The Lost (43 page)

‘I’m OK. What is it?’ She braced herself for more awful revelations about the Mission, about Maddy,
now sectioned and suicidal again, about the McGreavy family. But nothing prepared her for what he said next.

‘As you know, one of the old files we were given was your mother’s.’

‘Oh.’ She blinked. ‘There won’t be anything there. It was all picked over many times.’

‘But that’s the thing. This man who’s getting out of prison – Sean Conlon – the one who most likely killed John O’Hara, well, he’s been hinting he knows other things. He wants protection in exchange for information – he’s got some powerful enemies on the outside.’

‘Oh.’
No. No. Not this. Not now
.

‘I’m sorry, Paula, but it seems he might know something about your mother. Hers was one of the names he mentioned.’

She looked down at what Guy was pushing across the table. An A4 envelope, very slim.

‘I didn’t know what to do. It’s there, if you decide you want to take it further. He hasn’t talked yet, but – he might.’

Paula sat looking at the envelope for a long time. Then she got slowly to her feet, slipping it into her bag. ‘Thank you, Guy. For everything. And you shouldn’t blame yourself, for Cathy, or for any of it.’

He looked up at her, tired, wry. ‘Neither should you, Paula.’

On the wide elbow of the Thames, boats passed, shrouded in sea-mist. Mournful hoots made it up to the windows of Paula’s Docklands flat, as she knelt on the window-seat looking down. A whole sweep of city on the edge of a vast world. The river curling and twisting about it, opening wide and generous to the salt of the sea. She’d lived here in this city, hiding herself among the crowds, for twelve years. Yet still the sea had swept her home, jetsam on a chill northern shore.
Return to Sender.
She’d ended up exactly where she’d come from. Ballyterrin, its ravaged heart, its dark secrets. Home.

Paula scrubbed a patch in the
steamed-up window, and gave a last look at the river that had been her companion for so long. For a moment, a wave of something swamped her – sorrow, nausea, fear – and she pressed her face to the cool glass until it passed. Then she picked up her bag from the floor. Inside was the crackle of the brown envelope Guy had given her. Still unopened after a week. Maybe, soon, she’d have the strength to see what it held.

Never enormously homey, the flat had been emptied of its books and files, pots and pans, clothes and toiletries. The shelves and cupboards had the forlorn look of leaving, stray bits of pasta in the larder, the fridge standing open and unlit. A cleaning company would come in the following day, and then the keys would be handed back to the letting agency, and soon there’d be no trace of the life that Paula Maguire of Ballyterrin had lived here.

One thing remained, and she crossed to the fridge door, removing the strawberry-shaped magnet. The photo had curled a little from being out in the air. She smoothed down the sides, then looked for a moment at the image of the smiling red-haired woman.
Where did you go?
The question she hadn’t allowed herself to ask for so many years, now wide open and waiting once again. Because, as dozens of families now knew, thanks to her work, it was never really too late. There was always still a terrible hope, long after you’d given up. That maybe, just maybe, you would find what you’d lost.
Hope
. She sometimes thought it was the hardest thing of all.

Paula slipped the photo into the envelope, switched off the last light, and went out.

There was just one
more thing to do before she caught the Gatwick Express for her flight back to Belfast. The address she’d looked up on Google Maps was a large house in Chiswick, in the flat rolling west of the city, giving way to the fields round Heathrow, where she’d once found another lost girl who wasn’t really lost.

There was no real need for the last errand. This girl also had never been missing in the technical sense. But in some ways, Paula saw now, it was easy to be lost in plain sight.

Paula walked from the tube, past stylish restaurants and boutiques, a thin rain spattering on her hair and trench-coat. As usual, she had no umbrella. At the entrance to the street she wanted, the trees wet and green, another wave of nausea hit her, and she bent over, hands on her knees, until it eased. Christ, if this was the after-effects of shock, it was taking a long time to pass.

Walking slowly on, she consulted the map function on her phone and knocked on the door of a large red-brick house. She saw children’s play equipment in the garden beyond, a discreet bronze plaque that said this wasn’t the private home you might think. There were footsteps, a trill of bells, and the door was opened by a tall woman in a long dress, bangles on her arm. Dark hair curled in a plait, hooded eyes.

She cleared her throat. ‘Hello. It’s Paula.’

Tess Brooking looked at her for a long moment. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

The house was light and airy, and through one door Paula glimpsed a baby in a cradle, a young skinny girl rocking her. ‘You get a lot of women here?’

‘It’s a place they can come to if they need it. I’m a midwife, so when I wanted somewhere I could go to find peace – this seemed right.’

‘Same for Katie?’ Paula risked.

Tess frowned over her
shoulder as she led Paula into a back sitting room, full of old mismatched chairs and vases stuffed with wild flowers. A place for women, you could feel it in the air. Like at St Bridget’s. ‘I’ve already told the police. Katie wasn’t ever missing. She ran away to find me, and as soon as she tracked me down, she was fine.’

‘Was she?’

Tess paused for a moment. ‘I know not everyone believes in abortion, but our philosophy here is choice. Millions of women don’t have the choice, none at all, including those in Northern Ireland.’

‘I know that.’ Paula wasn’t invited to sit, so she stood by the bay window looking out on the lovely, overgrown garden, slick and green with rain.

‘Katie’s fifteen, she’s been through enough already. It was her decision to have it done, and I helped her out.’

‘I know.’ She faced the woman head-on. ‘I’m not here to judge.’

‘So, why have you come, if you’re not trying to interfere?’ Tess crossed her arms.

‘I needed to see. I can’t explain.’ Paula shrugged. ‘I need to see she’s safe.’ To move her from the lost pile to the found. Left to right. To put her in the past.

Tess said nothing, but crossed the room in long strides, bracelets jingling. At the window she pointed out, and at the back of the wet garden Paula could just make out a sort of summerhouse in the trees, and inside it a flash of red anorak and dark hair. Katie Brooking, huddled against the weather. ‘She’ll be fine, like I said. Now, is that all?’

Paula swallowed. ‘Yes. I just wanted to say – how sorry I am. About Jamie.’ She saw Tess stiffen. ‘And that I didn’t protect her. Katie. I should have seen how unhappy she was.’

Tess’s voice dropped a few degrees. ‘They’re my children, Paula. I don’t see what it has to do with you.’

‘No. Nothing. I just wanted
to say it.’

Tess nodded slowly. ‘I see what this is. You’re feeling guilty, because you slept with my husband.’ She saw Paula’s face. ‘Oh yes, Katie told me all about finding you in the kitchen the next day.’

‘I – I thought he was getting divorced. It was only once. We were drinking, and something happened, something very bad, and I suppose we just . . .’ She tailed off. ‘I’m sorry. Really, I’m so sorry.’ She clamped her mouth shut as another burst of sickness came. ‘I’m sorry, Tess, is there a bathroom I can use?’

In the small room to the right of the front door, Paula breathed in the smell of floral soap as she retched into the toilet bowl. Nothing came up; she hadn’t eaten all day. A polite notice over the cistern reminded residents not to flush any sanitary towels. She pulled the old-fashioned chain and went back into to the sitting room, wiping her mouth. ‘God. Sorry. I’m making such a mess of this.’

Tess laughed shortly. ‘Don’t bother apologising. Just tell me one thing, then you can leave.’

She braced herself. ‘Yes?’

‘Is it his?’ Tess was staring at Paula with those unreadable eyes.

‘Is what his?’

Tess twisted her mouth. ‘Come on. I think you owe me more than that, Paula.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Fear was creeping up her legs. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. ‘Is what his? I don’t—’

‘Come on. I heard you throw up. You’ve been sick like that a lot recently?’

‘I’ve been under the weather . . .’ Since the incident with Angela, it was true she’d felt all wrong. But that was to be expected. Wasn’t it?

‘Is that why you came here? You want to rub my face in it?’

‘Listen, I really
don’t know what you mean. I came to see Katie, that’s all.’

Tess made an impatient noise and crossed the room. The woman’s slim fingers approached Paula’s stomach. She just stood there paralysed, as Tess probed her. ‘Well, it’s early days, but you could definitely be a few months gone.’

Paula gaped at her. Tess raised her eyebrows. ‘Paula, come on now. You’re a smart enough girl, I imagine. It didn’t occur to you that you might be pregnant?’

The room was swimming. Rain dissolved on the window. ‘No. Eh, no, it didn’t.’

‘But you could be?’

Paula thought of the night with Guy, careful even when sunk with the weight of despair. But things could go wrong, of course, things could fail. Everyone could fail, however hard they tried. And then Aidan, as always full of fire and thunder, no idea of caution, of consequences.

Guy. Aidan.

‘I— I— maybe. I don’t—’

‘And is it Guy’s? Is it my husband’s?’

Slowly, Paula shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I honestly haven’t a clue.’