One Click

by Andrea Mara

  She pulls up a photo on her phone and passes it to me. The search entry is clearly visible in her photo of Dave’s laptop screen: ‘Can gardaí find IP address of anonymous troll?’

  “I don’t know anything about what an IP address is but I know what a troll is. And I suppose it has something to do with what he said before – the Leon thing he mentioned. And I told it all to my husband this afternoon and showed him the picture and he said it’d be safer to tell you and let you decide, so here I am.” She pauses. “Only I’ve probably gone and got myself fired now, haven’t I?”

  Jesus Christ. All this time. He sat in my kitchen last night, casually drinking my tea, then he’s at home this morning, scrambling to cover up what he did. Fucker. The absolute fucker.

  “No, you haven’t got yourself fired, Grace. I need to confront Dave about this.” Her face falls. “But I won’t mention you at all. I’ll think of something, but I won’t breathe a word about this conversation.” She still looks nervous, and now I’m even angrier with Dave for putting her in this position too. “I promise you I won’t involve you. I appreciate you coming to tell me this – lots of people would have stood by and said nothing. I’ll tell him I found out how to trace it myself online. Okay?”

  She nods, but still looks only slightly reassured as I walk her out to the door.

  I take her hand as she turns to say goodbye.

  “I really mean it, Grace, I won’t involve you, please don’t worry. And thank you.”

  And then she’s gone into the night, and I hesitate for just a few seconds more, before running down the path.

  At Nadine’s door, I press the bell, and wait, trying to slow my breathing. What was he thinking? Why would he do that to me? The door stays stubbornly shut, and I try again, pressing the bell twice more.

  “Dave!” I half-shout, hammering on the door with my fist now. Still nothing. They’re probably both still at work.

  My hand touches my back pocket, but I’ve left my phone at home on the couch.

  I try calling his name again. Nothing stirs. Part of me wants to pick up a stone and fling it through their front window. But I don’t. Instead I walk back around to my own house, and lock the door.

  In the sitting room, I try phoning him, but it goes to voice-mail. At the end of the beep, I take a breath, but I have absolutely no idea where to start. Were you my troll? It’s insane. And why? Jesus Christ, no wonder he’s anxious about the Guards dealing with it.

  Then the doorbell rings, and I rush to answer, ready to let him have it, but it’s not Dave, it’s Clare.

  “Hey – I saw you at Dave’s house – is everything okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay. Come in.”

  She follows me to the sitting room and sits beside me on the couch. She’s wearing pyjama bottoms with boots and a cardigan, and I’m so glad to have this friend it almost hurts.

  There’s no roundabout way to say it. “The troll I had last year was Dave all along.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “No. Nadine’s cleaner overheard him on the phone talking about it – she was just here telling me. Bloody petrified she’ll get fired for talking out of turn, which is making me even more angry with Dave. I promised her I wouldn’t involve her.” I sigh. “How could he do this?”

  I’m waiting for Clare to tell me there must be a simple explanation, but she doesn’t. She sits back and folds her arms.

  “Let’s have a glass of wine,” she says.

  I watch as she treads a familiar path to the wine rack in the kitchen, and when she comes back she busies herself with the corkscrew, still saying nothing. She pours me a huge glass and a slightly smaller one for herself, then sits beside me.

  “Clare, why aren’t you surprised?”

  She lifts the wine to her lips and looks at me over the top of the glass as she drinks. Her eyes are darker than ever in the low lamplight, and I can’t read them.

  “I had an inkling,” she says finally.

  “What? You knew?”

  “No, nothing concrete. God, no. I’d have told you for sure. Just a hint of something that stayed at the back of my mind. It was too ridiculous to even verbalise to myself, but now that you say it I’m not as shocked as I would otherwise have been.”

  Shifting on the couch, I turn to face her.

  “But why? What hint?”

  “It was last summer. You were talking a lot about your online friends – trying to get me to join Twitter, remember?”

  I do remember. God, I must have been a pain.

  “And – you might not like this – but often when I was here and you were on your phone, Dave was a bit eye-roll-y about it. He’d look at me, nod towards you, and throw his eyes up to heaven – that kind of thing.”

  I can feel colour filling my cheeks and I’m glad it’s too dark for her to see.

  “Then one night we were all in mine for dinner,” she continues, “and you’d got the first couple of messages from Leon, and you were telling everyone – remember?”

  I do. I wasn’t too worried at that stage – it was dinner-party anecdote material and nothing more.

  “I remember you were laughing about it but I was kind of worried for you, in case it would get out of hand. I glanced over at Dave to see what he thought, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was typing something on his phone. Then a moment later, you got a message from Leon and showed us all – do you know the time I mean?”

  I nod. It was a response to an article I’d shared on Twitter that day – something about the gender pay gap. Leon had said if women worked as hard as men, they wouldn’t need to keep wittering on about being paid less.

  “For some reason,” Clare continues, “I was looking over at Dave when you were reading the tweet, and he was still looking down at his phone, but he was smiling. Not smiling – smirking. And something tiny lodged at the back of my mind. And I thought of it on and off since, but always told myself it was ridiculous. Until tonight when you said it, and it didn’t seem ridiculous anymore.”

  Silence now. A car passes outside, and the wind picks up, making the bay windows rattle and the candle flicker in the fireplace. I stare at the flame, watching it dance. Clare’s eyes are on me, waiting for me to speak, but I don’t know what to say, partly because I’m no longer shocked that Dave sent the messages and that in itself makes me indescribably sad.

  “Do you think he went to all that effort just to get me offline?” I ask her eventually.

  “Perhaps. Or maybe it was a way to get your attention – to engage with you?”

  I let that idea sit for a moment. A way to get my attention. Like a toddler having a tantrum.

  Clare clears her throat and I turn to look at her.

  “Oh God, what now?”

  “I’m just wondering if he started again – is VIN his way of staying close to you even though he’s gone?”

  “No, he couldn’t. Could he? The VIN messages are even nastier than Leon’s. I don’t think Dave would go that far.”

  “Well, until half an hour ago, you didn’t think he was Leon either . . .”

  “I know, but this is a whole other level. He couldn’t be VIN, could he? What would be the point?”

  Clare shrugs and throws up her hands. “To teach you a lesson? To show you he was right all along and being online so much has a downside?”

  That makes me wince, and she qualifies it.

  “I don’t mean I think you’re too caught up in it, but he clearly does – he’s said it often enough. Or maybe it’s a way of seeking your attention – albeit in a completely fucked-up manner – the bold schoolboy who keeps pulling your hair?”

  “Jesus Christ, there are better ways of getting my attention – like continuing to live here and not sleeping with the neighbours, you know?” My voice is louder than I intended, and Clare reaches out to touch my arm.

  “I know. And maybe I’m completely wrong. In fact I probably am. More wine?”

  I don’t want more wine, I want a clear head
for when I get hold of Dave. I pick up my phone to try him again and see a message from Cleo.

  Back in Dublin, exhausted after my trip home but kinda missed Ireland a little too.Any more messages from VIN?

  Yep, still loads. So, so tired of it now. I hit send.

  Ah, I’m sorry to hear that. I was thinking, should we go to the police here in Ireland now that Chris ruled out?

  Already done, reported it to Guards last week when you told me wasn’t Chris.

  Her response is immediate.

  Great. Actually – has VIN ever mentioned the name Barbara?

  No, never – why? I ask.

  Just something my mom asked me when I was back home. I think she was confused about hoax messages in general, but I thought I’d check with you.

  Sure thing, I reply. I’ll keep you posted about any new messages anyway.

  Cool, she says. Let’s do coffee soon and see what else we can do?

  Sounds good xx I type.

  I glance at Clare and try calling Dave again, but there’s still no answer. He couldn’t possibly be VIN, could he? Clicking into the VIN account, I look at the profile again. There’s still no avatar, but he’s added a cover photo – my picture of Cleo on the beach. There’s no new blog post, but where the Twitter bio has always been blank, there’s now one word: VINDICTA.

  “Vindicta. I guess that’s what VIN means!”

  I turn my phone to show Clare, then type the word into Google. The search results all refer to a game – maybe the troll is a gamer? The game seems to involve dragons and an army general called Vindicta but none of it links in any way to what VIN has been messaging.

  “It sounds a bit like the word ‘vindictive’ – does that mean anything?” Clare asks. “Could he be calling you vindictive for some reason – to get at you?”

  I shake my head. It doesn’t add up. Nor does it make sense that VIN is calling himself vindictive – it’s not a compliment in any form. Unless it means something else – in a different form . . . back in Google, I try “vindicta meaning” and a Latin-English dictionary comes up. According to the page, vindicta is a Latin word, and in English it means “revenge”.

  I show it to Clare and she examines it for a moment, then shakes her head.

  “A flair for the dramatic no doubt, a deliberate attempt to scare you. Don’t worry about it.”

  “No, I think it’s real – I think he’s talking about revenge on the person he calls the Whore in the blog posts. I just don’t know what that has to do with me.”

  I turn my phone screen down and cover my face with my hands.

  Clare sighs. “Ah Lauren, this must be horrible. I’m here for you, okay?”

  I nod but don’t speak, because I know if I do I’ll be crying, and if I start I don’t know how I will stop.

  Chapter 48

  Thursday morning, sitting at my desk, I still don’t know what the Vindicta reference means and I still can’t get hold of Dave.

  When I knocked on the door before leaving for work, I got a very curt response from Nadine – he was gone to a conference in Bristol and wouldn’t be back till the weekend. So I left him a voicemail, short and to the point: I know you’re LEON. We need to talk.He ignored that and my next two calls, so I tried using Rebecca’s phone – he’s never ignored a call from either of the girls. But this time he did.

  He’s probably petrified, though I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to manage living two doors away and maintaining a relationship with his daughters while avoiding me.

  And, in ten minutes, I’ll have the weekly hell that is a session with Jonathan. Dear God, why didn’t I become a teacher like my mother told me to?

  With Vindicta still playing on my mind, I go into VIN’s Twitter account and click through to his website. He’s published a new blog post overnight, this time called The Doll.

  So in the end, I used pipe cleaners to make the second doll – my mother would have killed me if she caught me with candles and matches again. I made the head with a ball of white wool, I glued the Whore’s hair to the top, and stuck buttons on for eyes. I remember thinking ‘black eyes to match her black heart’. I took a knitting needle from my mother’s room, closed my eyes, and thought about what I wanted to happen – it was simple really, I wanted her to die in grotesque pain for what she did to us. I opened my eyes, and plunged the knitting needle into the head. Right between the eyes. I did it again and again, then sat back, and waited.

  And it worked, but not the way it was supposed to. Did I take the wrong hair from the hairbrush? I couldn’t have, it was long hair – it wasn’t my father’s. But either way he was gone. Dead as a doornail. My mother was back in her bedroom, and I spent most of my time sitting outside her door, listening. There was a funeral, but we didn’t go. My mother said she couldn’t go through it and that I was too young. I asked what happened to him but she just looked at me and shut the door of her room. I went back to look at the voodoo doll. The hair wasn’t Dad’s, I was sure of it. But I needed to know how he died – if he was stabbed in the head. It was like a ball of fire inside my stomach and it wouldn’t go away.

  On the fourth day, my mother got up and made tea, then sat down at the table with her hands wrapped around the mug, staring at nothing.

  “Mam?” I touched her lightly on the shoulder and she jumped.

  “What is it?”

  “What happened to him? Did the Whore do it?”

  Her eyes were black and empty. She turned away from me before she answered. When she started to speak, her voice sounded strange to me – empty like her eyes.

  “She may as well have killed him,” she said, still not looking at me.

  “Did she stab him between the eyes?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  “No.” She sighed, but her voice didn’t change. “You see, what happened was, he was driving home from a party. Because that’s the kind of thing they did together – went to parties. And they were supposed to walk home, but she said it was too far, and her heels were too high.”

  She turned to me then, and I was glad, even though I’m not sure she really saw me.

  “Imagine. Her heels were too high. Why didn’t she just wear proper shoes? So he drove, because she made him drive.”

  She stopped and looked away again. I waited, not knowing what was coming but praying that nobody was stabbed in the head.

  “And of course your dad had had a few whiskeys. He never did that when he was here either. So he had a few whiskeys, and she wouldn’t walk home, and he drove the car, and sure you know what happened then – he crashed it, didn’t he?”

  She turned suddenly back to me, and I jumped. Her eyes flashed, no longer empty, and that should have been good but somehow it wasn’t good.

  “He died on the spot, and she walked away.” She slammed her teacup down on the table and it cracked in two, tea spilling out all over the table. She didn’t notice. “That woman did it to him, and he did it to himself. Isn’t that a neat thing now?”

  I didn’t know what she meant but one thing was clear – nobody got stabbed, and I had the right hair on the doll. I just needed to try harder.

  The door opens, pulling me away from VIN, and in comes Jonathan, smiling a little too widely.

  “How was Halloween, Dr Elliot – did you get dressed up yourself?” he asks as he sits down. “Or did you just stick on a witch’s hat with your normal clothes?”

  My head jerks up. Was that his car outside my house?

  “Sorcha always just put on a witch’s hat,” he continues. “But then again, we didn’t have kids. You might be under more pressure to wear a costume?”

  Now he sounds genuinely curious, a normal man making normal small talk. Or a good actor, messing with my head.

  “We’re past that stage in our house now. But talk to me about that – did you want children? Did Sorcha?” I ask, sitting down.

  Let the games begin.

  His face darkens. “She didn’t. I did. It’s one of the things we fought abou
t. She’d have been a terrible mother in fairness. That’s one thing we can all be thankful for – no chance she’ll ever procreate.”

  “But I guess she might have children with her new partner – how would that make you feel?” I wonder if I’m going to enflame something I shouldn’t, but he must know it’s a possibility.

  He looks at me for a moment and I can almost see his mind working behind his eyes, trying to decide on something.

  “She won’t ever have children,” he says in a low voice, “because she’s gone. She’s not with a new partner. She’s in the ground, in a pine box, in the family plot.”

  Sorcha is dead? How could I have missed this? He’s been talking for months about their separation but never once mentioned she’d died – this doesn’t make any sense.