The Gifts Read online

  ‘He seems shifty,’ she had said.

  ‘Listen,’ Jim was trying to sound reasonable, ‘he knows the road well, and he knows the safari routes out there like the back of his hand. By all means, look for someone else, but you won’t find anyone who can sniff out the big game like Mack, believe me.’

  She had gone along with it. So, when they had woken on the last day of their three-day safari to find their driver missing, it had been, in a way, her fault.

  It was mid-morning by the time the white van came skidding up the track, coughing up dust around it as it drew to an unsteady halt. She had known, as soon as Mackenzie stepped out, that he was drunk. The angle of his cap, the unsteady weave of his gait as he came towards them, the way he heaved in his breath as if trying to push down on the rising bile inside him.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Ken had said. ‘He’s pissed.’

  And he was. Astonishingly and outstandingly drunk. He had staggered towards them, tried to string a few words together but they had emerged as an incoherent mash-up of an excuse. Helen, a witness to his inebriation, had blown up. Ken had lost all his patience, and Sally had felt rage ripping through her as if she wanted to kill someone. The row that ensued was awful. It was like the driver’s drunkenness had put a match to a highly flammable atmosphere, one that had been smouldering for days, setting it ablaze.

  In the searing heat of the midday sun, as Sally bends to begin folding away the tents, she feels suffused with a sense of shame. She should never have let it get so far. The words she had spoken, the things she had said – in front of her own children, in front of Helen’s daughter – were unforgivable.

  She would have to patch things up with Helen, although time was not on her side. They would drive back to Nairobi tonight – if they could find a driver – and the next day, Helen and Katie would board their flight for home. And then what would happen?

  She packs away the tents, stacks the neat bundles alongside their bags, and looks around for any stray belongings. There is still no sign of the others.

  Shouts erupt from the trees down by the river – yelps of joy and delight, alongside sounds of taunting. Helen’s words come back at her – You’ll keep an eye on Katie, won’t you? She feels a small stab of guilt. The shouts draw her on, as does the need to get out of the sun’s glare.

  Even here, under the shade of the acacias, it’s still hot as hell. Sweat beads on her brow and she wipes it away with the back of her forearm, looks down into the gloom, her eyes adjusting to the sudden plunging loss of sunlight. A great whoop of delight catches her off guard – shrieked out through the shadows, it causes her to step back involuntarily – followed by a deep splash. She looks down into the water, sees it ripple and rock in the half-light, before Luke’s blond head emerges, then his naked torso. His skin glistens, and when she calls to him, for just an instant she sees unabashed glee on his face before the mask comes down, extinguishing the glittering light of his joy.

  ‘What?’ he asks sullenly.

  ‘I told you not to go into the river,’ she says.

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘Luke, I did. It’s not safe.’

  ‘You said to be careful, and we are. But you never said not to go in.’

  She hesitates – a fatal mistake. He lowers himself back into the water, keeping his eyes locked on her, challenging her.

  ‘Where’s Nicky?’ she asks.

  ‘There.’ She follows the direction of his outstretched arm, sees the dark hair of her younger son a little way down. He is crouched among the shallows, and there are two girls with him, but neither is Katie.

  ‘Hello,’ she says tentatively, feeling her way carefully down to the bank. ‘I see you’ve made new friends, Nicky.’

  The boy doesn’t look up, just stays there, hugging his knees to his chest and staring into the water, a strange little smile on his face.

  ‘Hello, lady!’ the girl next to him shouts up.

  Sally laughs at the salutation, and turns to the girl – white blonde hair in bunches, two big square front teeth shining in their newness, gaps on either side where the adult teeth are yet but stubs. A rabbitty face busy with freckles, rounded cheeks. Her smile is open and warm but there is something about her that Sally is unsure of. Gormless. That is the word she alights on. Something in the girl’s eye that is dull and slow. ‘Not the full shilling,’ as her father might have said.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asks brightly.

  ‘Cora.’

  ‘Hello, Cora.’

  ‘And she’s Amy.’

  A jerked thumb indicates the presence of a smaller girl hovering behind her. A tatty dress tucked into knickers, the same white blond hair as her sister, but her eyes are sharper, the gaze more discerning. Sally guesses this child is four or five.

  ‘Are you allowed to play here by the river?’ she asks, wondering about the younger child, wary somehow of leaving her in the care of the older girl.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Pops says it’s fine.’

  Sally glances behind the girl, up past the bank of trees on the other side of the river. There is a clearing there, the vague outline of some kind of house. Over the past few nights, they have seen the glow of a campfire through the trees, smoke rising into the night. When they asked him about it, Mackenzie had snorted dismissively. ‘Gypsies.’

  Sally takes in these girls with their washed-out dresses, dirty faces and feet, and feels a jab of uncertainty.

  ‘Where’s Katie?’ she asks.

  ‘Here I am.’

  The voice, directly behind her, causes Sally to jump. She swings around, sees the girl sitting still in the shadows, sandalled feet together, hands clasped around her knees, and those big round eyes, solemn and staring up at her through the gloom.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sally asks, unreasonably sharp, but she is still recovering from the fright.

  ‘Nothing,’ Katie says, her eyes fixed on Sally.

  ‘Well, it’s time to go back to camp now,’ she says firmly.

  ‘Is Dad back yet?’ Luke asks.

  ‘No. But he will be soon.’

  ‘Ten more minutes.’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Aw, please, Mum,’ he says, a plaintive whine in his voice. It strikes Sally forcefully that, for the first time in days, he has addressed her as ‘Mum’. Something inside her falters.

  ‘All right, then.’

  What’s the point in arguing anyway? Best to leave them here playing, where they’re happily entertaining themselves, than have them under her feet, whining and moaning and questioning her constantly about when the others will return.

  She scrambles up the bank, stops to take one look back at them – Luke gliding through the water, Nicky turned to the girl with the buck teeth, whispering something to her, Katie sitting and gazing down at them, still and impassive. Sally watches them for no more than a minute, before turning away. And as she steps back out into the blinding heat, feeling the dryness of the grass brushing her ankles, she has no idea that this is the last time she will see them as innocent children, the last time she will feel such uncompromising love. She doesn’t know it yet, but in less than an hour, her whole life will have changed.

  Everything is packed and ready now, but still the others have not returned. Sally lies down again on the tarpaulin, resting on her front, and tries to read her book. But the words blur on the page, sweat running into her eyes; soon she gives up, rolls onto her back and closes her eyes.

  She feels her body swamped in heat, imagines herself as a tiny insect trapped beneath the searing gaze of the African sun. Three years they have been here, and now that Ken is coming to the end of his contract, a decision must be made. Do they return to Ireland or will he push to extend his contract for another year? The boys are growing up and there is their education to consider. There is also Sally’s own work in Kianda, and the growing pull it has on her life. She thinks of the house back in Ireland, remote in the Wicklow hills, each room crowded with inherited antiques, and tries to
imagine going back there, picking up where she had left off. Africa has changed her. She is not the same person as the woman who kept house in those rooms. A door has been opened inside her and she fears returning to Ireland will mean slamming it shut.

  Tiredness pulls at her limbs, dragging her towards sleep. She should go and fetch the children. Five more minutes, and she’ll get up and go to the river.

  A decision needs to be made – Ken will begin to push her on it soon. The truth is, she had hoped to know by now, had thought that somehow it would grow clear to her what she should do. But her thoughts are so muddy and opaque. And there is another decision that pulls at her conscience – an ultimatum delivered before they left for the Masai Mara, an ultimatum from someone else entirely.

  ‘I have to know,’ the man had said. ‘I can’t hang on here waiting for you for ever.’

  The three days away on safari were supposed to be spent in thinking it over. But somehow, whenever she has a quiet moment to herself, the last thing she wants to do is think about it.

  Sleep comes to her then, swooping down and taking her; under the burning sun, she lets it all go – the argument this morning, her decaying friendship, the ultimatum delivered, the indecision and dread that she has been dogged by lately – all of it obliterated by the blanketing darkness of sleep.

  A scream.

  The shrill note of terror.

  It comes to her through her dream. Instantly, she opens her eyes, squints under the glare of the sun, feels the tightness of sunburn across her forehead and cheeks.

  Another scream. She pulls herself up, head heavy and swimming with sleep. She looks about her, confused, the searing knot of a headache announcing itself at the back of her eyes.

  Silence surrounds her. Only the gentle hissing of a breeze through the grass, the click and hum of insects. Birds in the trees. And yet the absence of any other sound strikes a chord of urgency within her. She cannot hear the children now but, remembering the scream, her heart gives a sudden lurch of fright. She knows it wasn’t imagined.

  She stumbles to her feet, scans the empty field, and turns towards the river. She moves swiftly, the ground hard and unforgiving beneath the soles of her feet, propelled by a fear that has come alive inside her.

  The silence seems to deepen, to gather density as the dark clutch of trees looms in front of her.

  A voice whispers in her head.

  The boys, it says.

  And then it starts, the stream of frightening possibilities – a fall, a broken limb, a gashed head, a snake-bite – all of it running through her as she pounds a ragged path through the bush. The silence seems to roar around her now, and a warning voice sounds in her head, a voice that tells her to hold steady, to steel herself for whatever is to come.

  Another scream – this time from the opposite bank – stops her in her tracks.

  And it comes to Sally then, with a striking clarity, an insight so clear that she knows it to be true.

  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 ti
ghten.

  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.