Northern Spy(9)

Six months. My cabinets are crowded with things I can’t bring myself to throw away. Lanolin ointment, prenatal vitamins, iron tablets, appointment cards. During the delivery, I looked at the scale across the room where the baby would be weighed at birth, a perspex tray under a yellow flannel patterned with ducks. It was impossible to believe that in a matter of hours a baby would be placed on that scale, and then carried back to me.



* * *



—

Once Finn falls asleep, I find my mother in the kitchen and pour both of us a brandy. After the Victoria Square attack, I gave Marian brandy from the same bottle, and the thought comforts me, like it means she can’t have gone far.

My mother says, “Who were those men with her?”

“I don’t know.” I might have recognized them if their faces had been in view, or they might be strangers.

“Why would they want Marian?” she asks.

“She might just be who they found,” I say. I can’t imagine an IRA unit making a list, and then choosing her from it. What would the criteria even be? Other paramedics? Other women her age?

“When did you last speak with her?” I ask.

“Yesterday, around eight.”

“Where was she?”

“A pub in Ballycastle. She was about to have dinner.”

They might have taken her at the pub, or while she was walking to her car, or once she was back inside the cottage. I can’t decide which is worse.

“Which pub?”

“The Whistler.”

Are there security cameras in Ballycastle, in a town that small? On the main street, maybe, but not out on the headland, not anywhere near the cottage. Even if they identify the men, though, the police might not find her. They have enough trouble finding actual members of the IRA. Hundreds of them are in Belfast, hiding in plain sight.

“Do you think they’re hurting her?” my mother asks in a thin voice.

“No, mam. They have no reason to hurt her. She cooperated with them.”

“If they do, I’ll kill them,” she says evenly.

“I know.”

My mother and I went to the peace vigil in Ormeau Park last month. We stood in the darkness with thousands of others, holding candles. But maybe we’re not actually pacifists, maybe we’ve just been lucky until now.

Having Finn has made me understand revenge. If someone were to hurt my son, I would rise up and find them. It has made sense of the conflict for me, and now I don’t see how it can ever end, with both sides desperate to avenge the ones they love.

“I can’t stand this,” says my mam.

“It will be fine. You know what she’s like.”

Marian will ask the men questions, draw them out, win them over. Chances are she already has.

I pour my mother another short brandy, and we begin to compare our conversations with Marian over the past week, everything she has said, every place she has visited. My mam tells me that Marian went swimming in Ballintoy yesterday.

“Good,” I say. I picture her following the cold, clear swell into the caves, and diving under the limestone arches. In the hours before they took her, she was free, and she’ll be free again.



* * *



—

Ilurch up in bed at the sound of crying and rush into Finn’s room, but he’s all right, he’s in his crib, he’s only crying because he’s hungry.

I don’t remember setting him down again after nursing him, or whether we’ve been up once or twice already tonight. He’s wearing a different sleepsuit. I must have changed him at some point, too. This disorientation reminds me of the first weeks with him, when I’d wake in terror, certain that I’d fallen asleep while holding him, that he was suffocating in the blankets, then see him through the mesh wall of the bassinet, safe on his back, sound asleep.

I lift Finn from the crib and onto a pillow on my lap. It hurts when he first latches on, and I flex my feet toward me. He settles to nurse, a steady, diligent expression on his face. Where is my sister? How do we get her back? After settling Finn down again, I find the surveillance footage from the robbery online. I pause the video and study the two men.

They seem to be about our age. Marian has a slighter build than either of them. In the footage, she has the same distant, fixed expression as she did in school while taking an exam.

I rub my forehead. The police will be in Ballycastle, searching the lane out to the headland and inside the cottage. They might find blood on the floor or the walls.

Marian doesn’t look hurt in the surveillance footage, but I still feel sick. She would have been alone in the cottage when they came. She must have been so scared. I imagine her begging them not to hurt her, and fury drops over me like a hood. I wish I’d been there with her. I wish I’d been there, and I wish that both of us had been holding baseball bats.

I go back to bed, and for a long time I lie in the dark with my eyes open. How is this fair? How can I be here while she’s there? Marian should be able to come here to rest while I take her place. We should at least be able to take it in turns.





5


MORE RAIN HAS REACHED the north coast this morning, according to the radio. I crack eggs into a bowl on the counter. Finn bounces in his swing, then tips his weight forward. “Careful,” I say, pointlessly.