They studied face after face as people came in through the doors and halls and spread into the various parts of the venue. The place filled quickly so each took turns monitoring a set of cameras. Graham had posted Alexandra’s picture on the wall in front of him for purposes of recognition. The venue became louder as the chatter grew and people moved to and from their seats to the toilets and
to the bar, and servers began working the round tables where groups were drinking, laughing and talking.
Jane thought how funny it was to have this perspective, to watch people who were unaware they were being watched. She saw one woman lift and separate her breasts when her partner left to go to the toilet, then followed him down the hall and witnessed him turn to stare as a pretty girl walked past him. Another guy waited for his date to go to the bar before he picked his nose, examined the result and flicked it across the room. She pointed at the camera and made a sound suggesting she was appalled. “People are disgusting,” Graham said. She saw many brunettes but none of them had her friend’s rich glossy hair. Every now and then her heart-rate would increase because she spotted someone who just might be Alexandra, but Graham would zoom in and her heart would slow, and Tom would momentarily close his eyes and bow his head for the second or two he needed to pull himself together.
Jack L and his band emerged from the dressing room two minutes before he was due on stage. Jack was in a black suit and a red shirt; he ran his hand through his hair and took a drink from his bottle of water. The bass player slapped him on the back and he grinned at him, the familiar troublemaker grin that Jane recognized. The door of the dressing room stayed open for a second or two before someone inside closed it. The band walked down the hall and out of shot, only to be picked up on the next camera that focused on backstage.
On stage the lights rose and danced on the velvet curtain. The drummer sat behind his drums, the guitar player picked up his guitar and placed it around his neck, the piano-player
made herself comfortable, and they started to play while Jack bounced with guitar in hand stage right on a separate screen. Tom watched the crowd as they clapped and cheered, and some people stood and some stamped their feet, and the curtain rose and Jack walked on. The crowd went mad – he bowed and grinned and raised his hand – the band started up, the show began and Alexandra was nowhere to be seen.
They continued to scan each and every face while Jack sang and told stories and shared a joke with the guitar player, and time passed so quickly and then the gig was almost over.
Jack returned to the stage to sing his encore, but just as Graham turned to offer his sympathy to Tom, Jane noticed a woman with short brunette hair and Alexandra’s face emerge from Jack’s dressing room. She pointed and called out to Tom, and he and Graham saw her. Tom shot up and Graham zoomed in and Tom started running and Graham shouted for him to turn left at the box office and he did but the hallway was empty. Jane had run after Tom. Graham phoned Tom’s number and directed him to the side entrance and he followed the advice and ran through the club, navigating past people who were on their feet and dancing to “Boys And Girls”, with Jane hot on his heels. He made it outside to an alleyway and the woman had her back to him and was talking to a man with a laminated card around his neck and Tom called out to her.
“Alexandra!”
And she turned – and for a split second he thought it was her and seeing her took his breath away, but then she walked towards him and the closer she got the less she looked like his wife because the expression on her face was not an expression he’d ever seen before.
“Can I help you?” she said, and her accent was English.
Tom couldn’t do anything but shake his head. “No,” he said, “you can’t help me.”
And then he was on his knees, weeping uncontrollably.
Jane stood behind him, staring at the woman who looked so much like her friend on camera but in person and close up seemed shockingly different.
We’re so stupid. Of course it wasn’t her. It was never going to be her
.
The woman was unsure how to react. The man with the laminated card moved to stand beside her and they both found themselves staring at Tom, who was on his knees and crying, “Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?”
Jane knelt down and took his hands, then pulled him to her and hugged him close.
“Where is she, Jane?” he whispered. “Where’s my girl?”
“I don’t know,” she said, rubbing his head like she used to rub Kurt’s when he was young enough to be soothed rather than repelled by her touch, “but we will find her.”
Michelle, tipped off by Graham who was watching the sad scene on screen, appeared and took the English Alex inside, where she explained the tragic circumstances the crying man had found himself in. The English Alex was dreadfully sorry to hear of the man’s plight and more than a little freaked at the likeness between her and the picture of the missing woman. She explained that she worked for Jack’s UK distribution company and made her excuses as she had somewhere to be. She was gone before at last Jane came in with Tom, whose disappointment had turned into mild shock.
*
Back in his hotel room, Jane insisted that Tom have a strong brandy to calm his nerves. He was berating himself for believing it possible to find Alexandra at a gig in London and saying how stupid of him to think that his wife would be in Jack L’s dressing room – after all, the Jack camp had been so good about helping him. That woman was not just thinner, she was rail-thin, and she was taller and, despite certain similarities, up close she was nothing like his wife. He had been fooling himself.
His police liaison officer, Trish, had said as much the last time she called to the house to update him on the investigation surrounding his wife’s disappearance. Their unit had analysed the CCTV footage that Michelle had passed on and found that it wasn’t a match. He had argued with her that computers were not gods and he knew his wife’s face. She had been patient with him and was always kind, but she was adamant that he needed to let go of the notion of finding his wife in a London club.
“I can’t let go,” he said. “I have to find her.”
Trish left soon after and he promptly blocked out the information she’d just given him because, more and more, his mind was visiting the dark place and he desperately needed hope.
Now, as he sat drinking brandy, that conversation came back to haunt him. He apologized to Jane for wasting her time and for breaking down in the alleyway. He assured her he would pay to clean the oil stains from her coat, the result of her sitting on the ground and rocking him like a baby for ten minutes.
She told him he should get some sleep. She kissed his cheek and said they would keep searching.
He held her hand and looked into her eyes and bit his lip. “Tell me something about her.”
So she told him about a time when her best friend Alexandra was a little girl, maybe eleven or twelve, and stole an ice cream from the local shop. She’d spent a second or two choosing the one she wanted, placed it under her coat and made her way outside. When the shopkeeper ran after her, calling on her to stop, she turned to him, calmly took out the ice cream and handed it to him. Then she smiled and congratulated him on catching her. “No flies on you, Mr Dunne, no flies at all!” Alexandra had said.
Mr Dunne was taken aback, especially when she pointed out that two days earlier, while he was away from the shop and his wife was behind the counter, she’d stolen a bar of chocolate without any fear of capture. She took it from her pocket and handed it to him. “I practically dangled it under her nose,” she said to Mr Dunne, who was now decidedly confused. “To be fair to her, the shop was busy but, Mr Dunne, you can never be too careful – shoplifters are everywhere.”
“I’ll mention it to her,” he said, still unsure as to what was going on.
“You’re welcome,” she said, and walked down the road.
Mr Dunne stared from her to the chocolate bar and to his wife, who was busy serving a customer.
What the hell just happened?
Alexandra made it around the corner to where Jane was waiting and, as soon as she was sure that Mr Dunne could no longer see her, she burst into tears. Once she’d recovered sufficiently to walk home Alexandra promised Jane she would never again engage in a criminal act, but although
she had scared the pants off herself and was down a bar of chocolate, the encounter was not a total loss because Alexandra had learned something very powerful that day: any lie delivered with confidence and conviction is believable, no matter how ridiculous the circumstance. This self-awareness had really worked in their favour when they were caught poaching while on holiday with Alexandra’s parents in Mayo a year later.
“And what about you?” Tom asked. “Did you just wait to see if she’d get away with it before you had a go?”
“Oh, no! I’d successfully robbed three Mars bars from a shop two doors down. It was one of those bars that she gave back to Mr Dunne.”
He laughed a little. “So what did you learn?”
“That the hand is quicker than an old woman’s one good eye.”
When Jane was content that she’d cheered Tom up a little she bade him goodnight.
“Thanks,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
He walked to the door with her and watched her go down the corridor to her room. She could feel his eyes on her back and she smiled at him when she turned to place her key card in the door. She disappeared into her room and Tom entered his, opened the mini-bar again and started drinking. When he saw he’d missed three calls from Jeanette he turned his phone to silent.
When Jane’s taxi pulled up to her house her son opened the front door, walked down the steps, met her at the gate and took her suitcase from her hand. “Sorry, Mum,” he said. “I should have helped out with Gran.”
Jane was surprised and unsure what to say. Instead she just hugged him tight and took the opportunity to kiss his cheek.
“Mum!” he moaned. As they walked up the steps together he put his arm around her shoulders. “I have something to tell you,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“Irene’s here.”
“And?”
“She needs a place to stay.”
“What’s going on?”
“There’s no food in her house.”
“Okay.”
He stopped at the door and turned to her. “Really?”
“Really. Just make sure she lets her mother know.”
“She would if she could reach her.”
He followed her inside, she hung up her coat and he placed her case on the floor.
“Are you hungry?” she said.
“We’re starving.”
“Okay,” she said. “Give me five minutes and I’ll get busy.”
Irene appeared in the sitting-room doorway. “Hi, Jane,” she said shyly.
Jane walked over to her, hugged her and kissed her on the forehead. “Welcome.”
Irene brightened. “Thanks, Jane, you rock.”
“Yes, I do,” she said, “and you’re in the spare room.”
“I know, I know. Don’t have sex, not here, not there, not anywhere,” Irene said, in a voice that mimicked Jane’s.
Kurt laughed and Jane nodded. “Exactly.”
She walked into her bedroom, sat on the bed and took a minute to allow the events of the weekend to wash over her. Then she took time to be grateful for her life, as hard as it sometimes was.
I’m one of the lucky ones
.
Chapter 8
Numero Uno
I looked behind the counter
,
sofa and the sink
,
got down on my knees
and looked under the fridge
but I can’t find love
.
Jack L,
Metropolis Blue
April 2008
Dominic had never been very good at relationships. In his thirty-six years on the planet his longest had been three years. He had married Bella six months after he’d ended a disastrous but very passionate affair with a dancer called Heidi. She was twenty-three and liked to take E or alternatively acid on weekends. He hadn’t bothered to take E in his teens and twenties with his peers so he was damned if he was going to do it in his thirties. Also he’d witnessed a guy in college attempt to hack off his own foot with a wooden spoon while screaming that the eagles had landed after a particularly bad acid trip, so that was out. Besides, as a respectable bank manager the last thing in the world he wanted was to be found in a club in Dublin off his tits and bouncing off walls or screaming bloody murder while attempting to land himself on the moon.
Heidi resented that he didn’t share her interests and he found it difficult to live with someone who was in a bad mood from Sunday morning to Tuesday night. So, class A drugs were blamed for the demise of their relationship. They had fought and she had ordered him out of her flat, and he told her he wouldn’t be back and she was happy with that, further promising that if she saw him anywhere near her place again she’d call the police. Obviously he pointed out that calling the police would be a bad idea, considering she shared a flat with a drug-dealer named Seth and spent half her time either going up or coming down. He had walked from her flat to his car and gone to Jane’s house. She had made him dinner and provided a shoulder to cry on, because even though Heidi drove him crazy he would miss her. Jane was a great listener. She was always there for him even though when she’d needed him most he hadn’t been there for her.
Dominic often regretted the choices he had made aged seventeen but there was part of him that was also secretly grateful. If he and Jane had married, as Rose had demanded at the time, they wouldn’t have made it. He would never have gone to university. If he hadn’t gone to university he wouldn’t now have an extremely well-paid and cushy job in a top bank and he certainly wouldn’t be living the luxury lifestyle he’d become accustomed to. He could have kissed goodbye to his cars and his house in Ballsbridge, his chalet in France and the five apartments he was earning high rents from in an exclusive development in Blackrock. God knew where he’d be because, when he was seventeen, his parents had warned him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t go to university and get a degree and follow in his father’s footsteps he was on his own.