Is this really happening?
Are you here, sitting in front of the TV, right now, this minute, waiting for the match to start, drinking can after can of beer? Or is it somebody else, not you?
Did you do that? You couldn’t have.
Do what?
Did you take a pillow to Jenny and Cass upstairs, after drugging them? Like you’d planned for weeks. Was that you?
Ah, but it was. You did. Or did you? You’re not sure. How can you not be sure of something like that?
The girls are in their beds upstairs. You’re almost certain of it. You look around the room – well, they’re not here, where else could they be? You crushed up the Halcion tablets first thing this morning, with the mortar and pestle, when Maura left to go to the match. You cried as you were doing it, the sound of the tablets cracking like dried bones. Then you sprinkled the powder into their hot chocolate. You did.
You did.
You try to remember if you put the pillow over their precious sleeping faces, or if you just stood there with it trembling in your hands, walking back and forth at the end of the beds, talking to yourself. The clear morning sunlight flowed through the window, reflecting off the creamy pillowcase in your hand. You remember that powdery smell in their room. Their little chests rising and falling as they slept. Jenny’s left leg bent funnily under her. Cass’s Star Wars ‘tattoo’ of that robot on her forearm. Her strawberry blonde hair spilling down over her face. Those pink Frozen pyjamas that she insists upon wearing, night after night – with the Disneyfied, doe-eyed, heart-shaped faces of those sisters, Anna and Emma. Or is it Elsa?
Did you right Cass’s hair and straighten Jenny’s leg before you took the pillow to them? You can’t remember. You must have.
You do know that Jenny walked groggily up the stairs and you did carry Cass up to the bed after the hot chocolate. That is definite. They are in their beds. That’s for sure.
The pencil feels heavy in your fingers as you try to write some words in the notebook. But no words will come. What words are there, anyway? And what good would they do her?
You open another can, looking blankly at the screen. The sound is turned down because of the headache. You couldn’t be listening to those muppets, anyway. The minor match is nearly finished. Kilkenny again, the bastards. Your phone (on Airplane Mode) says 13:57. An hour and a half to go.
She was full of it this morning, of course. Heading off to the match with Trish and that dopey husband of hers. Poured, as she’d say herself, into those white skinny jeans she thinks she’s only divine in. What was that expression she had the other day about something she didn’t like? Oh, yes. I wouldn’t be wild about that. Yes. Very good when you think of it, but the opposite doesn’t work. I’m wild about that. No. You can say, I’m crazy about that, all right. Can you say I’m not crazy about that?
Speaking of crazy, take another Tofranil there, while you think of it, boy. Take two, to be sure to be sure.
You open another can. These slabs of beer are great value, only €20 for twenty-four cans. You hear a song from the radio in the kitchen: ‘Breakfast in America’. E.L.O. Or is it Supertramp? You sing along about the girls in California, a vision entering your mind of blue skies and blonde young women in bikinis on a beach.
You ‘na na na’ yourself off into reverie and then you sleep. You dream about walking down a never-ending hospital corridor. It’s in John of Gods, of course, and yet it isn’t. In the way that dreams have of bringing you somewhere that isn’t really there. It is John of Gods because you know it is. It isn’t because there are no zombie patients shuffling around in tracksuit pants and stained T-shirts; no kind-faced nurses or competent-faced psychiatrists; no bloat-faced, doped-up, stubbled ex-architects looking out at you from mirrors. No smells or mumbling or shame or terror.
You wake up. Can you even smell in dreams? It bothers you. You try to recall if you ever have. There are ads on the TV and you have a sudden horror that you slept out. 14:29. Phew. An hour to go. A bit of a lurch when you get up, but you right yourself. Have to tidy the place up. You pick up some empty cans and the hot chocolate cups – one Star Wars, one Frozen. You smell the dregs in the cups. Nothing. No wonder they use it to drug girls and rape them. Another thing you’re saving them from.
Altruistic filicide – you count them, seven syllables. Sounds almost innocuous. Stupid name, Halcion, too, when you think of it. Should be called Somnium, or something like that.
The sunlight in the kitchen assaults your eyes and takes you back to the incessant rows when you were redesigning the house. When you’d show her the new drawings.
‘I thought we were going to have the island here,’ she said, pointing to the centre of the room on the plan.
‘Yeah, it kind of blocks the flow there. If we have it here, we’ll get the benefit of the French doors and the view outside.’
‘Fuck the fucking flow of the room, I wanted it there. It’s the one thing I asked you, the one thing – to have my own kitchen. But no. The flow of the room. Jesus Christ,’ she said, storming out and slamming the door behind her.
She never got her island in the end. Events intervened, didn’t they? Events, dear boy. But you were right, too, it would have blocked the flow. Not that it matters now. The bank will probably take the house anyway, along with everything else.
You put the cups in the dishwasher. Must turn that on, too.
It all seems so unreal. Or surreal. Maybe you’re dreaming the whole thing. Maybe you’ll wake up in a minute and it’ll be …
Be what?
Be fine?
Be over?
She’ll have ‘lover boy’ to console her, of course. The barefaced cheek of her, denying it to your face when you eventually built up the courage to confront her. It was all in your head, she had no interest whatsoever in any other man, you invented the whole thing. She thinks you’re some fool, laughing at you behind your back, but we’ll see who has the last laugh. She can go and fuck him all she wants now. See how she enjoys it now. She can make two more kids for herself with him and see how that works out. But she’s not getting yours. Oh, no, they’re yours. They stay with you.
Anyway, the literature was quite clear: Resnick’s study catalogued the motives for filicide as: 1) altruistic (tick); 2) acutely psychotic (tick, probably); 3) accidental filicide (e.g. maltreatment) (no tick); 4) unwanted child (no tick); and 5) spouse revenge (tick).
Three out of five. And when you add in the history of depression (tick), previous self-harm (tick), mental illness (tick), consumption of alcohol and medication (tick tick), and fear of spousal estrangement (tick tick tick), that’s a lot of ticking. Which reminds you.
You look at the kitchen clock. 3:14, getting close now. They’ll be on the pitch already. If they can only mark McMahon, they’ll do it. Sully’s scoring goals, he’s scoring goals.
If you’re psychotic, can you be aware that you’re psychotic? Wouldn’t that negate the psychosis, if it’s true? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
You check yourself – you wonder sometimes if you’re saying out loud what you’re thinking. No. It’s quiet.
Another thing: isn’t it fair to say that if life is hard (which it is) and full of pain and suffering (which it is) and then you fall in love and get dumped (which you do) and then you’re alone and lonely (which you are) and then you get depressed (which you do) and then you can’t work (which you can’t) and then you are poor (which you will become) and then you are stressed to the gills (which you are) and then you get old (which you do) and then you get sick (which you will) and then you die in misery (inevitably), isn’t it better to prevent all that?
Isn’t it?
To have never suffered pain or worry or despair? To fall asleep painlessly as a child and never to wake up? As an innocent? Pure and clean? To become angelic, to become, in fact, an angel. Angels – that’s what they looked like in their two beds and that’s what they will always be now. Perfect. Washed pure in the sunlight. Buried side by side in their little white coffins in their good dresses. Beautiful and pure. Daddy’s little angels.
And you there with them. Beside them in the ground. Looking after them, forever.
Will that happen? Will it, though?
You bend over. You moan. You hold on to the sink for support. You press your forehead against the sun-warmed white ceramic.
You wander back into the living room. Stagger, really. You flop on the sofa. Need to keep on top of things, but fuck it. You open another can from the slab. You think about turning up the sound, but no, this is better. Both teams are parading behind the band. The players form two lines for the national anthem and face the flag. After that, they take their places around the pitch. Here we go. Clare bastards. Up the Rebels!
Looks like they put Culloty on McMahon at left half-back. Good move. The game begins. You sip your beer and settle down to fret.
The game is shit. Cork are hanging on for dear life. Sully hardly touches the ball. Lucky to be just a couple of points down at half-time.
You take a well-earned piss in the downstairs toilet. Coming back into the living room, you stand and stare for several moments at the carpeted stairs through the door. No going back upstairs, not now. Angels. Daddy’s angels, forever.
You wake up on the sofa. Did you fall asleep again? Shit, you did. How could you have fallen asleep at a time like this? You look at the TV but can’t focus. You’re groggy; must be all the beer.
You look for the packet with the fifteen metres of rope on the coffee table; it isn’t there. It was earlier, you’re almost certain. You bought it six months ago, surprised that the shortest rope you could get was fifteen metres long.
Did you bring it in from the shed earlier and put it on the table? Did you open the packet and make the noose like you learned on YouTube and wrap it around two of the banisters? You’re almost certain you did. Or did you imagine it?
The match is over and the muppets are talking in silence. They start laughing, whatever’s funny. It switches to show Sean Culloty accept the cup and raise it above his head. Did Cork win?
You look to your left.
Two little pale waifs are standing by the door in their little bare feet. Two angels. Cass in her Frozen pyjamas, Eeyore hanging from her right hand. Jenny in her long nightdress, the back of her index finger in her mouth, the way she does when she’s anxious; her hair over her eye, the way it hangs there.
Your angels.
Jenny has grown so tall. She’s the image of your sister, Eva, at that age – all gangly arms and legs. She’s looking straight at you, her head swaying slightly.
Cass is staring at the TV. Her eyes are wide, replete with wonder, and she gives a shiver of excitement. She says something; you almost don’t hear her. She says, ‘Oh.’
You feel your face fall in upon itself. It fissures and caves in and something escapes out of it. Some untenable sound.
Is this really happening?