56 Days

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  Kevin manages to look both horrified and transfixed.

  “Shit,” he says, putting a hand to his mouth. Stop touching your face, Lee thinks. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “But is it, like, a crime?”

  “We’ll soon find out. Can you tell us who lives there? ID-ing the deceased and notifying their family is our top priority at this point.”

  “Ah, yeah . . .” Kevin roots inside his suit jacket, pulls out some folded pages: a spreadsheet of names. He scans them. “Ah. Actually, no, I can’t tell you—I don’t have an individual name for that one. It’s a corporate let, rented by KB Studios on Baggot Street. I think they’re architects . . . ? They’d know who’s in there. Who, um, was in there.”

  Lee looks at Karl, who nods and steps away.

  “Meaning what?” she says to Kevin. “They just rented it for a few weeks, a month?”

  “No, they’ve had it ages. From the start, I’d say. That’s almost two years ago now. They have two. It’s a twelve-month lease but they use them themselves for shorter stays.” As he talks to her, his eyes keep straying over her shoulder, to where she knows the Tech Bureau van is parked. “Just to have at their disposal, you know? Relocations, visiting clients, that sort of thing. Someone could stay three months or they could stay a night.”

  “What about cleaning? In between stays?”

  “Yeah, they’d have that,” Kevin says. “Organized through us. But not at the moment. Not since lockdown began.”

  “Talk to me about CCTV.”

  “We have it, yeah.”

  Lee resists the urge to point out that she knows that, that she can see with her own eyes the fish-eye cameras mounted around the complex.

  “I’ll need to see it,” she clarifies. “The footage.”

  He hesitates. “Am I, like, supposed to show it to you? Don’t you need, like, a warrant or—”

  “That’s just on TV, Kevin.”

  “Oh.” He blushes. “Right. I’d, uh, have to go get the footage for you. It’s monitored off-site.”

  “And how long would that take?”

  “They’re out by the airport so maybe an hour for me to get there and back? But I don’t know how long it’ll take to download. How much do you need?”

  “How far back does it go?”

  Kevin frowns, thinking. “Seven days, maybe?”

  “I’ll take as far back as you’ve got, all cameras. If anyone stops you, tell them the truth and give them my name, okay? Here.” She fishes a somewhat battered, standard-issue business card from inside her blazer and hands it over. “Show them that. Is there an on-site maintenance person, someone who’d have access to any locked doors, know how to disable the fire alarm, that kind of thing?”

  “We have a guy,” Kevin says. “He’d be on call.”

  “Can he come here right now? We’ll need his assistance.”

  “I’ll tell him to.”

  “As quick as he can, okay?”

  Kevin nods firmly like he’s just been tasked with a life-saving mission, and turns sharply on his heel.

  When he’s gone, Karl rejoins her, sticking his phone back into his pocket.

  “So KB Studios is indeed a firm of architects,” he says. “The office number is redirecting to the mobile phone of a receptionist who’s at home. She doesn’t know anything and she says that kind of info is with the office manager. She’s going to get him to ring me back.”

  “We’ve got a problem.”

  Karl snorts. “Just the one?”

  “The CCTV only goes back seven days.”

  “Well, if it’s an accident, we won’t need it. And that’s still, what? Nearly a hundred and seventy hours of video we’ll have to watch? I can hardly wait.”

  Lee sighs. “And here I was thinking I might treat myself to a curry and veg out on the couch tonight . . .”

  “Why? Because you’re overdue a break from your hectic social life? You know, I was thinking this morning, Lee—have you even noticed we’re in lockdown? Like, how has your life changed, actually?”

  “When were you thinking this? Was it before or after I had to get your naked arse out of two sets of handcuffs?”

  “We’d both be a lot more emotionally scarred if they’d been anywhere near my arse.”

  “Thank God for small mercies.”

  “So, wait, we have no ID? Was there no wallet or—”

  “There’s an envelope in the letterbox,” Lee says, remembering. “But if it’s not a permanent residence, it’s probably not even for him. Could just be junk.” She nods toward the building. “Let’s go check.”

  Karl motions toward the cordon. “After you, boss.”

  34 Days Ago

  Early the next morning, Ciara wakes up in the warmth of Oliver’s bed.

  After dinner, they’d finished the wine, and after that she’d expressed regret that they didn’t have more of it. Oliver had suggested a walk to the Spar and then, gently, that they should carry on to his place after that. She’d spent the whole day cleaning the apartment from top to bottom and money on things she didn’t actually need—like three god-awful purple throws—because he’d never been to her place but had been pushing to see it for at least the last ten days. It was getting mildly annoying, so she’d given in. Now, two hours after he’d arrived there, he was suggesting they leave.

  “You can have a look at your new room,” he’d joked.

  She’d already seen it, actually, but she couldn’t tell him that. A few days before, when he was in the shower, she’d taken a peek behind the only door in his apartment that always seemed to be closed. On the other side was nothing more exciting than a spare bedroom.

  A single box spring with no headboard was pushed up against one wall, opposite some built-in wardrobes. The mattress was pristine and there was a protector still neatly folded in plastic packaging lying at one end. The roller-blinds on the window were pulled all the way down and the air in the room smelled faintly of new paint, as if no one had ever stayed in there for any length of time.

  “You just don’t want to sleep in my bed-that-comes-down-from-the-wall,” she’d said to him. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  He’d grinned. “Oh, I’d have no problem sleeping in it . . .”

  And she’d laughed and looked away so he wouldn’t see the sudden flare of heat on her face.

  Their sex isn’t as awkward and fumbling as it had been the first two or three times, back when it came like full stops at the end of evenings where Ciara, knowing what was coming, had made sure to drink enough to make it possible, to silence the parts of her that screamed she shouldn’t be doing this, that reacted as if Oliver’s touch was something her skin was allergic to. She’d taken to closing her eyes and trying to shut down her brain, telling herself that this, too, was another excruciating beginning that, if she managed to get past it, would lead to better things, better feelings, a better life. And it did get a little easier with each go, like a dance she was gradually learning the steps to, the moves slowly becoming muscle memory. But still, she found herself occasionally shocked by the cold bareness of Oliver’s skin, the restriction of his weight on top of her, parts of his body in hers like some kind of foreign invasion.

  She rolls onto her side now and looks at him.

  He’s still sleeping, his bare back to her, as far away as he can be while remaining on the bed. His breaths are deep and regular. This is how they always end up when she stays over: repelled, even though they begin the night in each other’s arms, her head resting on his chest.

  She can see the top of the scar just above the sheets.

  She rolls onto her back and stares at the smooth white ceiling. She hates this bit, the morning after the night before. Daylight is no one’s friend and, she’s convinced, her active enemy. Above the blankets she knows there’s onl
y what’s left of yesterday’s makeup on her puffy face, and beneath them there’s nothing at all.

  She feels vulnerable and exposed.

  She wishes she could just put on underwear and a T-shirt before she goes to sleep and tell him that that’s how it needs to be for her, but she hasn’t managed to find a voice to say it in yet. She imagines she can feel a dampness between her thighs that she worries might transfer to his sheets. She absolutely hates not knowing what time it is.

  From the moment she wakes up like this she’s waiting for the moment she can return to her own place and start putting herself back together in her own time. Shower. Fresh makeup. Clean clothes.

  Building herself back up, reassembling the woman who will be ready to meet him again later in the day for lunch or dinner, to sip a glass of wine they both know is the first stepping stone in a row of several that will lead her right back here again.

  Putting things on she knows he will be taking off, that she hopes he will, because if he is, that means that they are still moving forward, that this is still happening, that this is working.

  But from tomorrow, all that will have to happen here, in this apartment. There will be no other place. She’s not ready for it, but it’s a go. She’s agreed to it.

  Because she wants to keep seeing him and this, right now, is the only way.

  Over the course of three Saturdays, she’s watched the life drain out of Dublin city.

  On the first—the day after Oliver spoke to her outside Tesco—the pubs were still open even if the parade had been canceled and the tourists who’d flocked into what should’ve been ground zero for St. Patrick’s Day festivities hadn’t yet fled. They’d milled around Stephen’s Green with their outstretched iPhones and bags from Carrolls Irish Gifts, wearing too many layers for the mild spring weather, feeding the pigeons on purpose and the seagulls inadvertently. They’d all seemed to Ciara to be inexplicably carefree, carrying on as if everything were normal, as if they hadn’t noticed that the only nontourists around were loners scurrying nervously past, clutching grocery bags and giving them sidelong glances, doing their best to avoid getting close. Even the Italians, who, by then, must have known all too well what was coming, seemed utterly untroubled. The only anomaly was a guy in his late teens wearing a mask, holding his phone in front of his face while he spun around to offer the lens a three-sixty view of the streets behind him. In what sounded like a German accent he was narrating the scene, pointing out that he was the only one wearing a face covering. At the time, he’d struck Ciara as a bit of an alarmist.

  A week later, the tourists were gone and the vast majority of businesses had preemptively closed. The people left on the streets were few but from both ends of the caution spectrum. She’d seen two women in their twenties sitting outside one of the few remaining open cafés exchange glances as a man hurried past wearing latex gloves and a mask that, by then, Ciara could identify as respiratory as opposed to surgical. The women had had stiff, waxed bags bearing the logo of a high-end clothing store by their feet and were drinking coffees in seats nowhere near two meters apart.

  It was as if some people thought the end was nigh while others hadn’t even seen the papers.

  A strange phenomenon of all this, she’d discovered since, was that you yourself were capable of being both types of people. One afternoon, Ciara had put on a nice dress and waves in her hair and set off in chilly sun to Oliver’s place. The sky was blue, the birds were chirping, and she felt good. She was also making this walk a little earlier than she usually did, during the Six One news bulletin instead of just after it, so she’d missed her nightly ritual of waiting on the couch for the four numerical horsemen of the apocalypse: new deaths, new cases, total deaths, total cases.

  She’d forgotten, just for a few minutes.

  But directly across the canal was a construction site surrounded by blue hoarding and, overnight, new signs had been stuck to it. Multiple copies of the same one, their surfaces bubbling and creased from a hasty application. The only words large enough for her to read at that distance were in the headline: YOU Can Help Stop the Spread of COVID-19! It was like walking out of real life and onto the set of a Hollywood virus thriller, only the poles were reversed. This was what was real, and that was terrifying.

  This morning, the first of this de facto lockdown, it’s as if some awful event has come in the night. There’s nowhere near enough vehicles on the road to justify calling it traffic. The loudest sound is that of her own footsteps, the hollow heel of her boots hitting the path as she walks alongside the canal. She passes a pharmacy with a handwritten sign in the window screaming, Hand Sanitizer 50ml In Stock, €4.99, Max 3 Per Customer! But if you want it, you’ll have to wait for it because the lights are off inside and a metal grate is in place across the door. Above the rooftops stand an array of motionless cranes, stopped clocks in the sky.

  By the time Ciara reaches her building she has only passed one other pedestrian, an older man walking a small dog who’d stepped out into the bus lane to give her the requisite two-meter berth, and she sees only one other neighbor as she goes inside, a Lycra-clad gym-bro doing planks on the dewy grass.

  An information sheet about COVID-19, government issued, has appeared in the lobby, taped up next to the list of emergency numbers, and an industrial-sized bottle of hand sanitizer is sitting in a little pool of clear liquid on a stool by the main door.

  As she slides her key into the lock, she thinks about all the units in this building and all the hands that have touched the same door she is touching right now. She takes the fact that there are fewer units at Oliver’s place and, so, fewer people, and mentally adds it to her collection of reasons why this might not be a terrible idea, actually.

  Inside her apartment, she kicks its door closed behind her and goes straight to the bathroom sink to wash her hands—in the dark, because she won’t touch the light switch until after the handwashing.

  That’s what Oliver says you should do and now that they’re riding out this thing together, she feels obligated to follow his lead.

  She also finds these cleansing rituals oddly calming. Anything simple with a series of steps will probably have that effect, even when it’s in an attempt to minimize the risk of catching a deadly virus.

  She strips her clothes from her skin and stands in the scalding stream of the shower until the bathroom grows thick with steam. (His shower is better, too—there’s another reason.) Then she wraps herself in a towel and trails water droplets through the living room and into the kitchen, where she makes herself a cup of tea and a slice of buttered toast and wonders what should she pack?

  What exactly does a girl need to move in with a guy she barely knows because there’s a global emergency, the country is going into lockdown, and her apartment is about the size of a matchbox?

  She lands on: everything. She has so little stuff that it all fits into her one suitcase.

  Even now, transferring her underwear from a drawer to her case, she still can’t quite believe that she’s doing this, that she’s moving in with him. But here’s another reason to add to her collection: she’s not. Not really.

  She’s just staying with him for a couple of weeks. She’s not letting this place go. Nothing about this is permanent or irreparable.

  Not yet, anyway.

  And there’s a lot about this that is incredibly lucky or at least could prove to be, in time. These strange, unprecedented circumstances—when all this is over, she vows to never use that word ever again—might just conspire to take her via express train to everything she’s ever wanted when there might not even have been a route there otherwise.

  Only time will tell.

  When Oliver opens the door he holds out a hand, presenting her with the set of keys that lie in his palm: one standard silver one that will open the door to the apartment and one small black plastic fob that will open the main door to the building.

 
“I would’ve put them in a gift box or tied them with ribbon or something,” he says, “if I had any.”

  She smiles and reaches for them, and for him with her other arm—but he suddenly snatches his hand away and steps back.

  A shadow of something unreadable crosses his face and then something more readily identifiable begins to fill it: embarrassment.

  “Your hands,” he says to the floor. “Sorry.”

  “Of course, yeah. I just forgot.”

  She’s already turning toward the bathroom.

  “I’m not trying to be a dick, it’s just with the asthma—”

  “No, I’m glad you reminded me,” she says. “Really.”

  She doesn’t quite understand why he tried to hand her something before he did it, but fine, whatever.

  Before any resentment can bloom, she catches herself. He has asthma. That’s an underlying condition. Handwashing is something she should be doing anyway, whether he’s there to nag her about it or not.

  She pushes the bathroom door open with an elbow and goes to the sink.

  As she sluices water over her hands, she feels something that wasn’t there before: a ridge of hard, dried skin on the outer edges of her little fingers. After she dries off with a hand towel, she rotates her wrists so she can get a better look. The skin there is peeling, red, and sore. Protesting. She makes a mental note to buy some hand lotion. This makes her think of going to a pharmacy, which makes her think of what else she might buy while she’s there, seeing as any sort of retail experience is a major operation now.

  They’re talking about this thing being a dry cough, fever, aches and pains. Apparently some people get upset stomachs, too. She tries not to think about the nightmare of having too much coming up or too much coming out here, in the only bathroom in Oliver’s apartment, with him right outside the door, and focuses instead on what might help if that happened.