The Doll's House

‘How the hell should I know?’


‘Was losing Dad the ruination of her life?’

‘For fuck sake, Clodagh, that was forever ago.’

‘But it matters, it all matters. I learned that in rehab.’

I hear him sigh.

‘Dominic, can I ask you something?’

‘What’s that?’

I look around my mother’s bedroom, a kind of foreboding crawling over me, like a snake easing its way inside me. I spit it out before I think better of it: ‘Dominic. Why did she stop loving me?’

‘She did love you.’ He’s trying hard, I know that.

‘I wanted to drive her to the doctor that morning, the morning she got sick, but she shut me out.’ I’m sounding hysterical. ‘Ever since her death I’ve tried to think of the two of us having a proper conversation. Normal stuff, the kind most daughters and mothers have.’

‘Calm down, Clodagh. You both talked all the time.’

‘Talked about nonsense, you mean. Where we went on holidays, or what each of us wanted for Christmas. None of it was important. And then at the hospital—’

‘I thought we were putting that behind us.’

‘I can’t, Dominic. I tried to, but I can’t.’

‘Suit yourself.’ The anger is back in his voice.

‘Dominic, do you know what I’m just thinking?’

‘What?’

‘This is the first time since Dad died that I’ve been in her bedroom on my own.’

‘It can’t be. Before the funeral—’

‘You and Val collected her stuff. I was in Gaga Land, remember.’

‘Clodagh, no one blames you for that, not now.’

‘Yes, they do,’ and then I say it: ‘She always loved you more. Mum was different with you.’

‘I’m not listening to this rubbish.’

‘Why not, Dominic? Because it’s the truth? Is that it?’ I’m shouting at him.

‘Jesus Christ, Clodagh.’

I can’t hold back my anger. ‘Two peas in a pod, you and her together. I was always the outsider.’

‘One day soon,’ he’s roaring back at me, ‘you’re going to have to stop feeling sorry for yourself, Clodagh, and forget about all that shite. Did they not teach you that in rehab?’

‘It wasn’t a fucking school, Dominic.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t know, seeing as how I never had the luxury.’

My hand is shaking as I press the disconnect button on the phone. I turn to the photograph of my mother on the bedside locker. ‘Happy now?’ I say, with as much loathing as I can muster.





Leeson Street Bridge


Kate took photographs of the surrounding area, beginning with the houses at either side of the canal, including the one from which the witness had made the vital 999 call. They were Victorian, most converted to offices. Others looked divided, like Kate’s building on Mervin Road, into separate apartments. By now there was plenty of activity along the terrace, but in the early hours of the morning, it would have been a different story.

Turning towards the canal, Kate saw the long grasses swaying in the water with the October breeze. She photographed the canal bank from different angles, as well as the bridges at either end of it, including the one with the reporters.

Because of Jenkins’s celebrity status, huge resources would be pumped into the investigation. Information would arrive like a tsunami, members of the public believing they had been close to the victim. Like the previous investigation Kate had worked on with O’Connor, when the age of the young victims had created such an outcry, the public’s attention would be a double-edged sword, feeding the investigation while stretching it to the maximum.

Although Keith Jenkins’s body had been removed, the large white tent in which the state pathologist had carried out his initial investigation was still in situ. Kate looked down at Hanley and his crew. Hanley had grown a beard since they’d last met. From her current vantage point on the bridge, like the reporters and television crew behind her, she watched the team in their white bodysuits working alongside the various uniformed police officers and detectives, including O’Connor, stationed outside the cordoned-off area, a world within a world. It was almost as if those who were part of the crime scene were under some kind of microscope.