Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(13)

Let me show you Rosie, back when the nuns had convinced girls half as pretty that their bodies were a cross between cesspools and bank vaults and that boys were filthy little burglars. One summer evening when we were about twelve, before we ever copped that we were in love with each other, the two of us played I’ll-show-you-mine. The closest I’d ever got to seeing a naked woman before was black-and-white cleavage, and then Rosie tossed her clothes in a corner like they were just getting in her way and spun around in the dim light of Number 16, palms up, luminous, laughing, almost close enough to touch. The thought still knocks the wind out of me. I was too young even to know what I wanted to do about her; I just knew nothing in the world, not the Mona Lisa walking through the Grand Canyon with the Holy Grail in one hand and a winning Lotto ticket in the other, was ever going to be that beautiful.

Kevin said quietly, to the ceiling, “We didn’t even think anything was up, at first. Shay and I noticed you weren’t there when we woke up—obviously, like—but we just thought you’d gone out somewhere. Only then we were having breakfast and Mrs. Daly came roaring in, looking for you. When we said you weren’t there, she practically had a bleeding coronary—Rosie’s stuff was all gone, and Mrs. Daly was screaming that you’d run off with her, or kidnapped her, I don’t know what she was on about. Da started roaring back at her, and Ma was trying to make the both of them shut up before the neighbors heard—”

“Good luck with that,” I said. Mrs. Daly’s form of crazy is different from my ma’s, but at least as loud.

“Yeah, I know, right? And we could hear someone else yelling across the way, so me and Jackie had a look out. Mr. Daly was chucking the rest of Rosie’s gear out the window, and the whole street was coming out to see what was up . . . I’ve got to be honest with you, I thought it was bleeding hilarious.”

He was grinning. I couldn’t help grinning too. “I’d have paid good money to watch that.”

“Oh, yeah. It almost turned into a catfight. Mrs. Daly called you a little gouger and Ma called Rosie a little slapper, like mother like daughter. Mrs. Daly went through the roof.”

“See, now, my money’d be on Ma. The weight advantage.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that.”

“She could just sit on Mrs. Daly till she surrendered.”

We were laughing, under our breath in the dark, like two kids. “Mrs. Daly was armed, though,” Kevin said. “Those fingernails—”

“Fuck me. Has she still got those?”

“Longer. She’s a human—what do you call those?”

“Garden rake?”

“No! The ninja yokes. Throwing stars.”

“So who won?”

“Ma, give or take. She shoved Mrs. Daly out onto the landing and slammed the door. Mrs. Daly yelled and kicked the door and all, but in the end she gave up. She went and had a row with Mr. Daly about Rosie’s stuff, instead. People were practically selling tickets. Better than Dallas.”

In our old bedroom, Da went into a coughing fit that made the bed rattle off the wall. We froze and listened. He got his breath back in long wheezes.

“Anyway,” Kevin said, lower. “That was sort of the end of it. It was major gossip for like two weeks, and then everyone forgot about it, more or less. Ma and Mrs. Daly didn’t talk for a few years—Da and Mr. Daly never did anyway, sure, so no big change there. Ma gave out shite every Christmas when you didn’t send a card, but . . .”

But it was the eighties and emigration was one of your three main career paths, along with Daddy’s firm and the dole. Ma had to have been expecting at least one of us to end up with a one-way ferry ticket. “She didn’t think I was dead in a ditch?”

Kevin snorted. “Nah. She said whoever got hurt, it wouldn’t be our Francis. We didn’t call the cops or report you missing or anything, but that wasn’t . . . Not that we didn’t care, like. We just figured . . .” The mattress moved as he shrugged.

“That Rosie and I had run off together.”

“Yeah. I mean, everyone knew the two of yous had been mad into each other, right? And everyone knew what Mr. Daly thought about that. So why not, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Why not.”

“Plus, there was the note. I think that was what blew Mrs. Daly’s fuse: someone was messing about in Number Sixteen and they found this note. From Rosie, like. I don’t know if Jackie told you—”

“I read it,” I said.

Kevin’s head turned towards me. “Yeah? You saw it?”

“Yeah.”

He waited; I didn’t elaborate. “When did . . . ? You mean before she left it there? She showed it to you?”

“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.