‘So what changed?’ I asked her.
She shrugged. ‘My dad’s work. He had to go away earlier than he thought. He cancelled.’
‘He shouldn’t have done that.’
Her fingers went lifeless in mine, and her voice cooled.
‘My dad needs his work. It’s important to him. Very important.’
Keep your mouth shut, Nick.
I squeezed her hand to make it mine again. ‘Well, I’m glad anyway.’
When in a hole, Nick, stop digging.
‘I’m glad you’re still here,’ I clarified. ‘I’m glad I could see you.’
Why was it that around Orla I was lamer than a three-legged dog? But she said, ‘Yeah. I know,’ and her fingertips curled round the edge of my hand.
The early September sun was out, giving the grey sea a skin of light. We leaned on the chipped handrail watching the tide, which was right in, small dirty waves slapping the sea wall. A fag end, a plastic bottle and a piece of dirty orange rope rocked in the swell, sucked around in the motion of the water.
‘Why is that?’ said Orla.
‘What?’
‘Why is there always a bit of orange rope? When you go to the seaside there’s always a bit of orange rope.’
‘And half a tyre.’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’ She scraped up a handful of small stones and started to use the bottle for target practice. ‘And I dread to think what else.’
I thought, I went swimming in that. To impress this wumman, I went in there. Made my side itch just thinking about it.
‘I’m glad you never let me drown.’
She gave me a sidelong look that was almost a smile. ‘Me and all.’
I put my arm across her shoulders, happy when she leaned into me. A slight shiver ran across her skin, picked up and transmitted by my nerve endings. I liked this cooler weather.
‘How’s your sister?’ Orla flung the rest of her gravel. It spattered on the water’s surface and sank.
‘Fine.’ I was almost afraid to ask, in case she’d evaporated into small particles overnight, but I managed to say: ‘How’s your mum?’
‘Kind of better.’ Orla paused. ‘She’s at work. Works Saturdays.’
‘I knew that.’
‘She wanted to take the day off. Y’know, when Dad cancelled, she thought she should spend time with me instead. Said she felt guilty, but I told her not to be stupid. Like she has anything to feel guilty about.’
We watched the milky sheen of light undulate on the water.
‘You know what she’s really guilty about? Not coming to the trial. I talked to her yesterday.’
No comment, no comment, for God’s sake. ‘At least you and your dad were there.’ And me and Mum, sitting one row behind and six chairs along. Even at the trial I could barely take my eyes off Orla.
‘She should have been there from the start,’ said Orla flatly. ‘Couldn’t face it, couldn’t face Kev. I could see that, but it was wrong. No, not wrong, a bad decision. I kind of fell out with her yesterday, about that and … about Allie.’
‘Did you?’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this.
‘I don’t think Mum should give her a hard time. Because, you know, she’s fine, Allie. Far as I’m concerned, if she needs my brother she can have him. Because of what she did.’
What she did.
Whispered the last words he’d ever hear and told him he wasn’t going to die? Held him in her arms as he died anyway? Lied to him? The last thing the boy ever heard was a lie.
Little white lie.
‘Not that,’ said Orla, like she could read my mind. ‘The trial, I mean.’
What Allie did at the trial, then. And that was to look into Kev’s eyes with her own dead black ones, make him look away, make him shiver and rub his neck and scowl. And then she looked at the judge and she said: