The Lost (31 page)

She shot him a look. As a teenager she’d appreciated Trevor’s blind eye when it came to dodgily-forged IDs, but as an adult she wished he had more respect for the law.

Aidan sat up with a start when she turned the ignition key. ‘Here! Here! What’s this, I wanna drink!’

‘No chance. I’m taking you home.’ She realised she had no idea where his flat was. ‘Will I take you to Pat?’

‘No, no. Don’t wanna see . . . Mammy.’ It was a good drunken point. Pat shouldn’t have to see her only child like this. She’d been through enough that night.

‘Where will we go, then?’

‘The paper – haveta do the paper.’

‘What?’

‘Deadline. S’deadline day . . .’

‘You mean you’ve not sent it off yet?’ She remembered that Friday had always been the deadline for the main text of the
Gazette
. ‘For God’s sake, Aidan, you’re pissed. You can’t do the paper in this state.’

‘Da – he never missed an issue in his life, no, he never. You know why he was even there that night they got him? Why
I
was there? Didya ever wonder where me mammy was?’

She was trying to settle him in
the seat. ‘Put your belt on there. Where Pat was, you mean? I never thought.’ But it was a good question. Why had Aidan even been there with his father, so late at night?

‘She was in the fucking hospital, losing another wean. All miscarriages, ’cept me. And he was here all the same. Haveta do the paper.’

‘It’s just a paper,’ she said, as gently as she could. ‘People can wait another day to find out who won the bloody Classic Car competition.’ But on the other hand, it was as good a place as any to take him. She suspected he often slept there anyway. ‘Come on, I’ll do what I can to help.’

The
Gazette
offices gave every sign of being recently abandoned. Aidan’s chair was pushed back, his jacket thrown over it, a cigarette crumbling in an ashtray. The computer was on and a cursor blinked on the screen.

‘Hmm. You really must be at deadline.’

Aidan seemed to have sobered up considerably during the car ride, during which she’d kept the windows open in case he boked on the interior of her father’s car (not for the first time, she’d admit). Had she read somewhere that this was a sign of an alcoholic, that booze barely touched the sides?

Aidan sat down in the chair. ‘Was gonna finish up after me tea at Mammy’s, but then—’

Paula perched on the desk beside him. ‘Listen. I’m sorry about what happened. I know it’s – well. I know it’s not easy.’

His shoulders were rigid, hands shaking. ‘It’s just the idea . . . you know, I could be out doing my messages, having a wee jar, and that fella could just come walking in, right as rain, living his life, and my da dead these twenty years and more. How’s that fair?’

‘It’s not.’ He wasn’t the only one in Northern Ireland who had to share the streets with the person who’d smashed their life to pieces. This was what they sometimes called
the price of peace.

Aidan squinted at the
screen. ‘And now I’m letting him down here. Can’t even get the bloody paper off to print.’

‘No, you’re not.’ She got down, pushing his chair firmly up to the screen. ‘I’m going to stand over you till you do it. Type.’

Aidan pulled the keyboard towards him and tapped out a few strokes. Then he put his head down on the desk and groaned. ‘I can’t, Maguire, I’m too pissed.’ Without opening his eyes, his hand felt along for the half-smoked cigarette, and the other produced a lighter, which he snapped at ineffectively. ‘Feck.’

Paula leaned over and plucked the fag from his mouth.

‘Hey!’

‘No smoking here, it’s a workplace. Fecking
type
, will you.’

‘Jesus, Maguire, you’re not me mammy.’

‘No. Your mammy would have her heart broken if she saw you in this state.’

He slumped. ‘Can’t. Need water . . .’

‘Water we can do.’ Paula filled a mug from the small sink in the corner, and stood over him while he drank it down. Then, shaking his head like a dog, he started to type, fingers rattling as he squinted at the screen out of one eye.

Paula resumed her seat on the neighbouring desk, moving aside a large manila envelope to make space. ‘What’s this?’

‘S’for you,’ he said, sucking on the unlit cigarette. ‘Some of what you asked for on Carr and that.’

‘Thanks.’ She pulled it open and saw the mess of papers inside. ‘Hey,’ she said after a while of leafing through it. ‘This isn’t half-bad, what you’ve found out.’

He cocked his head at her without interrupting his tapping. ‘Well, thanks Maguire. Always good to get the approval of a sophisticated ex-pat such as yourself.’

‘Ah, here we go. You must
be feeling better then, if you’re getting the boot in.’

‘I’ll do.’ He tapped on for a while, before stretching and leaning back. ‘Think she’s done, Maguire. Full to shite with typos, but sure most people round here can’t spell.’

‘And it’s not like anyone reads it.’

‘Ha ha.’ He looked round at her. ‘Will I send it then?’

‘What are you on about? Of course, send it. I thought your deadline was nine.’ She nodded at the clock, which now said ten to.

‘It is. You don’t want to see it first?’

‘No, there’s no time. Go on.’

‘All right then.’ With a flourish, he pressed the key. ‘Gone.
Fait accompli
, Maguire.’

‘Don’t start speaking French, Aidan. Try mastering English first.’

‘Ah, you’re full of wit, Maguire.’ He stood up and came over to where she sat on an adjoining desk, feet on someone’s wheely chair. Suddenly she felt very exposed. She was wearing the same clothes she’d been in all day, black trousers under black knee boots, clingy grey wool jumper over a white shirt. She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘Couldn’t have done it without you.’

‘Come off it, as if you’ve never written drunk before. Anyway, it’s not the first time I’ve helped you home pissed.’ It had seemed funny when they were teenagers, and drink was new and exciting. But now he was thirty-one, it just made her worry. He was standing in front of her, and he pushed the chair away from her feet and sat down in it, between her legs. She drew them up to her chest; this abrupt re-animation was making her anxious.

‘Well, well. Maguire.’ He was
watching her closely, eyes no longer unfocused. His pupils were very wide, several days of stubble on his face. She could smell the whiskey on his breath.

‘What?’

‘You know what.’

‘I don’t.’ But she couldn’t meet his dark, steady gaze. ‘Come on, Aidan. Don’t mess me about.’

‘I’m not. I’m trying to say – how did I manage without you all these years?’

‘Well, that’s funny. As I remember, you were the one who dumped me.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘Maguire. You know that wasn’t the way of it. Come on. I might have made mistakes, but that was never what I wanted. You know that.’

She pushed him away, and got off the desk in a burst of energy, moving to the door. ‘Look, I only came here to help Pat. You’ve her worried sick, that’s all.’

‘Paula.’ He never called her this, and it made her freeze.

‘What? What do you want from me?’

He got up and came over to her. They were an inch apart. He didn’t touch her. ‘Same thing I always wanted.’

‘I’m not doing this. You’re drunk.’

‘I am that. Maybe that’s why I can say these things.’

‘What things?’

‘That maybe I was an eejit back then. Christ, I was all of nineteen – of course I was an eejit, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t lo—’

‘Don’t!’

He put up a hand and touched her face; she flinched. ‘I mean, what was I meant to think, Maguire? One day you were here, listening to god-awful music with Saoirse, drinking Peach Schnapps, getting your da to put the frighteners on me . . . then the next thing, no one sees you all summer, PJ’s putting me away from the door like a dog, and you won’t talk to me, and then you’re gone, and I don’t see you for twelve years?’

‘Stop it!’

‘Jesus, I know Ballyterrin’s not
got much on London, but could you not have dropped us a line once in a while?’

She was shaking. ‘That’s not fair. You know that’s not fair.’

‘I don’t know anything much, Maguire, and that’s the God’s honest truth. I never did.’

Paula was leaving. She snatched her bag up from the floor and was storming out, struggling to see the door through the film that suddenly veiled her eyes. ‘Just fuck off, will you?’

‘That’s nice. I try to have an honest conversation for once, and you tell me to—’ He stopped. ‘Ah, Jesus, Maguire, don’t cry. I never could stand it when you cried.’

‘I’m not crying,’ she sobbed, and her whole body sagged. Aidan came closer, and then she was weeping into his black shirt. He smelled exactly the same – of mint, and booze, and something else she could never identify, but could have picked out of a darkened room. Paula cried solidly for a minute, everything suddenly crowding in on her – the dead girls, and Ed emerging from the shadows, and the memory of what had happened that summer, the one where she’d lost Aidan for good. She pulled away, wiping her face with her hands. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just stressed, I think.’

He was brushing back her damp hair, cupping her face. She still couldn’t look at him. ‘You don’t have to be sorry, Maguire. It was me who fucked it all up.’

‘You did. And you’re drunk.’

‘That’s true. And because I’m drunk, that’s why I can do this,’ he said, and kissed her.

It was some time before Paula disengaged herself and sat up. Somehow they were under his desk, on the floor. She pulled together the open sides of her shirt. ‘It’s not very comfortable down here.’

‘I never noticed.’ Aidan’s hand was stroking
her waist, very softly.

‘That’s because you’re plastered.’ And she wasn’t. So why did she feel as if she were, as if she might fall over or cry or vomit at any moment? The worst thing was, it had always been this way, and she had only just remembered. Like finding a box hidden at the back of the wardrobe. Back then, whenever they’d touched each other, they’d always been able to let go of the rest, his father and her mother and all of it. That was what had nearly killed her when she lost him. When suddenly there was no way to forget.

She ran her hands over his torso, pale, sinewy. ‘What are we at, huh?’

‘You want me to draw you a diagram?’

She looked down at her exposed bra, his shirt crumpled on the floor beside them. ‘I mean, this is as far as we ever got. It’ll be further, in a minute.’

The hand on her waist moved up an inch, grazing her bra strap. ‘That sounds promising.’

She tried not to smile. ‘For God’s sake, do you ever think about consequences?’

‘I’m a journalist. We live one day to the next.’

The hand was stroking her shoulder now, sliding under the strap of her bra, and she half-heartedly pushed it away. ‘I think, maybe, we should talk about this.’

‘What’s to talk about?’ He pulled her head down to his again, his mouth soft and warm, and for a moment she lost her thread.

‘Stop it! I mean, we shouldn’t be doing this.’

‘Fuck’s sake, Maguire, you
need to learn some new lines. You’re thirty now, not eighteen.’

‘I know, but—’

He stopped kissing her neck to glare at her. ‘This better not be to do with that fecking Brit cop.’

‘Guy?’

‘Yes, that’s his name,’ Aidan muttered. ‘Bloody ex-Army, all muscles and stiff upper lip and . . . Are you and him some kind of item, is that it?’

‘What? No! He’s hardly even speaking to me.’ She decided not to mention their brief ‘indiscretion’, as Guy had termed it. Best put it behind them as a bad mistake.

‘Good. Because he doesn’t know you like I do.’

‘Oh, you know me, do you?’

‘Well enough to know you like this . . .’

She gasped

‘And this . . .’

‘For God’s sake.’ Paula tugged on his hair and they were both gone again.

‘What the fuck was that?’

Paula came awake slowly. What? Why was she under a desk? Then she remembered, and was flooded with shame. Aidan was sitting bolt upright beside her. Both of them entirely naked. Paula clutched her shirt to herself, burning red. ‘What—’

‘Sshhh!’ He held out his hand. ‘You hear that?’

‘What?’ All she could hear was her own heart, about to explode with embarrassment. Her mouth felt gritty and her back stiff from lying on the floor. What would Pat and PJ think, both of them out all night? She tried to focus on what Aidan was saying.

‘Listen. You can’t hear it?’

She could now. It sounded like the noise of a lock being broken off. Male voices.

Aidan was sitting very
still. ‘Sooner than I thought.’

‘What’s going on?’

He sighed. ‘Maguire, you better get your kecks on. They’ll be in any minute.’

She started pulling on her trousers. ‘What do you mean? Who is it?’

He got up, still bollock-naked, and looked out of the window, where it was still dark. ‘Bailiffs, I’d say. Quick off the mark, these boys.’

‘What are you on about?’ She was doing up her shirt, the buttons all wrong. Her head was like a block of wood.

‘You told me to send it. I said you could read it first, but you said send.’

‘What?’

‘The paper.’ Seeing her blank face, he sighed. ‘Look.’ He pressed his mouse and the computer sprang into life. A printer began to whir at the back of the office.

From downstairs came a cracking noise. The voices got louder. Paula looked at what he’d printed off. ‘This is – this is what you published this week?’

CATHY’S LAST WALK
said the headline. Aidan had traced out Cathy’s movements on the last day she’d been seen alive.
Why did she visit her father’s office? Why did prominent businessman Carr lie to police?
‘Holy God, Aidan, please say this is a joke.’

‘Wouldn’t be a very funny one, would it.’ Almost regretfully, he was putting his jeans back on.

‘But – they’ll crucify you! You said he practically owns you!’

‘Like I said, they don’t waste time. Carr gets an advance copy – he must have sent his heavies right round.’

‘Fucking hell, Aidan, I can’t believe you did this. You’ll lose everything. And the investigation! Christ, it could all collapse now.’ She thought of what Gerard had said, about the guilty walking free. About the girls at the school, too scared to say anything. About the cold white flesh that was buried in the earth. ‘Oh my God. I’ll get fired. Why in the hell did you do it?’