Darkhouse

‘’Allo?’ she said. She listened, confused.

‘No, Martha. He came in about eleven-thirty on his own. Unless … I don’t know. Let me go check.’ She handed the phone to Joe.

‘Hi,’ said Joe. He let her talk. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m sure there’s—’ Anna walked back into the room, shaking her head. Shaun bounded in after her, frowning.

‘What?’ he asked, looking at both his parents. ‘What?’

‘She’s not here, Martha,’ said Joe. ‘What time did you leave her?’ he asked Shaun.

‘About eleven-thirty, quarter of twelve,’ said Shaun. They all turned to the clock. It was four-thirty a.m.

‘Oh my God,’ said Shaun, his eyes wide.

‘What would you like us to do? Is there anyone we can call?’ said Joe into the phone. ‘OK,’ he said, then put it down. ‘Martha’s gonna call some of the girls from school.’

‘But she wasn’t with any of the girls from school,’ said Shaun.

‘It’ll be OK,’ said Joe. ‘She could have met one of them on the way home. Why didn’t you walk her home?’ He hesitated. ‘Did you have an argument?’

When Shaun saw the concern in his father’s eyes, he had to look away. There was no way he could tell him what happened tonight. Katie would kill him.

‘No, we didn’t,’ he said. He looked like he was about to cry. ‘She just wanted to walk home on her own.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Joe. ‘She’ll show up.’

For the past two hours, Frank Deegan had been staring at the ceiling. He had nodded off on the couch earlier, but a phone call had jerked him too wide awake to handle his regular bed time. It had been a hang-up, to make matters worse. He turned to look at Nora, asleep by his side. Raising himself up on one elbow, he lumbered out of bed, pausing to sit on the edge before standing. He tightened his navy pyjama pants and headed for the kitchen. He stopped at the counter, his short fingers hovering over a shiny foil bag of coffee grounds. Nora had to be different, a coffee addict in a generation of tea drinkers. She would complain when she visited friends’ houses that they’d use the same instant coffee that they offered her a year beforehand, its granules in damp clumps against the side of the jar. Only the teabags were replaced regularly in most Mountcannon homes.

‘Vile,’ she would say to Frank, afterwards. ‘Vile.’

He looked up at the clock, heard the rumblings of his ulcer and ignored the call of caffeine. Instead, he put a small saucepan of milk on the stove and sat down at the table with the newspaper. He reached for his reading glasses with their thick magnifying lenses. He’d bought them from a stand in the pharmacy. Nora loved to poke fun at him and his super-sized eyes. He reminded her of something she could never remember. Sometimes he would look up from his book or paper just to make her laugh.

As he settled back into the chair, the phone rang.

‘Hello,’ he said as if it was ten o’clock in the morning.

‘Frank, it’s Martha Lawson. Katie didn’t come home last night.’

‘You mean the night before last?’ asked Frank.

‘No, well, tonight, I mean. She should have been home at midnight.’

‘It’s five a.m., Martha, the night is still young for a teenager. Especially at the weekend.’ He rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Was she in one of the discos in town?’

‘No,’ said Martha. ‘She’s not allowed. She was in the village with Shaun. She wanted to walk home on her own for some reason and now she hasn’t shown up. Oh, hold on, Frank. There’s someone at the door.’

‘Well, there she is now,’ he said, rolling his eyes.

She came back on the line, her voice shaking.

‘It was just the Lucchesis,’ she said.

‘Oh, OK. Well, I’ll come over to you, so,’ said Frank. ‘Sure I’ll probably pass Katie by on the drive.’

‘Thanks, Frank. I appreciate it.’

Frank took the milk from the stove and reached for the Colombian roast.

Martha Lawson lived with her daughter in a small white bungalow with a large garden – a suburban home on a country road, a ten-minute walk from the harbour, a thirty-minute walk from the Lucchesis. Inside, the house was a blend of different woods, carpets and fabrics: a mahogany dresser with varnished pine coffee table, floral carpet with Aztec print drapes. Every surface was spotless.

Frank sat to Martha’s left on a brown sofa, his body turned towards her. She had a plain face, but most of the features that made Katie beautiful. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her eyelashes wet from tears.

‘I’m sure Katie is fine,’ said Frank. ‘I don’t know what she’s up to, to be honest, but whatever it is, I’m sure she’ll have a good explanation when she walks through that door.’

‘No, Frank, I really don’t think so. Please. I know Katie. It’s not like her at all. God knows, she could be dead in a ditch somewhere. You hear about these hit-and-runs …’

‘Don’t be worrying about things like that,’ said Frank gently.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is just, I’ve never …’ she trailed off.

‘It’s OK,’ said Frank, patting her hand.

‘Shaun called here for Katie at eight,’ she said. ‘She didn’t stick her head in to say goodbye, she just hopped out the hall door to him.’ She thought about this for a while. ‘I didn’t even say goodbye to her,’ she cried.

‘We don’t know anything’s happened to her,’ said Joe, who had been standing at the fireplace opposite. ‘And if we all got up to say goodbye to our kids every time they went out the door, we’d be up and down all day.’

Martha smiled, wiping her nose with a pink tissue.

‘Shaun said they had been hanging around the harbour, but she wanted to walk home on her own or something, so he let her.’ She glanced over at Anna and Joe. ‘She was supposed to be home at midnight.’

‘Where is Shaun?’ asked Frank, frowning.

‘He wanted to stay at home,’ said Joe. ‘And wait by the home phone. He figures she could call him on that because he doesn’t get a great signal on his cell.’

Shaun stared at his bedroom wall. His heart was thumping. He moved around, trying different positions to get a signal on his mobile, but he knew nothing would work. He used the portable phone to dial his message minder. There were no new messages. He tried his private line in the bedroom. It rang. He hung up. He checked the answer phone. There were no messages. He picked it up, pushed buttons, turned it over, put it down again. Still no messages.

There was a knock on the door. Martha looked around at everyone. They all stood up at the same time, but left her to answer it. Low muttering came from the hallway. Richie Bates, in his pristine navy uniform, bent his head to get through the door and nodded when he saw Joe and Anna. He was pale, but alert. His hair was still damp from the shower. He turned to Frank.

‘Howiya, Frank,’ he said sombrely, nodding again.

Martha walked in behind him, disappointed and exhausted.

‘Will you have a cup of tea, Richie?’ she said.

‘I’ll get it,’ he said.

‘You will not,’ she said. ‘Sit down there.’

She brought him out a plate of plain biscuits and tea in a china cup that looked lost in his big hands.