Before You Were Gone

by Sheila Bugler

  The man leaned forward, pushing his face close to hers.

  ‘She’s a private person. And she doesn’t like strangers sticking their noses into her business. So why don’t you do us all a favour and sling your hook before I call the police and get you arrested for trespassing?’

  ‘It’s not trespassing if I’m in a public place.’

  ‘It is if I tell you to leave and you refuse.’

  Fair point. Recognising he wasn’t going to back down, Dee left before he could follow through with his threat.

  ‘She doesn’t want to speak to me,’ Dee told Emer when she went back outside. ‘There’s not much we can do about that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So we just walk away and forget all about her?’ Emer said.

  It was the sensible thing to do. But Dee had never been very good at being sensible. She didn’t think the woman was Emer’s sister. The idea was ridiculous. But her journalist’s instinct had kicked in. The woman inside the pub was hiding something, and Dee wanted to find out what that was.

  ‘Come on,’ she told Emer. ‘I’m taking you up the road to a different pub.’

  ‘What about Kitty?’

  ‘Leave Kitty with me for now,’ Dee said.

  ‘But if she’s refusing to speak to you, what can you do?’

  ‘I might know someone who can find out who she is.’

  ‘You mean you’ll help me?’ Emer said.

  ‘Of course.’ Dee linked her arm with Emer’s as they started walking. ‘You’re my cousin, aren’t you?’

  She glanced back at the pub. Just in time to catch a movement in one of the upstairs windows. The blond woman was up there, watching them. She stepped back from the window when Dee saw her but, as she walked away, Dee imagined she was still there, her eyes boring into Dee, watching to make sure she wasn’t coming back.

  Four

  Two months earlier

  She is running down a corridor, looking for Kitty. The murmur of voices travels up from the ground floor, muffled by the thick carpets and the layers of space between them. They told her that Kitty’s dead, but how can she be dead if Emer’s just seen her?

  She’d been lying in her bed, eyes wide open staring into the darkness, wondering how it could be true – how could her sister have drowned without anyone noticing a thing? And then, like a miracle, the door had opened and Kitty was there. Not dead. Coming into the room and sitting on the side of Emer’s bed. The weight of her body pressing into the mattress, her breath hot against Emer’s cheek as she leaned down and whispered to her.

  ‘I did something really bad, Emer. And because of that I have to go. I can’t see you again.’

  Emer’s bare feet fly over the carpeted corridor as she calls her sister’s name, over and over, louder and louder.

  ‘Kitty! Kitty!’

  She turns the corner and sees Kitty. She’s at the fire exit, pushing open the door that leads to the steps they’re not allowed to use. Their room is on the top floor of the hotel and they usually get the lift. If the lift is busy, they take the stairs – but the big, curved staircase with its red carpet at the front of the hotel, not these ones at the back which are for emergencies only and if you go there on your own no one can see you so it’s not safe.

  When she sees Kitty’s face, she stops running, because Kitty is crying and she never cries. Emer’s the crybaby who cries at everything and should try harder to be more like her sister because she’s a big, brave girl. But Kitty doesn’t look big and brave now. She looks sad and lonely and it makes Emer feel sad and lonely looking at her.

  ‘Go back to your room.’

  Kitty sounds angry, but Emer’s not going to go back to her room because everyone thinks Kitty’s dead and if this is a joke it’s not very funny.

  Emer starts to run towards her, but someone grabs her and lifts her off the ground. She sees her hands, reaching out in front of her, trying to pull Kitty back, but she’s already too late.

  Kitty is gone.

  * * *

  The same dream, always. The details so familiar it had become impossible, over the years, to separate the dream from what had actually happened. There were times she could almost believe that’s all it had ever been: a dream. It would be so much easier if that’s all it was. If she could let go of what she believed had happened that night and move on with her life. And she’d tried. God knows, she’d tried. When Nikki had first threatened to leave, Emer had promised she’d change. She would accept, once and for all, that Kitty was dead. And she would focus, instead, on the life she had with Nikki. But she hadn’t been able to keep the promise. The memory of her sister in the hotel that night continued to haunt her. Her belief that Kitty was still alive remained as strong as ever. And because of that, Nikki had left, and now Emer was living back in Ballincarraig with her mother and stepfather.

  She could hear them now. Talking in the kitchen of the big house that Robert O’Brien had bought for his new wife as a wedding present. The house, a converted coach inn, was one of the finest in the town. Ursula never tired of telling people how, when she was a little girl passing the house on her way to school each day, she’d dreamed of living here eventually. She refrained from adding that the only reason the house had come on the market was because of the town council’s plans to build a municipal dump on the land behind the property. Or that these plans were mysteriously rejected by the same town council a week after Robert, then head of the council, had purchased the house.

  ‘She’s never going to get a job if she lies in bed until lunchtime, is she?’ Her mother’s voice, deliberately loud so Emer would hear her. ‘I’m sick and tired of her using Kitty as an excuse not to do something with her life. I never liked Nikki, but I don’t blame her for not wanting anything to do with her.’

  This was followed by the rumble of Robert’s voice. Emer couldn’t catch what he said, but she could guess the gist of it. He would be quietly telling Ursula not to worry so much, that Emer would be ‘grand’ and all she needed was a ‘bit of time to work out what she wants to do with her life’.

  Sure enough, a moment later, Ursula was off again, telling Robert that what Emer needed was a bit of discipline, not a stepfather who spoiled her instead of telling her to get her act together and grow up.

  Again, Emer couldn’t hear Robert’s response, but she heard the heavy tread of his footsteps on the stairs a few minutes later, followed by a knock on her bedroom door.

  ‘Come in, Robert.’ She sat up in the bed, pulling the quilt around herself.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said, standing in the doorway. ‘Ursula was wondering if you fancied a trip to the shops? She wants to buy you some new clothes.’ He smiled. ‘She seems to think a new wardrobe will improve your chances of getting a job.’

  Dear old Robert, Emer thought. Always trying so hard to maintain peace between his wife and her daughter.

  ‘Only my mother would think that buying new clothes is going to suddenly make everything better.’

  ‘She’s upset,’ Robert said. ‘You can’t blame her for that, Emer. First you head off to London without telling her where you’ve gone. And then you come back with all this business about seeing Kitty. You’re not stupid. You must have known how this would play out.’

  ‘I thought she’d be happy I was showing some initiative for once,’ Emer said. ‘She’s the one who’s always on at me to do find a job.’

  ‘Not in London, though.’

  ‘Why not?’ Emer said. ‘I thought she’d be delighted to get rid of me.’

  ‘She’s already lost one daughter,’ Robert said. ‘The last thing she wants is to lose you too.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be losing me if I moved to London. It’s hardly the other side of the world, is it?’

  ‘Try not to be too hard on her, Emer. Losing a daughter the way she did, that’s not something any parent gets over. And, well, we both know there’s a lot of uncertainty around what actually happened the day your sister drowned.’

  ‘She blames
me, you mean. My mother thinks what happened to Kitty was my fault.’

  ‘Can you blame her?’ Robert said quietly. ‘She tries not to, but it isn’t easy. You were the last person to see Kitty alive. Your mother thinks… Well, it doesn’t matter what she thinks. The point is, you need to be a bit more understanding, that’s all. Do you remember when you were a little girl and you used to come into the office with your mother during the summer holidays?’

  Emer remembered. Back then, her mother had been working as Robert’s PA. During the summer holidays, there’d been no one at home to look after Kitty and Emer, so Ursula used to take them into work with her. Long, boring days when they’d been forced to sit at a desk with nothing to do for hours on end.

  ‘We used to have those young women working with us,’ Robert said.

  ‘The work experience girls,’ Emer said. A steady stream of older teenage girls, working on an apprenticeship scheme set up by Robert back in the eighties and still running today.

  ‘Those girls,’ Robert said, ‘they’d never worked in an office before. Most of them had never even made it to secondary school. It took a lot of patience to skill them up and get them to a standard where they were employable. But I put the effort in because it was worth it. That’s why the scheme is still running. Because people see how much it helps.’

  ‘And your point is?’

  Robert smiled.

  ‘My point is that a little bit of patience pays dividends. I know your mother can be difficult, but she means well. And she does love you, in her own way. So come on, what do you say? Hop out of bed, get dressed and let her take you shopping. And maybe stop all this nonsense about seeing Kitty in London. It’s not fair on your mother.’

  She wanted to tell him to get stuffed, that it wasn’t nonsense. She knew what she’d seen, and if her mother didn’t like that there was nothing Emer could do about that. But she’d always found it hard to say no to Robert. Something he knew and used to his advantage whenever he wanted her to give in to her mother.

  ‘Give me fifteen minutes to shower and get dressed,’ she said, ‘and then I’ll be right down.’

  ‘Good girl.’ He smiled and her spirits lifted, as they always did, when she made him happy.

  She was ready in under ten minutes. Which gave her five more before she had to leave the bedroom. Her laptop was open on the desk beneath the window. An old colour photo filled the screen; two girls, their smiles wide and bright and so happy her throat ached.

  They could have been twins. Everyone said so. Except for the eyes. Emer’s were blue; Kitty’s, of course, were two different colours – the left one was blue, the right one was green. Two sisters, and then there was only one.

  Sometimes, when the memories came, she tried to resist. Now, just for a moment, she let them in. Image after precious image, snapshots of the first ten years of her life. Playing with Kitty in their tiny back garden. Fighting over a Barbie doll that Kitty had stolen from her and refused to give back. Cuddled up together in the same bed, whispering to each other late into the night. So many memories, all of them ending abruptly one night in a hotel corridor.

  I did something really bad, Emer. Kitty’s voice, whispering, her breath hot against Emer’s cheek. And because of that I have to go. I can’t see you again.

  Closing the photo, Emer quickly checked her emails – still nothing from Nikki – and opened her internet browser. When she started typing, the words appeared automatically on the screen. Remembered by her browser because she’d typed them so often: Kitty Doran, Lucy Ryan, Ballincarraig.

  The results were almost instant. Thousands of links to thousands of different stories about the two girls. And there, midway down the first page, the story Emer was looking for.

  Father of missing girl, Lucy Ryan, found dead in family home.

  She clicked on the link, like she’d done countless times over the last few days, and saw Lucy’s face smiling out at her. The same photo that had accompanied the many news stories Emer had read over the years. And beneath it, a more recent photo of Lucy’s sister, Maeve, standing outside the hotel she now ran. The story was three months old. Robert and Ursula had gone to the funeral. Emer had thought about it but, in the end, the thought of seeing Maeve again was too much. So she’d taken the coward’s way out and stayed away. And every day since, she’d gone onto the internet to read about her old friend.

  She opened a new tab on her browser and checked Instagram and Twitter. Last month, she’d finally plucked up the courage and followed Maeve’s social media accounts. So far, Maeve hadn’t followed her back. As each day passed, it seemed less likely she ever would. Maeve’s Instagram account was private, but her Twitter account wasn’t. Emer scrolled through Maeve’s tweets, mostly promoting the hotel she ran, searching for any mention of what had happened in Ballincarraig twenty-three years earlier. But there was nothing. There never was.

  Based on her social media presence, it seemed that Maeve had found a way to put the past behind her and get on with the rest of her life. Emer knew social media didn’t always give an accurate portrayal of a person’s life, but she couldn’t help feeling Maeve was managing to cope better than she was.

  Five

  Two months later

  The hotel was on the riverfront, with sweeping views of the Thames from the restaurant, where Dee was enjoying a substantial breakfast. She wouldn’t normally stay somewhere this fancy, but she’d been paid well for her ten-minute appearance on the TV programme and had decided to spoil herself.

  The last time she’d stayed in London had been with Ed Mitchell, the man Dee had briefly thought she was in love with. Booking this hotel had been a way of proving to herself she could have a good time without him. Unfortunately, every time she let her guard down her mind started to imagine what it would be like if he was here with her. Because Ed would love a place like this, with its views and its good coffee and its fancy breakfast menu. She could just picture him reading the menu, that little frown line between his eyes while he tried to choose between Eggs Benedict and a Full English.

  Thankfully, before she got to the bit in her daydream where they went back upstairs after finishing their breakfast, Dee’s phone started to ring. The caller was Louise, Dee’s cousin on her mother’s side of the family. The only person who called Dee this early.

  ‘How was it?’ Louise asked. ‘Did they tell you when the programme will be aired? The kids are so excited their auntie is going to be on TV. They think this means you’re famous.’

  ‘I hope you’ve set them straight then,’ Dee said.

  ‘What about Emer? Did you meet her? What’s she like?’

  ‘Yes, I met her,’ Dee said, ‘and she seems very nice.’

  ‘Nice?’ Louise snorted. ‘So you didn’t like her then.’

  ‘That’s not what I said.’

  Dee looked out the window at the river and the people hurrying along the waterfront. So many people. She thought of the view from her house on the beach in Eastbourne. An uninterrupted stretch of shingle, sea and sky. She was missing it already. Strange to think she’d spent so many years living here, in the city, not ever planning to leave. Now, she couldn’t imagine how she’d ever lived so long in this overcrowded metropolis.

  ‘So what was it then?’ Louise said.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Dee said. ‘I’ll tell you about it when I see you. Any chance you’re free for a coffee or a walk over the next few days?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Louise said. ‘Although not tomorrow or Saturday. I’ve got a meeting in Worthing tomorrow. Then Saturday’s pretty full on with the kids’ activities. Let’s see if we can fit something in on Sunday?’

  ‘Only if you’ve got time,’ Dee said. ‘Otherwise, don’t worry. We can catch up next week.’

  ‘Great. I’ve got to go now. Just dropped the kids off and I’ve got a session with Pete before work.’

  ‘Pete?’

  ‘My PT. Catch you later. Bye!’

  She hung up before Dee had a chance to
ask what PT stood for. Deciding she was probably better off not knowing, she directed her attention back to her laptop, open on the table. A faded colour photo of two girls filled the screen. Gap-toothed and smiling, their arms draped over each other’s shoulders. A row of nondescript terraced houses in the background. The similarity between the two girls was impossible to miss, although if you looked closely enough, you could see that the taller girl had two different coloured eyes.

  The girls were Emer and Kitty. Emer had emailed the photo last night.

  One month before Kitty disappeared. Also, you might want to read up about Lucy Ryan. She was Kitty’s best friend.

  Emer had included links to several archived stories about Lucy Ryan, along with a Facebook friend request which Dee had accepted.

  Picking up her phone again, she scrolled through her list of contacts until she found the name she wanted. Leonard Mann, a journalist Dee had got to know the previous year, when she was investigating a murder that had taken place outside her house in Eastbourne. The victim, a young woman, had been at the centre of another murder that had happened in London ten years previously – a murder Leonard had covered extensively at the time.

  Dee dialled the number, and waited.

  ‘Dee Doran, as I live and breathe. What a pleasant surprise.’

  His voice hadn’t changed, still sounded as if someone had sandpapered his throat. A little frailer, perhaps, than when she’d first got to know him. Not surprising, given everything that had happened to him since then. His girlfriend and his oldest friend both killed in the same tragic event eleven months earlier. Dee knew that the loss of his girlfriend, in particular, was something Leonard was still struggling to come to terms with.

  ‘Hey Leonard. How are you?’

  ‘Getting by. Good days and bad days, as you’d expect. But the good days are becoming more frequent, which is something. I hope you’re calling to tell me you’re coming to London soon and you’d like to buy me that pint you still owe me.’