‘My granddad used to hurt them both. Gaga and my mum. He drank too much. Gaga says he was unpleasant most of the time, but he was violent when he’d had a drink. Sergeant O’Grady, the local garda, was his best friend. They’d gone to school together, they drank together. Gaga wasn’t from around there, she grew up in Leeds. She was a nanny, moved to Ireland to look after a family. She met Granddad and that was that, she stayed, but she found it hard to settle. She liked to keep to herself. The locals didn’t like that very much, which made her keep to herself even more. Granddad was possessive, he used to pick holes in everything she’d say when she was around people, the way she behaved, and so she decided it was better not to go out any more. It suited her, she said. But then he started getting aggressive. He hit her. She went to hospital with cracked ribs. Eventually things got so bad she went to Granddad’s friend, Garda O’Grady – not to press charges, but to ask him, as Granddad’s friend, to talk to him, help him. He didn’t like what she was saying, told her she must be doing something wrong to make him so angry – he turned it all around on her.
‘She would never have gone back to Garda O’Grady again, but for Granddad hitting Mum. She told the guard if he didn’t do something then she would report him. Garda O’Grady told Granddad what she had said. That night Granddad came home from the pub drunk. He hit Gaga, he said he was going to kill Mum. Gaga told her to run and Mum escaped the house and ran off into the woods. Granddad chased her, but he was two sheets to the wind. It was dark, he couldn’t see, he was drunk. Gaga followed him. She watched him trip and hit his head on a rock on the ground. He was begging her for help, to call an ambulance. She couldn’t help him. She said she was frozen. There was the man she had loved, the man who had just beaten her and threatened to kill their daughter, and she sat and watched him drown in a stream. She said that was the best thing that she could have done for both of them. She didn’t hit him, she didn’t kill him, but she didn’t try to save him either. She said she chose to save herself and her daughter instead.’
Laura lifts her chin. ‘I’m proud of her. I’m proud of what they did, that they were strong enough to defend themselves in the only way they knew how. She had tried talking to his friend, she had tried talking with the law, and it didn’t do any good. Granddad died at his own hands.’
‘But why did they choose to keep you a secret?’
‘Because Garda O’Grady wouldn’t leave them alone. He dragged Gaga in for questioning almost every day for months. He made her life hell. He spoke so badly about her she barely had any customers left. He even tormented Mum, who was only fourteen years old, he brought her in for questioning too. He accused them both of being murderers. He used to drop by the house at all times of the day and night. He scared them, threatened he’d lock them up for the rest of their lives. They lived in fear for so long, but they stayed where they were.
‘When the work dried up, Mum had to look around for another job. That’s when she started working for the Toolin twins. She had an affair with Tom Toolin. I don’t know how long it went on for, but I know that it ended when she became pregnant. She never even told him she had a baby. She was terrified that Garda O’Grady would take me away from her, that he would find a way. Gaga felt the same. So they kept me secret. They didn’t want me to have the same life as they had, they didn’t want him to torment me. They protected me in the best way they could.’
‘Do you think now that what they did to you, the life they chose for you, was right?’
‘They were doing the best they could. They were protecting me. I could have left the Toolin cottage at any time, but I was happy there. Growing up, I liked to hide, to be hidden. I liked looking at things from outside, from afar. If I hadn’t, I couldn’t immerse myself so much in all of the sounds around me. They all became part of me. I absorbed everything, like a sponge, because there was room for it in my life. Where other people have stresses and strains, endless pressures, I had none. I could be complete.’
‘Complete,’ Bo muses. ‘Do you feel complete now that you’ve left the cottage? Now that you’ve become immersed in society?’
‘No.’ Laura looks down at her fingers. ‘I don’t hear things as much as I used to. There’s a lot of noise. A lot of muddled …’ She searches for the right word but can’t find it. ‘I feel a bit broken,’ she says sadly.
38
Solomon brushes his teeth, taking longer than usual, staring at himself in the mirror but not seeing himself. He looks up to see Bo standing at the door of the ensuite, bag in hand.
Tears glisten in her eyes.
He spits out the toothpaste hurriedly and wipes his mouth. He moves back into the bedroom, banging his hip off the corner of an open drawer. He hisses with the pain then searches for something to say to Bo, but nothing comes to mind, nothing appropriate, more a feeling of panic that this moment is here and after everything, does he want it to happen? No relief, just panic, dread. The awful feelings of having to confront, deal, not hide from it. The natural wonder of second-guessing that comes with being confronted by change.
‘Jack?’ he asks, clearing his throat, awkwardly.
‘No,’ she laughs lightly. ‘Just not you.’
He’s taken aback by the harshness of it.
‘Oh, come on, Sol, it’s hardly shocking to either of us.’
He rubs his hip absentmindedly.
‘You’re in love with her,’ she says quickly. She rubs a single tear away from her cheek. Bo never did crying very well.
Solomon’s eyes widen.