Stolen Child (22 page)

Carla

Robert’s son was eight months old when Raine married Jeff Boyne, the European manager of the Fuchsia chain. Under different circumstances, Carla would have been her chief bridesmaid. Raine understood her reasons for refusing. Too much exposure could destroy her hard-won freedom. As Carla waited with Frank and the other guests for the bride to arrive, he nudged her with his knee and whispered, ‘Is that Sharon in the front row?’

‘Yes.’ Carla folded her hands calmly on her lap and watched as Sharon lifted her son to her knee and silenced his cries with a kiss. ‘How did you know?’

‘She’s your clone.’

‘Not any more, she isn’t.’

‘True,’ he replied. ‘But you know what I mean.’

A wide-brimmed hat added to Carla’s anonymity. Her arrival at the church had not caused an intake of breath, or a head to turn, yet when the organist played ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and Raine walked up the aisle on Robert’s arm, he recognised her instantly. His eyes widened and his mouth opened, as if he was going to speak her name. Then he recovered. His expression smoothed out. He too was used to invisibility.

When they reached the hotel where the reception was being held, Carla went directly to the ladies’. She ran cold water over her wrists until her hands felt numb and her cheeks grew pale again.

‘Carla…’ He was waiting for her outside.

‘Clare,’ she said, softly.

‘Raine told me.’ He nodded in acknowledgement and gestured with his hand, taking in her slimline shirt and short jacket. ‘You look stunning.’

‘Thank you.’ She removed her hat and ran her hand through her hair, ruffling it back into shape. ‘I still get a shock when I look in the mirror.’

‘You’ve moved apartments, I believe.’

‘Yes. I’m settled in now. And you…a family man. Are you happy, Robert?’

‘Sometimes I believe I am,’ he replied. ‘In my own way. And you?’

‘I’m content. It suffices.’

‘I think about her every day.’ He spoke so quietly she had to lean forward to hear him. ‘I visited the Angels’ plot yesterday. She would be seven years old now.’

‘She
is
seven years old.’

‘You look different,’ he said. ‘But you haven’t changed at all.’

Sharon, pushing the baby in a buggy, stopped beside them. ‘I was wondering where you were.’ She glanced at Carla without a flicker of recognition. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Sharon Dowling.’ She waved towards the baby. ‘And this is our son, Damian.’

‘Congratulations, Sharon.’

‘Carla…’ Sharon’s gasp was audible. For an instant no one moved. Even the baby seemed gripped by the currents playing across their faces. ‘I saw you in the church but I’d
no idea…’ Her voice trailed away and the little boy, as if unable to bear the tension, began to wail.

‘He’s hungry.’ Sharon bent and laid her hand like a protective wing over Damian’s head. Her bleached hair showed dark at the roots. She was obviously letting it grow out. Perhaps she was tired of being the alter ego of a past memory. ‘I’m going to take him to our room and feed him.’

‘I’ll join you in a moment,’ said Robert.

She nodded and glanced from him to Carla. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

‘You too, Sharon.’ How civilized we are, Carla thought. How immune to pain we have become. Who would have believed it would be possible to stand in the same space without drawing knives?

‘Can I call and see you?’ he asked when Sharon walked away.

‘No.’

‘Just to talk?’

‘
No.
’

‘I wouldn’t—’

‘Yes you would.’

He nodded. ‘You’re right. I would. But would you?’

‘I’m not going to risk finding out.’

‘That man you’re with? Who is he?’

‘Frank Staunton. He’s a friend.’

‘Ah, the publisher. Raine says he wants to be more than that.’

‘He does.’

‘Will you let him?’

‘I believe I will.’

He reached out and grasped her hand. ‘Jesus Christ, Carla…how did we lose each other?’

‘I don’t know, Robert. But we did. And now there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.’

Frank had organised a table and ordered drinks. ‘I was going to send a posse out to look for you,’ he said when she sank into a chair opposite him.

‘I was talking to Robert.’

‘I thought you might be. If you want to break for the border, we don’t have to stay for the reception.’

‘The border sounds good. Raine and Jeff will understand.’

‘Where would you like to go?’ he asked.

‘How does my apartment sound?’ she replied.

‘It was a dangerous place the last time I visited it.’

‘No, Frank. It was an uncertain place.’

‘And now?’ His expression was quizzical.

‘It’s filled with certainty.’

She was surprised at how easy it was to love Frank. He delighted in controversy, the edginess of living close to the wire, and it was this recklessness that continued to attract her to him. If she had been asked to define her feelings she would have admitted that it was a convenient love, one that made few demands on her. No questions asked. No turbulence, no rows. She experienced none of the fire that had drawn her to Robert or any of the giddy, foolhardy excitement that had attracted her to Edward Carter. Frank’s true passion was paper and print and he, while appreciating her past, was not burdened by it. At forty-two, he was, he admitted, a confirmed bachelor with a set lifestyle he had no intention of changing. They suited each other’s needs and the move from being friends to becoming lovers was effortless.

Susanne

Twelve Years Later

Tonight you were a star. I sat with David in the front row of the assembly hall of Maoltrán National School and watched you strut into the spotlights; that radiant smile, that cocky walk that could, in a heartbeat, slow to a languid glide. Your mop of red curls was a thin disguise but no one sat alertly in their seat and added two and two together and, even if they could, they were too absorbed in their own children’s performances to notice the resemblance that beamed at me from the stage.

From the time the auditioning for Annie began, I knew you’d be chosen. Your music teacher loves your voice.

‘How proud you must be of your daughter,’ she said, when we went backstage. ‘Where does she get her talent from?’

After the show, I wanted to sweep you into my arms and tell you how wonderfully you had performed. My voice sounded strained, the words empty. I saw your face fall, your expression harden. You tossed your head defiantly and turned your dazzling smile upon those who came to congratulate you. You believed I’d dismissed you and I was in too much pain to care. Fear and pain, I wasn’t sure where one ended
and the other began. My stomach cramped and I was afraid blood would flow…it gets worse each month and I’m frightened…oh Jesus…I’m frightened.

Discipline, that’s what matters. Yoga and religion. I’ve discovered the power of prayer…and property. It was Miriam’s suggestion that I call in to Breen’s Auctioneers and talk to Victor Breen about a job. ‘If only you’d come to me sooner,’ she said, sighing and pretending to be disappointed when I’d asked if I could work again in her studio. Our relationship changed after the Joey incident and has never been the same since. For your sake, we occasionally have Sunday dinner together, but in the years that have passed we’ve grown more distant. Busy people, both of us. Pillars of the community, each in our own way. Occasionally, I think back to the early days but thinking back is to stand still and I don’t have time to pause. Not with Victor breathing down my neck and prices spiralling.

I never thought I’d be good at selling property but it’s a piece of cake. Victor believes we’re cut from the same cloth. I guess he’s right. Commitment. That’s his mantra. One hundred and ten per cent commitment. ‘The property market is going through the roof,’ he shouts. ‘We have the Celtic Tiger by the balls and by Christ we’ll make him roar. Apartments and town houses, manors and mobiles, castles and chateaus, duplexes, semis, terraces, bungalows, barns and shoe boxes. This is our time, Susanne. Big is beautiful. Property is king. Sell, sell, sell.’ Maoltrán seethes with life. It’s not unusual to hear Polish voices in the shops or the deep roll of an African accent. Stately black women in peacock colours address me by name, as do the slim Latvians and brown-eyed Romanians. Sell…sell…sell…

Tonight, you sold yourself to a packed audience. You got a standing ovation. Cameras flashed.
This way, Annie…That
way…The other way. Sing ‘Tomorrow’…‘Maybe’…‘Hard-Knock Life’. Encore…encore.
Miriam led the standing ovation.

‘Aren’t you glad you changed your mind about home-schooling,’ she said.

She finds it hard to resist these small verbal nudges but she’s right. I
am
glad I set you free. I never realised how claustrophobic our relationship had become until you walked away from me that first morning when I brought you to school. You held my hand tightly, your eyes round with fear when I knocked on the classroom door. We both cried in the beginning, morning after morning, and then, slowly, I felt my grip loosening on you.

Initially, Lilian Marr, the school principal, was cool with me. Home-schooling was a challenge to her authority but she mellowed when I offered to join the school management committee. After that it was the Chamber of Commerce and the Tidy Towns committee. In the end, it was easy enough to assimilate. People in country villages understand depression. The grey sky. The grey rocks. The isolation. It can happen to anyone.

Months passed without writing in my journal and, even when I remembered its existence, I had no desire to pour my dread into it. Carla Kelly had disappeared. Nothing to suggest she had ever existed. The relief was slow to come. I kept expecting her to stare at me from screen and paper. Then, finally, I was able to breathe deeply into my lungs and walk freely into the world.

You asked where the Judgement Book had gone. I hadn’t realised what terror it held for you. It was mixed up in your head with the Day of Judgement when all our sins shall be revealed. I never intended it to become a weapon of fear but you had found its hiding place. If I hadn’t discovered you
drawing those pictures you would have shown them to David. You always showed him everything you did, hanging on to his words of praise. I lashed out…forgive me. In that instant I saw a terrifying future…everything we had achieved…our lives wrenched apart. I’d forgotten to lock the box. How could I have made such an incredible mistake?

But now I write again, write late into the night. The whisperers came back to me after David’s father died. Six months now since he was laid to rest in the graveyard. Last week Miriam erected a headstone. I never knew the man. When I saw him for the first time he was laid out in his coffin. Miriam had received the call from the Mater Hospital in the middle of the night. Since he left her, there had been many women in Kevin Dowling’s life but none were by his side when he died. Miriam and David went to Dublin and brought his body back to Maoltrán. He’s at peace now, if peace is what awaits us on the other side. But on this side I’m in torment. In his will he left the cottage and the land surrounding it to David. Now my husband has ambitions. There’s a sparkle in his eyes and you’ve been fired by his enthusiasm. He’s had plans drawn up by an architect. The two of you pore over them, discuss how the lane will be widened and the cottage demolished so that a hostel can rise in its place. Dowling’s Meadow will become a wildlife sanctuary. They’ll come to Maoltrán, the botanists and lepidopterists, the hill walkers and those who seek mystical significance in the ancient tombs. I imagine the claws of diggers reaching deep into her tomb. My almost child. My secret exposed.

I tried to find her, tried to remember the exact spot. You came upon me as I was digging. I though you were in Lucinda’s house but you came home early. Some row over
a boy. You dropped your bike in the lane and ran into that wild place, stared at the mound of earth. I told you I was uprooting wild primroses to replant in my garden.

They will be destroyed when the cottage is demolished, I said, and you were too absorbed in your argument with Lucinda to wonder.

Your eyes sparked with indignation. ‘Lucinda’s
such
a cow,’ you said, and spent the next ten minutes explaining why. An hour later you were on the phone to her, giggling and whispering secrets.

David came home the next day. It’s too dangerous to search for the past. He will not believe vague excuses about uprooted plants. Victor Breen is my only hope. He dislikes competition and he has plans to build a new hotel on the outskirts of the village. There’s four of them involved in the conglomerate, all members of the Chamber of Commerce, all friendly with Mattie, the local county councillor. It’s how things work here, a nod, a wink and a brown envelope slipped sleight of hand.

The entrance to your lane is narrow, a traffic hazard, says Victor when I tell him what David plans to do. Can he honestly expect to get planning permission under such circumstances? Tell him it’s a pipe dream. Don’t let him waste his money.

Tonight, at the musical, he slapped David’s shoulder and wished him luck with his planning permission.

‘Sly bastard,’ said David. ‘He’ll do everything he can to scupper my plans.’

He dislikes the fact that I work for Victor. They went to school together. They know each other’s warts. He advises you to avoid Danny Breen. ‘Like father like son,’ he says. ‘I don’t want him supping at my table.’

But Danny Breen’s house is the honey pot. It’s where you
all gather around the swimming pool, the pool table, the home cinema. Soon you will be a teenager. Already you show the signs. A touch of acne on your forehead sends you spiraling into anxiety. Your mood swings cast you high and low, fill you with sunshine or dark, brooding clouds. You argue for the sake of it, challenge my authority, disagree with me over every change I make to the house. You obsess over your weight, your looks, your clothes, your friends. You are typical of your age group yet to me you will always be unique.

The pain has eased since I started writing. The house is silent, except for the whisperers. So low they whisper…
Beware…beware…tread carefully…

The blind stallion glints on its pedestal. I will finish now. I found a hiding place that will never again be breached unless I decide otherwise. If there comes a time…it will not happen…but if it should…then you will know the truth.

Until then, only the eyes of the blind see what I write.