Fourth Horseman (21 page)

Beyond the farm the land became much wilder. This was the winterage that belonged to the Liddy farm, but unlike Mikey’s land at the top of the mountain it had hardly any grazing at any time of year, and to a farmer it was useless. The rocky slopes rose steeply, and in hollows and gullies there were belts of woodland, mostly ash and hazel, guarded by blackthorn and brambles. There were plenty of places where Jenny could be hidden from view. She could be almost anywhere.

‘Jenny!’

There was no answer. Even the white goat had disappeared. JJ sighed and, with a last glance back at the house, climbed over the dry-stone wall.

‘C
AN I GO TO
Ennis with the girls, then,’ said Hazel, ‘if Jenny’s not back by six?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Aisling. It was nearly five already, and a few minutes earlier she had got up to turn on the outside light. This was not for JJ’s benefit, or for Jenny’s, but for Aidan, who had found three large pieces of polystyrene packaging in the shed and was out in the back yard, pulverizing them with a brick. It was making a terrible mess, which someone would have to clear up at some stage, but it was rare for anything to keep Aidan occupied for more than a couple of minutes at a time, and Aisling was reluctant to bring an end to the relative peace.

Hazel went off to phone her friends and book a seat on the bus. Aisling looked at the clock again. She would soon have to think about making a meal. There was hardly anything in the house, because they hadn’t planned on being there that night. She could probably scrape something together with tins and frozen food, but the trouble was she didn’t want to. She had been looking forward to getting away; to being fed for a change, and to mucking in with Marian and Danny in the big friendly kitchen down in Cork. She had been looking forward to sitting at the piano and having a few tunes tonight. But then Jenny …

A wave of anxiety washed over her thoughts and changed their direction. What were they going to do about her? The child had been a disaster right from the word go. She wasn’t stupid or devious or nasty, she was just completely intractable. She spent most of her time roaming around the countryside and seemed to be incapable of doing as she was told. And recently it had got worse. Much worse.

At least, in the past, she had gone to school. She still did occasionally, but it was becoming the exception rather than the rule. Most mornings when Aisling and JJ got up, Jenny was already gone. And when she was gone, she was gone all day. The girl didn’t seem to need the things that normal children did. She never took anything to eat, and she never came home for lunch. She wore light clothes, often forgetting to take a jacket, even in the foulest of weather. And although Aisling’s notes to the teachers were full of them, the truth was that Jenny never ever got a cough or a cold or a sore throat. But it couldn’t go on. The school principal was beginning to get suspicious and had starting asking questions that Aisling found difficult to answer. It should have been JJ’s responsibility to deal with that kind of thing, but the trouble was that JJ was hardly ever there.

Because JJ Liddy, over the last few years, had become a household name. He had made four CDs and he spent a large part of every year touring at home and abroad, playing to packed houses wherever he went. That hadn’t been the plan when they married. The deal had been that JJ would stay at home and make violins, and Aisling would go back to working as a homoeopath. They were supposed to be sharing the housework and the child-rearing, but as the years went by, those things had become, almost exclusively, Aisling’s department.

Anger simmered under her breastbone. She had put up with it for years, partly for the sake of JJ’s career and partly because he was better paid for playing music than she would be for working as a homoeopath. But money wasn’t everything. Aisling’s life was passing her by, and Jenny’s behaviour was the last straw. It was high time things began to change.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Kate Thompson

Cover design by Michel Vrana

978-1-4804-2426-5

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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