‘Ellie, why did you tell me all of this if it’s of no consequence?’
‘Lately, I’ve started to feel different. The change scares me.’
‘Change can be a good thing.’
‘It won’t bring her back.’
‘No it won’t, but at least you are talking about it.’
‘Talk is cheap.’
‘It can be, but not this time I don’t think.’
He hands me a plastic cup of water from the dispenser over by the window.
‘Ellie, you said about the ribbons, the ribbons in her hair, that when you found her, they didn’t look the way Amy would wear them, that the ribbons weren’t hers.’
He walks back to his desk and rummages through the file. He takes out an old photograph of me and Amy.
‘You said that when you found her, her hair was in plaits.’
‘Yes.’
‘But they looked different.’
‘They were tied with perfect red bows.’
My head throbs. I want the ground to swallow me up. I look into the plastic cup filled with water and I can see the sea, puddles building up in the sand, the past swirling around my feet like quicksand. That familiar sinking feeling, knowing this time if I go down, I might never get back up again.
Dr Ebbs picks up the copybook and rereads the words. He seems distant, as if his frame is closing in on me. Small details overlap each other, his shape appears loose, his voice farther away. I try to get him back into focus, but it’s like I’m wearing glasses that no longer suit my eyes. Everything around me darkens. I put my head in my hands, and the pain begins to settle. It takes all my strength to look back up.
‘The fire, Dr Ebbs.’
‘What about the fire, Ellie?’
I’m back there again, being dragged out, the cracking of the windows, the flames as they roared, the stench of rubber, and then that smell, the one I least expected.
‘I had not expected it.’
‘Had not expected what?’
‘The smell of burned flesh, Dr Ebbs, I had not expected that.’
‘Ellie, I’m so sorry.’
He unlocks the bottom drawer in his desk and gives me two white tablets, gesturing for me to drink my water again. I swallow both straight down.
I trust him. I now have two people in this hospital to trust. He waits. I can’t tell how long it is before I raise my head and finally look at him.
‘Just one other thing, Ellie.’
‘Yes.’ I feel the tablets kicking in quickly.
‘In this photograph …’ He holds up the one of me and Amy, the one taken the year before we went to Wexford. ‘You look happy in this picture, Ellie.’
I look at the woman in the photograph, and again I wonder where she has gone. I don’t know who she is any more.
‘Yes.’
‘Who took the photograph, Ellie?’
‘Andrew.’
‘Joe’s brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you love him?’
‘I thought I did.’
Dr Ebbs hands me the copybook, this time holding my left elbow as he leads me to the door. He calls one of the new nurses. She tells me her name is Sinead, like it should make a difference. She seems kind. I don’t mind her taking me to my room. At least now, I know I will sleep.
Mervin Road
Saturday, 8 October 2011, 5.30 p.m.
IT HAD BEEN OVER AN HOUR SINCE THE BULKY motorbike courier with his glistening black helmet had pounded up the pebbled pathway of Kate’s home, a large brown parcel covered in protective plastic under his arm. Kate had spread the photographs out like a mismatched carpet across the study floor, grabbing the desklight down beside her as she knelt to examine each one in detail. The images revealed themselves like an old movie playing out slowly, each of them somehow intimate in their silence. She checked again that the study door was locked, shutting out the world outside and keeping the horror within, safe from her son.
As she studied both sets of photographs, it was clear that the girls’ similarities were more glaring than their differences: both were beautiful, both young adolescents, both covered with a sprinkled layer of clay, like a second skin. Kate went back to the photograph with the gleaming crucifix. There was something about it that bothered her: what was it? The clothes – Caroline’s school uniform and Amelia’s jeans and tracksuit top – although at odds, could be distanced from how both girls looked, but the crucifix on Caroline, being so close to the plaiting and the ribbons, didn’t make sense. He was crafting them, she was sure of it, turning them into an image that was important to him. So why leave one with a crucifix, and one without?