Turned on radio. Made the news! (Sort of.) Shooting incident in Dalkey was main story. A man in his fifties (Harry Big) had “shot several times at another man” (Racey). Target had escaped injury, and although police quickly arrived on scene, gunman had “evaded capture.” Police warning people “not to approach him.”
This was utterly ridiculous. She was out of her mind to be involved in all of this; she could end up getting killed.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Denooming!
Helen, do NOT go to that warehouse place. You are way out of your depth. I want you to promise me you won’t go. You have to do whatever I ask because my husband died.
Anna
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Denooming!
Ah, feck.
I promise.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Denooming!
Good!
82
I settled down to wait. In a way, it felt like a rerun of the previous night, but back then I’d been full of hope and now I was weighed down with foreboding.
Kevin rang and once again I didn’t pick up; I just couldn’t face it. He said he’d be arriving on the 7 A.M. shuttle from Boston. I’d see him tomorrow. Tomorrow I would know everything.
Then Jacqui showed up: she’d broken the news to Narky Joey. The fact that she was here did not bode well.
She shook her head. “Dopamine wipeout.”
“Oh no!”
“Yeah, he doesn’t want to know.”
“For God’s sake! Like he didn’t have anything to do with it! Was he horrible?”
“Not horrible. Just the old nondopamine Narky Joey.”
“Horrible, then.”
“Yes, I suppose. I mean, I knew he wasn’t going to go for it, but I was hoping, you know…”
I nodded. I knew. She sank onto the couch and had a good old sob while I murmured what a fuckhead he was. After a while she began to laugh even though she was still crying. “I mean, Narky Joey,” she said, wiping her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “What was I thinking of, falling in love with him? Talk about asking for trouble. And you know something, Anna, you’ll have to be my birthing partner. We’ll have to go to the prenatal classes together and all the other man-and-woman couples will think we’re a pair of Jolly Girls.” She even went to the trouble of doing an Indian accent when she said “Jolly Girls.”
“You’re a trouper,” I said.
“I’m a gobshite, and I can’t even drown my sorrows. Stick on Dirty Dancing there, would you? That’s the only comfort available to me for the next eight months. I can’t drink, smoke, eat too much sugar, buy lovely clothes, or have sex; the only men who’ll want to sleep with me are those weirdos who are into pregnant women. Sappy movies are all that’s left. Who’s the message from?”
I was on the floor, searching for the DVD. “What?”
“Your message light, it’s flashing.”
“Oh, it’s Kevin, he’s coming to town tomorrow.” It was amazing how normal I sounded. I couldn’t tell Jacqui what was going on; she had enough on her plate.
After she left, I went to bed, went to sleep—sort of—then got up around 7:30, feeling like I was going to be executed.
83
I washed and got dressed as usual. My mouth was as dry as cotton wool, so I had a glass of water, but it came right back up again, and when I tried to brush my teeth the pressure of the toothbrush against my tongue made me gag.
I didn’t know what to do. Until Kevin arrived, everything was on hold. I made a bargain with myself: if I could find an episode of Starsky & Hutch on the telly, I’d watch that. And if I couldn’t? Well, then I’d go to work.
Strange as it sounds, not one single episode of Starsky & Hutch was on. Plenty of other stuff—The Streets of San Francisco, Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey—but a bargain was a bargain. I’d go along to work and see if anything was happening. Maybe they might have changed their minds and decided to sack me after all, which would certainly provide distraction.
I forced myself toward the door and slowly descended the stairs. The mailman was just leaving. It was the first time this year that it felt like autumn; leaves were skittering past outside and there was a chill and a hint of wood smoke in the air.
I wasn’t going to bother opening my mailbox. What did I care if I’d got post? But something told me to unlock the box. Then right off, something else told me to walk away.
But it was too late. I was unlocking it, and there, waiting in my mailbox, was one letter, addressed to me. Like a little bomb.
There was no return address on the envelope, which was a little weird. Already I was slightly uneasy. Even more so when I saw my name and address: it had been printed neatly—by hand. Who sends handwritten letters these days?
The sensible woman would not open this. The sensible woman would throw it in the bin and walk away. But apart from a short period between the ages of twenty-nine and thirty, when had I ever been sensible?
So I opened it.
It was a card, a watercolor of a bowl of droopy-looking flowers. And flimsy enough that I could feel something inside. Money, I thought? A check? But I was just being sarcastic, even though there was no one there to hear me, and anyway, I was only saying it in my own head.
And indeed, there was something inside: a photograph. A photograph of Aidan. Why was I being sent this? I already had loads of similar ones. Then I saw that I was wrong. It wasn’t him at all. And suddenly I understood everything.
Part 3
84
I woke up in the wrong room. In the wrong bed. With the wrong man.
Apart from one small lamp, the room was in darkness. I listened to the sound of his breathing but I couldn’t look at him.
I had to get out of there. Stealthily I slid from between the sheets, determined not to wake him.
“Hey,” he said. He hadn’t been asleep. He sat up on his elbow. “Where are you going?”
“Home. Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I’m watching you.”