by Laura Elliot
‘Do you believe her?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘”If you have another truth, then go and find it.” Wasn’t that what you said to me, Henry?’
He steps closer and grabs her shoulders. ‘I was a fool not to report you for breaking into my house. You need to be locked up and I’m going to make sure that happens. Starting right now.’
‘The only way Nicholas can keep me from revealing the truth is to kill me,’ she says. ‘If that happens, I want you to remember this conversation.’
Without replying, he storms ahead of her into the other room, where Joel is lying on the floor, red-faced and drumming his heels. Grace, her hands clasped over her ears to drown his shrieks, is weeping quietly in Sophie’s arms.
‘They were afraid you’d left them without saying goodbye.’ She glances apologetically at Elena, who has lifted Joel and pressed him to her shoulder. Gradually, his shrieks quieten into hiccupping gulps. Her neck is wet with his tears. She waits for Henry to report her for accosting him. He bends and begins to pick up the toys. His face his hidden from her, his shoulders stooped.
‘Say goodbye to your mammy.’ He speaks softly to Grace and takes Joel, relaxed now, from Elena’s arms. He does not look at her or speak again.
He will ring the police as soon as he returns home. What else can he do? Elena is a stalker, intent on destroying his son with her insane accusations. This time there will be no mitigating circumstances. The post-partum depression argument is a spent force and will not soften a judge’s heart.
Fifty-Five
Henry is in an agony of indecision. He remembers that afternoon at the barbecue. How he shut me down when I appealed to him for help. He has blocked the words we exchanged, believing I had been driven by malice or, even, jealousy. Excuses can be found easily if you search for them as desperately as Henry does. He had seen the flint in his son’s eyes, witnessed his sudden outbursts if he was challenged or questioned. Not that it happens much these days. Unlike his childhood tantrums. They left Henry whey-faced and desperate for a professional opinion as to why their son could shatter his parents with his mood swings and then charm them back with a smile.
Yvonne refused to acknowledge his fears. Small boys were aggressive by nature, she said, and Nicholas was just going through a phase. One he would soon outgrow. Henry must stop being jealous of the attention she gave to their son. Stung by her attitude, afraid that, if they continued to argue, she would leave him and take Nicholas with her, he buried his misgivings. Today, Elena forced him to confront them again, as did Joel’s ear-piercing shrieks, the pitch of his distress sweeping Henry back in time. The only difference was that Elena had pacified her son. Nicholas could never be silenced by soothing arms, yet it seemed that Yvonne always knew best.
Henry had relaxed as his son grew in assurance and self-control. It was easy to dismiss the odd incident. Like the boy in hospital with the fractured arm and the Year Head’s belief that he had been bullied by Nicholas. A lie, as it turned out. What else could it be when the boy had insisted he fell off his bike on his way home from school? Yvonne threatened to bring the Year Head to court for slander and only stopped the proceedings when he resigned. Then there was the incident with the girl, doe-eyed and hungry for Nicholas. Her father had the nerve to accuse Nicholas of rape, which his daughter denied as soon as she realised that she would have to admit in court how she had stalked Nicholas and constantly demanded his attention. Nicholas was right to go abroad afterwards. He needed time to recover from her slanderous accusation. The wealth of experience he gained in China and Hong Kong was invaluable. Henry never admitted, even to himself, that the happiest time of his married life was when his son lived abroad. The knot in his chest – so familiar that he was hardly aware of it – only tightened again when Nicholas returned.
I am witness to his tormented thoughts. I don’t want to be there but hither and thither like a feather I float and land. It would be easy to blame Yvonne. An easy target, indulgent and obsessed with her only son, unable to see the mote in her own eye and in his. But Yvonne is not to blame for his murderous intent. Nor are his antecedents, though there was a great-grand-uncle who terrified both of his wives into early graves. When it comes to the final roll-call, we are all responsible for our own actions and Nicholas knew from the beginning that he was set apart from others. He was gifted with an intuition that recognised vulnerability and could prey upon it. He chose well when he captivated Elena. An only child, no siblings or parents to give her support, her friends scattered. As isolated as the wife he had lost. Unable to see beyond his tragic past, no one makes that connection… except, perhaps, Henry, half-blinded by paternal love but beset by doubts he is now forced to acknowledge.
At Woodbine, where he takes Grace and Joel after their visit with their mother, he feeds his grandchildren and settles them down for an afternoon nap. He passes the bedroom Nicholas once shared with Amelia. The key, no longer hidden, falls at his feet and clatters on the wooden floor. He picks it up and replaces it in the keyhole. Why is the door locked? Why does he feel the urge to unlock it? Why is his skin crawling, as if beset by small, scurrying spiders?
Henry does not know what he expects to find there, yet he keeps looking in drawers, under the bed, in the wardrobe. He is shocked to see Amelia’s clothes still hanging neatly on hangers. Clothes so different from the ones she used to wear in those early years. The only eye-catching dress is the silver lamé one and even that, he knows, though he has no sense of fashion, is one Amelia would never have chosen for herself.
His movements become more frantic and finally he finds what he has dreaded, on the top shelf. Photographs of Elena going to and coming from work, at the supermarket, emerging from the sea, a swim hat in hand, walking with Rosemary in a park, entering the community centre to visit her children, and one that shows her outside a pub. He examines other photographs. A mother and child, an unruly lamb, the ocean thrashing below them.
‘Leanne.’ He breathes my name. The child is a stranger to him but the last photograph Henry comes upon will torment him forever. He recognises Neary’s distinctive décor. He had sat in that pub with Nicholas, comforting him, when tragedy came out of the blue and the woman he loved disappeared without trace. Now, he wishes he had the wisdom of Solomon. If he could cut the truth in half, he could endure it. But there is no middle ground. Either Elena Langdon is an insane liar or his son is a monster. The face of the person in the photograph is familiar to him. He has seen Mark Patterson on television. He has heard the request from the gardai for information from anyone who noticed him in the vicinity of the Grand Canal on the night he was attacked with a one-punch blow to his head.
Fifty-Six
Rosemary is visiting her sister for the weekend and will not be back until Sunday night. On Monday, she has an appointment to meet with Christopher Keogh. ‘He has some very interesting information to share with me,’ she said to Elena before she left. ‘He wants to discuss why I became suspicious of Nicholas. I wonder who could have alerted him that something was wrong? It appears that his golden boy is made from gilt.’
Alone in the house, Elena waits for the knock on the door. Henry will have reported her by now. She imagines the authoritative voices, the clink of handcuffs. Outside, there will be media, cameras flashing, questions shouted.
The night passes. She tries to distract herself by watching television. A crime drama is playing on every channel she zaps. Finally, she discovers a nature documentary that looks gentle enough to soothe her – until the animals obey their primal instincts and kill for their dinner. Giving up, she decides to go to bed. An envelope lies on the hall floor. She picks it up, thinking it will be addressed to Rosemary, and is surprised to see her name printed on it in block capitals. Opening it, she removes a sheet of paper that has been wrapped round a USB key. The message is stark and brief.
Be careful, Elena. You are being followed.
The USB key opens up as soon as she inserts it into her laptop. She s
tares at photographs that can only have been sent by one person. Henry’s phone is switched off when she rings him. His answering machine tells her he is unavailable.
* * *
The eyes that follow her must sleep at some stage and Elena has chosen the quiet of the small hours to drive through the slumbering streets. No car headlights beam in her rear-view mirror. The only traffic she encounters is trucks heading towards the ferry.
It is after five in the morning when she reaches Lily Howe’s Grocery Provisions. A light is shining from the window and Lily, muffled in a quilted dressing gown, waits in the doorway. She opens a gate at the side of the shop and gestures at Elena to park the car in the back yard where sacks of coal and turf are stored.
Mag’s Head, rising to meet the dawn, stands like a brooding sentinel over the small hamlet. The jeep arrives shortly afterwards. Elena and Amelia do not embrace. Their kinship, conjoined by secrets, is still too tentative for touch. They have accepted that their lives are in danger. Not to act now is to look over their shoulders every time they hear footsteps behind them.
Inside the cottage, breakfast is ready. Fresh fruit and poached eggs, a pot of strong tea, home-baked scones that Lily pressed into Elena’s hand as they were leaving. The radio playing early morning music and the heat in the kitchen from the wood-burning stove add to the cosy normality of their surroundings. The décor in each room has a flawless simplicity that combines comfort with style and reminds Elena of Woodbine.
Kayla is excited when she runs into the kitchen. She is on her school holidays and her mammy is taking her to a special farm where there is a new baby for her to mind. Elena waves goodbye as they hurry towards the jeep. She yawns, tired and stiff from her journey. She will rest for a few hours in the spare bedroom. The sounds of the morning are muffled. The jeep leaving, the shriek of seagulls and kittiwakes, the radio still playing as she drifts towards sleep.
In a few hours, she is due to present herself at the garda station. Her disappearance will be reported to Nicholas. The eyes that he has hired to watch her will have no idea of her whereabouts. He is the only one who will figure out where she has gone.
Fifty-Seven
Amelia enters her daughter’s bedroom. It is empty of clothes, toys, books and the many possessions Kayla loves. Today, Amelia drove her to Lemon Grass Hill, the farm run by Elena’s friends. Kayla had been enraptured by baby Lucy but had wept loudly when time came to say goodbye, unable to understand why, for the first time in her life, her mother was leaving her. She had cheered up a little when Killian brought her to the stable yard to meet their horse, Cassandra, and her newborn foal Jolly. Since then, Susie had sent photographs of Kayla holding Lucy, and feeding the hens, her face alight with excitement, yet Amelia still feels as though she has lost a limb.
When she returned from the farm, she had packed everything belonging to Kayla in boxes and left them in Lily’s storeroom. All photographs have been removed and there is nothing in the cottage to remind her that she has a child who was conceived in love.
Thinking of Jay causes pain. She has deprived him of the right to know of his daughter’s existence. A harsh decision that she has never regretted. This realisation steadies her resolve when the isolation of Mag’s Head fills her with longings to ring him and utter the words he yearns to hear. Feelings pass, no matter how agonising they are to endure. On such occasions she sits beside Kayla, her secret safe within the thick, strong walls of Clearwater.
Mark sees Jay when he returns to Kilfarran to visit his father and talks him out of driving to Mag’s Head to persuade Amelia to change her mind. Thinking about Mark, Amelia pauses in her preparations. Yesterday, she had missed the morning news bulletin and was unaware of the attack on Mark until Elena rang late in the night to inform her that she was on the road, heading for Mag’s Head. The connection on their phones broke occasionally and their conversation was disjointed. But one thing was clear. Mark was in a coma and Nicholas was responsible. Fury had followed Amelia’s shock and action had replaced the anxiety that she had managed to control ever since she came here.
She kneels on the stony floor. Her prayers have never matured beyond those she learned by rote in her childhood. Here, on this isolated headland, she knows that praying takes many forms. She stills her mind and brings her consciousness to Mark’s bedside. Her love for him flows from her through his unconsciousness and penetrates the darkness that still possesses him.
Gradually, Amelia returns to her surroundings and rises. She has much to do and time is running out. The search for Elena will have begun by now. How long before it lands on the doorstep of this haven that Leanne created for Amelia and her daughter?
On her last visit, Elena had been battered and bruised. Amelia, fighting against the swarming memories of her own beatings, had wanted to slam the door in the face of this dangerous interloper. Elena’s bruises have healed since then. The emptiness in her eyes has been replaced by a steely determination. Her shoulders are no longer slumped with defeat.
Fifty-Eight
I always suspected I would die young. Not tragically young, as in my teens, but a little later, after life had tossed me around a bit. Turns out I was right. How much time has passed since I reached this uncertain shore that rests between the rapture and the inferno? Years? A nanosecond? Does it really matter anymore?
Jay left Mag’s Head with me, his heart breaking as he waited in vain for Amelia to call him back. So long since I travelled under my own name and, as we passed through airports, those who checked my old passport gave it just a cursory glance. It’s all about the hair, you see. My crowning glory, windswept as the tresses of a banshee.
On our last night together, we ate in a restaurant where a musician played on a piano. I called it my last supper and was the only one who laughed at my joke. I considered telling Jay the truth about Amelia, as I had once before, but, this time, too much was at stake for compassion.
We slept side by side in an anonymous hotel room, chaste yet linked in love. I love them all. Mark with his quiet determination. Amelia… what more can I say? And Jay, who came with me to that strangely peaceful house of death. The calm before the storm of passing.
I was curious but not frightened by the thought of what was to come. I’d jettisoned the dogmas of faith when I was sixteen. My church had turned its back on me, refused to recognise that I had a unique identity that desired to be fulfilled. Outside the mould, I became an atheist who believed that death was the void. Was I right or wrong? Would I wilt like a flower into the mulch when I drank the cup of hemlock – or travel towards a rapture that stretched far beyond my imagination?
Jay held me as my heart slowed and my eyes were filled with visions. Soon, very soon, as I was unwoven from life’s canvas, I would know the answer to that eternal question.
I was wrong. There was nothing here to reflect my surroundings back at me, apart from those brief laser blasts. That’s how they came, such visions, always catching me unprepared. All I had to sustain me was her name. Amelia. And then another name that echoed like the chimes of a bell when it stops tolling. Elena… Elena…
Could I have interceded when she stared at him across the width of her mother’s grave and fell into his eyes? To do so would have made sense. Why else was I forced to witness such an encounter and others over which I had no control?
I never believed in psychics. Never had my palm read, tea leaves studied, tarot cards analysed. Never wondered if those who claimed to have visions were the chosen ones or simply charlatans, experts only at reading the runes of the body, hearing the unspoken words, tracking the unshed tears. I had to die to discover that to be so gifted is to accept a wound that will never stop bleeding.
Fifty-Nine
Night settles over Mag’s Head. The cottage blends into the rocky bluffs and windswept trees, the blue shutters on the windows securely closed, the door of the studio locked. The only noise to penetrate the restless swish of the ocean is the growl of a BMW as it negotiates the steep bends in t
he road. Sheep stir, eyes glazed with sleep as they are caught in the headlights.
Amelia lifts her head, suddenly alert. Accustomed to the reverberations of the headland, she recognises this alien sound for what it is. Her scalp bristles. The moment she has always feared is upon her. Elena, who has been talking about Grace and Joel, tenses when she sees her expression change. It’s audible now, the gears straining against the upward slant, then easing down when he reaches the plateau where Clearwater sits. They have planned each detail of this confrontation yet, suddenly, there is a void where moments before there was a strategy.
They hold hands, squeeze hard. This is their first physical contact, though they have poured their hearts out to each other, drinking black coffee to keep them awake, knowing he will come at a time when he believes they’ll be unprepared.
In the living room, Amelia slides the hidden door across and enters her refuge. The BMW is silent. The gate bangs. He strides across the gravel, making no effort to disguise his arrival. He knocks on the door, an assertive sound that he quickly repeats.
‘Hello, Nicholas.’ Elena swings the door open. ‘What took you so long?’ Her life depends on remaining composed, yet the urge to cower away from him is as strong as ever. She holds her head erect, conscious that Amelia, who found the courage to face her greatest fear and escape from his brutality is close by.
‘I’m relieved to know you’re safe.’ His forehead furrows with concern and he speaks quietly, as he often did before he struck her. ‘What on earth brought you to this godforsaken hole?’
Elena stands aside and gestures for him to enter. ‘Come in and I’ll explain everything.’
