He often stayed in his room for long periods of time with the door locked.
Mother and daughter had always felt it important that he should have his own space.
His privacy.
He kept a kettle, a radio, a portable TV in there.
Sometimes the only way you could be sure of his presence at all was when he crossed the landing to use the bathroom.
“Sure he’s no trouble to nobody,” was how Mrs Breslin described him.
Anne knew he would go to ground following the visit by Herringshaw and the crushing disappointment regarding Molly McArdle.
It was only natural.
She didn’t want to worry their mother when she’d asked after him. Asked why he hadn’t gone into work. Anne reassured Mrs Breslin that he was just a little bit down in himself.
But she had been to Joe’s door three times now and he had refused to answer her.
That was unlike him.
She couldn’t sleep.
She was rendered distraught beyond belief at the thought of the animal who had destroyed her brother’s life, only yesterday sitting below in the parlour of their own home.
She prayed to God and the Virgin that Joe did not comprehend who his callers had been.
It was bitter wound inflicted upon bitter wound.
She had heard the noise of the radio carry on all through the night.
But Joe had made no visits to the bathroom.
Anne was desperate to speak with him.
To learn what they had said to him.
If they had threatened him.
And to tell him that there was someone for everyone in this world and he was not to fret over Molly McArdle.
But if that were true, then where was her shoulder to cry on?
Anne did what she always did when confronted with the prospect of a solitary, loveless existence and buried her own disappointments deep down beneath selfless anxieties for her brother and mother.
Now, as she stood outside Joe’s bedroom door knocking and calling once again, she wondered why the volume and the station playing had not varied for close to eighteen hours or so.
She felt icy dread rise from the well of her guts, but pushed it back down again.
Crouching, she peered through the keyhole but her view was blocked by the key in the lock on the other side.
Taking a pair of scissors, she pushed through the aperture until it fell to the floor.
What she then saw caused her to cry out in a plaintive wail that she stifled as quickly as it had escaped her.
Joe’s lower body was visible. Inanimate.
He lay on the floor in an unnatural position, one arm trapped beneath his leg.
Anne’s first instinct was to scream for help.
To hammer on the door and to screech his name.
But there was no-one there to help her.
Her mother’s voice came from downstairs. “Anne… did you call me?”
She closed her eyes and gathered herself.
“No Mammy… I just took a fit of sneezing.”
“Oh. Will you ask Joe if he wants tea?”
“I will.”
“Do you want a drop yourself?”
“No Mammy… thanks…”
Her mind was racing.
A fall? A stroke?
Her brother might be dead or dying.
It took all of her composure to collect herself and enter the kitchen where Mrs Breslin was pulling on the lid of the biscuit tin as the kettle boiled.
Anne took a deep breath. “Mammy, Joe says he’ll take a drop of tea but he’s dying for one of them snowball buns he loves.”
“Sure I’ve nothing in… you know I don’t do my grocery shopping ‘til tomorrow.”
“Sure put your coat on and nip down to the wee home bakery.”
“Their stuff is very dear. He’s a bandit, that one,” she complained.
Anne was opening her purse and pressing a ten-pound note into her mother’s hand.
She tried hard to stop her own hands from shaking.
Tried hard to push away the image of her brother upstairs, slowly choking to death on his own vomit.
“That’s far too much!” scolded the old woman.
“Get a few fresh creams and a bap… I’d go myself but I’m waiting for an important phone call from work.”
Mrs Breslin pulled on her coat and searched for her shopping bag. “You say Joe wants snowballs?”
“Aye.”
“See if you can get him to come down for his tea… I’ll not be long.” She paused at the door. “They’re slave drivers in thon place of yours!”
“I know Mammy, I know. I’ll get a pot of tea made.”
*
Anne waited for the garden gate to close, the metallic clang and click.
It seemed like forever.
She stood fighting tears, pushing her nails into the palms of her hands in an act of sheer willpower.
When she was sure her mother was gone, Anne flung open the front door and flew as fast as her feet would carry her to Sweeney’s house next door.
Tommy answered her urgent knocking.
“It’s Anne Breslin,” she heard him say to his wife Rita as he turned the deadbolt.
“Tommy, it’s our Joe… can you come?”
Seeing Anne’s face, the man followed her in next door and bounded the stairs two at a time, apprising himself of the situation instantly.
“I can get my tools and take the hinges off, but…”
Anne’s expression answered his question.
“Stand back then.”
He aimed a kick at the base of the handle and it splintered but held.
A second broke the door handle off completely.
A third and the door opened a small way, pushing against Joe’s prone body.
Tommy placed his shoulder in the gap and levered it wide enough to slip though.
He immediately dropped to his knees and placing his ear close to Joe’s mouth, looked for a pulse.
Anne peered in through the opening.
On top of Joe’s bed were a number of paper chemist bags and a small pile of brown pill bottles.
He must have been stockpiling his medications, she thought, and mentally ran through what he might have taken.
Rita Sweeney now arrived on the landing.
“Antidepressants,” said Anne, aloud but to herself.
“Will one of the two of youse phone an ambulance… he’s still breathing!” shouted Tommy from inside the room.
“I’ll do it,” said Anne. “Rita, will you keep an eye out for my mammy when she comes back and take her into your house?”
The operator asked her for the nature of the emergency.
Anne heard herself say, “My brother took an overdose.”
It came out of her sounding almost matter-of-fact.
“Just bear with me while I take a few details.”
She remembered Joe building her a doll’s house, carrying her on his shoulders down Royal Avenue, sitting up nights, caring for a sick dog he’d brought home.
“Do you know what he might have taken?”
She felt anger swell up inside her.
Resented these ‘by the numbers’ protocols.
Felt that her brother was being judged somehow.
How could they know what he’d been through?
What he’d had to endure?
The daily prolongation of a body and soul in torment, representing some kind of pitiful existence.
And they couldn’t even leave him that.
“He’s taken just about all that he could take,” she said and began to cry quietly.