by Karen Perry
‘Help who?’
‘Look,’ she says, the hardness creeping back into her tone, ‘I saw Luke the night before he went missing. He and I had met up a few times recently. You know my editor wanted me to do a feature on him – Luke Yates, mover and shaker? So I sought him out.’
‘You sought him out?’
‘Nick, I didn’t ask to do a piece on your brother. I was told to.’
‘And you always do as you’re told?’
‘So, we met up,’ she says, ignoring my antagonism. ‘And we talked about his success and his luck at escaping unscathed from the crash when many of his peers had not.’
‘Lucky Luke.’
‘So, when I called over to see Julia, yes, I was doing my job. I was there in a professional capacity. But I was concerned too, Nick. I wanted to help.’
I listen but it’s a blur because all I can think about is her and Luke, meeting up, talking, spending time alone.
She sips her pint, and into the pause, I say: ‘Were you having an affair with him?’
The look she gives me: it’s like she’s been slapped. I can’t quite believe I’ve spoken those words aloud. When she answers, her voice is icy. ‘No, Nick. I wasn’t.’
Shame comes over me, like a wave of nausea. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Things are just so fucked up right now.’
I hold my head in my hands, staring hard at the manky carpet, blood pounding at my temples. Then I feel her hand touch my knee. ‘Can we start again?’ she asks, and I nod.
She puts her glass down and gets to her feet. I do, too, and we lean in towards each other. She wraps her arms around my neck and I fold her into my embrace and we stand there holding each other like the old friends we are, and even though I can feel people staring at us, I don’t give a fuck, because I know that this is what I’ve needed.
‘It’s so good to see you, Nick,’ she says, against my cheek. I feel the conviction in her words. All malice between us has vaporised.
‘It’s good to see you too, Kay,’ I say softly. She pulls away and I see something move behind her face, some push of emotion, of recognition. Kay – my old name for her.
It’s easier now. The air between us is clear. We can talk freely, and for a while we do – discussing Luke, his recent behaviour, what she has learned of his business dealings, what Julia has told me.
‘What about the photograph?’ Katie asks. ‘The one on Luke’s desk – of the three of us.’
‘I don’t know, Katie,’ I say. ‘I don’t know why he’d be looking at photos from so long ago.’
She thinks about that for a minute, biting her lower lip in a way that is painfully familiar to me. ‘I wasn’t being completely honest with you, when you asked about me and Luke.’
I wait for her to explain.
‘It wasn’t an affair – nothing like that. It was more a flirtation. A light-hearted thing. Can you imagine that?’
I can’t help but notice the dark circles, like bruising, around her eyes, the taut pull of the muscles in her face, as if something angry and pained is lurking at the back of her expression. ‘Kay, I can’t imagine you doing anything light-hearted right now.’
It’s honest – maybe too honest – and instantly I regret saying those words. But they can’t be taken back.
She fiddles with a ring on her middle finger, turning it like a worry-bead.
‘You don’t think …’ she begins ‘… you don’t think this – Luke’s disappearance, I mean – you don’t think it has anything to do with what happened back then? In Kenya, when we were kids. Do you?’
‘The past is the past,’ I say.
‘It makes me uneasy, Nick. Luke’s missing, and now you’re back.’ She spreads her hands in a gesture of futility. ‘It’s the three of us again, isn’t it? And then when Julia gave me that photograph –’
‘I think Luke’s overstretched himself,’ I say in a rush. ‘I think he’s taken on too much and it’s all got to him. I think he’s still grieving for our mum and needed to get away for a while to be by himself. It’s all just got him down. That’s what I think.’
‘That’s a big speech from you,’ she says wryly, and I know that she’s teasing me but, still, I see the doubt in her eye.
She has almost finished her pint, and stares at the dregs in the bottom of her glass. Her voice so low, I can hardly hear her, she says: ‘Do you ever think about it? About what happened?’
My heart gives a dull thud of fear. The dread that always lies at the pit of my stomach, like a sleeping dog about to stir.
‘No,’ I say, my voice thick with fatigue and stout. ‘No, I don’t.’
I don’t ask her whether she does – I don’t want to – though she seems to be inching towards talking about it. Then my mobile buzzes – a text – and I busy myself with checking it, grateful for the distraction. ‘It’s Lauren,’ I say. ‘She’s awake.’
Katie smiles and drains what remains of her pint. ‘Best run along then,’ she says, turning to get her things.
When I get back, Lauren is not in the room. Her latest text says: Need fresh air. Gone for a stroll in the park.
I climb into bed and fall into a deep sleep. I sleep all night and wake early, feeling dazed and weary. At first I don’t know where I am. The bed sheets feel strange to my touch. I open my eyes and reach for Lauren only to find that I am alone. I sit up and call her name but there is no answer from the bathroom.
I reach for my phone on the bedside locker. There’s a missed call from Julia. As I swing my legs out and get to my feet, the door opens and Lauren enters. As soon as I see her I know that something has happened. She’s agitated and there is an urgency to her movements that is foreign to me.
‘Look,’ she says, holding a newspaper up to me. I feel a sudden plunge of dread as I take it from her, steeling myself for the news I’ve been waiting for.
But when I study the paper, the headline and photographs, there is nothing about Luke, nothing at all. Instead, it’s a piece about a terrorist attack.
‘It’s in Westlands,’ she says. ‘They don’t know yet how many are dead.’
‘Nairobi?’ I say, confused, as she crosses the room and switches on the TV, flicking rapidly through the channels until she finds Sky News.
‘A gang of terrorists armed with AK-47s and grenades have taken over a shopping mall.’
I try to arrange my thoughts, clear them of the fug of sleep, picturing in my mind’s eye that part of Nairobi with the nightclubs and shopping malls, an area of opulence and excess.
‘God knows how many people they’ve got in there,’ she says, concentrating on the words flashing across the screen. ‘Nick? Honey, are you okay?’
I sit down on the bed, spots dancing in front of my eyes, and let the paper fall to the floor. A needling sound rises in my ears – a sharp tinnitus – and with it comes pain.
‘Jesus, Nick, you’re white as a sheet.’
‘When you came in just now, the paper in your hand, I …’
Her arms wrap around me, and she pulls me to her. ‘Of course you were thinking of Luke. I should have realized.’
I draw away from her embrace, take hold of her wrists and tell her I’m okay, even though I’m still shaking with nerves.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she says.
‘All right. We should call over to Julia, I suppose.’
‘No,’ she says, with a degree of force. ‘You need a break, Nick – we both do. Let’s get out of the city. I want you to show me where you grew up.’
‘Really?’
‘Come on. We’ll hire a car, take a picnic, make a day of it. It’ll be good for you.’
There’s a hesitation within me, but I feel I have something to make up to Lauren. And maybe she’s right – maybe it would be good for me, for us. So I dress quickly, and by the time we’re having breakfast and the coffee has kicked in, I’m feeling like it’s a good idea. It will take our minds off the search. It’s been a hectic week; we need the break. The hotel arranges a rental
car and, in no time, we’re on our way.
Lauren’s mood lightens as we leave the city and head towards the Dublin mountains and beyond to the Wicklow hills, and so does mine. Even with the nagging urgency I feel to find my brother, it’s a relief to be leaving the city.
The traffic lightens as we pass Harold’s Cross, drive through Terenure and begin the climb up the Grange road towards Kilmashogue. As I drive, Lauren busies herself sending emails and texts to our friends in Nairobi, trying to find out if anyone we know could be caught up in the siege. The responses are jittery and panicked; a sense of the shock that has taken over Nairobi drifts through the car. On the radio, a talk-show host is discussing the end of the bail-out, the forthcoming budget, and some changes to inheritance tax at which I zone out.
Then, after an ad-break, there is a piece about Luke.
‘He’ll turn up,’ says one of the jaded pundits. ‘He’s like Houdini. He’s always been able to get himself out of a fix.’
The host laughs. ‘But where is Luke Yates and what has happened to him? He was on with us, listeners, if you remember, only two weeks ago to talk about the wonderful work his charity ALIVE does in Kenya, building homes for the less fortunate.’
Before I get a chance to, Lauren switches the channel. She doesn’t say anything, just stares resolutely ahead. The sound of stringed instruments fills the car. A violin lifts the heavy mood into some other-worldly trance.
We reach the outskirts of south Dublin and Ticknock where the road steepens. The engine strains, and the tyres bite into the ground beneath us. I stop at a junction on the Tibradden road.
‘Take a peek,’ I say to Lauren.
From here you can see the whole city; you can see from Howth Head all the way into the city centre where the Spire gleams, like a shining needle. You can see the red-and-white twin-stack chimneys of Poolbeg standing out like two sticks of candy rock. You can see Dublin in all its beauty.
Lauren takes it in with a deep breath of pleasure.
I keep on into Wicklow, past Bray, heading south towards the place I had once known as home. As soon as the house comes into view, I feel pressure building in my inner ear – the bubble of air threatening to burst. My tinnitus, pinging on a high, shrill note, makes me want to turn the car around. Coming here was a mistake, I want to say. I don’t want to reveal the secrets that lie behind these walls. I don’t want to disturb the sleeping ghosts.
But Lauren is expectant and full of excitement. Her wonder at seeing the house I grew up in makes me feel a little sad, but I can’t bear to disappoint her.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she says, taking in the elegant sweep of the drive, the high walls, the grandeur of the eaves.
‘It was once,’ I say to her. Then I explain that it was sold to a developer after my father died. ‘He was going to knock it and the neighbours’ houses down and build a bigger estate, only he went bust.’
She places a warm hand on my thigh as I drive. She is trying to reassure me, but all I feel is a dull panic. Lauren wants to invest this moment with too much significance. Tiredness creeps over me, and with it a confusion of emotions. I’m worried for my brother, but there’s a whisper of anger too – at the senselessness of his disappearance, at his dragging me back here when I wanted to stay away – and with the anger comes a clinging shame.
Some of the stones in the driveway have come loose, weeds growing among them, making the surface crooked and uneven. The splendour of the sash windows remains hidden, plywood hammered over the frames. The garden is overgrown, bindweed choking everything. We’re far from anything. The idyllic, once bustling family home is gone.
I park the car and turn the key to kill the engine.
‘Come on,’ Lauren says, stepping out.
She approaches one of the boarded-up windows, stands on a couple of stacked blocks, attempting to peer in. My eye is drawn upwards to the eaves where gaps have appeared, ripe for nesting house martins. I notice the holes in the woodwork and the fissures in the walls and think of the draughts whistling through the house, and feel a shiver of loneliness.
‘What now?’ I ask.
‘Let’s go inside.’
‘Lauren,’ I say patiently, ‘the place is all locked up. There is no going in.’
She doesn’t seem to hear me. Instead she walks around the side of the house and I trail after her, through the overgrown kitchen garden, a gnarled mess of shrubbery, nettles and weeds, and round to the back where the door into the scullery has been blocked off with two planks nailed across it. I watch her pulling at them, one half of me concerned at her insistence, the other half curious. All at once there is a rending sound as the wood gives way and she pushes the door open, turning to me with a grin of triumph that I can’t help but laugh at, her excitement is so infectious.
‘Congratulations,’ I say, following her as she ducks in under the remaining plank and enters the dark space. ‘You’ve a shining career as a house-breaker ahead of you.’
There’s a dank smell of rot and damp. Lauren is one step ahead of me.
‘Look at this place,’ she says, her voice hushed with wonder, and I can see the thrill in her face – the thrill of the illicit, the forbidden. I’m full of warnings and words of heed, like a good husband, but she doesn’t answer. In the kitchen, someone has built a small bonfire, which has gone out now. The walls are charred black in one corner. The picture of the Sacred Heart still hangs on the far wall, faded now. Somewhere in the cavern of my memory, I hear the ghostly echo of voices calling to me from the past.
‘Oh, wow, check this out,’ Lauren says, reaching the staircase, which has retained its elegant sweep despite the decay. I watch her climb, her hand recoiling at the grimy touch of the banister.
‘Be careful,’ I tell her, worried that at any moment the wood under her feet might give way and she could crash through the stairs.
I watch her until she disappears, but I don’t follow her. Instead, I step through into what had been the living room. A murky half-light fills the space. I can see that the fireplace has been ripped out and carried off, along with all the other furnishings. There is a stripped-out, forlorn quality to it, as if the room itself is in mourning for its past glory. A swarm of voices ghost through my head. They seem to echo with warning. I didn’t think coming here would affect me so deeply. A well of emotion rises in me and I feel dizzy, as if I’m standing at some great height and looking down.
Lauren calls my name but I don’t want to go up there. I’ve seen enough. I shout up to her that I’ll wait for her outside. She calls me again. This time I hear a shrill note of panic in her voice. I take the staircase two at a time and follow the sound into the front bedroom.
She turns to me, her face pale with shock. I look past her to the quiet and stillness of the place.
The dimness is broken by a beam of light that has escaped through the cracked boarding of the window.
The light catches his feet and ankles – black patent shoes, socks with a diamond pattern, the cuffs of his black tuxedo trousers.
‘Oh, God,’ Lauren says quietly to herself, over and over.
I stand still, ears ringing painfully, pricked by a thousand stinging needles. If there are words to say, I cannot say them. Not here, not now. I feel Lauren’s hand on my back, but I can’t look at her. Instead I stand in my parents’ house, transfixed, staring up at him: my brother, the beam above him creaking as he swings gently from the end of a rope.
Part Two
* * *
KENYA 1984
7. Sally
‘I don’t like him,’ she says.
They are in the office in Kianda, the two of them. The driver has just left. Sally stands at the door, watching the small figure oiling his way down the alley, the casual roll of his step.
‘Why not?’ Jim asks, and she turns to see him looking up at her, surprised.
‘I don’t trust him.’
He laughs, returning to his paperwork, one hand tapping out a rhythm with his pen. ‘You don’
t trust anyone,’ he says softly.
She turns away and looks out of the door again. The driver – Mackenzie – has paused at the corner to light another cigarette, shoulders hunched forward in his denim jacket. The whole time he was in the office he kept puffing away, cigarette pinched between stubby fingers, grime around the fingernails. Sally has a sudden glimpse of a lurching journey in a tin-can minibus, the stale smell of that cigarette smoke making her nauseous.
‘He seems shifty,’ she says, and feels again the push of her irritation. The way he had snubbed her, directing all his comments to Jim as if she wasn’t even in the room. Occasionally, the conversation had drifted into Kikulu and Sally, who cannot speak the language, could only stand by and dumbly observe their exchange. Jim speaks it fluently, yet carries the current of Irishness through his vowels and inflections. She had shifted her weight from one foot to the other, arms crossed over her chest, and Jim, noticing her impatience, had drawn the conversation back into English. Once the arrangements were made and a fee settled on, the two men had shaken hands. She had come forward to offer hers but he had nodded at her and stepped past her out onto the street. Her anger had risen.
‘Listen,’ Jim says, trying to sound reasonable, ‘he knows the road well, and the safari routes out there like the back of his hand. By all means look for someone else, but you won’t find anyone who can sniff out the big game like Mack, believe me.’
He’s right, but she doesn’t say anything, watching silently as Mackenzie rounds a corner and disappears into the vast clogged wasteland of the Kibera slums. Today, in the heat, the stench is worse than ever. Sewage chugs through open channels and a lively commerce of shoe-repair and laundry takes place outside steaming tin huts. Overhead, the sky is a dull white, with heavy clouds, and the miasma of heat beats down oppressively.
Once, flying over Nairobi in a small aeroplane, Sally had peered out of the tiny window to the sprawling slum below.
‘It’s like a great big smear of shit on the landscape, isn’t it?’
