Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(24)

‘Sarge,’ I say with an involuntary smile.

‘Steele just called.’ He sounds pin-sharp and pumped-up, the complete opposite of earlier. ‘Big news, kiddo. This case just got a whole lot weirder.’

I sit up, galvanised by the thought of more brain-ache. ‘Come on then, don’t be a tease, what’s the story?’

‘A call’s come in. Some Irish fella, living in Mile End. Saw the picture in the Standard and reckons Alice Lapaine is his sister. Only she’s not Alice Lapaine. She’s a MISPER from the west coast of Ireland.

She looks familiar somehow .?.?.

A roar fills my head, a hellish cacophony.

‘Could it be a crank? What’s the boss think?’

‘Seems to think it’s legit. He’s coming in to give a DNA sample ASAP but he’s adamant, apparently. Same mole on her clavicle. Says she’s also got a birthmark between her shoulder blades, a bit like a bruise.’

‘And Alice Lapaine does?’

‘Maryanne Doyle does. Looks like our girl is called Maryanne Doyle.’

*

The world tips.

Everything I’ve ever known tilts to a forty-five-degree angle, taking me with it. I stutter a goodnight to Parnell then put my head between my knees, trying to breathe deeply but the shock doesn’t subside. Instead it seeps into my lungs and makes my breath even more desperate.

Maryanne Doyle. Two words, four syllables skewer every layer of my skin.

I reach under my bed for the shoebox and take out my red fluffy notepad – the place where I write the unspeakable things when my head can’t contain them.

‘Journalling,’ a counsellor called it. ‘A safe place where you give voice to your fears until you feel you can share them.’

And I write. Fast, uncensored but as methodical as I can be. This is no time for jumbled thinking.



WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW:

In 1998, Dad was involved in the disappearance of Maryanne Doyle?

In 1998, Maryanne Doyle disappeared and Dad knew something about it??

Maryanne Doyle was never seen again – murdered???



WHAT I KNOW:

Maryanne Doyle wasn’t murdered in 1998. She was alive until yesterday.

Maryanne Doyle has been found a few hundred yards from Dad’s pub.

In 1998, Dad lied about knowing Maryanne Doyle – THIS IS FACT



So you see, some fears can never be shared. Some fears are so cataclysmic that to share them would be tantamount to suicide.

Life as I know it, obliterated.





1998

Tuesday 26th May

Scary’s dark curls, Geri’s big boobs, Baby’s blue eyes. My three favourite Spice Girls rolled into one, stood at the top of the road with her thumb out.

‘It’s called hitch-hiking,’ Dad said, starting the car. ‘There’s no buses or tubes around here, poppet, so you have to drive or hitch a lift if you want to go anywhere.’

‘Hitch-hiking,’ I repeated, swilling the word around. ‘Can we give her a lift?’

‘Ah, I don’t know,’ Dad said, like he didn’t really mean it. ‘Mum wouldn’t like it.’

‘But Mum’s not here.’

‘That’s my girl.’

He grinned at me in the rear-view mirror and I grinned back but I instantly got the bad feeling. The one I always got when we lied to Mum – nervy, like I had bats in my tummy. Normally Dad would buy me treats and the bad feeling would pass. Cheese and onion crisps always did the trick.

We turned left at Gran’s gate, towards town. ‘I suppose Jesus taught that we should always help strangers?’ Dad said.

Dead right. Matthew 25: 35-40. I’d learned it in Holy Communion class.

Not that she was a complete stranger. I even knew her name: Maryanne. She worked in the Diner where Jacqui hung out and once when we’d picked Jacqui up, she’d served me a banana split and told a table full of boys that her favourite ice-cream was ‘cock-flavoured’.

Jacqui’d found this hilarious. Dad pretended not to but I’d clocked a smile as he’d counted out the two pounds fifty. He’d smiled at her again when we left.

Back in the car, Dad peered up at the sky, reading the clouds. ‘Mmmm, you know it looks like it could rain. Maybe we should pick her up.’ He turned his head. ‘But not a word to Mum, sweetheart, you know what she’s like.’

I didn’t actually. All I knew was that if I wanted to share a car with the next best thing to a Spice Girl, I’d have to promise to keep the secret.

*

If I’d known she’d completely ignore me, I wouldn’t have bothered. She didn’t cast one single glance back. Didn’t even say hello. Stuck-up like Posh Spice, I decided.

She wasn’t stuck-up with Dad though, firing question after question at him for five solid minutes. Who? Where? Why? What?

Was he here with his wife? Did he mind if she smoked?

Dad said she’d better not. ‘The wife wouldn’t like it.’

‘Do you always do what your wife wants?’ I could see her smirking in the wing mirror.

When we dropped her off just outside the town, she asked Dad one final question.

‘So will you be out this evening, Mike?’

It was Padraigh Foy’s sixtieth, she said, and there’d be free beer and fierce craic in Grogan’s if he fancied it. I shouted from the back that he didn’t fancy it because he’d promised to watch Spice World with me, but I don’t think she heard because she just walked away. Not even a thank you or a quick wave. It made her less pretty being that rude.