Only We Know Read online

  The river.

  A child under water.

  Momentarily the fear drains away as she reels from the impact, coldness flushing through her body. It lasts but a second. Then, she starts to run.

  Part One

  * * *

  DUBLIN 2013

  1. Katie

  It starts with the pictures.

  A Thursday morning, much like any other in the office, three of us standing around Reilly’s desk shooting the breeze while we wait for the deputy editor to arrive. The others are giving me flak on account of my appearance – last night’s make-up slipping off my face, my hair still spiky with grips, the collapsed up-do that I haven’t yet brushed out. I’m feeling like I’m only half present. The other half of me is biding my time until I can get back to my desk, finish writing my piece, then high-tail it home to my apartment for a shower and a long sleep.

  Colm from Legal says: ‘Jesus, Katie, the smell of booze off you would knock out a horse.’

  Beside him Peter sniggers and I smile sweetly. ‘Just doing my job, boys. Sacrificing my sobriety for the scoop, you know how it is.’

  And he says, no, he doesn’t, but it’s all fine, really, despite the pain searing my temples and the weariness rising up my legs, like mercury in a thermometer. I’ve been here before. And then Reilly arrives, clearly harassed, as if he has something important to tell us. He sits in his chair, throws the pictures onto his desk and says: ‘Get a load of these.’

  The four of us lean in to peer at them and straight away I feel it start.

  Pictures of a dead girl floating in a swimming-pool.

  ‘They just came in,’ Reilly tells us. A death at a party in the early hours of the morning. Drink, drugs, a bunch of students, a game that got out of hand.

  Peter is spreading them out now so that they cover half of the desk. The water so clear. The girl, only a teenager, her hair fanning out in the water.

  ‘Some sicko at the party took these with his phone,’ Reilly explains.

  ‘We can’t print them,’ Colm says emphatically. ‘There’s no way.’

  ‘So fucking ghoulish,’ Peter whispers, with an air of fascination. His eyes are soaking them up.

  ‘Her parents probably haven’t even identified her body yet, and here we are staring at these,’ Colm says, disgusted.

  ‘We can’t print them, but there’s a story nonetheless,’ Reilly insists, ‘about camera phones and the lack of morality governing their use.’

  He’s directing his comments at all of us. I’m listening to him, but I can’t drag my attention away from the pictures. The creamy whiteness of her skin, the reddish cloud of hair spreading in the water. Clothes sticking to her limbs. Her body half turned as if in a slow farewell. Eyes open and unseeing, her mouth frozen into an O of surprise. I imagine all the water leaking into her, filling her, swelling her lungs to bursting point.

  Someone says my name.

  But I stare at the pictures, transfixed. Not a bubble of air. Just the stillness of that girl beneath a film of water. I look at her and feel the change come over me, that tender place deep inside me prodded with a stick. My toughness vaporizes in a puff of steam.

  ‘Katie?’ Reilly says again, but I don’t look at him. I don’t look at any of them.

  I reach down and grab my bag, urgency consuming me as I stumble away from the death spread on that desk. Without saying a word, I run from them, not stopping until I reach the lift.

  I head out onto the grey blandness of Talbot Street, cross the road, without glancing left or right, and go straight into the pub.

  ‘Whiskey,’ I say to the barman, fumbling for change in my purse.

  ‘Powers or Jameson?’ he asks, his face betraying neither surprise nor judgement. It’s not even midday.

  ‘Jameson.’

  It’s that kind of pub, walls adorned with framed mirrors and dusty trinkets, horse-racing on the telly, a smell of damp clothing in the air. No matter how early in the day, there’s always some solo drinker in here, hunched morosely over a pint. I take my drink to a quiet corner and wait for my nerves to calm. Nausea stirs in the pit of my stomach and it has nothing to do with my hangover. That girl in the water. A cold shiver goes straight to the soft spot inside me. I close my eyes and wait for it to pass, urging myself to get a grip.

  I can feel it coming over me. The tightening, like a belt, around my neck. Every time something like this happens, I feel the belt tightening by a notch. Like when I heard that Ken Yates had been killed in a car crash all those years ago – a notch. And Sally’s funeral last year – another notch. With each little piece of news from the past that trickles through – another notch.

  Most of the time, I don’t feel it – the vice about my neck. But then something will happen, like those pictures just now, coming out of nowhere, pictures of a girl and a tragedy completely unrelated to me. That’s when I feel the tentacles of the past reaching out to grasp me so that I can’t breathe, as if I’m the one under water. Only a few weeks ago, in this very pub, I’d felt the belt tighten.

  I remember the night vividly. I was sitting with some of the other hacks, a quick pint after work having turned into a session, the telly on in the background. Someone said: ‘Here, turn that up, will you?’ I swivelled in my seat to see the screen, and there was Luke Yates making an impassioned plea to the general public from the sofa of a TV talk-show. Among a panel of entrepreneurs, economists and other talking heads, discussing the downturn in the economy and how we as a nation needed to encourage growth instead of austerity, Luke seemed to be going off-script as he urged the viewers to stop focusing on their own misery, and start looking further afield to see what real suffering was like.

  ‘This country has always punched above its weight,’ he said. ‘In terms of international standing, in terms of international aid, we have never turned our backs on those whose need is greater than ours. Generations of Irish people have given to help the poor of other countries – from the Trocaire boxes during Lent, to Live Aid, and well before that. When it comes to putting our hands in our pockets to help our fellow man, this country has not been found wanting. But now the storm clouds have gathered, and the bogeymen are here, the IMF, the Troika, and all we talk about is austerity, budget cuts, mortgage arrears, job losses. Fear has taken hold of Ireland. All around me I see people turning in on themselves. And the worst thing about the fear is what it does to us as a nation. It makes us insular. We no longer look out, we seek to protect ourselves, batten down the hatches and hold on to what we’ve got. To hell with everyone else. The fear extinguishes our generosity, it suppresses our collective conscience, it makes us hard, mean and grasping and that, to my mind, is not who we are. That is not who the Irish are.’

  On and on he went. The host and some of the others on the panel interjected with talk of job losses and creeping poverty, but Luke would not be silenced.

  ‘Jaysus, he’s getting a bit worked up,’ someone said.

  And it was true. I could see the colour rising in his face as he leaned forward in the seat, barely able to contain himself. Where had it come from, his passion, his social conscience? Like those around me, I’d had no inkling he held such strong principles or beliefs. As I watched, I noticed something else. Everyone had fallen silent. The whole pub was watching: pints were left untouched, each drinker’s attention arrested by the man on the screen, with his smart suit and his media-friendly features, pounding the table and berating us for our failings, urging us not to allow this depression to change our fundamental values, not to allow our human decency to crack under the strain. The studio audience had fallen silent, too, and I had a sudden flash of memory: Luke as a boy, waist deep in the river, vines hanging down from the trees overhead. I felt it then as I watched him up there on the screen – the tightening about my throat – which was strange, because we hardly knew each other now, not really.

  He finished what he was saying and there was a pause. Into the brief silence, a man at the bar raised his pint to the tell
y. ‘Hear, hear.’ As the studio audience broke into applause, people around me raised their glasses, nodding, and for the rest of the night, it was all anyone could talk about.

  The next day, the airwaves were clogged with news of Luke and his Late Late Show performance. The papers were full of it. Unlike some stories that have a brief moment, then fade from the public consciousness, this one seemed to stick. It was no surprise when word came down from the editor-in-chief that someone had to write a profile of Luke for the paper. I just hadn’t realized the job would fall to me.

  I finish my drink, pick up my bag and go out into the afternoon sun. The rain has cleared and I have the half-formed intention of taking a walk along the canal, knowing that the fresh air and exercise will help clear my thoughts. Instead I sit at a picnic table outside the Barge and email the office, telling them I’ve gone home, sick. After that I switch off my phone and spend the afternoon sipping Coronas and eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table, until the shadows start to lengthen and the air grows chilly. Reggae drifts down from an open window nearby, with traffic noise rising from the streets beyond.

  This time yesterday I was applying make-up and pinning up my hair, a red dress laid out on the bed, with an evening bag containing my invitation. A fund-raiser at the Morrison. Not something I desperately wanted to go to, but Luke would be there, with some others I was supposed to be researching. It was out of duty more than pleasure that I headed into the city.

  By the time I arrived the party was in full flow, well-dressed and -groomed bodies pressing against each other, imbibing champagne, waitresses in starched white shirts and aprons passing among them with trays of canapés. All of us crammed together in a room on the top floor of a hotel, the windows giving onto the roofs, spires and cranes that punctuated the city’s skyline. Luke and Julia Yates, the glamorous couple, were in the midst of the throng, and I watched them from afar: their practised smiles, the way they worked the room together, in a carefully choreographed routine, their sheen of confidence and privilege. I felt a creeping sense of envy. No, not envy. Rather, it was as though I was confronted with a mirror reflection of myself: a thirty-seven-year-old woman with nothing of permanence in her life. No husband, no children, no home of her own. An apartment she rents – just another in a long list of places she has tried and failed to make into a home. Her job the one constant in her life that keeps her tethered to the earth. There have been times lately when she’s felt that sense of displacement nudging into her work. Even in the office, where she feels safe, she is still in danger of slipping off.

  I kept my smile bright, and made my way through the crowd, escaping onto the terrace for air, to suck oxygen back into my body and try to calm the shaking in my hands. I sipped my champagne and felt fury curdle within me, fury at myself. Why had I come to this party? How on earth did I think I might fit in here? At this stage of my life I should know by now when to leave well enough alone.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts.’

  I turned. He was standing outside the glass doors. He closed them behind him so that the noise of the party was contained, and I watched as he came towards me, grinning. My heart was beating fast as he approached. Neat and unruffled in his black tuxedo, hair smoothed off his handsome face, he had a glass of champagne in each hand and offered one to me. ‘Looks like you’re running dry.’

  The air had done nothing to dispel my unease. Luke smiled but I couldn’t make out whether it was genuine or just that he was better than me at covering up his discomfort.

  ‘I was waiting for you to come and say hello,’ he added.

  ‘You could have come over to me,’ I said, defensive.

  ‘True.’ He stood alongside me and looked out across the city.

  ‘I had the feeling we were studiously avoiding one another, Katie.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  And yet I felt the pull between us, and knew he felt it too, just as I knew he was equally aware of the past, which threatened every contact between us. Even the most casual encounter seemed charged with fear, regret or some other elusive emotion.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be here,’ he said. ‘After our last conversation, I thought you’d keep your distance.’

  His tone, initially jokey, had softened. We were standing together as the last of the sunset cast the roofs of Dublin in a soft glow. I saw the glint of gold on his finger, and watched his hand move to cover my own.

  He left it where it was and I made no attempt to move mine. Further down the terrace, a group of smokers were sharing a joke. Their laughter reached us as we stood on the balcony, the shadows deepening in the streets below.

  ‘It sounded like it might be fun.’

  ‘You don’t look like you’re having fun, Katie.’

  ‘But what about you?’ I said, slipping my hand out from under his. ‘The golden boy. The man of the moment.’

  A flash of disappointment crossed his face. Then he laughed and made a swatting gesture, as if to bat my words away. It was hard to fathom. At one moment he was a businessman who’d had a couple of lucky breaks. At the next he had been catapulted into an exalted position – man of the people, champion of the masses, his finger on the public pulse. All it had taken was one high-profile interview on national television. The right words spoken at the right time.

  ‘So where will it all lead?’ I asked, watching him over the rim of my champagne flute. ‘Leinster House? A seat in government? Or how about the presidency? You know, I can see you and Julia settling into life in the Phoenix Park.’

  I was joking, of course: there was too much in Luke’s past for him to pull off a successful political career.

  ‘Jesus, Katie, come off it!’ He laughed. ‘Politics isn’t my bag, you know that.’

  But there was something in the way he said it that made me look closely at him. Faint shadows under his eyes, tension in the way he held himself. I wondered whether he had bitten off more than he could chew. But before I could ask him about it, he said, ‘I heard from Nick.’

  His brother.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He rang a few days ago, out of the blue.’

  Anxiety stirred in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘Is he still in Nairobi?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded, then said, ‘Did you know he’s getting married?’

  My mouth went dry.

  ‘An American he met over there, apparently. Another hippie drop-out by the sound of it. They’ve known each other about five minutes.’ He drank some champagne. ‘The wedding is tomorrow.’

  Before I could answer, there was movement behind us. The glass door opened and someone came out. Luke instantly drew away from me.

  ‘Christ, it’s hot in there,’ the man exclaimed, coming towards us and giving Luke a friendly slap on the shoulder. I recognized him at once – Damien Rourke, a self-made multi-millionaire who still resembled a rumpled grocer. He had taken a white hankie from his pocket and was mopping his brow with it, before turning his attention to me. ‘You, is it?’ he asked, in an unfriendly way.

  I had once penned a not, entirely, flattering piece about him. ‘In the flesh.’

  ‘Still writing for that rag, are you?’ he asked, with a grin.

  ‘A girl’s gotta make a living somehow.’

  He snorted, and the conversation moved on. For a while, we talked about politics and the economics of the European crisis. A ribbon of grey cloud hung above the horizon as the sun dipped low. I tried not to glance too much at Luke, conscious of his quiet confidence and the contours of his handsome face. Nick’s getting married. Nick: dark hair falling over his forehead, that introspective gaze and the shy smile, as if something funny or touching had just occurred to him that he didn’t wish to share.

  I smiled and nodded along with the conversation, sipped from my glass, all the while feeling numb and telling myself there was no reason why this news of Nick should get to me in this way.

  Now, as I sit drinking another Corona, watching the swans glid
ing along the canal, I think of Nick and try to imagine him waiting at the top of the aisle for some nameless, faceless woman. There had been a bond between us once, Nick and me – I have the scar to prove it. Yet we’re strangers now. I have the urge to text him, to tell him that I’m happy for him, though that doesn’t come anywhere close to describing the emotion passing through me.

  Get a grip, I tell myself sternly. Don’t indulge yourself with this maudlin bullshit. I get up from my seat and leave my half-empty beer bottle. Walking briskly back towards the city, I pull my jacket about me, crossing my arms over my chest, as if a cold wind is blowing, even though it’s still warm and, although night has fallen, there’s barely the whisper of a breeze coming off the canal.

  I climb into bed and fall into a sleep that feels like oblivion.

  When I wake to the sound of someone banging on my apartment’s front door, it feels like the middle of the night. I get up and go to open it, my head still swimming with fatigue. Reilly’s familiar bulk stands under the halo of light cast by the bare bulb above his head.

  ‘Reilly? What is it? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I tried calling but your phone is switched off.’

  ‘It’s the middle of the night, for Chrissakes!’

  ‘It’s eight a.m., Katie,’ he says, a wrinkle of concern in his voice. ‘Are you okay? I can’t say you look it.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I reply, embarrassed now, pulling my robe tight around me.

  ‘You didn’t come back to the office yesterday.’

  ‘I was sick.’

  I turn away and let him follow me into the flat, hear him closing the door, before he joins me in the kitchen. I flick on the coffee machine, then rest my head on the counter, feeling the ache that stretches from my temples to the small of my back.

  I can feel him watching me, so I straighten and busy myself with making coffee because, even though I like him, it feels strange to have Reilly in my kitchen. He’s unlike most of the men who have witnessed me making morning coffee in my bathrobe. Thick hair the colour of oatmeal, a reddish tinge to his beard, which fails to hide the deep lines on either side of his mouth, or the amusement that animates his face. Black leather jacket, grey shirt, faded blue jeans – the hack’s uniform: all of it out of place on him, somehow. I like to imagine that when Reilly goes home, he dons a smoking jacket and velvet slippers.