Under the red emergency sign, I stand breathing in the damp night air. Across the car park, an ambulance drives slowly out toward the main road with its sirens off.
I follow the narrow road toward the M11. My car’s headlights illuminate a space under the dark trees, sending a fast tunnel down the road. Beside me, the side mirror suddenly brightens with the reflection of another car’s headlights. We are alone, somewhere between Wicklow town and the motorway, and the other driver seems to be accelerating, closing the distance between us. I speed up, too, racing down the winding country road, but soon the other driver is just behind me, close enough for his headlights to bleach the interior of my car.
I reach my hand out to push down the automatic locks. If the driver rams me off the road, I can either sit inside my locked car or take off running into the darkness. I can’t see any houses along the road. My pulse beats in my throat, but then the other car is turning, its headlights rotating, and I continue straight, the distance growing between us. It was only someone speeding, nothing to do with me.
Mam lives in a cul-de-sac of pebbledashed houses in Inchicore. She has a row of seashells on the windowsill and a driftwood sign on the front door that says fáilte. Marian and I always tease her about that sign, and the wine o’clock one in her kitchen, but tonight, standing in the dark on her front step, I’m glad at the sight of it.
When I let myself into her house, mam is scrubbing her kitchen surfaces in a pair of yellow rubber gloves. She drops the gloves in the sink and gives me a tight hug. “If you hadn’t rung the guards, Marian would still be up there.”
“It’s all right, mam. She’ll be fine,” I say. Over her shoulder, the kitchen is scrubbed to a shine. Mam must have been cleaning since putting the children to bed. She can never sit still when she’s worried.
I watch her scoop formula into a bottle for Saoirse’s night feed. “Ah, sorry, I forgot to tell you there was pumped milk in Marian’s freezer.”
“Honestly,” says mam, “the carry-on you girls have over milk. Do you know what I was reared on? Condensed milk and golden syrup.”
She takes down a bottle of Bailey’s and two glasses. “Do you’ve nothing stronger?” I ask, pulling a face. I want a brandy, something to relax my nerves enough for me to sleep. Mam shakes her head, and we carry our glasses into the front room. I move some of her thousand throw pillows aside before dropping onto the sofa. I take a sip of Bailey’s, and it tastes cold and sharp, like spiked eggnog. I lean my head back against the sofa, hugging a throw pillow to my chest.
“Marian’s going to hate being laid up in bed,” says mam. “And how on earth will she look after Saoirse?”
“Seb will do it.”
“He’s on a shoot,” says mam. “He’ll lose the job if he doesn’t go back, and they need the money.” Of course they need the money, everyone’s budgets have been tightened recently, and yet Marian still sent cash to Niall in prison.
“The detective was a prick,” I say, twisting the tassels on the pillow.
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” says mam. Two of her brothers were battered by cops at Musgrave in the eighties, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“He put a lot into interviewing me today. He won’t want all that time to have been wasted.”
Mam frowns. “But it wasn’t wasted. They found Marian.”
“That’s not what he wants,” I say, taking a long swallow of my drink. “He wants to uncover an IRA sleeper cell.”
Mam laughs. “Well, he needs to cop on, then.”
“I’m worried about him. What if he doesn’t let it go? What if he keeps after Marian?” I picture the detective after our interview ended, looking at our chairs, switching off the lights. He won’t leave it there. I know he won’t.
“He’ll not find anything,” says mam. “You worry too much.”
“There’s no such thing,” I snap. “Not for us. There aren’t enough hours in the day for all the worrying I should be doing.”
Mam’s face softens. She starts to speak, and I stand from the sofa. If mam tells me, one more time, to speak to a priest or come with her to mass, I’m going to lose my head. She thinks going to church will stop me worrying all the time, which is ironic, since the church is why we’re here. The churches. “Night, mam. Thanks for minding Finn.”
Saoirse is asleep in a travel crib in mam’s room, and Finn is in the smaller back room. I touch his forehead, and he feels warm. His body always seems to heat by a couple of degrees while he’s sleeping. In the darkness I look at his small face, his snub nose and the arch of his eyebrows, his closed dark lashes. I climb in beside Finn, my body tucked around his, the warm soles of his feet resting on my knees, relieved to be with him, in this house, with mam downstairs waiting on Fair City to start, with the sloped roof above us and the other small houses curving around the cul-de-sac.
Darkness will have settled over the mountains by now. The ruined chapel and round tower in Glendalough will be dark, and the bare slopes of the mountain rising above them. Marian could still be there, unconscious, her body crumpled against a boulder. Ringing the gardaí today saved her life.
I’m aware of something tugging at me, something I’m missing. There was something from earlier I’d meant to think about when I had time, but my body is already sinking into the mattress and I can’t remember what it was.
At home the next morning, I squeeze my car into a spot on Northbrook Road. I lift Finn out of his car seat, and hold him close for a second before spinning around and lowering him to the footpath. We round the corner onto Dartmouth Terrace, and it occurs to me that the detective knows my address. He might have driven here after his shift last night. He might have sat in his car on the road, staring up at my house, but that’s a mad thought. Surely he must have better things to do. Mam’s right, I do need to have a word with myself.
The detective wouldn’t have seen much, even if he had come here. I usually draw the front curtains before we go out, although I hate when other people do. I like being able to glance into strangers’ houses, especially during the holidays, when decorations twinkle in some of the front rooms.
Inside, I turn off the security alarm and open the curtains while Finn scatters his train set onto the floor. I watch him scoot around the carpet, finding pieces, fitting them together. The sun catches in his hair, on the tip of his nose, and on the round curve of his cheek.
While he plays, I make a spanakopita to bring Marian in the hospital. I separate the phyllo sheets and brush oil onto them with my fingers, then blend the spinach and cream, grate the cheese. I work quickly, glad to have my hands busy. While the spanakopita cooks in the oven, the kitchen starts to smell rich and golden, like a place where no one is ever anything but safe.
On the drive to the hospital, I glance from the road to Finn in the rear mirror. Before we left, I set a thermos of water and a fruit pouch in the cups of the car seat, and in the mirror I watch Finn drink the fruit purée with a look of concentration. “Here,” he says, straining forward to hand me the empty pouch.
“I can’t take it right now, I’m driving.”
“Here, mama.”
“Put it in the cup for now,” I say, and he sighs.
At the hospital, Marian, Seb, and mam are ravenous. They fall on the spanakopita like wolves, savaging the entire pan inside of ten minutes. “Was that meant to last me the week?” asks Marian, licking crumbs from her fingers.
“I’ll make something else,” I say. “What do you fancy?”
“Chicken Marbella? And your polenta one,” she says, clapping her hands over Saoirse’s. The six of us barely fit in her room in the step-down unit.
“Has your fever come back?” I ask.
“No, thank christ for antibiotics.”
“A hundred years ago,” says mam, “she’d be dead.”
“Jesus, mam.”
“In fairness,” says Seb, “she would probably have already died from the flu or something.”
Seb tells her that he ordered a satellite messenger for her next hike, and an avalanche beacon. “Ireland doesn’t have avalanches,” says Marian.
“Not yet,” says Seb darkly.
“You need to go home,” says Marian, and Seb shakes his head. “You’ll be up with Saoirse tonight.”
“I’m fine,” he says. Early tomorrow, Seb has to travel back to the Aran Islands for the reshoots. The two of them were arguing over it when I came in. Seb said, “Don’t you want me to stay?” and Marian said, “Of course I want you to stay, but I also want to pay our mortgage. If word gets out that you up and left in the middle of a shoot, no one will hire you on the next job.”
Mam and Seb bring the children down to the canteen for tea, leaving Marian and me alone in the room. She says, “Can you research the detective? Find out what other cases he has worked on.”
“Why?”
“So we know what he wants.”
“Do you want me to run surveillance on him, too?” I ask, and Marian’s head rears back. “You’re thinking like an IRA member.”
“At least I’m thinking. What about yourself? What are you even doing? You’ve made no progress with Eamonn. I could have finished this weeks ago,” she says, her eyes glittering. I’m about to answer when Seb and mam crowd back into the room with the children, balancing paper cups of tea. “Finn, time to go,” I say, not looking at Marian.
Mam turns between the two of us, looking at my clouded face, Marian’s arms folded over her chest, and says, “Are you girls rowing?” Neither of us answers, and she mutters, “Give my head peace.”
Mam walks me outside, both of us holding Finn’s hands as we cross the car park. After buckling him into his seat, mam stands beside me. “I popped up to Belfast this morning,” she says.
“What? When?”
“Before visiting hours,” she says, like the drive across the border and back was nothing. “I saw Sheila.”
“You went to see Eoin Royce’s mother? Are you out of your mind?” I ask, and mam tuts. “What were you thinking, mam? You’re going to get us killed.”
“Oh, I trust Sheila. We’re old friends.”
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” I say.
Mam reaches into her bag and takes out a stack of handwritten letters. She says, “Will you not be wanting these, then?”
After leaving Wicklow, I take back roads instead of the motorway, like it’s a dig at Marian, like she will somehow know that I’m in no humor to hurry home and make her a tray of chicken Marbella. Asking me to research the detective, like we’re in an active-service unit, and she is divvying up the jobs for an operation.
I won’t research the detective when I get home. I won’t start reading through his press statements, I won’t work out when he joined the Gardaí, which of his cases went to court, or which school he attended, though I know that he might be researching me. And I won’t read through the handwritten letters mam has given me, not yet. It’s Sunday afternoon. After Finn’s bedtime, I’m going to watch television and do laundry, and tomorrow I’m going to walk into work like this weekend never happened.
At home with Finn, I think finally something simple, something good, and being alone with him is like pouring molten gold into all the day’s cracks.
During dinner, Finn looks at me over his plate. “I don’t want this,” he says. “I want plain rice.”
“It is plain rice,” I say. “Risotto is basically plain rice.”
Finn jumps down and shoves his chair over to the cabinet, reaching for a biscuit. “No,” I say. “Not until after dinner.” He kicks the cabinet, wailing, and I mutter, “Jesus christ, can I never get a break?”
Finn looks at me, startled, and guilt floods through me, because it’s not his job to be good for me, to make up for anything for me. “Sorry. Sorry, sunshine, I’m tired. And we both need to eat our dinner. Do you want some parmesan on yours?”
“I want to grate it myself,” he says. He gives the cabinet a final kick, which I decide, for both our sakes, not to see, and sits down at the table. After precisely three bites of risotto, Finn is happy again, babbling away to me, swinging his legs under the table, like the tantrum never happened, and I understand why mam still asks Marian and me if we’re hungry anytime we’re in bad form.
Finn has been overwrought all evening, I realize. Earlier, when his scissors wouldn’t open, he started sobbing, almost doing himself a violence. “Were you worried about Aunt Marian yesterday?” I ask him at bedtime.
“Granny said she could have frozen to death,” he blurts out, and I’m amazed it took me so long to cop on.
“She’s fine now, mo leanbh, she’s safe.” He asks if he will freeze, and I say, “No, no. You’re in your warm bed, in your safe house.”
The phrase catches in my mouth, and I lift a hand to my face, trying to hide the tears springing to my eyes. How has this happened? What have I done wrong? Because I’ve been raising my son in hiding, in what is, for all intents and purposes, a safe house. With a security alarm, with double-paned windows, with extra locks on the doors.
“What is it, mama?” he asks.
“I just meant that you’ve nothing to worry about, okay? You’re safe.”