‘At least let me give her something to eat,’ Mrs Mahoney said to her husband, willing to expose softness when she believed I couldn’t hear.
I opened my eyes to see Finbarr’s parents, standing by the door that led to the rest of the house as if they meant to guard it from me. If he’d inherited his joyful air from either of them, it was gone from both now. Still they had made him, these two people, they had made Finbarr and raised him in this small, dirt-floored house. I love you and thank you rose in my throat, but I choked the words back. They wouldn’t want to hear them from me.
‘Let me give her a glass of milk and some bread,’ his mother said. ‘And there’s stew left over from last night. The poor girl, in the way she is, she must be famished.’
I lifted my head, feeling the creases in my face. My eyes felt swollen from sleep and crying. The poor girl. I recognized Mrs Mahoney’s new sympathy as a bad sign. If she no longer needed to steel herself towards me, my fate was no longer in her hands. Somebody else had taken over.
Mr Mahoney sat in the chair beside me. He wore an oilskin coat and smelled of fish and salt air. His wife set to bustling, making me a plate.
‘If you’d just let me see him for one moment,’ I said. ‘All I ask is one moment.’ And then it would all be clear to everyone. They’d never seen us together. They couldn’t know. If they did, they would understand.
Mr Mahoney put his hand on my arm. Slim, like his wife, but much taller, with a full, ruddy face, hard bitten by years on the sea. When he spoke it was with the brogue that still sounded like music to me.
‘Listen,’ he said to me. ‘Nan, is it?’
I refused to nod. Shouldn’t he know by now it was Nan? Of course he knew.
‘I know you’d like to speak with Finbarr. But he’s not in a way for that now. He can scarcely lift his head from the pillow.’
‘I don’t mind.’
They looked at me, the two of them, like I’d lain with every soldier home from the war and landed on their doorstep to trap their son’s eternal soul.
‘You don’t understand,’ Mr Mahoney said. ‘The poor boy, he might not live to see tomorrow morning.’
‘Please,’ I said.
They looked at each other.
‘You promise you won’t touch him?’ said Mrs Mahoney. ‘We don’t need you getting sick too. You’ve more to think of than just yourself now.’
Perhaps she cared about me and my baby after all. It was impossible to think of being anywhere near Finbarr without touching him but I nodded.
The door swung open with a creak to reveal a dark room hanging heavy with despair, the curtains drawn. My nostrils filled with a sad, pungent odour, like mushrooms and sweat. The figure on the bed barely made a rise in the covers.
I walked to the side of the bed and kneeled down to see his face. ‘Finbarr,’ I whispered. ‘It’s me. I’ve come to you.’ I reached out my hand to stroke his hair off the feverish head but his mother was behind me now and caught it before I could touch him. Finbarr’s eyes, open, did not land on me, or focus. Though I hadn’t touched him I could feel heat emanating from his body, almost as warm as the stove. A stale, awful scent like he’d soiled himself settled around us. He moved and a damp cloth that may have been cooling his forehead fell to the dirt floor. It was crusted with blood and so were his ears. His lips had turned an odd dark blue and they didn’t move or say my name. He didn’t see me. I struggled to tear my hand out of his mother’s so I could touch him. Surprisingly strong, she increased her grip.
‘If you let me stay,’ I whispered, ‘I could take care of him for you.’
‘And where would the sense in that be?’ Mr Mahoney put his arm around my shoulders. He pressed me to my feet, turned me around and gently pushed me out of the room.
They fed me dinner and made me a pallet by the stove in the kitchen. When I was sure they’d be sleeping, I crept into Finbarr’s room and lay down beside him. ‘Dogs and books,’ I whispered, the words scratching my throat with despair. ‘We’ll get Alby back and it will be dogs and books and you and me and the baby.’
His body moved and for a moment I thought he’d answer, but instead he coughed; shaking, dry coughs that didn’t bring him to consciousness. I froze, worried his mother would hear and run into the room, but she didn’t. Finbarr’s body quieted. I stayed beside him, awake all night, so before dawn I could be found on my pallet, a good girl.
‘Might I say goodbye to him?’ I said, before we left.
‘You must think of what’s best for the baby, dear,’ his mother admonished.
I nodded, not yet realizing that as far as the world was concerned, what was best for the baby could mean something entirely different from what was best for me.
The Disappearance
Day Three
Monday, 6 December 1926
PERHAPS IT’S ONLY hindsight, rearranging memory. But it seems to me that evening at the Bellefort Hotel, when I first saw Inspector Frank Chilton, I knew he was searching for Agatha. Not that I knew his name yet – that discovery was moments away. He stood at the front desk, talking to Mrs Isabelle Leech, our Caribbean proprietress. My senses were heightened from being held in Finbarr’s arms. I might have turned and headed back to my room to avoid Chilton, if he hadn’t glanced my way. Once he spotted me, a retreat would only garner suspicion. I kept my eyes down and tried to head past him to the dining room.
‘Pardon me,’ Chilton said. ‘Miss.’
‘Mrs,’ I corrected him, then smiled too stiffly. I could feel the edge of my lips stretch unnaturally. ‘Mrs O’Dea.’ After escaping the baths I had walked to another hotel to clear my head, and bought a new shawl at their gift shop, as well as some paper and a fountain pen. Perhaps I’d write a story while I was here, or a poem. I pulled the shawl close around me, and its price tag tumbled from the dark threads.
Chilton reached out and touched it. ‘Is that what you’re worth, then?’
It was the sort of jest I loathed, but something in his face made me relax. He looked embarrassed at making such an easy joke. He looked mild, even kind. It was bad luck to have a police inspector at the hotel, but I saw at once it was good luck that it happened to be this one.
‘Here you go,’ said Mrs Leech, passing me a pair of shears. ‘Inspector Chilton’s here looking for a lady gone missing from Berkshire.’
‘Goodness,’ I said. ‘Missing from Berkshire and you’re searching for her in Yorkshire?’
‘All of England’s in on this hunt,’ he explained. ‘Inspectors and police officers dispatched to every county.’
This news set my teeth on edge. I smiled to conceal it and said, ‘My, my. She must be ever so important.’
Chilton intercepted the shears and cut the tag off for me. ‘If I could trouble you just a moment, Mrs O’Dea.’ He placed the snipped price tag in my hand. His fingers were chapped and tobacco stained, his clothing rumpled. He held out a photograph with his right hand. His left dangled at his side. ‘This is the lady. Have you seen her?’