by Andrea Mara
We were walking past one Sunday in early October, planning a midweek date in Dublin to see A History of Violence. Ray was expressing his surprise, not for the first time, that Carrickderg didn’t have its own cinema, when he spotted the notice. He stopped to examine it and asked me what it was.
“If you want to do building work or an extension to your house, you have to apply for permission, and the notice must be on display so that neighbours can object.”
“Ah, you mean like a building permit. So Alan wants to do some renovations and people from around here can stop him if they don’t like how it sounds?”
“Yeah, like, I don’t know the ins and outs of it – I doubt you can just say ‘I object’ without having a good reason, but that’s pretty much how it works.”
He moved closer and leaned in to read.
“What is it?” I asked when he shook his head.
“Alan is looking to convert his home into a guesthouse, it seems – adding extra bedrooms and bathrooms so he can cater for tourists.”
“Oh my God, imagine coming on holidays to Ireland and booking into a guesthouse and discovering Alan is your host – I’d run a mile!”
I laughed. Ray didn’t.
“You should be concerned about it, Marianne – this narrow road can’t handle any extra traffic, and with tourists in and out of the place all the time, there’ll be more noise and more trash. You should object.”
“Ray, it’s half a mile from my house – there’s no way I’m going to be impacted!”
“But what about traffic?”
I looked left down the empty road to the village, and right, up towards my house, then back at Ray and raised my eyebrows.
“Okay sure, there’s no traffic right now, but what about in the future? You need to take this seriously, Marianne.”
“I’ll think about it – now come on, let’s keep going before it gets dark,” I said, linking arms with him, and by the time we’d rounded the next corner, I’d forgotten all about it.
CHAPTER 17
The knock, when it came, was more of a hammering, and late on an October night it made both of us jump. I looked at Ray – was he expecting someone? He shook his head, answering my unspoken question. But there was something in his expression and looking back later I realised he knew exactly what was going to happen. The banging came again, accompanied now by shouting.
Alan.
I got up and opened the door, and before I could stop him he barged into the living room, his face mottled red and white.
“Who the fuck do you think you are, sticking your nose in – you don’t even live here! What’s it to you if I’m doing building work?”
He stood over Ray, who was still sitting on the couch.
“I’m just looking out for Marianne’s interests,” Ray said, eyes wide and innocent. “She’s young and she’s lost her dad and she needs someone who’s been around the block looking out for her.”
I looked from one to the other, trying to work out what was going on.
“You fucker. You did it to spite me, no other reason!” Alan shouted, poking a finger in Ray’s chest.
I took a step forward.
“Wait, what’s going on – what happened?”
Alan turned around. “Your boy-friend here objected to my planning permission and it’s been turned down.” His eyes flashed. “Are you going to claim you had nothing to do with it?”
Jesus, what was Ray thinking? I looked over, and he mouthed something at me. I couldn’t make out what, but his expression said it all – play along.
“Um, I guess it’s not ideal to have all that traffic and noise . . . and the countryside is so unspoilt out here . . .”
Alan looked at me, a slow smirk sliding across his face.
“You didn’t know, did you? Then I wish you well. That sounds like an ideal start to a courtship.” He shook his head. “Then again, you’re used to lies, aren’t you?” He pulled his hat down, and strode out of the house, leaving the door swinging open behind him.
I stared after him, stung more by the parting comment than any of what went before. Slowly I shut the door and sat beside Ray.
“Wow, that was dramatic – someone needs a blood-pressure check,” Ray said, picking up the TV remote control.
I took it out of his hand.
“Ray. What were you thinking? You objected to his planning permission? Why? It doesn’t affect you in the slightest!”
“But if affects you, Marianne, and without your dad here to look out for you, someone’s got to.”
“Excuse me, but I’m well able to look after myself, and if I was worried about the guesthouse, I’d have objected.”
“And now you don’t have to, I’ve taken care of it for you. And Alan can consider that the next time he decides to make a fool of someone.”
There it was.
“I see. Look, I get that you were pissed off for what he did in the pub that night, and on some level I understand why you sabotaged his plans.”
Ray opened his mouth to object but I held up my hand to stop him.
“That’s what it was, Ray, sabotage. But you know, apart from the fact that it’s over the top, and the fact that we have to live in the same small village as Alan, and the fact that he can, if he wishes, now retaliate in some way –”
Ray opened his mouth again, but I kept talking.
“Yes, of course he can retaliate. But the thing that bothers me most is you didn’t tell me about it. You went behind my back. You have to swear you’ll never do that again, right?”
“Is this about what he said – there’s something about your dad lying to you, isn’t there?”
I flopped back against the cushions.
“For all the right reasons though – he was looking out for me.”
Ray waited for me to say more, and when I didn’t he patted my hand. “Just like I am, right?”
He picked up the remote and switched on the news, but I couldn’t concentrate on any of it – my mind was back on that day ten years earlier, when everything I thought I knew came tumbling down.
CHAPTER 18
1995
Mrs Griffin said she’d only be gone five minutes but it was at least half an hour, and maybe that’s where it all started to go wrong. We had finished our work and were getting bored and fidgety, and even though Mrs Griffin had said there’d be extra homework for anyone caught away from their desk, people were getting up and walking around.
Then Philip, the boy sitting behind Sorcha Riordan, started pinging her bra strap, and every time she told him to stop, he nodded, then did it again. Some of the other boys were cheering, including Jamie. I threw him a look to tell him to cop on, and Linda got up to go over to Sorcha. We weren’t mad on Sorcha, but this was crossing a line.
“Leave her alone,” Linda said, planting her feet firmly between Sorcha and Philip.
“Who’s going to make me?” Philip said, smirking up at her.
Linda was at least three inches taller than him, and not afraid of anyone, so I’m not sure why he thought that was a good idea. He reached past her, and pulled Sorcha’s bra strap again. That was enough for Linda – she smacked him across the face, a wallop that left a bright red mark. He put his hand to his cheek and looked like he was about to cry, while Sorcha sat still as a statue.
Linda was standing, staring Philip down when Mrs Griffin walked back into the classroom.
“What on earth is going on in here?”
Philip was holding back tears, massaging his cheek.
“She hit me!” he said.
“Because you wouldn’t stop pulling her bra strap,” Linda said, hands on hips.
“Linda, up to my desk right now,” Mrs Griffin said, her mouth set in a thin line. Though Mrs Griffin looked like that ninety per cent of the time.
“But, Miss, I was just standing up for Sorcha,” Linda said, as she walked up to the desk.
“Sorcha, can you tell me what happened?”
But poor Sorcha, the only girl in the c
lass who had a bra, was too embarrassed to explain. She said nothing.
“Does anyone else want to tell me what happened?” Mrs Griffin asked, looking around.
“What Linda says is true, Miss,” I said.
“No, it isn’t,” piped up Nigel Stokes. “He didn’t do anything. You two are always on each other’s side and telling lies.”
“Yeah, they’re always telling lies and trying to get people in trouble,” said John-Paul Ryan.
And before I could say another word, half a dozen boys in the class joined in, all claiming Philip had done nothing.
I stared over at Jamie, waiting for him to speak up. But he just looked down at his hands and said nothing.
“Miss, I’m telling the truth,” I said again, and some of the other girls joined in, until the room was full of battling voices.
“Enough!” roared Mrs Griffin, and gave us all a page of Maths to do while she spoke to Linda, then Philip, and finally a blotchy-faced Sorcha.
They all had to go to the principal, because slapping was so serious apparently, though it seemed to me that it was precisely the right response to bra-pinging. The principal made Linda apologise, and said she hoped Philip’s parents didn’t take it further. She made Philip promise he wouldn’t do anything like that to Sorcha or anyone else again. She told Sorcha she needed to get used to it and not be so sensitive, and Linda was madder about that than anything else.
She flounced out of the school when the day came to an end, as Jamie and I trailed behind. She rounded on him as soon as we got to the gate.
“What were you thinking – why didn’t you speak up?” she yelled. “You’re supposed to be my friend!”
Jamie pulled up short, almost toppling over her.
“What?” he said, his voice breaking over the end of the word. He cleared his throat and stood with his hands on his hips, mirroring her.
“You know what. Why didn’t you tell Mrs Griffin I was telling the truth?”
Jamie rolled his eyes and shrugged. Big mistake. “What difference would it make? I’m just one person. All the girls were on your side anyway. Mrs Griffin hardly cares what I think.”
“That – Is – Not – The – Point,” Linda hissed. “You are my friend. Friends stick together no matter what.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, it’s only bloody Sorcha Riordan! You don’t even like her. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
Linda stared open-mouthed.
I jumped in.
“Jamie, cop on. You know that’s not the point – if it had been the other way around, me and Linda would have stood up for you. That’s what friends do.”
A group was gathering behind us and someone shouted, “Jamie’s scared of his two girlfriends!”
Colour flared in Jamie’s cheeks, but he didn’t turn around.
“I don’t need you to stand up for me, Marianne. Just cos we live near each other doesn’t mean we’re friends.”
“Excuse me?” Now my hands were on my hips too. “Where do you go after school every day? At whose kitchen table do you do your homework? We were definitely friends when we were playing Scrabble with Mrs Townsend yesterday afternoon – what’s changed since then?”
There were sniggers in the crowd behind us and Jamie’s face went redder.
“You play Scrabble after school? In her gaff?” someone said. Nigel Stokes, I think, big man that he was all of a sudden.
“My dad makes me go there!” Jamie shouted, to me or to them, I don’t know.
I shook my head.
“That’s not true. You like coming over to my house, you told me that.”
“I don’t!” he shouted. “I only started going cos I felt sorry about your mam being murdered!”
Silence. Then a roar, but only inside my head. In the outer world, the one where his words had just fallen, there was no sound.
“Shut up, Jamie,” Linda said quietly. She reached out to grab my elbow and pull me away.
I couldn’t move.
A murmur rose in the group behind but I couldn’t make out the words. Jamie stood beside me, eyes down, kicking a stone with the scuffed toe of his trainer.
I swallowed, and shaped my mouth to make words come out.
“My mother died in her sleep. Why would you say something like that?”
“Ignore him, Marianne, come with me,” Linda was saying.
Jamie was silent.
“Jamie, why did you say it?” I asked again, reaching out to shake his arm and make him look at me.
But he wouldn’t.
“Ask your da, he’ll tell you,” he muttered, turning to walk away.
He didn’t come back to my house after school ever again.
Linda came with me that day and, ignoring our homework, we went straight to the den at the bottom of the garden. We wriggled under the branches that hid the entrance, and sat cross-legged on the hard soil floor, facing one another. There was more space that day than we were used to – we were rarely there without Jamie, and his absence amplified everything that had just happened. Linda reached for the tin box where we kept the torch, and pulled it out. The beam lit up the squat wooden walls and tin roof, built by my dad back when I was short enough to stand upright in there. Now we could only crawl or sit.
I pulled out a packet of Maltesers I’d stashed the week before, but I never felt less like eating.
“Are you okay, Marianne?”
“Do you know what Jamie was talking about?”
In the torchlight, I saw her shake her head but just a little.
“You need to ask your dad.”
And there we sat on the damp floor of the den, sharing a bag of Maltesers and saying little, because good friends listen but best friends know when you just can’t find the words.
That night, with a hot stone lodged in my stomach, I sat down beside my dad when he came in from work. His shoes were at the front door, and I remember there was a tiny hole in one of his socks. I focused on that as he switched on the TV and asked how my day was.
“Fine,” I said, still not sure how to bring it up.
I remember the Six O’Clock News was on, a story about a prisoner called Fred West who’d been found hanged in his prison cell a few weeks earlier.
My dad looked at me and changed the channel.
“Dad,” I said eventually, and it came out as a mumble.
“Yes, love?” he said, without looking away from the TV.
“I need to ask you something. Can you turn down the telly?”
He did, and swivelled on the couch to look at me.
“What is it, love?”
Was there a wariness in his eyes? Or did I imagine it?
“Jamie said something at school today.”
My dad blinked twice. I wasn’t imagining it. He knew what was coming.
“About my mother.” The seal was broken, the words flew out in a rush. “He said she didn’t die in her sleep, that she was murdered. But that’s just crazy, isn’t it? That’s just Jamie being an idiot? Isn’t it?”
I waited for him to tell me Jamie was an idiot, but he didn’t. Instead he took my hand in his and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, it was all laid bare. There was no going back and it hit me like a wallop from a punch bag.
“Oh my God. What happened?”
And he told me. Sitting on our little couch that night, holding my hand, he told me that she went back to Denmark to visit her parents, and that’s where it happened. She went out for a walk one night, and never came home. Her parents had gone to bed, not thinking they needed to wait up and it was late the following morning when they realised something was wrong. She’d been sleeping a lot during her visit, and they hadn’t gone to her room all morning, he told me. Her mother had put her head around the door at lunchtime and realised Hanne wasn’t there – the bed was made. Had she got up early and gone out? But they didn’t hear from her and began to wonder if she’d come back at all the night before. Hanne was twenty-three, a grown-up, free to come and go a
s she pleased, so the alarm wasn’t immediately raised. And even when it was, the police didn’t worry too much. She’d probably just gone off on a trip for a couple of days, they said. Wasn’t she a wanderer? And she was. She’d gone to Ireland on her own, and she’d gone to the States during college summers, exploring the east coast with only a backpack for company. Her parents weren’t convinced though, my dad said. They didn’t think she’d take off without saying anything. They phoned my dad that first day to find out if she’d been in touch, but she hadn’t. He was here looking after me. He sat by the phone, waiting for updates as hours turned into days, then weeks. And then came the call, he said, his face so full of pain it hurt me to look at him. They’d found a body. Hanne’s body. She was buried in woodlands near Roskilde, about 40 miles from her home in Købæk on the island of Zealand.
My dad stopped then, and closed his eyes, his hand still on mine.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
“Are you okay?” he said eventually, opening his eyes.
Slowly I nodded.
“I’m so sorry, Marianne. I never wanted you to have to deal with this. It’s bad enough to lose your mother, but like this . . .” He lifted his hands and dropped them again.
“Did they find out who did it?” I asked, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
My dad’s face changed. “No. There were two other women who had been . . . well, they were found a bit before Hanne disappeared. Because they were all young women, the police wondered if the same person had . . .” He stopped.
I knew what he was trying to say.
“What happened to her – how did she die?”
“She had been drowned,” he said, his voice low and cracking on the words.
I sat staring at my hands, trying to take it in, trying to work out how I felt. There was horror, but distance too. Maybe it hadn’t sunk in. Or maybe because I never really knew her, it was like watching a film about a fictional character.
“What happened then?” I asked, because I needed something to say. “Did you go to Denmark?”
