Outside my sister’s house, I’m disoriented by the row of cottages, expecting to see tall brick terraces. For a moment, I’d thought I was back in Belfast, outside Marian’s old house on Adelaide Avenue.
You could see the Black Mountain from the end of her old road, rising on the edge of Belfast. I could see it from our council estate, too, and from my secondary school. I used to sit in class, watching the rain and clouds lashing the mountain, with longing tugging at my chest. The mountain is so large that looking at it was like looking at the ocean, its shades constantly changing.
When we left the North, we tore our lives apart, starting over with nothing. Not one friend, not one plan. I had to build it all up again. Find a job, a place to live, a playschool for Finn. Introduce myself to my new coworkers, to the other parents on the playground, under my new name, and wait to see if we’d grow a friendship. And we have done, I’ve new friends here, but they’re not my mates, not yet. Mates piss in front of you. I remember my old mate Clodagh dropping onto a toilet in a pub stall without even breaking conversation. None of my new friends would do that, not yet. Sometimes the thought turns me grief-stricken, that I might never again have the sort of friend who will reach over and take a sip of my drink without asking first.
And I miss my old job at the BBC, and the high-wire act of producing a radio show live on air. I was good at it, too, really good at it.
I owned a small house in Greyabbey that I’d fixed up myself, tearing out the insulation, ripping up the floorboards, putting in a new boiler, spending all that cash and all that time, because I’d planned to stay. I’d planned for Finn to grow up in that house. I’d even chosen the doorframe where I’d mark Finn’s height every year. We only got to one measurement, the one I drew on his first birthday, when he must have been about two feet tall. He’d only just learned to walk. I remember him standing against the doorframe, proud, wriggling, while I held the book straight above his head, and if the new owners have painted over it, I’ll hang for them, I swear to god.
We could have stayed in Northern Ireland, for all that leaving helped us. It didn’t keep us safe, after all, the IRA have found us anyway.
I remember walking in Greyabbey on the green lanes behind our old house, past sheep pastures and potato fields, with Finn in his front carrier, kicking his feet against my thighs. I was happy then, with my baby snug on my chest, and I want to go back to that exact moment. If I could, I’d do every single thing differently.
Before reaching the office, I duck down a laneway behind Molesworth Street, lined with blackened exhaust vents and restaurant service doors. I ring Tom, and ask to say hello to Finn. “I’m in the middle of making breakfast,” says Tom.
“Please, Tom. Two minutes.”
A few scuffling seconds of quiet, then a high, bright voice says, “Hi, mama.” I lift my face toward the sky, love thundering through me. “Hello, sunshine.”
“I’m making pancakes by myself with dada.”
“Are you? Very good. And how’s the beach? Have you been swimming yet?”
“And bellyboarding,” says Finn. He chats to me about the beach, and warmth runs through my veins. He sounds cheerful, contented. Four more days to go. Before we hang up, I say, “Finn, sweetheart, can I talk to your da?” When Tom comes on the line, I say, “So everything’s going well?”
“We’re good. You sound exhausted, by the way.”
“Thanks, mate,” I say. “Tom, have you ever told anyone where we live?”
“Of course not. Why?”
“No reason,” I say.
“What’s going on, Tessa? You sound awful.”
“Nothing, sorry,” I say. “Where’s the cottage?”
“It’s great,” he says. “It’s really close to the beach, maybe a couple hundred meters.”
“Lock the door at night.”
“You think Finn is going to open the door and sleepwalk two hundred meters down to the beach?” asks Tom.
“Maybe.”
“Has Finn ever sleepwalked in his life?”
“Will you just lock the door, Tom?” I ask. He tells me not to worry so much, like he usually does, and I tell him he’s right, that I’ll try to relax a bit.
After hanging up, I stop into Buswells Hotel, turning my face away from the clattering tea room, since some of those tables will be people from my office, and head straight for the toilets to straighten myself out before work. I expect my face to look bruised and raw from last night, for my eyes to be bunched up and blackened, and I do look terrible, but not in that way, more like someone suffering through a migraine. My mouth is strained, my eyes bloodshot. I take my hair down and try to soften the pinched set to my forehead. I dab more aloe onto the cut on my bottom lip, and check that none of the scratches on my legs are showing below my skirt.
On the way out, I walk through the tea room, as a sort of rehearsal. I recognize a few faces from the office. None of them takes much notice of me, even though I feel like I’m dragging something across the carpet. And then I’m pushing through the door and out onto Kildare Street, with the parliament looming across the road behind tall black iron gates.
Inside the parliament courtyard, a cameraman from RTÉ stands checking his phone, waiting for his reporter, and a few senators are climbing out of their cars. The senators can park in the courtyard for free, their very own parking spot in the center of Dublin, a privilege they seem to hold more dear than their actual senate seats.
I walk up Kildare Street, past the parliament, to the Irish Observer building. The morning is still overcast enough to see the strip lighting glowing inside the offices. I scan my badge by the security turnstile. “Hi, Stephen,” I say to our front clerk. “How’s things, how was your weekend?”
“Grand,” he says. “The wiring is still banjaxed, though. It’s going to be boiling in here again today.”
“Ah, look, I’ll take that over baltic.” I climb the stairs to the open-plan office, making my way between the desks. After settling at mine, I start mousing through the first copy to arrive this morning, a long story on economic indicators around Ireland.
Our production editor, Joanna, says, “Sorry about the heat, everyone. I’ve asked for more fans, but I’ve seen neither head nor tail of them yet.”
A few people start to complain, and Emer catches my gaze above the desks and rolls her eyes. She advises the newspaper on legal questions. Today Emer has on tracksuit bottoms and a gray sports top, and a pair of thick athletic sandals. She has never once followed the newspaper’s dress code, but no one minds. Emer’s brilliant. I doubt anyone has ever even tried to have a word with her about her clothes, too worried she’d piss off to a private law firm, which would pay ten times her current salary.
Emer was the top law student in her class at UCD. “It wasn’t a fair competition,” she once told me, as we circled around Merrion Square on our lunch break. “Both my parents were alcoholics, I’d more that I needed to block out than the other students.” We’d only been working together for a few weeks at that point, but people often tell me their secrets. I don’t know why. I’m not nearly as outgoing as Marian, or as approachable. When strangers stop the two of us on the street, they look at my sister while asking for directions, not me, and at a party, whoever is telling a joke will often look at Marian, expecting her to laugh, which she does easily. People tend to tell Marian jokes, but they tell me what they worry about.
“Nice shoes,” I mouth at Emer, and she winks back at me.
I spend the rest of the morning editing copy for the news desk. The atmosphere in the office soothes me, the constant stream of voices, of laughter and arguments, the squeak of dry-erase markers. I can feel twinges in my ribs and a stiffness in my neck from the whiplash, but they’re submerged, snowed under the painkiller.
I look around the other desks. If I were to tell any one of my coworkers about what happened yesterday, they would each tell me the same thing. They would tell me to go to the police. And maybe they’d be right. I don’t have to do what Marian says. The main garda station on Harcourt Street is only a few minutes away. The city center will be busy at this time of day, I might be able to slip inside without being seen. I wouldn’t bet my life on it, though. Or Marian’s.
At half two, Oisín says, loudly, “Christ on a bike. Emer, have you seen this?”
“What?” she asks.
“Nesbitt and Hooper is threatening to sue us,” he says. “For the Fianna Fáil piece.”
“Pricks,” says Aisling, and everyone nods. Protecting the newspaper from getting sued is the hardest part of our jobs.
By four in the afternoon, the office is stuffed with heat, and the painkiller is wearing off. The temperature isn’t doing me any favors. I should have ice packs on my ribs, to bring down the swelling. Instead, they’re throbbing with heat.
A piece on a bank robbery in Ballymore still needs a headline, but my mind has gone blank. This one should be a doddle, but I can’t think of a single clever heading. Normally I like writing them. I’ve a collection pinned above my desk of classic headlines from vintage newspapers. My favorite is for a match between Celtic and Caledonian Thistle, “Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious.”
Whoever wrote that would have no trouble writing a headline for a bank robbery. I rub my temples with my thumbs, and when I look up Joanna is watching me. She turns away quickly, tapping on her keyboard. Minutes pass, in which I focus on staying upright in my chair. Finally, I type, “Bank Robbed in Ballymore” and send off the copy, shame flushing my cheeks.
At five, I say goodbye to Joanna, in the midst of the others as they troop out the door. “Pub?” says Andrew, once we’re down the corridor.
“I’ve to finish some work,” says Oisín.
“Wagon,” says Andrew, and turns toward me. “Same,” I say, and as the others walk down the road toward Toners, I sag against the rails of Merrion Square to wait for the bus. The air is cooler out here than in the office, and carrying a green scent from the trees overhead. None of the others were surprised that I’m not joining them. I never do, too nervous about blowing my cover by saying something stupid after a few glasses of Rioja down the pub.
I call Marian from the top deck of the bus. “You okay?” she asks.
“I’m on the bus.”
“Get some rest, then. You’ll be back at work tomorrow,” says Marian, and I know which work she means. She’s right, too. My mind is grinding to a halt under the exhaustion.
“How’re you?” I ask. “Did you have any visitors today?”
“Only Seb’s sister,” says Marian. “She dropped off a lasagna, since she knows I’m on my own with the baby.”
“Which sister?”
“Orla,” she says, the youngest one of the five. “Seb says it’ll be inedible, but wasn’t that lovely of her?”
“Yeah, she’s a dote.”
“Where are you now?”
“Leeson Street,” I say, and Marian talks to me about nothing much for the rest of the bus ride home and up to my front door, like she’s holding my hand.
Without Finn, the air in the house feels thin, like the difference between fresh and salt water. It’s strange to move around the rooms without bumping into him, apologizing, touching my hand to his hair, to brush my teeth without Finn following me into the bathroom, tangling around my legs. Being away from Finn now is like being out in a city with your phone about to die, that slight hum, that sense of something askew.
Upstairs, I fill the bath with lukewarm water and lower myself in. I sink under the water, feeling my dry hair floating on the surface for a moment before the water swallows it under. Finn’s not home, but a part of me is listening for him anyway, circling around and around, like the beam of a lighthouse. After toweling off from the bath, I set my wet head on the pillow and let the beam rotate.