Keelin’s story was far more complicated than that.
Chapter Nineteen
It was the last days of August now and Henry still hadn’t returned from his trip to the mainland. It should have been peaceful, having the house to herself while her husband was away on yet another ‘business trip’. It meant Keelin didn’t need to worry about wearing make-up, she barely changed out of her dressing gown and slippers, and she could happily watch what Henry termed ‘trash’ television, shuddering at the sight of a Kardashian or a Real Housewife. But she couldn’t fully relax because she never knew when Henry would be back; he was always vague about his travel dates, which meant Keelin was on edge all the time, awaiting his return. He would email at irregular times, and if she didn’t respond within the hour, he would worry. Why did it take you so long to reply? he would ask. Are you OK? Do you need me to come home? It was easier when Henry was here, and he knew she was safe.
Keelin was outside, dead-heading roses, wearing the Cath Kidston gardening gloves Evie had given her as a birthday present, a sign, if one was needed, that she truly was middle-aged now. There was real heat coming from that sun, as her mother would have said, despite it being almost September. Keelin could feel it burn across the back of her neck, sweat forming beneath her breasts and at the edges of her hairline. She had been uncomfortably warm this week but it had to be the weather, she was too young for hot flushes, surely? Cáit had been forty-three when she gave birth to Keelin, a great age in those days, but Keelin had no idea when her mother started perimenopause or what the experience had been like for her – had Cáit suffered with mood swings, an intense irritability climbing out of the days where she’d felt weepy, maudlin? Had Cáit missed her period for three months, and then bled continuously for weeks, the stains seeping through her underwear and her trousers, leaving both ruined? Keelin wondered why she hadn’t asked her mother these questions when she’d had the chance; she was twenty-eight when Cáit died, she hadn’t been a child. Cáit would have been prepared to have that kind of conversation with her then. But Keelin had been preoccupied, dealing with her ex-husband, who was still making weekly pilgrimages to the island, begging Keelin for a reconciliation. You’re the love of my life, he swore. I’ll kill myself if you don’t take me back. In the midst of all that drama, she didn’t have time to be sitting around with her mother, having casual chats about their menstrual cycles. Later, when she was starting the college course in Cork, she hadn’t given her mother much thought at all, outside of the convenience of having a live-in childminder. Keelin had presumed that Cáit would always just be there and she would answer all the questions Keelin had when she was ready to ask them.
‘Why aren’t you wearing your visor?’ Henry asked, the squeaking of the garden gate behind him. Keelin put a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun, peering up at her husband. He was dressed in a light shirt and linen trousers, and as he pointed at her bare head, she noticed his armpits were perfectly dry despite the weather. His body probably wouldn’t countenance the indignity of perspiration.
‘Welcome home,’ she said. ‘How was your trip?’
‘I’m not sure if there’s much point in paying a dermatologist to come to the island if you’re just going to sit outside and scorch yourself,’ he said, standing closer to her so his shadow blocked out the sun.
‘I used factor fifty . . .’ she trailed off. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘Come on,’ he said, reaching down to pick up the Louis Vuitton overnight bag that was at his feet. ‘Let’s go inside.’
That night, he watched as she did her bed-time yoga routine, stretching her body to the soothing voice of the YouTube instructor. Upper arm bones still rotating out, we’re breathing here, yes, we’re starting to find that vital prana, yes, that’s it . . .
‘You look fantastic,’ he said as she pushed back into a downward dog. He placed his novel on the bedside locker, taking off his reading glasses and putting them on top of the hardback. ‘You’re in such good shape, darling.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, moving through a chaturanga extra slowly, showing off her body for him. She’d already gone to the gym that morning, pushing herself to run 15K on the treadmill as she ignored her stomach grumbling. You’re not hungry, she told herself, running faster. You’re stronger than that. She kept thinking of that photo, and how thin the girl had been. The image haunted her. The exposed clavicle and delicate ribs, the bones so lovely in their aching fragility. Keelin wanted to be like that. She wanted to be clean; and not just for Henry, for herself too.
He waited until she had completed her final vinyasa and was resting in child’s pose before saying, ‘Will you try on the Simone Rocha I bought? I’d love to see it on you.’
In the dressing room, Keelin held her breath as her husband pulled the dress over her head, praying silently that it would fit, that the sacrifices she’d made during the two weeks he was away would pay off. The zip stuck for a second, Henry meeting her eyes in the mirror, but he tugged on it again and it glided the rest of the way up easily. She smiled in relief, proud of how she looked in the red silk slip with a sheer sleeveless tulle layered over it, embroidered with a delicate floral lace, daisies dancing across the fabric. Henry pulled her hair out of its ponytail and shook it loose around her face.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, but she wasn’t; Keelin knew that. She had never been beautiful. But she was thin now, thinner than she had ever been in her life, and maybe that was just as good. She looked at her reflection, her gaze moving from her manicured toes to her toned arms, her taut, slightly waxy face. It had been Henry’s idea to hire the dermatologist to give her Botox twice a year, as well as injecting her lips and her cheeks with subtle fillers. Keelin had been complaining of feeling tired, and worse, looking so, and Henry only ever wanted to make her happy. I’ve found someone who can come to the island, if you’d like, Henry told her when she turned forty. He handed her a glossy leaflet, before and after photos of an ordinary woman on the front, grinning, a body and a life transformed. Entirely your decision, darling, her husband said. You know I think you look perfect just as you are.
But when Keelin looked in the mirror, she could see her mam’s face, Cáit’s distinctive features emerging on her skin. She didn’t want to look like her mother, not now. She didn’t want to be reminded of all she had lost. So she asked Henry to help her forget, and he had whittled her into this new wife, like Frankenstein with his creature, remaking her into a woman who was small and neat and tidy, someone who took up as little space as possible.
‘Beautiful,’ Henry said again, unzipping the dress to the waist. He knelt down, lifting the tulle skirt. He grabbed her hands, placing them at the back of his head, and then he buried his face between her legs. Her knees trembled as he picked her up, carried her out of the dressing room and lay her on the bed, nodding as she murmured, ‘The KY is in my locker.’ Henry warmed the lubricant between his hands, and Keelin closed her eyes as he entered her, hard. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh fuck, that’s good.’ As she closed her eyes, she imagined that Nessa was watching them. The girl was standing by their bed, her hair clumped with blood and mud, still in her party dress, and she watched as Henry fucked Keelin, as she cried out, telling her husband to do it harder, faster. It was Nessa’s face that she saw as she came, falling apart.
Henry allowed himself to come too, collapsing on Keelin’s body with a gasp. He rolled off her quickly, pulling the locker open and grabbing a packet of wet wipes to clean himself with. Inside the drawer, in among the earplugs, lip balm, the random selection of batteries and antacids, there was a small brown bottle. Henry took it out, shook a pill into his palm and handed it to her.
‘You don’t need to check up on me all the time, you know.’
‘I’m not checking up on you,’ he said. He went to the chest of drawers against the far wall, riffling through them. ‘You were the one who as
ked me to remind you to take your Lexapro, weren’t you? Why ask for my help if you don’t want it? Sometimes I feel like I can’t win with you, Keelin.’ He pulled on an old T-shirt and boxer shorts and sat down on the bed beside her.
‘I just . . . I was thinking maybe I could come off them. Even just to see what it’s like. It’s been such a long time since—’
‘You need the medication.’ He cut across her. ‘I don’t want things getting bad again.’
‘Neither do I,’ she replied. ‘But I’m fine, I promise. I don’t see why I can’t try at least, it might—’
‘You took your tablets every night when I was away?’ he asked, and she nodded. ‘What about Alex? Has he been taking his as well?’
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to keep at him – you know how he gets if he feels like I’m monitoring him. He’s been in better form anyway. He’s still eating – he’s gained some more weight back.’
‘That’s good,’ Henry said, scratching at a patch of dry skin on his neck. ‘Has he done an interview with the Australians yet? I don’t think they’re going to give up on him easily, you know.’
‘He’s not ready for something like that, Henry. I’m . . .’ She paused. She hated to admit this, even to her husband. ‘I’m scared for him.’
‘Please, darling, don’t worry. Didn’t I promise you that I would take care of this?’ He lowered his body until it was flat on the bed, pulling Keelin down with him. She nestled into his armpit, and, with her ear pressed against his skin, she could hear the sound of her own heart ticking. She was like the alligator from Peter Pan, a clock stuck inside its throat, tick tock, tick tock. Listening to her life pass her by with every beat.
‘I missed you while I was away.’ He pulled his knees up, the bones cracking in protest. He could do with some yoga himself, but she knew better to suggest such a thing. Henry didn’t like any intimation that he was getting older. At nearly fifty, his hair remained suspiciously free of grey, his anti-aging skin products fighting for space with hers on their bathroom shelves. He’d always been interested in his looks – ‘fond of himself’, her mother would have said, which Keelin used to tease him about when they were first married. But it was different now; there was something disquieting about the way her husband took care of his appearance. He chose his clothes for the documentary with such meticulousness, selecting the most flattering of cuts, wondering aloud which colours would ‘pop’ on camera. Everyone was watching him, he said, so he may as well dress to impress.
‘Was your trip a successful one?’ she asked.
‘Depends on what you define as success,’ he said. Keelin waited for him to speak again, curling her fingers into her palms when she noticed a small chip in her scarlet nail polish.
‘It was obvious people recognised me at the airport,’ he said after a few minutes. ‘They’d see my face and do a double take, and they looked frightened of me, Keelin. It was like I was some sort of ogre. I just . . .’ He broke off. The pain was etched into his skin, in the new creases cut deep across his forehead and around his mouth. ‘I know I made mistakes. I know Nessa is dead and Alex is heartbroken, and I bear a degree of responsibility for that but I feel like I’m a bloody pariah,’ he continued. ‘I tried to contact Miles in London but he said he was in Norfolk, and Charlie bowed out of our lunch at the last minute, my own brother. Everyone’s always too busy to meet me now. I used to be . . .’ Henry sighed and Keelin could hear the heaviness in it, the burden her husband had carried with him for the last ten years. It wasn’t made up of guilt, like hers was, but something stickier, more complicated; it was the frustration of a man who had lived a blessed life, who saw such an existence as their birthright, and could not understand why that was no longer the case. ‘I was someone people wanted to spend time with,’ he said under his breath.
Keelin intertwined her fingers with his, kissing his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Henry.’
‘I’m afraid this documentary is turning out to be a bad idea. Giving them so much access, allowing them to stay in the cottage,’ he confessed. ‘It’s too risky. We don’t need these men here for another five months. What if they discover something we don’t want them to find?’
‘That’s why I said we shouldn’t –’ Keelin stopped.
‘What was that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh no, darling. Do tell me your thoughts on the matter.’.
‘Henry, please. I don’t want to fight about this.’
‘You never wanted to do the documentary, is that what you were going to say? So it’s all my fault again. Everything is always my fault, isn’t it, Keelin?’ He pushed her off. ‘I’ve spent the last decade protecting you, trying to make sure you don’t fall apart, again, and all you can do now is say, “I told you so.” The Australians were going to make this film whether we liked it or not; I was the only one who was willing to face facts, as per usual. And now you’re trying to throw it back in my face. Is it too much to ask that you support me, Keelin, just once?’
‘I do support you!’
‘Do you? Because I feel like I do an awful lot for you, and you don’t appreciate any of it.’ He gestured at the four-poster bed, the Egyptian cotton bedsheets, the House of Hackney wallpaper that had cost €250 per roll. Not a problem, Henry had said grandly to the interior designer when they’d received the bill, only the best for my family. He walked into the dressing room now, coming back with his arms full of her clothes, the designer labels he’d so carefully selected for her, and threw them in a heap on the floor. ‘And what about your wardrobe? That doesn’t come for free, you know. Everything in this house was paid for by me with my family’s money and it would be nice if you could express even a fraction of gratitude for any of it, and for what I do for you and your bloody children. You sit there, rolling your eyes at the idea of a documentary, even though it could change everything for us, it could fix Misty Hill, people might come back and we—’
‘Henry, please. Please.’ She knelt up on the bed. ‘You need to calm down.’
His shoulders slumped and he dropped down beside her, visibly deflating. ‘This isn’t easy for me,’ he said. ‘I love you so much, Keelin, and it’s like you don’t feel the same way.’
‘Of course I feel the same way.’
‘Do you?’ He looked at her. ‘Because sometimes I get the impression our relationship is rather one-sided. It’s not very nice, given what I’ve done for you.’
‘Please don’t think that,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry I made you feel this way.’ She wrapped her legs around his waist, shuffling closer so that her groin was pressed against his lower back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into his neck. His body was tense at first, and she waited for him to relax, to accept her apology. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘When you act like this,’ he said in a small voice, ‘it reminds me of how my mother treated me when I was a child, how obvious it was that she loved Charlie more than she did me. It brings up all these old emotions when you do that, Keelin, and you make me feel irrelevant. I can’t—’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Please, Henry. I’ll do anything you want to make this better. Just tell me what you need me to do.’
He ran his hands down her legs. ‘Will you do a joint interview with me tomorrow?’ he asked quickly. ‘The Australians have been wanting us to speak on camera together, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea, actually. It might force them to back off Alex for a while, give him some space. And most importantly, it’ll give the impression we’re united in this. Us-against-the-world-type thing, you know.’ He half laughed. ‘How could people believe I had anything to do with Nessa Crowley’s death if my wife still loves me?’
Keelin hesitated. ‘But I thought you said—’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ. Fine. Forget I even asked.’ Henry bent down to pick the clothes off the ground, telling Keelin to ‘leave it’ when she tried to help. �
��You’ll only do it incorrectly,’ he said. ‘Like you do everything else.’
‘Henry, please. I’ll do the interview, if that’s what you want.’ She picked up her dressing gown and wrapped it around her body. ‘I just thought we’d agreed it would be better if I didn’t talk to them any more.’
‘When did we agree to that?’
‘In your study? Remember? The morning after I had dinner in Marigold Cottage and I was late home. You thought it best that I stay away from the Australians for a while.’
‘No, darling,’ he said. ‘That was your suggestion. It’s not my place to tell you whom you can and cannot see.’
‘Oh,’ she said, trying to think back to that moment. He was right, she realised. It had been her idea. ‘I’m sorry. I . . . I must have gotten confused.’
Henry’s face softened. ‘That’s OK, silly,’ he said, pulling her into his arms. ‘Have you been feeling confused a lot recently? We might want to look at adjusting your meds if that’s the case – it’s best to keep an eye on these things, isn’t it? Now,’ he said, without giving her time to reply, ‘you should wear your Armani dress tomorrow, the burnt-orange one. With the Aquazzura pumps.’ He tightened his grip. ‘I bet Jake will like you in those.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Keelin said, laughing. ‘There’s no way Jake sees me in that way.’
‘I didn’t mean like that – goodness, you’re old enough to be his mother. But he’s intrigued by you, I can tell, and we can use that. You should befriend him.’ Henry moved his hand under her dressing gown, tracing his fingertips up her rib cage. ‘Try and find out about the other interviews he’s conducted so far, what people have said about us. The direction they’re taking with the doc.’
After the Silence Page 10