The wheat is almost tall enough to hide inside. Past the road, golden fields ripple toward the horizon, catching the sun.
A heat wave began in Dublin earlier this week. I can see a band of haze in the distance, a storm front coming in from far over the west country. Along the Atlantic coast, the sea will be surging, rain pounding the backs of the waves, fog rising from the water to cloak the headlands, but here the air is hot and close. This morning every single person walking past me in my neighborhood looked sticky, their skin, their clothes.
I’m escaping the city’s blistering streets for a swim. Normally I’d swim at the Forty Foot, but during a heat wave, most of Dublin will have the same idea. All of the swimming rocks—the Forty Foot, Howth Head, the Vico Baths—will be jammed, and instead I’m trying a place my sister told me about months ago.
Art’s Lough is in the Wicklow countryside, near Ballinaskea. Marian told me the lough is balanced on a hilltop, the water running down through the gorse bushes and boulders at its edge, like an infinity pool. She said you can swim around the boulders, diving between them through the cold, clear water.
I could be spending the free weekend getting ahead on work. I’m a subeditor at the Irish Observer, but our work is slower in August, with parliament out of session. Fewer breaking news stories, fewer reporters filing late copy.
I check the pulsing dot on the map, then turn onto a road through more wheat fields. I can see Finn’s empty car seat in the rear mirror. It’s strange not to have him here with me, staring out the window, asking me questions. Today his father is bringing him to Donegal for a holiday. They must be somewhere near Kells by now. Finn always falls asleep on long drives, and I picture him with his eyes closed, sunshine flooding over his face.
He’ll be home on Friday. Five days to go. With Finn away this week, I’ll have some spare time for all the things I moan about being too busy to do. An exhibit at the Hugh Lane Gallery, dinner at the Winding Stair, a browse of the bookshelves in Hodges Figgis. The prospect should have me giddy, but instead I only feel restless. Wise up, I tell myself. It’s only five days.
I roll the car to a stop at a crossing. With the windows down, I can hear the drilling sound of crickets. I forgot to tell Tom about the bottom strap of Finn’s life vest, the one that hooks under his legs. Maybe I should text Tom, I think, and I’m reaching for my phone when something crashes into me. My hands fly back to grip the steering wheel as the car lurches forward, the metal screeching around me. The sound grows louder, then my head whips back against the seat.
The car has come to a stop, shoved halfway into the crossing. I climb out, shaking. Behind me, the driver of a black Range Rover is stepping onto the road and apologizing in a polished south Dublin accent, holding his hands up toward me. “Are you hurt?” he asks.
“What were you thinking?” I say, distantly aware that I haven’t actually checked if I am hurt. I tilt my neck, testing it, and feel a deep spasm of pain. My legs haven’t stopped shaking. Finn could have been in the car during the collision.
“I’m so sorry,” says the driver. “I only looked away from the road for a second.”
I stand with my hands on my hips, looking at my car. The back of it is crumpled in like paper, and I hear myself groan. This will take ages to sort out. The driver says, “Here, let me give you my insurance card.”
Behind him, heat shimmers above the tarmac, the mirage making the road look wet. He is reaching for his wallet when I catch a movement inside his car. A pale blur of a face, behind the windscreen. Someone else is with him, and fear drops over me. We are alone, I realize, on a road surrounded by wheat fields. Sweat prickles down my back. Around the crossing, the wheat shifts in the wind, dozens of paths across the field appearing and collapsing.
“I’ll give you my insurance, too,” I say, and turn back toward the car, forcing myself to walk normally. I can’t let on that anything’s wrong, he can’t see. In the hot air, the sound of the crickets rises, ringing like an alarm. My heart thumps, sending out sheets of blood. The driver waits a few paces down the road. Ahead of me, my car door is hanging open, and I’m nearly there when I hear movement at my back.
I run the last few steps and throw myself into the seat, scrabbling for the keys. The man is already alongside the back windows. I shove the key into the ignition and stamp my foot down on the pedal. The engine starts spinning, but the car won’t move. Something must be broken from the collision. I push my foot down again and again as a shadow falls over my lap. The man is outside my door, standing over me. I left the car in park, I realize, and shove at the gear stick. The man’s hands reach through my open window and his fingers dig into my arms, trying to drag me onto the road. Almost there, the gears are about to release, and then he wrenches me out.
The tarmac scrapes my bare knees. He punches me in the mouth, and pain splits open my bottom lip. Blood sprays onto the road, onto my dress, onto him. I fight him off, panting. If I can break away from him and run into the field, the wheat will close behind me, hiding me from view. I’m already close enough that the stalks are whipping against my bare arms as we fight.
The field is right behind me. I can feel it happening, I can feel the wheat rushing past my face as I run, but then the tarmac is rearing up, and I’m flat on my stomach while he kneels on my back, closing a zip tie around my wrists.
The other man is here, too, now, saying, “Jesus, hurry up,” and taking my other side as they drag me toward their car. I can’t scream. I keep trying, but no sound comes out. They shove me into the back seat, behind tinted windows. I sit upright, with my wrists bound behind me and blood spilling down my chin, as the driver takes off down the road, veering around my dented car. My heart keeps pounding, fit to burst, like my body hasn’t copped on that the fight is over. I force myself to breathe, and cough on the blood in my mouth. Tiny drops spray onto the seat in front of me, too small to see. Good, I think. That will be evidence, that will be one way to prove what happened.
I hear another car behind us. Maybe I can signal the driver, I think, but when I turn around, I only see my own car following us. Someone is driving it away from the scene.
The younger man reaches back from the front seat, twisting me aside and pressing my finger to my phone to unlock it. “What are you doing?” I ask.
Without answering, he drops back into the front seat. I hear him typing, then the swish of a message being sent, and another. He is texting my mother, I think, and my sister, so they won’t think anything is wrong, so no one will look for me. He must have snatched the phone from my car.
I could have made it in time. I could have closed the door and hit the automatic locks first, then reached for my keys, I think, playing it through in my mind, like I’ll be given another chance.
In the front of the car, the men don’t speak, and I stare at the backs of their heads. I am aware of soft places in my ribs and down my legs, but nothing hurts, not yet. Finn, I think, and the need for him roars through me. I cast myself toward my son, some part of me galloping toward him. Finn isn’t here. He is with his father, he is safe, he will be safe. That already feels like a triumph.
A mobile rings up front, and the driver answers. “Yeah, five minutes out,” he says, and sweat rolls under my hair. His voice has changed from before, he’s speaking with a Belfast accent now.
We’re driving west, racing across the countryside toward the Wicklow Mountains. I try to work out how far we’ve driven from Ballyvolan, and where the next village might be. Ahead of us, haze hangs over the mountains. After this much heat, the heather and gorse will be dry as kindling. This entire range is a tinderbox.
“Can you open my photos, please? I want to see my son,” I say, and the younger man drops my phone. I don’t need a camera reel to see Finn. His face is clear in my mind, every bit of it, but I need these men to understand what they’re doing. “I’m Tessa,” I say. My dress is plastered to my skin with sweat and I’m shaking, but somehow my voice comes out calm and soft. “You were careful not to hurt me in the crash. Thank you.”
Neither of the men answers, but I can tell they’re listening.
“You could have killed me, though. My head almost went into the steering wheel,” I say. “What would happen to you if I’d died? Would you get in trouble? Would you be given a kneecapping for that?”
The driver opens his mouth. He wants to defend his technique, which is a start. If I can get him to argue with me, then we’ll be getting somewhere.
“What did they tell you about me?” I ask, feeling the tires spinning beneath the car. “Did you actually believe it?”
The younger man’s jaw has tightened. He wants me to shut up, he doesn’t think he should have to hear my voice. He was fine with earlier, with tracking my car, chasing me down the road, bracing for the crash. This part, though, isn’t exciting.
“My son is four years old. Did they tell you that part? He could have been in the car with me. Would you have hurt him?”
“No,” says the driver, rolling his hands on the wheel.
“I believe you,” I say. “Will you help me?” Neither of the men looks at the other, but a silent argument is under way up there, between the pair of them.
The driver turns down another road. Thick hedgerows block the view, then we come around a bend. I can see a house ahead, a gray bungalow in some fields, and my breath catches. I’ll only have a second to tug the door open, throw myself onto the road, and start screaming. My fingers are on the lock, ready to pull, but the driver is downshifting and turning onto the bungalow’s drive. No one is going to hear me, the only house in sight belongs to them.
The two men climb down onto the gravel, and the younger one takes my arm and walks me toward the front door. I feel something like vertigo from all the open space around us, the broad fields stretching beside the bungalow. Even if I can twist out of his grip, there are no woods to swallow me up, no walls to crouch behind, no neighboring houses to shelter me. Behind the bungalow is a hill with electric pylons up its side, black wires strung between them. I can hear the pylons humming, a ringing in the empty air.
The bungalow has a rock garden and lace curtains in its windows. It looks like someone’s granny’s house. A statue of a fawn stands outside it. My mam would love the statue, it would look right at home in her front garden.
The men push me through the doorway, and the air goes out of my chest. The bungalow has been stripped to its floorboards. It’s a safe house, a war room. The ordinary front is only a facade, to distract anyone driving past on the road. Someone from the IRA bought that fawn statue and stuck it in the garden, which I might find funny under other circumstances.
I can see a card table and plastic chairs, a portable generator, rolled-up sleeping bags, a box cutter. The younger man walks me into a back room and lifts a shackle attached to the radiator.
“Please help me,” I say, looking in his face. “Please.”
“Which leg?” he asks, avoiding my eyes, and when I don’t answer, he closes it around my left one, snips the zip tie on my wrists, and leaves the room.
I stand alone in the middle of the room, the collar of my dress stained with sweat and blood. When I step forward, the chain pulls tight, the metal biting into my ankle. There is a mattress on the floor, and bare walls with thick sprays of black mold.
The window is boarded over, but there’s a crack between the boards. I press my face against it and look out at the low hill behind the bungalow, and the electric pylons climbing over it. Those pylons will lead to a town, to other houses. I work my fingers into the gap between the boards, trying to tug them loose, but their nails are hammered deep into the wood. The pylons aren’t far off the bungalow, and I wonder if I can use them somehow. Snap one of their wires, start a fire, so a repair crew is called in. I’ve no idea how, though, from in here.
The fear is total now, obliterating, a white room with nothing else in it, and something about that means I’m able to move and think inside it. It’s like that absolute silence after a loud blast of noise, everything else blown clear of it.
I study the radiator, like my sister would, and the wiring in the ceiling fixture, for anything that might be useful. There are no lamps, but a yellowing plate with two electric outlets, and I might be able to weaponize them. I’m forever telling Finn to be careful around outlets.
I run my hands around the shackle, feeling for a catch in the metal. The band is loose at my ankle. Sized, I’d imagine, for a man. I rock back onto my heels. Already I can fit two fingers inside the band, and my ankle is swollen from the heat. If I can bring down the swelling, maybe I’ll be able to slip my foot loose.
I start rubbing at my ankle, working my hands under the shackle. I remember this from pregnancy, pressing down hard with my thumbs to drain the fluid. When nothing happens, I grow frustrated, pummeling hard enough to leave bruises.
Finally I sit back against the wall under the spray of black mold. The men are talking on the other side of the door, but I can’t make out the words. This would be easier if I knew what they wanted. Or if I had something sharp.
I need to warn Marian. She’s working today, though. They won’t risk going after her at the air-ambulance station.
I blame the heat wave. I made this so easy for them, driving out to the countryside. If they’d come for me in Dublin, I would have stood a chance. I would have taken a knife from the block on my counter. They’re stronger, but they’d expect me to hesitate, and I wouldn’t have hesitated.
But Finn might have been in the house, and I’d rather be locked in here than fighting them in my kitchen with Finn looking on. If he saw that now, he would remember it for the rest of his life.
I wipe the sweat from my forehead. This room is sweltering, with no vents and nothing shading the roof. They haven’t given me any water. I move toward the window, feeling for a draft, but there’s no wind outside, either. On the hill, the pylons are so bright that looking at them makes my eyes sting.
In another life, I would be swimming at Art’s Lough now, diving under the cold water by the boulders, looking out across the valley. I put myself in this position. Driving out, alone, for a swim. I’d stopped being scared of the IRA in the daylight. Stupid, unbelievable logic. Over the past few years, Marian and I have both grown careless of ourselves in certain ways. Nearly all of our worries are attached to the children instead, the way you put sun cream on them and not yourself.
We should have seen this coming. Having a bad thing happen once doesn’t make it less likely to happen again. If anything, it’s the opposite, at least where we’re from.
Three years ago, the IRA interrogated me and my sister at a farmhouse in south Armagh. Seamus Malone asked us if we were informers, if we were working for the British. I have trouble remembering exactly what happened next, except in scattered images. Marian rising up, a hairpin clenched in her fist, blood running down Seamus’s throat, the two of us sprinting through the snow.
We faked our own deaths, and started new lives across the border, in the republic. I have long bangs now, darker hair. People often think they recognize me, but never from Belfast, only because I have one of those faces.
I sit very still, straining to hear sounds, listening for movement outside the bungalow. What evidence was left of my abduction today? Some trampled wheat on the side of a road, a few drops of blood drying on the tarmac and clinging to the wheat. It won’t be enough. Though that man sent messages from my phone. If he made a mistake, if he didn’t sound like me, mam and Marian will be suspicious.
Of the pair of them, Marian is more observant than mam. That message is sitting in her phone. I will my sister to read it again, to think, No, that’s not right, to try ringing me, to call the police in Belfast and the Gardaí here in Dublin when I don’t answer.
I picture a police convoy racing toward the bungalow across the countryside, and a briefing in an incident room at Harcourt Station. Some senior officer describing the situation to a group of gardaí. “Tessa Daly, thirty-six. Her sister Marian Daly was in the IRA but turned informer, and Tessa helped her pass messages. MI5 dropped them when their cover was blown, and the Belfast police helped them settle in the republic under new identities.” If I were an officer hearing all that, I wouldn’t be optimistic. What’s the life expectancy of an informer from Belfast? It can’t be long.
I close my eyes and try to breathe slowly. My clothes are clinging to my skin, and I pull at my dress, adjust my bra. The underwire digs into my ribs, and my eyes blink open.
I work my bra off under my dress. The bra is white cotton with a blue rosette and two wires under its cups, and I bite at the fabric, making a hole big enough to slide out the underwire. The wire feels sharp when I test it against my thumb. It could puncture skin, with enough force behind it. I put the bra back on, and slip the wire inside one of the cups, within easy reach.
This should be simple enough. I’m only in a room in a bungalow, of course there’s a way out, I think, but then my mind runs into a wall, again and again. I’m so tired. Finn still isn’t a good sleeper, and I’d been expecting things to get easier soon. Though this past year has not been, it occurs to me, so hard. Let me go back, I think, and I won’t complain, I won’t mind waking during the night, cooking a dinner my son refuses to taste, cleaning underneath the table afterward, picking up a hundred peas one by one. What, exactly, about all that had seemed difficult?
An elasticated sheet is pulled over the mattress in the room. Earlier this week, I was trying to make the bed in my room, while Finn kept tugging the corners loose. “That’s enough now,” I said, irritated, and remembering that makes me as homesick as anything else.
At some point, I shift my body toward the mattress, close enough to run my hand back and forth over the ridges of the elasticated sheet, feeling them bump against the pads of my fingers. The one at home, I tell myself, would feel exactly like this.