I could still picture Mickey’s twisted leer, his implied promise. Mickey wasn’t in jail. I shivered.
He’d never dared come after Allie before now. I’d always known he wouldn’t. His little brother was serving a life sentence and his mother’s grief was genuine, if noisy. He wouldn’t lose her another son.
Not while she was alive.
I shivered again.
Poor woman. Never killed anyone. So sad.
She wasn’t alive. The trial hadn’t killed her but she was dead. She didn’t have feelings to hurt any more. The cancer came back. With a vengeance.
That can be fatal, you know. Stupidhead.
She wasn’t there to be damaged. Unlike –
No, no, no. Mickey was spit and wind and empty threat, and I couldn’t live with any other possibility, because what could I ever do about it otherwise? It wasn’t enough to take to the police: one name-calling and a parking incident on a public road.
I never forget a face. Bitch.
So what? Face recognition. Not an uncommon talent.
They’d laugh at me. I’d seen these things in the papers, in the TV news. The police had other things to think about; they had targets to meet. And if I asked Dad to tell them he’d get purple and high-pitched and high-dudgeoned. They’d laugh even more at Dad.
What was I supposed to do to protect Allie? You have to look after yourself.
I shook my head violently. Orla was still leaning on the rail cemented into the sea wall, gazing down, cool as the gunmetal sea. Just watching her made me feel better.
Something struck me then. It just sort of fell off my tongue and out of my mouth.
‘You’re so strong,’ I said. ‘I can’t take any more brittle people. You touch them and they break.’
Orla turned. For a moment she examined my face, then she reached out and drew one fingertip along the straight line of my eyebrow.
‘I won’t break.’
‘No,’ I said.
She glanced out to the horizon. ‘I need to go home now.’
‘Why?’ I was bitterly and abruptly disappointed. ‘I thought your mum was at work.’
She eased away from my arm, took her gum from her mouth between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it into the sloshing grey waves.
‘Come back with me,’ she said.