Three Little Truths

by Eithne Shortall

  ‘It’s the neighbourhood code.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Edie, then she paused. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You know: what happens on Pine Road stays on Pine Road. Blood is thicker than water, but neither’s as thick as mortar.’

  ‘Right. Yes. Absolutely.’ Edie thought about it. ‘That’s quite good, Shay.’

  ‘Yeah. I dabble in verse.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Haiku mainly.’ Shay gnawed at his lip again. ‘Anyway, I think I saw the coppers crossing to the other side of the road, but thought I’d come and make sure.’

  Edie peered out to the other side of the street. She’d text the group as soon as she was done here. Pine Road was having quite the day.

  ‘Edie! Bae?’ The back door slammed shut and Daniel’s voice called out from the kitchen. He was making his way up through the house. ‘I’m sorry! I’m an idiot. You should just ignore me. If you want to go upstairs and make a baby, I’m ready. My little man might need a few gentle strokes to get him standing to full salute, and maybe a few nibbles on your yum-yum num-nums—’

  The kitchen door opened into the hallway and Edie, who was doing her best not to pinch her eyes shut, watched as a look of unadulterated pleasure spread across Shay Morrissey’s face.

  ‘Hi, Daniel,’ he called cheerily, lifting a hairy hand and waving it into the hallway behind her.

  There was no response and Edie didn’t dare to turn around. Shay’s smile grew even wider. The level of euphoria bordered on the obscene.

  He leaned to the side and called down the hall again: ‘Everything good with you?’

  ‘Shay just called in to see if the police had been to see us, Daniel. Apparently, there were a couple of them on the road.’

  ‘I didn’t want you getting into trouble on my account, Dan-Dan.’ Shay’s voice had a mild squeak to it. His cheeks were puffed like balloons.

  Daniel didn’t respond. Shay wiggled his eyebrows at Edie, mouth still plastered with delight.

  ‘Daniel,’ called Edie. ‘Come up here and say hello. And sorry. See if we can’t be friends again.’

  She smiled at Shay who was having a great time.

  ‘Daniel.’

  The floorboards creaked and her husband slowly made his way up the hall to the front door. His expression, as was always the case when he was embarrassed, was thunderous.

  ‘All right, neighbour?’

  Edie wanted to reach out and burst Shay’s engorged cheeks.

  ‘Where were the police going?’ said Daniel eventually.

  Although he had directed the question towards Edie, Shay was only too delighted to respond. ‘Not sure,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe it was something to do with Fiona Quinn’s wheels?’ suggested Edie.

  ‘Whose wheels?’

  ‘Fiona Quinn,’ Edie told her husband. ‘Someone stole the wheels off her car a while ago.’

  ‘I didn’t know about that.’

  ‘I think they were headed for one of those houses.’ Shay pointed across to the opposite corner, where Bernie’s and Trish’s houses were. ‘Might have been to do with that dog Bernie Wackers was littering my letterbox about.’

  Edie had forgotten all about Bernie’s sketch artist and the printouts. They were still on the hall table.

  ‘Although if the coppers are wasting their time on that when I’m constantly reporting non-resident cars on this street, they’re even more useless than I thought.’

  ‘I didn’t know about any of this.’

  Edie ignored her husband. He’d been made to feel foolish and now he was sulking. He had no interest in what went on on the road. He barely knew the neighbours’ names. And how was she supposed to tell him anything anyway when they spent all their time arguing and making up?

  ‘Are you going to apologise to Shay, Daniel?’

  Shay’s eyes lit up and he went back to unabashed grinning. Edie knew Daniel was annoyed at her but she didn’t care. She’d worked too hard to fit in on this road, she wasn’t going to have him ruining it all.

  ‘Daniel!’

  ‘I’m sorry I hit you.’ She could hear the clench in his jaw.

  ‘Not a bother, neighbour,’ replied Shay with grandiose graciousness. ‘We all get a little wound up from time to time. And aren’t we lucky if we, eh, have ways to release all that pent-up energy?’ Shay sucked in his cheeks in a half-hearted attempt to stop himself laughing and Edie felt her husband square beside her. ‘I’m leaving the bollards for today anyway, you’ll be glad to hear. Going to see about getting a professional to put them in later in the month.’

  Daniel went to say something but Edie put an arm firmly on his.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll leave youse to it. Good luck with, ah . . . whatever it is you get up to for the afternoon.’ He turned and walked down the path. ‘Up! Ha. I didn’t even mean it like that. I’m off to have my tea. Yum-yum num-num!’

  Daniel opened his mouth but Edie had the door closed before he could say a word. She gave him a good solid stare, daring him to start yet another argument. But instead he sulked off, back towards the kitchen and presumably the shed. Edie stood alone in the hallway and sighed.

  She took her phone from her jacket pocket. Thirty-two new WhatsApp messages! She read through the thread and replied, hoping the delay hadn’t made her look like a suspect. Was she being a grass by mentioning Trish and Bernie? Surely not. Those two would have nothing to hide and anyway they were long-term residents. She was still a blow-in; a criminal rumour like this could follow her around for the rest of her Pine Road days.

  She pressed send and threw the phone on to the hall table, beside Bernie Watters-Reilly’s ‘Wanted’ posters. She’d forgotten all about them. Edie pulled one of the sheets out from below the bowl and unfolded it. There was an actual ‘Wanted’ masthead at the top of the page and the sketch was signed, just as Carmel had said. How much had Bernie spent on this?

  Then Edie focused on the actual drawing and her amusement faltered.

  She knew that dog.

  That was Rocky. It was a picture of Peter’s dog.

  ‘Edie?’

  Daniel came back through the kitchen and into the hallway. She folded the sheet quickly and pushed it back under the Waterford Crystal bowl.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know I keep saying that but I am, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me . . .’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘It’s not. I want to explain exactly but I can’t—’

  ‘Daniel,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s okay. I get it. I understand.’

  He opened his mouth to disagree but she took a step forward and kissed him, slipping her tongue gently between his lips.

  ‘I understand,’ she said again, moving away and pulling him after her up the stairs.

  Because now, finally, she did understand. Daniel had been minding his brother’s dog when the animal bit Sylvie Reilly. He was the adult male who’d fled the scene. If she’d been minding a dog and it bit a young girl, Edie would be questioning her suitability to be a parent too. She’d be doubting how responsible she really was and if she should be entrusted with a child’s welfare.

  Dear, sweet Daniel, always so hard on himself.

  It finally made sense and Edie was overcome with relief.

  *** Pine Road Poker ***

  Edie:

  Hi, ladies. Sorry for the parking tiff earlier. Daniel is a bit stressed at work and I think he just saw red. I’m the one who’s red now, though! V embarrassing! Sorry again.

  And no. The guards were definitely NOT calling to us.

  Shay Morrissey (long story) said it looked like they went to Trish’s or Bernie’s. He lost them behind the tree.

  x

  THIRTY

  ‘We’re here,’ said Martha, having refused refreshments and now sitting upright at Trish’s mahogany kitchen table, ‘because Sinead has something to tell you.’

  ‘All right,’ replied Trish, interlinking her hands and resting them on the
gleaming wood. ‘I’m listening.’

  Her face was unreadable and Martha wondered if, faced with a student, Trish had consciously gone into teacher mode, or if this was just what a long-term career did to you.

  Martha could feel Sinead look at her, but she didn’t turn. It was up to her daughter to explain.

  ‘It’s about the list on the bathroom door,’ came the small voice beside her. ‘I took the photos of it.’

  Martha kept her eyes trained to Trish’s face as her daughter spoke, but there was no discernible change.

  ‘I printed them out and I stuck them up around the school.’

  Trish nodded. It was the same thing you saw with doctors, an unflappable expression of calm, mild interest.

  ‘Tell her the other bit,’ said Martha.

  Her daughter shifted beside her and Trish’s face softened a fraction.

  ‘And I wrote it,’ said Sinead. ‘Not all of it. But my own name. I added my name to the list.’

  Martha, though she had heard this qualifier an hour earlier, breathed a sigh of relief. For an awful few seconds that afternoon she had thought her daughter, just weeks into her new school, had written the whole thing. Adding her own name was still a definite cause for concern, but at least she wasn’t bringing others down with her.

  ‘I was in English and I heard two boys talking about the list. They weren’t laughing, but they didn’t think it was a big deal either. I just wanted to see it for myself first, to make sure it was really there . . .’

  Sinead repeated all that she had already told her mother. Although now, on its second telling, the sentences were clearer, the story without gaps. Martha continued to watch Trish as Trish watched her daughter. She didn’t interrupt Sinead the way Martha had or demand clarification or ask her to repeat herself.

  ‘. . . So the next day, I asked to go to the toilet but I went into the boys’ bathroom instead of the girls’ one. I found it on the back of the door and I added my name to the bottom. Then I took a photo. I saw you on my way back from the bathroom, Mrs Walsh. I think you were going to remove it, because it was gone by the end of that day. If I’d left it even till the next class, I might have missed it.’ There was an edge of pride to Sinead’s voice, and she must have caught it too because she quickly brought the tone back to remorseful.

  ‘I know it’s a sicko thing to do,’ she pleaded, though the principal had yet to make any objection. ‘But when I heard the boys talking about it, I was so angry. They weren’t going to tell a teacher. I really was. I was going to report it. But when I saw it, I got even madder. I felt sick. I . . .’

  I felt like I did that day in Limerick, Sinead had told Martha an hour earlier. I had to do something this time. In the principal’s kitchen, however, Sinead left her own experience out of it. She didn’t mention all the ways she had conflated the two events.

  ‘You painted over it,’ said Sinead, her tone now verging on accusatory. ‘If I didn’t do anything, everyone would just act like nothing had ever happened . . .’

  Like you do, Mum, Martha added silently, like how we all act like nothing ever happened.

  ‘. . . So I took the photos and I stuck them everywhere and sent them to the newspapers and radio stations.’

  Oh, Sinead.

  But as Martha listened for the second time to her daughter purging and trying to rationalise her actions, she found herself beginning to understand. She knew what it was to have misplaced rage; to be angry about one thing and to direct it at something – or, in Martha’s case, someone – else because they were right there, and they were wrong too, and it’s easier to lash out than to accept that something awful was done to you and you may never get the chance to right it.

  ‘I thought it was wrong,’ stated Sinead. ‘That list shouldn’t have existed, and I wanted people to know about it. I added my name because I knew people would take me more seriously if I was one of them – one of the victims. Being an activist isn’t enough. People like their victims to have a face. It had to be personal, about me. That’s how I could make it right.’

  And then there was silence. She was done. Martha turned, finally, but Sinead was no longer looking to her for guidance. Her gaze was fixed across the kitchen table, on the school principal.

  When Trish moved, it wasn’t much, just a slight shift of her body and the relaxing of her face. ‘Is that it all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Trish nodded. Her hands separating now as she pulled herself up a little straighter. She didn’t seem shocked by what Sinead had said. Was that possible? Was it not shocking? Perhaps this was always her demeanour.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ added Sinead. ‘I know it’s not your fault.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ agreed Trish. ‘And it would be true to say that I could have done without a journalist from the Mirror doorstepping me two days in a row last week, or the Sun branding the school “Saint Horny Teens”.’

  Sinead laughed. Then stopped abruptly. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s very catchy,’ Trish agreed. ‘We’ll be a while living that one down.’ She sighed. ‘But it’s not your fault either, Sinead. Not really.’ She leaned back and stretched her neck with a loud crack, then she smiled at them both.

  Martha and Sinead looked at each other. ‘Is . . . Is that it?’ asked Sinead, taking the words out of her mother’s mouth.

  Trish gave a rueful laugh. ‘No, that is not it. God, I wish it was. But as far as you’re concerned, I think it is.’

  ‘You’re not going to punish me?’

  ‘No,’ replied Trish, as if she’d been mulling it over for longer than ten minutes and this was the last word on the matter. ‘I don’t think that’d do anyone any good. There are other things that might help.’

  Trish glanced at Martha, who nodded. They could all benefit from some therapy. She knew that already, she had just been reluctant to acknowledge it.

  Martha’s surprise at how relaxed the whole thing had been must have shown because Trish was now regarding her with a reassuring smile. ‘Look, we’ve nearly drawn a line under the whole thing now, and the bigger issue is not who spread the list, though of course’ – she glanced at Sinead – ‘I wasn’t delighted about that, but the bigger issue is who wrote the thing in the first place – the whole thing.’

  ‘Have you caught the person who did it, then?’ asked Martha, speaking for the first time since her daughter had started to divulge her story.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Trish, avoiding her gaze. ‘But I can’t go into that just—’

  A phone on the table started to flash and vibrate.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Trish, scooping it up. ‘I have to take this.’

  ‘No problem.’ Martha pushed back her chair and gestured for Sinead to do the same. ‘We’ll see ourselves out. Thanks for . . . Thanks.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ said Trish. ‘See you Monday, Sinead.’ Then she turned from them and walked towards the rear patio doors. ‘Hi, Norman. Thanks for returning my call.’

  Martha ushered her daughter into the hallway. She would find someone for Sinead to talk to and she would tell Robert about the man she saw, both from their new bedroom window and that day in the old house. She imagined telling him and she didn’t feel annoyed. She felt relief. It was exhausting to hate him.

  In the hallway, she handed her daughter her coat and then, without really intending to, she hugged her.

  ‘It’s okay, Mum.’

  It wasn’t Robert’s fault or hers; what happened in Limerick was not the fault of anyone in her family.

  ‘I’m sorry we don’t talk about what happened more,’ she said, parting from Sinead.

  Her daughter looked at her. ‘Sometimes I feel his hand on me.’

  ‘Sometimes I felt his hand on you too. I get a pain in my chest, just here.’ Martha brought her hand to her left breast. ‘And sometimes my cheek stings so much, I look in the mirror and am convinced it will be glowing red.’

  ‘He wasn’t allowed to touch me like that.’

&n
bsp; ‘No. He wasn’t.’

  The faint sound of Trish’s voice and a clock ticking from the living room to their right. They stood in the unfamiliar house, looking at each other, just as they had that day, when Martha’s role of protector had been so diminished she no longer had the power to make things better with words.

  ‘I was worried I liked it,’ said Sinead, all of a sudden. ‘I mean, I don’t think I did. I couldn’t have. I just . . . I felt something stirring inside me and I wondered, you know, if that was me being turned on.’ She scrunched up her face at the awkward-sounding phrase. ‘And then when I . . . when I wet myself’ – again rushing through the words – ‘I felt glad. I was almost happy it happened, happy I wet myself, because then that could be the thing that was stirring. I . . .’ Her face was pleading with Martha to make it better, to fix it for her, to tell her it would be fine. ‘Sometimes I still worry I did like it . . . and I hate myself.’

  ‘That’s a completely normal reaction,’ said Martha, barely allowing her daughter to finish her sentence before responding and not caring an ounce if it was true or not. ‘When we’re in danger our bodies are no longer logical. Instinct takes over. It’s not up to you any more. Your brain isn’t in charge. None of it is your fault. All right? Sinead?’

  Sinead nodded and her breathing quietened.

  When she spoke again, it came with the familiar, crusading tone. ‘I was just trying to make the school a better place, Mum. For me and for Orla, and for everyone.’

  ‘I know, honey,’ said Martha, kissing her firmly on the forehead and finally pulling open the door, her arms shaking slightly. She was relieved to step out on to the top of Pine Road, where the daylight was rapidly fading.

  Halfway down Trish’s path, Sinead tugged at Martha’s sleeve. ‘Look, Mum. Is that Ellis?’

  She peered down Pine Road, raising her hand to her forehead to shield the afternoon sun. Ellis was standing across the road from their house. Was he in the Dwyers’ garden?

  ‘You never said Ellis was coming over. Ellis!’ Sinead shouted. ‘Hey, Ellis!’