“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.
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.
