Her footsteps clomp down the stairs, and when I hear the pans bashing in the sink in the kitchen, I get up and go over to the airing cupboard. Inside is the little chair that’s too small
for me now. I sit on it anyway, and my knees do a diagonal up towards my chin. On the back of the door is the padlock and hinge I bought from the hardware shop. I fitted it myself, sneaking
Dad’s screwdriver back into the shed before Mum saw. I lock up the cupboard and test the door – it’s jammed shut. After a while I stop shaking and wipe my snot on my sleeve.
It’s very dark in here, but the edges of the door make a square of daylight. On the floor is my biology textbook, my exercise book and also the torch I put in here earlier. I flick on the
light to read about ‘the bolus’: ‘A small rounded mass of a substance, esp. of chewed food at the moment of swallowing.’ I have to put it into my own words, so I write:
‘You chew and mix the food up in your mouth, then push the lump to the back with your tongue. Next, your oesophagus squeezes it down to the stomach where the acid breaks it down. It would
even work if you stood on your head.’
My legs cramp. There isn’t enough room to stretch out. When I was little I could squeeze behind the immersion tank, but once I got stuck and it took ages to get out. After that I put the
chair in here and sometimes I fall asleep. I need a wee and I’m not sure how long I can hold it in, but mostly I worry about the supper I’ve eaten. I’ll have to do more sit-ups
tomorrow. From downstairs comes Mum’s voice. She sounds like she’s shouting through a pillow, but I can still make out what she’s saying: ‘You little bitch. I’ll leave
you and go on a long holiday, then you’ll really be able to starve yourself to death. That’s what you deserve.’
The outline of light round the door slowly disappears until there’s nothing but black. The torch dims, then flickers, then goes out. It’s so dark that I can’t tell how far away
the wall is, and I try to imagine I’m in a big room, but that makes me more scared so instead I put my hand flat on the wall in front of me and keep it there, holding myself up.
This must be like the prisons Peter talks about, where people who are liars, the ones who get other people into trouble, go to rot and die. No one ever knows what’s happened to them. They
disappear. Peter says the police can fix it so that whatever they say goes.
Everything is my fault anyway. If I concentrate hard enough I can make it like nothing ever happened.
Downstairs in the nursing home the trolley woman is talking to me, or at least her mouth is moving, but I can’t decipher her words. On her third attempt she’s
tetchy and almost shouts, ‘Do you want me to order a taxi?’
‘No thanks,’ I reply. ‘I need to walk.’
Rush-hour traffic zooms past on the busy road as people return to homes and families and Christmas cheer. A damp dusk crowds the sky. I bend my head forward as if carving a route through the
sea-steeped air. The smell reminds me of the last time I saw Will at the beach, and the same predictable ache twists in my gut. I’ve become strangely at home with this sole connection to
Will, only now it’s coupled with a hopelessness which gnaws even deeper, as if I’m being hollowed out from the inside.
Heading in the direction of the town and my B & B, I leave Peter behind, locked inside the walls of his decrepitude. My fingertips hold the slide of his loose skin, and I hug my dad’s
coat round me as I force my feet to move, one in front of the other, to draw me into the meditation of walking, but my thoughts won’t blank; a lid has opened on the past. A tumble of images
flicker through my brain: Alex’s calves pinched by the band of sock elastic, my colleagues’ heads at the office bobbing above their workstations, the brush of the old man’s
fingers in the car park as he put the coat on my shoulders. The dead dog. Seamus lying under wet leaves. Mum’s sweaty face as she stood over the washing-up. The taste of pipe tobacco in my
mouth.
My roll call of shame.
Echoes of memory bounce back and forth, but so many at once it’s impossible to lock on to any one. A car beeps its horn and several others join in as a jam builds up at a junction. The
buzz of noise crowds the snapshots in my head. The lid shuts.
A man in a ragged overcoat and oversized trainers walks the crossing as the lights flash amber. The man’s pace is solid and relaxed, as if he has all the time in the world. Even as the
lights change to green for the traffic to go, he ambles at his leisure before reaching the other side and stepping on to the pavement. Waiting vehicles spin their wheels to get away. One driver
shouts from his window, something I can’t make out above the noise of the traffic, but the man on the pavement takes no notice and continues to walk at the same speed into the distance. I run
to catch him up, jamming my finger repeatedly into the crossing button, but the signal phase takes too long before I can cross, by which time he has disappeared.
It will take over an hour to walk back to the B & B, and I cut through the suburban outreaches of the city. Most houses have Christmas trees in their windows, and I picture a young Claire,
like me, waiting for a Disney version of her father to walk through the door, full of apology and arms laden with presents. Claire’s letter to her dad is hidden with the rest of
Seamus’s papers at Will’s house, and if Will ever finds the correspondence he won’t have a clue what any of it means. The police can’t identify Seamus or trace his family
without this information, and his daughter will for ever wonder what happened to her dad. I could turn myself in but then Will would be drawn into a mess he has nothing to do with, so it’s
better I remove the middle man and deal with this last piece of shame head-on.
There’s a wall next to a big park. I sit. Detached houses circle the green, many with closed wrought-iron entrance gates leading on to a driveway where at least two cars are parked. The
lights from all the entrance buzzers form a string of stars along the road. I take out my mobile and scroll through the numbers until I find ‘Sister Williams’ – I thought it would
look as if I’d discovered the Lord if David found the number, and I hoped that in my current state of hysteria, David would believe I was capable of that.
A month ago, before I cut all ties with the office, I rang my contact at our debt-collection agency and asked Toby to put a trace on Claire. ‘She was pretty easy to find,’ he said
when he phoned back. ‘County Court judgement back in ’92. Lives in Belfast, divorced and married a second time, three kids. Pay cheques go into her account from Tesco.’ He sounded
guarded, less friendly than the conversations I was used to – normally he’d have been breathless with the chase, so David must have got to him – but I’m glad he did me one
last favour, and perhaps David is wrong; I do have some friends.
I dial 141 first so my number can’t be traced, then put the call in to Claire. I get her answering machine. The message says: ‘Hello, this is Claire, please leave your name and
number after the beep.’ It’s the voice of a woman and it takes me a moment to connect her grown-up intonation with the image of the little girl in the photo. In the background of the
recording is clattering and a baby crying. I don’t leave a message but hang up and redial. On my third attempt she answers. I say nothing, but listen to her voice and the noises in the
background: laughter, a TV up loud, children shouting. So different to my own life, so full. I want to sit with her on her sofa; we’d smoke cigarettes and laugh at the happy chaos around us.
‘Who is this?’ she says now. ‘Tell me what you want or leave me alone.’ My phone beeps with a low-battery warning – I’m so used to charging it in the car, I
didn’t think to pack my plug – and before the last bar of power disappears I hang up and copy the number on to the back of Claire’s photo in my bag.
A few paces inside the park is a modern-style glass and metal phone box covered in graffiti. Its yellow glow is a beacon in the darkness. I walk towards it and open the door, avoiding the old
spit on the handle. It’s so long since I’ve used a public phone and the system has changed completely; I don’t know where to start. From my purse I scoop a fistful of the coins
that Alex scattered. Pounds and ten-pence pieces warm in my grip. I pick out and discard the coppers. A receiver hangs down vertically, not slung over the top like in the old days, and I lift it to
my ear to hear the dialling tone; it’s a relief the phone’s still working and not been vandalized. Five pounds slide into the slot. I pause before dialling. This time I need to say
something, but I’ve nothing prepared. Is it enough to listen to Claire again, the daughter of Seamus and living proof that he existed and he carries on? There’s comfort in that
alone.
I dial her mobile and this time I don’t withhold the call-box number: now that I’ve heard her speak, I find I don’t care any more if I’m discovered.
‘Yes, hello?’ Her voice is brusque and flustered.
‘Hello,’ I say, ‘is this Claire Kenny?’
‘Yes. Who is this?’
‘Did you used to be Claire Williams?’
‘Yes. Who wants to know?’
‘I have some information about your father.’
‘What?’ The line crunches, as if she’s changing hands, then her voice comes back clearer and more serious now. ‘What information? Who are you?’
‘I know where your father is.’
‘My father?’ Her voice crackles and becomes louder. ‘How do you know my pa? That bastard’s been gone for over thirty years. What makes you think I want to know where he
is now?’
A pause.
‘Hello?’ she says. ‘Are you still there? Who is this? Is this some kind of wind-up?’
‘No, it’s not.’ I move the receiver to my other ear and take a breath. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Look, who are you and what do you want?’
‘I’m really sorry.’ My voice breaks up. Words lurch and stutter. I hadn’t expected this. ‘It was an accident. I didn’t mean for it to happen.’ Not until
we spoke did I realize what I was expecting. Resolution. Atonement. Forgiveness.
‘An accident? What are you talking about, what’s happened?’
‘I don’t know if I’ll get another chance, but I wanted to tell you with my own words. I believe he was a good man.’
‘If he thinks I’m coming to get him after all these years, then he’s got another thing coming.’ Her voice becomes cloudy, as if she’s holding her hand over the
receiver. ‘Jesus, Paul,’ I can make out, ‘I’ve got some nutter on the phone, says she’s got my dad. There’s been some kind of accident.’ I hear the man
mumble, then she comes back on. ‘Look, who are you? Where did you get my number?’
‘I’m trying to tell you about your father. I know all about you, you wrote him letters, you had a cat called Mouse.’
‘What the fuck is going on? How do you know that?’
‘I know because I was with him at the end.’
‘The end? What end?’ she says. ‘What are you telling me?’ Then her voice is muffled again. ‘Somebody help me here.’ In the background something smashes and a
child screams. ‘Paul, get the police on the other line. No, do it fucking now!’
‘No, please, don’t waste your time,’ I manage to say. ‘They can’t do anything, and I want to explain. I know what you’ve been through, I know what it’s
like to lose your father, but I believe he had his reasons. If you could see what I saw.’
Claire is shouting. ‘You let me talk to him. You put my pa on the phone.’ She’s ranting, probably not listening, so I raise my voice.
‘I’m really sorry. It was all my fault but I didn’t mean to do it. He was just there on the road when I came round the corner.’
‘What road, for Christ’s sake?’ Claire cries. ‘Is he dead, is that what you’re saying? Tell me what you’ve done to him!’
‘Yes, he is. I’m sorry. He’s dead.’
‘Dear God.’ Her voice becomes distant. Silence. Crackling, then sobs. A man asks her what’s the matter. ‘Leave me alone,’ she says.
‘Are you there?’ I say. ‘Can you hear me? I want to tell you I’m sorry, for everything. Please, forgive me.’
Back on the line now, and full volume. ‘What did you say?’ She’s screaming and I have to hold the receiver away from my ear. ‘You fucking bitch. Who are you to bring him
back into my life after all these years, you have no idea. And with this! You ask for my forgiveness? How dare you! You deserve nothing.’
A man comes on the line. ‘Leave my wife alone, do you hear? We’ve got your number and we’ve called the police.’
I bang down the phone. The receiver clangs on its support and the sound holds in the air like a tuning fork, then softens and blends into the silence of the night. I think of Claire and her
husband left in their own noise and confusion, in another room across a sea. I pick up the receiver to call again, but I’ve said all I need to say so put the phone back on its cradle, softly
this time.
As I leave the phone box, the door squeaks and thumps shut behind me. Cold oxygen fills my lungs. I inhale and exhale fast and loud, and do it over and again until I’m dizzy.
Behind me the phone in the box rings and I jump. It must be Claire. Or the police. I turn and stare at the receiver as if I can will it to stop, but it doesn’t. The chrome and glass of the
shelter chops the reflection of the trees into disjointed fingers, and a just-risen moon stretches round the contours of the metal. I walk into the big city park with a slow steady pace and listen
to the phone drill behind me. It stops then starts again. The park is the kind of place where it’s unsafe for a woman to be on her own at night. Trees lock round dark shadows. Leaves rustle.
A swing in the children’s playground squeaks with the ghost of the wind.
Time has been coming for me, always, trucking forward, and I’ve been fooling myself I could outrun it by hiding behind an upstanding life. And now the time has come to let go, it’s a
relief. There are no more decisions to make, and nothing else I can do to make anything right. I sense a large animal hidden in the undergrowth, pacing alongside me. Its eyes flash as if caught by
the headlights of a car. Inside my pocket my fingers find a piece of Seamus’s miniature skeleton.
In the distance the phone stops ringing. The clouds have cleared and the air chills. Two stars puncture the night. Later the sky will burst.