The irony that my sister had been abducted in the country she proclaimed to be as ‘safe as houses’ was not lost on me.
“Broke my arm,” I said. “Slipped on the stairs at work and took a tumble.”
She gave my arm an appraising glance. Either she wanted to believe me or she just wasn’t that interested in the truth. She nodded. “That’s terrible. Anyway, come in. Your mother is waiting for you.”
Imelda patted my shoulder, sending flares of pain shooting down my spine. I was overdoing it and the pain from the wound was beginning to wear me down. I could feel it. With one last look at the tyre swing, I followed her down the lawn and over to the house.
There was no point in hiding anymore. The sooner I faced whatever lay ahead of me, the better. Putting it off wasn’t going to make it any better.
Pausing at the front door, I drew in a breath and tried to mentally prepare myself for what was coming. Of course, no matter how much you try to psych yourself up, no matter how many times you run this exact same scenario over in your head, there’s still nothing to prepare you for the real thing.
Nothing prepares you for the grief and the anguish.
Nothing protects you from it.
And nothing can stop it.
Some seek oblivion in the bottom of a bottle or the supposed sweet relief that some medications bring but even then, even drunk out of your mind, or drugged to the eyeballs, it steels in around you. Creeping ever closer, bringing with it razor-edged grief and the narrow blade of sorrow, ready to slip them between your ribs when you’re at your most vulnerable.
Like the tides, it’s inevitable, whether you wish for it or not.
Sometimes, there is no getting over something; there is only getting through it.
And for some, no matter how hard they fight, it’s a battle they cannot win.
17
September 10th 1996
I was wondering when Liam would come crawling back. He brought flowers and chocolates to the hospital appointment today. The nurses all thought it was so adorable, told me how lucky I was to have such a handsome and strapping young man waiting on me hand and foot.
I wanted to scream at them all, tell them what he was really like but I kept quiet. He asked Mam if it’d be all right if he came in with me for the ultrasound instead of her and she agreed…
When he saw the screen, I swear his whole face changed. I’ve never seen him look so amazed, like he’d just seen the face of the Virgin Mary in his toast or something. (If Mam caught me saying that she would string me up.) I wanted to tell him to cut the crap, that I knew he was just trying to make it look good but I don’t think he was screwing around. There were actual tears in his eyes and I’ve only ever seen Liam get emotional over Tipp losing their shot at the Sam Maguire cup.
He looked at me like I’d done something miraculous and I couldn’t help but feel emotional myself.
He asked what sex the baby was and the nurse seemed a little taken aback that he didn’t already know. I found out right at the start, I’d intended to tell Liam but things between us soured and it never felt like the right time to share the news that he was having a son. I guess a part of me wanted to punish him for the way he was behaving… I don’t know anymore, it was probably selfish of me.
When she said it was a boy… There was a moment where I thought everything between us might change, that he might decide to get involved and then he got up and walked out, leaving me alone with the nurse and the cold jelly on my belly.
I was mortified.
He caught up to me once I finished up and I was outside waiting for Mam. He seemed genuinely sorry for walking out. He couldn’t explain why he did it. I think it’s because he was overwhelmed. He’s still so immature and this has to be a lot for him to take in. Mam said I should cut him a little slack, that boys of eighteen are not known for their maturity…
I’m not so naive. This wasn’t the life he had planned. It wasn’t the life I planned but it’s the one I’ve got. I can feel the baby kicking and I know I’ll do my best by him. I already love him…
Liam, I think will take a little longer to come round to the idea. He’s not the worst. I refuse to believe he’s all bad. He’s just misguided. And maybe if he does a little growing up, it won’t be as terrible as I’d first thought? Maybe he’ll at least want something to do with his son when he arrives?
I won’t hold my breath but seeing his face has given me at least a little more hope than I had.
18
The smell of incense overpowered me as I stepped in through the front door. I slipped my shoes off, noting the small pile of trainers and other shoes already present.
There were pictures on the wall in the hall, most of them of Clara, her smile wide and eyes bright as she posed. Out of the two of us, she had always been the photogenic one. People had told her she could have been a model, which always irritated her. She had no interest in pursuing a career in front of the camera; she wanted to help people and a career in nursing had seemed most likely, at least until she’d fallen pregnant.
As I reached the end of the hall, the pictures came to an abrupt halt, the last image one of Clara and I together, arms around each other on the last holiday we’d had up in the north with Mam and Dad. We were grinning at the camera, a moment in time captured. A frozen moment of pure happiness. There were no pictures from after the time Clara had disappeared. It was as though neither of us had ever grown past that point in our lives.
Perhaps it was just that pictures after that time would show too clearly the giant hole in our family. We were broken; an incomplete circle. Making memories to mark that was simply too painful.
I stared up at the picture of the both of us, my mind refusing to accept that I was the girl in the photograph.
“Come on in, pet,” Imelda said, poking her head around the door.
I gave her a small smile and nodded. Even though it had been my home at one time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was an outsider.
I stepped from the hall into the small kitchen. The range in the corner was throwing out the kind of heat you’d expect to find in a furnace, making the sombre atmosphere in the room all the more stifling.
Dad sat at the kitchen table. He looked smaller, almost shrunken. No more than a shade of his former self. From the moment Clara had gone missing, he’d started a decline. A slow one but still noticeable to those he shared the house with. Of course, denial could do wonders and he and my mother had clung to their hope that she was still out there, still alive. Their denial was a life raft in the ocean of reality.
Over the years, Dad’s hair had gone grey but as I watched him now, I could see that it was beginning to thin too.
An untouched cup of tea sat in front of him and a half empty bottle of whiskey with the cap still off sat next to his hand. The glass tumbler—still half full with the amber liquid—was clutched in his other hand.
He raised his eyes to mine, the whites almost entirely bloodshot.
“It can’t be her, Ali,” he said, the pet name he had for me constricting my chest.
I said nothing but I bent over him, wrapping him my arm around him in an awkward one-armed hug. It wasn’t just his hair that was thinning. There had been a time when my father had been a great hulking figure of a man. Tall and solidly-built. Not fat, by any means. The kind of build you expect to see on someone who spends all day working in the fields. A giant of a man, strong and sure. His word was law. Perhaps he had seemed like a giant at the time because we were children. Wasn’t it natural to view your parents as infallible creatures, never failing, always true?
But now…
“What are we going to do, Ali?” he whispered against my hair, clutching me to his chest. “She’s broken my heart.”
I kept silent. There was nothing I could say to him. His grief was his own, something only he could shoulder.
He released me almost reluctantly and I pushed back onto my feet. “I’m going to go in and see Mam now,” I said.
Dad nodded. His eyes shone with unshed tears and it hurt me to see them. I wanted to turn tail and race out of the house. I’d only ever seen my father cry once before. Twice would be too much.
Pulling away from him, I moved into the living room.
Mam sat in the corner of the living room. It was smaller than I remembered, as though the walls had closed in.
“Mam,” I said, my voice quiet, the kind of voice that wouldn’t be out of place in a church. “I got the first flight over.”
She didn’t look at me. Her eyes were fixed on some point just beyond the window.
“She’s taken it quite badly.” A female voice piped up from just behind me and my heart leaped into my chest. I turned and found myself face to face with the owner of the voice I’d spoken to on the phone.
Her dark chestnut coloured hair was cut short, the natural curls unruly, the kind of hairstyle that gave every appearance of looking undone but in reality took hours to achieve. Her hazel eyes were kind and she gave me a sympathetic smile.
“I’m Fiona,” she said. “We spoke on the phone this morning.”
“Yeah, I remember.” The pity in her face rankled m. It wasn’t what I needed. What I needed were answers.
“You’re Alice right?”
“You found a… body?”
My words seemed to penetrate at least some of the fog surrounding my mother and she let a low moan escape her.
“Maybe we should talk about this outside,” Fiona said softly. “The doctor gave her something. You know, just to keep her calm, but…”
“Fine.”
I followed her from the room, back out through the kitchen. She paused next to my father and patted him on the arm. “You all right, Dennis?”
He didn’t answer her, just nodded, his eyes half lidded as he stared down into the now-full glass of whiskey before him. The bottle next to his elbow was a little lighter and I had to wonder just how full it had been when he started. Not that I could blame him; there was a part of me that longed to join him, to get my own glass and fill it, and keep filling it until the amber liquid smothered the guilt that was clawing at my chest.
Fiona tugged open the backdoor and stepped out onto the steps, I went after her and we stood on the patio. It had started to mist since I’d arrived. The droplets so fine I couldn’t tell them apart as they landed on my skin, coating me in a damp blanket that chilled me to my bones.
“It’s so good you could get home,” Fiona said. “It’s important your parents have your support at this time.”
I bit my tongue but I could feel a scream swelling in my chest. She was right of course. It was good. Yet there was a part of me, that childish, self-centred core that kept wondering who would support me? It had always been Clara and I, together against the world. We’d supported one another and when she was taken, my stability went with her.
“Are they sure it’s Clara?”
Fiona shook her head. “Not entirely. Like I said on the phone, preliminary identification suggests it’s your sister but…”
“What does that mean,” I said, cutting over her. “What preliminary identification? Either it’s Clara or it’s not…”
She gave me a grim smile, more a grimace than anything else. “Its been twenty-two years, Alice. Facial identification is out of the question.”
I heard her words but my brain refused to put the pieces together. There was a part of me, a deeper, more primal part of me that understood but it kept the truth hidden, as though it understood I wasn’t capable of fully hearing the truth.
“The baby…” I said. “She wouldn’t be a baby now.”
“They’ve asked if you could come down to the station later and look at some photographs.”
“Photographs? Of what?”
“To help with the identification,” she said. “We have some items we need you to look at. We’d normally ask your parents but…” She trailed off.
“They wouldn’t cope,” I said.
She nodded. “Only if you think you can do it,” she added.
“Who else can?”
Fiona shuffled awkwardly and I had my answer.
A sudden thought struck me. “What if it isn’t her?”
“I don’t think you need to be thinking like that,” she said. “You just need to focus on the next few hours and getting through them. Looking too far ahead into the future isn’t helpful.”
Silence returned and I didn’t try to fill it.
“I’ll go and make a quick phone call,” she said.
“Wait!” I called after her and Fiona paused. Her expression was friendly but I could sense she was guarded just by the way her shoulders tensed when I called after her.
I drew my breath in through my nose, my stomach rolling uncomfortably. Asking the question probably wasn’t a good idea but there was a part of me that needed the answer.
“You said they’d made a preliminary identification,” I said. “How do they know it’s her?”
“I’m not sure—”
“Please,” I said. “Just tell me how they made the preliminary identification. They must be pretty sure it’s her if they sent you lot here and they want us to go and look at pictures…” A sudden sickening thought popped into my brain.
Fiona sighed and trudged back toward me. “There are certain items found with the body that indicate it’s your sister,” she said.
“Such as?” My stomach lurched.
“Clothes, jewellery. Most notably, a necklace.”
“Heart shaped,” I said almost absently as my mind took me back to that night. Clara’s fingers had been wrapped around the heart shaped locket, tugging and pulling at it, a nervous gesture before we’d ever left the house. What was she nervous about?
“Yeah,” Fiona said. “There’s an inscription on the back but until it gets cleaned up, they can’t make out what it says.”
My head jerked up sharply. “An inscription?”
Fiona nodded, her intelligent gaze lazering in on my question. “Clara’s locket had an inscription, didn’t it?”
I shook my head. “No. I bought it for her but I didn’t have enough money to get it engraved,” I said. “I meant to do it. I was saving up for it but she was taken before—”
I met Fiona’s gaze head on. “It’s not her.”
19
Sitting in one of the small interview rooms of the Garda station, I stared at the fogged glass window high up in the wall. The outline of bars could just be discerned through the patterned glass and I’d spent the last twenty minutes counting the same four bars over in my mind. It gave me something to do, something other than mull over the idea that the body they’d found couldn’t possibly be Clara’s after all.
The door rattled and banged open making me jump. The petite woman who entered, carrying a large green file folder, wasn’t much older than I was. Late thirties at most. Her highlighted hair shimmered under the florescent lights. A blunt fringe that had grown out a little too far so that it was practically in her bright green eyes framed her angular face, softening her.
The smile that had been on her face faded, her expression morphing into something more serious but still unreadable.
“Alice McCarthy?” she asked. I knew by the tone of her voice that she already knew who I was and her question was more formality than anything else. “I’m Detective Siobhan Geraghty with the—”
“I need to see the necklace,” I said, disregarding any pretense at pleasantries. Under the circumstances, I figured my rudeness could be forgiven.
“Of course,” she said. “But while you’re here, I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions.”
“What, you mean after twenty-two years you lot are actually interested in what I have to say?”
She smiled but it was all business and never touched her eyes.
“I can’t speak for anyone else involved in the case,” she said, “but I’m here from the NBCI to assist in the investigation. So if you could indulge me and tell me in your
own words what you remember about that night, it would be a great help.”
“We were walking home together after a disco—”
“Why were you walking home? Why not get a lift with someone?”
“We were supposed to,” I said, “but in the end we decided to walk it. It wasn’t that far anyway.” Noting the question in her eyes, I sighed. “We’d done it before and anyway, Clara used to walk home along the road after work if she couldn’t hitch a lift so it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
She sat across from me and flipped open the large file in her hands, peering down at reams of handwritten and typed pages. From my vantage point across the table, I tried to read what was scrawled across the pages but they were mostly illegible. Only the odd word like, ‘runaway,’ and ‘pregnant,’ jumped out at me from the pages.
“Who were you supposed to get a ride with?” she said, her nose buried in the paperwork.
“It’s all in there,” I said exasperation causing my anger to rise to the surface. “If you can’t be bothered to read the file, then why am I even here at all?”
She raised her face and observed me coolly. “Look, I’m just trying to do my job, I—”
“Your job?” My voice had an edge to it that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. “Were you doing your job when Clara first went missing and you lot dismissed her as nothing more than just another teenage runaway? Who was looking for her then? Who even gave a shit—” My voice broke down but the tears that prickled at the back of my eyes refused to fall.
Her expression remained the same. “I’m sorry you feel your concerns weren’t listened to. I know this can’t be easy.”
“You have no fucking clue.” My voice was hoarse with emotion. “Just show me my sister’s things so I can get out of here.”
For a moment, I thought she was going to argue with me but in the end she nodded and from the back of the file, she pulled an A4 clear plastic folder. Out of it, she took several large colour photographs.
All the Lost Girls Page 9
