The Crowley Girl
Keelin stayed in her bedroom the night of her thirty-seventh birthday party, and it was peaceful there, watching the lightning lick the earth clean until her bedside lamp began to flicker. A stutter at first, on–off, a whisper of a what was that? Barely perceptible, unless you were looking for it. Then on–off, and staying off, the island tumbling into a darkness so deep it felt as if her eyes had been cut out of her head. The music stopped, a roar of voices – ‘What?’ ‘Fuck.’ ‘Shit.’ ‘That’s my foot, you ass.’ Above it all, she could hear someone calling her name.
‘Keelin? Keelin?’
Footsteps on the stairs, too slow to be Alex’s, and not deliberate enough to be Henry’s, she wasn’t sure who this person was. A knock at the door – how did they even know she was in here? – then another one, more insistent, then a voice. ‘Keelin.’ It was Miles. He sounded sober, despite the coke; his capacity for drugs had always been much higher than Henry’s. ‘Are you awake? My apologies for disturbing you but we’re in rather a bind. The power has gone out.’
‘Miles?’ she said, making her voice sound sleepy. ‘Sorry, I had too much to drink and I . . . I must have dozed off.’ She was wearing her pyjamas and dressing gown, her face slick with night cream. She didn’t want him to see her like this, she would have bet good money he’d never seen his own wife without perfectly applied make-up. ‘Can you get Henry to fix it?’
‘We don’t know where he is, I’m afraid,’ Miles said.
‘OK. I’m coming.’ She swung her legs off the bed, cursing as she walloped her foot against the bedside locker. Using the light from her phone, she changed into leggings and flat boots, pulling her Musto rain jacket over a threadbare geansaí. ‘Right,’ she said to Miles when she opened the bedroom door, hoping he wouldn’t notice her oily skin, ‘let’s get this sorted, shall we?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she reassured guests as she passed them, downstairs and through the hall and into the kitchen, their worried faces illuminated by phone light. ‘We have it under control.
‘Have you seen Henry?’ she asked but everyone just shrugged in response. No, no, not for a while now, they said. Wasn’t he with you, Keelin?
‘There’s a small generator for Misty Hill,’ she told Miles as she hoisted herself up onto the counter in the utility room, feeling around the top shelf of the cupboard for a torch. She handed him the three flashlights she found there, along with two boxes of matches and a plastic bag of tea lights left over since Christmas. ‘But it needs to be switched on and I’m not sure where it is, Henry’s always taken care of that kind of thing . . . I don’t understand where he’s got to – it’s not like him to miss a party.’ She took Miles’s outstretched hand and jumped down, the bang of the cold tiles reverberating through her shoes and into the soles of her feet. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘You distribute those – and tell people to be careful with the matches, will you? The last thing we need is for the house to go up in flames. I’ll go look for that husband of mine.’
Henry wasn’t in Evie’s bedroom, and Alex’s was locked, as it always was on nights like this, her son squeamish at the thought of strangers wandering into his room and touching his things without permission. She retraced her steps, feeling her way downstairs and through the hall, but it was so dark she could barely see, even with the candles twinkling on windowsills and tabletops. She called out his name again, but it was lost in the chatter of voices:
– we’re stuck here, this is such a –
– this is what you get in the country, I suppose, but really I –
– bloody Ireland. I don’t –
– Do you have any signal yet? This is absolutely –
And then she realised. She still hadn’t seen Alex, and she hadn’t seen Nessa either. The girl had probably pulled her son into a corner, whispering that she wanted him, now, hoisting up her dress to show him how ready she was. She would care little that they were in Keelin’s house and could be caught at any time. That would be half the thrill for a girl like that, she bet. Keelin imagined Nessa pressing her body against Alex’s, reaching her hand down to – no, she said to herself, queasy. She wasn’t going to think about that. She spotted Miles lighting a row of tea lights on top of the mantlepiece, his forehead creasing in concentration. ‘Have you seen Alex?’ she asked, but Miles shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t have gone out?’ he asked, recoiling as a gust of wind punched against the windows. Was the glass strong enough to withstand the pressure; should she be warning people to stay away from them in case they shattered? ‘Not in this weather, surely?’
‘I don’t know.’ Keelin tried the handle to the patio, and the door flew open, almost taken off its hinges. ‘Shit,’ she muttered, struggling to close it behind her. She pushed against the wind, feeling as if she might be knocked off her feet with the weight of it. ‘Alex,’ she yelled. ‘Alex!’ The sky was on fire, like shooting bursts of fireworks. A cracking whip of light and then an ear-splitting grumble of thunder, too close together for comfort. The storm must be right above the house, she could hear her father warning her; she needed to get inside immediately. She stumbled, the wind slamming her into the garage, her spine straightening in pain as she felt the wallop of the wooden wall against her back. She could barely see now, blinded by the heavy rain, but she fumbled until her fingers grasped the iron handle, trying frantically to slot it sideways. She nearly had to crawl into the garage, using all of her strength to pull the door closed behind her. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she muttered as she pushed herself to standing, shaking the wet off her like a dog.
Then, with a prickle against the nape of her neck, she could feel that something was behind her. She turned around, trying to see in the shadows, but there was nothing. Still, she could sense a presence, a person. Someone holding their breath and waiting for Keelin to move first.
‘Henry?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Is that you?’
‘Darling.’ She heard her husband come towards her, his steps heavy on the wooden floor. ‘I came to get more food – the caterer’s left the platters out here and we’ve enough to feed an army, but the weather was so frightful I thought I should stay here and wait it out. But I don’t think it’s going to get any better, is it? What rotten luck.’ His hand on her waist, nudging her towards the door. ‘Let’s go back to the house, shall we?’
‘But we have to get the generator sorted and I can’t find Alex, where –’ She stopped, inhaling deeply. No, she thought. It couldn’t be. No. She took another breath in through her nose, until she was sure, she needed to be sure. But she had been correct. It was the scent of apple shampoo.
A flare of lightning, double quick, throwing the room into relief. The shape of a person standing beside her husband, tall and thin. A woman. She disappeared into the night again but Keelin pressed the keys on her phone with trembling fingers and held it up, pointing it in their faces. Smeared lipstick and an unbuttoned shirt and a short black dress, bunched around the woman’s waist, showing lace knickers and long, lean thighs.
‘It’s not what it looks like,’ Henry said, and Keelin couldn’t help but laugh, because of all the stupid, clichéd things her husband could have said when she caught him fucking a twenty-one-year-old, that had to be top of the list.
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘Just shut up, just, just –’ And she reached out and hit him across the face as hard as she could. She did it again, scrawling at him, wanting to feel his skin under her fingernails. She would draw blood from this man. ‘I’ll kill you,’ she shouted. ‘I’ll kill you, you piece of shit.’
‘Keelin . . .’ The young woman’s voice. ‘Stop it. You’re hurting him.’ Nessa stood in between them, wincing as Keelin’s flailing hands struck her too. ‘Henry.’ She crouched down. ‘H, are you OK?’ As Keelin kept her mobile light trained on the two of them, she could see the girl stare at her husband like she had loved him for years. It was then she realised this wasn’t a one-time thing, a drunken snog after too many glasses of wine. This had happened before, and more than once. The worst of it was how good they looked together – they made sense in a way Keelin suspected she and Henry never had. Both tall and beautiful and infinitely desirable. How long had this been going on for? she wondered, suddenly nauseated. How could she have been so blind?
‘Get out of my house right now,’ Keelin told Nessa Crowley. ‘Or I’ll kill you too.’