Faithful Place (44 page)

It was the speed of that heartbeat that gave me the guts to look up and meet Rosie’s eyes. They were enormous, just a rim of green around black, and her lips were parted like I had startled her. She let the pendant drop. Neither one of us could move and neither one of us was breathing.

Somewhere bike bells were ringing and girls were laughing and Mad Johnny was still singing: “I love you well today, and I’ll love you more tomorrow . . .” All the sounds dissolved and blurred into that yellow summer air like one long sweet peal of bells. “Rosie,” I said. “Rosie.” I held out my hands to her and she matched her warm palms against mine, and when our fingers folded together and I pulled her towards me I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe my luck.

All that night, after I shut the door and left Number 16 empty, I went looking for the parts of my city that have lasted. I walked down streets that got their names in the Middle Ages: Copper Alley, Fishamble Street, Blackpitts where the plague dead were buried. I looked for cobblestones worn smooth and iron railings gone thin with rust. I ran my hand over the cool stone of Trinity’s walls and I crossed the spot where nine hundred years ago the town got its water from Patrick’s Well; the street sign still tells you so, hidden in the Irish that no one ever reads. I paid no attention to the shoddy new apartment blocks and the neon signs, the sick illusions ready to fall into brown mush like rotten fruit. They’re nothing; they’re not real. In a hundred years they’ll be gone, replaced and forgotten. This is the truth of bombed-out ruins: hit a city hard enough and the cheap arrogant veneer will crumble faster than you can snap your fingers; it’s the old stuff, the stuff that’s endured, that might just keep enduring. I tilted my head up to see the delicate, ornate columns and balustrades above Grafton Street’s chain stores and fast-food joints. I leaned my arms on the Ha’penny Bridge where people used to pay half a penny to cross the Liffey, I looked out at the Custom House and the shifting streams of lights and the steady dark roll of the river under the falling snow, and I hoped to God that somehow or other, before it was too late, we would all find our way back home.

Author’s Note

Faithful Place did exist once, but it was on the other side of the River Liffey—northside, in the warren of streets that made up the red-light district of Monto, rather than southside in the Liberties—and it was gone long before the events of this book. Every corner of the Liberties is layered with centuries of its own history, and I didn’t want to belittle any of that by pushing an actual street’s stories and inhabitants aside to make way for my fictional story and characters. So, instead, I’ve played fast and loose with Dublin geography: resurrected Faithful Place, moved it across the river, and added this book into the decades when the street doesn’t have a history of its own to be pushed aside.

As always, any inaccuracies, deliberate or otherwise, are mine.

Acknowledgments

I owe enormous thank-yous to the usual suspects, and then some: the amazing Darley Anderson and his team, especially Zoë, Maddie, Kasia, Rosanna and Caroline, for being several million miles beyond what any author could expect from an agency; Kendra Harpster at Viking, Ciara Considine at Hachette Books Ireland and Sue Fletcher at Hodder & Stoughton, three editors who regularly take my breath away with their passion, skill, and immense soundness; Clare Ferraro, Ben Petrone, Kate Lloyd and everyone at Viking; Breda Purdue, Ruth Shern, Ciara Doorley, Peter McNulty and everyone at Hachette Books Ireland; Swati Gamble, Katie Davison and everyone at Hodder & Stoughton; Rachel Burd, for another razor-sharp copy-edit; Pete St. John, for his beautiful love songs to Dublin and for his generosity in allowing me to quote from them; Adrienne Murphy, for remembering McGonagle’s even through the haze; Dr. Fearghas Ó Cochláin, for the medical bits; David Walsh, for answering questions about police procedure and sharing insights into a detective’s world; Louise Lowe, for coming up with such a great title (and cast) for that play, all those years ago; Ann-Marie Hardiman, Oonagh Montague, Catherine Farrell, Dee Roycroft, Vincenzo Latronico, Mary Kelly, Helena Burling, Stewart Roche, Cheryl Steckel and Fidelma Keogh, for various invaluable kinds of warmth and love and support; David Ryan,
braccae tuae aperiuntur
; my brother and sister-in-law, Alex French and Susan Collins, and my parents, Elena Hvostoff-Lombardi and David French, for more reasons than I have room to list; and, as always, last but so far from least, my husband, Anthony Breatnach.