Alone on the road, with the sound of the car engine in my ears, I was suddenly back at that night in 1996 with Clara. I could almost feel her hand in mine as I turned toward the ditch. This time we would get away. This time I wouldn’t leave her behind and the last twenty-two years would be nothing but a terrible nightmare. She would be alive. Clara would survive.
“Alice McCarthy, get your arse in the car this minute!” My aunt’s voice cut through the panic that had momentarily swamped my brain and I turned to find her standing at the driver’s door of her white Citroen.
“Where did you come from?” I asked, pleased that my speech was at least steadier than my legs felt.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she muttered to herself as she came around the side of the car and pulled open the passenger door. “Get in the bloody car.”
I didn’t argue with her and climbed into the passenger seat, feeling her anger vibrate through me as she slammed the door.
I closed my eyes and when I opened them again she was already sitting in the driver’s side and we were moving.
“Fiona told me where she left you,” she said. “I can’t believe how selfish you’re being. You’d think you could spend more than five seconds with your mother.”
I was bathed in her anger and I fumbled to buzz the window down. I needed air, to breathe, to escape.
I clicked the button and mercifully, the window opened a crack, letting the night air inside the car.
“And then I see you wandering around the roads. After everything that happened with Clara, have you no sense?” She carried on, no end in sight.
“Just stop,” I said, holding my head in my hands. I needed to sleep. The whiskey mingled with the pain in my shoulder and head wasn’t sitting well on an empty stomach and if she kept up her tirade I was going to redecorate the pristine interior of her car.
“What did you say?”
“I said stop. Please…”
“You were always a selfish girl, only thinking of yourself. Your poor mother and—”
I closed my eyes and pressed my face against the cold glass of the window. I felt like a teenager again, being scolded for something ridiculous. It was one of the reasons I didn’t like coming back here. It wouldn’t matter how old I was or what I did with my life, they would always treat me like an errant child.
The car jerked to a halt and she killed the engine. Imelda brushed my shoulder with her hand.
“I know you’re hurting,” she said, “but your Mam and Dad need you now more than ever.”
“Thanks for the lift,” I said and without another word, I pushed open the car door and stumbled out onto the drive. The house was in darkness and for that I was grateful. I didn’t want to see anyone now. My head was too full of Clara and what had happened to her. There were so many unanswered questions, I’d thought finding her might have made it easier but it hadn’t.
In fact, I had more questions than ever and the not knowing was slowly crushing me.
22
Elation. I can feel it coursing in my veins like some sort of illegal high. I only tried weed once but it wasn’t for me. It made my head ache and stomach knot.
It made me paranoid.
Others seem to like it well enough, though. The movies make it look harmless, fun even, but I know different. Not that it matters. Not anymore.
Alice is back. She’s my drug of choice. A succour for my tarnished soul. Seeing her there on the road, stumbling around just like she had that night, it was like I’d plucked her straight from my mind, wished her into reality. Maybe I had.
Could she feel the same pull I did? Was that why she’d returned?
Not that she had a choice. Deep down I knew she would come back. I’ve always known it. All I did was help it along, speed up the inevitable.
Drunk.
So terribly vulnerable.
But not alone.
Is she doing it on purpose? Evading me?
Does she know I’m here?
Too many thoughts. Too many possibilities. It hurts my head. I don’t need possibilities; I need action. I need certainty.
She won’t leave this time. Won’t run away like before. This time, I’ll make her understand, make her see the truth of what I’m creating.
I always knew she would come home.
Clara’s going to be so happy.
23
Light lay across my face, burning against my closed eyelids, seeking a way in, a way through my lashes. The mattress was lumpy beneath my back and my head felt like someone had poured acid inside it before shaking it up like a magic 8 ball.
Noises filtered through from downstairs, the whine of a hoover and the muffled music of a radio.
Lifting my head from the pillow, I stared at the room, the unfamiliar wallpaper and pale pink lampshade slowly coming into focus. It took a moment for my brain to catch up with my surroundings and as it did, so too came the memories of the previous day.
Clara…
Just thinking her name hurt. There was a weight on my chest, crushing me into the mattress and I rolled awkwardly onto my side, welcoming the flare of pain that raced up through my arm and into my shoulder.
I’d slept with the strap on my arm all night. It was a miracle I hadn’t managed to strangle myself. After the pain came a kind of numb ache that settled into my shoulder blade. A constant throbbing reminder that set my teeth on edge.
I pushed myself upright and a wave of nausea slammed into me, sending the world spiralling for a couple of seconds. The whiskey I’d drank the night before rushed up the back of my throat but I swallowed it back and rubbed my chest, a poor attempt to rid myself of the burning indigestion left in its wake.
Home… Not that this house was home for me anymore. It hadn’t been for a long time.
Shortly after I’d moved out, Mam had set about the place, changing the wallpaper and dumping my bed as though trying to rid the house of any evidence that I’d ever lived there. She’d done a good job too. Nothing was as I remembered it. My old room was now the guest room. Not that they ever had any guests to stay.
I unhooked the strap that was keeping my arm in place and flexed my fingers, trying to feed a little life back into them. It took a couple of minutes but the feeling returned, slowly at first and then with a sudden rush of burning intensity that saw me curl my toes in discomfort.
The bedroom door slammed open and Mam appeared in the gap, hoover in hand.
“Don’t mind me, love,” she said. “Just getting a head start on the cleaning. This place is going to pot!” She shouted over the whine of her old Henry vacuum cleaner. There was a frantic, almost frenzied energy to her movements as she scrubbed at the carpet with the head of the hoover.
“Mam, you don’t have to do that,” I said, crossing the floor toward her.
“Yes I do,” she said. “There’s so much needs doing. This place has to be spick and span and…”
I tried to take the hoover from her but she jerked away from like I’d tried to burn her.
“What are you doing, Alice?”
I held onto the head of the vacuum and tried to talk over the noise. “You should sit down. You need…”
“What I need,” she said, ripping the vacuum from my hands, “is to get my work done.”
I thought about arguing with her. I could fight her for the vacuum, knock her to the ground and wrest it from her control but what good would it do? I could just see it now, the two of us rolling around on the carpet as I tried to hold her down. The ridiculousness of the vision brought a hiccup of laughter and I fought to keep it in.
“The Gardaí want to come round later,” I said, trying to catch her eye.
“What for?” There was an edge to her voice.
“To talk about Clara,” I said.
“Whatever for?”
I stood there, staring at her as she tried to hoover around me, unable to form the words that swirled in my head.
“Mam,” I said, trying again. “They found her body. Someone
murdered her.” Seeing her yesterday with a blank expression on her face had been bad enough but this denial or whatever it was felt so much worse.
“Don’t be daft,” she said but there was a flicker of something akin to panic in her eyes as she spoke. “Move over now, let me in.”
I stepped aside and caught her arm again. Beneath my fingers, her skin was paper thin, her bones sliding just below the surface making me think of the bones of a bird. She’d lost weight, either I hadn’t wanted to see it, or I’d ignored it but now I could feel it and as I stared into her face I could suddenly see just how haggard she’d become.
Her hair, which was normally neatly combed, was frazzled and unkempt. The bags beneath her eyes made her appear drawn. Her face was wan and pale.
“Mam, you need to listen to me…”
“No, Alice,” she said, her voice high and thready.
“Mam, Clara is dead and cleaning isn’t going to bring her back.” There was a cruelty to my voice that I hadn’t intended and I regretted the words as soon as they’d left my mouth.
“No, I don’t, I don’t. I can’t. You can’t make me. You can’t, you can’t!” Her voice grew higher and higher until she was practically screaming the words at me.
I tried to hold her, to comfort her but she flung the hoover at me suddenly, her eyes wide and frightened as she bolted from the room.
There was a slam as she disappeared into her bedroom and then nothing.
I clicked off the vacuum cleaner, letting the silence close in around me, almost suffocating in its entirety. It had been the same after Clara disappeared. The constant cleaning, the denial, the screaming.
Closing my eyes, I tried to crush the memory down inside. I didn’t want to remember it, didn’t want the memory of the look in my mother’s eyes. The blame.
I crossed the hall to Clara’s room. My fingers hovered over the doorknob but I couldn’t bring myself to turn it. Perhaps I was just as bad as my mother. Staying out of Clara’s room was a form of denial, a way of insulating myself from the truth.
I spun away from the door and headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time until I reached the bottom. Panic clawed in my chest, fighting to escape. The voice in my head, the same one from the night Clara had been taken thrummed in my head, urging me on.
Run. Run. Run. Run. Run.
Shoving open the back door, I burst out into the morning sunlight and stood on the porch, drawing lungfuls of air into my body. There was no heat in the light that danced across my face. There was never much heat in the Irish sun. If we were lucky, we got a week of temperatures in the mid twenties. For the first day everyone ventured out as if they were sun worshippers starved of the light. Twenty minutes was all it took for the uninitiated skin to crisp, changing from a pasty white to a lobster red. The shops would run out of aftersun and aloe vera gels and by day two everyone would begin complaining about the heat and the farmers would be on their knees praying for the rain to return.
When the rain did return—and it always did, this was Ireland after all—and the mercury dropped back to a more normal range, the country would let out a collective sigh of relief before once more bemoaning the cruel twist of fate that saw them living in a country where it rained 99% of the time.
“How are things this morning?”
I jumped at the sound of Imelda’s voice and jerked my head up from the silent contemplation I’d fallen into.
“She’s cleaning again,” I said.
“Well that’s good…” Imelda trailed off as she noted the look on my face.
She stood next to me, in companionable silence but I could sense there was something she wanted to say.
“Thanks for last night,” I said.
“About that.” She twisted her fingers around the strap on her handbag, almost a nervous gesture. “You know your Mam has a lot on her mind right now, she doesn’t need…”
“It’s fine, it won’t happen again.” My voice was flat, my head beginning to throb.
“I just mean…”
Turning away, I pushed open the backdoor and stepped back into the kitchen. There had been a time when the room would have been warm. The range in the corner was nearly always lit when Clara was here. At times the heat in the small room was almost unbearable. Now, it sat cold and unlit. Like the forgotten carcass of some great fiery beast, perched in the corner of the room. Seeing it lit yesterday had been an aberration. Perhaps Fiona had done it; Imelda knew better than to interfere.
The telephone in the hallway rang, the shrill sound echoing in the unnatural silence of the house.
“Hello?” My father’s voice, quiet and uncertain, cut the jarring ringer off as he picked up the phone. “I’m not sure, I… No, I…”
Standing in the kitchen doorway, I watched his expression crumble as he listened to whatever was said on the other end of the line.
“No, she was…”
Crossing the hall, I snatched the phone from his hand and pressed the receiver to my ear.
“Do you think your daughter’s death is in any way connected with the other missing women?”
“How about you fuck off?” I said, pouring as much bitterness into my voice as I could. They were goddamn vultures, the lot of them. Always claiming to be on your side, always claiming they wanted to help when in reality all they wanted to do was grab their next big headline.
“Is that Alice? Can you tell me if—”
I slammed the phone down.
“You shouldn’t speak to them like that, love,” Dad said, the tremor in his voice betraying just how much the call had upset him. “They’re only trying to help.”
“I think maybe you should let the answering machine pick up any other calls,” I said, touching his arm gently.
The phone started to ring once more and he reached for it. “It could be important,” he said.
“And if it is, they’ll leave a message and we can get back to them.” I took his arm and steered him toward the kitchen.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Imelda said, hovering in the doorway.
Directing him to the table, I sat across from him, noting the dark circles beneath his eyes. “Maybe you and Mam should take a trip to see Dr. Lennord,” I said. “You know, have a chat to him about…”
“All that ape wants to do is drug us to the eyeballs,” he said. “After the way he treated your mother the last time…”
I nodded. It was a silly suggestion. Dad hated the family GP. He’d resented him ever since Dr. Lennord had suggested we have Mam sent into hospital after Clara’s disappearance.
There was a knock on the front door that saw Dad climb unsteadily to his feet. Grabbing his arm once more, I shook my head. “It’s fine, I’ll get it.” I had visions of him standing at the front door, flash bulbs going off in his face as he stood there frozen like a deer in headlights.
“No, love, I can…”
I pushed him back onto the kitchen chair. “I said I can do it, Dad. Just sit and drink your tea.”
He didn’t fight me, which suggested he was far more worn down than I’d realised.
Leaving him in the kitchen with Imelda, I headed for the front door and tugged it open. There was no one on the front step and the driveway was empty. Dad’s car sat abandoned near the door and Imelda’s car was parked close behind. From what I could see, there was nowhere else for anyone to hide.
Turning, I started to shut the door when something on the doorstep caught my eye.
My heart stalled in my chest, my breath catching in the back of my throat as I stared in disbelief at the white rabbit statue that sat in the centre of the old brown welcome mat.
Some of the paint from his little red waistcoat had worn away, exposing the white pottery beneath and the hands on the large pocket watch in his grasp ticked sluggishly, making me think the batteries inside were on their last legs. Crouching down, I tentatively reached out, my hand trembling as I brushed the tips of the white rabbit’s ears.
The memory of Clara handin
g the box to me filled my head. Her grin wide as she watched me rip away the balloon covered paper.
“You won’t be sleeping in anymore,” she said, as I pulled the white rabbit alarm clock from its box. The rabbit had always been my favourite character from Alice in Wonderland. Clara had gotten the clock for me as a present, a sort of consolation prize for the fact that I couldn’t go with her to Irish college for the summer. It was going to be the first summer we’d spend apart.
The rusty alarm ripped through the silence and I jumped, spilling backwards in the front door, I landed on my ass in the hallway. My heart thumped wildly in my chest, my breathing ragged as I stared down at the white rabbit that had started to vibrate on the welcome mat.
“What the hell is that?” Imelda asked, appearing behind me in the hall.
I scrambled to my feet and snatched the rabbit from the mat, flicking the switch on the underneath so that the alarm once more fell silent.
“My old alarm clock,” I said, unable to tear my gaze away from the rabbit.
“What’s it doing on the doorstep?”
I pushed onto my feet, my legs suddenly felt like the bones in them had been replaced with jelly. “I don’t know.”
Imelda stared down at the rabbit, clutched in my hands. “Well it must have come from somewhere,” she said. “It can’t just have walked onto the mat itself.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” It was the truth. The last time I’d set eyes on the clock, I’d been a teenager and the alarm had sat pride of place on my bedside table. Then one day it was gone. No one knew where it was. It was as if it had suddenly come to life and hopped away.
Only now it was back and I had the distinct impression that whatever secrets the white rabbit had, he wouldn’t share them with me.
24
September 18th 1996
How can one person misjudge another so utterly and completely? I think I must have dickhead printed on my forehead.
Sarah says I’m too naive for my own good but I don’t think it’s naivety. I want to believe that people are capable of goodness in this world. I want to believe that not everyone is out only for themselves. And every time I think I’m coming close to discovering true goodness in the world, something else ruins it.
All the Lost Girls Page 11