“ADAM.”
I mouth at him through the car window, beckon to him. My body feels strange, like it’s not quite under control.
He speaks to Sylvie, gets out of the car, closes the door behind him. His expression changes once he’s there in front of me—he has a somber, expectant look, no smile. I wonder what he’s responding to, what he can see in my face.
I stand there for a moment, not knowing how to begin. I feel I can’t quite trust myself, that I might do something out of place—burst into tears or collapse in mirthless laughter.
“Adam,” I say quietly. “They’ve found them.”
“My God,” he says.
I see the shock in his face, now that it’s really happened.
I glance toward the car. Sylvie doesn’t look up—she seems immersed in her book.
“They think it was murder,” I tell him. “I mean, they don’t know, but that’s what they think. There was a bullet wound.”
My voice is shaking.
He puts his arm around my shoulders, wrapping me in his warmth. I lean against him. I want to hide in him.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” he says.
I nod. My mouth is like blotting paper.
“There was a bracelet. By the remains of the child.” The words are solid things in my mouth. “It must have fallen off her wrist when—well, you know . . . Adam, there was a dragon charm.”
He takes his hand from my shoulders, turns to face me. His eyes are wide. For a long, long moment he doesn’t say anything. The air between us feels shimmery and thin.
“Sylvie’s dragon,” he says.
“Yes.”
He’s staring at me with that look of wide amazement.
“I need to ring Deirdre,” I tell him. “I want to make sure she knows everything. It doesn’t seem right—that we’re here and she isn’t.”
“No, I can see that,” he says.
I scrabble in my bag for my phone.
“Shit.”
I stare at the display: it’s out of charge.
“You can borrow mine,” he tells me.
I have Deirdre’s number in my bag. I ring on Adam’s phone.
She answers immediately.
“Deirdre Walker.”
Her voice is too high-pitched. I wouldn’t have known it was her.
“It’s Grace,” I tell her.
“Grace? That’s weird,” she says.
She sounds distracted. Perhaps I’ve confused her by ringing from Adam’s phone.
“Has somebody come to see you from the gardai?” I say.
“About the quarry?” she says.
“Yes.”
“He said they think they’ve found Alice and Jessica,” she says.
I wonder if she’s in shock. She sounds remote, like she’s not really taking it in.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I just wanted to check that you knew everything.”
“Thank you so much, Grace. That’s very thoughtful,” she says.
“I knew that you’d want to think about what it might mean for Gemma. I don’t know if they told you, but they found a bracelet with the child’s body. I guess they might ask Gemma to say if it’s Jessica’s bracelet . . .”
“They might ask Gemma,” she repeats, her voice still tight and high. “Well, here’s the thing—why I said it was weird that you called. I was just going to ring you about it.”
“Oh.”
“I can’t find her. I can’t find Gemma,” she says.
“You can’t find her?”
A cold dread moves through me—that this is all our fault, it’s all because of me and Adam and Sylvie; that we have made this happen. I realize I expected something like this, feared it.
“She told me she was going to spend the night at Kirsty’s house,” says Deirdre. “Kirsty’s her closest friend. Last night, this was. I rang Gemma just now, but her phone’s switched off. And then I rang Kirsty, and Kirsty told me that Gemma had never shown up. She’d texted Kirsty to tell her there was something she needed to do.”
I’m hunting in my mind for some banal explanation.
“You don’t think perhaps she was doing something and didn’t want you to know? Maybe staying the night with Marcus? You know how teenagers are.”
“That’s the first thing I thought of,” says Deirdre.
“You’ve rung him?”
“The phone at his house is on voice mail. I don’t understand it. There’s usually somebody there . . . Why I was going to ring you—I wondered if she’d heard about Sylvie, if she’d gone looking for you.”
“It can’t be that. We haven’t seen her,” I say.
“Oh.”
“You must speak to Brian,” I tell her.
“Yes. I will. But I need to search for her myself, I need to be out there looking. I know all the houses she visits. I’m going to look up all her friends, go to the places she goes.” I can hear the tremor in her voice. “Look, I know she’s probably fine. But after . . . everything—you can’t tell yourself you’re stupid to worry. You know that the worst can happen.”
There’s such fear in her.
“You don’t have to do it alone,” I tell her. “We’ll come with you.”
“You can’t do that,” she says.
“No. Really. We will. We’d like to help.”
“Would you?” She sounds so grateful.
“You could meet us here,” I tell her. “You could speak to Brian, and then we’ll help you look for her.”
“I’ll come straight over,” she tells me. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
I give Adam back his phone.
“She can’t find Gemma,” I say.
“Yes, I gathered that.”
“I said we’d help to search for her.”
He’s looking into my face with a frown, like he’s troubled by something he sees in me.
“Grace.” His voice is soothing. He reaches out and pushes back my hair. “You mustn’t worry too much. She’s almost certainly fine. Kids do run off sometimes.”
“I know,” I tell him. “But Deirdre was frantic.”
I glance toward the car. Sylvie’s face is pressed against the window. She’s white and still and watching us intently. I feel guilty suddenly. For a moment, listening to Deirdre, I’d almost forgotten her.
I open the door, and she scrambles out.
“When are we going?” she says.
“Soon, Sylvie.”
“I don’t like it here.”
“No, sweetheart.”
I crouch down, put my arms around her. She lets herself be held.
“Sylvie, was this the place where it happened?” I say. “The place where—what you said . . .”
I can’t quite form the words.
But this time she won’t tell me anything.
“I don’t like it here. I don’t want to stay here,” she says.
I glance over her shoulder—at the garda cars, the cordon tape, the man in a baggy forensic suit who is walking along the path, moving so slowly, as though the things he has seen are weighing heavily on him. I think of the horror of what they found beneath the water—just letting my mind touch lightly on this, then pulling abruptly away, as though the very thought could hurt me. Suddenly all I want is to take her away from this place.
I look up at Adam. “Could you stay and wait for Deirdre, if we go now?”
“Yes, of course,” he tells me.
I press my face against Sylvie’s. Her skin is very cold.
“Let’s go off somewhere happier,” I say.
“Yes, Grace.”
“Why don’t we go back to Coldharbour? We’ll do something nice. I could buy you an ice cream from Barry’s.”
She scrambles back into the car.