DYMPHNA

Dymphna felt her left leg trembling. Soon her right leg would shake too. Usually she could conceal it. Especially if she was sitting down.

She was in the Darcys’ kitchen, wedged against the back door. Kelpie by her side. Jimmy on the other. Her leg’s tremor causing the door, already loose on its hinges, to vibrate. Kelpie must know she was shaking. But surely Mrs. Darcy’s brood were gobbling their porridge too loudly to notice? Even though they were seated mere inches away. Even though the ones without their backs to her were staring at Dymphna, barely blinking.

She had to steady herself. If she wasn’t calm, she couldn’t plan her way out of this imbroglio.

“Why are you so pretty?” one of the little Darcys asked.

Dymphna smiled. “Thank you.”

The littlie goggled at her.

“’Cause she’s got money, silly,” an older one replied.

“Money don’t make you pretty,” the younger one protested. “You is or you ain’t.”

“It helps,” Dymphna could not resist replying. Money kept you clean and housed and eating well and wearing beautiful clothes and having your hair styled and your nails done by other people. She was quite sure she spent more on a jar of face cream than the Darcys spent on food in a month.

“How much did your hat cost?” another of the little Darcys asked.

Dymphna laughed, though her leg did not stop shaking.

“Mary!” Mrs. Darcy glared at the girl. “Ain’t polite to ask about money. Finish your breakfast, the lot of youse. Now.”

The police hadn’t asked after Dymphna by name. She could take comfort in that, couldn’t she? But their description fitted her. Well-dressed, blonde. Surely she wasn’t the only one in Surry Hills. There was that girl who worked at the florist’s on Taylor Square. Very pretty she was, blonde like Dymphna, and always smartly dressed.

What did the police know? She was sure she and Kelpie hadn’t been seen. If they had, surely they would already have been dragged from the Darcys’ yard and thrown in the lock-up. Or Dymphna would be. They would hand Kelpie over to Child Welfare. Dymphna didn’t know which was worse.

Even if they knew nothing about what had happened last night, everyone knew Jimmy was her man. They would be coming by to question her. They always did.

Snowy Fullerton had killed Jimmy.

What if she’d arrived when Snowy was still there? Would he have killed her too? She didn’t think so. Snowy and she, they were friends. She could make a sly comment and he’d understand. Make a similar observation of his own. She liked Snowy.

Snowy did not pick fights, and he didn’t kill unless his boss told him to. Had his boss told him to kill Dymphna too? Was he looking for her now? If Snowy had to kill her, he would be sorry about it. She wasn’t sure what difference that made. She didn’t doubt he’d been sorry to kill Jimmy. That didn’t make Jimmy any less dead.

Or any less of a ghost railing at being dead.

His face was getting darker because Kelpie wasn’t answering any of his questions. When he was alive, his face would turn bright red when he was angry, when he laughed too hard, when they had sex.

Dymphna had thought Jimmy was smart enough to realise why Kelpie was ignoring him in a room full of the living. His adjustment to being dead was going to be slow. From what she’d seen, it was slow for most people. No one believed they were going to die, and once dead it was hard to let go of that disbelief.

At least Jimmy wasn’t trying to touch her or talk at her now.

He was focused on Kelpie. Poor Kelpie.

If Dymphna’s leg hadn’t been shaking, if her man weren’t dead, if she weren’t afraid that Mr. Davidson or Glory would find and kill her, she would have laughed. She was in a none-too-clean room full of Irish tykes, their overworked mother, handsome eldest brother, Kelpie, and the ghost of her dead man.

Kelpie and Jimmy Palmer in the same room.

Chance had thrown Dymphna and Kelpie together. Left to herself, she would have gone on waiting for the perfect moment to introduce herself to the girl. She was too nervous about frightening her off. Dymphna’s desire to win Kelpie over was too intense.

But here Kelpie was, and for the first time in Dymphna’s life, she was with someone who could hear every word the dead said.

It made Jimmy harder to ignore because she couldn’t help but watch Kelpie interact with him, which led her gaze back to Jimmy, whom she could not look at without giving herself away.

Jimmy had been alive yesterday; Jimmy had been alive mere hours ago. Her leg shook harder.

Focus. Where had the lodger gone? To the police? The shakes were in her hands now. She put them behind her back.

“We should go,” Dymphna said. “Your lodger …”

“Miss Pattinson won’t say nothing to no one. She’s here to escape her husband. Ain’t even her real name. She won’t do nothing that’ll help him find her.”

“Her old man tried to dead her,” one of the smaller Darcys announced.

“With an axe,” another added breathlessly.

Dymphna breathed in sharply. Did it have to be an axe?

Kelpie turned to look at her and then away.

Dymphna shivered. She had to calm herself.

Sheep’s brains.

Dymphna’s mother used to make brains for her and her twin sisters when they were wee. Strained so that they became a delicate, tiny-bubbled sauce. They called it fluffy. It was the one savoury dish Mama always prepared, though Isla, their cook, made most of their food.

Mama had made it for them whenever they were upset. When the littlies, faces streaked with tears, begged, “Fluffy, please, Mama.” Or when Dymphna’s leg started shaking. She’d had these tell-tale tremors all her life. Set off by anxiety, by fear, by death.

Mrs. Darcy handed a half-full bowl of pale, grey mess to Dymphna. The uneven, muddy porridge was not fluffy. “You’ll have to share.”

Dymphna gave the sludge to Kelpie, who ate until she was scraping the spoon at nothing. Dymphna didn’t wonder at it. There was almost no meat on the girl’s bones.

Mrs. Darcy and Neal Darcy stared at Kelpie. The girl kept her eyes low.

“When’s the last time you ate, girl?” Mrs. Darcy asked. “It wasn’t when I gave you that scrap of bread, was it?”

“Her bones are sticking out,” one of the little Darcys said.

“Most everyone’s bones stick out round here,” an older Darcy said.

“Not like hers. She’s like old Mr. Farrow’s horse that fell down dead in the middle of Crown Street. Nothing but bones with a bit of skin tying them together.”

Dymphna saw the suppressed smile in Neal’s eyes and smiled too. She liked a fella who could laugh. Jimmy was not much for laughing.

“Shush, Eoin,” Mrs. Darcy snapped. “Don’t repeat what you don’t understand.”

“I understand bein’ hungry!”

Dymphna could see that all the Darcy children understood that.

“Shush, Eoin.”

Mrs. Darcy opened the cupboard behind her and unwrapped a half loaf of grey bread. Dymphna doubted much wheat had gone into the making of it. Mrs. Darcy cut off a bit, leaning heavily on the knife, and handed it to Kelpie.

The girl took the bread and ate it as though she worried that Mrs. Darcy might change her mind and snatch it back. Mrs. Darcy handed her another piece. The girl gobbled that down too.

Mrs. Darcy shook her head.

“You’ll be all right, Kelpie,” Neal said. “I promise.”

Kelpie edged closer to the back door, scrupulously avoiding Jimmy. Dymphna could see she didn’t like going through ghosts. Jimmy moved closer to Kelpie. The girl twitched.

“You can stay with us, love,” Mrs. Darcy said. Neal smiled.

“There’s no room—” one of the younger Darcys began.

“I’m looking after her,” Dymphna said.

A factory whistle sounded. Then another and another.

“Time to finish up,” Mrs. Darcy announced. “Got to get youse all to school. Mary, you with the dishes. Seamus, take the little ones out to wash.”

“Ma,” Seamus whined.

“Now.”

Seamus led the three youngest through Jimmy, not a shiver among them, out back to the rusted tub, but not before shooting a look at Mary. The back door crashed shut behind them.

“Upstairs,” Mrs. Darcy said, pushing Dymphna towards the stairs. In any other situation, Dymphna would have let the woman know how much she presumed. “You too, Kelpie.”