Dark Mirrors

by Siobhain Bunni

  Maloney sat into the front passenger seat and swivelling around to her asked, “You okay?” to which Esmée simply nodded. “We’ll take the car back to the station a little later on,” he told her as they pulled away past the small crowd and down the hill.

  “What about Philip?” Esmée asked quietly, feeling Tom’s grip tighten around her hand.

  “We’re not sure yet. It’s too dark for the full team to start out now, but we’ve put the coastguard on notice so they’ll head out first thing for the sea search – but the Search and Rescue helicopter will go out now and scan the cliffs, just in case . . .”

  She nodded vacantly, assembling in her head the notion of what a sea and cliff-side search might involve. The idea of Philip out there, somewhere, cold, wet, alive or dead brought tears to her eyes and pierced her heart with an intensity that words couldn’t describe. And if, as everyone was suggesting and appeared to be obvious, he had taken his own life and committed his body, eternally, to the waves, he didn’t want to be found alive. Did he? But that wasn’t Philip’s style, she denied, refusing to accept the vision in her head as a possible reality.

  “You’ve got this all wrong,” she announced as they reached the end of the hill, “This isn’t Philip. It’s not his way, he wouldn’t do this.” Urgently she turned to Tom, seeking some level of endorsement and when none came she laughed feebly. “You know he’s probably at home right now with his feet up watching the telly.”

  “We checked, Esmée,” Maloney said. “He’s not there.” He watched her face in the rear-view, feeling her pain.

  “Then we have to check again,” she insisted looking at both him and her brother, imploring them to have faith. If they believed then it might be true.

  “You think he’s dead, don’t you?” she accused.

  And because they did, neither answered, but Maloney wanted to help, wanted to stop the hurt, and nodding to the driver instructed with a pointed jerk of his head. “Let’s go to his house.” She needed to see for herself.

  Their driver took the left instead of the right and headed to 12 Woodland Drive.

  Appeased but fearful, Esmée sat back and held onto the handle above her head. “This is all my fault,” she whispered, hardly noticing the tears that spilled down her face as the darkness sped by outside the clear window.

  It took just under fifteen minutes to get to the house which, just as Maloney had described, appeared dark and unoccupied. Their unmarked police car came to a halt at the edge of the kerb. Maloney turned and looked at her expectantly.

  Reaching into her bag she hunted for her old house keys.

  “I’ve left them!” she cried, frantically ransacking her bag.

  “It’s okay,” Maloney soothed. “Look, I’ll use these.” He extracted Philip’s from his pocket.

  “I’m not going in,” she declared suddenly. “I can’t.” She was afraid of the emptiness she might find.

  Nodding patiently, he got out and for the second time that evening walked the short distance to the front door. Out of courtesy to the possible occupant he rang the bell and stood there waiting for what seemed to Esmée like an age. She sat in the car, counting the seconds, willing Philip to appear alive and well. When he didn’t Maloney turned briefly towards the car before inserting the key in the lock to enter the house. Tom got out and went in after him. She saw the lights go on in the sitting room and the familiar environment come to life. She could see them standing in the doorway and looking around the obviously empty room and moments later they turned and the room once again fell into darkness. She couldn’t watch any more. Through closed eyes she could sense them investigate, imagined them going from room to room through the house, opening door after door, until eventually in almost perfect time she lifted her lids to see Maloney and Tom exit the house and lock the door behind them.

  “Here,” Maloney said, getting into the car and handing her Philip’s keys, minus the car key. “You can hang on to these.”

  She took them from him and held them in her hand, massaging the smallest unconsciously, staring out the window vacantly while making the short journey to the station. Her thoughts were completely empty but her heart was full of shame.

  When they got there she and Tom were led through the quiet public office into a sparsely furnished garish-yellow interview room. It smelt old and dank with tattered posters on the wall promoting everything from cyclist safety to confidential crime lines. The fluorescent lights above their heads flickered while they waited patiently, reading the cheeky graffiti scratched onto the tabletop before them.

  Garda Burke came into the room after a short while with two mugs of steaming milky tea on a tray, accompanied by chocolate-covered HobNobs. Before she left the room, Esmée asked what was going to happen next. Taking her hand from the door, Burke turned back into the room and sitting down she told Esmée that they would need to take a statement from her about the last time she saw Philip, about his behaviour and his general movements. She explained how they’d examine the car.

  “Just routine procedure,” she assured her, saying that the rest depended on the results from the search. “Detective Sergeant Maloney will go through it all with you.” With that she rose and left the room, closing the door gently after her.

  Esmée was tired and emotionally drained.

  “I can’t believe it, Tom. It just – it just feels like it shouldn’t be happening – it doesn’t feel real.”

  She tried to catalogue her thoughts, tried to measure the enormity of what that parked car, the empty house and, above all, the note meant.

  “I’ve no idea how I should take this. What do I do next?”

  At a total loss, the guilt once again setting in, she thought about what might have provoked Philip to . . . She couldn’t finish her own sentence, because truly no one knew what he had done.

  “Maybe he just went for a walk,” she said, “you know, changed his shoes before he got out of the car.”

  “What do you think? What is your instinct telling you?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she answered truthfully, flustered and stressed, running both hands through her hair. “I was so busy concentrating on myself I never thought to look at him.” Her chest hurt as the anguish of such a huge oversight struck her. “It never dawned on me that he might be unhappy too.”

  Putting her head in her hands, she admonished herself. “How could I have been so blind?”

  “What was going on in his life, Esmée?” Tom asked, rubbing her back.

  “That’s the terrible thing, Tom – I have no idea! We didn’t talk. He had no idea what I was up to and . . .” She paused, shrugging her shoulders in despair. “Well, it works both ways, doesn’t it?” She looked at her brother and welcomed his comforting embrace as she racked her brains. “We were strangers,” she whimpered into his shoulder. “Oh God, please let him be okay!”

  It was half an hour later before Detective Sergeant Maloney joined them. He sat at the far side of the table, laying a notebook in front of him.

  “Okay, Esmée, here’s what we’re going to do.” Although exuding an air of tremendous efficiency, of being a man in control, he lacked the pushiness of their previous conversations – he was softer, more human, so much so she almost forgot to be irritated by him.

  She nodded, listening intently as he explained that they would need to put the facts together in order to build a picture of what might have happened. He told her that they should assume nothing until that picture was complete and asked permission to record their conversation, since shorthand wasn’t his forte. They laughed together, politely, at his little joke. Very pleasant, very formal.

  “Now,” he said, clicking the mouse on the computer to commence their electronic recording and nodding to her when the microphone symbol on screen blinked to indicate that it was on. “I want you to tell me everything that has happened over the last few weeks.”

  Without hesitation she braced herself and told him her story. She felt removed from
it, separated, like her story belonged to someone else. Leaving nothing out, she recounted it fully: her circumstances, her reasons, her strategy, its execution and final reaction. Throughout the rendition she remained calm and unemotional, allowing the story to tell itself methodically and without embellishment or exaggeration.

  Once finished she was cold, trembling slightly while playing with the wedding band and solitaire-diamond engagement ring on her finger.

  “Esmée?”

  “Yes?”

  “What did he do?”

  She looked up from her hands. “What did he do?” she repeated, sure she’d missed something, “What do you mean? When?”

  He took Philip’s letter from the plastic sleeve at the back of his notepad and placing it in front of her continued, “He says in his letter ‘I did it for us’.” He paused, not taking his eyes off her for a second. “What did he mean, Esmée?”

  She reached out her hand towards the note and, turning it on the table, dragged it towards her and read it again. “I have no idea.” She had focused so hard on the first line, the remainder had missed her somewhat. “Really I don’t know.” She looked up again, annoyed with herself and ashamed that she knew so little and couldn’t fill the dark abyss that was building before her.

  “I think that’s enough,” Tom said, sitting forward in his chair while putting a protective arm about his now weeping sister.

  Detective Sergeant Maloney nodded his assent to Tom, silently asking him to be patient for just one minute.

  “I have one last question and then we’ll call it a night, okay, Esmée?”

  Wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, she nodded her agreement.

  “Esmée, what did . . . I mean does . . . what does Philip do?”

  “He’s a broker with Alliance Vie – they’re a French Insurance company.”

  “Alliance Vie – what exactly does that mean?” Maloney probed purposefully.

  This was an easy one. She grinned, wiping her streaming nose with a well-used and mangled tissue. “He’s an insurance salesman.”

  Philip hated being called that. Like he was too good for it.

  “And how was it going for him?”

  “Great, I assume,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders. “He was promoted about six months ago and bought the car as soon as he found out. He said they were going to offer him another grade promotion within the next six months. He’s good with people. They trust him.” She let her words linger as the irony of the statement became clear.

  Maloney pondered this last comment, scratching a few words on his pad before finally concluding, “It’s late.” Switching off the recorder, he stood up. “You need some rest.”

  He accompanied them through to the main office, telling them as they went that the search team would head out first thing, promising to call her with any news as it transpired.

  It was a quarter past three by the time they were dropped home in the unmarked police car. The three girls, Penny, Lizzie and Fin, were alert and waiting for them when they walked through the door. There were lots of hidden gestures but no words as they made room for Esmée on the couch. She was so tired.

  Tom handed her a brandy, but the smell of it turned her stomach.

  “You know what?” she said, looking up at him. “I’d actually love some tea!”

  “You’re just like Mum,” he said affectionately, taking a swig for himself from the glass before returning to the kitchen.

  Lizzie and Penny followed him while Fin moved to sit beside her.

  “Well?” she asked expectantly.

  “It was his car all right,” Esmée replied. “They think he threw himself off the cliff.” It sounded funny to say the words no one had actually uttered all night. So funny, in fact, that she began to laugh quietly at first, but as the picture of her husband, leaping off the side of the cliff in his bare feet, formed in her head her laughter turned to a crescendo of hysterical screeches.

  Fin, conscious of the sleeping children upstairs, tried to calm her, to reassure her with gentle words. With a rising sense of panic she realised that she wasn’t getting through and Esmée continued her raucous roars of laughter. Ignoring the audience that had returned from the kitchen, Fin put strength in her tone and with a forthright sense of urgency commanded firmly: “Stop, Esmée, stop it!” to no avail until finally, seeing no other alternative, Fin raised her hand and slapped her friend hard across her left cheek.

  Chapter 13

  She awoke with a start. Disorientated, it took her a second to realise she was on the couch in her sitting room wrapped in a blanket with Fin snoring soundly on the sofa opposite. She had no idea where the others were. Pushing aside the cover, she sat upright and wiped the sleep from her eyes, the memory of the previous evening’s events rushing to fill the vacuum inside her head. Unfortunately, it was a real-life nightmare and not a dream. Her feet padded softly on the tiled floor as she made her way from the sitting room to the kitchen and straight to the fridge to pour herself some ice-cold water. Her parched mouth was refreshed by the cool liquid and she consumed every last drop without stopping for air. Pouring a second glass, she leaned against the counter and brought the cold glass to her forehead, rocking it gently from side to side as if the steady motion could in some way dull the monotonous pounding in her head. What a week!

  The silence of the house was refreshing. Looking up at the clock on the wall she saw it was only just after five in the morning. Opening the back door, she sat at the small table outside, bringing her knees up against her chest to provide a little extra protection against the snappy morning air. It smelt of spring and clean laundry. Predictably, her thoughts were with Philip, wherever he was. She couldn’t help but wonder about the car, about how it got to be there and in her mind’s eye she traced his movements. It was chilling, the idea that he was out there, somewhere. Dead possibly. Or perhaps just running from her to teach her a lesson? A cruel, evil lesson. But something about the picture as it was building wasn’t quite right. She could imagine him getting there, see him driving up the steep hill, picture him turning into the spot with the dramatic vista over the bay. She could see him pat both his trouser pockets for his phone like he always did when he got out of the car. But she just couldn’t figure why he would have taken his shoes off. He was familiar with the path and it was sharp and rocky. Even knowing he was going to reach his final end, why would he go the proverbial last leg barefoot? While it might be that he was desperate, Philip wasn’t stupid. She had to see it. Feel it like he did. She needed to be there to try to understand.

  The irritation and frustration of her own ignorance drove her for the third time in less than a week to leave her children in the care of her sisters.

  At that hour it wasn’t surprising that, pulling into the Cliff Top car park, she saw hers was the only car there. Even the spot where Philip’s was the night before was now glaringly vacant.

  She turned off the ignition and let the smooth sound of the simmering wind entertain her.

  She wondered if he had noticed this vast and beautiful bay before locking his car and wandering off. What was going through his head as he apparently removed his shoes and placed them so carefully on the floor? What time was it when he got there? Was it dark or was it light? Had anyone seen him as he supposedly strode off barefoot? Those bloody shoes. Didn’t anyone see him and think “How strange!”? Did they not, perhaps, try to stop him, maybe report their unusual sighting to the police? Did no one, anyone, care? Obviously not. She measured up the lonely car park, watching as a few stray gulls pecked optimistically at the ground for food, crumbs dropped from the picnics of the many tourists this beauty spot attracted each and every day. People. Blind people. If he had stood at the top of a tall building, balanced himself precariously on its windy perch then perhaps they would have screamed and stopped to ask questions. They would have called for him not to be a damn fool, to come down and talk, to think of his family. Yes, then they would have taken notice.

  Th
e effervescence of the new day tempted her out of the confines of the car. The yellow gorse, shouting out with vibrant cheer, lured her into the bright brilliance of the unblemished morning. Contrasting perfectly against the purples, pinks and lavenders of the surrounding heather it spread like lava over the barren rocky track that led to the lower cliff path. She pulled her fleece tight to protect against the biting breeze that nipped deviously like a snappy dog, seeking out any small crevice into which it could creep. Instinctively she descended the path to the large boulder that protruded out of the ground, its grey top flattened and smooth, forming a natural seat where she and Philip had sat on so many occasions previously. Happier times, lovers holding hands, kissing lips, planning their future together, Christmases, summers, wet autumn days, this was their spot even though she couldn’t exactly remember the last time they had walked this way. Regardless, there it was, present, solid, timeless and slightly overgrown. Evidence of previous less respectful visitors littered the thick green and wild grass at its base. She sat, unconsciously wiping her hand across its rough surface while reverently looking out to inspect the immeasurable expanse of the dark sea before her, its surface borrowing colour from the ominous clouds that hovered overhead: fast and full with the threat of rain. The translucent light on the horizon was dreamlike as the oncoming greyness battled and eventually swallowed the weaker iridescent blue sky way above. She could taste the salt in the air as the breeze whipped into a minor gale. Closing her tired and sore eyes, she drew that pure sea air deep into her lungs, felt it massage her face and hands, and steal her breath to make her light-headed and dizzy. She loved the sea, always had, invigorated by its powerful swell and enigmatic expanse. The sound of the waves thrilled her as they crashed on the rocks below, sending up salty spray to be carried by the wind up the cliff face before being sucked back, up to the skies, knowing eventually it would fall back to its unrelenting source. A hypnotic, never-ending cycle, powerful and majestic, a force to be respected, now more than ever as she pleaded with it, begged it, to tell her where he was. As her eyes scanned the endless undulating stretch before her, she wished for a sighting, a sign of his life.