‘Dolores, I’ll treat you like you’re one of my own.’
She heard the noise of an engine coming up the drive, saw Donal’s van through the frosted panels on the door.
‘Dolores?’
‘There’s Donal back now,’ she said. ‘Call my father. I’ll be down in half an hour.’
She heard Sergeant Farrelly say something as she hung up.
She crossed the hallway, placed herself on the sofa. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, so swollen she could see the ripple of life moving beneath her top. She looked up at him as he walked in.
‘We had a call when you were out,’ she said.
He stopped and stood at the centre of the room. ‘Who?’
‘Sergeant Farrelly,’ she said. ‘He wants us to come into the station in the morning to answer a few more questions.’
‘Fuck,’ he said, dropping down on the opposite end of the sofa. He placed his elbows on his knees, made a steeple with his fingers.
‘He said there’s an investigation, which means they must know something.’
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he said, jouncing his elbows with his knees.
‘Donal?’
He was staring at the floor in front of him, his palms placed together now and pressed to his lips.
‘Donal – she was pregnant, wasn’t she?’
He turned his head slowly to look at her and the face she was presented with was almost unrecognisable. His features were raw with terror, his eyes bloodshot with the sting of tears.
‘That was why you . . . why you wanted her out of the cottage,’ she said.
He was pushing back his cuticles with his thumb. He drew sharp, seething breaths through his clenched teeth. ‘She threatened me,’ he said. ‘She wanted money, and she said that if I didn’t give it to her, she’d tell everyone the child was mine. But that child could have been anyone’s. And that’s what we’ll say, if they ask, we’ll tell them about that fella you saw going up there. He was a lover of hers. A fellow from Dublin. He was obsessed with her, stalking her, writing her love letters the whole time. You could describe him if they asked you to, couldn’t you?’
She was silent. She watched him turn his eyes on her then, and as though registering her doubt, her fear, he said, ‘I did this for us. I was scared for you, for the kids. She was acting so mad I didn’t know what she might do. I panicked. She was blackmailing us. Did you want her to have that child, to go parading it around, to have that kind of hold on us for the rest of our lives?’ He was shaking, snivelling noises squirming out of him. ‘She didn’t suffer,’ he said.
She rose slowly and the child moved inside her and she had to brace herself against the unsteadiness that washed over her.
‘You’re right about one thing,’ she said. ‘You keep saying it. We need to show a united front. I need to pull myself together, start showing my face.’
‘That’s it,’ he said, and the look he offered her was blissful with relief.
‘I can’t stay hiding in the house. I’ll drive into the town and collect Jessica from nursery, then I’ll drive to my mammy’s and collect Eric afterwards.’
‘Why don’t I take the van and collect Eric,’ he said.
‘Sure, that doesn’t make sense, making two trips. And anyway, I phoned Mammy earlier and told her I’d be down around three – they’ll be expecting me.’
He nodded, absently. ‘But you won’t be long?’
‘I’ll be back as soon I can,’ she said. ‘Can you get me Jessica’s wee coat? The pink one. I forgot to put it on her this morning and it’s going to rain.’
‘Where is it?’
She paused. ‘It’s hanging by the back door.’
Donal walked in the direction of the kitchen and she took the car keys from the drawer in the hall, opened the cupboard under the stairs, and lifted out her weekend case.
‘I can’t find it,’ Donal shouted.
‘Try in their bedroom,’ she called.
She moved quickly out the door and put the bag in the boot of the car, closing the lid gently.
When Donal came out of the house, she was standing at the driver’s side watching him approach, the tiny pink coat bunched in his fist. She took it from him and sat in the driver’s seat. He tapped on the window and she rolled it down a few inches.
‘Dolores,’ he said. He was bent over, his hands placed on his knees so his face was level with hers. He was out of breath suddenly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Her eyes scanned his face. ‘What for, Donal? What are you sorry for?’
And then it was as though he had to search the farthest reaches of his mind to come up with an answer to that, and failed. She rolled up the window.
He stepped aside and she was confronted by the sight of the cottage, looming over her on the hill. Like a featureless face –
the roof, the windows, the door – anything that had once identified it, erased. She started the engine. As the last of the
daylight bled away, the blackened ruin of the cottage faded into the sky. In the rearview mirror, she couldn’t stop herself
from taking one final look at her home, where Donal stood on the doorstep, watching.
Chapter 29
Izzy approached the display table near the back wall of the café. She reached for the books in her handbag, but it didn’t look like any had sold since the last time she’d checked. She looked around for a member of staff and saw a young waitress taping a poster to the wall. Izzy thought about mentioning the conditions of the lease. The premises had to be handed back in the state it was found in, allowing for reasonable wear and tear. But she didn’t have the heart to say anything. The place had lain empty for most of the summer and she was just glad to have a bit of money coming in for it at last.
