“Wasn’t hard. I knew what night yous were heading off, and I knew she’d have to call into Number Sixteen. I stayed awake, watched you leave, then went out the back and over the walls.”
He drew on his cigarette. His eyes through the trails of smoke were narrow and intent, remembering. “I would’ve worried I’d missed her, only I could see you, out the top windows. Waiting by the streetlamp, rucksack and all, running away from home. Sweet.”
The urge to punch his teeth down his throat was starting to build again, somewhere far in the back reaches of my head. That night had been ours, mine and Rosie’s: our secret shimmering bubble that we had built together over months of work, to sail away in. Shay had smeared his grubby fingers over every inch of it. I felt like he had watched me kissing her.
He said, “She came in the same way I did, through the gardens. I got back in a corner and followed her up to the top room, thought I’d give her a scare, but she hardly even jumped. She had guts, anyway; I’ll give her that much.”
I said, “Yeah. That she did.”
“I didn’t bully her. I just told her. That you had a responsibility to your family, whether you knew it or not. That in a couple of years, once Kevin was old enough to take over, yous could head off wherever you liked: London, Australia, I wouldn’t give a damn. But up until then, you belonged here. Go home, I told her. If you don’t fancy waiting a few years, find yourself another fella; if you want to go to England, off you go. Just leave our Francis alone.”
I said, “I don’t see Rosie taking well to you giving her orders.”
Shay laughed, a hard little snort, and ground out his smoke. “No shit. You like the mouthy ones, yeah? First she laughed at me, told me to go home myself and get my beauty sleep or the ladies wouldn’t love me any more. But when she copped I was serious, she lost the rag. She kept the volume down, thank Jaysus, but she was raging all right.”
She had kept it down at least partly because she knew I was just a few yards away, waiting, listening, just over the wall. If she had screamed for me, I could have got there in time. But Rosie: calling for help would never have occurred to her. She had been well able to sort this tosspot all by herself.
“Still see her standing there, giving out yards: mind your own business and don’t be annoying me, not our problem if you can’t get yourself a life, your brother’s worth a dozen of you any day, you dozy bollix, yak yak yak… I did you a favor, saving you from a lifetime of that.”
I said, “I’ll be sure and write you a thank-you card. Tell me something: what did it, in the end?”
Shay didn’t ask, Did what? We were past that kind of game. He said, and the rags of that old helpless rage were still caught in the corners of his voice, “I was trying to talk to her. That’s how desperate I was: I was trying to tell her what Da was like. What it felt like going home to that, every day. The things he did. I just wanted her to listen for a minute. You know? Just to fucking listen.”
“And she wouldn’t. My Jaysus, the cheek of her.”
“She tried to walk out on me. I was in the doorway, she told me to get out of her way, I grabbed hold of her. Just to make her stay, like. From there…” He shook his head, eyes skittering across the ceiling. “I’d never fought a girl, never wanted to. But she wouldn’t bleeding shut up, wouldn’t bleeding stop-She was a vixen, so she was, gave as good as she got; I was covered in scrapes and bruises, after. The bitch nearly kneed me in the balls, and all.”
Those rhythmic bumps and whimpers that had made me grin up at the sky, thinking of Rosie. “All I wanted was for her to stay still and listen. I got hold of her, shoved her up against the wall. One second she was kicking me in the shins, trying to scratch the eyes out of me…”
A silence. Shay said, to the shadows collecting in the corners, “I never meant for it to end like that.”
“It just happened.”
“Yeah. It just happened. When I realized…”
Another fast jerky shake of his head, another silence. He said, “Then. Once I got my head together. I couldn’t leave her there.”
Then came the basement. Shay had been strong, but Rosie would have been heavy; my mind snagged hard on the sounds of getting her down the stairs, flesh and bone on cement. Torchlight, the crowbar and the slab of concrete. Shay’s wild breathing, and the rats stirring curiously in the far corners, eyes reflecting. The shape of her fingers, curled loose on the damp dirt of the floor.
I said, “The note. Did you go through her pockets?”
