Henry was furious for weeks after their disastrous joint interview for the documentary, although he claimed he didn’t blame Keelin ‘in the slightest’, and she was being ‘absurd’ to suggest otherwise. It must have been a figment of her imagination then, how he slammed doors and stomped around the house like he was trying to dislodge the floorboards. In mid-September, he decided they needed to clean the house from top to bottom in preparation for autumn, inspecting Keelin’s dressing area, querying why lids weren’t on night creams and why cashmere jerseys didn’t have lavender sachets tucked beside them. Did Keelin want her clothes to be destroyed by moths, was that it? Those sweaters were expensive but it was his money, so it didn’t matter, was that it? And when she tried to apologise, he would tell her that she had nothing to say sorry for, he wasn’t angry with her, for God’s sake. Why did Keelin insist on behaving like he was some kind of tyrant? He just wanted things to be done correctly, he wanted things in their proper order, and no one else seemed to care.
But when night-time came, Henry was a different man. He would tell Keelin he loved her then, pulling his wife close and staring into her eyes. ‘Isn’t this nice?’ he said. ‘It’s important we feel connected to one another, don’t you think, darling?’ She smiled her agreement, waiting until he fell asleep before attempting to wriggle out of his grip, but he refused to let go, his head tucked into her shoulder, the sounds of his snores grating against her ears. They would lie like that until the sun rose. ‘I haven’t slept this well in years,’ Henry said when he woke, stretching his arms in satisfaction, and Keelin would smile and say yes, me too, but when she stood up she was dizzy, a rush of blood to the head, clouds swirling in her eyes. She became clumsy again, banging hip bones and knees against sharp edges, examining her skin for new bruises, and she was forgetful too. I’m so sorry, she said when she missed her daughter’s first day back at school. Don’t worry, Evie replied. Daddy sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to wish me luck. At least one of you remembers that I exist.
‘Jesus,’ Henry spluttered. It was the afternoon and Keelin was sitting at the kitchen island, her head nodding forward and then jerking back as she tried to stay awake. He rushed to the kitchen sink and spat out a mouthful of tea. ‘You’ve put salt in there instead of sugar,’ he said, picking up the canister, dabbing his finger on the grains and holding it to his tongue. Had she? She couldn’t remember re-filling that container in ages. ‘Sweetheart, are you quite all right? I’m worried about you. Maybe we should get the doctor to pay a visit to the island, look at your prescription.’
‘I don’t think that’s—’ she began, but Henry was hugging her, murmuring, ‘Poor Keels,’ into her hair. She started to apologise, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but he put his fingers to her lips. ‘You need to rest, darling,’ he said. ‘Let’s have some quiet time, just the two of us.’
He barely spoke to her for weeks after that. He would leave the room when Keelin walked in, and he checked her mobile every evening, looking at the phone calls made and received, scrutinising her search history. ‘You need a digital detox,’ he said, tutting when she asked for her iPhone back. ‘We spend too much time on our screens these days. I read an article that links it with depression. We don’t want to risk it, not with your history.’
Alex asked if she was OK. You’ve been very quiet recently, Mam, he said. And she lied and said she was fine, just a touch of laryngitis, that’s all. She thought her son might question her further, he was usually so attuned to her moods, but Alex was distracted these days. He’d taken to going out at night in a waft of hair gel and aftershave, wearing a denim jacket with sheepskin lining that Keelin had never seen before. She badly wanted to ask where this new jacket was from and why he was making such an effort to go down for a pint in the local pub, and who was he meeting there? Who was he talking to? Was he being careful? Her son walked out the door every evening with such hope shining in his eyes. When was the last time any of them had a reason to feel hopeful? She wished she could discuss the matter with Henry, she was desperate to talk about anything really, the clamouring thoughts rapping their knuckles against her skull, whispering, Hello, Keelin? We’re here. Let us out, please. She was going mad with the need of it.
It was a Saturday evening in late October and Alex was out, again, and Henry didn’t like the TV show she had chosen. Do you mind, darling? he said, taking the remote control from her. The presenter’s voice gives me a headache. His hand on her knee as they watched a documentary about the Holocaust, pictures of emaciated children, brittle bodies piled up in a cavernous pit, and Keelin could feel her gag reflex contract and she was afraid she might be sick all over the carpet. (A pity, she imagined Henry saying. That rug was Persian, and rather expensive.) Her mind was skipping over memories like a child jumping rope, over and over and over and – I am going crazy, she realised. I will lose my mind on this island, like my mother did before me.
‘I can’t do this any more,’ she said, her voice hoarse.
‘Can’t do what?’
‘This . . . silence. I can’t—’
‘I’m trying to help you, Keelin,’ he cut across her. ‘I do these things because I love you and I want to take care of you. I don’t want you to become ill again. You don’t know how frightening that time was for me, for all of us.’
‘I do know,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry I put you through that. But let me take care of you for a change.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’m going to go to Marigold Cottage,’ she said. ‘You were right about Jake. We will be friends, he and I. We have plenty in common, don’t we? Maybe it’s time I reminded him of that.’
Her husband hesitated, uncertain, but then something broke in him. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and for a moment she thought he might cry. ‘I love you, Keelin. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I love you too.’
It was obvious Noah hadn’t expected Keelin to be knocking on their door. He was in a vest and pyjama bottoms, his long hair held back with a tartan bandana, and there was an open box of sweets in his hands. He froze when he saw it was her. ‘Shit. I thought it was more trick-or-treaters looking for lollies,’ he said. It was Halloween tonight, she realised; she’d forgotten. Keelin thought of October nights celebrating Samhain as a child, watching her mother bake the barmbrack, stirring a coin, a pea, a rag, a ring and a stick into the mixture. Tomás would cut Keelin a slice, slathering it with butter, whispering to his daughter that he bet she would find the ring, its golden sheen foretelling of a white dress, a walk up the aisle and a handsome man waiting for her at the end. Keelin took a bite, testing the brack for any hard edges, and for a moment she hoped she would find nothing there. She didn’t want to grow up, she didn’t want anything to change. She wanted this house and this island, her parents, Seán and Johanna. What need did she have of anything or anyone else? But she started to choke, spitting out half-masticated brack into the palm of her hand, spying a tiny wooden twig within its gooey mess. She whimpered, looking up at her parents in distress, but her father told her it was just a load of rubbish, and she wasn’t to be worrying. He cut her another slice, handing it to her. Here you go, mo stoirín, he said. Everyone deserves a second chance, don’t they?
‘Keelin,’ Noah said now. ‘Keelin, I’m so sorry about what happened during the interview. Jake pushed it too far, he knows that. We didn’t mean to upset Henry, or you for that matter. Jake gets really passionate about this stuff and he—’
‘I’m here to see him,’ she said. ‘Jake.’ It looked cosy inside the cottage, the fire lit, a half-eaten lasagne in a baking tray on the table. Noah nodded, disappearing into Jake’s room, and she could hear them talking in hushed tones. ‘All right,’ she heard Jake say. ‘I get it, mate.’ Then he appeared, standing on the slab of stone outside Marigold Cottage, zipping up a North Face fleece, his persistent cowlick standing on end. His mother would have fussed over that, Keelin bet, wetting her fingers and trying to smooth it down as best she could, but to no avail.
‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been phoning and texting non-stop, Keelin. I was so worried about you.’
‘Why?’ she asked, genuinely curious. Why did all of the men in her life worry about her? What was it about her that prompted such concern?
‘Because of Henry, he was fuming after the interview. Are you sure you’re OK?’ he asked, peering closely at her. ‘You look exhausted.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. She didn’t need Jake to tell her this; she was well aware of what she looked like. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
It was very still as they picked their way down to the headland. The lighthouse on the mainland blinked slowly, and all across Inisrún the houses were lit up like jewels, smoke unfurling from chimneys in peels of grey. The bracken was turning at this time of year, dropping into a deep russet, but they couldn’t see that now, not in the dark. They could only hear the roar of the waves, their feet against the ground as they walked to the cliffs, and their uneven breaths, a fraction out of sync with one another.
‘Watch it,’ Jake said, grabbing Keelin’s arm to pull her back. ‘You’re too close to the edge.’
‘There’s a joke to be made there,’ she said, ‘but I can’t quite seem to find it.’
She crept further, the stones loosening beneath her boots, crumbling into the sea below. Keelin had always needed to go to the cliffs and stand as close to the end of the earth as she could possibly go, staring at the flat expanse of sea and sky, tasting salt on her tongue. Next stop, America, the islanders said, and for the first time she yearned for that place. For dirt and car fumes and buildings so tall it would give you vertigo to look up at them. A place where no one recognised her name, and they’d never heard of the Crowley Girl. She could die in a city like that and no one would know, no one would even care. The prospect was oddly thrilling.
‘Keelin,’ Jake said again, a note of fear creeping into his voice. ‘Be careful, please.’
Still she did not step back. She found that she could not, that the swirling vortex of water below was holding her in its trance. Would it hurt? she wondered. If she fell. Would anyone care as much about her death as they had done about Nessa’s?
‘Are you angry with me about what happened during the interview?’ he asked. ‘I only wanted to push Henry a little, see if I could get something new out of him. It’s worked with other subjects, you know? And Noah and I need this doc to be a success if we’re going to break out of the Australian market, we have to prove we’re not just one-hit wonders. I misjudged the situation, clearly.’ His hand on her elbow, making sure she wasn’t going to jump off the cliff in front of him. ‘But Henry says he won’t give us any more interviews now. We can stay in Marigold Cottage if we want, he’s not going to be petty about it, he said, but he won’t be involved from here on.’ Jake led Keelin back to a large rock, and pulled her to sit on it beside him. ‘Noah is fuming,’ he admitted. ‘We’re not totally fucked yet – we have plenty of other people to talk to; we’ve lots lined up on the mainland and in the UK for the next few weeks – but Noah says we’ll be wasting our time with that, our whole USP was unrestricted access to Henry Kinsella.’
‘What age are you again, Jake?’
‘I’m twenty-nine.’
‘Interesting.’ She bent down to pick up a small pebble, worrying it smooth between her fingers. ‘When I was your age, I was married for the second time with a nine-year-old son to take care of.’
‘Is this your way of telling me that the documentary is meaningless in the greater scheme of things?’ he asked. ‘Because I don’t think Noah is going to see it like that, or the production company for that matter.’
‘No, that’s not what I meant at all. I suppose it’s funny, given how similar you and I are in some ways and then . . .’ She trailed off, still rubbing the stone in her hand. ‘When I was in my twenties, I couldn’t have imagined travelling halfway across the world, like you’ve done – I’m not sure I was ever that brave. For a long time, I felt like I was just surviving. I loved Alex but I never thought I’d be a single parent, that this would be my life, you know? Mark – that’s my ex-husband – he sent me a letter in ’96, saying he wanted to start the divorce process. He wanted to marry his new partner. She was a nurse, he wrote, and he included a photo of the two of them, like I was a relative living out foreign who needed to be kept updated with all the Delaney family news.’ Keelin had recognised Mark’s handwriting on the front of the envelope immediately, her heart pulsing in her throat as she opened it, the small snapshot falling to the ground. She looked at that photo for hours, scanning the nurse’s limbs for bruises, wondering if she could see a shadow of something in the other woman’s eye. If she looked scared the way Keelin had done.
‘That poor woman.’
‘You know something,’ she said. ‘I never thought “poor woman”, although I’m sure Mark did exactly the same thing to her as he did to me.’ A tiny, terrible part of Keelin hoped that he had. For what if it had only been her whom Mark had decided to hurt? What if his new fiancée was simply easier to love? ‘I was relieved,’ she continued. ‘I thought Mark would leave us alone then, he would forget about us. He used to come to the island, in the early years, begging me to take him back. And even when he finally accepted there was no hope left for us as a couple, he would still sit on the stone wall at the end of the garden and watch us. He wanted me to feel scared and to know he could do whatever he wanted, no matter how many times I complained to the guards. We can’t arrest a man for standing outside a house, they told me. Call us when he actually does something. When I got the letter saying he’d met someone else, all I thought was: he’ll leave us alone now . . . That was selfish of me, I suppose.’
‘Alex was better off.’ Jake looked away from her. ‘No father is better than a bad one, I can safely say.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Keelin said. ‘For what happened to you and your family.’
They sat in silence, listening to the waves crash against the pebble beach a hundred feet below them. The crests forming and re-forming and then breaking again. It had been the same for as long as Keelin could remember, and would be the same long after she was gone and everyone had forgotten about the Kinsellas and Misty Hill and the dead Crowley Girl. They were all inconsequential, at the end of it all.
‘What happened after that? After Mark’s letter?’
‘I thought I was grand but a few weeks later, I don’t know how to explain it, it was like I was coming down with the flu. I was tired all the time; I couldn’t stop crying. You’re grieving for what could have been, if that makes sense. The future I thought I’d have, the man Mark might have been if his childhood had been different, if he’d seen any kindness whatsoever from his own father. I had wanted to help Mark so badly and I felt like I’d failed him. Failed Alex too. My dad had been so important to me and the idea of Alex not having that broke my heart.’
‘That wasn’t your fault, Keelin.’
‘Maybe not. I don’t know.’ She pulled her hand back, threw the stone as hard as she could into the sea below. ‘But it was soon after I got the letter from Mark when I read an article in the paper about a course providing training in counselling for mature students, and I thought to myself that’s what I’d do. I had a mind even then that I could help other women who’d been beaten, like I’d been. The services are bad enough as it is now – funding seems to get cut year on year; who cares when women and children are the primary victims of abuse, I suppose – but Ireland in the nineties? No one talked about this stuff. You were expected to get on with things. I went to a solicitor in Carlow once, I just wanted to see what my options were if I did decide to leave Mark. And the man asked me when was the last time I’d had my hair done and did I wear make-up around the house? It was important not to let myself go, he said. And even when I’d gone home to Rún, Mam didn’t want to be hearing about all of that. When I told her Mark was getting re-married, I was expecting some sympathy, I suppose, but she told me I needed to get up off my backside and do something with my life. Alex deserved better than a mother sitting around moping all day, she said. I mentioned then I’d seen an ad for the counselling course, and it was she who made me apply.’
‘And you got in,’ Jake said.
‘I did. I felt guilty at the start, leaving Alex with my mother, but I told myself I’d be back every Friday evening, he’d hardly miss me. The island is a good place to raise children, they have so much freedom here. They’re –’ her voice caught – ‘safe. And I’d been having fun. I hadn’t had fun since I was a teenager. I hated college the first time around, I’d been so shy – this felt like a do-over But I shouldn’t have left Alex here,’ she said. ‘Mam was getting bad at that stage. She was so forgetful – I was afraid it was early Alzheimer’s for a while. It wasn’t fair on Alex, but he seemed to be the only one who could do anything with her, and I just wanted some time for me, for once. I was only in my late twenties. I wanted . . .’ She shook her head. There was no point in making excuses. ‘I can still remember that day,’ she said. ‘I was coming home from the library, the cherry-blossom trees were blooming and I remember thinking, I’m happy. Then I heard someone yelling my name, and it was the woman from the digs, waving at me frantically. There’d been a phone call, she said, an accident. Is it Alex? I managed to get out, and the fear, I can’t explain it. It was crippling, the idea of anything happening to him. But the landlady said no. It was my mother, she said. I was to go home immediately.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jake said, gingerly placing an arm around her shoulders.
‘She’d been on pills after Daddy had died, to help her sleep.’ Keelin’s voice was so calm, it was as if she was talking about someone she barely knew. ‘She hadn’t taken any of them in months, it turned out; she’d been stashing them away. And she’d phone me in the digs in Cork and she’d tell me she couldn’t sleep. Go back to the doctor, I’d say, those tablets should be knocking you out cold. But she didn’t want to go to the mainland alone, she said, and it was obvious she was hoping I’d bring her. And I should have. I should have. But I just pretended like I didn’t know what she was hinting at. I didn’t want to have to think about her, or Daddy, or even Alex, when I was at college. I wanted to be free.’ She was afraid to look at Jake to see what his reaction was. ‘You must think I’m a horrible person.’
‘I don’t, Keelin.’
You should, she thought. You would, if you knew the truth about me. ‘It was Alex who found Mam,’ she said. ‘He’d been out exploring – he was always the sort of child who preferred his own company. He would roam the island all day, coming home spinning tales of pirates and smugglers, hidden coves in the sea cliffs. Mam had given him a packed lunch, told him to stay out as long as he liked. When he came home, he . . . he found her there, in her bed. He said it was like she was waiting for him.’
A doctor came from the mainland to pronounce her mother dead, a wake quickly arranged. It was a muted affair, the islanders huddled into the cramped parlour around the open coffin, everyone cutting glances at Alex. The poor lad, Keelin overheard a neighbour say through a mouthful of buttered scone, and that mother of his off gallivanting on the mainland when all this was going on. Sure the dogs on the street could see Cáit Ó Mordha was in a bad way. Terrible stuff all together, they agreed. Keelin took Alex’s hand in her own and he stared up at her with those new eyes of his, eyes that had seen too much for one so young. I will never leave you again, she promised him silently, and she barely left his side in the weeks to follow. Not that her son seemed to notice. He was practically catatonic, fighting sleep every night because he was terrified the spirit of his mamó would haunt him in his dreams, arriving at the breakfast table in the morning pale and drawn. It was Henry Kinsella who suggested a child psychologist, Henry, who was fast becoming a – a friend, maybe? Keelin wasn’t sure. It had been years since she had last seen the younger Kinsella brother, and she’d tried to hide her surprise when he arrived at the funeral to offer his condolences, so tall in his long navy overcoat, smelling of expensive cologne. Her mother would have liked that, delighted her funeral had been graced by one of the Kinsellas, but Keelin hadn’t given him another thought until ten days later when the phone rang, that deep voice and its plummy accent on the other end. Henry Kinsella here, he said. Just wanted to check in. He rang again, once a week in the beginning, then twice a week, and soon they were talking every day, or Keelin was talking at least, telling Henry things she had never told anyone else – about her first marriage and what Mark had done to her, the guilt she felt over leaving Alex alone with his grandmother, her fears for her son, this voluntary vow of silence the boy had taken. Henry didn’t say much in return, but during their next conversation he told her a consultation had been scheduled with a child psychologist in Cork, a woman whose reputation was so renowned that even Keelin’s supervisor hadn’t been able to help her get an appointment. Henry shrugged when Keelin asked how he’d managed to skip the consultant’s notoriously long waiting list. I had a friend make a call, was all he said. When the day of the appointment came, Keelin felt sick to her stomach but she smiled at her son as they stepped onto the ferry, leading him to a bench inside the poky cabin. He sat there, staring at the posters on the walls – safety procedures to be followed in case of emergency, B & Bs that had rooms for rent on the island, restaurants in Baltimore offering a ten-per-cent discount to anyone who presented their ferry ticket – while Keelin smiled at Murphy’s, who were off to visit their daughter in Dublin. We’re going to the mainland to get a new pair of school shoes for this one, she fibbed, and she pretended not to see Alex looking up at her sadly as she told the lie. Come, mo stoirín, she said, when the ferry docked. Let’s go. And there, at the top of the steps at the pier, she saw Henry Kinsella, reaching out his hand to help her. I thought you might need some extra support today, he said.
‘Keelin,’ Jake said now, and she started. He was fumbling in his pocket, pulling out a small packet of Kleenex, and it was only then she realised she was crying.
‘Thanks,’ she said as he handed her a tissue. ‘You came prepared.’
‘Irish weather,’ he said. ‘I’m constantly sniffling. It’s driving Noah mad.’ He took a tissue himself, as if to prove the point. ‘Thank you for sharing that with me, Keelin,’ he said gently. ‘I know it’s not easy but I’m honoured you would open up to me like this.’
‘I don’t know why,’ she replied, ‘but for some reason, I feel like I can trust you.’
She said goodnight to Jake at the gate to Marigold Cottage, telling him she would call in the morning for her next interview, as planned. When she was at the bottom of her own garden, she looked up to see Henry standing at the bedroom window, waiting for her.
‘Darling,’ he said, when she slipped under the covers beside him, wincing at how cold the sheets were. ‘Did it go well?’
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
‘Will you do something for me now?’ she said, pausing until he nodded. ‘Will you keep an eye on Alex? Find out where he’s going in the evenings? I’m worried about him.’
‘I’ll take care of it,’ her husband said, and he reached down between her legs, smiling at her intake of breath. He touched her until she came, silently shuddering. ‘Goodnight,’ he whispered, and he moved away from her, to his own side of the bed. For the first time in weeks, Keelin had enough space to breathe.
She fell asleep instantly.