From her hiding-place in the house, Monica sees Peter bending to pick up the cat’s body. The vet had wrapped it in a blanket, which was a considerate thing to do, Monica thought. No need for the children to see the – she has to force the word into her mind – wound. Peter has arranged it so that just the cat’s face shows. Jenny is ushering the girls forward now. They cling to her dress, to her arms, to her hands. How strange it must feel to be attached like that, lassoed like that, by two small people, like Gulliver and the Lilliputians (how Aoife had loved that story). Florence is throwing back her head and roaring, her face shiny and scarlet. Jenny is hugging her body to her and Monica sees that she is crying too; she reaches forward her hand and strokes the cat’s head, the pathway between its ears, where almost invisible stripes gather and seem to flow through the narrow gap. Monica finds that her fingers twitch involuntarily into the position she might use to do the same. She would like to feel that soft nap, one last time. But, of course, she cannot. She cannot go down there. She squeezes the fingers in her opposite hand.
Peter had refused to say that he had put the cat down; he had refused to do that small thing for her. She had lain next to him in bed and pleaded and pleaded for him not to tell the girls that it had been her. But he’d said no, his back to her in the dark. He couldn’t lie to them. It was out of the question.
Jessica hangs back, Monica notices, sobbing into her palms. Peter lowers the bundle – a pathetic-looking thing it is, like an armful of old rags – into the hole. He turns and embraces the children, too, and the four of them are bound together on the lawn, a complicated knot of people.
Monica can’t watch any more. She can’t. She’ll find something to do, something useful, set herself a task, put herself to work. She should make a list of people to ring about her father, people to ask, places to search. She doesn’t believe this disappearance stuff, not for a minute. Something must have happened. Her father wouldn’t just walk out on them, on her. He would never do such a thing, not in a million years.
She won’t go downstairs, she won’t. She doesn’t want to see the girls, doesn’t want to feel the force of their anger. And she doesn’t want any questions about her father from Jenny. She heard Peter telling her earlier. The cheek of it. She’ll have words with him about that later. How dare he share details of her life, her private family life, with that woman? She’ll stay out of the way. There’s lots to do up here. Jenny won’t come into the house anyway, Monica is sure. Why would she?
But, astonishingly, she does. Monica hears her voice spiralling up from the hallway, speaking to one of the children in soothing tones, asking them to please leave their sandals on. Monica stands there at the top of the stairs, frozen, one hand on the banister, unable to comprehend what is happening.
Jenny. In the house. For the first time since she left it. Peter had never told her this might happen.
She can hear her in the kitchen now. Opening and shutting a cupboard door. Because, of course, she will know where everything is kept, where everything is. Someone is running the tap. There is a clink of cups, a murmur of voices, still soothing, the noise of a child still crying. Jessica, is it, or Florence? She’s heard that a mother can recognise her child’s cry instantly; the same is obviously not true for stepmothers.
She’s in the house.
Monica feels moisture express itself through every pore in her body. It’s so goddamn hot up here, her blouse tight and wet under her arms. Her joints seem to ache with stillness but she’s unable to move, unable to retreat back into the bedroom and unable to go down the stairs.
When Michael Francis returns, everyone has disappeared. The sight of an empty table, discarded teacups, a folded napkin greets him. He hears a footfall in the room above, unmistakably his mother’s, that emphatic, lurching tread. The back door is open so he moves towards it and gets a view of Aoife from behind, on the back step, knees drawn up, a line of smoke rising straight up, like a signal, undisturbed by any movement of air.
He lowers himself to sit beside her. She doesn’t say anything but moves the hand with the cigarette towards him. He shakes his head and she turns to look at him, one eyebrow raised.
‘Given up,’ he says.
She raises both her eyebrows.
‘Mostly.’ He plucks the cigarette from her fingers and takes a drag. ‘Don’t tell Claire.’
She makes a small, scornful noise that means, as if I would, and he feels a rush of how much he’s missed her and how much he loves that she’s the one person in his family who will always keep a secret, who will be true to her word, and how much of a relief it is to have her here, and he is about to say his wife’s name, he is about to say, Claire, about to tell Aoife everything because he knows she would listen until he ran out of words, and then she’d ask a question that would provide him with more words and she’d stay silent until the end, her head on one side, and then she’d say something, something so—
‘Is Monica coming?’ Aoife asks.
He hands the cigarette back to her, and as she takes it he notices that her nails are bitten down to the quick and he’s puzzled because he didn’t know she bit her nails – wasn’t that Monica?
‘Later today, I think.’ He looks across at her. ‘She’s got a lot on.’
Aoife smiles, like he’d known she would.
‘Something about burying a cat,’ he says.
‘Monica has a cat?’
‘Had. Peter’s, I think.’
‘Oh.’ She tucks her feet underneath her, rests her chin on her knees. ‘Look at this place,’ she murmurs.
He surveys the back garden, a narrow block of land, fitted in between its neighbours, the faded, balding grass, the dried, bloomless flowers, the aetiolated plum tree.
‘I know.’
‘I mean, I’d heard the drought was bad but I didn’t realise it was this bad.’ She grinds her cigarette into the step. ‘It’s so hot. And it’s only . . . what time is it?’
He turns his watch towards him. ‘Eight fifteen.’
‘Eight fifteen,’ she repeats, looking up into the lapis sky. ‘Christ.’
They sit for a while longer. A bee drones by, scribbling on the air near their heads before changing direction for the branches of the apple tree.
‘So, what’s your view?’ She nods towards the house.
He draws a breath. The bee returns to them, then seems to change its mind, heading upwards along the brickwork of the house. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘It’s not good.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Do you think he’s . . .?’
‘What?’
‘You know.’
Their eyes meet for a moment, then veer away.
‘Done away with himself? Is that what you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ Aoife fiddles with a silver chain around her wrist, letting the links fall through her fingers. ‘I don’t know what I think. I never know what I think about him. He’s an impossible person to . . .’
‘Fathom.’
‘Exactly. Do you think he’s gone off with someone?’
‘A fancy woman?’ he says, employing a favourite expression of their mother’s. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Sure?’
‘I don’t see him doing that.’
‘Who’d have him?’ Aoife murmurs, opening her pack of cigarettes, then closing it again. ‘Do you think she knows more than she’s letting on?’
He turns to look at her. ‘What makes you say that?’
She shrugs. ‘You know what she’s like.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know.’ She shrugs again. ‘Sees what she wants to and—’
‘Filters out the rest. Give us one of those,’ he says, and she hands him the pack. He puts a cigarette to his lips and is about to take the matches when they are interrupted by a shout from above their heads.
‘What are you two whispering about down there?’
‘Fuck.’ Michael Fr
ancis snatches the cigarette from his mouth. He shoves the pack out of sight, and the matches, and turns to look up.
‘Jesus,’ Aoife whispers, ‘what are you? Twelve years old?’
‘Shut up,’ he hisses.
‘You shut up.’
‘No, you shut up.’
Aoife leans against him and the press of his sister into his arm is remarkable – the only good thing about the day so far.
‘What’s so funny?’ Gretta’s head and shoulders demand.
‘Nothing.’
‘I’m coming down,’ she announces.
Aoife turns back to the garden. She raises both arms above her head and, with her eyes closed, stretches her neck one way then another.
‘What is that? Some kind of yoga shite?’
‘So what if it is?’ she returns, her eyes still closed. Then she opens them and looks at him. ‘How’s Claire?’
‘Fine.’ He brushes something off his trouser leg. ‘How’s things in New York?’
‘Fine.’
Gretta appears in the dark oblong of the back door, holding something in her hands, a long flex trailing after her like a tail.
‘Do either of you want a hairdryer that once went on fire?’
The Irish are good in a crisis, Michael Francis thinks, as he eases back the clingfilm on a tray of sandwiches his aunt Bridie has left in the kitchen. They know what to do, what traditions must be observed; they bring food, casseroles, pies, they dole out tea. They know how to discuss bad news: in murmurs, with shakes of the head, their accents wrapping themselves around the syllables of misfortune.
A slight mist has gathered on the underside of the clingfilm. The sandwiches are warm, their edges curling apart. But he’s not complaining. He eats one, two, then three. The first is some kind of meat spread, the third has a disquieting fishy flavour. The fourth he takes to eliminate the aftertaste of its predecessor. But then he is seized by a frantic hunger. He cannot stop eating. He has never, it seems, encountered anything more appetising than his aunt’s warm meat-paste sarnies.
Just when his mouth is as full as it can physically be, Aoife appears in the doorway. She has pinned back all that hair of hers. The sight of her neck, her jawbone exposed, touching in their fragility, takes him by surprise. She looks at him, looks at the ravaged plate of sandwiches beside him. She withdraws again without speaking.
The sitting room is full, suddenly, briefly, of cousins and relatives and people he recognises but can’t quite place. He doesn’t want to speak with them, doesn’t want to meet their gazes, to receive their commiserations. He feels at a disadvantage in the midst of his mother’s crowd: they all know who he is, know more about him than he’d like, he suspects, but he can never remember who any of them are. Neighbours? People from the chapel? Possibly both. Word has spread and here they all are, to offer their ruminating, murmuring support. He wishes they’d all get lost, go back to their damn houses, leave them to get on with it. He wants to talk to Aoife, to his mother, wants to sort out this disaster. He doesn’t know where he’d start but he knows that the first step is to get rid of these bloody people, that nothing can be done with a houseful of strangers cluttering up the chairs and needing hot drinks. How does his mother stand it?
He approaches the doorway and peers into the sitting room. Not as many as he’d thought. Bridie and her husband; one of Bridie’s daughters with her baby on her knee. A few random old geezers, shaking their heads. How is it they all know to come at the same time? Is there an unwritten code that you visit the wife of a disappeared man at exactly ten thirty in the morning?
Bridie goes from person to person, offering another plate of sandwiches – meat paste, he wonders, or something else? – a word here and a nod there, her expression pleasant yet solemn, as befits the occasion. Yes, he hears her murmur, it is a terrible business, no, she’s not getting any sleep at all, poor thing, who would, no word at all, just upped and offed, the police have been no help, will you have another sandwich?
It would be hard to find a more different woman from Gretta, he thinks, as he watches Bridie exclaim how good it is to see Aoife, and how gorgeous she’s looking. You’d never know they were sisters, at first sight. Bridie is small, like Gretta, but slight and more youthful, somehow, despite being three years older. ‘Trim’ is the word, he thinks, well groomed. He bets Bridie watches what she eats; her hair has never been permitted to go grey but is, these days, the colour of ripe wheat, and stiff, brushed up and away from the forehead. Her house is neat, with a few glass ornaments along the windowsills. Tea is served in cups with matching saucers. He remembers wishing he could live there instead of here.
He returns to the plate, just for a small top-up. One or two more should do the job, then he’ll leave them alone. He tosses one into his mouth but somehow misses: the sandwich drops to the floor, glancing first off the toe of his shoe before disappearing somewhere near the bin.
It seems only fitting that this should happen; it seems entirely in keeping with his current situation in life – a man with a wife who seems to loathe him, a man whose family is fragmented, in crisis, a man beleaguered by heat, by drought, by water shortages, a man whose father has run off to Godknowswhere.
He lowers himself, sighing, to all fours and peers into the slice of gloom under the cupboard. He spies what is possibly a sausage, mouldering, rigid with decay, the ring-pull of a can, a reel of cotton, what appears to be a desiccated baked bean. How can his parents live like this, in such squalor? It’s a wonder neither of them has contracted dysentery. Cholera, even. He sees the pale side of the sandwich, and even though he has now lost his appetite, he reaches in and pulls it towards him. When it comes out into the light, something has adhered to its buttery opening. A scrap of paper. He separates the paper from the sandwich and holds it close to his face.
It is folded in the middle, its edges torn, and it still has a corner of envelope around it. Just visible is the edge of a stamp depicting the stretched strings of a harp. Michael extracts the paper and written on it are the words and they say the end is coming in blue ink, a fountain pen, an unfamiliar hand. He lets the sandwich fall into the bin, allows the lid to clang shut, and reads it again: they say the end is—
Someone touches him and he jumps.
‘Now, Michael Francis, is there any news?’ Bridie is next to him, a hand on his arm, in accordance with her decree that any serious questions must be addressed to the male of the household. Another thing that marks her out as different from Gretta.
‘No,’ he says, and stuffs the slip of paper and the corner of the envelope into his pocket. He reaches blindly for a sandwich off the plate she’s holding, cramming the whole crustless triangle into his mouth, discovering too late that it’s egg, his least favourite filling.
‘None at all?’ Bridie leans forward, whispering.
‘Nuh-uh,’ he gets out, around the odious mouthful.
‘I always knew that good-for-nothing—’ Bridie lets fly but is interrupted.
‘An awful business,’ says an elderly man in possession of an astonishingly large pair of ears, who has appeared beside them, and Bridie leaps in with a yes, isn’t it, before they all hear the front door slam and footsteps in the hallway. The clip-clip of high heels and Michael Francis thinks, the end is coming, and also, how come Monica still has a key?
Aoife is rubbing her mother’s back, saying, no, no, to a woman on the next chair, we haven’t heard from him yet but we’re hoping to, any time now, when she realises something.
Monica is here. Behind her, in the hallway. She can feel it: she’s aware of her sister’s presence near her, and Aoife’s pulse is thick in her ears. She cannot turn round, she cannot, and then she does and her first thought, when she sees Monica standing there, is: oh, it’s only you. It’s only you after all.
A wave of affection rises in her – instinctive, reactive – and she feels her face break into a smile. She can see that her sister has taken care with her appearance. She has done her hair in a way Aoif
e hasn’t seen before, longer, in loose curls, swept up off her neck, and although it doesn’t quite suit her, doesn’t quite come off, Aoife is imagining her sitting at her dressing-table with her kirby-grips and hairbrush, her fingers anxious as they tease the hair into shape, and the idea of Monica doing this is oddly touching. It’s only Monica, after all, is what Aoife thinks. Just Monica. The Monica she has known all her life, her sister, not the terrible spectre of doom Aoife has built her up to be, all that time in New York. It’s just Monica, and Aoife is rising from her seat, because that is what you do, isn’t it, when you see your sister after a period of years? You embrace her, and whatever problems have arisen between you in that time can be wiped clean, you’ll be able to start again, and Aoife is thinking that maybe she could forget what happened that time in Michael Francis’s house, that maybe nothing needs to be said.
She has almost reached Monica when she realises that her sister hasn’t even looked at her. Isn’t even looking at her. Monica’s gaze slips past her and away, as if Aoife isn’t there, as if Aoife is an inexplicable, person-shaped hole in the atmosphere. Aoife is an arm’s length from her when Monica does a neat sidestep into the hall, saying something about hanging up her jacket because it’s a pain to press and she doesn’t want to be spending an evening slaving over the ironing-board in this heat.
Aoife stands facing the empty doorway. Her pulse is still thudding in her ear, spurring her on to something, giving her the means to act. But what, exactly, should she do? Her mother is beside her, a vacant smile on her face; the people in the room are getting to their feet, saying it is time they were off. Bridie is clearing plates suddenly. Gretta heads after Monica, saying, will I find you a coat-hanger?