Yes, My Darling Daughter

by Margaret Leroy

  She undoes her seat belt and leans across the back of my seat toward me. I feel her moth breath on my face. Her eyes are full of the colored lights from the sky.

  I don’t know how to handle this. I glance at Adam for guidance.

  “Sylvie, it’s nearly dark,” he says. “What we’ll do is, we’ll come back tomorrow, first thing in the morning. So we can see everything properly.”

  She’s anxious. “But what if we can’t find it?”

  “We’ll find it, sweetheart,” I tell her. “Adam will mark it on the map. Look, we’ll mark it now. It isn’t going anywhere. We’ll come and find it tomorrow.”

  “Promise,” she says.

  “I promise,” I say.

  This seems to satisfy her.

  She sits back, buckles up her belt. As we drive away, she twists in her seat, staring out the window, holding the house with her eyes until it’s swallowed up by the night.

  Sylvie settles quickly. But it takes me ages to get to sleep, even though I’m exhausted. I lie in bed and stare into the dark.

  I hear Adam in the next room, talking on his cell phone. I can hear the tone of his voice through the wall, but I can’t make out the words. I wonder if he’s ringing Tessa. There are lots of silences his end—she seems to do most of the talking—and he’s on the phone for what seems like a very long time. Then I hear his shower running, hear him unpacking, opening cupboards, shifting things around in the room. It’s a very old building, everything creaks. It’s unnerving, living so close to him, this man I scarcely know at all, and it feels too intimate—hearing all his movements. Eventually the creaking stops.

  I lie awake and listen to the silence. There’s no noise at all but the sea, just the faintest pulse as the waves break, a sound that’s more felt than heard, as though it’s part of your body. I think of why we’ve come here, remembering what Adam said: A violent, sudden death, with all the wreckage that leaves. I realize I’m shivering, pull my duvet close against me. I try to reassure myself with thoughts of London things—our street, our flat, the mulberry in our garden—but already our life there seems remote, the images so small and distant. Like pictures on a page, not something real.

  35

  IT’S A SOFT gray day, full of the cries of hidden birds, with rags of mist in the hollows under the hills. We drive out of Coldharbour and join the road we found last night that leads to Ballykilleen. Sylvie leans forward, straining against her seat belt, her gaze fixed on the passing fields and hills.

  The house looks messier by daylight. You can see how derelict it is. There’s a Dumpster in the front garden, heaped with bits of broken wood and torn-off lumps of rock wool.

  We walk in through the open gate.

  I feel uneasy.

  “Isn’t this trespassing?” I say to Adam.

  He smiles his sudden, crooked smile.

  “Well, technically, yes. If you want to be pedantic.”

  I go to the unboarded window and peer in, cupping my face with my hands to shield my gaze from the light. Adam comes with me.

  The room through the window is empty except for a mirror left hanging on the opposite wall, its glass brown and speckled with age. Our images caught on its pitted surface seem distorted and blurred—we could be anyone. There’s patterned wallpaper peeling off, and a ghetto blaster on the floor that looks quite new and shiny, left there by workmen, perhaps. Litter has gathered in the corners, scraps of paper and dust balls, and leaves, some worn to a net of veins, like the rubbish that drifts and masses in the quietest reaches of a river. A slight breeze moves a single russet leaf across the floor.

  I turn to Sylvie, but she isn’t there.

  Immediately I hear her shout from around the back of the house.

  “Grace! Come and see!” Her voice is full of triumph.

  We go around the side, past a sprawling hedge of ragged yellow roses, with last year’s delicate dead flowers still clinging to the stems.

  At the back there’s a lawn that slopes steeply up the hillside. The grass is uncut and shaggy, and on this misty morning it has a gray shimmer of dew. A plum tree grows at the side of the lawn, and the fruit from last year has been left to lie around it, all rotten now, seeping luscious brown flesh. There’s a stone birdbath that holds a pool of rainwater, green with scum—an emerald color, too vivid, unwholesome-looking—and an apple tree that is just beginning to blossom, its flowers palest pink with a scribble of black. I smell the blossom as I pass, its whisper of polleny scent. The air is still, and the birds are astonishingly loud.

  In the middle of the garden, where the slope is steepest, three shallow stone steps are set into the lawn. As I watch, Sylvie runs up the steps, turns around on the top one, and then jumps down all three of them, landing in the grass.

  “Look, Grace! I’m an acrobat!”

  She says the word with relish, rolling it around her mouth.

  “Yes, you are,” I tell her.

  She does it again and again. Three steps and turn and jump. She chants to herself half under her breath as she does it—“One-two-three and jump.” She’s breathing hard, I can hear all the breath in her voice.

  “Be careful, Sylvie. Those steps look slippery. Don’t you go breaking a leg . . .”

  She pays no attention. One-two-three and jump. It’s as though she’s settled into a rhythm that feels comfortable to her. Her sneakers and the hems of her jeans are soaked with dew, and the exertion has brought a flush to her face. She looks entirely happy.

  There’s a click of a back door opening in the house next door to us, the urgent bark of a dog, footsteps coming out into the garden.

  “Can I help you?”

  A man leans over the wall. He has a creased, pallid face, narrowed eyes, no smile. His dog barks roughly and leaps against the wall, its open mouth red and vivid. I feel a little nervous, thinking how we are trespassing.

  Adam goes to speak to the man.

  “We were just looking round,” he tells him. “The gate was open, and it was just too tempting. It’s such a beautiful spot. It seems such a waste that it’s empty.”

  The man’s face mellows. He nods. I notice how different his garden is from this one. It’s orderly and rather geometric, with cloches and beanpoles and seedlings in neat, measured rows.

  “This was Gordon and Alice’s place,” he says. “Gordon and Alice Murphy.”

  He leaves a significant pause. It’s like he expects some response from us—surprise, or recognition. I feel all the quiet of the gray, wet garden. A pigeon flies out of the plum tree with a sound like something torn.

  “Okay,” says Adam, vague and noncommittal.

  “You’ll have heard that Gordon is putting it back on the market?”

  “No, we didn’t know that,” says Adam.

  “He’s having it all done up,” says the man. “Well, you can see for yourselves.”

  He waves one hand toward the house. From here we can see through a glass door into the kitchen. The walls are stripped back to the plaster, and the pipes have been exposed.

  “Weird, really,” he goes on. “When they moved in, Gordon and Alice, all that time ago—well, they ripped out all the old stuff, put posh new units in, laminate flooring, the lot. And a very nice job they made of it.”

  “I’m sure they did,” says Adam.

  “But what people want today—they want it to be traditional. So he’s changing it all back again. The old flag floors and one of those butler sinks—you know the kind of thing?”

  “I think so,” says Adam.

  “Great massive contraption. My wife can’t see the point of it. Still, there you go,” he says. “What goes around comes around. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “Well, fashions change,” says Adam.

  “He couldn’t sell it, of course, before.” The man lowers his voice a little. “Well, no surprises there. We had our doubts, me and Maureen, we reckoned the timing was wrong. Folks are wary. I can understand that.”

  Adam nods, and waits.
<
br />   The man runs a pensive finger down the side of his face.

  “He’s been renting it out in the summertime, but he’d really like to sell. He just couldn’t find a buyer. Well, I tell a lie. One time there was somebody—not anyone local, of course—a woman from Dublin with a Porsche, she wanted a weekend cottage. But then it all fell through.”

  “It’s a very frustrating business, selling houses,” says Adam.

  “Thing is, Flag Cottage needs to be lived in again. It’s crying out to be lived in. Like you say, it’s a beautiful spot. Well, maybe he’ll have better luck this time.”

  “Maybe he will,” says Adam.

  The man leans toward us, resting his elbows on the top of his wall. He has a thoughtful, solemn look.

  “In the end,” he tells us, “folks put the past behind them. And that’s how it has to be. People move on. That’s what we all have to do, isn’t it? To forget if we can and put the past behind us . . . well, good to meet you, Mr.—?”

  “I’m Adam, and this is Grace.”

  “Good to meet you, Adam and Grace.” He reaches over the wall and shakes our hands. “I’ll let Gordon know you’re interested, he’s going to be pleased . . .”

  Sylvie is still playing on the steps. As we watch, she jumps and loses her balance and tumbles into the grass. I worry she’s hurt, but she’s laughing.

  “Did you see that, Grace? I did a different jump. That was a jelly-fish jump.”

  “Yes, I saw it,” I tell her.

  The man smiles with a sudden, surprising warmth. “That does my heart good,” he says earnestly, “to see a little one play in that garden again . . .”

  He waves, goes back toward his kitchen door, his dog careering ahead of him.

  I feel we shouldn’t stay here, now that he’s gone.

  “Sylvie, we have to leave now,” I tell her.

  “I’m not going,” she says, speaking with absolute certainty.

  She runs to the top of the steps again.

  “Sylvie, really, we have to go. I mean it.”

  She turns her back deliberately toward me. She covers her ears with her hands, pretending not to hear.

  I don’t know how to manage this. I glance at Adam.

  “Bribery, maybe?” he says quietly.

  So I tell her we’ll go to Barry’s and I will buy her a KitKat.

  She pauses on the steps, torn, then comes, but with reluctance. There’s a slight pink flush in her face, and she’s breathing hard and her jeans are dark with wet.

  “See. That was fun, wasn’t it, Grace?”

  We go around to the front of the house again and get back into the car. I can see the man from the next-door house watching us intently from his living-room window.

  Sylvie leans toward me across the back of my seat.

  “Did you like it?” she says.

  “Yes, I liked it,” I tell her. “I liked the house and the plum tree and the three little steps.”

  “Yes.” She has a satisfied look. “We always played on the three little steps.”

  The past tense chills me.

  Adam turns sharply toward her. “Sylvie—who’s we?” he asks her.

  “Me and my family, Adam, of course.” That condescending smile again, the smile that says, You just don’t get it.

  “Sweetheart, could you tell us about the games you played?” I ask.

  Sylvie shrugs. “I’m an acrobat, Grace. You saw,” she tells me.

  I feel how elusive she is, how she seems to slip through your hands.

  She turns to the rear window and watches till the road twists around and the house is lost to view.

  36

  BARRY’S GENERAL STORE is rather drab and cluttered, selling a few dusty sand toys and a small selection of groceries. There’s a glass case holding a birthday cake with complicated icing, and a handwritten notice announces “Erin’s Celebration Cakes!!” A convection heater gives off a hot, scorched smell.

  Sylvie chooses her KitKat, then wanders off to the back of the shop to look at some plastic windmills. Adam is by the counter, choosing a packet of potato chips.

  I flick through the postcards. I want to write to Karen: the memory of the phone call still upsets me. I can hear her voice in my head, all the outrage in it. You can’t be doing this, Grace, you can’t. I mean, for Chris-sake, Grace . . .

  The woman who runs the shop is leaning on the counter. She has a mug of coffee, and a magazine open at the horoscope page. She’s a wiry, angular woman with lipstick pink as cotton candy, and her gaze through her thick glasses is glittery and intent.

  “You’re on holiday here, then?” says the woman to Adam.

  Adam nods. “We’re staying at St. Vincent’s.”

  “And very nice too,” says the woman. “I hope that Brigid is pulling out all the stops for you.”

  She sips her drink. There are little stains of coffee around her mouth.

  “She certainly is. She does a brilliant breakfast,” says Adam.

  “And you’re getting a chance to explore our wonderful countryside?”

  Her eyes are bright and curious.

  “We drove over toward Ballykilleen this morning,” Adam tells her. “By the longer route, round the coast. The views from that road are amazing.”

  “So they are,” says the woman.

  She pauses for a moment, her gaze flicking over our faces, as though there’s something that she expects us to say.

  Adam smiles vaguely, selects his packet of potato chips.

  “I heard you were having a little look at Flag Cottage,” says the woman then.

  I turn sharply toward her.

  But Adam nods and just moves smoothly on.

  “It’s got such a great situation, that house.” He’s unperturbed, as though this is perfectly normal. As though you’d expect a total stranger to know your every movement. “We were wondering why it was empty.”

  “Gordon’s decided to put it on the market,” says the woman.

  There’s satisfaction in her voice, in sharing this inside knowledge.

  Adam nods. “His neighbor told us,” he says.

  The woman lowers her voice a little. “Well, obviously, he wouldn’t want to live there anymore.”

  She watches him, her lips pressed tight together. Her lipstick seems too vivid for the pallor of her face.

  “Gordon isn’t too keen on village life, then?” says Adam.

  She licks the coffee from her mouth.

  “Who was it you spoke to?” she says. “Was it Paddy O’Hanlon, next door? Thickset guy with a Border collie?”

  “That sounds like him,” says Adam.

  “Paddy didn’t tell you, then? Didn’t tell you what happened?”

  Adam shakes his head with a slight, apologetic smile.

  The woman’s voice is hushed. “Time flies, it seems like yesterday. But it must be years ago now . . .”

  She’s counting on her fingers. Adam waits for her.

  She shakes her head. “You know, it must be seven years since Alice disappeared. That’s Alice Murphy—Gordon’s wife,” she says.

  “Since Alice disappeared? They’re divorced, then, Gordon and Alice?” says Adam carefully.

  The woman doesn’t say anything. Her pupils through the thick glasses are like tiny, glossy beads.

  “The neighbor we spoke to—Paddy,” Adam goes on. “I did notice that he never mentioned Alice, and I thought they might be separated.”

  “I wish,” says the woman. “No, nothing so straightforward . . . I mean, don’t get me wrong. The ending of a marriage is a terrible thing, of course, don’t think that I’m belittling it. But Alice Murphy—it wasn’t like that. She simply vanished—off the face of the earth. And her little daughter with her.”

  A thrill of cold goes through me. I glance at Sylvie. She’s still looking at the windmills. She doesn’t seem to have heard.

  “Alice walked out, then?” says Adam, keeping his voice quite level. “Just packed her bags and took her child and
left?”

  “We don’t know. Nobody knows.”

  “But what about the gardai? Why didn’t anyone find them? It’s not that easy to vanish.”

  “It wasn’t for want of trying,” says the woman. “We had detectives from Dublin here. They talked to all of us, really combed through everything. I had to go to the garda station in Ballykilleen to give my statement. He was very insistent, the sergeant I saw—went over it all again and again. So you see why Gordon wouldn’t want to live there anymore.”

  “Absolutely,” says Adam.

  “It was a bad time,” says the woman. “A bad time for all of us.” She closes up her magazine. “When something like that happens, you feel how fragile everything is.”

  We leave the car outside the shop and walk along the seafront, Sylvie clutching her KitKat. There’s a slight wind blowing up that carries the smells of the harbor—diesel fumes and rotten fish and the chill salt scent of the sea. The water is moving very gently, like some great scaly animal that stretches and stirs in its sleep. There’s hardly anyone about.

  We sit at the top of the steps that lead to the beach. There’s a white splash of birdshit on the concrete.

  “Sylvie, can you tell me who lived in your house?” Adam asks her. “Who lived in Flag Cottage?”

  “Me, Adam. I told you.”

  “D’you know what the people were called?” he says.

  Sylvie frowns.

  “People live with their family, Adam,” she says.

  I know he won’t ask her directly about Alice Murphy, remembering what happened when I first talked to her about Coldharbour: once you’ve suggested something, you never really know.

  “Can you remember anyone’s name?” he asks her. “Anyone who lived there?”

  “Me and Lennie, of course,” she says.

  “Anyone else at all, Sylvie?”

  “They were my family, Adam. My family lived in my house. I told you.”

  “What happened to your family, Sylvie?” he says.

  Her face glazes over. She turns a little away.

  “Can you remember anything that happened, Sylvie?” he says, his voice too eager.