‘All I’ve ever tried to do is protect you and the children, is that so wrong?’ Henry reached for the bottle of red wine warming by the open fire, pouring some into his glass. ‘You wouldn’t have survived in those early days without me. I’m hardly one of those men, am I?’
‘No, darling,’ she said, fingering the ice-cream charm hung around her neck. ‘Of course you’re not.’
‘Then why did that therapist insinuate that I am?’ He yanked her hand away with force. ‘Would you stop doing that, Keelin, for God’s sake. I’m on my last nerve here,’ he said. ‘You know I find it annoying when you’re playing with that bloody thing. Why would you insist on wearing it tonight, of all nights?’
Henry always said the charm looked cheap, like something she’d found as the prize in a Christmas cracker. You have boxes of beautiful jewellery upstairs, he protested. Why on earth do you insist on wearing that gaudy little knick-knack? He didn’t know Nessa had given the necklace to her, nor did he understand the meaning behind it; he just thought it was naff, and unbecoming of a Kinsella woman. But as she had gotten dressed today she had picked the chain up from her jewellery box, watching herself in the mirror as she fastened it around her neck. She wanted the Crowley Girl to be here with them, in a small way.
‘Shh,’ he said as the commercial break ended, pushing Keelin’s feet off his lap. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, staring intently at the television. Why wasn’t he more afraid? she wondered. Surely he must know the danger this documentary put them all in. ‘I don’t think that’s the most flattering colour on you,’ he said as the camera zoomed in on Keelin’s face. ‘I told you to wear your pink Hermès scarf with that suit. It needs something to lift it.’
‘I must have forgotten,’ she said. She did look pale on the screen, her face angular and tired, the make-up doing little to disguise the dark circles under her eyes. What would the people watching think of her? Would they wonder who that woman was, this perfectly groomed, middle-aged woman with her chic clothes and neat hair and legs crossed primly at the ankles? Her face and her voice in millions of homes all over Ireland and the UK tonight – The Crowley Girl was the most anticipated documentary of the year, The Times had said, guaranteed to get a huge audience share. The viewers would be mostly female, the columnist wrote, questioning why these gruesome true crime reports appealed so much to women, given they were the primary victims of such crimes. But Keelin could understand it. Women had always been taught to be afraid; it was embedded in their very DNA, passed down from mother to daughter, a poisonous heirloom. Women wanted to hear these stories of rapes and murders so they could search for the clues, the warning signs the victim had missed but which would ensure their own survival if such a threat befell them. They needed to hear of the mistakes, the dark road walked down at night, the door opened, the lift taken from a smiling stranger. I wouldn’t do that, they would whisper, incredulous at the victim’s stupidity. Hoping it would be enough to save them when their time came.
Would Jonathan and Olivia watch the documentary? She knew Evie wouldn’t. There had been a FaceTime call that morning where her daughter had informed her scornfully that no one watched television any more except for ‘like, old people’, but if this show sold to Netflix, she would have to kill herself, and her mother would be to blame, naturally. Everyone in Ireland would be glued to the documentary, and Keelin knew too that if she walked the island tonight, every living room would be lit up, each body to a one planted on sofas and chairs as this documentary – their home, their history, their shame – played out for all to see. Suffering through the indignity of having their greatest tragedy picked apart by outsiders for sport. Were Bríd and Brendan sitting in their mausoleum on the far side of Rún, listening to Keelin swear that her husband was innocent? Would Alex and Sinéad be watching it, wherever they were? They’d been gone from the island a full week before her son deigned to phone her, reassuring Keelin they were safe and happy. ‘Ta sé ar fad taobh thiar dúinn anois,’ he said, speaking in Irish because he knew Henry would insist Keelin put her phone on loudspeaker so they could both listen in. ‘Tá sé ar fad thart.’ It’s all behind us now. It’s all over.
And maybe it was. The Australians had gone home months ago, and they obviously hadn’t discovered any new information to justify reopening the case; the guards hadn’t come knocking on the door of Hawthorn House, search warrants in hand. The gardaí had always been sore about their failure to prosecute Henry for the murder, embarrassed by the international criticism of the investigation, the skewering of the sloppy mistakes that had been made, both in the Irish media and abroad. If there had been a shred of evidence in the programme that incriminated Henry, the guards wouldn’t have wasted time in arresting him. They must be safe, she thought. And she didn’t need to worry about Alex either, as Henry kept reminding her. He would never tell Sinéad what he had seen that night, because if he did, he would lose her, and her son wouldn’t survive losing another Crowley Girl.
Keelin’s face disappeared from the screen, replaced by other, heartbreakingly familiar ones. Maria Crowley. Bríd. Alice Buckley. Seán. Johanna . . . Oh Jo – how she missed her friend. Henry was talking now, handsome and forlorn. It had been difficult, he explained, these last ten years, paying the price for a crime he didn’t commit. He had cared for Nessa Crowley, of course he did, and he regretted their unfortunate, er, dalliance. The truth was that he loved his wife more than anything in the world but it had been a difficult time in their marriage, she hadn’t been well in those days, psychologically, and he’d been under immense pressure to keep everything together for the sake of the children. It was a stupid mistake, but it wasn’t a crime to have an affair, surely? And while he was devastated at what had happened to the young woman – and in his own home too! – he was an innocent man and deserved to have his name cleared. He wanted an apology from the state. An acknowledgement from An Garda Síochána that they had attempted to frame him with the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. I don’t know what happened to Nessa Crowley the night of the party, Henry said, wiping tears from his eyes. I swear to you on my children’s life, I don’t know.
He was convincing, Keelin thought. It was almost unnerving how skilled at lying her husband had become, or maybe he had always been this good and she hadn’t been paying enough attention.
They watched the rest of the documentary together, the talking heads and the opinions for hire, the outlandish theories and the wild speculation. Henry’s phone started to light up, dozens of missed calls and texts and notifications on social media. ‘Look at all these friend requests on Facebook,’ he said, holding his iPhone out for Keelin to see. ‘And my Twitter followers, crikey. I can’t keep track. I’m at twenty thousand . . . Keelin, I’m at twenty-five thousand, oh my God, thirty thousand followers.’ Henry jumped off the couch, knocking over his glass. Keelin sat there, staring at the red stain seeping into the cream carpet and she did nothing. She was good at that.
‘“The guards had nothing on Henry Kinsella”,’ Henry read aloud. ‘“Yet another cover-up to save their incompetent arses”.’ He punched the air triumphantly. ‘Go on Twitter there,’ he told her, gesturing at his iPad resting on the arm of the sofa. ‘Come on,’ he said when she didn’t move, clicking his fingers in front of her face. ‘Search for the hashtag TheCrowleyGirl. This is amazing, Keels. The tide is turning, I can feel it. I always knew this documentary was going to save us. I’m a bloody genius.’ His phone rang again, Henry grinning when he saw the name on the screen. Emma, he mouthed at Keelin. ‘Well, hello there,’ he said as he answered. ‘How’s my favourite solicitor doing tonight?’ Keelin could hear the woman’s voice on the other end of the phone, excited, speaking rapidly. ‘I know,’ Henry said. ‘It looks good, doesn’t it? Should we set up some interviews for next week?’ He paused, nodding at whatever the solicitor was saying. ‘Have you seen the response on Twitter? The Crowley Girl is trending at number one,’ he said. ‘It’s i
ncredible. I’ve over thirty thousand followers now.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe I could have a second career as one of those influencers that Evie is obsessed with – my kingdom for my teenage daughter’s approval.’
Keelin tapped the screen of the iPad, clicking into the Twitter app. #thecrowleygirl, she typed in, deliberating over every letter. Giving herself enough time to go back, if she wanted, to save herself, but she knew she wouldn’t. She was unable to resist the temptation.
@GrahamLFC19 I think the wife did it. Hell hath no fury, etc #thecrowleygirl
@MaireadNiR #TheCrowleyGirl theres something not quite right about Keelin Kinsella. She knows more than shes saying like
@SarahFitz63 I don’t know why it’s the Crowley *Girl*. We don’t call men *boys*, do we? It’s so sexist and reductive #Thecrowleygirl
@trionasunshine why do these women stay with men like that? I’d be out the door before you could catch me, its mad #thecrowleygirl #toughloveisland
@dubsfiveinarow96 wudnt of kicked nessa crowley outa bed for eating crisps, would ya? What a ride
After the Silence Page 29