Three Little Truths

by Eithne Shortall

  He lowered his head into his hands. She perched herself on the swivel chair at his desk.

  ‘What printouts are you talking about, then?’

  He groaned, face obscured.

  ‘Daniel? You’re scaring me now. Tell me what’s going on.’

  He looked up and she was instantly nauseous. The expression on his face, like he’d gambled their house away or murdered her family – like whatever he’d done, there was no turning back. He pointed at her feet.

  ‘What?’ She looked down, bending her legs slightly to the side. ‘The bin?’ Of course. She had hidden the fifth clue in the wastepaper basket.

  ‘Empty it.’

  Feeling queasy still, she picked up the basket and upended its contents on to the floor. Several A4 pages fell out, followed by the folded-up clue he’d been supposed to find. This was the final clue, the one that led to his prize. But he’d missed it entirely.

  The A4 pages were duplicates of the Limerick Leader article she’d printed off by accident weeks ago. She reached down to pick one up.

  ‘These have nothing to do with you,’ she said, scanning the details of the tiger raid again. ‘Did I tell you about this?’ No, she didn’t think she had. ‘It’s about the new family at number eight.’

  ‘No, Edie,’ said Daniel, his voice thick. ‘It’s about me.’

  The office door creaked and one of the not-so-friendly neighbours stuck their head in.

  ‘Upstairs,’ said Edie, standing to push the door shut before the person had fully retreated. She didn’t want to be rude but she had a very bad feeling about whatever Daniel was going to tell her. She barely recognised him, face drained of colour, fingers digging into the side of his skull. He hadn’t even looked this bad when the work stress hit its climax back in November.

  ‘All this time, I’ve been . . . I’ve . . .’ He exhaled loudly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew?’

  Edie looked down at the printout. Her internal protests quietening long enough to hear what was being said. How could this article be about Daniel? He had nothing to do with Limerick. Unless . . .

  She suddenly felt very warm. Her Cos trousers prickled against her legs and she began to scratch at her neck.

  She rehearsed the question in her head a couple of times, before finally saying it aloud. ‘What do you mean this is about you?’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ He gave a loud exhalation and looked at her, his lovely face awash with culpability and fear and something she’d only ever seen in bed, late at night, when he confessed past sins. ‘I did it. Is that it? You want to hear me say it? I was part of the robbery. Okay? You’re right. However you knew, you were right.’ He groaned quietly, hands down on his knees, just about holding his head up.

  Was he going to be sick?

  ‘I agreed to help Peter and some of his mates. He said I wouldn’t have to go in. I was the driver. I could just wait outside and follow the man when he drove to work. But I fucked up. I panicked. I was getting into the car and I pulled up my balaclava, just for a second, just so I could see where I was going, and his wife saw me. She looked right out the window at me. There were two kids there too. They were tied to the radiators. Oh, Jesus.’ His head was in his hands again and he was rubbing at his cheeks, like the skin might come away, like he might be able to change his face. ‘I saw them in there, sitting on the floor, fucking petrified. I still see it, Edie. I can’t stop seeing it.’

  He was seeking absolution from her, but she was countless steps behind. She was still back in a time when she thought his guilt was linked to a dog.

  Daniel leaned forward and pulled up one of the articles. ‘Tiger raid. I didn’t even know what that meant before this.’ He stared at the page, then back up at her. ‘Did you find this on my search history? I did my best to clear it but I knew I was going to mess up eventually. It was always late and I was so tired, I couldn’t sleep.’

  Edie thought of the sleeping tablets Daniel had started taking last year. She’d presumed it was because of the garage, that he couldn’t sleep because of stress from work. But of course. She looked at him, into his big dark eyes, and his handsome, handsome face, ready to crumble. This was the stress from work. This was the big job, the one that was going to save them but had fallen through.

  Daniel had been involved in the tiger raid. Daniel was the man Martha had seen on Pine Road that night.

  ‘But you’ve met Martha,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘Who?’

  Was that true? Martha had been in their house, but Daniel hadn’t been here that evening. And she had been on the road that day Daniel drove home to find Shay Morrissey out with his retractable bollards. But Martha had gone inside before Daniel was out of the car.

  The night Martha saw the man from the robbery on Pine Road was the night before Parking-gate. It was the night she and Daniel fought on the way home from the pub, and he stormed off as she chatted to Robin and the hipster non-journalist . . . Edie’s scalp began to sting.

  ‘I thought you didn’t want to have kids because of the dog . . .’

  ‘What dog, Edie?’ said Daniel, his voice high. He was growing more stressed by the sentence, blotches of red forming on his pale skin. ‘Please stop going on about a dog.’ He went back to trying to erase his face. ‘I didn’t do the job right, I didn’t follow the man. His missus saw my face and I panicked. I kept thinking of those girls, on the floor, tied up. I left the motorway. I left the car where they’d told me to collect it and I came home. They were going to break my fucking legs but I thought I could fix it. I have fixed it, I think. Peter believed me when I told him the man got away from me and he convinced the others. I told them I tried to follow him but he swerved off the road, I told them there was a police car, that I didn’t want to risk it. I can’t stop seeing them, Edie.’ His voice broke and for a horrifying moment she thought her rock of a husband was going to cry.

  ‘It’s okay, Daniel,’ she said quietly, absently. Not sure if it was or not.

  ‘I’ve been taking tablets, but they don’t work. Nothing works. I’m glad you know; I’m glad. I need to say it all. I’m sorry. I keep seeing the family, the children. I just want that picture out of my head.’

  FORTY-SIX

  ‘Are you sure, Martha? Are you absolutely sure?’

  Martha stared into her husband’s face – it was difficult to look anywhere else, he was that close – and a sliver of the disgust that had been retreating in recent weeks inched back in. Robert had gone back to talking to her as he had after the robbery, like she was a child who kept counting her fingers and coming up with thirteen.

  ‘Yes, Robert,’ she said calmly, ‘I’m sure. I saw him with my own two perfectly functioning eyes.’

  ‘Did you guys see him?’ he asked, turning away from her to Ellis and Robin.

  Martha closed her perfectly functioning eyes. Be fair, Martha, she told herself and she breathed through the rage. Yet again she was directing it all at Robert when there was a more obvious, more logical target readily available to her. So available, in fact, that he was only a few metres up the road – had been only a few metres up the road since the day they moved in.

  ‘I think she’s talking about one of the neighbours’ husbands,’ Robin replied, though she was looking at Martha. ‘Edie’s Daniel?’ she mouthed, and Martha nodded.

  ‘Mum, will you please tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘One second, darling,’ she said, putting a hand on Cormac’s arm. She felt fine now, perfectly rational and alert. The man with the soulful eyes lived on her road. Well, he had to live somewhere. He was Edie’s husband. Daniel. Daniel the lovely man. Daniel the excellent mechanic. That made sense, she supposed; he had been driving a car. ‘I have to deal with something.’

  She went to stand from the chair that she now realised she was sitting on.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Robert, puffing out his chest. ‘I’m going to call the guards. You stay right here. I’ll just find my phone, call them, and be right back o
ut. Don’t budge. Ellis!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You make sure your mother stays right there.’

  It must be tough to be so feted and admired and then have it fade away. Robert surely missed being the hero. He did brave well, but when she thought of him on that day in November it was always shirtless, his belly pushing against his belt. She didn’t mean to have such cruel thoughts. But there they were.

  She never used to question Robert’s behaviour, to consider the choices he made might actually be wrong. It made sense that what she’d been through had changed her. She’d worried it had made her colder, but now she thought it had made her resilient, the way she used to be when it was just her and Ellis.

  ‘Do you understand, Martha?’ Robert was back in her face now. The slightest bit of spittle catching just below her eye. ‘You stay here.’

  She smiled and nodded and watched him walk up their garden path and into the house. Then she stood from her chair and began to walk up Pine Road.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘Is this why you didn’t want to have kids?’

  Daniel gave her the look he sometimes gave her now, the one she’d never been able to place. ‘I left them, Edie. Two little girls with a group of fucking monsters. I knew they were monsters. How could I have just left them?’

  Edie went to tell him the girls were okay, when there was an almighty crash from upstairs.

  ‘Sorry!’ came a voice through the ceiling.

  ‘Should we be keeping an eye on them?’ asked Daniel, his voice changing slightly. ‘In case they steal anything.’

  And with that absurd aside, it all slotted into place. Daniel had been worried about the garage throughout the summer but his mood swings really only began late last year, around the time of the robbery. That was why he didn’t want any publicity for the garage; when she’d talked to Bernie, and Bernie had gotten them a ‘small business’ feature in the Independent, the whole thing fell through because Daniel wouldn’t have his photo taken. He’d lost weight, he hadn’t been sleeping, he refused to take pleasure in anything. He didn’t think he was an unfit father because some dog had growled at a kid on his watch; he thought he was unfit because he’d left two girls, someone else’s children, chained to a radiator and at the mercy of a bunch of awful men.

  Daniel chewed the nail of his ring finger. His eyes seemed suddenly far apart and his nose oddly flat. She barely recognised him. This was the cause of the tension between Daniel and his brother, not Rocky. The dog seemed so childish now. How could she have thought he was worried about a dog?

  ‘Edie?’

  Of course, he didn’t want kids. He thought he was a monster.

  ‘Bae?’

  Did she think he was a monster?

  ‘I’m sorry, Edie.’ His voice volleying, remorse filling the space between the quivering notes. ‘I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t want you to know about this. I didn’t want you to worry. I didn’t want you to know what I’d done. I’m so ashamed. I’m so sorry.’

  No. Daniel was not a monster. Daniel was her husband.

  She loved him.

  Edie was an exceptionally well-behaved citizen. She’d never lied to a guard or cheated on a tax or driven in the bus lane, no matter how late she was. She didn’t take soap from hotels in case anyone thought she was stealing and she felt bad when the dentist gave her free dental floss. But she and Daniel were a team. She loved her husband more than anything, even civil obedience. She would lie in official statements for him. She would perjure herself in court, she would allow their lovely new neighbours to suffer silently for the rest of their lives, if that was what it took. She had to adapt to the situation and this was her metamorphosis. She hated him, he had ruined everything, but she always loved him more.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I forgive you.’

  The naked gratitude made him childlike. She wanted his child.

  ‘There’s something else, Daniel. The–’ She was about to tell him that the family he’d helped terrorise were now living on their road and that the wife who’d seen him that day in November had seen him again a few weeks ago, but the door to the office opened again. ‘The clue is upstairs!’

  Only this time, it wasn’t treasure hunters.

  And though a blanket of dread descended on Edie and she accepted that it was too late – too late to perjure herself to prove her loyalty, too late for today to be the glorious first-day-of-the-restof-their-lives she had envisaged, too late even for the Pine Road dream she’d been working towards – she couldn’t help the latent delight that ignited when she saw that she and Martha Rigby were wearing the exact same trousers.

  ‘Hello, Daniel,’ said Pine Road’s newest woman. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’

  FORTY-EIGHT

  ‘Ioverestimated their intelligence,’ said Ellen, throwing herself down beside Trish at one of the banquet-esque tables and flicking through the treasure hunt route she had mapped out on squared paper at the back of her clipboard. ‘They should be done by now but several of the clues have yet to be touched. The haiku at number nine seems to have thrown them.’ Ellen traced her finger along the route. ‘Occupied Territory to number thirteen, fine, then up to number nineteen without a problem. A few seem to be floundering when they get to nine but a couple more have made it over to sixteen then on to eight. . .’

  Ellen looked up at Martha Rigby’s house while Trish helped herself to another slice of Rita Ann’s walnut loaf. Rita Ann had ignored Ellen’s instruction to remove the nuts – small mercies – and the famous cake was good, but not quite as moist as Trish remembered.

  Ellen tapped her pen on her clipboard and pushed back her chair. ‘We seem to be losing them at number eight. . .’

  The majority of residents were still sitting along the tables. Shay Morrissey was wearing Joe O’Toole’s rabbit head and doing his best Bugs Bunny impression, using a squashed bread roll as the carrot. Rita Ann was pilfering spoons and napkins and making little effort to hide it as she stuffed the junk into her bag. Treasure hunters continued to run in and out of houses. Trish didn’t think a couple of the properties were actually part of the game but she turned a blind eye. Ted had gone inside to read the paper a half hour ago and she was desperate to do the same. She needed a break from the noise. It was like being at school.

  ‘Oi!’ shouted Ellen, as Fiona’s twins approached her garden gate. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  The girls looked at each other, then one of them shouted back: ‘We’re hungry, and tired. We just want an egg.’

  ‘You haven’t finished the treasure trail.’

  ‘We followed the riddle in there.’ One of the girls pointed at Martha’s house, number eight. ‘But the clue wasn’t where it was supposed to be.’

  ‘Or maybe you just didn’t get it right.’

  ‘We did,’ the other twin insisted. ‘An inherited eyesore that you think they’d have mowed; welcome to the worst garden on Pine Road. We checked all around the weeds. There’s no envelope.’

  Ellen pursed her lips. The twins were obviously right. ‘Stay away from my house,’ she shouted. ‘Who says the eggs are in there anyway?’

  The girls rolled their eyes at each other and Ellen turned to Trish. ‘I’m going into number eight to investigate. Stand guard at my house and don’t let anyone in who hasn’t completed the hunt. Cheating is contagious, Trish,’ she said, gathering her clipboard. ‘And I’m sorry to say Pine Road might need to be quarantined.’

  Trish popped the last of the walnut cake wedge into her mouth, lamenting that the cream had all been ruined, and reluctantly went to stand outside Ellen’s garishly-decorated front garden.

  ‘All right Trish,’ called Ruby from across the road. She got up from her step and left a couple of kids in her front garden petting the lamb that someone said she’d won off a social influencer. Ruby crossed the road, one of those fancy gin and tonic glasses that look like goldfish bowls in her hand. ‘How’s the treasure hunt going?’

&
nbsp; ‘Too complicated. I don’t think many people read the booklets Ellen put through the doors this week. We’re still getting complaints from residents who thought they were doing an egg hunt, and a few have just given up. Some of the clues appear to have gone missing now too.’

  ‘That’s awful!’ said Ruby, grinning from ear to ear as she took another sip. ‘I’d say that has ruined Ellen Two Names’ day altogether. Has the “Bring Back Bernie” campaign began yet?’

  Giggling started up behind Ruby and the two women turned to see Fiona’s twins running into Rita Ann’s house.

  ‘I thought Rita Ann said she wasn’t having anyone in her house? I’ve never even been in Rita Ann’s house.’

  ‘She did say that,’ said Trish, frowning. ‘She only let Ellen hide a clue in her front garden.’ Trish glanced, longingly, up the road to her own nice, quiet home. But no. She couldn’t just leave the road to fall asunder. ‘I better go in and make them leave. Will you stay there and stop anyone going into Ellen’s house?’

  ‘No way,’ said Ruby, hurrying after her. ‘I’m not missing a chance to see inside Rita Ann’s place. I’m only half messing when I say she might be keeping corpses in there.’

  ‘Girls!’ Trish stepped over the threshold of her neighbour’s home as she tried and failed to recall the twins’ names. How she’d forgotten, she didn’t know; Fiona rang the school every week to see if they had moved up the waitlist for next year yet. In the end Trish had actually pulled a few strings to confirm their places, on the condition that her neighbour promised never to phone again. ‘Come out, girls! You’re not supposed to be in—’ Trish stepped farther into the dark hallway. ‘Wow!’

  Ruby came to an equally abrupt stop. They were squeezing along the only part of the hallway not occupied by towering mounds of boxes and bags and a general assortment of rubbish. ‘What is all this?’

  The junk was everywhere and it was piled to the ceiling in places. The mounds morphed from one to another, with only their peaks to distinguish them. Trish spied an old filing cabinet, a ball of bed linen and a Scooby Doo wastepaper bin.