked, hands holding her face. The same scenario all over again.

  “He said that as it had only been over twenty-four hours and because it was in keeping with her usual behavior that he didn’t think there was any cause to worry.”

  “Why, what’s her usual behavior?”

  “That she comes and goes as she pleases, keeps to herself and doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going,” Jack rattled off tiredly.

  “Oh.” Judith looked relieved.

  “But that doesn’t mean you park your car in the middle of trees by the estuary and desert it for two days. That’s slightly different from coming and going as she pleases.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Judith said slowly. “The missing-persons person is missing?”

  Silence.

  Judith allowed that thought to roll around in her head, shifting it until it found a place it was comfortable to settle in. She looked contemplative as she moved her
jaw from side to side.

  Then she snorted and burst out laughing.

  Jack sat back in his chair and folded his arms, feeling offended as Judith shook uncontrollably before him. Rachel stopped suckling and watched her bouncing mother, who was now wiping tears from her eyes. Nathan stopped playing with his blocks, stood to watch his mother. His face broke into a gummy smile and he began laughing, clapping his pudgy hands and bouncing his body with delight from the knees up. Eventually, Jack felt the corners of his lips tickle and he joined in, laughing deliriously at the ridiculousness of the situation and feeling such relief to let go after so long, even if only momentarily. Once they’d settled down, Judith began rubbing Rachel gently on her back, so soothingly it made Jack’s eyes feel heavy.

  “Look, Judith, maybe Graham is right. Maybe she did just walk away. Maybe she just thought to hell with all this and left her car, left her phone, her diary, her life, and gave up. Maybe she’s this mad, loony woman who does it all the time with the intention of coming back after a while. Maybe she walked away completely but I’m going to find her, she’s going to find Donal, and then she can quit. Then I’ll let her walk away.”

  “You really think this woman could find Donal?” Judith was contemplative.

  “She believed she could.”

  “What do you think?”

  He nodded.

  “So if you find her, you’ll be helping to find Donal.” She was deep in thought. “You know, Willie and I were going through the photo album last night with the kids and Katie pointed to Donal and asked who he was.” Her eyes filled. “Neither Katie or Nathan remember him, they’ll never have a memory of him and Rachel”-she looked down at her baby in her arms-“she doesn’t even know he existed. Life is going on without him and he’s missing all this.” She shook her head.

  Jack couldn’t think of anything to say, didn’t think there was anything to say. The same thoughts ran through his head every second of every day.

  “What makes you so sure that a woman you’ve never even met, a woman you don’t know anything about, has the ability to find Donal?”

  “Blind faith.” He smiled.