“I read it,” I said.
Kevin’s head turned towards me. “Yeah? You saw it?”
“Yeah.”
He waited; I didn’t elaborate. “When did . . . ? You mean before she left it there? She showed it to you?”
“After. Late that night.”
“So—what? She left it for you? Not for her family?”
“That’s what I thought. We were meant to meet up that night, she didn’t show, I found the note. I reckoned it had to be for me.”
When I finally figured out that she meant it, that she wasn’t coming because she was already gone, I put on my rucksack and started walking. Monday morning, coming up to dawn; town was frosty and deserted, just me and a street sweeper and a few tired night-shift workers heading home in the icy half-light. Trinity clock said the first ferry was leaving Dun Laoghaire.
I ended up in a squat, off Baggot Street, where a bunch of smelly rockers lived with a wall-eyed mutt named Keith Moon and an impressive amount of hash. I sort of knew them from gigs; they all figured another one had invited me to stay for a while. One of them had a nonsmelly sister who lived in a flat in Ranelagh and would let you use her address for the dole if she liked you, and it turned out she liked me a lot. By the time I put her address on my application to cop college, it was practically true. It was a relief when I got accepted and had to go off to Templemore for training. She had started making noises about marriage.
That bitch Rosie, see; I believed her, every word. Rosie never played games; she just opened her mouth and told you, straight out, even if it hurt. It was one of the reasons I loved her. After life with a family like mine, someone who didn’t do intrigue was the most intriguing thing of all. So when she said I swear I’ll come back someday, I believed her for twenty-two years. All the time I was sleeping with the smelly rocker’s sister, all the time I was going out with feisty, pretty, temporary girls who deserved better, all the time I was married to Olivia and pretending to belong in Dalkey, I was waiting for Rosie Daly to walk through every door.
“And now?” Kevin asked. “After today. What do you reckon now?”
“Don’t ask me,” I said. “At this point, I honestly don’t have a clue what was going on in Rosie’s head.”
He said quietly, “Shay thinks she’s dead, you know. So does Jackie.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Apparently they do.”
I heard Kevin take a breath, like he was gearing up to say something. After a moment he let it out again.
I said, “What?”
He shook his head.
“What, Kev?”
“Nothing.”
I waited.
“Just . . . Ah, I don’t know.” He moved, restlessly, on the bed. “Shay took it hard, you leaving.”
“Because we were such great pals, you mean?”
“I know yous fought all the time. But underneath . . . I mean, you’re still brothers, you know?”
Not only was this obvious bullshit—my first memory is of waking up with Shay trying to jam a pencil through my eardrum—but it was obviously bullshit that Kevin was making up to distract me from whatever he had been going to say. I almost pushed it; I still wonder what would have happened if I had. Before I got there, the hall door clicked shut, a faint, deliberate sound: Shay coming in.
Kevin and I lay still and listened. Soft steps, pausing for a second on the landing outside, then moving on up the next flight of stairs; click of another door; floorboards creaking above us.
I said, “Kev.”
Kevin pretended to be asleep. After a while his mouth fell open and he started making little huffing sounds.
It was a long time before Shay stopped moving softly around his flat. When the house went silent I gave it fifteen minutes, sat up carefully—Jesus, glowing away in the corner, gave me a stare that said he knew my type—and had a look out the window. It had started to rain. All the lights in Faithful Place were out except one, throwing wet yellow streaks on the cobblestones from above my head.
3
I have a camel-type approach to sleep: I stock up when I get the chance, but I can go without for a long time if something else needs doing. I spent that night staring at the dark lump of the suitcase under the window, listening to Da snore and getting my head in order, ready for the next day.
The possibilities were tangled up like spaghetti, but two stuck out. One was the line I’d fed my family, a minor variation on the same old theme. Rosie had decided to fly solo, so she stashed the suitcase early, for a quick getaway with less chance of being snared by her family or by me; when she went back to pick it up and drop off the note, she had to go through the back gardens, because I was watching the road. Hoisting the suitcase over walls would have made too much noise, so she left it where she’d hidden it and headed off—the rustles and thumps I’d heard, moving down the gardens—to her shiny new life.
It almost worked. It explained everything except one thing: the ferry tickets. Even if Rosie had been planning to skip the dawn ferry and lie low for a day or two, in case I showed up at the harbor in full Stanley Kowalski mode, she would have tried to do something with her ticket: swap it, sell it. Those things had cost us the best part of a week’s wages each. There was no way in hell she would have left them to rot behind a fireplace, unless she had no choice.
The other main possibility was the one that Shay and Jackie, on their different levels of charm, had gone for. Someone had intercepted Rosie, either on her way to Theory One or on her way to meet me.
I had a truce with Theory One. Over more than half my life it had worn itself a nice little corner in my mind, like a bullet lodged too deep to dig out; I didn’t feel the sharp edges, mostly, as long as I didn’t touch. Theory Two blew my mind wide open.
It was Saturday evening, just over a day before Zero Hour, the last time I saw Rosie Daly. I was heading out to work. I had this mate called Wiggy who was the night guard in a car park, and he had this mate called Stevo who was a bouncer in a nightclub; when Stevo wanted a night off, Wiggy did his job, I did Wiggy’s, everyone got paid in cash and everyone went away happy.
Rosie was leaning on the railings of Number 4 with Imelda Tierney and Mandy Cullen, in a sweet giggly bubble of flowery smells and big hair and glittery lip gloss, waiting for Julie Nolan to come down. It was a cold evening, fog blurring the air; Rosie had her hands pulled up into her sleeves and was blowing on them, Imelda was jigging up and down to keep warm. Three little kids were swinging off the lamppost at the top of the road, “Tainted Love” was blaring out of Julie’s window and the air had that Saturday-night charge, a fizzle and musk like cider, tantalizing. “There’s Francis Mackey,” Mandy said to the air, nudging the other two in the ribs. “The hair on him. He thinks he’s only gorgeous, doesn’t he?”
“Howyis, girls,” I said, grinning at them.
Mandy was little and dark, with a puff of fringe and a lot of stone-washed denim. She ignored me. “If he was ice cream he’d lick himself to death,” she told the others.
“I’d rather someone else did it for me,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows. The three of them screamed.
“Come here, Frankie,” Imelda called, flipping her perm. “Mandy wants to know—”
Mandy shrieked and dived to clap a hand over Imelda’s mouth. Imelda ducked away. “Mandy said to ask you—”
“Shut up, you!”
Rosie was laughing. Imelda caught Mandy’s hands and held them away. “She said to ask if your brother fancies going to the pictures and not watching the film.”
She and Rosie dissolved into giggles. Mandy clapped her hands over her face. “Imelda, you wagon! I’m scarlet!”
“So you should be,” I told her. “Cradle robbing. He’s only started shaving, do you know that?”
Rosie was doubled over. “Not him! Not Kevin!”
“She means Shay!” Imelda gasped. “Would Shay fancy going to the—” She was laughing too hard to finish. Mandy squeaked and dived back behind her hands.
“I doubt it,” I said, shaking my head ruefully. The Mackey men have never had any trouble with the ladies, but Shay was in a class of his own. By the time I was old enough for action I took it for granted, from watching him, that if you wanted a girl she came running. Rosie once said Shay only had to look at a girl and her bra snapped open. “I think our Shay might be more into the fellas, you know what I mean?”
The three of them screamed again. God but I love gangs of girls on their way out, rainbow-colored and perfect as wrapped presents; all you want to do is squeeze them and see if one of them is for you. Knowing for sure that the best one was all mine made me feel like I was Steve McQueen, like if I had a motorbike I could sweep Rosie up behind me and leap it straight over the rooftops. Mandy called, “I’m telling Shay you said that!”
Rosie caught my eye, a tiny secret glance: by the time Mandy told Shay anything, the two of us would be a sea’s width out of reach. “Feel free,” I said. “Just don’t tell my ma. We’ll need to break it to her gently.”
“Mandy’ll convert him, won’t you?”
“I swear, ’Melda—”
The door of Number 3 opened and Mr. Daly came out. He hitched up his trousers, folded his arms and leaned against the door frame.
I said, “Evening, Mr. Daly.” He ignored me.
Mandy and Imelda straightened up and looked sideways at Rosie. Rosie said, “We’re waiting for Julie.”
“That’s grand,” Mr. Daly said. “I’ll wait with yous, so.” He pulled a squashed cigarette out of his shirt pocket and started carefully smoothing it into shape. Mandy picked a bit of fluff off her jumper and examined it; Imelda pulled her skirt straight.
That night even Mr. Daly made me happy, and not just the thought of his face when he woke up Monday morning. I said, “You’re looking very well dressed tonight, Mr. Daly. Are you off out to the discos yourself?”
A muscle flickered in his jaw, but he kept watching the girls. “Bleedin’ Hitler,” Rosie said, under her breath, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans jacket.
Imelda said, “We’ll go see what’s keeping Julie, will we?”
Rosie shrugged. “Might as well.”
“Bye-bye, Frankie,” Mandy said, giving me a cheeky dimpled grin. “Say howya to Shay from me, now.”
As Rosie turned to go, one eyelid drooped and her lips pursed, just a fraction: a wink and a kiss. Then she ran up the steps of Number 4 and vanished, into the dark hallway and out of my life.
I spent hundreds of nights lying awake in a sleeping bag, surrounded by smelly rockers and Keith Moon, picking those last five minutes to shreds looking for a hint. I thought I was losing my fucking mind: there had to have been something there, had to, but I would have sworn on every saint in the calendar that I’d missed nothing. And all of a sudden it looked like I might not have been off my nut after all, might not have been the world’s most gullible all-day sucker; I might have been just plain right. There’s such a fine line.
There had been nothing in that note, not one thing, that said it was meant for me. I had taken it for granted; I was the one she was ditching, after all. But our original plan had involved ditching a lot of other people, that night. The note could have been for her family, for her girls, for the whole of Faithful Place.
In our old room Da made a noise like a water buffalo being strangled; Kevin muttered in his sleep and rolled over, flinging out an arm and whacking me in the ankles. The rain had turned even and heavy, settled in.
Like I said, I do my best to stay one step ahead of the sucker punch. For the rest of the weekend, at least, I had to work off the assumption that Rosie had never made it out of the Place alive.
In the morning, as soon as I had convinced the Dalys that they wanted to leave the suitcase in my capable hands and that they didn’t want to call the Guards, I needed to talk to Imelda and Mandy and Julie.
Ma got up around seven; I heard the bedsprings creaking, through the rain, as she stood up. On her way to the kitchen she stopped in the doorway of the front room for a long minute, looking down at me and Kevin, thinking God only knows what. I kept my eyes shut. Eventually she sniffed, a wry little noise, and kept moving.
Breakfast was the full whammy: eggs, rashers, sausages, black pudding, fried bread, fried tomatoes. This was clearly some kind of statement, but I couldn’t work out whether it was See, we’re doing just grand without you, or I’m still slaving my fingers to the bone for you even though you don’t deserve it, or possibly We’ll be even when this lot gives you a heart attack. No one mentioned the suitcase; apparently we were playing happy family breakfast, which was fine with me. Kevin shoveled down everything in reach and sneaked glances at me across the table, like a kid checking out a stranger; Da ate in silence, except for the occasional grunt when he wanted a refill. I kept one eye on the window and went to work on Ma.
Direct questions would just get me the guilt trip: All of a sudden you want to know about the Nolans, you didn’t care what happened to any of us for twenty-two years, rinse and repeat. The way into my ma’s info bank is by the disapproval route. I’d noticed, the night before, that Number 5 was painted a particularly darling shade of baby-pink that had to have caused a conniption or two. “Number Five’s been done up nicely,” I said, to give her something to contradict.
Kevin gave me a startled are-you-mental stare. “Looks like a Teletubby puked on it,” he said, through fried bread.
Ma’s lips vanished. “Yuppies,” she said, like it was a disease. “They’re working in the IT, the pair of them, whatever that means. You won’t believe me: they’ve an au pair. Did you ever hear the like? A young one from Russia or one of them countries, she is; it’d take me the rest of my life to pronounce her name. The child’s only a year old, God love him, and he never sees his mammy or daddy from one weekend till the next. I don’t know what they wanted him for, at all.”
I made shocked noises at the right points. “Where did the Halleys go, and Mrs. Mulligan?”
“The Halleys moved out to Tallaght when the landlord sold the house. I raised five of yous in this flat right here, and I never needed any au pair to do it. I’d bet my life your woman had an epidural, having that child.” Ma smacked another egg into the frying pan.
Da looked up from his sausages. “What year do you think it is?” he asked me. “Mrs. Mulligan died fifteen years back. The woman was eighty-bleeding-nine.”
This diverted Ma off the epidural yuppies; Ma loves deaths. “Come here, guess who else died.” Kevin rolled his eyes.
“Who?” I asked obligingly.
“Mr. Nolan. Never ill a day in his life and then dropped down dead in the middle of Mass, on his way back from the Communion. Massive heart attack. What d’you think of that?”
Nice one, Mr. Nolan: there was my opening. “That’s terrible,” I said. “God rest him. I used to hang around with Julie Nolan, way back when. What happened to her?”
“Sligo,” Ma said, with gloomy satisfaction, like it was Siberia. She scraped the martyr’s share of the fry-up onto her plate and joined us at the table. She was starting to get the bad-hip shuffle. “When the factory moved. She came up for the funeral; she’s a face like an elephant’s arse on her, from doing the sun beds. Where do you go to Mass now, Francis?”
Da snorted. “Here and there,” I said. “What about Mandy Cullen, is she still about? The little dark one, used to fancy Shay?”
“They all used to fancy Shay,” Kevin said, grinning. “When I was coming up, I got all my practice off girls who couldn’t get their hands on Shay.”
Da said, “Little whoremasters, the lot of yous.” I think he meant it in a nice way.
“And look at the state of him now,” Ma said. “Mandy married a lovely fella from New Street, she’s Mandy Brophy now; they’ve two young ones, and a car. That could’ve been our Shay, if he’d bothered his arse. And you, young fella”—she aimed her fork at Kevin—“you’ll end up the same way as him if you don’t watch yourself.”
Kevin co
ncentrated on his plate. “I’m grand.”
“You’ll have to settle down sooner or later. You can’t be happy forever. What age are you now?”
Being left out of this particular salvo was a little disturbing; not that I felt neglected, but I was starting to wonder about Jackie’s mouth again. I asked, “Does Mandy still live around here? I should call in to her, while I’m about.”
“Still in Number Nine,” Ma said promptly. “Mr. and Mrs. Cullen have the bottom floor, Mandy and the family have the other two. So she can look after her mammy and daddy. She’s a great girl, Mandy is. Brings her mammy to her appointment at the clinic every Wednesday, for her bones, and the one on Friday for—”
At first all I heard was a faint crack in the steady rhythm of the rain, somewhere away up the Place. I stopped listening to Ma. Footsteps splashing closer, more than one set; voices. I put down my knife and fork and headed for the window, fast (“Francis Mackey, what in God’s name are you at?”), and after all this time Nora Daly still walked just like her sister.
I said, “I need a bin liner.”
“You haven’t eaten what I cooked for you,” Ma snapped, pointing her knife at my plate. “You sit down there and finish that.”
“I’ll have it later. Where do you keep the bin liners?”
Ma had all her chins tucked in, ready for a fight. “I don’t know what way you live these days, but under my roof you won’t waste good food. Eat that and then you can ask me again.”
“Ma, I don’t have time for this. That’s the Dalys.” I pulled open the drawer where the bin liners used to live: full of folded lacy God-knowswhats.
“Shut that drawer! Acting like you live here—”
Kevin, smart boy, had his head right down. “What makes you think the Dalys want to see your ugly mug?” Da wanted to know. “They probably think this is all your fault.”
“—strolling in like Lord Muck—”
“Probably,” I agreed, whipping open more drawers, “but I’m still going to show them that case, and I don’t want it getting rained on. Where the fuck—” All I could find was industrial quantities of furniture polish.