Authors: Julie Parsons
It wasn’t hard to find him. He was looking at the exhibit of ancient gold. The light from the glass case shone up into his face, showing up the fine lines and wrinkles under his eyes and
around his mouth. She moved closer and looked down at the gleaming yellow necklets, the metal twisted into fine spirals, the huge flat buttons and cloak-fasteners, the heavy ornate collars. She saw
both their faces reflected in the glass and the way he was looking at her, recognizing her from the train. She smiled.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
She was proud of herself, the way she had managed to initiate the conversation. She had opened her mouth and wondered if the words would come. She knew about these things. She had studied
archaeology in first year in college, part of her degree. The knowledge was all still there. Lodged in her memory. She explained. The kind of artefacts they were. The date they were made. She
talked about the people who had worn them, the way they had lived. And he was charmed, she could see.
‘Here.’ She led him from room to room.
‘You’re better than a tour guide,’ he said, his hand casually brushing against her back as they walked out into the sunshine again. And the hairs on her arms rose up as she
felt her skin tighten.
‘Can I buy you a drink?’ he asked. ‘As a thank-you for your time.’
And she nodded, unable for a moment to speak. She could see that he hadn’t noticed. He was too busy telling her all about himself. He was thirty-two. He was divorced. He was from Ottawa.
He worked for a software company, installing telephone and computer systems. He was in Dublin for two months, working on a big job debugging some of the programmes here. And he laughed his loud,
ugly laugh.
‘You wanna see the mess that some of your guys have made of the system. And will they be told? You wanna bet?’
He was lonely, he said as he moved closer, his thigh rubbing against hers, one hand sliding up and under her shirt, pressing against her vertebrae. She could smell his sweat. She watched him
drink. The way he lifted up his chin as he raised the glass to his lips. The way the skin stretched tightly over his throat, so she could see clearly his Adam’s apple and the tendons in his
neck. His hand clutched her thigh under the table, his fingers digging into her crotch. She reached down and slid open her zip and felt him touch her, then take her own hand and press it hard
against himself. So long since she had done this. Years and years and years. She felt his mouth against her ear, and his whispered instructions.
‘Come with me, come back to my place. We’ll have some fun.’
She followed him out of the bar, waiting while he hailed a taxi, gave an address somewhere on the Quays, then pushed her back against the seat, forcing open her mouth, his hands reaching for her
breasts. So long since she had felt anything like this. And she remembered suddenly, so vividly that she wanted to cry out, her first time with Martin. Outside in the open air. Midwinter. The night
they met. A retirement do for a friend of her father’s. She hadn’t wanted to go but her father had persuaded her. Bought her a new dress. Halter-neck. Silk. Pleated. Beautiful. And she
had met Martin, the son of her father’s friend. And left with him, long before the speeches were over. Walked out of the hotel. Walked as far as the car park. Opened her coat. Felt the cold
on her breasts and the warmth of his mouth. Leaned back against a tree and felt him inside her. Laughed out loud at their pleasure together. Afterwards they drove away in his car to sit by the
little beach at Sandycove and watch the sun rise over the sea. And they touched each other as if each was precious and new and perfect.
There was a security gate at the apartment complex. He punched in his code. Five, eight, three, seven. She remembered it. She looked for cameras. There were none. He used a swipe card to open
the door.
‘Better than a hotel,’ he said as he pulled her in behind him.
More private, she thought. He put on music. She knew it. The Cranberries. The girls inside had been mad about Dolores O’Riordan. She looks like one of us, they always said. He turned up
the volume.
‘Aren’t you worried?’ she asked him as he poured glasses of vodka and took a plastic sachet of what she was sure was cocaine from his briefcase. ‘About the neighbours
complaining?’
‘Neighbours, complaining? It’s live and let live here. I don’t know them, nor could I give a fuck. And the feeling, I’m sure, is mutual.’ He looked down at the two
lines of coke he had laid out carefully across a small rectangular mirror. ‘Now.’ He handed her a rolled-up ten-pound note. ‘Ladies first, I do believe.’
They’d have been proud of her, all her old friends from the prison. Not just the way she snorted the coke with practised ease but also in the way she sorted through his clothes before she
left the next morning. Taking the cash from his wallet, his credit cards, the identity card for his job. She hesitated over his passport. It was worth money, lots of it, but on the other hand
he’d have to report it stolen to get it replaced. No embassy official would believe that he had just lost it. And she didn’t want to do anything that would force him to go to the
police. Just in case, she wiped her prints from everything she had touched. Except his skin, she thought. He was still sleeping deeply when she had dressed and was ready to leave. Sleep suited him.
He looked young and beautiful. It was a pity about the sex, by the time he was ready for bed he couldn’t manage it at all. Too much drink, too many drugs. The girls had always said that the
stories about coke and sex were a myth.
‘It’s just like any other drug,’ they told her. ‘Once they’ve got a taste for it they’re fucking useless when it comes to bed. You always end up finishing it
off by yourself.’
Such a pity, she thought, that they were right.
She stood by the river in the early morning sunshine and watched as a school of grey mullet made the journey from the sea towards O’Connell Bridge. They hung five-deep in the murky water,
a lazy flick of their tails pushing them forward. What brings them up here, she wondered, away from the cleansing tide into the sluggish greasy sink of the river. Then she answered out loud her
unspoken question. ‘Food, of course, what else.’
She turned and walked away from the city towards where the river opened out into the bay. She raised her hand to her face. She could still smell him. His aftershave and his sweat. He had been so
helpless, lying there beside her when she woke. She had sat and watched him. She had pulled back the sheets and looked at his body. She hadn’t seen a naked man since Martin had died. As he
rolled over towards her she saw the place where the shot from the gun had torn Martin apart. She remembered the colour of the blood as his heart pumped it from his body. Now she watched the pulse
at the base of his neck, rising and falling. She reached out and touched it. It didn’t take much to end someone’s life. They had talked about it inside. The ways it can be done. The
quickest, cleanest, neatest. They had told her and taught her, and she had listened and learned, stored up the knowledge for later, for when she would need it. She put her hand around his neck and
felt his blood throb against her skin. He stirred and made as if to turn. She opened her fingers and pulled her hand away. She got up. She left.
Now the sun shone upon her face. She closed her eyes and tilted back her head. Then she pulled the credit cards and the money from her pocket. She had no need for them. She had all the money she
could possibly want lying neatly in its hiding place in her room. She just wanted to know that she could do it. Break the commandment. Thou shalt not steal. Then get away with it. It was practice,
that’s what it was, for what was to come. She held her booty out in front of her, then flung the lot of it down into the river. She watched it settle on the surface, then waited until slowly
and gradually the water dragged down the plastic and paper until all that was left was a tiny spreading ripple. Then she turned away.
M
ORE ADVENTURES NOW
. Every day something new to discover. Every morning there were exercises to do. Yoga poses she had learned in prison to drag her
muscles out of their state of inertia. The cat, hollowing and arching her back, breathing in and out smoothly, rhythmically. The cobra, lifting her ribcage up out of her abdomen, the palms of her
hands and her pubic bone flattened on the wooden floor. The dog, hips high, feet stretched, heels pushing down. The triangle, legs wide, feet turned first to one side, then to the other. And
balancing poses, one leg raised, one foot anchored, one arm above her head, her gaze fixed to a dark spot on the wall, keeping her straight, keeping her upright, keeping her focused. Then down on
the floor again, her knees bent, hands clasped behind her neck and she lifted and lowered her head, feeling the contraction in her stomach muscles. Twenty, thirty, forty times, sweat breaking out
on her forehead. Hearing the voices of the women in the prison gym, shouting at her, urging her on, telling her to do it, to make it happen. She stood in the shower and scrubbed and scrubbed, and
felt as if there was a new Rachel breaking through the skin of the old one.
The new Rachel who waited at the bus stop opposite the house just outside Dalkey village and looked at the cars parked on either side of the narrow road, haphazardly, some half up on the
footpath, others carelessly blocking the gateway. It was twelve-thirty. Going-home time for the twenty or so small children who spent their weekday mornings at the Little Darlings crèche
just outside Dalkey village. She had been here before. Every day this week. She would arrive just before twelve-fifteen and take up her position at the bus stop on the other side of the road. The
bus, she knew, wouldn’t come until well after twelve forty-five and no one would notice the woman who waited so patiently, leaning against the crooked metal pole.
It was the same routine every lunchtime here. The first of the mothers and the au pairs came at about twelve-twenty. The early birds would sit in their cars, listening to the radio or reading
the paper. Then gradually all the others would arrive. Those on foot would walk past the parked cars and wait just inside the gate, leaning against the granite wall, chatting quietly. And the rest
of the sleek, well-groomed women would arrive soon after, parking where they could find space, a steady rhythm of slamming doors announcing their presence as they too made their way into the drive.
And then, sometime just after twelve-thirty, the children would appear, led by two teenage girls. They would always be carrying a present for their mothers. Paintings on large pieces of flimsy
paper, bright splashes and smears of colour to be fussed over and cooed about, and interpreted endlessly over lunch. Or lumps of clay, whose function was equally obscure, but whose reception was
guaranteed to be ecstatic.
Had it been like this for her, Rachel wondered as she watched. Did she see herself and Amy among the group? Was she the mother who crouched down beside the little girl with the red curls,
praising, encouraging, urging her on with loving words and kisses? Or was she the woman in a hurry, barely greeting the chubby boy with glasses, before gathering up school bag and painting, and
hustling him out of the gate and into the back seat of the car? There had been a time, she remembered, when her kitchen walls were decorated with Amy’s paintings. Every day a new one to add
to the collection. Each one dedicated. To Mummy or Daddy. To Grandad and Granny. To Uncle Dan. What had happened to all of them, she wondered. Lost, thrown away, dumped, she supposed. When the
house had been sold, after she had gone to prison, and Amy to Rachel’s father and mother, and then, when it had all become too much for them, to the foster-family. The house and its contents
had belonged equally to her and Martin. It was their family home. But Martin’s family had argued that the proceeds should go only to Amy. That Rachel should not be allowed to profit in any
way from Martin’s death. She could have fought it. Her solicitor told her she had a case. But she had no stomach for the fight. She agreed. Asked only that her own belongings be parcelled up
and sent to her father. But what had happened to them when her mother died and Alzheimer’s disease took her father away from her? She had no idea. And now she no longer cared.
She was late today, the woman who Rachel had come to see. It was twenty-five to one. Most of the children had gone home. There was just the one still waiting, still being looked after by the
teenage minders in their tight jeans and T-shirts. A girl, a sweet little thing with straight dark hair and a solemn expression. She stood by herself, the thumb of her left hand in her mouth, the
other hand holding on to a large piece of cardboard on which were stuck some things that looked like seashells. The child was getting anxious. She was beginning to edge towards the gate, one step
at a time, then stopping and looking back at the girls who were now deep in animated conversation. Rachel watched her. The child pulled her thumb out of her mouth, wiped it carefully on the skirt
of her dress and moved to the edge of the footpath. She peered up and down, taking a step forward, then pulling back. She was talking to herself. Rachel couldn’t hear what she was saying, but
she could see the small mouth opening and closing, the plump cheeks dimpling. Soon, Rachel thought, there would be tears.
She looked beyond the child to the two girls to see if they had noticed what was happening, but they had turned their backs even more firmly on her, their heads together as they furtively lit
their cigarettes. Time passed slowly. The little girl edged further and further away from the gate. Rachel looked up and down the road. It was quiet now, no passers-by, no pedestrians, just the
occasional car taking a short cut to avoid the traffic congestion of the village. Driving fast, too fast down this narrow road. Rachel stepped forward. She crossed over to the child. She stopped in
front of her. She bent down.
‘Hallo,’ she said, ‘are you all right?’
The little girl looked up at her, squinting her grey eyes against the bright midday sun.