The sun dipped towards the rooftops as Fegan rang Marie McKenna’s doorbell. Her flat was on the ground floor of the old red-brick terraced house. The drawn curtains twitched in the bay window by the door. His skin tingled when he heard her footsteps approach from inside.
Marie opened the door and smiled. “Thanks for coming,” she said. She stepped back to let him in. Her eyes were puffy from crying.
“Have you eaten?” she asked as they walked along the hallway. A bicycle was propped at the foot of the stairs leading to the flats above.
“Not since this morning,” Fegan lied. His stomach had still been reeling from the whiskey and no solid had passed his lips that day.
“You must be starving,” Marie said, showing him into the flat. “I’m just about to make something for Ellen and me. You’ll have some too.”
It was more an instruction than an invitation.
“Hiya!” Ellen chimed as he entered. She lay on the floor, a coloring book and crayons strewn around her. The flat was open-plan, with the living area to the front, a kitchenette to the rear. Two doors opened off this room, leading to the back of the house.
“Hello, Ellen,” he said.
Fegan took in the large open space, and the homey objects scattered about it. His own home was drab and spare by comparison, decorated only by the wooden objects he’d made himself. He clutched one of them, wrapped in plastic.
“Lookit,” Ellen said, climbing to her feet. She brought the coloring book over for him to see. There was a picture of a pig in a little dress. Ellen had colored it all green.
‘Very good,” he said.
Marie stroked her daughter’s hair. “Ellen, leave Gerry alone a while, okay?”
Ellen pouted. “Okay.”
As Marie took his coat, Fegan said, “I brought you something.” He handed her the plastic bag as his cheeks grew hot.
“Oh?” She opened it.
Fegan had found the piece of oak on a derelict site near his home. It might once have been a small part of a mantelpiece or a banister. He had worked with the grain over weeks, sanding into its flow, until it became a fluid shape like a river current. He smoothed out the hole where a knot had been, and built up thin layer after thin layer of varnish, buffing between coats until it looked like it burned from within. To finish, he mounted it on a slate base.
“It’s beautiful,” Marie said.
“It was just gathering dust in my house,” Fegan said. “It’ll look better here.”
“Thank you.” She placed it on a table by the window next to an open laptop computer.
“Anything?” Fegan asked.
“Nothing. It’s been quiet. I’ve been working, mostly.” She studied the piece in what little light the drawn curtains let through.
“It’ll be dark in a couple of hours. They’ll come after that.”
“And what’ll you do?” she asked, turning back to him.
“Talk to them,” he said.
“Talk? I doubt they’ll listen.”
“Well, then I’ll try . . . something else.”
Marie stared at him for a beat then said, “I’m glad you came.”
Dinner was simple—grilled chicken breast with boiled new potatoes and salad—but Fegan devoured it like it was his last meal. When Marie asked if he wanted more, he said yes before she’d finished the question. The time since anyone had made him a home-cooked meal could not be counted in weeks, months or even years. It was almost two decades since he had last sat at a table and eaten with people he knew and liked.
Ellen had meticulously separated the red-leaf salad from the green, and banished it to the side of her plate. Likewise, she had removed dark spots from the potato skins with the care and precision of a surgeon, and deposited them with the unwanted salad. Other than that, she had cleared her plate whilst chatting to Fegan about shoes, drawing and Peppa Pig.
“What’s Peppa Pig?” Fegan asked.
Ellen giggled, and said, “Silly.”
Fegan didn’t inquire further.
When the meal was done, Marie stood and shooed Ellen away to her coloring books lying strewn around the living area.
“So, what happens after tonight?” she asked. She began clearing the table. “Say you see them off. They’ll just come back with more tomorrow, won’t they?”
“Maybe,” Fegan said. “I’ll come back and take care of it again, if you want me to.”
She brought the dishes to the sink where pots were already soaking. “And what about after that? They’ll come back with more and more. I don’t want Ellen to see that. And I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I won’t,” he said. He joined Marie at the sink, took a towel, and began drying dishes as she handed them over. “I’m going to take care of it. In a few days, it’ll be sorted.”
“How?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’m going to take care of it, that’s all you need to know. You and Ellen won’t have to worry any more.”
She held on to a plate as he went to take it from her. “What does that mean?”
He smiled at her. It felt easy and honest on his lips. “You won’t have to worry. That’s all.”
Marie returned his smile, but Fegan glimpsed something hard and jagged in it as she turned away.
Marie told Fegan about Jack Lennon, how the handsome policeman had asked her out as she packed her Dictaphone away. The story had been about Catholics in the police service at a time of reform. Jack had been a good interview, open and eloquent. Charming, even. He blushed when Marie asked if Jack Lennon was really a John.
Within six days, Marie was in love.
She had kept it secret at first. Her family’s disapproval of her working for a Unionist newspaper had been made clear. Her father had never spoken about his involvement in the conflict, but she knew her Uncle Michael was up to his neck in it. Everywhere she went, people knew who she was, and who she shared her blood with. Her friends were from that community, too, and all but a few drifted away because of her job. When she could keep Jack Lennon secret no longer, they deserted her as quickly as everyone else she’d grown up with.
At the age of thirty-one, Marie McKenna found herself isolated, cut off from her old life. But she had Jack, and that was enough. Vague threats would surface now and then, Mass cards with bullets in the post, but the couple were strong. They could survive it.
Two years after meeting him, just a few weeks before the day she realised her period was late, Marie smelt perfume on him. By now, Jack was working CID, out of uniform. He said it was a female colleague, one who had shown no interest in him in the past. Seeing him in a solid relationship with another woman changed that. Day after day she had been throwing herself at him, often physically, but he had resisted her. He always had been, and always would be, faithful.
Jack Lennon was a charming and persuasive man. Marie believed every word he said. In retrospect, she imagined she saw him flinch when she told him she might be pregnant. She couldn’t be sure of it, but that was immaterial in the long run. All she could be sure of was arriving home on a drizzly evening two months later and finding their flat empty.
Fegan listened to Marie as she sat next to him on her sofa. Her face showed no emotion as she spoke.
“Do you want to know the really sad thing?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “A week after he left me for her, she dumped him.” Marie gave a brittle laugh. “She wanted what she couldn’t have, and when she could have it, she didn’t want it any more. So much damage, just on a whim. Anyway, he phoned me, begging to come back. I told him to shove it.”
“Good,” Fegan said. “He sounds like an arsehole.”
Ellen looked up from her coloring. “You said a bad word.”
“Sorry,” Fegan said.
Ellen looked to her mother. “Mummy, can I watch a DVD?”
“It’s nearly bedtime, sweetheart,” Marie said.
“Can I just watch the start of it?” Ellen implored.
Marie sat forward on the couch and gave it her consideration. “All right, but no arguing when I say it’s bedtime, right?”
“Right.” Ellen grinned and went to a bookcase laden with paperbacks, CDs and DVDs. She picked a brightly colored case, opened it, and carefully removed the disc.
“Watch this,” Marie whispered. “She’s an expert.”
Ellen went to the player underneath the television, pressed a button to open its tray, and placed the disc at its center, adjusting it with her tiny fingertips. She turned on the television, found the right channel, and bounced over to the sofa. There was just enough room between Fegan and Marie for her to wriggle into. Fegan watched as Ellen manipulated the remote control until the film began to play.
“You’re very clever,” he said.
Ellen looked up at him, brought her finger to her lips—shush—and pointed to the television. Fegan cleared his throat and did as he was told. He caught Marie’s smile from the corner of his eye.
Soon, Fegan knew nothing but the movie. It was about an orange and white fish who searched a big blue ocean for his son. Sometimes he felt Ellen’s body jerk and rattle with laughter beside him, and he did the same. They felt strange, these spasms, rippling up from his belly to burst in his mouth. The moving images made shadows dance around the room, but they concealed nothing but Marie’s scattered possessions.
Ellen’s bedtime came and went with no protest from her mother, but as the film ended, Marie patted her knee and said, “Okay, missy, you got away with that one, but now it’s really time for bed.”
Ellen slumped forward, despondent. “Do I have to?”
“Yep, it’s nearly half-nine and you were supposed to be in bed an hour ago. It’s . . .” Marie paused as if remembering something she would rather have forgotten. “It’s dark outside.”
Fegan raised himself from the sofa. He looked to the curtained window, then back to Marie. She stood, lifting Ellen, and placed her upright on the floor.
“Go and get your jammies on,” she said. “Then we’ll get your teeth brushed.”
Ellen trudged to one of the doors beyond the kitchenette at the back of the house. She turned in the doorway, waved, and called, “Night-night, Gerry.”
“Night-night,” he said, feeling a little pang of sadness to see her go. He looked down to Marie, who stood with her hands in the hip pockets of her jeans.
“So, here we are,” she said.
“Yeah,” Fegan said. He was unable to hold her gaze and he looked away.
She cleared her throat and sniffed. “Listen, I’m pretty tired, too. I didn’t sleep well last night. I’ll, uh . . . I’ll see to Ellen, then take myself to bed. Will you be all right here?”
“Yeah,” Fegan said. “When they come I’ll be ready for them.”
“Okay,” Marie said. She stepped away, paused, and then came back to him. Standing on tiptoe, she placed a kiss on his cheek and smiled. “I’d say you were a good man, but I’m a terrible judge of character.”
Fegan watched her leave the room as the warmth of her lips on his cheek gave way to the slightest chill of moisture.
Once the flat was quiet, he circled the room, switching off lights. Blackness owned him until he opened the curtains. The street light outside coated the room in a dim orange. He sat down at the table by the window and waited.
Occasionally cars moved along the street outside, their headlights illuminating the old houses, making their facades seem to turn and watch the travellers go by.
Now and then, people would pass the window, oblivious to Fegan’s vigil. Sometimes they were couples, young men and women clinging to each other, moving as one. The sight of them opened paths in his mind, paths he did not want to follow. He would only find regret and self-pity there.
Instead, he thought about the chill of moisture on his cheek. He brought his fingertips to that place, remembering the warmth before the cold.
Almost three hours passed before the chill crept to his center, a tingling began in his temples, and the shadows around him came to life.