In three weeks it would be the end of term. If they hadn’t been caught by then we’d all move to Belfast until they were, or rent a house in Donegal, or do something to get away from the oppressive nature of what was our home.
But going away would mean leaving Michael. It would mean spending more time with Paul and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about that. I could barely look at Paul, let alone try to play happy families in front of the girls for intense periods of time.
The girls.
I was trying my best to protect them, but it wasn’t enough.
Beth jumped every time a car drove past or there was a knock on the door. Molly, although not quite aware of what was going on, sensed something was very wrong in her universe, and had become increasingly clingy and tearful as the day had gone on. For the first time in over a year she’d wet herself during the night and sobbed into her daddy’s chest while I stripped her sodden bed sheets and put them in the washing machine.
‘I want to sleep with you,’ she’d sobbed as I told her I’d fixed her bed and put her favourite My Little Pony blanket on it.
I was too tired to argue, so I lay down beside her and stroked her hair until her eyes fluttered and she drifted back off to sleep.
‘This isn’t good for them,’ Paul said.
A part of me wanted to bite back that of course it wasn’t good for them. It wasn’t good for any of us. I couldn’t switch my brain off, not even for five minutes. No matter how heavy my eyes felt. Everything just ran over and over through my head.
Laura O’Loughlin – it was a name that didn’t mean much to me. Had she been the girl who’d spent every lunchtime reading Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters and hadn’t been interested in reading Just 17 or More magazine? A little odd in her demeanour.
Not like us.
Was that her?
At around 3 a.m., I got up and slipped downstairs. At least it was a little cooler there. I sat and watched as the first strobes of light started to break through the night sky then I made myself a coffee and pulled out a dusty cardboard box from the cupboard under the stairs. It had been a long time since I’d looked in it, but I knew exactly what it contained. Photo albums, everything from my teenage years until my late twenties when digital cameras took over. Yearbooks from school. I knew exactly which album I was looking for – one that had two Forever Friends teddy bears on the front – and I pulled it out before sitting back on the sofa. The memories contained in those pages – they’d been such innocent times.
I flicked through the album. Bad haircuts, unkempt eyebrows, teenage skin and thickly applied make-up. The three of us pulling poses and laughing at the camera, together, individually, in pairs. At birthday parties, or on the beach, at concerts. Dressed up for Halloween. Pictures from school – faded now. The colours muted as if they’d always been that way. Slightly out of focus. Just like my memories of that time.
A group of our classmates, pulling poses and grinning outside the school canteen. Set on hills that rolled down to the River Foyle, our school site – now closed, just a collection of decaying buildings and overgrown grass. On warm days – days just like the day that was dawning – the all-girl school population would lay our coats down on the grass banks then sit and soak in the sun at lunchtime. Hundreds of milk bottle-white legs, our regulation grey socks pushed down to our ankles trying to catch a bit of colour. Girls rubbing cooking oil into their white skin in the hope of getting a tan, long before SPFs were thought of.
Innocent times. There were pictures of us making daisy chains. Heads bowed in concentration. Pictures of us messing about in the science lab – an old, dark room with high ceilings and a permanent musty smell. No doubt we should never have been messing around in there or taking pictures. But it was harmless, our harmless rebellion.
I looked at the picture closely, at Clare’s smile. The braces on her teeth still evident then. She only really bloomed into herself when they were gone. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, her skin shiny. She was so young. We all were.
It was only then I saw another face, at the bench behind. Long hair, greasy strands, hanging around her face. No silly smile. No friends posing beside her, just a head bent forwards. Doing her best to avoid eye contact with the camera and the person behind it. There was a paleness and a sadness there; or maybe the lack of sleep was causing my brain to play tricks on me.
I blinked and I swore, even though I knew it was impossible, I saw her lift her head and stare directly at the camera, directly at me, with such hurt in her eyes that I wanted to look away but couldn’t.
It was the flash of a memory, maybe. I was the person who’d taken the picture after all, back then. It pinched at me. Her face. That expression. In the background of my schooldays. I’d paid no notice then. Had looked away. Had continued in my selfish teenage bubble.
I flicked through more photos and again and again I saw that lonely figure in the background. The person not laughing. The person not posing. The person we were happy to ignore, but not out of badness. The person looking at me occasionally in those pictures with something akin to sadness on her face – or was it disgust?
Laura O’Loughlin. Seeing her face, I remembered her in a way I hadn’t at the mention of her name. I felt my stomach sink. I recognised her. Remembered her. Remembered the things we’d said and done. Or hadn’t said or done. We’d been so silly then. Immature. Bitchy at times, but no more than other teenage girls.
I blushed at the memory of it now. Ashamed. I remembered Clare snatching Laura’s beloved book from her, mocking her by reading the passages out in an exaggerated posh voice. Everyone had laughed. Even Laura had cracked a smile. Hadn’t she?
She’d been less happy when Clare had declared the book rubbish and threw it in the bin. But Clare hadn’t damaged it. Laura had been able to retrieve it just fine. She’d stuffed it into the bottom of her bag and laughed along. I remembered that, sitting in my living room that morning. I remembered her laugh and I remembered that I’d thought it was a bit cruel of Clare. Out of character for her, too. I remembered that I wanted to say something to her about it, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember if I had.
Jane Eyre … that was the book. I think. Or Wuthering Heights, maybe. Something suitably gothic and brooding. No Judy Blume or battered copy of Flowers in the Attic.
I don’t think I’d given her a second thought in years. I probably hadn’t given her much thought while at school, but now our lives were linked. Our fates linked too, maybe.
I lifted my phone and typed her name into Facebook; even though she was dead, I wondered would her Facebook account, if she had one, still be there? Maybe I’d see her as she looked now, maybe it would ring some more bells. I scrolled through a number of accounts until I found a Laura O’Neill from Derry.
Her profile picture was of two children, a boy and girl, dressed in school uniform and smiling at the camera. It was the same school uniform that Beth had worn when she was at primary school. The same that Molly would wear the following year. Was it possible I’d seen Laura at the school gates when Beth was still a pupil there? I tried to count backwards, guess the age of her children.
If I had seen her at the school, I hadn’t paid attention. I was fairly sure we hadn’t spoken. Or if we had, it had been small talk, the way anyone would talk to a stranger.
I clicked into the profile, dormant since 2016. There wasn’t much to see, except that it appeared that she’d sent me a friend request, to which I still hadn’t responded. I didn’t even remember seeing it. But there it was, with an option to accept it, or not.
My finger hovered over the button. It would be wrong to accept now. What good would it do? But would I see more of her profile? Get more of an idea of who she’d been?
I shivered. I didn’t want to dig deeper, so I closed the Facebook app and slipped the photo album into my bag. What I’d do with it, I didn’t know. But there was a part of me thinking of the look on her face when Clare had tossed her book into the bin. There was a part of me that wondered whether I’d sensed her vulnerability then, or had the knowledge of what had happened since coloured my faded memories? Was there more in our past that I’d filed away to the deep recesses of my brain? Was I an unknowing guilty party in whatever had driven Laura to take her own life all these years later?
It seemed absurd, and yet the police believed there was a link between us all now. That whatever had happened to Laura may well be linked to what had happened to Clare. Where did that leave Julie and me?
I was still on edge when I woke the girls; caffeine was surging through my veins to try to keep me focused on what I needed to do. We’d decided they still needed to go about their daily routine but that Paul would drop Beth at school and I’d pick her up. We wouldn’t leave her to walk on her own.
Beth had rebelled against it, of course. I couldn’t blame her, but I didn’t want her to be home when the police came to fit the panic alarms. If I could get just one more day of normality out of this madness, I would.
I’d leave Molly at daycare. She’d be safe there. Distracted. Keeping things as normal as possible for her was key. I’d hung her washed sheets out on the line first thing, tried to reassure myself that her accident was just one of those things and didn’t mean she was being damaged by the atmosphere that hung all around us.
Paul had agreed to cut his hours in Belfast. Only be there when necessary. I’d have preferred it if he’d worked at home, but he said he couldn’t let his clients down. He wouldn’t be drawn further on it.
But at least if he was away for a few hours I might get a chance to see Michael. I hadn’t been able to get him out of my head since we’d last seen each other. His plea for me to run away with him. Maybe if he wanted the girls to come too, we could?
My head hurt. I took a couple of paracetamol. I knew this was a flight of fancy – even to think I could run away to be with him – but it provided some comfort.
I was making the breakfast, plastering on my biggest, fakest smile, when my phone rang. The number was listed as private and my heart hammered as I answered. What if it was Clare’s killer? They knew where I lived, who was to say they wouldn’t get my phone number?
I was relieved, at first, to hear Constable King’s voice on the line. The familiarity of it soothed me.
‘Rachel,’ she said, ‘we were wondering if you could call into the station, maybe this morning?’
‘What’s happened?’ I asked, immediately suspicious.
I saw Beth look at me, saw the fear in her eyes.
‘Don’t worry. There have just been some developments on the case overnight and we’d like to talk to you, and to Julie, about them.’
‘What developments?’ I asked, wanting to ask why Julie and I needed to come in.
‘I’d rather not talk about it over the phone. Look, I know you have things to do first thing. So maybe you could call in after ten? We can send a car to get you, if you’d prefer?’
I tried to keep my voice light, aware that Molly and Beth were both within earshot.
‘I’m fine to drive, honest. But you’re making me a little nervous here,’ I said with a false laugh.
‘Look, we’ll talk about it when we see you. If you ask for me when you arrive, I’ll come down and get you.’
With that she was gone and I looked to see Beth staring at me wide-eyed.
‘What is it now, Mum? Where do you have to drive to?’
‘The police just want to update me on what’s happening. Routine, don’t worry.’
There was no chance that she wouldn’t worry. Paul looked at me, one eyebrow raised.
‘They said they’ll fill me in when I get there. They said not to worry.’
‘Well then,’ Paul said, ‘if the police say not to worry, there’s no point in wasting any energy on worrying now, is there?’ he said before urging Beth to hurry up getting ready.
‘But I really don’t feel very well,’ she said, clutching her stomach.
She knew he’d not ask too many questions if he thought there was any chance it was her period that was ailing her.
‘Rachel, are you sure she’s fit for school?’ he asked me.
‘I’m pretty sure she’s absolutely fine and isn’t it better to have the school look after her than to leave her alone?’ I said, nodding towards Beth while I spoke.
‘But, Mum, I really, really don’t feel great. I’ve awful cramps and I’m afraid I’ll just start crying every five minutes.’
Paul shrugged his shoulders, absolving himself of any further parental responsibility with a smooth: ‘Your call, Rachel.’
‘But I’ve got to go to the police station; I can’t bring you with me,’ I told her.
‘I’ll lock all the doors and windows and go straight to bed. I’ll only answer the door when I know it’s you or the police.’
‘She’s a sensible girl, Rachel,’ Paul said, already filling his briefcase and getting ready to leave. ‘Besides, the police have said this is all just precautionary. We can’t change the course of our entire lives because of this. We can’t live in fear.’
I was so tired, my brain so fuzzy. I could have argued with him, but what would it have achieved except to upset Molly, and me into the bargain?
‘Okay then, Beth. You stay in bed.’ I glared at Paul as I spoke. ‘I’ll be back from the police station as quickly as I can and you must promise me not to open the door to anyone. Not a single soul! And keep your phone at your side. If anyone even remotely suspicious comes to the door, you call the police, okay? Don’t hesitate.’
She looked at me, solemn with just a hint of fear in her eyes as if she’d bitten off more than she could chew.
‘Okay, Mum, I will. I promise I’m not faking.’
I didn’t have the patience to console her, so I just turned my attention to getting Molly ready.
‘What does sausagepuss mean, Mammy?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Sausagepuss! You just said it to Beth. Anyone sausagepuss comes to the door?’
I wanted to pull that child to me and keep her this innocent forever.
‘It’s like a sausage dog, only a cat instead,’ I said with a giggle and she ran off to grab one of her soft toys, a well-loved cat, from the sofa.
I felt a wave of emotion rise up in me and I let out a shuddering breath.
‘Rachel, you need to try to keep calm or this is going to destroy you,’ Paul said.
But he didn’t stop to offer a hug. He didn’t offer to stay with Beth while I went to the police station. He just lifted his travel coffee cup and briefcase, called goodbye to the girls and left.