The Doll's House (27 page)

‘And that’s it?’

‘Keeping our options open, boss.’ O’Connor forced a smile.

‘Good to hear it.’ Butler remained stern-faced, turning to Matthews and Martha Smyth. ‘As soon as we have something concrete on the fibre and the tyre markings, I want to run with everything we’ve got.
Arrange a slot on
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. I know it’s short notice, but we need to get the public working for us. We don’t know everything, so we want people talking.’ He addressed the entire cast: ‘Now, the rest of you, get out there and get some bloody answers. As O’Connor reminded you all at the start of this investigation, this is supposed to be an élite unit. Let’s start bloody acting like one.’

The mumblings of the detectives forced Matthews to raise his voice above the din. ‘The next full squad briefing will be ten a.m. tomorrow. You all heard the boss.’

As soon as the words were out of Dominic’s mouth, telling me Keith Jenkins wasn’t the only man who liked Mum, I knew he’d spoken the truth. I knew it because it felt like another building block had slipped into place, something solid and impossible to deny.

Gerard Hayden had told me this kind of thing could keep happening. Under regression I was seeing things from the past, even if my subconscious mind was trying to block out aspects of them. He was suspicious that this was happening with the dolls. According to him, when one truth is revealed, another could unlock itself.

Dominic’s words were clear and equivocal. Without knowing why, I’d always known there was someone else in Mum’s life. From the moment I’d remembered Keith Jenkins on the strand, and the two of them in the back room off the kitchen, something else had been pushing to the surface, there was another man, another face.

I asked Dominic for a name, but he wasn’t talking. Maybe he thought he was giving away too many of Mum’s secrets, especially when she wasn’t there to defend herself. I guess I couldn’t blame him for that. Considering his mood, it felt useless staying at the house any longer. Perhaps he has a point about leaving the past in the past. He was always the clear thinker, cutting through crap, saying it as it is, and absolute in his way with the world. How can old memories help anything? I’m a bit long in the tooth to change my life. At times, I don’t even know if I bloody well want to.

It’s raining now. I watch the drops slide down Ruby’s bedroom window, relieved that Martin is still at work. I need more time to think things through. Dominic is right. There’s no reason to believe we’re
connected to the murder of Keith Jenkins or Uncle Jimmy. I could go to the police, but what would I tell them? I remembered Keith Jenkins while I was under hypnosis. That Mum had never liked Jimmy Gahan. There isn’t a whole lot of information in that. Dominic’s accusation about me being overdramatic is ringing out loud and clear.

I text Martin and ask him what time he’ll be back. He answers with his usual efficiency. He won’t be home for another few hours. I feel relieved. I sit down on Ruby’s bed, and pick up my old doll, Emma. I cradle her in my arms, like I did as a child. I can afford to be a little crazy, now that I’m alone.

Rocking her back and forth, I watch Emma’s eyelids, with their long lashes, open and close. Each time I rock her, she looks up at me again. I stare into the crack running down the side of her face, remembering that old argument with Mum and Dad, how scared I felt, and once again, I feel like that child, the one who found escape with her dolls and her doll’s house.

I’d thought about cancelling my next appointment with Gerard, but regardless of how stupid Dominic and everyone else may think I’m being, I want to find answers. A part of me needs to know more. I brush my hand across Emma’s cold, cracked porcelain face, hoping she might unlock something. She stares back at me, giving nothing away.

I think about the happy little girl, the one held by my mother, the one I saw the first time I regressed. I don’t know where she’s gone. Can life change you so much, as if the first person never existed?

Emma is still staring at me, her eyelashes looking longer and more curled. I realise I’m still holding her like a baby, and it’s then something else comes back. I see my mother. Her back is towards me, but I know she’s been crying. She, too, holds a doll. She thinks she’s alone, but she isn’t, because I’m in the room. When she turns and looks at me, it isn’t love I see in her eyes. It’s hatred.

I have no idea how long I’ve been sleeping, but when I wake, I’m still holding Emma. I put my doll on the bed, resting her head on the pillows. I walk across the corridor to the room Martin and I used to share as husband and wife. Looking around it, I’m hurt when I realise Martin has removed all the photographs of the two of us. I instantly wonder where he has put them. I start opening drawers in search of some proof that I once existed here. I feel like I’m in a maze, neither the past nor the present making any sense, but something is telling me to be afraid.

Outside, the October weather takes a turn, and the sound of hailstones feels like tiny hammers thumping away at my thoughts. With my back to the door, I decide, like some madwoman, that I need to toss the room. I won’t be like that little girl and simply disappear.

I’m so engrossed in what I’m doing that I care little for the mess I’m creating, pulling clothes out of our wardrobe, flinging them onto the floor and emptying drawers. I find Martin’s briefcase at the top of the wardrobe, but it’s locked. I wonder why he didn’t take it to work today. He could be home at any minute. I grab the stainless steel letter opener from the top of his desk in the corner, finally prising it open. It’s practically empty, except for a couple of work letters in the leather flaps, so I unzip the centre pouch. I no longer hear the hailstones, losing all concept of time and anything else other than my desperate effort to find a small piece of me. When I pull the old photograph from the centre of Martin’s briefcase, I feel as if my mind has finally cracked, that I’m like my doll Emma. It’s only then that I hear him and know he is standing behind me.

It was six o’clock by the time Kate arrived back at the apartment. O’Connor would be screaming for her report.

‘Where have you been, Mum?’

‘Work, honey, but I’m home now.’

Was she imagining it, or did she recognise the same sense of loss in Charlie’s eyes that she’d seen earlier in her own?

When the phone rang, thankfully it was Declan. She’d hoped he would ring, not because she wanted to speak to him but because she knew Charlie needed to. Kate had avoided talking about him to Charlie, which had inadvertently told him something was wrong. Handing the phone to Charlie felt strange. Now it was as if every action, or inaction, needed to be viewed differently. Something to which before she wouldn’t have given a second thought had become strained, different, questioned, front and back, inside and out.

She felt like an intruder in the room, hearing only one side of the conversation. At the same time, she was unsure if she wanted to know what Declan was saying. At the start of the conversation Charlie appeared guarded, and again she wondered if he was aware that something was wrong. She didn’t need a degree in psychology to know children picked up the slightest change in mood or atmosphere, especially when that change went to the core of their emotional security.

Kate gave Charlie a reassuring look before turning away to look out of the living-room window. If he was feeling uncomfortable, the best thing to do was to give him space with his dad. It looked bitterly cold outside, with a dark, damp chill, as another shower of hailstones
belted against the glass. Almost without thinking, she turned to her son. He looked so serious that she wanted to rush over and grab him, hold him so tight that no words were needed for him to understand the almost primal love she felt for him – a tiny tot stuck in the middle of it all.

‘I’m okay, Daddy, honest,’ she heard him say, and her heart broke some more. What the hell was Declan saying to him? So many times, adults dump their guilt on their children, looking for reassurance in whatever situation they’ve created, the younger and potentially more fragile person forced to help the adult, instead of the other way around.

Kate knew she couldn’t interfere. She didn’t want to make a scene in front of Charlie. She had to remain calm. For all she knew Declan wasn’t unloading anything. But this was the beginning. The beginning of second-guessing what your partner, or ex-partner, was up to. Kate had seen these situations before. Trust blown apart because of doubt and disconnection. That was the thing about beginnings, even the beginning of an end: they might not dictate the final direction, but they set down a future pathway, one that either party in a broken relationship could encourage or pursue. She wrapped her arms tightly around her shoulders, staring at her reflection in the glass as, like her mood, the sky darkened.

‘Will you, Dad?’ Charlie’s voice had an edge of excitement and adventure. ‘I’d like that.’

Kate was almost in tears, and she wasn’t sure why. All of a sudden the sense of loss, of division, made her feel nauseous. She kept her back to Charlie as he continued chatting with Declan, not wanting him to see the upset on her face. She continued to stare at her reflection in the glass, no longer sure who that woman was or what she wanted to do with her life. She thought about Imogen Willis, so much of her memory lost to her, Rachel Mooney’s horrendous rape attack, before her mind drifted to the young girl called Susie sitting in Harcourt Street station with her mother.

Even though Kate had a ton of things on her mind, including the current investigation and the vulnerable five-year-old behind her, she made a mental note to contact Hennessy. O’Connor wouldn’t be happy. He wanted her to concentrate on the main investigation, but O’Connor could go to Hell too. There was something about that young girl, her distant, lost eyes, which made her determined to find out more.

‘Dad, do you want to talk to Mum?’ Another silence. Declan was talking, no doubt. The realisation hit her again. Both she and Charlie were going through the biggest change in their family life and there wasn’t a darn thing she could do about it.

‘Okay, Dad, see you soon. Love you.’ And with that Charlie hung up.

Kate turned to catch his expression: an old head on his young shoulders. She had to say something. ‘Hey, Buster, what do you want to do now?’ A wide smile forced itself across her face.

‘Dunno.’

‘Dunno? What kind of an answer is that?’ She scooped him up and attempted to tickle him under the arm.

‘Stop it, Mum!’ His laughter broke the gloom both of them felt.

‘What about painting? I know you love to make a mess.’

‘I do not.’ His stern but determined look this time brought a real smile to Kate’s face.

‘Or we could play Connect 4. Bet I win.’

‘Bet you don’t!’

Kate put him down. ‘You get the game and I’ll take out the ice-cream.’

‘Can we have cones?’

‘Sure.’ Kate hoped there were cones in the kitchen cupboard.

As Charlie darted into his bedroom for the game, Kate shouted after him, ‘What did your dad have to say?’

‘Nothing.’

It was a very long nothing, thought Kate, but decided, all things
considered, it was best to let it go. On opening the kitchen cupboard, she was relieved to find a box of cones at the back.

‘Ice-cream on the way, Charlie.’ As she turned towards his bedroom, she smiled again, watching her son carry the Connect 4 box to the coffee table. The last time they had played the game was a couple of months before. Both she and Declan had allowed Charlie to win every single time. She had every intention of applying the same rules, only this time, she knew, she was in it alone.

I brace myself for the brute force of Martin’s aggression. I don’t know how much more of it I can take. Almost without realising it, my mind shuts down, goes blank. I can’t think what to do next. I have nowhere to run, no means of escape, and with that knowledge, my head and heart swell with such colossal fear that I can’t breathe.

‘What the hell are you at, Clodagh?’ Martin’s voice is edged with a mix of anger and disbelief.

I still haven’t turned, unwilling to look at his face, to contemplate his mood.

‘Nothing,’ I say, for I can’t think of anything else.

‘Are you gone completely mad?’ He slams the bedroom door behind him.

It is only then that I turn. He stands three metres away from me. The bedroom is completely tossed, and a part of me wants to kill him.

‘What do you have in your hand, Clodagh?’ He comes forward a metre.

‘You know darn well.’ My voice sounds like that of a madwoman because I’m screeching.

‘Clodagh, give me the photograph.’ Again he steps forward, reaching out his hand, almost touching me.

‘What’s going on, Martin?’ I clutch the photograph, as if it’s the only bargaining power I have, even though I know he could take it from me if he wanted to.

‘You tell me, Clodagh.’ His tone is gentler.

‘I don’t know, Martin. I don’t know anything any more.’ There is still anger in my voice, but also a note of pleading. I’m backing down
out of fear because, right now, I’m more convinced than ever that I’ll crack and my brain might simply cease to be.