There's No Place Like Here (13 page)

“Go on.” His heart thumped.

“You should have told me, Jack,” Graham said softly.

Jack nodded in the darkness, though Graham couldn’t see him. Graham continued, “Seems you shouldn’t worry about her. A good few of the lads knew her.” He laughed, and stopped himself. “They said she disappears all the time without letting anyone know. She’s a hermit, keeps to herself and comes and goes as she pleases but always comes back within a week or so. I wouldn’t worry about her, Jack. This seems to be in keeping with her usual behavior.”

“But what about her car?”

“A 1991 red Ford Fiesta?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s hers, all right. Don’t worry about it; she’s probably around the area checking out the place. The lads say she’s a keen jogger, so she probably parked there and went for a run earlier, or maybe the car wouldn’t start or something simple as that. Anyway, it’s been a little over twenty-four hours since you were supposed to meet. There’s no need to panic.”

“I thought the first twenty-four hours were supposed to be the most important,” Jack said through gritted teeth.

“In missing-persons cases they are, Jack, but this Sandy Shortt isn’t missing. She likes to disappear all the time. I was told that most of the time even her family doesn’t know where she is. They called the guards on three occasions years ago but they don’t bother anymore. She comes back.”

Jack was silent.

“There’s not much I can do. There’s nothing to go on, nothing to suggest she’s in any danger. She’ll probably call you in a few days. According to her ex-colleagues, that’s the way she works.”

“I know, I know.” Jack rubbed his eyes wearily.

“As a word of advice, be careful of those kinds of people. Agencies like Sandy Shortt’s are just out to make money, you know? I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s done a runner. There’s nothing that they can do that we haven’t already done. There aren’t any more places to search that we haven’t already searched.”

Sandy hadn’t asked for a cent, knowing that Jack hadn’t got a cent to give.

“I had to do something.” That was all he could reply. He didn’t like how Graham was referring to Sandy. He didn’t believe she was crooked, he didn’t believe she had gone wandering off on an investigation without her phone, her file, her diary, and her car, or was still jogging at midnight. Nothing Graham said made sense, yet nothing Jack said aloud seemed to make sense either. He was going entirely by instinct alone, instinct that had been affected by Donal’s disappearance and a week of nightly phone calls to a woman he had never met.

“I understand,” Graham responded. “I’d probably do the same myself if I was in your shoes.”

“What about my stuff that’s locked in her car?” Jack bluffed.

“What stuff?”

“I sent her Donal’s file and a few other things, I can see them sitting in the car. If she’s going to take my money and run, I’d at least like my things back.”

“I can’t help you out in that area, Jack, but I wouldn’t be asking any questions if by morning your belongings are back in your possession.”

“Thanks, Graham.”

“Anything at all to help.”

A few hours later, as the sun was rising over the Estuary, casting orange hues on black ripples, Jack found himself sitting in Sandy’s car, leafing through Donal’s file and through all the pages of Garda reports that only Sandy had been able to retrieve through her contacts. Her diary revealed a plan to go to Limerick city the following day to visit one of Donal’s friends, Alan O’Connor, who had been out with Donal the night of his disappearance. Hope returned at the possibility of meeting her there. The cramped car smelled sickeningly sweet of the vanilla-fragrance air freshener that hung from the dashboard mirror, mixed with the tinge of stale coffee from the Styrofoam cup balanced below it. There was nothing about the car that gave him any more clues as to the type of person Sandy was. There were no wrappers left behind, no CDs or cassettes revealing her taste in music. Just an old, cold car with work and cold coffee left behind.

It had no heart; she had taken that part with her.

21

I
awoke, I wasn’t sure how many hours later, to see a little girl with wild, black frizzy hair perched next to me on the arm of the couch, watching me with the same intense black eyes as her grandfather’s.

I jumped.

She smiled. Dimples dented her yellow skin and her eyes softened to a dark brown.

“Hi,” she chirped.

I looked around the room that was now almost pitch-black save for the orange light creeping under the kitchen door, lighting the floor just enough for me to be able to make out my surroundings and the little girl half-lit before me. The sky outside the window over the sink was black. Stars, the same stars I never paid the slightest bit of notice to at home, hung above like Christmas lights decorating a toy village.

“Well, aren’t you going to say hi?” the little voice again chirped happily.

I sighed; I had never had time for children and had even despised being one myself.

“Hi,” I said with disinterest.

“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Excruciating.” I yawned and stretched.

She hopped off the arm of the sofa and bounced onto the end, joining me but crushing my feet in the process.

“Ouch,” I moaned, tucking my legs closer to my body.

“That can’t have hurt.” She lowered her head and viewed me doubtingly.

“How old are you, one hundred and ninety?” I asked, pulling my blanket around me tighter as though it would protect me from her.

“If I was a hundred and ninety, I’d be dead.” She rolled her eyes.

“And what a shame that would be.”

“You don’t like me, do you?”

I thought about that. “Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Because you sat on my feet.”

“You didn’t like me before I sat on your feet.”

“True.”

“Most people think I’m cute.” She sighed.

“Really?” I asked in mock surprise. “I don’t get that impression.”

“Why not?” She didn’t seem to be insulted, just more interested.

“Because you’re three feet tall and you have no front teeth.” I closed my eyes, wishing she’d go away, and rested my head against the back of the couch. The throbbing in my head had dissipated but the chirping at the end of the couch would no doubt bring it back in full force.

“I won’t be like this forever, you know,” she said, trying to please me.

“I hope so for your case.”

“Me too,” she said with a sigh and rested her head on the back of the couch, imitating me.

I stared at her in silence, hoping she’d take the hint and go away. She smiled at me.

“Most people’s impression of me is that I don’t want to talk to them,” I hinted.

“Really? I don’t get that impression,” she imitated me, saying the words with difficulty in her toothless mouth.

I laughed. “What age are you?”

She held up her hand displaying four fingers and a thumb.

“Four fingers and a thumb?” I asked.

She frowned and looked at her hand again, her lips moving as she counted.

“Is there a special school kids go to, to learn to do that?” I asked. “Can’t you just say five?”

“I can say
five
.”

“So what, you think holding up a hand is cuter?”

She shrugged.

“Where is everyone?”

“Asleep. Did you used to have a television? We have televisions here but they don’t work.”

“Bummer for you.”

“Yeah, bummer.” She sighed dramatically but I don’t think she cared. “My grandma says I ask a lot of questions but I think you ask more.”

“You like to ask questions?” I was suddenly interested. “What kind of questions?”

She shrugged. “Normal questions.”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

“You keep on asking them, Wanda, maybe you’ll get out of here.”

“OK.”

Silence.

“Why would I want to get out of here?”

Not such normal questions after all, it appeared. “Do you like it here?”

She looked around the room. “I prefer my own room.”

“No, this
village
place.” I pointed out the window. “Where you live.”

She nodded.

“What do you do all day?”

“Play.”

“How tiring for you.”

She nodded. “Sometimes it is. I start school soon though.”

“There’s a school here?”

“Not in here.”

She still couldn’t get past this room. “What do your parents do all day?”

“Mama works with Granddad.”

“She’s a carpenter too?”

She shook her head. “We don’t have a car.”

“What does your dad do?”

She shrugged again. “Mama and Daddy stopped liking each other. Have you got a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Ever had one?”

“I’ve had more than one.”

“At the same time?”

I didn’t answer.

“Why aren’t you with any of them now?”

“Because I stopped liking them.”

“
All
of them?”

“Almost all of them.”

“Oh. That’s not very nice.”

“No.” My mind wandered. “I suppose it’s not.”

“Does it make you sad? It makes Mama sad.”

“No, it doesn’t make me sad.” I laughed awkwardly not feeling comfortable with her gaze or loose tongue.

“You look sad.”

“How can I look sad when I’m laughing?”

She shrugged again. That’s why I hated children; there were so many empty spaces in their minds and not enough answers, the exact reason why I’d hated being one myself. There was always a lack of knowledge about what was going on and seldom did I come across an adult who could enlighten me.

“Wanda, for someone who asks a lot of questions, you don’t know a lot of answers.”

“I ask different questions than you do.” She frowned. “I know lots of answers.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” She thought hard. “The reason Mr Ngambao from next door doesn’t work in the fields is because he has a sore back.”

“Where are the fields?”

She pointed out the window. “That way. That’s where our food grows and then everyone goes to the eatery three times every day to eat it.”

“The entire village eats together?”

She nodded. “Petra’s mama works there but I don’t want to work there when I’m older, or in the fields, I want to work with Bobby,” she said dreamily. “My friend Lacey’s dad works in the library.”

I searched for the importance of her sentence and found none. “Does anybody ever think of spending their time more wisely, like trying to get the hell out of here?” I asked smartly, more to myself.

“People try to leave,” she said, “but they can’t. There’s no way out, but I like it here, so I don’t mind.” She yawned. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. ’Night.” She climbed down off the couch and made her way to the door dragging a torn blanket behind her. “Is this yours?” She stopped, bending over to pick up something from the floor. She held it up and I saw it shine as the light seeping in from under the door hit it.

“Yes,” I said, taking my watch from her hands.

The door opened, orange light filled the room, forcing me to close my eyes, and then I heard it shut again and I was alone in the darkness with the words of a five-year-old ringing in my ears.

“People try to leave but they can’t. There’s no way out…”

That was the other thing I hated about kids; they always said the exact things that deep down you already knew, would never admit to, and most certainly never wanted to hear.

22

“S
o Joseph is a carpenter. What is it that you do, Mary?” I asked Helena as we strolled along the dusty path of the village.

Helena smiled.

We had walked through the village and now wandered beyond, passing fields of glorious golds and greens, dotted with people of all nationalities who stooped and rose as they worked the farm, growing anything and everything I had ever and never heard of. Dozens of greenhouses speckled the landscape, the villagers taking every opportunity to grow what they could. Like the diverse people, the weather had arrived in this place in all its fiery yet vital forms. Already in just a few days I’d experienced the sweltering heat, a thunderstorm, a spring breeze, and a winter chill, inconsistent weather I presumed to be the explanation for the unusual array of plants, trees, flowers, and crops that all managed to live together successfully in the same environment. The explanation for the humans, I hadn’t yet learned of. But it seemed there were no rules regarding nature in this place. Four seasons in one day was accepted, welcomed, and adapted to. It was warm again now as we strolled side by side, me feeling revitalized after sleeping more hours in one night than I had since I was a child. Since Jenny-May.

“Since Jenny-May
what
?” Gregory would always ask me. “Since she went missing?”

“No, just since
Jenny-May
—period,” I would reply.

That morning I encountered someone I had been searching for for twelve years. Helena had urged me onward, snapping shut my gaping mouth and clicking fingers before my goggling eyes. I was overwhelmed by her presence, and I was never overwhelmed. I was dumbfounded, and I was never dumbfounded. I suddenly felt lonely, and I was never lonely. But lately I was a lot of things I never used to be. After so many years of looking, it was near impossible to remain as serene as Helena when the faces I saw in my dreams passed me in my waking hours.

“Stay calm,” Helena had murmured more than once into my ear.

Robin Geraghty was the first of my ghosts to float by. We had been seated at the eatery, a stunning timber building on two levels, with a balcony around four sides from which the views of forestry, mountains, and fields were displayed to perfection. It wasn’t a crammed work cafeteria, as I had imagined; it was a beautiful building that housed the local villagers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; a scheme created to help ration the food they collected and grew. Money, I recalled, had no value here, not even when wallets filled with it arrived on their doorsteps. “Why spend money on something that arrives in abundance daily?” Helena had asked by way of explanation.