She feels the lough before she sees it. A damp, spongy give under her feet, spiked marsh plants needling her trouser hems. At its edge, she discards her shoes, rolls up her trousers. The water is a shock, a delicious, skin-shrinking cold. Her feet find their way forward over the gritted, stony lakebed.
She stands up to her knees in the water. The sky above her is a blue-black, a purple-black, the hue of the ripest blackberries, backlit by silver, a colour she has never seen anywhere else, not in the private gloom of Evelyn’s darkroom, not in all those thousands of photographic negatives she has pored over.
Aoife puts her hand to her middle. How strange it is to feel so alone and yet know that you are not. There is a second heart inside her, beating away. She applies a light pressure to her abdomen. Quickening: isn’t that the word? The best word of all to describe what is going on in there, in some hidden fold of her body, in some pressed corner of her being. She has given up, of late, trying to understand why things happen. There is no use in that line of thought, no use at all. What will happen will happen and there is often no reason at all. But this – this is something else. For it to arrive, to begin, to quicken now, when so many people in her life seem to be pulling away from her. How can it be?
As this thought threads its final syllables through her mind, there is, just to her right, a heave in the water of the lough. The surface parts, she sees the motion of a muscled back, a flash of sleek hide. She takes a step back, missing her footing as she stubs her toe on a sharp point of rock. She makes a small cry of pain. The lough seems to be waiting, flat again, its surface still as a mirror. Aoife looks left, then right, searching for a ripple, a line of bubbles, anything. What was that animal and where did it go?
A movement, a plash – where? She turns her head, alert for motion, and she is trying to push from her mind all her mother’s tales of selkies, of watery spirits, of sailors lured to their deaths by apparitions on nights such as these. She wonders if she were to shout, to cry out, would anyone hear her? Would Michael Francis come running? He would. But would he be in time?
Then she sees it, not three feet in front of her. Its head rising from the water, looking straight at her. A blunt forehead, wetted fur, whiskers spread into the air, a pair of wide, dark eyes. A dog, she tells herself. It’s just a dog, from one of the farms, having a swim. But its ears are too small for a dog, the muzzle too short.
Aoife and the creature regard each other. It’s like an otter but big, like a seal but furred. Then it brings up a clawed paw and sweeps at its face, once, twice, the length of its nose and over its brow. There is a feeling behind Aoife’s eyes as if she is about to sneeze, a gathering, a buzzing, like the sensation she gets if she looks too long at a page of text and doesn’t work hard at keeping her mind in gear, a feeling that what she is looking at is slipping and sliding, might morph into anything if she isn’t careful.
‘Gabe?’ she says.
Even as she speaks the word, she is aware of the ridiculousness of what she is saying. She knows this creature, whatever it is, isn’t Gabe. She isn’t crazy. Gabe is over the sea, that sea to her right, all the way over, in New York. And yet, there is something in that creature’s gaze, something in that gesture of its forepaw.
She says it again, whispered this time: ‘Gabe?’
With a wheeling motion, the animal turns and disappears, diving down into the lough.
Aoife runs. She runs without thinking about where she is going and why, without picking up her shoes. She runs barefoot back up the dune, over the top, back down the grassed side. She vaults the wall, she passes two black cut-out silhouettes on the track. Aoife, her brother’s voice calls after her, come back, but she doesn’t, she doesn’t come back, and when she gets to the other side of the island, she is unsurprised to find that the waters have parted, that there is a narrow strip of gleaming sand, fretted by tides, leading to the mainland.
She takes this path, she runs along it. She sprints the length of the causeway, seawater reaching and reaching for her ankles. She runs all the way to Claddaghduff and, when she gets there, she sees the telephone box, lit up like a landing strip, and she goes inside.
She dials the number for her apartment; she isn’t expecting him to be there; she just wants to call, to hear the phone and know that it’s ringing there, on the wall next to her bed. It’s seven in the evening in New York. Gabe will be at the restaurant, stacking plates, skinning vegetables, sluicing down surfaces. But, amazingly, she hears a pick-up on the line, she hears the intake of his breath, the minute parting of his lips.
‘Gabe?’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s me.’
‘Aoife,’ he says, elongating the sound of her name. ‘How are you?’ Is that her imagination, her wishful thinking, or is his voice a little bit less brusque?
‘I’m in Ireland.’
‘Ireland?’
‘Yeah. We came to Ireland, me and my family – all my family, even my niece and nephew.’
‘What’s the news on your dad?’
‘We’ve found him. Sort of. Well, we know where he is. We just haven’t seen him yet.’
‘He’s in Ireland?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He just took off for Ireland?’
‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you another time. How come you’re not at the restaurant?’ There is a pause. She listens to him sigh. ‘Are you OK? Did something happen?’
‘It’s nothing,’ he says.
She grips the phone tighter. ‘Tell me.’
‘There was just someone looking for me.’
‘At the restaurant?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Shit.’
‘It was probably nothing but Arnault said I should stay away for a few days.’
‘I’m so sorry, Gabe.’
‘It’s OK. It just means I’ll have to find another job. Which is a shame because I kind of liked Arnault’s.’
‘You’ll find something else.’
‘I guess.’
Another pause. She hears him shift about, as if he’s walking across the room or perhaps sitting down on the bed.
‘I’ve been keeping myself busy, though,’ he says, after a moment.
‘Oh?’
‘I sorted out that file for you.’
She snaps upright. ‘You did?’
‘Yeah. I didn’t have anything better to do and it kind of took my mind off things.’
‘You’ve done it all? The whole thing?’
‘I’ve put the contracts in envelopes and I clipped all the cheques together. You can pay them in when you get back. Or,’ she can hear him plotting his way carefully around the fact that he thinks she might not come back, ‘I can take them along, if you tell me where Evelyn banks, or give me the name of the accountant, or—’
‘Thank you, Gabe,’ she bursts out. ‘Thank you so much, I really, really—’
He cuts her off. ‘Don’t worry about it. I couldn’t just, you know, leave it like that. And, like I said, I had nothing better to do today.’
Aoife flattens her hands against the glass of the phone box and leans her head into it. The file has been sorted. She cannot believe it. The problem that has weighed on her for a year is gone. Just like that.
‘Aoife,’ he says suddenly, ‘I know this isn’t really the time but I just want you to know that I’m not going to be bothering you any more. About the apartment and stuff. It’s OK. I get it.’
‘You get what?’
‘I get it. The whole thing. I realised at the airport.’
‘You realised what?’
‘That you don’t want to move in with me – you don’t really even want to be with me.’
‘But—’
‘It’s all right. Let’s not get into it now. I’ll be out of here by the time you get back.’
‘Gabe,’ she shakes her head in panic, ‘no, you’ve got it all wrong. Completely wrong. I do want to be with you, I want that very much, more than anything, and I would love
to move in with you but the thing is . . .’ she gets that old, familiar feeling of not being able to draw enough breath down into her lungs ‘. . . at the airport . . . I couldn’t . . . see . . . what you’d written . . . I had difficulty . . .’ she tries and fails to produce her usual, casual, self-deprecating laugh ‘. . . Maybe I need glasses or something . . .’
There is a silence on the line, a great ocean of silence that rolls and surges and heaves between them.
‘Glasses,’ he repeats flatly.
‘I want to be with you,’ she says again. ‘Please believe me. The thing is . . .’ She screws up her face so that the lights of Claddaghduff blur and distort before her. It is taking considerable physical effort for her even to contemplate saying this. She is raising herself on to her toes, she is tensing her shoulders, as if readying herself for a blow. ‘The thing is . . . I have a problem . . . I have a problem with reading.’
For a moment, she cannot believe what she has said. It seems astonishing for those words to be out in the air. They fly around in the hot, narrow space of the phone box, circling her head. She wants to ease open the door a crack, to let them out, like bees from a hive, into the outside world. I have a problem with reading. Then she is worried that she might have to say them again because time is ticking on, her change is being swallowed by the phone, and Gabe hasn’t replied. Is it possible that he didn’t hear her?
‘Huh,’ Gabe says eventually. ‘A problem with reading. Right. OK . . . You know something?’ Each of his words comes out as if he is enunciating with care. ‘My grandfather had this strange trouble with the written word.’
Aoife breathes in and breathes out. She cannot believe what he is saying. She cannot believe that he said ‘written’ in front of ‘word’. She loves him for that; she loves him for that distinction because, of course, there are so many forms of words, so many guises, and it is only the goddamn written kind that won’t work for her, that trips her up, that makes a mess and a tangle, like string, inside her head. All the others, she can do.
‘Really?’ Aoife gets out.
‘Yeah. He went his whole life pretending everything was fine. He had this stock of excuses to get him through. He used to say he could only read in Russian. Or that he’d lost his glasses. Or that he had a headache and would I read the paper aloud to him? But it wasn’t true. We all knew he just couldn’t read.’
In Gabe’s tone of studied casualness, in what he is saying, Aoife is suddenly aware of a buoyant, lifting sensation, as if flexed, feathered wings have unfolded from the muscle and bone of her back.
‘When are you coming back?’ Gabe says, after a while. ‘I miss you. We all miss you – me, the rats, the cockroaches, those spooky things that scratch from inside the walls at night.’
‘Soon,’ Aoife says, as she looks out to Omey Island. ‘I’m coming back very soon.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘I promise,’ she says, the words spreading in steam across the glass. ‘But you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I think we should come here for a while.’
‘Here?’
‘Where I am right now, Omey Island. I wish you could see it. It’s so beautiful. My family has a house here. We can live in it, you and me, and we can just sit things out.’
She hears him swallow, shift his fingers on the receiver. ‘Uh, maybe. Would I like it there? I mean, I’m guessing it’s kind of different from Manhattan.’
She laughs. ‘It couldn’t be more different from Manhattan, I can tell you that. It’s an island but that’s about the only similarity.’
‘Aoife—’
‘Just think about it.’
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Bring me back a photo and I’ll think about it.’
Monica leans on a stone wall and waits. It is past midnight, close to one o’clock. A moon hangs above the island, so impossibly round and bright that it looks like a fake moon, a Hollywood moon, one made from paper and trickery and electric lights.
She feels sleep approach her, again and again, like a draught from under a door. Her eyelids droop, her head starts to fall but she jerks herself awake.
When Aoife didn’t come back after dark, not after Michael Francis and Claire came in, Gretta was up and down from her chair, to the window and back, wringing her hands, saying, where’s she gone, did she fall in the sea, do you think, why is it people keep disappearing? Monica had sent her to bed, saying she would go out, she’d find her. Everyone was tired from last night on the ferry. You’d have thought Aoife wanted her sleep too, what with all the jet lag, but then Aoife had never been much of a one for sleep.
Monica went out into the dark. She walked to the north of the island, around to the westerly tip, back to the south. Calling and calling Aoife’s name, searching everywhere she could think of. It reminded her of those times Aoife sleepwalked as a child. They would come in waves, Aoife’s night-time wanderings. Weeks could go past without a single incident but then Monica would wake and the bed next to hers would be empty, sheets pulled back, and she’d know that Aoife had been propelled to her feet by some unknown urge. Monica used to search the house – the bathroom, the stairs, the living room, the kitchen. She had found her once, crouched by the dying fire. Sometimes she’d be sitting on Michael Francis’s bed. Once, she found her out in the back garden, trying and trying to open the shed door, her eyes half open and dazed, in the grip of some somnolent drama. Their father had screwed bolts into the doors, high up so that Aoife couldn’t reach them, to keep her from wandering into the street.
So here was Monica again, out in the night, searching for the wandering Aoife, ready to lead her gently back to bed.
She saw her from up on the sandy bluff: a tiny figure walking back along the causeway, which shone slick in the moonlight. Monica picked her way down – she has her wellingtons on, under her nightdress – and is waiting here, at the wall.
As Aoife reaches the rise of the track, Monica calls her name. ‘Aoife!’
The figure of her sister jumps, puts a hand to her heart. ‘Who’s there?’ she says, and Monica is surprised by the fear in her voice.
‘It’s me.’
‘Oh. You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for you. Where’ve you been?’
‘Out,’ Aoife replies, without stopping, moving past her along the track.
‘Out where?’
She flings her arm behind her, towards Claddaghduff. ‘There.’
The dark is soft around them but she can see that Aoife’s face is set, her mouth the slightly downturned line that Monica remembers so well from her childhood. Monica scales the wall, carefully, inexpertly, her wellies catching on the stone edges, and runs to catch up with Aoife. ‘Were you phoning your boyfriend?’
Aoife makes a noise that means neither yes nor no and, without intending to, Monica stops. She says, ‘Aoife, listen.’
Aoife stops too, a few steps further on, her back towards her.
Monica has surprised herself. She doesn’t know what she wants to say, doesn’t know what she wants Aoife to listen to.
‘I . . .’ she begins ‘. . . about Joe . . .’ She comes to a halt. ‘I was just so . . . Everything was in such a . . . after what happened, you know . . .’ She takes a breath, then manages to say, ‘After what I did . . . I . . . well . . .’
‘Just say it,’ Aoife says, still with her back turned.
‘Say what?’
Aoife sighs. ‘For fuck’s sake.’
Monica flinches at the phrase. An ugly thing to say, a horrible thing. Joe had said it to her when—
‘It’s a word that everybody knows,’ Aoife says. ‘Except you, it would seem. It begins with s.’
There is a pause. They listen to the high chirrup of a bird, the tussling flap of the breeze catching in Monica’s hem, the distant pulse of the waves.
‘I’m sorry,’ Monica says, on the track over Omey Island, to her sister’s rigid back.
‘For what?’
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‘For everything. For thinking you would ever have told Joe. Of course you never would have done that. I don’t know why I forgot that about you. And . . .’ Monica pauses, tugs at the cuffs of her nightdress ‘. . . I said some terrible things to you, that day in the kitchen. Awful things. I’ve regretted them ever since.’
‘Have you?’
‘Yes. I should never have lashed out at you like that and I shouldn’t have said them and they’re not true and—’
‘Ah, now I know you’re lying.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, they are true, aren’t they, those things you said about Mum and me as a baby? I know they are.’
‘Well.’ Monica opens her hands and shuts them again. ‘I should never have said them, either way. The last three years have been horrible without you.’ Monica sighs and as she does so she realises that this is true and that she isn’t going back to Gloucestershire: all that is over for her. She will not return to the farmhouse, she will not live there again. Jenny and the children will come back to live at the house that was never, after all, hers. She regards this notion with an odd calm. It is a fact, stolid and uncomplicated by indecision: she is not going back there. ‘Horrible,’ she says again.
Aoife turns now, to face her. ‘Really?’
‘I . . . I don’t seem to make the right decisions when you’re not around,’ Monica says. ‘Like the dress I wore for my wedding. I bought it the week before, in a panic. I knew the skirt was too short and it made my knees look awful and it just didn’t suit me. The woman in the shop told me it looked lovely and so did Mum, and I wanted to believe them. But when I saw the photos, I kept thinking, if Aoife had been around, she would have said, don’t wear that, not that, it looks terrible. You would have sorted it out.’
‘I would.’
‘It was a bad dress.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Turquoise watered silk, netted skirt, puffed sleeves.’
They are walking now, together, back to the cottage, their steps in rhythm. Monica had forgotten that she and Aoife could do this, could walk in perfect unison; she’s never found this exact, metronomic motion with anyone else. It must come from all those years of walking together, to school and back, to the shops and back, to the bus stop, the tube, the library.