So lovely to be back in Monkstown. On a cool clear morning to stand on the doorstep and gaze across the narrow road to the sea wall and the sea beyond. Margaret could smell the salt and the seaweed and the tang of the black mud. It was a fresh smell, washed clean by the twice daily sweep of water in and out of Dublin Bay. She glanced up at the sky. She had forgotten how the light here was always different, how it changed from one minute to the next. How clouds formed, dissolved, re-formed, filtering the sun’s rays so the light moved through the spectrum. So different from the hard, unchanging blue of the Queensland sky where she had lived since she left Dublin the last time. When she had driven Jimmy Fitzsimons’s car from the cottage in Ballyknockan to the car park in Dun Laoghaire. Waited until it was time to board the ferry for Holyhead, taken the train to London, then the tube to Heathrow. Boarded a plane for Brisbane. Wouldn’t go back to New Zealand where Mary had grown up. She’d shed all her ties there. Sold the house, closed down her medical practice. Told anyone who asked that she was going back to Ireland. But didn’t say anything else.
She’d rented a car at Brisbane airport and driven north, first to Sunshine Beach, then to Noosa where she stayed in a small hotel on the beach. Just long enough to get her bearings. Then bought a house near the small town of Eumundi. A low wooden house with a wide veranda on three sides and five acres of land around it so nothing was visible from the road. And there she had stayed. And counted out the days. Until she knew that Jimmy would be dead.
Now she walked back inside. This house, where she had grown up, had been empty for the last year or so. There had been tenants but they had moved out and she had not replaced them. So when she decided to come back it had been simple to get a taxi from the airport and come straight to Monkstown, to Brighton Vale, open the gate, walk up the path, climb the six steps to the front door, put her key into the lock and turn it.
Not much had changed. Her tenants had been happy to get such a lovely house in a beautiful place for a modest rent. They hadn’t minded that it was shabby and poorly equipped. Sometimes they talked about their landlady.
‘The poor thing . . . Can you imagine losing your only child like that?’
‘I know. I couldn’t bear it. Bad enough that she would die, but to be murdered. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘And then that trial. The guards have a lot to answer for. How did the guy get off?’
‘Something to do with the length of time they kept him for questioning. I didn’t realize the rules were so strict. It doesn’t seem right somehow.’
‘It’s a civil-liberties thing. I suppose you have to have some safeguards. Innocent until proven guilty.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe, but it sounded as if he did it. Didn’t it?’
And a few years later they’d heard it on the news.
‘Wow, incredible. Are they sure it’s him?’
‘Apparently. It looks like his body’s been locked in that shed for years.’
‘So how did he die? Was he murdered?’
‘Starvation, the pathologist reckons.’
‘But who – who would do it? And how?’
Why, how and who? The obvious questions.
The last time Margaret had seen Mary alive it had been here in this house. That hot summer evening ten years ago. It was Saturday. The August bank holiday. She had been sitting in the garden reading the paper. She had been about to go inside and prepare some food for her mother. She had wanted Mary to stay and help her.
‘It’s not much to ask, for God’s sake. You know how hard it is to lift her.’ She had been angry and irritated.
‘She doesn’t want me to help her, Mum, you know that. She doesn’t like me to see her in bed. She doesn’t even want you to see her. I think you should get a full-time nurse or, better still, why don’t you see if you can get her into hospital? Or what about a hospice? They do have them here, don’t they?’ Mary was already fiddling with her bag, checking her keys, her wallet, her make-up. She was already walking back into the house.
‘That’s not what I want to do. You know that. That’s why we came back. Because she’s my mother and she’s dying and it’s my responsibility to look after her.’ Her voice had risen.
‘Yeah, yeah, so you keep on saying.’ Mary stopped in the doorway and turned to her. ‘Why won’t you be honest? You don’t even like her and it doesn’t seem to me as if she likes you very much. So why don’t you call it quits? Get her into hospital and then we can go home. Or, better still, to Paris or Rome or even Berlin. I’m bored with Dublin. I need a bit more excitement in my life. Anyway,’ she moved out of sight into the darkness of the house, ‘I’m off. Don’t wait up.’
‘Mary,’ Margaret had stood up and followed her, ‘don’t go like that. Wait. Phone me if you’re not coming home. Do you hear me? Phone me.’ But even as she spoke she heard the front door slam.
She heard it slam now as she opened the back door into the garden and a draught rushed through the house. She’d thought she had closed it, but the lock was loose and sometimes it slipped. Another job to be done, she thought, as she walked out into the sun. Grass to be cut, the beds to be weeded, the hedges to be trimmed. The place was a mess. Her father would have been appalled, if he could have seen it. She would deal with it tomorrow. She would deal with everything tomorrow. Today she was too tired. An old wooden deckchair with a canvas seat was opened out on the flagged terrace. She sat down on it and lay back. Her fingers reached beneath it and found a glass of wine. She lifted it to her mouth and drank. She drained the glass and put it back carefully on the stone. Then she closed her eyes. Her head lolled to one side and her breathing slowed until it was barely audible. There would be plenty of time tomorrow to do what had to be done. Or maybe the next day, or the next or the next. It was only the beginning of July. Nearly a month to go until the anniversary of Mary’s death. So much to think about. So many memories. But for now there was the comfort of sleep.