After the Silence

by Louise O'Neill

  Declan: Who knows? In my opinion, there are only two people who have any answers to your questions and their names are Henry and Keelin Kinsella. And I don’t think either of them is going to be telling the truth any time soon.

  Chapter Six

  Keelin was wearing her noise-cancelling headphones, so she didn’t hear him come into the study and yet, somehow, she could sense him there, standing behind her. The knowing was in the stiffening of her spine, that uneasy prickle at the nape of her neck. She could taste him on her tongue.

  Her eyes flicked to the corners of the computer screen, checking to see if she could find his shadow, but there was nothing. Her hand rested on the mouse, and she stopped scrolling through the article she’d been reading, waiting for him to speak first.

  ‘She’s young,’ he said. There was a photo of a woman on the screen; it was taken on her wedding day, a slip of ivory silk clinging to her body. ‘She can’t be more than mid-twenties, can she?’

  Nessa never even made it to that age. Nessa would never turn forty-six and feel bone-deep tired all the time, like Keelin did. She wouldn’t crawl into bed at ten p.m., barely able to keep her eyes open any longer, nor would she wake at four in the morning, her bladder fit to burst. Nessa wouldn’t have to stare at her reflection in the mirror, pinching the new folds of skin around her jawline she was certain hadn’t been there yesterday, wondering when, exactly, she had become old. The Crowley Girl would be young forever.

  Her husband leaned over her and pressed the page-down key on the keyboard. An intake of breath as he skimmed the article. ‘My God,’ Henry said. ‘The poor girl. Did you read this part, Keelin? Where her daughter had a tummy bug and was sick all over her bedspread? And when the husband found out, he made –’ he checked the screen again – ‘Sarah Watson eat the vomit.’ He shivered. ‘That’s barbaric.’

  Sarah Watson had married young, the journalist wrote, and the first time her husband hit her was on their honeymoon. By the time their youngest daughter was three, he’d hospitalised Sarah on two occasions, breaking her jaw and dislocating her shoulder by throwing her down a flight of stairs. But Sarah gave as good as she got, her mother-in-law was quoted as saying. That girl could start a fight in an empty room; they were as bad as each other, she said. After a particularly heated argument he choked Sarah until she lost consciousness, and she fled to a shelter, fearing for her life. The husband threatened to go to the police and file kidnapping charges if she didn’t bring the children home and so, despite the staff’s best efforts to persuade her to stay, she went back to him. I can’t lose my kids, Sarah Watson said to the shelter’s coordinator. He has rights in the eyes of the law, I’ll still have to negotiate child-visitation rights with him. I’ve seen what the system does to women like me. It won’t protect me. She was dead within two weeks, the story splashed across the front pages of the newspapers, friends and colleagues expressing shock that the husband could commit such a horrifying act of violence. He hadn’t seemed the type, but you never know what goes on behind closed doors, do you? they said to each other for a few days before promptly forgetting all about it.

  ‘I don’t know why you continue to read stuff like this,’ Henry said. ‘It only upsets you. Why do it to yourself?’

  Keelin continued to read ‘stuff like this’ for the same reason she continued to read her psychology books and journals. It was why she was still a member of the Psychological Society of Ireland and subscribed to their magazine, why she scrolled through the events sections on their website on a daily basis, imagining which conferences she would go to, the questions she would ask the speakers, if she was capable of leaving this island. Keelin had trained to become a counsellor specialising in domestic violence because she’d wanted to support women, to show them that a life free of abuse was within their grasp. The work had been difficult, but it had been fulfilling too, in a way that seemed impossible to imagine now. So she read ‘stuff like this’ because she needed to pretend she still had a career, a purpose.

  Henry turned the computer off. ‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘it horrifies me how these men behave, if you can even call them “men”. When I think about how Mark Delaney treated you, darling . . .’ He gripped the back of her chair tightly. ‘It’s revolting.’

  (Where were you? Her ex-husband screaming at her when he arrived home from work. I phoned the house a hundred times today and there was no answer. Where were you, Keelin? Are you fucking someone else, you cunt? Fists punching into her stomach, and she was doubled over in agony, begging him to stop, she would never do that, she would never betray him like that. I didn’t mean it, Mark would always say afterwards, drawing a bath and gently lowering her into the water, tears coming to his eyes when she gasped in pain. I just can’t bear the thought of you cheating on me, not after everything that happened with her. I’m terrified of losing you, that’s all. I’ll get help, he promised, and Keelin had believed him or she’d wanted to believe him. Maybe they were the same thing, in the end.)

  Henry pulled her to standing, taking her place on the chair. He sat Keelin on his lap and she buried her face in his shoulder, breathing in the spicy scent of his cologne as she thought of that other house, that other husband. Henry would never raise a hand to her. She was safe with him.

  ‘Look at that,’ he said, checking his Patek Philippe watch, the delicate strokes of silver ticking in a platinum face. When Henry’s brother turned fifty, Jonathan had given his first-born son his vintage Audemars Piguet as a birthday present; it was the sort of thing that should become a family heirloom, he’d said. He gave it to Charlie, of all people! Charlie would be as happy wearing a fucking Swatch! Her husband had seethed when he watched the videos of Jonathan’s speech on Facebook, accompanied by photos of a lavish birthday party they hadn’t been invited to. He spent weeks afterwards searching for the most expensive piece he could source and sent his father the bill. It’s beautiful, Keelin told him when it was delivered to the island, hoping this would settle his prickly mood for a few weeks at least. But that same night she woke up and the bed was empty beside her. Henry? she called out, stealing downstairs and finding her husband in the sunroom. The new watch in his hands, staring at it. When will I be enough for them? he asked her, so quietly. Keelin sat at the foot of the chair, leaning her head against his thigh. You’re enough for me, she said, wishing she could make this better for him. I love you so much. When she jolted awake the next morning, her neck aching, her husband was gone.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s June 21st already,’ he said now. He’d never become accustomed to this new, amorphous life of theirs, the undefined edges of each day where one hour bled into the next until finally it was over and they could go to sleep again. ‘Remember when we used to—’

  ‘Yes.’

  Henry had always loved the summer solstice, waiting until the day fell fast into night before setting the bonfire alight, taking a breathless step back as it soared to kiss the sky. The flames crackling orange, bodies moving in and around its heart, dancing shadows cast against bare skin. The solstice celebrations were supposed to be cleansing, meant to purify the body and soul. The Misty Hill guests would run into the sea at midnight, gasping at the icy sting of the water, calling to the heavens to wash their sins away and make them worthy.

  ‘Will you go down to Marigold Cottage and check on the Australians? They’ve been on the island for over a month now, I’m curious to know what kind of progress they’re making,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you ask if they’d like to join us for dinner? It’s the longest day of the year – we should mark it in some way.’

  Henry missed their old life, she knew, the dinner parties and the heavy thud of wedding invites through the letter box every spring, throwing confetti into the air outside charming little churches in the Cotswolds, the holidays to the south of France to stay in friends’ plush villas. Was that why he had agreed to have the Australians stay in Marigold Cottage – because he was starved for company
? Was her husband so desperate to fill the empty seats around the dinner table that he would put them all in danger?

  ‘I have to check on Alex first. He’s sick.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Henry’s tone was sharp. ‘Has he done anything to—’

  ‘He’s fine, don’t worry. It’s just a twenty-four-hour thing.’

  ‘Ah, OK. Poor Alex.’ He kissed the back of her neck. ‘But you can go down afterwards, can’t you? To talk to the Australians.’

  ‘I . . .’ Keelin pictured herself walking down the garden path, knocking on the yellow door of Marigold Cottage, and she was so weary at the thought of it she could feel herself physically wilt. ‘Please, Henry,’ she said. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘We’re all tired, darling. And we all have to do things we don’t want to do, now, don’t we?’

  She looked to the ground. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘You’re always right.’

  Upstairs, she knocked on her son’s door. ‘Alex?’ she said, tiptoeing into the room without waiting for his response. She shouldn’t have done that. She should have ‘respected his personal boundaries’, as her old supervisor would have said, but then again, her supervisor didn’t have to deal with an adult child still living at home at the age of twenty-seven, a half-finished degree in French and Philosophy the only thing to his name. I can’t do it any more, he’d told Keelin when he arrived home that day, midway through his second year at Trinity. I can’t pretend I’m OK when I’m not, he said. He hadn’t left Inisrún since.

  ‘Alex,’ she said again. It took her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom, but then she saw him, lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. This was Evie’s apartment and the interior designer had taken the ‘Teenage Girl’ brief very seriously, using shades of millennial pink and rose gold, a four-poster bed with a sheer gauze canopy as the centrepiece. The last time she’d come home, Evie had plastered the walls with photos of her school friends: beautiful girls in short skirts and Adidas trainers. Friends Keelin had never met because her daughter had never brought them home to the island, and she never would.

  She sat down on the bed, switching on the bedside lamp. Alex blinking, turning away from her. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘I just wanted to check you were OK.’

  ‘I’m grand, Mam. Just tired, you know.’

  His face was pale, sharp cheekbones protruding and casting shadows on his jawline. He ate so little, scraps of sandwiches and half a biscuit washed down with a milky cup of tea, and only when Keelin forced him to do so. She could still see him as a new-born, wet and red and screaming. It’s a boy, they’d said. What? she’d cried out, It’s a what? (No. No. It couldn’t be. A fortune-teller had once told Mark he would only have daughters, and so he had said throughout Keelin’s pregnancy that the baby must be a girl. If the baby wasn’t a girl, he would know Keelin had cheated on him, just like his ex had done.) You have a beautiful baby boy, the nurse said again, and Keelin wept as he was placed against her breast, wondering what Mark would do when he heard the news of a son, how he would punish her. But she had known too, in some primal part of herself that she couldn’t quite understand, that this baby was more important than Mark now, and she would do whatever it took to protect him, including from his own father. Alex had grown from a demanding, colicky infant into a quiet child, one who had never played easily with other children, reluctant to share his toys. They’ll only break them, Mammy, he explained, clutching his Tellytubby to his chest. He didn’t need their company anyway, he said, not when he had Keelin’s hand to hold. She’d hoped he would find it easier when he started at the island school; she had been shy too, yet she had found Seán and Johanna, she’d found her tribe. But her son became increasingly quiet, coming to her in the middle of the night in soaked pyjamas, whispering that he had wet the bed. It was months later when she awoke to the sound of him crying, choking back ragged sobs. (That was what hurt her most of all, she would think afterwards. That he had tried to hide it, that he hadn’t felt he could confide in her.) What’s wrong, mo stoirín? she said, one hand on his forehead to check his temperature. Are you sick? And then he told her. One of the big boys had informed everyone at playtime that Alex was weird, he was so weird he’d scared his dad away and that’s why he lived in a house full of women; he was a sissy, a wuss, a mammy’s boy. Why doesn’t my daddy live with us? Did I do something wrong? the boy asked. The hurt in his voice, and Keelin’s heart twisting in her chest to hear it. You did nothing wrong, she said, almost winded. I love you and your mamó loves you and your father loves you too, in his own way, of course he does. Our marriage didn’t work out for other reasons – nothing to do with you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to us, Alex, she told him. We will love you forever.

  ‘I have to go see the Australians,’ she said now, and her son stiffened.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s summer solstice. We thought it might be a good idea to have a dinner party.’

  ‘Henry thought it was a good idea, you mean.’

  ‘They seem like nice enough lads.’ Keelin brushed his hair away from his forehead, feeling how lank it was beneath her fingertips. When was the last time he’d showered? Was he taking his medication? She wanted to ask him, but she knew Alex would snap at her, tell her to mind her own business, he wasn’t a child any more.

  ‘Don’t.’ He pushed her hand off him. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this, Mam.’

  ‘Henry—’

  ‘Henry would do anything for attention.’

  ‘That’s not fair. Who’s been the one taking care of us for the last ten years? I wouldn’t have survived without him in the beginning and I think you know that. This documentary was going to happen, whether we liked it or not, and now they’re here, we have to stick together and get on with it.’ She waited for his reply. ‘Alex,’ she said in a softer voice when he remained silent, ‘please. I need you to promise me that you’ll just try, OK? That’s all I’m asking, mo stoirín.’ She stood up, and when she was at the door her son spoke again.

  ‘These true-crime programmes are disgusting. They’re voyeuristic and exploitative. Someone died, Mam. She’s dead,’ he said. ‘Nessa is . . .’ He curled into the fetal position, his arms around his knees, holding himself together. He could barely say her name, Keelin realised. Her son still loved that girl, even after all this time.

  Chapter Seven

  The Crowley Girl

  ‘I don’t know what to do, lads,’ Keelin said. She’d texted her two best friends that afternoon and asked them to meet her in Cupán Tae, the island’s oldest cafe. The owner had been one of the few who refused to sell to the Kinsellas when Misty Hill was set up, much to their frustration, so there was never any danger of running into Henry here. She hadn’t yet met another human being who could nurse a grudge quite like her husband. ‘What do ye think I should do?’ she asked them. Seán Crowley, with his weather-beaten face and unkempt blond beard, was as much of the island as Keelin was, his family had been here for generations, but Johanna Stein was the daughter of blow-ins, a pair of German artists who moved to west Cork in the early seventies, looking for the end of the world, and they had found it on Inisrún. As children, the three of them spent their days exploring the island; racing down narrow, winding roads with tufts of grass sprouting in the middle, shouting Seachain! when the odd car would pass, a shell of metal belching black clouds and half held together with twine, squeezing the children up against stone walls stuffed with moss and weeds. They would go down to An Siopa Beag and beg Keelin’s mother for salt-and-vinegar Taytos, sitting side by side on the stone ledge outside, licking crumbs from the foil crisp packets, their voices echoing in the cocoon of a beach surrounded by the high sea cliffs on the right and the pier to the left, watching as the boats arrived from the mainland to see if anyone new was coming to the island. Apart from Seán and Keelin’s brief attempt at romance as teenagers – This is a
terrible idea, Keelin had said after a few months of dating. Can we go back to normal, please? and Seán had laughed, and said he thought she’d never ask – they had always been a gang of three, and utterly inseparable.

  ‘Henry will go mad if he sees these marks.’ She gave Seán the report that her son had brought home from school the day before. He took it from her, making a face as his eyes skimmed down the page.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, passing it to Johanna. ‘Not great and that’s coming from me, like.’

  ‘Alex is more creative,’ Keelin said defensively, taking the letter from the other woman, folding it in two and putting it back in her handbag. ‘And you know how much I hated maths in school – I was pure useless. Alex takes after my side, unfortunately for him.’

  ‘He did brilliantly in french,’ Johanna tried to comfort her. ‘He’s obviously more inclined towards languages. There’s no harm in that.’ The café’s proprietor, wearing the same worn-out GAA jersey and acid-wash denim jeans he did every day, placed a slice of homemade coffee cake on the table for her, apple tart for Johanna. ‘Go raibh maith agat, Cormac,’ Keelin said, smiling at him. She waited until the older man had gone behind the counter again before continuing. ‘Henry won’t be happy about this,’ she admitted, frowning at Seán when he rolled his eyes. ‘Excuse me, Crowley. Don’t be like that about my husband. If Alex wants to go to university, he’ll need to get better marks than this, and that’s the reality of it. We agreed that he could sit his final exams on Inisrún, but only if he kept his grades up. If Henry hears he’s failing maths . . .’ She sighed, taking a bite of the cake. Her son had been miserable at the boarding school outside Dublin that a friend of Henry’s had recommended; he felt isolated, never quite fitting in with his rugby-obsessed classmates. I miss the island, he said every time he phoned; please let me come home, Mam. She had gone to Henry then, wheedling and cajoling, promising that Alex would be an exemplary student if he came back to Inisrún, he wouldn’t get lower than a B in any of his subjects and if he did, there’d be hell to pay. She didn’t want to admit that her efforts were as much for her own benefit as Alex’s; she’d missed her son terribly when he was away at school. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said again, slicing her fork into Johanna’s apple tart, ignoring her friend’s complaint.