I say, ‘And so her plan changed.’
Lucy laughs, one sharp breath. ‘You know the first thing I thought, when she showed up on my doorstep sobbing her heart out and kicking the walls? At least it’s over. Thank God. I didn’t say that to Ash till I had her calmed down – which took forever; I had to listen to the whole story three or four times over, every detail, she couldn’t stop telling me. But finally I got a shot of whiskey and a cup of tea into her – I mean, she looked like she could’ve used a massive spliff or a Valium or something, but I didn’t have any and I just knew sweet tea for shock, right? It worked, anyway: she was still raging, but she settled down enough that at least she could sit still and she was only crying off and on, and I could get a word in edgewise. So I said, “Look, the only good thing is that now you know. Now you can leave it. Like you said.”
‘Ash practically came up off the sofa. Her hands were—’ Lucy’s hands shoot up, rigid claws. ‘I thought she was going to go for me, or dig her nails into her own face, I didn’t know whether to grab her before she could . . . But she went, “You think I’m going to fucking leave this?” – Ash doesn’t swear. “I’m not done. I’m nowhere near— I’m going to get that fucker. He thought he had the right to decide my life – no. No. No. I’m not going to just lie down and take it, yes sir whatever you want sir do it to me harder sir— Fuck him.” She was so angry she was panting, but it was a different kind of angry from before. She looked dangerous. Ash, like; the least dangerous person in the world. Her voice was wrecked from crying, this hard hoarse voice that didn’t even sound like her – she said, “Now I’m going to do it to him. I’m going to make the rest of his life into whatever the fuck I want.”
‘I went, “OK, hang on, what?” And Ash said, “He’s already half in love with me. I’m going to get him the rest of the way there. Then I’m going to convince him to leave his wife and get a divorce so that he and I can be together. I’m going to make him tell her all about me, so there’s no way she’ll ever take him back. And then I’m going to dump him.” ’
And there it is, the one piece me and Steve couldn’t find: why Aislinn wanted McCann. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I say. ‘There’s no way that was going to end well.’
‘I know that. I told her that. In those exact words.’
‘I thought Aislinn was good at people.’
Lucy says, ‘She is. That’s what freaked me out the most. In order to come up with a fucking looper idea like that one, she had to have completely lost hold of everything she knew about how people work. She was so obsessed with the story in her head, the fact that there were actual people involved wasn’t even a factor any more.’
She reaches for her smoke packet, not to open it, just to have something in her hands. ‘I tried to wake her up. I said, “I thought Joe wasn’t the type to have affairs.” And Ash said, “He isn’t. I can get past that. It won’t be that hard; he’s always dropping little hints about how he and his wife are basically staying together out of habit and he loves her but he’s not in love with her, blah blah clichés. Which is just him trying to convince us both that it’s totally fine for us to be going for drives together, but I can use it. I’ll make him think he’s the brave romantic hero breaking out of his meaningless marriage and turning himself into something special by following True Love. Him telling my mum that he’d never leave his wife and kids, never, the sanctimonious fuck, and all the time he knew— I’ll have him dumping her by Christmas. Just watch me.” ’
I say, ‘Being blunt here: she was planning on shagging his brains out till he couldn’t think straight.’
That makes Lucy blink, but she says evenly, ‘Yeah. She was.’
‘Not everyone would be on for that.’ Which is putting it mildly. There are plenty of undercovers, trained professionals, who won’t shag the targets. For a civilian, Aislinn was hardcore.
Lucy moves on the sofa, like a spring is sticking into her. ‘Ash was weird about some things,’ she says. ‘Sex, love, all that. She was all into reading romantic books that ended happy-ever-after, but when it came to her own life: no way. She said – ever since we were kids, she said it, and she meant it – that she was never going to fall in love. She went out with a couple of guys, but that was just for the experience – she didn’t want to be thirty and a virgin who didn’t know what a date felt like. The second the guys seemed like they might be getting serious, Aislinn broke it off.’
‘Because of her dad,’ I say. ‘And her ma.’
‘Yeah. She said look what it does to you, falling in love. Just look. It means someone else has hold of your whole life. At any second, like that’ – a snap of her fingers – ‘they could decide to change it into something else. You might never even know why. And you might never get it back, your life. They could just walk out and take it with them, and it’s gone for good.’
Lucy’s eyes are on nothing and her voice has changed, lightened and tightened: Aislinn’s voice, quick and urgent, running under her own. She’s remembering. For that second I want to nod to her – to Aislinn, not Lucy; that nod across a crowded room to the person you peg as a cop, to the only other woman there, to the only person dressed in your same style. The nod that says, whether you like each other or not, You and me, we get it.
Lucy says, ‘I mean, I thought she was doing exactly that anyway: letting her parents have her life. She was going to deliberately miss out on falling in love, because of what they did. But Ash said I didn’t get it. She said this was her; her own decision. She was right, I didn’t exactly get it, but I did get that the idea of shagging Joe . . . it didn’t mean the same thing to Aislinn as it would to most people. Sex wasn’t something she was hoping would be special, or mind-blowing; she specifically didn’t want it to be. And this, getting Joe, this was the most important thing in her life. So if sex could help her do it, why not?’
‘Well,’ I say. ‘You said she’d never hurt anyone. This plan was going to hurt Joe’s wife, and his kids. A lot.’
Lucy turns the smoke packet between her fingers. ‘I know. I said that to her, that day. I thought it would stop her for sure.’
‘Why didn’t it?’