It wasn’t hard to find him. He was looking at the exhibit of ancient gold. The light from the glass case shone up into his face, showing up the fine lines and wrinkles under his eyes and around his mouth. She moved closer and looked down at the gleaming yellow necklets, the metal twisted into fine spirals, the huge flat buttons and cloak-fasteners, the heavy ornate collars. She saw both their faces reflected in the glass and the way he was looking at her, recognizing her from the train. She smiled.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
She was proud of herself, the way she had managed to initiate the conversation. She had opened her mouth and wondered if the words would come. She knew about these things. She had studied archaeology in first year in college, part of her degree. The knowledge was all still there. Lodged in her memory. She explained. The kind of artefacts they were. The date they were made. She talked about the people who had worn them, the way they had lived. And he was charmed, she could see.
‘Here.’ She led him from room to room.
‘You’re better than a tour guide,’ he said, his hand casually brushing against her back as they walked out into the sunshine again. And the hairs on her arms rose up as she felt her skin tighten.
‘Can I buy you a drink?’ he asked. ‘As a thank-you for your time.’
And she nodded, unable for a moment to speak. She could see that he hadn’t noticed. He was too busy telling her all about himself. He was thirty-two. He was divorced. He was from Ottawa. He worked for a software company, installing telephone and computer systems. He was in Dublin for two months, working on a big job debugging some of the programmes here. And he laughed his loud, ugly laugh.
‘You wanna see the mess that some of your guys have made of the system. And will they be told? You wanna bet?’
He was lonely, he said as he moved closer, his thigh rubbing against hers, one hand sliding up and under her shirt, pressing against her vertebrae. She could smell his sweat. She watched him drink. The way he lifted up his chin as he raised the glass to his lips. The way the skin stretched tightly over his throat, so she could see clearly his Adam’s apple and the tendons in his neck. His hand clutched her thigh under the table, his fingers digging into her crotch. She reached down and slid open her zip and felt him touch her, then take her own hand and press it hard against himself. So long since she had done this. Years and years and years. She felt his mouth against her ear, and his whispered instructions.
‘Come with me, come back to my place. We’ll have some fun.’
She followed him out of the bar, waiting while he hailed a taxi, gave an address somewhere on the Quays, then pushed her back against the seat, forcing open her mouth, his hands reaching for her breasts. So long since she had felt anything like this. And she remembered suddenly, so vividly that she wanted to cry out, her first time with Martin. Outside in the open air. Midwinter. The night they met. A retirement do for a friend of her father’s. She hadn’t wanted to go but her father had persuaded her. Bought her a new dress. Halter-neck. Silk. Pleated. Beautiful. And she had met Martin, the son of her father’s friend. And left with him, long before the speeches were over. Walked out of the hotel. Walked as far as the car park. Opened her coat. Felt the cold on her breasts and the warmth of his mouth. Leaned back against a tree and felt him inside her. Laughed out loud at their pleasure together. Afterwards they drove away in his car to sit by the little beach at Sandycove and watch the sun rise over the sea. And they touched each other as if each was precious and new and perfect.
There was a security gate at the apartment complex. He punched in his code. Five, eight, three, seven. She remembered it. She looked for cameras. There were none. He used a swipe card to open the door.
‘Better than a hotel,’ he said as he pulled her in behind him.
More private, she thought. He put on music. She knew it. The Cranberries. The girls inside had been mad about Dolores O’Riordan. She looks like one of us, they always said. He turned up the volume.
‘Aren’t you worried?’ she asked him as he poured glasses of vodka and took a plastic sachet of what she was sure was cocaine from his briefcase. ‘About the neighbours complaining?’
‘Neighbours, complaining? It’s live and let live here. I don’t know them, nor could I give a fuck. And the feeling, I’m sure, is mutual.’ He looked down at the two lines of coke he had laid out carefully across a small rectangular mirror. ‘Now.’ He handed her a rolled-up ten-pound note. ‘Ladies first, I do believe.’
They’d have been proud of her, all her old friends from the prison. Not just the way she snorted the coke with practised ease but also in the way she sorted through his clothes before she left the next morning. Taking the cash from his wallet, his credit cards, the identity card for his job. She hesitated over his passport. It was worth money, lots of it, but on the other hand he’d have to report it stolen to get it replaced. No embassy official would believe that he had just lost it. And she didn’t want to do anything that would force him to go to the police. Just in case, she wiped her prints from everything she had touched. Except his skin, she thought. He was still sleeping deeply when she had dressed and was ready to leave. Sleep suited him. He looked young and beautiful. It was a pity about the sex, by the time he was ready for bed he couldn’t manage it at all. Too much drink, too many drugs. The girls had always said that the stories about coke and sex were a myth.
‘It’s just like any other drug,’ they told her. ‘Once they’ve got a taste for it they’re fucking useless when it comes to bed. You always end up finishing it off by yourself.’
Such a pity, she thought, that they were right.
She stood by the river in the early morning sunshine and watched as a school of grey mullet made the journey from the sea towards O’Connell Bridge. They hung five-deep in the murky water, a lazy flick of their tails pushing them forward. What brings them up here, she wondered, away from the cleansing tide into the sluggish greasy sink of the river. Then she answered out loud her unspoken question. ‘Food, of course, what else.’
She turned and walked away from the city towards where the river opened out into the bay. She raised her hand to her face. She could still smell him. His aftershave and his sweat. He had been so helpless, lying there beside her when she woke. She had sat and watched him. She had pulled back the sheets and looked at his body. She hadn’t seen a naked man since Martin had died. As he rolled over towards her she saw the place where the shot from the gun had torn Martin apart. She remembered the colour of the blood as his heart pumped it from his body. Now she watched the pulse at the base of his neck, rising and falling. She reached out and touched it. It didn’t take much to end someone’s life. They had talked about it inside. The ways it can be done. The quickest, cleanest, neatest. They had told her and taught her, and she had listened and learned, stored up the knowledge for later, for when she would need it. She put her hand around his neck and felt his blood throb against her skin. He stirred and made as if to turn. She opened her fingers and pulled her hand away. She got up. She left.
Now the sun shone upon her face. She closed her eyes and tilted back her head. Then she pulled the credit cards and the money from her pocket. She had no need for them. She had all the money she could possibly want lying neatly in its hiding place in her room. She just wanted to know that she could do it. Break the commandment. Thou shalt not steal. Then get away with it. It was practice, that’s what it was, for what was to come. She held her booty out in front of her, then flung the lot of it down into the river. She watched it settle on the surface, then waited until slowly and gradually the water dragged down the plastic and paper until all that was left was a tiny spreading ripple. Then she turned away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MORE ADVENTURES NOW. Every day something new to discover. Every morning there were exercises to do. Yoga poses she had learned in prison to drag her muscles out of their state of inertia. The cat, hollowing and arching her back, breathing in and out smoothly, rhythmically. The cobra, lift
ing her ribcage up out of her abdomen, the palms of her hands and her pubic bone flattened on the wooden floor. The dog, hips high, feet stretched, heels pushing down. The triangle, legs wide, feet turned first to one side, then to the other. And balancing poses, one leg raised, one foot anchored, one arm above her head, her gaze fixed to a dark spot on the wall, keeping her straight, keeping her upright, keeping her focused. Then down on the floor again, her knees bent, hands clasped behind her neck and she lifted and lowered her head, feeling the contraction in her stomach muscles. Twenty, thirty, forty times, sweat breaking out on her forehead. Hearing the voices of the women in the prison gym, shouting at her, urging her on, telling her to do it, to make it happen. She stood in the shower and scrubbed and scrubbed, and felt as if there was a new Rachel breaking through the skin of the old one.
The new Rachel who waited at the bus stop opposite the house just outside Dalkey village and looked at the cars parked on either side of the narrow road, haphazardly, some half up on the footpath, others carelessly blocking the gateway. It was twelve-thirty. Going-home time for the twenty or so small children who spent their weekday mornings at the Little Darlings crèche just outside Dalkey village. She had been here before. Every day this week. She would arrive just before twelve-fifteen and take up her position at the bus stop on the other side of the road. The bus, she knew, wouldn’t come until well after twelve forty-five and no one would notice the woman who waited so patiently, leaning against the crooked metal pole.
It was the same routine every lunchtime here. The first of the mothers and the au pairs came at about twelve-twenty. The early birds would sit in their cars, listening to the radio or reading the paper. Then gradually all the others would arrive. Those on foot would walk past the parked cars and wait just inside the gate, leaning against the granite wall, chatting quietly. And the rest of the sleek, well-groomed women would arrive soon after, parking where they could find space, a steady rhythm of slamming doors announcing their presence as they too made their way into the drive. And then, sometime just after twelve-thirty, the children would appear, led by two teenage girls. They would always be carrying a present for their mothers. Paintings on large pieces of flimsy paper, bright splashes and smears of colour to be fussed over and cooed about, and interpreted endlessly over lunch. Or lumps of clay, whose function was equally obscure, but whose reception was guaranteed to be ecstatic.
Had it been like this for her, Rachel wondered as she watched. Did she see herself and Amy among the group? Was she the mother who crouched down beside the little girl with the red curls, praising, encouraging, urging her on with loving words and kisses? Or was she the woman in a hurry, barely greeting the chubby boy with glasses, before gathering up school bag and painting, and hustling him out of the gate and into the back seat of the car? There had been a time, she remembered, when her kitchen walls were decorated with Amy’s paintings. Every day a new one to add to the collection. Each one dedicated. To Mummy or Daddy. To Grandad and Granny. To Uncle Dan. What had happened to all of them, she wondered. Lost, thrown away, dumped, she supposed. When the house had been sold, after she had gone to prison, and Amy to Rachel’s father and mother, and then, when it had all become too much for them, to the foster-family. The house and its contents had belonged equally to her and Martin. It was their family home. But Martin’s family had argued that the proceeds should go only to Amy. That Rachel should not be allowed to profit in any way from Martin’s death. She could have fought it. Her solicitor told her she had a case. But she had no stomach for the fight. She agreed. Asked only that her own belongings be parcelled up and sent to her father. But what had happened to them when her mother died and Alzheimer’s disease took her father away from her? She had no idea. And now she no longer cared.
She was late today, the woman who Rachel had come to see. It was twenty-five to one. Most of the children had gone home. There was just the one still waiting, still being looked after by the teenage minders in their tight jeans and T-shirts. A girl, a sweet little thing with straight dark hair and a solemn expression. She stood by herself, the thumb of her left hand in her mouth, the other hand holding on to a large piece of cardboard on which were stuck some things that looked like seashells. The child was getting anxious. She was beginning to edge towards the gate, one step at a time, then stopping and looking back at the girls who were now deep in animated conversation. Rachel watched her. The child pulled her thumb out of her mouth, wiped it carefully on the skirt of her dress and moved to the edge of the footpath. She peered up and down, taking a step forward, then pulling back. She was talking to herself. Rachel couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she could see the small mouth opening and closing, the plump cheeks dimpling. Soon, Rachel thought, there would be tears.
She looked beyond the child to the two girls to see if they had noticed what was happening, but they had turned their backs even more firmly on her, their heads together as they furtively lit their cigarettes. Time passed slowly. The little girl edged further and further away from the gate. Rachel looked up and down the road. It was quiet now, no passers-by, no pedestrians, just the occasional car taking a short cut to avoid the traffic congestion of the village. Driving fast, too fast down this narrow road. Rachel stepped forward. She crossed over to the child. She stopped in front of her. She bent down.
‘Hallo,’ she said, ‘are you all right?’
The little girl looked up at her, squinting her grey eyes against the bright midday sun.
‘I’m waiting for my mummy. I’m hungry. I want my lunch.’
‘Do you now? Would you like this?’ Rachel opened her plastic bag and brought out a peach. She held it to her nose and breathed in deeply.
‘Yum,’ she said, ‘it’s delicious.’
The child put out her hand for it, then pulled back.
‘Are you a stranger?’ Her voice was anxious. ‘I’m not s’posed to talk to strangers.’
‘Me?’ Rachel drew away. ‘Of course I’m not a stranger. I’m your friend. I have a lovely peach for you. I know little girls love peaches. I have a little girl just your age and they’re her favourite fruit.’
‘Where is she? Your little girl. Is she here?’
The child looked around, anxious again, then once more reached out for the yellow peach.
‘No, she’s not here, but would you like to meet her? She’s your friend too.’ She took hold of the child’s hand. It was damp. She lifted it to her lips and kissed it gently. It smelt of crayons and stale milk. She turned it over and looked at the palm. It was grubby, playground dirt lodging in the clear-cut lines.
‘You’ll come with me, won’t you?’ she said, and the child looked up at her and nodded. Rachel bent down and rested her cheek against the child’s downy skin. She breathed in the musky sweetness that rose up from beneath her bright blue summer dress.
‘You’re such a good girl, aren’t you?’ she said.
The child nodded. Rachel could see the saliva beginning to gather in the corners of her mouth as her hands grasped the peach’s furry surface. And then she heard the sound of the car. The black Saab, the new model, very shiny, very perfect, just like the woman who sat behind the wheel, driving quickly, careless in her anxiety. Stopping suddenly, pushing the door, leaving it standing open as she hurried towards her daughter. Rachel put the peach back in her bag and without looking around began to walk away, heard behind her the mother’s anxious apologies as she swept the child up into her arms, heard the sound of car doors slamming shut, then turned around and watched. Saw the older child, a boy, in the front passenger seat, and another in the back, a baby strapped in. Saw the woman look in the rear-view mirror, then expertly, smoothly, without a glance in Rachel’s direction, pull away.
Just as the bus came into sight, slowed and stopped, the driver waiting impatiently until she had boarded, paid her fare and swayed up the aisle to a seat in the back. From where she could turn and watch as the Saab accelerated. Through the village, up along the coast, the cliff edge falling away
below the road, then turning in through the high granite pillars, the wrought-iron gate, the gravel of the drive spitting out from beneath the car’s wheels, stopping outside the two-storey house built of buttery yellow sandstone, with the high bell tower, the gardens stretching away to the sea. And the girl and boy, the perfect children, running across the lawn into the shrubbery, chasing each other through the walled kitchen garden, stopping at a swing that hung from the lower branches of the macrocarpa tree, while all around, from every direction, the blue of the sea threw up a bright reflected light.
It was Mrs Lynch who had found them for her. The woman and the children. The house in the photographs. She had insisted when she came back to collect her dry-cleaning that Rachel come to visit.
‘I won’t take no for an answer, dear. You must come for lunch. I’ll collect you and bring you home.’
They lived, the Lynchs, in a red-brick house just off upper Glenageary Road. Deep carpets, a smell of furniture polish, a grandfather clock that tick-tocked like a slow, steady heartbeat. Mr Lynch barely spoke but he smiled at her, grasping her hand with his dry, birdlike claw, leaning over to pat her knee from time to time. Lunch was served at the mahogany dining table. Mrs Lynch talked. Rachel listened. Tales of children and grandchildren, holidays in Florida and Marbella. Rachel listened to the litany of proud achievement. She watched as Mrs Lynch sipped her soup from the edge of the spoon, tore her white roll in half and spread it with a smear of butter, dabbed at her lips with the linen napkin, punctuated her mouthfuls with conversation. Is this the way to do it? Rachel tried to remember, and tried to copy, to replicate the woman’s neat movements.
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