The Doll's House (29 page)

‘I agree with you, but as you say, it’s still early days for the girl. The body will recover, but the psychological trauma is different.’ Kate hesitated before asking her next question. ‘Did you interview Susie Graham?’

‘Yes, I did. Only members of the force with specialist psychological training are permitted to interview victims. Currently, I’m the most senior in Harcourt Street.’

‘When will you get the DNA results?’

‘Do you really think this is connected to your case?’

‘To be honest, I don’t think so, but I’d still like to be kept in the picture.’

‘We should get the results shortly. We’ll run the usual checks, and I’ll keep you posted.’

‘I’d appreciate that.’ Again Kate hesitated. ‘Will you also keep me informed on how the girl is doing mentally? I have a full brief right now, but there’s always room for another case if need be. I do a lot of work with Jigsaw, the voluntary group.’

‘We do too, especially via SATU.’

‘I know they’re often brought in if a patient isn’t coping and, like many psychologists involved, I offer my services
pro bono
in support.’

‘Okay.’

After hanging up, Kate went to check on Charlie. He must have woken up without calling her because when she opened the bedroom door, although he was asleep, she saw an open
Tom and Jerry
colouring book on the bed, with crayons. She tidied them away, leaving his door ajar, as she headed to the living room to do her next report for O’Connor.

When I wake, the room is black. The only sound is my own breathing. The door to our bedroom is open. There are no lights on, not even in the hall. I have no idea if Martin is anywhere in the house.

My head feels as if it has done battle with a hammer. I push the heavy throw off my body. I don’t know what time it is, or how long I’ve been knocked out. Even in the dark, I can see the room has been tidied.

My throat feels dry, and my mouth has an awful aftertaste. I sit on the side of the bed, then stand and walk into the bathroom. Switching on the light, I’m relieved to find I still have a toothbrush in the glass cabinet. Martin hasn’t cleared everything away. I brush my teeth, leaning down to rinse my mouth. I stop. I have that fear again. The all-consuming terror that whatever happens next might be outside my control.

‘Martin,’ I say, low at first. My voice sounds weak. ‘Martin.’ This time it’s a little louder. Still no answer.

I go out onto the landing, aware that my movements are causing further sounds, and pause before I switch on the landing light. I hear a creaking sound coming from Ruby’s bedroom. As happened in the regression session with Keith Jenkins at the door, I’m unsure about opening another door. When I do, I see my old doll, Emma, where I left her, sitting in the middle of the bed, propped up on the pillows. The creaking sound must have been the house settling. I can hear the central heating kicking in. I walk over and pick her up, then lie down on the bed, facing the door, in case someone is there.

Out of nervous habit, I stroke her hair. I lower my hand to the
coolness of her porcelain face, touching the crack, wondering if I’ve gone mad.

I check under the pillow for my mobile phone. It’s still there. I realise it’s gone eleven o’clock. Boston is five hours behind. If I contact Orla now, it would be six in the evening there, but the laptop is downstairs. I tell myself I’m acting crazy. I put Emma back on the bed and go down to the living room.

Orla answers straight away. Thankfully, she doesn’t ask me to switch on the Skype camera and says nothing about the automatic female icon face. At first we talk about rubbish things. I can’t believe I sound so calm. Maybe the sleeping tablets Martin gave me are still working.

‘Clodagh,’ she says, ‘are you okay?’ There is something in the way she says it. The same way Gerard Hayden sounded. As if they both care.

‘I’ve been better.’ I attempt a laugh.

‘It’s been tough on you. I know you and your mum didn’t get on well, but she was still your mother.’

For a moment I can’t think of anything else to say so I repeat her last words: ‘Still my mother.’

‘Clodagh?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s been a while since we talked properly, but friendship doesn’t disappear. You do know I’m always here for you, don’t you?’

‘I do. It’s just some things are a bit muddled right now.’

‘That’s only natural. Everyone grieves differently. When my mother died, I thought I’d never get over the heartbreak.’

It feels weird talking to the laptop screen. ‘As you said, Orla, me and Mum weren’t that close.’

There is a pause.

‘Clodagh?’ I can hear her sympathy.

‘Yes?’

‘Martin’s worried about you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know Martin and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but he loves you very much.’

‘What are you talking about?’ The coldness in my voice runs through me.

‘He emailed me to let me know you got my letter. He asked me to keep in touch.’

‘He had no right. Neither of you have any right to be talking behind my back.’

‘It wasn’t like that. You’re vulnerable right now. Martin explained everything to me.’

I remember him interfering with the letter. He must have taken down Orla’s email address. ‘Exactly what has he explained to you?’

‘Clodagh, it doesn’t matter.’

‘It does to me.’

‘Martin said you were going through …’ She pauses.

‘Through what, Orla?’ I don’t care if I sound harsh.

‘A bit of a breakdown.’

‘Go on.’

‘He said you were recording messages to yourself. He’s afraid you might hit the bottle again.’

‘Orla, I can’t talk to you any more.’ I need to shut her off.

‘Clodagh, please don’t hang up.’

‘You’re on his side.’

‘It isn’t about taking sides, Clodagh. It’s about your well-being.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘He said …’

‘Orla, just say it.’ I can’t take much more of this.

‘He said you were talking to …’

‘Talking to whom?’ I wonder if he’s found out about Gerard Hayden.

‘Clodagh, this is difficult to say.’

‘Orla, please.’

‘Dolls. He said you were talking to dolls. That you believed they could see and know things.’

I’m all out of words. I can hear Orla talking, but not what she’s saying. I feel numb. I hang up, hearing the connection die, followed by a darkened screen, zapping it all out. I need to think. I go back to Ruby’s room, unsure of what to do next. It’s then that I hear him calling my name. The way he has done so many times in the past, old and familiar.

He climbs the stairs, and I wait. From the darkness of Ruby’s bedroom, he looks like a large bear in the doorway. ‘Clodagh,’ he says, his tone soft and gentle. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I don’t know, Dominic. I don’t know anything, not any more.’

As he walks into the room, Dominic’s movements are slow. When he sits on the side of the bed, he notices Emma. ‘I see you still have your doll.’

‘In a way, Emma has always been with me.’

For a while he says nothing, giving me some space. Then he says, ‘Do you remember the argument, Clodagh, the one where Emma’s face split in two?’

‘I remember Mum and Dad’s voices. We were sitting on the stairs. You were trying to drag me away.’

‘I didn’t mean for your doll to fall, Clodagh. You believe me, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ His face is close to mine. It feels like we’re kids again. Dominic, my older brother, looking out for me, protecting me, telling me everything will be okay, even when it isn’t. ‘What happened to us back then, Dominic? Why are there so many bits that I can’t remember?’

‘We had a shitty childhood, Clodagh. Only, for the most part, you were too young to understand a lot of it.’ He looks pained.

‘I couldn’t help that.’

‘Whatever. It was different for you. That’s all I’m saying.’

‘Just as well, considering what a fuck-up I’ve made of things.’ I laugh out loud at myself, keeping my eyes on him. Dominic has had his fair share of crap to contend with too. I was always envious of his relationship with Mum. But after Dad died, she leaned on him. He became the functional man in her life, even if he was too young for the role.

‘Dominic?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yesterday, when I went up to the attic in Seacrest, I had another reason for going there other than looking for Emma.’

‘What?’

‘I remembered you and me and Martin and Stevie hiding up there. It had something to do with Emmaline.’

‘You must have imagined it, Clodagh.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I did, but I can’t help feeling it’s important.’

A zillion thoughts are rushing through my head now. If Dominic knew about Mum’s infidelity, and the other shitty stuff, he wasn’t like me. He didn’t hate her for it, even though he was on the receiving end of her emotional baggage. My memory’s a mess but I know that much. And, for the first time, I wonder if he had a sense of divided loyalty back then. If he knew about the affair and didn’t betray her, had he betrayed Dad instead?

‘Dominic, did Dad know Mum was having an affair, that there were other men?’

‘Not at the beginning. He was too wrapped up in the business. He wouldn’t have been able to see something sitting on the end of his nose.’

‘So when did he find out? What happened then?’

‘It was after the business collapsed.’ Dominic draws a deep breath and lets it out slowly. ‘One day he was this big success. Then everything started slipping away. His moods deteriorated. You don’t remember it, Clodagh. At least, I don’t think you do. He went to a very dark place.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Angry outbursts, him wanting to punish the world, keeping his anger behind closed doors.’

‘Like me and Martin,’ I say. My next words are loaded with sarcasm: ‘They say you always hurt the ones you love.’

Dominic doesn’t respond. In the silence, something else comes hurtling back. More raised voices. I see bruises on Dominic’s face. I thought he’d got into a fight with someone outside. But what if he hadn’t? What if his injuries were caused by someone closer to home? I stare at him, remembering the whispers I’d heard in the attic on our last visit to the house – the whispers of young boys, as if they were scheming.

‘Dominic, how did Dad find out?’

‘He started looking for answers. Once that happened, it didn’t take him long.’

‘Do you remember the other day in the attic, when I found Emma?’

‘What about it?’

‘I thought I heard whispers, boys talking low. It must have been a memory. If it was a memory, it means I was part of it.’

‘Clodagh, this isn’t helping you.’

‘Mum hated me. There has to be a reason she stopped loving me. She always loved you more than me.’

‘She didn’t. She found it difficult to show her love to you.’

‘Why? What did I do wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

And, for a moment, I’m not sure if he’s going to touch me. I wonder if I’m doing exactly what Mum did for as long as I can remember: she’d loaded all her problems onto Dominic. But still I say, ‘How hard can it be to show a child you love them?’

He takes my left hand in both of his. If Martin was to come in now, we would look ridiculous, a man, a woman and a doll with a cracked face.

‘Dominic, there’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘This evening when I came home, I went into that bedroom.’ I point to the room Martin and I used to share.

‘It’s your house.’ He sounds more like his clinical self.

‘Martin had removed all traces of me, every single photograph.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘I don’t know.’ I look down at Emma. ‘When I married him, Dominic, I think I needed love too much. I thought he loved me. I don’t think that now.’

‘People change.’

‘Dominic, do you ever see Stevie McDaid?’

‘Why?’

‘I was thinking about him today. When I went up to the attic, I remembered you all playing as boys, you, Stevie and Martin. The ropes are still there, you know, from your old hammocks.’

‘Well, that was a long time ago, Clodagh. Let’s mark it up as bad taste in friends.’

‘I thought I saw him last week. I thought he might have been following me.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I can’t be sure of anything any more.’

He says nothing.

‘Dominic?’

‘What?’ He’s closing up now. I know it. I need to push him.

‘That photograph, the one with Dad, Jimmy and Keith Jenkins – the one from their college days.’

‘What about it?’

‘You know who the other man is, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Alister Becon.’

‘It sounds familiar. He’s that politician.’

‘He and Martin have some business dealings.’

‘What kind of business dealings?’

‘You’d have to ask Martin about that.’

‘He won’t tell me.’

‘Alister Becon has his fingers in any number of pies, including politics.’

I look around the room, as if searching for something.

‘What are you looking for, Clodagh?’

‘The photograph – Martin took it from my bag. He put it in his briefcase. I need to find it.’