The Wife Before Me(94)
Kayla is excited when she runs into the kitchen. She is on her school holidays and her mammy is taking her to a special farm where there is a new baby for her to mind. Elena waves goodbye as they hurry towards the jeep. She yawns, tired and stiff from her journey. She will rest for a few hours in the spare bedroom. The sounds of the morning are muffled. The jeep leaving, the shriek of seagulls and kittiwakes, the radio still playing as she drifts towards sleep.
In a few hours, she is due to present herself at the garda station. Her disappearance will be reported to Nicholas. The eyes that he has hired to watch her will have no idea of her whereabouts. He is the only one who will figure out where she has gone.
Fifty-Seven
Amelia enters her daughter’s bedroom. It is empty of clothes, toys, books and the many possessions Kayla loves. Today, Amelia drove her to Lemon Grass Hill, the farm run by Elena’s friends. Kayla had been enraptured by baby Lucy but had wept loudly when time came to say goodbye, unable to understand why, for the first time in her life, her mother was leaving her. She had cheered up a little when Killian brought her to the stable yard to meet their horse, Cassandra, and her newborn foal Jolly. Since then, Susie had sent photographs of Kayla holding Lucy, and feeding the hens, her face alight with excitement, yet Amelia still feels as though she has lost a limb.
When she returned from the farm, she had packed everything belonging to Kayla in boxes and left them in Lily’s storeroom. All photographs have been removed and there is nothing in the cottage to remind her that she has a child who was conceived in love.
Thinking of Jay causes pain. She has deprived him of the right to know of his daughter’s existence. A harsh decision that she has never regretted. This realisation steadies her resolve when the isolation of Mag’s Head fills her with longings to ring him and utter the words he yearns to hear. Feelings pass, no matter how agonising they are to endure. On such occasions she sits beside Kayla, her secret safe within the thick, strong walls of Clearwater.
Mark sees Jay when he returns to Kilfarran to visit his father and talks him out of driving to Mag’s Head to persuade Amelia to change her mind. Thinking about Mark, Amelia pauses in her preparations. Yesterday, she had missed the morning news bulletin and was unaware of the attack on Mark until Elena rang late in the night to inform her that she was on the road, heading for Mag’s Head. The connection on their phones broke occasionally and their conversation was disjointed. But one thing was clear. Mark was in a coma and Nicholas was responsible. Fury had followed Amelia’s shock and action had replaced the anxiety that she had managed to control ever since she came here.
She kneels on the stony floor. Her prayers have never matured beyond those she learned by rote in her childhood. Here, on this isolated headland, she knows that praying takes many forms. She stills her mind and brings her consciousness to Mark’s bedside. Her love for him flows from her through his unconsciousness and penetrates the darkness that still possesses him.
Gradually, Amelia returns to her surroundings and rises. She has much to do and time is running out. The search for Elena will have begun by now. How long before it lands on the doorstep of this haven that Leanne created for Amelia and her daughter?
On her last visit, Elena had been battered and bruised. Amelia, fighting against the swarming memories of her own beatings, had wanted to slam the door in the face of this dangerous interloper. Elena’s bruises have healed since then. The emptiness in her eyes has been replaced by a steely determination. Her shoulders are no longer slumped with defeat.
Fifty-Eight
I always suspected I would die young. Not tragically young, as in my teens, but a little later, after life had tossed me around a bit. Turns out I was right. How much time has passed since I reached this uncertain shore that rests between the rapture and the inferno? Years? A nanosecond? Does it really matter anymore?
Jay left Mag’s Head with me, his heart breaking as he waited in vain for Amelia to call him back. So long since I travelled under my own name and, as we passed through airports, those who checked my old passport gave it just a cursory glance. It’s all about the hair, you see. My crowning glory, windswept as the tresses of a banshee.
On our last night together, we ate in a restaurant where a musician played on a piano. I called it my last supper and was the only one who laughed at my joke. I considered telling Jay the truth about Amelia, as I had once before, but, this time, too much was at stake for compassion.
We slept side by side in an anonymous hotel room, chaste yet linked in love. I love them all. Mark with his quiet determination. Amelia… what more can I say? And Jay, who came with me to that strangely peaceful house of death. The calm before the storm of passing.
I was curious but not frightened by the thought of what was to come. I’d jettisoned the dogmas of faith when I was sixteen. My church had turned its back on me, refused to recognise that I had a unique identity that desired to be fulfilled. Outside the mould, I became an atheist who believed that death was the void. Was I right or wrong? Would I wilt like a flower into the mulch when I drank the cup of hemlock – or travel towards a rapture that stretched far beyond my imagination?
Jay held me as my heart slowed and my eyes were filled with visions. Soon, very soon, as I was unwoven from life’s canvas, I would know the answer to that eternal question.
I was wrong. There was nothing here to reflect my surroundings back at me, apart from those brief laser blasts. That’s how they came, such visions, always catching me unprepared. All I had to sustain me was her name. Amelia. And then another name that echoed like the chimes of a bell when it stops tolling. Elena… Elena…