The Crowley Girl
When Henry and Keelin were first married, she had been relieved to discover that, unlike her first husband, Henry wasn’t the jealous type. He didn’t look at her text messages or demand access to her emails, he didn’t expect her to hand over the password to her Facebook account for the sake of ‘transparency’. There was a level of respect there from the very beginning, a mutual understanding that they were both entitled to some privacy.
So, when Keelin went into Henry’s study that day, she hadn’t intended to look at his computer. She was searching for a book on transcendental meditation her father-in-law had given Henry the previous Christmas. Jonathan had been meditating for years; everyone was doing it in the seventies, he said, everyone cool anyway. Keelin loved it when Jonathan told stories about London at that time, the parties he and Olivia had thrown in their Kensington townhouse. Mick Jagger would come with Bianca, he said, Edna O’Brien was a staple and even Princess Margaret would sometimes arrive, accompanied by her sullen protection officer, who would eye the inebriated guests with suspicion. It had been one of the Beatles who’d turned Jonathan on to TM – Ringo, or maybe Paul, he couldn’t remember, but he promised Keelin the practice would transform her life. My life could do with some transforming, she joked, hugging Jonathan and Olivia goodbye. What’s wrong with your life, exactly? Henry asked in the car as they drove away, both of them still waving at his parents through the windscreen. I’m trying so hard here, Keelin, to make things perfect for you and the kids. What more do you want from me? She apologised. It was a flippant remark, she hadn’t meant anything by it, she said, but he refused to talk to her for the rest of the journey to Inverness airport, Evie dozing in the back seat.
She couldn’t see the book on the shelves or in Henry’s desk drawers. Maybe her husband had thrown it away. It wasn’t his thing, too ‘woo-woo’, he had said when he’d unwrapped it. She sat on the cushy leather seat, twirling it around once, twice, before coming to a standstill. His desk was perfectly neat, as always; it was just the PC, a leather-bound jotter and a Montblanc fountain pen, engraved with his full name in a cursive print, Henry Thomas Kinsella. Her eyes began to follow the movement of the computer’s screensaver, hypnotised by the cosmos of writhing stars. For some reason – she couldn’t explain it to herself, although later she would wonder if she’d been led by instinct, a sixth sense which had compelled her to do it – she put her hand out and shook the mouse, pausing when the computer asked for Henry’s password. She typed in Evie’s date of birth, putting a hand on her heart with an ‘awww’ when it worked on the first try. Henry could be so sweet sometimes. She scanned the folders on the desktop, boring, boring, boring. It was all work related, Misty Hill accounts, nothing of any great interest. Then she saw one called ‘Birdwatching’. When had Henry developed an interest in birdwatching? Oh, this was too good – she was already planning how best to mercilessly tease him for his new hobby as she clicked on the folder, finding a thumbnail of a photo inside. She clicked on that to enlarge it and—
‘What are you doing, darling?’ Henry’s hands on the chair, spinning it around, smiling at her. He looked over her shoulder, his face paling at what he saw there. He reached around her and shut the computer down as quickly as he could.
‘What was that?’ she said, trying to see past him but the screen was blank. What had she just seen – long legs and fair skin and a delicate tattoo dancing across the ribs? It was the shape of a bird, the tattoo. A swallow, or a swift perhaps? ‘Why do you have a photo of a naked girl on your computer, Henry?’
‘Oh, please. It’s rather rich you trying to take the moral high ground here, Keelin. This isn’t the kind of relationship I presumed we had; we don’t snoop around like this. I thought we trusted each other. I’m so disappointed.’
‘Excuse me? You have porn on y—’
‘For God’s sake, lower your voice,’ he said, pointing at the open door. ‘Evie is in her playroom and I don’t think she’s quite old enough for us to explain pornography to her, do you?’
‘You have a photo of a naked teenager on your computer. Jesus Christ, that girl looked barely legal,’ Keelin whispered angrily. ‘You can stop acting like the injured party, Henry.’
‘I didn’t realise you had such an issue with porn. You don’t seem to mind when we watch it together, do you, darling?’ he said with a half-smile. He knelt down, one hand on each of her knees, pulling them apart. ‘You rather enjoy it then, I’ve always found.’
‘That’s different, that’s for the two of us and not . . .’ Keelin closed her eyes, her breath drawing shallow. She should tell him to stop, now. She should, she should . . . ‘Evie . . .’ she said weakly as Henry snaked his hand under her skirt, inching her knickers down her legs.
‘She’s playing with her new Crayola set,’ he said. ‘Barring an earthquake, we’re not going to see her for at least half an hour.’ Keelin pictured their daughter upstairs, sitting at the multicoloured table with legs that resembled sticks of crayon, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth as she folded over the page, scribbling reds and blues and pinks within the lines of the colouring book. ‘What about Alex?’ she asked.
‘He’s gone for a walk with Nessa Crowley.’
Keelin tried to sit up, to push Henry away from her. They had to have a conversation about Alex’s relationship with Nessa, it couldn’t continue, they had to – ‘Shh, darling,’ her husband said, kissing his way up her inner thighs, and she gasped as he touched her clitoris with the tip of his tongue. ‘Just relax.’
After she came, a hand over her mouth to silence herself in case her daughter heard her, Henry dropped to the floor, pretending to be exhausted. ‘You’ll be the death of me, Keelin Kinsella,’ he said, as she shuffled her underwear back on, pulling her skirt down. She felt embarrassed suddenly, too exposed, and she wanted to cover herself.
‘Henry,’ she said cautiously, ‘about that photo – I’m not trying to be prudish here, but I still feel weird about it. Don’t yell at me, I can’t help it.’
‘I’m not going to yell at you. When have I ever yelled at you?’ he said, propping himself up on his elbows. ‘I’m sorry, darling. It was a stupid prank Miles was playing on me. It’s nothing for you to worry about.’
‘It’s just that it looked so much like . . .’
It looked like Greta Ainsworth, Keelin wanted to say, the dead girl. The woman she was not allowed to mention in her husband’s presence. She’d searched for Greta’s name on the internet before, finding some old modelling photos, a couple of magazine covers from the nineties, but there was so little information about her. She had died in a car crash at the height of her career, a newspaper article said, only twenty-five years of age, but there were no other details. Did Henry still have old photos of his ex-girlfriend? Was Keelin even allowed to feel uneasy about that?
‘You thought it looked like whom?’ Henry asked, watching her.
‘I thought it looked like someone I know,’ she replied.