After the Silence

by Louise O'Neill

  ‘I . . .’ Keelin hesitated. She wasn’t quite sure what the question had been. She’d barely slept in the two weeks since the revelation about Alex and Sinéad Crowley’s relationship, the fear thick as smoke in her chest. Alex refused to speak to her, claiming she had taken Henry’s side, as always, and the tension between him and her husband felt combustible, as if the two men were seconds away from setting off an explosion which would destroy them all. When she did manage to sleep, the nightmares were always there, waiting for her. They were the same ones she’d had for years – Nessa Crowley begging for mercy and Keelin with a bloodied rock in her hand, hitting the young woman across the skull and screaming, I’ll kill you. Henry’s hands around her waist, pulling her away. A body in the grass, lifeless. What have you done? a voice said. What have you done? – and when she woke, the sobs breaking like waves in her chest, her husband would be in bed beside her, watching her. He put his finger to her mouth, whispering Stop that. You need to stay quiet, remember? She blinked, and there was Henry again, but he was snoring, unconscious. She couldn’t decide if that had been real or just part of the dream too.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said now. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I was just saying that the Australians are back.’ Henry waved in the direction of the cottage. ‘There’s smoke coming from the chimney at Marigold anyway, so unless we have ghosts, I’m going to presume it’s them.’ He laughed, for Henry didn’t believe in the island’s spirits, he hadn’t been reared on the taibhseoir’s stories of the púca and the bean sí, like Keelin had. He was far too sensible for such things, ‘too English, I’m afraid,’ he claimed.

  ‘You should call down,’ he said, picking up her secateurs and neatly slotting it into her garden-tools belt. ‘Say hello. They’re leaving at the end of this month, aren’t they? You’re running out of time, darling.’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ Jake said, breaking into a wide smile when he saw her, dimples forming in the corners of his mouth. He welcomed her into the warm cottage, where the stove was lighting, as Henry had guessed. ‘Happy New Year!’ he said. The artificial Christmas tree was still standing in the corner, the fairy lights blinking forlornly. ‘The decorations always look sad in January, don’t they?’ she said, fingering a piece of wilting tinsel. They asked about each other’s Christmases. Uneventful, Keelin lied, very quiet altogether. Jake told her about the Wilsons’ ramshackle farmhouse in Beara and Noah’s grandparents – his nan does nothing but read the death notices in the paper, Jake said, and his grandfather wouldn’t stop complimenting me on how good my English was. The endless days of turkey and stuffing sandwiches, tins of Roses opened and the fighting over who got to highlight the television listings in the RTÉ Guide. Drinking tinnies in the front room with Noah’s cousins before going to the local nightclub, a crush of a queue to get in before midnight. The DJ who played ‘Wagon Wheel’ five times while young men in checked shirts watched young women in tight dresses dance. ‘You had fun then?’ she asked, and Jake laughed. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘It was nice to spend Christmas with a proper family again.’

  He put the kettle on to boil, asking Keelin what kind of tea she would like. ‘Chamomile, please,’ she said; she needed something to settle her nerves. He unwrapped a cake from tinfoil, an apple tart that Noah’s grandmother had insisted the boys bring back to the island with them. ‘Are you sure?’ he said, when she shook her head. ‘It’s fresh out of the oven this morning.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You . . .’ He hesitated, cutting a slice for himself and grabbing a fork from the cutlery drawer. ‘You look thin, Keelin. You’re not crook, are you?’

  ‘Crook?’

  ‘Sick, I mean.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. She knew she had lost weight since she last saw Jake, and this time it wasn’t because of Henry’s careful efforts, weighing her twice weekly and doling out smaller and smaller portions of food, checking her Fitbit every night to make sure she’d exercised enough that day. (Exercise is essential in fighting depression, he explained, and fasting can help reduce the risk of disease – the studies are fascinating, darling.) No, Keelin had simply lost her appetite – fear would do that to a person, and God knows she was scared right now. Please, she’d implored her son every day since Christmas. You can’t do this. It’s not safe, for you or Sinéad, for that matter. Of all the people you could have chosen, why did it have to be one of the Crowley Girls? But her son wasn’t for turning. This was a chance for him to be happy, he said. Didn’t his own mam want him to be happy? Of course she did, she said, but not like this, not with Nessa’s sister. They needed to end this before the rest of the island had the story; it was impossible to keep a secret here for long, he should know that by now. Keelin kept insisting he had to break up with Sinéad, and her son was disappointed with his mother at first, but then he went cold. He locked his bedroom door, turning his music up to drown out her pleas as she begged to talk with him. She’d even contemplated going to Bríd and Brendan, appealing to them for help, but she wasn’t sure she had the stomach to see them again, not after what had happened on Christmas night.

  ‘It’s been a mad couple of weeks,’ she said, blowing gently on the tea to cool it down.

  Jake swallowed a piece of the tart. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I heard.’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘About Alex . . .’ He paused. ‘And Nessa’s sister.’

  ‘You . . . you can’t put this in the documentary,’ she said, her mouth dry. ‘Jake, please. Promise me.’

  ‘I promise,’ he said. ‘And don’t worry –’ he put his hand on hers as Keelin looked towards the other room in panic – ‘Noah doesn’t know anything about it. He’s still on the mainland. He had to interview someone; I’m not sure who.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Jake. What do you mean, you’re not sure who?’

  ‘It’s probably just a few re-shots – we’ve all the main interviews in the can.’ He raised his hands as if in surrender. ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Funny, there’s nothing that annoys me more than people telling me to calm down,’ she said. She took a gulp of the tea, barely registering when it scalded the roof of her mouth. ‘How did you find out about Alex and Sinéad?’

  ‘Seán told me.’

  ‘My Seán? Seán Crowley?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jake said. ‘He got the ferry this arvo – he’ll be on the mainland by now, I reckon.’ He walked into his bedroom, leaving the door open behind him. It was immaculate, she saw, the bed neatly made, his unpacked suitcase in the corner. He unzipped his laptop bag and pulled out a white envelope.

  ‘Here,’ he said, holding it out towards her. ‘He left this for you.’

  Seán used to write her letters all the time when they were younger. He would stuff notes into her school bag, leave them under her pillow for her to find when she went to bed. Keelin had kept them in an old shoebox, tucked away in a cupboard in her parents’ house, the letters and cards and the pieces of cheap jewellery Seán had given her when they were teenagers. She had forgotten all about it until she and Henry were clearing the place out, a few months after he’d proposed. Look at this! she exclaimed, riffling through the random trinkets. Mam must have brought it with her when we moved to this side of the island. This is so sweet, Henry said, reading one of the letters. We were babies, Keelin said, shaking her head. When she came back to the cottage the next day to pick up the cardboard boxes full of keepsakes she had set aside – her father’s gardening tools, the family photo albums, an Estée Lauder perfume her mother kept for ‘good wear’ – Seán’s letters had disappeared. Shit, Henry said. I wonder if the removers threw the box into the skip by accident? They rang the company to check but it was too late, everything had already been sent to the dump. I’m so sorry, her husband said. I’ll make this up to you, I swear. I will spend my life writing you love letters.

  ‘For me?’ Keelin repeated, taking it from
Jake.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘He said he didn’t want to phone you in case Henry answered, and he said he wasn’t going to text or email because he had a suspicion Henry read all of those.’ Jake looked at her nervously. ‘He doesn’t actually do that, does he?’

  She didn’t reply, tearing the envelope open and unfolding the single page that was inside. Seán’s handwriting, as messy as ever, words scribbled out and hastily drawn arrows pointing to the corrections above the line. It had been written in a hurry; she could tell.

  Keelin,

  I heard from Brendan after Christmas. He’s beside himself, Bríd too, and Róisín isn’t much better, she’s calling me every night from New Zealand in an awful state. This whole thing has been a shock to them, as you can well imagine.

  We were friends for a long time, Keelin, and I never asked you for anything, but I’m asking you now. Keep Alex away from Sinéad. No good will come of this. The two of you have always been so close, he’ll listen to you.

  Please, Keelin. My family has been through enough.

  Seán.

  She put the letter down on the table, pressing her lips together as hard as she could to stop herself from crying. She wanted to scream, but it was as if her throat had been slit open, her voice seeping from the wound. She had to stand there, silently, watching it all unravel before her.

  ‘Oh, Keelin,’ Jake said. ‘Please don’t cry.’ He crouched beside her, a hand on the small of her back. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. This isn’t your fault. This is so common with wives of abusers, blaming themselves,’ he said. ‘I saw it with my own ma. It didn’t matter how often my father beat her, he always told her it was her fault because she provoked him, and in the end she was so worn down that she believed him. “If I hadn’t said that to him . . . if I hadn’t had that last glass of wine . . . I tipped him over the edge . . .” She just needed to try harder, she said. She kept trying, she . . .’ He swallowed hard. ‘But that’s not how it works with domestic violence, Keelin.’

  ‘I have a little experience in the matter too,’ she said. ‘I left my first husband because I was afraid he was going to kill me. I spent years in the field, working with women whose partners had broken all the bones in their bodies. I know what domestic violence looks like, and my relationship with Henry is nothing like that.’

  ‘We both know there’s more ways to be abusive than just physically.’ He rubbed the base of her spine in small circles, attempting to soothe her. ‘I imagine Greta Ainsworth felt the same way as you do.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, pulling away from him. ‘Don’t touch me. And don’t talk about Greta – you don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘I’m only trying to help. That’s what I’ve been doing all along, Keelin. I’ve—’

  ‘Did you interview Johanna?’ she cut across him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Did you talk to Johanna Stein for the docu­mentary? If you’re trying to help me so much, why didn’t you tell me that you interviewed my best friend?’

  ‘I . . .’ He stopped, his face guilty. ‘You never asked. And that was before we became mates,’ he said. ‘I’ve been completely honest with you ever since. All I want is to—’

  ‘To what?’ she asked. ‘To save me, is it? Who told you I needed saving?’ She crumpled the letter up, opened the door of the stove and fed it to the fire, watching as it turned to ash. ‘I’m not your mother, Jake, as difficult a concept as that seems to be for you to grasp.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ he gasped. ‘You’re way out of line, Keelin. That was uncalled for.’

  But she didn’t care any more. She didn’t care about Jake or Noah or this godforsaken documentary. She had spent the last ten years holding on to her secrets as best as she could, and for what? For her son to fall for the only person he was forbidden to love, yet again choosing one of the Crowley Girls over his own mother. Maybe it was better if the truth did come out, she thought. Maybe it was time that it did.

  ‘I’m sick of you,’ she said, the words clipped. ‘I’m sick of listening to you talk about your childhood and your trauma and your dead mother. I’m sorry that happened to you, I am, but we’ve all been through shit, we’ve all seen things we wish we hadn’t, and I’m trying to, I’m trying to . . . Jake, I need you to leave me alone.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and he was crying now. His face blurred before her, morphing into Alex, then Seán, Henry, then Alex again. Alex as a little boy, his eyelids fluttering as he fought sleep. Asking Keelin to hold him, to sing him a lullaby, to make everything better. These men, always wanting something from her. But she had nothing left to give them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She had her fingers on the door handle, ready to leave this cottage once and for all. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. And I was wrong to spend so much time with you over the last few months; it wasn’t fair on you. I just . . . I needed someone. I haven’t had a friend in so long.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Home,’ she said. ‘To my husband, where I belong.’

  ‘You can’t stay with that man,’ he pleaded with her. ‘He’ll kill you. I’ve been looking into what happened to Greta Ainsworth, and the police reports are shady, there’s something not quite right about them. I’m telling you.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘I can’t just “stop it”. I think your husband killed his ex-girlfriend and I’m almost sure he murdered Nessa Crowley which means you’re in danger, Keelin. I can’t stand by and watch another woman die. I can’t, I –’ he broke off, panting.

  She opened the door, looking at the sky, a glowing haze of blue-purple settling on the hills. How beautiful the island was at this time of the evening, she thought. How lucky she was to live in a place like this. ‘Don’t follow me,’ she said to him. ‘Make your documentary, tell the story as you think it needs to be told. Do what you have to do. But I’m done.’

  ‘Henry is a murderer,’ he said, still sitting on the wooden stool and looking up at her.

  ‘No,’ she said, and there was a note of pity in her voice, for there was so little that Jake understood, in the end. ‘No, he’s not.’

  Chapter Forty-One

  When they were building Hawthorn House, Henry showed his wife the sketches the architect had created for them – glass and steel, windows from ceiling to floor to take advantage of the way the light shifted on the island, splintering into hundreds of shades of blue, filtered through the sea and the sky. Keelin thought the plans were stunning, but she hadn’t been able to conceive of the full scale of it at first, becoming increasingly uneasy as the foundations were laid and the building began to climb, brick by brick, as if trying to reach the sun. There had never been anything like it built on Inisrún before, and secretly she wondered what the rest of the islanders would make of it. But she smiled and said, Whatever you think is best, my love, to her husband. She asked for one room – just one, she hadn’t wanted to seem greedy then, especially when it was Kinsella money paying for everything – which she could decorate herself. Wasn’t it supposed to be the husband who got a man cave? Henry had laughed. But she didn’t care about those things as much as he did, he fretted over fabric and wallpaper and tiles, wanting to ensure his choices were the ‘correct’ ones, which meant the choices his mother would approve of. Once the house was built and they invited the Kinsellas to visit, all Olivia could say was, Goodness, it’s rather large, isn’t it? Henry’s face falling, looking to Keelin as if it say, Is it? Is it too big? Did I make a mistake? And she had stood beside her husband, and she said loudly, Well, I think it’s perfect, Olivia. I feel blessed to live in a house like this.

  Henry said she could take the upstairs living room as her own, telling his wife to do her worst. She ordered a paint in a dark blue, a large, squishy couch in wine velvet upon which she could curl up and read, and she laid an Aztec-print rug on the unvarnished wooden
floor. She asked the architect to put an open fire in there, exposed red brick, and covered the walls in prints she had found in flea markets in Berlin and Paris, refilling a vintage brass jug with wild flowers she picked on her daily walk. It was in this room that Keelin stood now, staring out the circular window which overlooked where Misty Hill had once been, and she watched Jake Nguyen and Noah Wilson leave Marigold Cottage for the last time. Noah bent down to tuck the key under the mat, as Henry had instructed, then clapped his friend on the shoulder. Adjusting his backpack, Jake looked up at Hawthorn House and she moved into the shadows before he could spot her. She waited a few seconds before creeping back, but all she could see was the back of their heads as they walked down the hill to the pier to catch the ferry. It was the end of January, it was time for the Australians to go home, but she was sorry she hadn’t said a proper goodbye to Jake. She regretted the way she had spoken to him that night in the cottage, and for the way she’d treated him for the entirety of their friendship really. She’d used him, and not just in an attempt to influence the direction the documentary took, to make sure he cast the Kinsella family in a flattering light, as Henry had asked her to do. It was more than that. Keelin had liked the way Jake made her feel, as if she were still an interesting woman, good company, a decent friend. She would miss feeling that way, as she would miss him. But Jake would be fine without her. He would find another woman to rescue, another broken doll to fix, lovingly gluing the shattered pieces of china back together. He would forget all about Keelin Kinsella then; she would just be some woman on an island he had once known.

  A floorboard on the stairs creaked – Henry? she thought, holding her breath – but when she turned around, it was Alex she found there. He was dressed smartly, a forest-green shirt under a fitted black sweater, an overnight bag in his hands, tiptoeing past her with the exaggerated movements of a cartoon cat burglar.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked. Her son flinched but he didn’t look at her. ‘Alex,’ she said. ‘I asked you a question. Where are you going? Why have you got that bag with you?’ He ignored her, hurrying his step. ‘Are you going to see her? After everything we talked about?’ Keelin followed him, her socks slipping on the polished stairs and she grabbed at the handrail to steady herself. ‘You can’t do this.’