The Game Changer

by Louise Phillips

  Turning the handle with a jerk, she pushed the door forward with such force that it bounced back on itself. She was surprised to find the room empty of furniture, except for her mother’s old dressing table and stool. Kate had cleared out most of the stuff to charity shops, and anything that wasn’t good enough had gone in a skip. In the haze that followed the funeral, could she have forgotten them? It didn’t matter one way or another. Perhaps the new owners had found them and decided to keep them.

  Kate took a couple of steps closer, visualising herself as a child, looking in the mirror after she climbed onto the stool, her younger self gazing back at her. She brought her hands to her face, touching her older features, aware that the flow of fresh tears was close. There was something utterly private about this room, which she had never noticed before. Perhaps it was the half-darkness, creating an intimacy, but this was the room where her parents had made love, where, more than likely, she had been conceived. Now both of her parents were gone and, with them, their secrets.

  Kate looked at her watch, knowing Pat Grant would be back soon. Reluctant to leave, something guided her to the drawers of the dressing table, which she opened one at a time. They were empty. She sat down, running her hand across the top, feeling the waxed wood beneath her fingertips. It was as if she was physically trying to connect with her mother by touching something that had belonged to her. She raised her hand to the mirror, passing her fingers around the edge, stopping at one of the sides, feeling something behind the glass. She stood up, pulling the dressing table out from the wall. Stuck to the back with Sellotape was a folded newspaper clipping. She removed it carefully. It was old and faded. She placed it on top of the dressing table, pulling back the curtains to allow in light. With it came a chill, and she shivered. In the street below, she saw the spot where she had stood when she was looking in. She opened the paper, conscious that it could fall apart because of its age. She looked at the date – 30 November 1987. The lead article was about the disappearance of Peter Kirwan. At the bottom of the page, there was a photograph with the caption ‘Schoolgirl delighted to meet the President’, and underneath, she saw her eleven-year-old face, with her name, Kate Pearson, written in bold type. It had been a school visit to Áras an Uachtaráin, and she had completely forgotten about it. She looked again at the article about the missing schoolboy, realising that his name and the date at the top right of the newspaper had been circled in red pen. Who had done that, and why?

  Behind her, the bedroom door creaked, closing, and suddenly she needed to be out of that room. Everything she had heard about paedophile rumours, unofficial cognitive testing of children, her father and Malcolm, and all the unanswered questions, came ramming into her mind. Had her father kept the clipping on the pretext it was about her, when all along, there was a very different reason? If he had, why had he circled the boy’s name and the date, bringing attention to something he wouldn’t want highlighted? And why hide it at the back of her mother’s dressing table? Unless it hadn’t been her father who’d put it there. What if it had been her mother? Had she known something so terrible that she had kept it as a permanent marker?

  Sarah

  AT FIRST SARAH WASN’T SURE WHERE SHE WAS. There was a bright light above her head, and as her eyes settled, she realised it was a fluorescent tube. It was blinding. The smells around her reminded her of hospitals. When she tried to move her head, she couldn’t. Her mouth was dry, and something was stuck into her right arm. It felt heavy, as if she was weighed down by it. She wasn’t alone. There were muffled voices in the room. She recognised one as Jessica’s. The sharp light eased. She blinked rapidly, and shapes became clearer. She caught a whiff of disinfectant.

  ‘We thought we’d lost you, Sarah.’ The voice sounded strangely cheerful. It was Jessica’s.

  ‘Where am I? Where’s Lily?’ she screeched. ‘I can’t see her! Where have you taken her?’

  ‘Calm down.’ Jessica’s voice still upbeat, sickly sweet. ‘Lily will be here soon.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Sarah pleaded, trying to force herself into a sitting position. Her body felt like a lead weight. She realised the thing in her arm was an intravenous drip and her flesh was badly bruised. ‘I must see Lily,’ she roared, ‘she’s my baby.’

  Jessica placed her hands on Sarah’s shoulders, easing her back down.

  ‘Where is she?’ Sarah hissed, spitting at Jessica.

  Instead of being angry, Jessica rubbed Sarah’s forehead with her hand. For an instant, Sarah thought she was going to throw up. It was then that she heard the wheels, tiny spinning wheels. She managed to turn her head towards the door. A slim woman in her mid-twenties, attractive, with shoulder-length honey-brown hair, and wearing a white hospital coat, pushed a clear plastic cot with a baby inside it into the room. She knew it was Lily, and her body eased with relief.

  ‘Is she okay?’ Sarah asked, hoping they would tell her what she wanted to hear.

  She expected the woman in the white coat to answer, but instead, Jessica said, ‘Look at her, Sarah. She’s perfectly fine. Isn’t that right, Dr Redmond?’

  ‘Mother and baby are doing great, but Sarah can call me Lisa.’

  ‘I need to talk to John,’ Sarah muttered. ‘He’ll be worried.’

  ‘Plenty of time for that.’ Jessica smiled.

  Sarah looked around the room for her mobile phone, but couldn’t see it. ‘Where’s my phone?’ she asked, sounding accusing.

  ‘Sarah, it’s important that you remain calm. You know the signal is bad here on the island. I’ll get one of the members to fetch it for you, shall I?’

  ‘Please. Thank you, Jessica.’

  ‘But first you must look after your baby.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she replied, looking at Lily, feeling guilty, but even as she was thinking that, she realised her mind was on some kind of slowdown. She saw Dr Redmond, Lisa, increase the flow of liquid from the drip under Jessica’s instructions.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Extra fluids,’ replied Jessica. ‘We need to keep the supply at a high level, now that you’ve come back to us after your turn.’

  Sarah kept staring at Jessica, watching her pick up Lily from the cot, ready to hand her to her.

  ‘What happened?’ Sarah asked. ‘I remember taking tablets, but after that, I can’t remember anything.’

  ‘You took too many, Sarah. It’s nothing to worry about now. We’ll have you on your feet in no time.’ Jessica fixed the blanket around Lily before handing her over. The pain wasn’t so bad for Sarah now, but the room was turning, and her vision blurred. She felt as if she was about to drift into sleep, but instead, she tried hard to concentrate.

  ‘My phone,’ she mumbled. ‘I need to call John. I want him to come here. I want him to come for us.’

  It was Jessica’s voice she heard next: ‘The weather will ease soon,’ she said. ‘You can call him then, and I’m sure he’ll want to come to see you.’

  There was an element of doubt implicit in her words.

  ‘It’s okay, Sarah,’ the doctor said.

  Sarah couldn’t remember her name. The doctor leaned in closer, lowering her voice to a whisper, as if she was about to tell Sarah a secret, something between only them. ‘Sarah, listen to Jessica, the medication has worked wonderfully. We’re all very pleased. You’re on the mend, but you need to keep healthy, for Lily’s sake.’

  Sarah blinked in acknowledgement, pulling her body upright again, somehow managing to repeat her earlier words, ‘I need to call John,’ her voice a crackly whimper. She saw disapproval in their eyes, and then her mind didn’t want to think any more. She needed sleep. When the darkness hit, it was a relief, until she heard the doctor speak again, asking Jessica about her.

  ‘You’re aware, Lisa, of what we’ve been told about dissenters? Saka won’t be happy that Sarah is harbouring links to her old ways. He will see it as an offence, an affront to the self-enlightenment path.’

  ‘Should we mention
it to him?’

  ‘I’ll tell him. He can decide what’s best. If Saka agrees, we can give her back her phone.’

  ‘Jessica?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That thing we spoke about this morning, about there being no absolute right and wrong?’

  ‘What about it, Lisa?’

  ‘Do you think that extends to life and death?’

  ‘Saka believes many people see death as welcoming. It is ahead of us all.’

  Kate

  WHEN KATE HEARD THE DOORBELL RING, SHE FROZE. It must be Pat Grant, but what if it was someone else? She took a number of tentative steps towards the bedroom door, and as she did so, the bell rang again, three fast rings, indicating impatience that it hadn’t been answered the first time. She took the stairs a couple at a time, stopping when she reached the bottom, hearing Pat Grant’s voice calling through the flap of the letterbox. It wasn’t the woman’s impatience that had made her pause: it was because she had remembered something else. Not now, Kate told herself, opening the front door.

  ‘You took your time.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Kate replied, breathless. She composed herself, then asked, ‘Pat, do you know the names of the people who live here?’

  The woman eyed her with suspicion.

  ‘Please, Pat. It’s important.’

  ‘I can’t say I ever met him. It was the woman who gave me the key.’ She still seemed unsure.

  ‘What was her name?’ Kate pushed.

  ‘Jessica.’ A slight pause. ‘Yes, that was it.’ Her voice was more confident. ‘I never got a second name. I didn’t want to pry.’ She raised her eyebrows, indicating to Kate she had already been in the house for too long.

  Kate repeated the name a couple of times. It meant nothing to her.

  Pat Grant stretched out her hand for the key. ‘Well,’ she said, stepping back to allow Kate to leave, ‘if you’re quite finished?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Kate placed the key in Pat’s palm, then punched the alarm code in to reactivate it, and joined her on the front step.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear? You look like you’ve been to hell and back.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied, although she felt far from it. ‘The house brought back memories, nothing more.’

  When they reached the gate, Kate said a speedy goodbye to her old neighbour, desperately wanting to get away from the house she had once called home, from the rumour and innuendo about her father, from the agonising memories of her mother’s death, and the anger that had been so much part of their lives.

  Kate ran and ran, and when she thought she couldn’t run any faster, she pushed herself even more, the pain of endurance acting like some form of balance against the thoughts jumping around in her mind. She needed time to think, but she wasn’t ready to let anything settle. Instead, it all crisscrossed inside her head, Malcolm and her father, the anonymous notes, the feeling of being watched, followed, the fresh memories from her past, her mother, Charlie, her failed marriage with Declan, Adam, and the one aspect of her past that she couldn’t deny: that it was full of secrets and lies. What lay behind them? What had lain behind her father’s anger? And why had she never sought answers before? Was she a conspirator in all this? Had she done something wrong?

  Finally, she climbed the stone steps to the front door of her apartment building, hearing the familiar beep of the access code being punched in. Stepping in from the cold into the warmth of the hall, her body pumped out more sweat. Once inside the apartment, she checked that everything was as she had left it, lifting up the plant pot to make sure the study-door key was underneath. Going into the living room, her eyes scanned the room for anything out of the ordinary. Walking into the bedroom, she did the same, then sat down on the bed.

  It was only when she felt safe, and confident that she was alone, that she could allow herself to drift back to memory. After her father’s death, her mother had said, ‘That’s it, then,’ as if he was something to be put behind the two of them. There hadn’t been any outward sign of sorrow. Kate had believed her mother was being brave. It was then that she thought of all the other conversations they had had, before her mother’s mind had slipped. Strangely, none had been about her father. The conversation Kate had remembered at the bottom of the stairs was one she had pushed to the back of her mind. It had taken place shortly after her father’s death. Her mother had phoned her one night out of the blue, asking if she would take her for a drive. Kate hadn’t asked where to, knowing that grief operated in strange ways. Instead she waited while her mother put on her heavy coat and fur hat. Kate had told her she looked like a Russian. ‘A warm Russian,’ her mother had replied, sounding ever practical. Pulling the passenger door closed, and putting on her seatbelt, she said to Kate, ‘I want you to drive me to the mountains.’

  Kate thought she knew the route her mother meant. As a family, they had often gone for Sunday drives around Glencree, so she started the engine even though it was after eleven o’clock at night. They drove past rows of houses with smoke billowing from the chimneys, city traffic giving way to clearer roads on the outer suburbs, then reaching the mountain road that would lead them to Glencree. Kate decided to pull in at the viewing point with the lights of the city below. ‘Don’t stop here,’ her mother said. ‘Keep going towards Killakee.’

  There was something about her mother’s words that told her to do as she was asked, and to do so without question.

  The road had narrowed, and her mother had said, ‘Not much further now,’ then instructed her to stop near a tumbledown bridge. When Kate pulled in, there was nothing but pitch blackness around them, and when her mother opened the passenger door, Kate had worried she would trip and fall on the mountain road. She had opened the driver’s door to follow her, but her mother had told her she was better off alone. Kate hadn’t wanted to intrude on her privacy, but she put on the car headlights, hoping her mother wouldn’t be long. The last thing either of them needed was a dead car battery and to be stranded on a dark mountain road.

  Sitting in the car, Kate watched her mother take a dozen steps towards the bridge, then stop to look down into further darkness and, what seemed to Kate, a steep drop. For a brief few seconds, Kate worried her mother was going to do something stupid, that she might even climb up on the bridge and jump off. Why had she thought that?

  When her mother got back into the car, she shut the door, put her seatbelt on and looked straight ahead. She had asked Kate if she thought this was a good place to die, and Kate had wondered about suicidal thoughts again. When Kate didn’t answer, her mother broke the silence, saying, ‘I know someone buried near here, a young boy.’ There was something about the way she’d said it, as if the words were full of regret.

  The strangeness of the event, and the relief that her mother wasn’t suicidal, had kept the memory in the back of Kate’s mind. At the time, she had thought about the various burial grounds nearby, the ones that locals used, empty plots belonging to ancient relatives. She hadn’t pushed it but now all she could think of was that newspaper article, and the red circle around the name Peter Kirwan. Was it guilt her mother had felt that night – for a dreadful wrong?

  Special Detective Unit,

  Harcourt Street

  ADAM HAD KNOWN THAT THE DNA SAMPLE extracted from Michael O’Neill and shared with their US counterparts on an intelligence basis would need to be verified Stateside. He wasn’t surprised to hear that Detective Lee Fisher would be making the trip himself. The senior officer attached to an investigation was often the one who made the journey to pick up the sample. Adam himself had made any number of trips abroad to do the same thing. What he hadn’t expected was the timing of the visit. The police in Manhattan were no closer to identifying a suspect than they were in Dublin, so what was the rush to collate evidence for a trial that might or might not take place?

  His gut told him there was more to it, and during their telephone and Internet communications, Fisher had seemed circumspect about the many strands develop
ing in the O’Neill case. That circumspection, Adam decided, was behind the timing of the visit, and he wondered whether, if the boot was on the other foot, he would be doing the same thing.

  Lee Fisher’s flight into Dublin airport would arrive the following morning, and Adam had already committed himself to collecting the detective. Despite the risk of jetlag, Lee had insisted on attending the next brain-storming session at Harcourt Street Special Detective Unit, scheduled for less than an hour after his arrival. Adam admired the detective’s determination and vigour – if nothing else, having a US investigator present would add some colour to the proceedings.

  He looked at his mobile phone. Three missed calls from Addy’s mother, Marion. There was no denying the magnitude of change in his personal life. At times, it had felt like a baptism of fire. Being with Kate was the best decision he had ever made, but he had gone from being a man without responsibilities for anyone other than himself to loving and worrying about Kate, while attempting to have a relationship with a son he’d ignored for years. He needed to be a solid figure in Charlie’s life too, and Adam was concerned about how their relationship would develop after Charlie returned to Dublin, having spent time with his real father. He wasn’t complaining. This was par for the course, and although Addy wasn’t making things easy for him, he also understood that his son’s aggression and distance were no more than he deserved. Still, if he was honest, Addy being away had made some things a lot easier.

  Knowing he had a number of calls to make around the investigation, he texted Marion instead of calling her, saying it would be another hour before he could be in touch.