Faithful Place

19

That night lasted a long time. I almost rang my lovely lady friend from the Tech Bureau, but I figured few things can put a damper on a cheerful shag quite like a partner who knows too many details about how your ex died. I thought about going to the pub, but there was no point unless I was planning to get moldy drunk, which struck me as a truly lousy idea. I even thought, a lot, about ringing Olivia and asking if I could come over, but I figured I had probably pushed my luck far enough that week. I ended up at Ned Kelly’s on O’Connell Street, playing game after game of back-room pool with three Russian guys who didn’t speak much English but who could spot the international signs of a man in need. When Ned’s closed up, I went home and sat on my balcony, chain-smoking, till my arse started to freeze, at which point I went inside and watched delusional white boys make rapper hand signs at each other on some reality show until it got light enough that I could eat breakfast. Every few minutes I tried to hit that mental switch hard enough that I wouldn’t see Rosie’s face, or Kevin’s, or Shay’s.

It wasn’t Kev all grown up I kept seeing; it was the sticky-faced kid who had shared a mattress with me for so long that I could still feel his feet tucked between my shins to keep warm in winter. He had been the prettiest of us by a mile, a chubby blond angel off a cereal ad; Carmel and her mates used to haul him around like a rag doll, changing his clothes and shoving sweets in his mouth and practicing to be mammies someday. He would lie back in their dolly prams with a big happy grin on his face, lapping up the attention. Even at that age, our Kev had loved the ladies. I hoped someone had told his multiple girlfriends, and been gentle about it, why he wouldn’t be coming over any more.

And it wasn’t Rosie shining with first love and big plans who kept sliding into my mind; it was Rosie angry. An autumn evening when we were seventeen, Carmel and Shay and me smoking on the steps—Carmel smoked back then, and she let me bum off her during school terms, when I wasn’t working and couldn’t afford my own. The air smelled of peat smoke, mist and Guinness’s, and Shay was whistling “Take Me Up to Monto” softly to himself between his teeth. Then the shouting started.

It was Mr. Daly and he was going apeshit. The details got lost, but the gist of it was that he wouldn’t be crossed under his own roof and that someone was going to get the back of his hand in a minute if she wasn’t careful. My insides turned into one solid lump of ice.

Shay said, “A quid says he caught his missus riding some young fella.”

Carmel clicked her tongue. “Don’t be filthy.”

I said, keeping my voice casual, “You’re on.” We had been going out for a little over a year, me and Rosie. Our mates knew, but we played it down, to keep the word from spreading too far: just having a laugh, just messing, nothing serious. That felt more like bollix to me every week, but Rosie said her da wouldn’t be happy, and she said it like she meant it. Part of me had spent the last year waiting for this evening to kick me in the teeth.

“You haven’t got a quid.”

“Won’t need it.”

Windows were sliding open already—the Dalys fought less than just about anyone in the Place, so this was high-quality scandal. Rosie yelled, “You haven’t a bleeding clue!”

I got one last drag out of my smoke, down to the filter. “Quid,” I said to Shay.

“You’ll get it when I get paid.”

Rosie flung herself out of Number 3, slammed the door hard enough that the nosy biddies shot back into their lairs to enjoy being shocked in private, and headed our way. Against the gray autumn day, her hair looked like it was about to set the air on fire and blow the whole Place sky-high.

Shay said, “Howya, Rosie. Looking gorgeous as always.”

“And you’re looking like a bag of spanners, as always. Francis, can I have a word?”

Shay whistled; Carmel’s mouth was open. I said, “Yeah, sure,” and got up. “We’ll go for a walk, will we?” The last thing I heard behind me, as we turned the corner onto Smith’s Road, was Shay’s dirtiest laugh.

Rosie had her hands jammed deep in the pockets of her jeans jacket and she was walking so fast I could hardly keep up. She said, biting off the words, “My da found out.”

I had known that was coming, but my stomach hit my shoes anyway. “Ah, shite. I thought that, all right. How?”

“When we were in Neary’s. I should’ve known it wasn’t safe: my cousin Shirley and her mates drink there, and she’s a mouth on her the size of a church door. The little cow saw us. She told her ma, her ma told my ma, and my ma bleeding well told my da.”

“And he went ballistic.”

Rosie exploded. “The bastard, the bloody bastard, next time I see Shirley I’m going to splatter her—he didn’t listen to a word I said, might as well have been talking to the wall—”

“Rosie, slow down—”

“He said not to come crying to him when I wound up pregnant and dumped and covered in bruises, Jesus, Frank, I could’ve killed him, I swear to God—”

“Then what are you doing here? Does he know—?”

Rosie said, “Yeah, he does. He sent me round to break it off with you.”

I didn’t even realize I had stopped in the middle of the pavement till she turned back to see where I’d gone. “I’m not doing it, you big eejit! You seriously think I’d leave you ’cause my da told me to? Are you mental?”

“Christ,” I said. My heart slowly slid back down to where it belonged. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack? I thought… Christ.”

“Francis.” She came back to me and laced her fingers through mine, hard enough to hurt. “I’m not. OK? I just don’t know what to do.”

I would have sold a kidney to be able to come out with the magic answer. I went for the most impressive dragon-slaying offer I could think of. “I’ll call in and talk to your da. Man to man. I’ll tell him there’s no way I’d mess you around.”

“I already told him that. A hundred times. He thinks you’re after selling me a load of bollix so you can get into my knickers, and I’m after buying every word. You think he’ll listen to you, when he won’t to me?”

“So I’ll show him. Once he sees I’m treating you right—”

“We don’t have time! He says I’m to break it off with you tonight or he’ll throw me out of the house, and he will, he’ll do it. It’d break my mammy’s heart, but he wouldn’t care. He’ll tell her she can’t even see me again and, God help her, she’ll do what she’s told.”

After seventeen years of my family, my default solution to everything was a tightly zipped lip. I said, “So tell him you did it. Dumped me. Nobody has to know we’re still together.”

Rosie went motionless, and I saw her mind start to move fast. After a moment she said, “For how long?”

“Till we come up with a better plan, till your da chills out, I don’t know. If we just hang in there long enough, something’s bound to change.”

“Maybe.” She was still thinking hard, head bent over our joined hands. “D’you think we could pull it off? The way people talk around here…”

I said, “I’m not saying it’d be easy. We’ll have to tell everyone we’re after breaking up, and make it sound good. We won’t be able to go to our debs together. You’ll be always worrying that your da’ll find out and throw you out.”

“I don’t give a damn. What about you, though? You don’t need to be sneaking around; your da isn’t trying to make you into a nun. Is it worth it?”

I said, “What are you on about? I love you.”

It stunned me. I had never said it before. I knew that I would never say it again, not really; that you only get one shot at it in a lifetime. I got mine out of nowhere on a misty autumn evening, under a street lamp shining yellow streaks on the wet pavement, with Rosie’s strong pliable fingers woven through mine.

Rosie’s mouth opened. She said, “Oh.” It came out on something like a wonderful, helpless, breathless laugh.

“There you go,” I said.

She said, “Well, then,” in another burst of almost-laughter. “Then it’s all OK, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. I love you, too. So we’ll find a way. Am I right?”

I was out of words; I couldn’t think of anything to do except pull her tight against me. An old fella walking his dog dodged around us and muttered something about shocking carry-on, but I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. Rosie pressed her face hard into the angle of my neck; I felt her eyelashes flicker against my skin, and then wetness where they had been. “We will,” I said, into her warm hair, and I knew for certain it was true because we were holding the trump card, the wild joker that beat everything else in the pack. “We’ll find a way.”

We went home, once we had walked and talked ourselves exhausted, to start the careful, crucial process of convincing the Place we were history. Late that night, in spite of the long cunning wait we had planned, we met in Number 16. We were way beyond caring how dangerous the timing was. We lay down together on the creaking floorboards and Rosie wrapped us chest to chest in the soft blue blanket she always brought with her, and that night she never said Stop.

That evening was one of the reasons it had never occurred to me that Rosie could be dead. The blaze of her, when she was that angry: you could have lit a match by touching it to her skin, you could have lit up Christmas trees, you could have seen her from space. For all that to have vanished into nothing, gone for good, was unthinkable.

Danny Matches would burn down the bike shop and arrange all the evidence artistically to point straight to Shay, if I asked him nicely. Alternatively, I knew several guys who made Danny look like a cream puff and who would do a beautiful job, complete with whatever level of pain I required, of making sure none of Shay’s component parts were ever seen again.

The problem was that I didn’t want Danny Matches, or the bolt-gun brigade, or anyone else. Scorcher was right off the menu: if he needed Kevin for his bad guy that much, he could have him—Olivia was right, nothing anyone said could hurt Kev now, and justice had slid way down my Christmas wish list. All I wanted in the world was Shay. Every time I looked out over the Liffey I saw him at his window, somewhere in that tangle of lights, smoking and staring back across the river and waiting for me to come find him. I had never wanted any girl, not even Rosie, as badly as I wanted him.

Friday afternoon I texted Stephen: Same time, same place. It was raining, thick sleety rain that soaked through everything you were wearing and chilled you down to the bone; Cosmo’s was packed with wet tired people counting shopping bags and hoping if they stayed put long enough they would get warm. This time I only ordered coffee. I already knew this wasn’t going to take long.

Stephen looked a little unsure about what we were doing there, but he was too polite to ask. Instead he said, “Kevin’s phone records haven’t come in yet.”

“I didn’t think they had. Do you know when the investigation’s winding up?”

“We’ve been told probably Tuesday. Detective Kennedy says… well. He figures we’ve got enough evidence to make a case. From now on, we’re just tidying up the paperwork.”

I said, “It sounds to me like you’ve heard about the lovely Imelda Tierney.”

“Well. Yeah.”

“Detective Kennedy thinks her story is the final piece of the puzzle, perfect fit, now he can wrap everything up in a pretty parcel and tie it with ribbons and present it to the DPP. Am I right?”

“More or less, yeah.”

“And what do you think?”

Stephen rubbed at his hair, leaving it standing up in tufts. “I think,” he said, “from what Detective Kennedy’s said—and tell me if this is wrong—I think Imelda Tierney’s well pissed off with you.”

“I’m not her favorite person right now, no.”

“You know her, even if it’s from ages ago. If she was pissed off enough, would she make up something like this?”

“I’d say she’d do it in a heartbeat. Call me biased.”

Stephen shook his head. “Maybe I would, only I’ve still got the same problem with the fingerprints as I had before. Unless Imelda Tierney can explain the note being wiped, it outweighs her story as far as I’m concerned. People lie; evidence doesn’t.”

The kid was worth ten of Scorcher, and probably of me. I said, “I like the way you think, Detective. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure Scorcher Kennedy’s not going to start thinking the same way anytime soon.”

“Not unless we come up with an alternative theory that’s too solid for him to ignore.” He still put a shy little twist on the “we,” like a teenager talking about his first girlfriend. Working with me had been a big deal to him. “So that’s what I’ve been concentrating on. I’ve spent a lot of time going over this case in my head, looking for what we could’ve missed, and last night something hit me.”

“Yeah? What would that be?”

“OK.” Stephen took a deep breath: he had rehearsed this, ready to impress me. “So far, we’ve none of us paid any attention to the fact that Rose Daly’s body was concealed, yeah? We’ve thought about the implications of where it was concealed, but not the fact that it was concealed to start with. And I think that should’ve told us something. Everyone’s agreed that this looks like an unplanned crime, right? Our fella just snapped?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“So his head must’ve been well wrecked once he saw what he’d done. Me, I’d have legged it out of that house as fast as I could go. Instead, our guy got up the willpower to stay put, find a hiding place, stash a heavy body under a heavy concrete slab… That took time and effort, loads of it. He needed that body hidden. Like, badly. Why? Why not just leave her for someone to find in the morning?”

He’d make a profiler yet. I said, “You tell me.”

Stephen was leaning forward across the table, eyes fixed on mine, all wrapped up in the story. “Because he knew someone out there could link him either to Rose or to the house. Has to be. If her body had been found the next day, someone out there would’ve said, ‘Hang on, I saw So-and-so going into Number Sixteen last night,’ or ‘I think So-and-so was planning on meeting Rose Daly.’ He couldn’t afford to let her be found.”

“Sounds about right to me.”

“So all we need to do is find that link. We’re discounting Imelda’s story, but someone out there has another story a lot like that one, only true. Probably they’ve forgotten all about it, since they never realized it was important, but if we can just jog their memory… I’d start by talking to the people who were closest to Rose—her sister, her best friends—and the people who used to live on the even-numbered side of Faithful Place. Your statement says you heard someone going through those gardens; he could have been seen out a back window.”

A few more days working along these lines and he was going to get somewhere. He looked so hopeful, I hated to smack the poor little bastard down—it was like kicking a half-grown retriever who had brought me his best chew toy—but it needed doing. I said, “Good thinking, Detective. That all hangs together very nicely. Now leave it.”

Blank stare. “What…? What d’you mean, like?”

“Stephen. Why do you think I texted you today? I knew you wouldn’t have the phone records for me, I already knew about Imelda Tierney, I was pretty sure you would’ve been in touch if something momentous had happened. Why did you think I wanted to meet up?”

“I just figured… updates.”

“You could call it that. Here’s the update: from now on, we’re leaving this case to its own devices. I’m back on my holidays, and you’re back on typist duty. Enjoy.”

Stephen’s coffee cup went down with a flat bang. “What? Why?”

“Did your mother ever tell you, ‘Because I said so’?”

“You’re not my mother. What the hell—” Then he stopped in mid-sentence as the lightbulb went on. “You’ve found out something,” he said, “haven’t you? Last time, when you legged it out of here: something had hit you. You chased it for a couple of days, and now—”

I shook my head. “Another cute theory, but no. I’d have loved this case to solve itself in a blinding flash of inspiration, but I hate to break it to you: they just don’t do that as often as you’d think.”

“—and now that you’ve got it, you’re keeping it to yourself. Bye-bye, Stephen, thanks for playing, now get back in your box. I suppose I should be flattered that you’re worried about me catching up, should I?”

I sighed, leaned back in my chair and kneaded at the back of my neck. “Kid. If you don’t mind hearing one little piece of advice from someone who’s been doing this job a lot longer than you have, let me share this secret with you: with almost no exceptions, the simplest explanation is the right one. There’s no cover-up, there’s no big conspiracy, and the government has not planted a chip behind your ear. The only thing I found out, over the last couple of days, is that it’s time for you and me to let this case go.”

Stephen was staring at me like I had grown an extra head. “Hang on a minute here. What happened to us having a responsibility to the victims? What happened to ‘It’s just you and me, we’re all they’ve got’?”

I said, “It got pointless, kid. That’s what happened. Scorcher Kennedy’s right: he’s got a beauty of a case. If I were the DPP, I’d give him the go-ahead in a heartbeat. There’s no way in hell he’s going to ditch his whole theory and start from scratch even if the Angel Gabriel comes down from heaven to tell him he’s got it wrong, never mind because something a little funny shows up on Kevin’s phone records or because you and I think Imelda’s story smells icky. It doesn’t matter what happens between now and Tuesday: this case is over.”

“And you’re OK with that?”

“No, sunshine, I’m not. I’m not one little bit OK with it. But I’m a grown-up. If I’m going to throw myself in front of a bullet, it’s going to be for something where that might possibly make a difference. I don’t do lost causes, no matter how romantic, because they’re a waste. Just like it would be a waste for you to get reverted to uniform and booted to a backwoods desk job for the rest of your career because you got caught leaking useless info to me.”

The kid had a redhead’s temper: one fist was clenched on the table, and he looked like he was just about ready to plant it in my face. “That’s my decision. I’m a big boy; I’m well able to look after myself.”

I laughed. “Don’t fool yourself: I’m not trying to protect you. I would happily get you to keep putting your career on the line through 2012, never mind through next Tuesday, if I thought for one second it would do any good. But it wouldn’t.”

“You wanted me to get involved here, you practically shoved me into it, and now I’m involved and I’m staying that way. You don’t get to keep changing your mind every few days: Fetch the stick, Stephen, drop the stick, Stephen, fetch the stick, Stephen… I’m not your bitch, any more than I’m Detective Kennedy’s.”

“Actually,” I said, “you are. I’m going to be keeping an eye on you, Stevie my friend, and if I get just one hint that you’re still poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, I’m going to take that post-mortem report and that fingerprint report to Detective Kennedy and tell him where I got them. Then you’ll be in his bad books, you’ll be in my bad books, and more than likely you’ll be at that desk in the arsehole of nowhere. So I’m telling you one more time: back off. Do you get that?”

Stephen was too stunned and too young to keep his face under control; he was staring at me with a naked, blazing mix of fury, amazement and disgust. This was exactly what I was aiming for—the snottier he got with me, the further he would be from the various forms of nasty that were coming up—but somehow it still stung. “Man,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t get you. I really don’t.”

I said, “Ain’t that the truth,” and started fishing for my wallet.

“And I don’t need you buying me coffee. I can pay my own way.”

If I kicked him in the ego too hard, he might keep chasing the case just to prove to himself that he still had a pair. “Your choice,” I said. “And, Stephen?” He kept his head down, rummaging in his pockets. “Detective. I’m going to need you to look at me.” I waited till he cracked and reluctantly met my eyes before I said, “You’ve done some excellent work here. I know this isn’t how either of us wanted it to end, but all I can tell you is that I’m not going to forget it. When there’s something I can do for you—and there will be—I’m going to be all over it.”

“Like I said. I can pay my own way.”

“I know you can, but I like paying my debts too, and I owe you. It’s been a pleasure working with you, Detective. I look forward to doing it again.”

I didn’t try to shake hands. Stephen shot me a dark look that gave away nothing, slapped a tenner onto the table—which counted as a serious gesture, from someone on newbie wages—and shrugged on his coat. I stayed where I was and let him be the one who walked away.

And there I was, back where I had been just a week before, parking in front of Liv’s place to pick Holly up for the weekend. It felt like it had been years.

Olivia was wearing a discreet caramel-colored number instead of last week’s discreet little black dress, but the message was the same: Dermo the Pseudo-Pedo was on his way, and he was in with a chance. This time, though, instead of barricading the door, she opened it wide and drew me quickly into the kitchen. Back when we were married, I used to dread Liv’s “We need to talk” signals, but at this stage I actually welcomed them. They beat her “I’ve got nothing to say to you” routine, hands down.

I said, “Holly not ready, no?”

“She’s in the bath. It was bring-a-friend day at Sarah’s hip-hop class; she just got home, all sweaty. She’ll be a few minutes.”

“How’s she doing?”

Olivia sighed, ran a hand lightly over her immaculate hairdo. “I think she’s all right. As all right as we could expect, anyway. She had a nightmare last night, and she’s been quiet, but she doesn’t seem… I don’t know. She loved the hip-hop class.”

I said, “Is she eating?” When I moved out, Holly went on hunger strike for a while.

“Yes. But she’s not five any more; she’s not always as obvious about her feelings, these days. That doesn’t mean they’re not there. Would you try talking to her? Maybe you can get a better sense of how she’s coping.”

“So she’s keeping stuff to herself,” I said, nowhere near as nastily as I could have. “I wonder where she got that idea.”

The corners of Olivia’s lips tightened up. “I made a mistake. A bad one. I’ve admitted that, and apologized for it, and I’m doing my utmost to fix the damage. Believe me: there’s nothing you can say that would make me feel any worse about hurting her.”

I pulled out one of the bar stools and parked my arse heavily—not to piss Olivia off, this time, just because I was wrecked enough that even a two-minute sit-down in a room that smelled of toast and strawberry jam felt like a big treat. “People hurt each other. That’s how it works. At least you were trying to do something good. Not everyone can say that much.”

The tightness had spread down to Liv’s shoulders. She said, “People don’t necessarily hurt each other.”

“Yes, Liv, they do. Parents, lovers, brothers and sisters, you name it. The closer you get, the more damage you do.”

“Well, sometimes, yes. Of course. But talking like it’s some unavoidable law of nature—That’s a cop-out, Frank, and you know it.”

“Let me pour you a nice cold refreshing glass of reality. Most people are only too delighted to wreck each other’s heads. And for the tiny minority who do their pathetic best not to, this world is going to go right ahead and make sure they do it anyway.”

“Sometimes,” Olivia said coldly, “I really wish you could hear yourself. You sound like a teenager, do you realize that? A self-pitying teenager with too many Morrissey albums.”

It was an exit line, her hand was on the door handle, and I didn’t want her walking out. I wanted her to stay in the warm kitchen and bicker with me. I said, “I’m only speaking from experience here. Maybe there are people out there who never do anything more destructive than make each other cups of hot cocoa with marshmallows, but I’ve never personally encountered them. If you have, by all means enlighten me. I’ve got an open mind. Name one relationship you’ve seen, just one, that didn’t do damage.”

I may not be able to make Olivia do anything else I want, but I’ve always been wonderful at making her argue. She let go of the door handle, leaned back against the wall and folded her arms. “All right,” she said. “Fine. This girl Rose. Tell me: how did she ever hurt you? Not the person who killed her. She herself. Rose.”

And the other half of me and Liv is that, in the end, I always bite off more than I can chew. I said, “I think I’ve had more than enough talk about Rose Daly for one week, if that’s OK with you.”

Liv said, “She didn’t leave you, Frank. It never happened. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to come to terms with that.”

“Let me guess. Jackie and her big mouth?”

“I didn’t need Jackie to tell me that some woman had hurt you, or at least that you believed she had. I’ve known that practically ever since we met.”

“I hate to burst your bubble here, Liv, but your telepathy skills aren’t at their finest today. Better luck next time.”

“And I didn’t need telepathy, either. Ask any woman you’ve ever had a relationship with: I guarantee she knew she was second best. A placeholder, till the one you actually wanted came home.”

She started to say something else, but then she bit it back. Her eyes were apprehensive, almost stunned, like she had just realized how deep the water was around here.

I said, “Go ahead and get it off your chest. You’ve started, you might as well finish.”

After a moment Liv made a tiny movement like a shrug. “All right. That was one of the reasons why I asked you to move out.”

I laughed out loud. “Oh. Right. OK, then. So all those endless bloody fights about work and me not being around enough, those were what, a diversion? Just to keep me guessing?”

“You know that’s not what I said. And you know perfectly well that I had every reason to be sick to death of never being sure whether ‘See you at eight’ meant tonight or next Tuesday, or of asking you what you did today and being told ‘Work,’ or—”

“All I know is that I should’ve got it written into the settlement that I never needed to have this conversation again. And what Rose Daly has to do with anything—”

Olivia was keeping her voice even, but the undercurrent was powerful enough that it could have thrown me off my bar stool. “She had plenty to do with it. I always knew all the rest of it was tied up with the fact that I wasn’t this other woman, whoever she was. If she had rung you at three in the morning to see why you weren’t home, you would have picked up the bloody phone. Or, more likely, you would have been home to begin with.”

“If Rosie had rung me at three in the morning, I’d have made millions from my hotline to the afterlife and moved to Barbados.”

“You know exactly what I mean. You would never, ever have treated her the way you treated me. Sometimes, Frank, sometimes it felt like you were shutting me out specifically to punish me for whatever she had done, or just for not being her. Trying to make me leave you, so that when she came back, she wouldn’t find someone else in her place. That’s what it felt like.”

I said, “I’m going to try this one more time: you dumped me because you wanted to. I’m not saying it came as a huge surprise, and I’m not even saying I didn’t deserve it. But I am saying that Rose Daly, especially given the fact that you didn’t know she had ever existed, had sweet fuck-all to do with it.”

“Yes she did, Frank. Yes she did. You went into our marriage taking it for granted, beyond any doubt, that it wasn’t going to last. It took me a long time to realize that. But once I worked it out, there didn’t seem to be much point any more.”

She looked so lovely, and so tired. Her skin was starting to turn worn and fragile, and the sickly kitchen light picked out crow’s-feet around her eyes. I thought of Rosie, round and firm and bloomed like ripe peaches, and how she never got the chance to be any other kind of lovely except perfect. I hoped Dermot realized just how beautiful Olivia’s wrinkles were.

All I had wanted was a cozy little spat with her. Somewhere on the horizon, building momentum, was a fight that would make the worst Olivia and I had ever done to each other vanish into a little puff of harmless fluffy nothing. Every particle of anger I could generate was being sucked away into that huge vortex; I couldn’t take the thought of a full-on deep and meaningful fight with Liv. “Look,” I said. “Let me go up and get Holly. If we stay here, I’m just going to keep being a narky bastard until this turns into a massive row and I put you in a bad mood and ruin your date. I already did that last week; I don’t want to get predictable.”

Olivia laughed, a startled, explosive breath. “Surprise,” I said. “I’m not a complete prick.”

“I know that. I never thought you were.” I shot her a skeptical eyebrow and started hauling myself off the bar stool, but she stopped me. “I’ll get her. She won’t want you knocking while she’s in the bath.”

“What? Since when?”

A tiny smile, half rueful, moved across Olivia’s lips. “She’s growing up, Frank. She won’t even let me into the bathroom till she has her clothes on; a few weeks ago I opened the door to get something, and she let out a yell like a banshee and then gave me a furious lecture on people needing privacy. If you go anywhere near her, I guarantee she’ll read you the riot act.”

“My God,” I said. I remembered Holly two years old and leaping on me straight from her bath, naked as the day she was born, showering water everywhere and giggling like a mad thing when I tickled her delicate ribs. “Go up and get her quick, before she grows armpit hair or something.”

Liv almost laughed again. I used to make her laugh all the time; these days, twice in one night would have been some kind of record. “I’ll only be a moment.”

“Take your time. I’ve got nowhere better to be.”

On her way out of the kitchen she said, almost reluctantly, “The coffee machine’s on, if you need a cup. You look tired.”

And she pulled the door shut behind her, with a firm little click that told me to stay put, just in case Dermo arrived and I decided to meet him at the front door in my boxers. I detached myself from the stool and made myself a double espresso. I was well aware that Liv had all kinds of interesting points, several of them important and a couple of them deeply ironic. All of them could wait until I had figured out what in the dark vicious world to do about Shay, and then done it.

Upstairs I could hear bathtub water draining and Holly chattering away, with the occasional comment from Olivia. I wanted, so suddenly and hard it almost knocked me over, to run up there and wrap my arms around the pair of them, tumble the whole three of us into Liv’s and my double bed the way I used to on Sunday afternoons, stay there shushing and laughing while Dermo rang the doorbell and worked himself into a chinless huff and Audi’d off into the sunset, order avalanches of takeaway food and stay there all weekend and deep into next week. For a second I almost lost my mind and gave it a try.

It took Holly a while to bring the conversation around to current events. Over dinner she told me about the hip-hop class, with full demonstrations and plenty of out-of-breath commentary; afterwards she got a start on her homework, with a lot less complaining than usual, and then curled up tight against me on the sofa to watch Hannah Montana. She was sucking on a strand of hair, which she hadn’t done in a while, and I could feel her thinking.

I didn’t push her. It wasn’t until she was tucked up in bed, with my arm around her and her hot milk all drunk and her bedtime story read, that she said, “Daddy.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Are you going to get married?”

What the hell? “No, sweetie. Not a chance. Being married to your mammy was plenty for me. What put that into your head?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Ma, it had to be; probably something about divorce and no remarrying in the Church. “Nope. I told you that last week, remember?”

Holly thought that over. “That girl Rosie who died,” she said. “The one you knew before I was born.”

“What about her?”

“Was she your girlfriend?”

“Yep, she was. I hadn’t met your mammy yet.”

“Were you going to marry her?”

“That was the plan, yeah.”

Blink. Her eyebrows, fine as brushstrokes, were pulled tight together; she was still concentrating hard. “Why didn’t you?”

“Rosie died before we could get that far.”

“But you said you didn’t even know she died, till now.”

“That’s right. I thought she’d dumped me.”

“Why didn’t you know?”

I said, “One day she just disappeared. She left behind a note saying she was moving to England, and I found it and figured it meant she was dumping me. It turns out I had that wrong.”

Holly said, “Daddy.”

“Yep.”

“Did somebody kill her?”

She was wearing her flowery pink-and-white pajamas that I had ironed for her earlier—Holly loves fresh-ironed clothes—and she had Clara perched on her pulled-up knees. In the soft golden halo from the bedside lamp she looked perfect and timeless as a little watercolor girl in a storybook. She terrified me. I would have given a limb to know that I was doing this conversation right, or even just that I wasn’t doing it too horrifically wrong.

I said, “It looks like that could have been what happened. It was a long, long time ago, so it’s hard to be sure about anything.”

Holly gazed into Clara’s eyes and thought about that. The strand of hair had found its way back into her mouth. “If I disappeared,” she said. “Would you think I had run away?”

Olivia had mentioned a nightmare. I said, “It wouldn’t matter what I thought. Even if I thought you’d hopped on a spaceship to another planet, I’d come looking for you, and I wouldn’t stop till I found you.”

Holly let out a deep sigh, and I felt her shoulder nudge in closer against me. For a second I thought I had accidentally managed to fix something. Then she said, “If you had married that girl Rosie. Would I never have been born?”

I detached the strand from her mouth and smoothed it into place. Her hair smelled of baby shampoo. “I don’t know how that stuff works, chickadee. It’s all very mysterious. All I know is that you’re you, and personally I think you’d have found a way to be you no matter what I did.”

Holly wriggled farther down in the bed. She said, in her ready-for-an-argument voice, “Sunday afternoon I want to go to Nana’s.”

And I could make chirpy chitchat with Shay across the good teacups. “Well,” I said, carefully. “We can have a think about that, see if it’ll fit with the rest of our plans. Any special reason?”

“Donna always gets to go over on Sundays, after her dad has his golf game. She says Nana makes a lovely dinner with apple tart and ice cream after, and sometimes Auntie Jackie does the girls’ hair all fancy, or sometimes everyone watches a DVD—Donna and Darren and Ashley and Louise get to take turns picking, but Auntie Carmel said if I was ever there I could have first pick. I never got to go because you didn’t know about me going over to Nana’s, but now that you do, I want to.”

I wondered if Ma and Da had signed some kind of treaty about Sunday afternoons, or if she just crushed a few happy pills into his lunch and then locked him in the bedroom with his floorboard naggin for company. “We’ll see how we get on.”

“One time Uncle Shay brought them all to the bike shop and let them try the bikes. And sometimes Uncle Kevin brings over his Wii and he has spare controllers, and Nana gives out because they jump around too much and she says they’ll have the house down.”

I tilted my head to get a proper look at Holly. She had Clara hugged a little too tight, but her face didn’t tell me anything. “Sweetheart,” I said. “You know Uncle Kevin won’t be there this Sunday, right?”

Holly’s head went down over Clara. “Yeah. Because he died.”

“That’s right, love.”

A quick glance at me. “Sometimes I forget. Like Sarah told me a joke today and I was going to tell him, only then after a while I remembered.”

“I know. That happens to me, too. It’s just your head getting used to things. It’ll stop in a while.”

She nodded, combing Clara’s mane with her fingers. I said, “And you know everyone over at Nana’s is going to be pretty upset this weekend, right? It won’t be fun, like the times Donna’s told you about.”

“I know that. I want to go because I just want to be there.”

“OK, chickadee. We’ll see what we can do.”

Silence. Holly put a plait in Clara’s mane and examined it carefully. Then: “Daddy.”

“Yep.”

“When I think about Uncle Kevin. Sometimes I don’t cry.”

“That’s OK, sweetie. Nothing wrong with that. I don’t either.”

“If I cared about him, amn’t I supposed to cry?”

I said, “I don’t think there are any rules for how you’re supposed to act when someone you care about dies, sweetheart. I think you just have to figure it out as you go along. Sometimes you’ll feel like crying, sometimes you won’t, sometimes you’ll be raging at him for dying on you. You just have to remember that all of those are OK. So is whatever else your head comes up with.”

“On American Idol they always cry when they talk about someone who died.”

“Sure, but you’ve got to take that stuff with a grain of salt, sweetie. It’s telly.”

Holly shook her head hard, hair whipping her cheeks. “Daddy, no, it’s not like films, it’s real people. They tell you all their stories, like say if their granny was lovely and believed in them and then she died, and they always cry. Sometimes Paula cries too.”

“I bet she does. That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to, though. Everyone’s different. And I’ll tell you a secret: a lot of the time those people are putting it on, so they’ll get the votes.”

Holly still looked unconvinced. I remembered the first time I saw death in action: I was seven, some fifth cousin up on New Street had had a heart attack, and Ma brought the bunch of us to the wake. It went along much the same lines as Kevin’s: tears, laughs, stories, great towering piles of sandwiches, drinking and singing and dancing till all hours of the night—someone had brought an accordion, someone else had a full repertoire of Mario Lanza. As a beginner’s guide to coping with bereavement, it had been a hell of a lot healthier than anything involving Paula Abdul. It occurred to me to wonder, even taking into account Da’s contribution to the festivities, whether just possibly I should have brought Holly along to Kevin’s wake.

The idea of being in a room with Shay and not being able to beat him to splintered bloody pulp made me light-headed. I thought about being a teenage ape-boy and growing up in great dizzying leaps because Rosie needed me to, and about Da telling me that a man should know what he would die for. You do what your woman or your kid needs, even when it feels a lot harder than dying.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Sunday afternoon, we’ll go along to your nana’s, even if it’s only for a little while. There’ll be a fair bit of talk about your uncle Kevin, but I guarantee you everyone will deal with that their own way: they won’t all spend the whole time in tears, and they won’t think you’re doing anything wrong if you don’t do any crying at all. Think that might help you sort your head out?”

That perked Holly up. She was even looking at me, instead of at Clara. “Yeah. Probably.”

“Well, then,” I said. Something like ice water ran down my spine, but I was just going to have to put up with that like a big boy. “I guess that’s a plan.”

“Seriously? For definite?”

“Yeah. I’ll go ring your auntie Jackie right now, tell her to let your nana know we’ll be there.”

Holly said, “Good,” on another deep sigh. This time I felt her shoulders relax.

“And meanwhile, I bet everything would look brighter if you got a good night’s sleep. Bedtime.”

She wriggled down onto her back and stashed Clara under her chin. “Tuck me in.”

I tucked the duvet around her, just tight enough. “And no nightmares tonight, OK, chickadee? Only sweet dreams allowed. That’s an order.”

“OK.” Her eyes were already closing, and her fingers, curled in Clara’s mane, were starting to loosen. “Night-night, Daddy.”

“Night-night, sweetie.”

Way before then, I should have spotted it. I had spent almost fifteen years keeping myself and my boys and girls alive by never, ever missing the signs: the sharp burnt-paper smell in the air when you walk into a room, the raw animal edge to a voice in a casual phone call. It was bad enough I had somehow missed them in Kevin; I should never, in a million years, have missed them in Holly. I should have seen it flickering like heat lightning around the stuffed toys, filling up that cozy little bedroom like poison gas: danger.

Instead I eased myself off the bed, switched off the lamp and moved Holly’s bag so it wouldn’t block the night-light. She lifted her face towards me and murmured something; I leaned over to kiss her forehead, and she snuggled deeper into the duvet and let out a contented little breath. I took a long look at her, pale hair swirled on the pillow and lashes throwing spiky shadows onto her cheeks, and then I moved softly out of the room and closed the door behind me.