After the Silence

by Louise O'Neill

  Back at Hawthorn House, Alex went upstairs for a ‘rest’. ‘I’m sorry, Mam,’ he said, his face pale. ‘I just need some time to myself.’ She and Henry opened their presents alone, exchanging polite thank yous. Henry bought Keelin things that Henry wanted his wife to have – Gucci trainers, a velvet Balenciaga dress better suited to their old life, when Keelin actually had a social life, parties to go to, friends to see – rather than anything she would have wanted for herself. She forced herself to smile as he unwrapped his present from Evie, a photo their daughter had taken in the gardens at his parents’ estate, stripped trees stark against the twilight sky, the river gleaming silver. A peace offering, Keelin knew, for her refusal to come home. Evie had never refused her father anything before. He turned the gilt frame around and read out what his daughter had written on the back. ‘“Merry Christmas to the best daddy in the world. With all my love, Evie Diva.” Isn’t that sweet?’ he said. ‘How thoughtful.’

  ‘Very thoughtful,’ Keelin said, pushing the cheap eyeshadow palette Evie had given her back in the gift bag. This was a recurring theme; Henry receiving delightful, considerate gifts, while she was given second-hand pieces of tat that Evie wouldn’t deign to use herself. There was no point in confronting her daughter about it. Evie would just smirk and say, What does it matter? Daddy pays for everything anyway.

  Keelin wasn’t sure exactly when Evie had begun to hate her so much. She’d tried to protect her daughter from the worst of the news coverage, telling her it was lies, that her father was a good man. You mustn’t believe the rumours, pet, she’d said. Maybe she had done too good a job because here they were, a decade later, and Evie could barely stand to be in the same room as her, whereas Henry was adored, the perfect daddy who could do no wrong. She wished she had someone to talk to about this, preferably another woman whose teenager was equally vile to her. They could share stories of their daughters’ casual cruelty, the dreadful mood swings, the screams of I hate you and I never asked to be born. Keelin and this imaginary friend would talk about Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, worry about how revealing their girls’ clothing was, and worry even more whether their noticing the revealing clothes meant they were shaming their daughters, making them conscious of their bodies and their sexuality, in the same way their own mothers had done to them in the eighties. Whenever Evie posted a photo on social media, it took all of Keelin’s willpower not to phone her daughter and tell her to be careful, to wear more clothes, to drink sensibly, to get a taxi home, to save her virginity for someone she trusted. Wait for a boy who will be kind to you, she wanted to tell her daughter, one who will still respect you the morning after. Keelin knew she shouldn’t think such things, it was old-fashioned; Attitudes like that perpetuate rape culture, Mum, Evie would tell her heatedly. But Keelin knew, too, that sometimes girls went to parties and they never came home again.

  In the afternoon, Alex trudged downstairs from his bedroom and the three of them ate dinner together. They pulled the crackers she had bought online, recited the terrible jokes aloud. ‘Ha,’ Keelin said, after each punchline. ‘That’s not bad, is it?’ The dining room was too big, really, for just the three of them. It was designed for a large family, for her and Henry and their parents and Alex and Evie and their prospective partners, maybe a handful of grandchildren, when the time was right. It was a room for the family that the Kinsellas could have been, if Nessa Crowley had not died. She took a nap after the Christmas pudding, gratefully accepting Alex’s offer to clean up the table – You worked so hard today, Mam, let me help you, he said – and when she woke hours later, she was groggy and disorientated, a sourness congealing on her tongue. She grabbed her phone to check the time. It was gone ten p.m.; she had been asleep for three hours. She still had to visit the grave, so she dragged herself out of bed with a groan, changing into runners and an old hoodie. She hoped that Henry wouldn’t object to her going out so late. It’s dark out there, he would say. I only want you to be safe, my darling. Her safety – that was the reason for her husband’s determination to keep her locked in this house. Keelin would die here, and Henry would dig her grave, oh so slowly, all the while telling her he did it because he loved her.

  ‘Where’s Alex?’ she asked when she walked in on Henry in the lounge. It was a spacious room with high ceilings, two plush grey sofas with cream scatter cushions, and grey lattice window frames. A low coffee table in a dark wood held a sterling-silver candle holder, a Diptyque scented candle in Figuier cradled in its heart. ‘He’s gone out,’ her husband said.

  ‘Out? It’s ten o’clock on Christmas night – where’s he gone “out” to? This has gone on for long enough; we can’t allow him to run around the place like this.’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Henry said, holding up a bottle of Bordeaux and tilting his head towards the antique cabinet behind him which held the wine glasses. ‘Care to join me?’

  ‘I thought I might go down to the grave,’ she said, gesturing at her tracksuit. ‘Is that OK? I’ll be quick, I promise.’

  ‘Why are you asking for my permission?’ he said, turning the TV back on. ‘You can do whatever you want.’

  She shivered as she stepped onto the front porch, the sharp wind cutting through her. She wrapped the cashmere scarf tighter around her neck, testing the ground ahead of her with the tip of her toe for patches of ice before she took each step. She was like one of Seán Crowley’s cousins, the boys who would arrive from the mainland every summer, pale-faced and thin, squatting to scoot down the hills when they felt nervous of their footing. Invariably, one of the boys would step in a puddle or fall over and scrape their knee, and instead of jumping up, like Seán or Keelin or Johanna would have done, blinking back tears and insisting that it didn’t hurt, not one bit, the cousins would race home to the Crowley house to be minded and petted by Seán’s mother. That was what she was reduced to, Keelin thought wryly, a mollycoddled city slicker who couldn’t cope with the island’s moods. She wondered where Seán was spending his Christmas this year; she hadn’t seen him or Johanna for such a long time. They’d tried so hard, in the beginning, begging her to leave Henry; how could she bear to stay with him, after everything he had done? You don’t have to be afraid of him any more, they told her, and they didn’t believe Keelin when she said she wanted to stay, that she needed her husband in ways they could never understand.

  Something rustled in the grass and she recoiled, laughing at her reaction when she realised it was just a rabbit. She’d always found Christmas night on Inisrún eerie; it was too quiet, all the islanders sequestered in their houses. She peeked through windows as she passed, taking in the fat candles flickering on windowsills, rows of multicoloured fairy lights strung over blazing fireplaces, and she could see people too, in pastel paper crowns, miming for a rowdy game of charades or dozing in front of the television, watching the Christmas special of Father Ted yet again. She hurried a little through the village, past the siopa and the pier, until she came to the graveyard, weaving her way around the headstones. She was deliberately avoiding a particular grave, the one marked by a three-foot-tall angel in shining white marble. That one was always brimming with flowers, gifts and cards from islanders and from mawkish tourists, all come to pay their respects to the Crowley Girl, taken too soon from this world.

  ‘Nollaig shona,’ she said when she was standing in front of her parents’ final resting place. The small, square corner the Ó Mordhas had claimed for their own was covered in chips of quartz stone, a narrow flower trough running along the top, choked with weeds. Her father would have hated that – he was always so fussy about their rose garden, heading out on a Saturday morning with his trowel and bag of soil, Cáit calling after him to remember his hat. Keelin squatted down, tracing her fingers along the inscription in the grey-flecked marble. She had been fascinated by this place when she was younger, counting off the familiar family names of the island – Murphy, Breathnach, Ó Súilleabháin, deBurca, Ó Gríofa. Ó Mordha. Crowley – and y
et these people were strangers to her, their memories as faded as the half-chipped names on broken-down stones. Would she be buried here one day? Would future children skip over her grave and recite her name out loud? What would they think of her, and what she had done?

  She said a few prayers; they meant nothing to her now, just empty words, but Cáit would have appreciated the gesture; her faith had always been strong. When Keelin was a child, her mother would kneel down beside her single bed every night, sprinkling her with the holy water brought back from Lourdes, and make the sign of the cross. Now I lay me down to sleep, she would mouth along with her mother, her small hands clasped together in prayer, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

  ‘Braithim uaim sibh,’ she whispered, covering her face with her hands.

  I miss you, Daddy. And you, Mam.

  I hope you can forgive me.

  ‘Tá sé fuar anocht,’ a man said. ‘It’s bitter.’

  Keelin heard the voice and she looked up to see where it was coming from. It was so dark she couldn’t quite make out who it was – two shadowy figures at the entrance to the graveyard. She squinted, peering into the gloom, until their features began to emerge, picked out of flesh, and her throat closed over when she realised who was coming towards her.

  ‘We’re nearly there now, a ghrá,’ Bríd Crowley said to her husband, one hand on his back, the other holding his upper arm.

  Keelin shrunk away; for one, absurd moment, she wondered if she could hide behind the headstone until they passed. She had been so careful in her efforts to avoid them, sneaking around the island whenever she left Hawthorn House, trying to fade into the shadows to avoid a moment like this one. But there they were, after all this time. Nessa’s parents.

  The last decade had taken its toll on the Crowleys. Bríd had been considered an attractive woman for her age; she was forty-eight when Nessa had died – almost the same age that Keelin herself was now, she thought with a jolt – but Bríd had gotten so thin, almost skeletal, her greying hair pulled off her bare face in a tight ponytail, and she was wearing a man’s woolly jumper over threadbare leggings and lace-up boots. However, it was Brendan that Keelin could hardly take her eyes off. Gone was the handsome, strapping man from whom the Crowley Girls had inherited their long legs and green eyes, and in his place was this elderly créatúr. That was the only word she could use to describe him as he hobbled down the footpath, leaning on his wife as if he was unable to support himself unaided. He was only in his late fifties, but he could have been many years older, and he was bloated, his face a swollen moon. From medication, Keelin had to presume; the papers had reported on his depression, the multiple suicide attempts. Yet another thing to blame the Kinsellas for. Brendan was the first to see her and he stopped in his tracks, stumbling.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Bríd asked, steadying him. ‘Bí cúramach, a ghrá.’

  Brendan didn’t reply, just held out his hand, pointing at Keelin. ‘What’s that?’ Bríd said, looking across the graveyard. ‘Hello? Who’s there?’

  Keelin stood up, unfolding her body out of the darkness, and Bríd froze at the sight of her. They stared at one another for a heartbeat, neither of them moving. Her mouth went dry. Go, she screamed at herself silently. Get out of here, Keelin. Until, finally, her limbs cooperated and she walked away as fast as she could, dashing past the couple. She tried not to look at them or touch them, and although she heard one of them say something to her, she did not stop. What had she been thinking, coming to the graveyard? Of course the Crowleys would want to visit Nessa on Christmas Day, but she hadn’t imagined they would come so late; they never had before. She could hear footsteps behind her then, gaining ground. Bríd and Brendan chasing her, they were coming to claim the price for the loss of their daughter. Keelin broke into a run, a queasy terror ripping through her. What would the Crowleys do when they caught her? What would they say to her? ‘Fuck,’ she hissed as she hit uneven ground, a pothole left unfilled after a bad storm last winter, and she turned over on her ankle, crying out in pain.

  ‘Mam. Mam, it’s me. Are you all right?’

  She looked up to see Alex standing over her, his face concerned. ‘Why were you running away like that?’ he asked, holding his hands out and helping his mother up to standing. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I was at the graveyard. I was going to the grave, like we used to, remember? I thought maybe this year you’d be well enough to come with me, but you weren’t there when I was leaving the house; Henry said you’d gone out – where did you go? I came down here by myself and then I saw them, and I—’

  ‘Mam.’ Her son motioned at her to slow down. ‘Mam, you’re babbling. Try to calm yourself.’

  ‘The Crowleys were in the graveyard – Bríd and Brendan. They looked so old, they looked—’

  ‘My mam and dad?’ another voice said, and when Keelin saw who was standing there, she lost her breath; it was whipped clean out of her throat, leaving her gasping for air. The Crowley Girl. Keelin felt something twisting in her stomach, dread, or hatred maybe, she couldn’t tell. I thought we were finished with you, girl. Her heart was screaming, tearing its way out of her chest, and she could taste vomit at the back of her throat. But she looked again, blinking rapidly, and she saw that it wasn’t Nessa, of course it wasn’t. This girl’s hair was curlier, falling to her shoulders in twisted coils, and her legs weren’t quite as coltish as Nessa’s, she was a little shorter, carrying more weight on her hips. Alex took the girl’s hand, this shadow of Nessa Crowley made flesh. This girl who was very much alive, and breathing. Staring at Keelin like she knew her.

  ‘Sinéad?’

  Bríd and Brendan were behind them, their gaze darting between Alex and their daughter, foreheads creased in confusion. Brendan glanced down, paling when he saw their intertwined fingers. He stood up straight, grimacing as the bones cracked in his spine. ‘Go home, Sinéad,’ he said. ‘Go home right now.’

  Bríd was shaking her head, saying, ‘No, no . . .’ under her breath, and Brendan turned to his wife and said, ‘You go home too. I’ll deal with this.’

  ‘Dad,’ Sinéad said, moving closer to Alex. ‘I didn’t want you and Mam to find out this way, but Alex and me, we’re—’

  ‘No,’ her father cut her off. ‘I don’t want to hear this.’

  ‘Dad, please. I’m trying to—’

  ‘Sinéad,’ he roared, and Bríd started to cry then, tears rolling down her face. Keelin wasn’t sure if the older woman even knew she was crying, she just stood there, staring at her daughter open-mouthed. ‘Get home now, I said,’ Brendan repeated. ‘I don’t know what exactly is happening here, but I can tell you one thing for nothing: it stops right now, a chailín. An gcloiseann tú mé?’

  ‘I love him,’ Sinéad said simply. Alex nodded, confirming her words. He squared his shoulders, and the look on his face gave Keelin pause. Love? If it was love, why had her son not told her? Why hadn’t he confided in her about any of this? And, the sly thought slithering through her before she could stop it, why did it always have to be one of the Crowleys who took Alex away from her? What would she have to do to be rid of these girls for good?

  Brendan laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. ‘And what about Nessa? Did you ever love her, ha?’

  ‘Dad!’ The girl was winded by this. ‘How could you ask me that? Of course I loved Nessa. I still . . .’ She swallowed. ‘Nessa is dead,’ she continued in a clear voice. ‘And it’s not fair to blame Alex, he didn’t do anything wrong and he—’

  Her father lunged forward, grabbing hold of her arm and yanking her away from Alex. He shoved his daughter in Bríd’s direction, and the girl tripped, half falling to the ground. Alex rushed to help her but Brendan moved in front of him, one hand on the younger man’s chest, holding him back. ‘Take her home,’ he said, and Bríd snapped out of her stupor, dragging Sinéad to her feet.

  ‘Sinéad,’ Alex called after her. ‘Sinéad!’
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br />   ‘Don’t you dare,’ Brendan said. He moved closer to Alex until their noses were practically touching. ‘You will never speak to my daughter again; do you hear me? You won’t contact her; you won’t see her. You will forget she even exists. She’s dead to you now.’ He turned to spit on the ground beside them. ‘You get that, don’t you, boy? You Kinsellas should understand what it means to have a Crowley Girl dead to you.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Alex said. ‘I love your daughter.’

  With that, all the energy seemed to leach out of Brendan’s body, his limbs sagging. He looked something more than merely old in that moment, he looked destroyed, as if he was barely alive, rotting from the inside out. ‘Why?’ he said, and his voice cracked in half. ‘Why can’t you just leave my family alone?’ He tried to control his tears, desperate to retain some dignity, but he couldn’t stop himself. The man stood in front of them and he wept. ‘You people took her from us,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘You took my Nessa. Wasn’t that enough for ye? You want Sinéad now too?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Keelin whispered as the man turned away, limping, fading into the shadows like a ghost. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ‘You have to talk to him, Henry. You have to put a stop to this madness,’ Keelin demanded, throwing the door of the lounge open.

  Her husband, still on the couch, picking at a box of Butler’s chocolates, looked up at her in surprise. ‘Put a stop to what?’ he asked, pushing the herringbone blanket away from him. ‘Darling, are you crying? I’m aware it’s Christmas Day, but your parents have been dead for almost two decades. It’s hardly what one would call a fresh wound.’ She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I was only joking,’ he said. ‘I didn’t—’