A Place Called Here

‘Many times?’ I asked in surprise.

She smiled. ‘Well, I had the great privilege of being loved by many people. The more people who love you, the more people you have out there to lose memories. Don’t make that face, Sandy. It’s not as desperate as it sounds. People don’t intend to lose memories. Although there are always some things that we would rather forget.’ She winked. ‘It could be that the real sound of my laughter has been replaced by a new memory, or that, when a few months after I went missing my scent left my bedroom and my clothes, the scent they tried so hard to remember was altered. I’m sure the image I have of my own mother’s face is very different from how she actually looked but, forty years on and no reminder, how is my mind to know, exactly? You can’t hold on to all things for ever, no matter how hard you grip them.’

I thought of the day I’d hear the sound of my own laughter drifting overhead, and I knew it would only happen once because there was only one person who knew the true sound of my laughter and cries.

‘All the same,’ Helena looked up to the now bright sky with tears in her eyes, ‘you do sometimes feel like catching them and throwing them back to where they came from. Our memories are the only contact we have. We can hug, kiss, laugh and cry with them over and over again in our minds. They’re very precious things to have.’

Chuckles, hisses, snorts and giggles filtered through the air, floating by our ears on the wind, the light breeze carrying the faint scents like the forgotten smell of a childhood home; a kitchen after a day’s baking. There’s a mother’s forgotten smell of her baby, now grown up: baby powder, Sudocrem, candy-smelling skin. There are older, musty smells of favourite grandparents: lavender for Grandma, cigar, cigarette and pipe smoke for Granddad. There are the smells of lost lovers: sweet perfumes and aftershaves, the scent of sleepy morning lie-ins or simply the unexplainable individual scent left behind in a room. Personal smells as precious as the people themselves. All the aromas that had gone missing in people’s lives had ended up here. I couldn’t help but close my eyes and breathe in those scents and laugh along with the sounds.

Joan stirred in her sleeping bag and I snapped out of my trance. My heart began to race in anticipation of finally seeing beyond the woods.

‘Good morning, Joan,’ Helena sang so loudly she succeeded in waking Bernard too. He awoke with a start, raising his head and revealing his spaghetti strips hanging to the wrong side. He looked around sleepily, his hand feeling for his glasses.

‘Good morning, Bernard,’ Helena said so loudly she succeeded in waking both Marcus and Derek.

I stifled a laugh.

‘Here you go, a nice hot drop of coffee to wake you up.’ She thrust steaming mugs in their faces.

They looked at her sleepily in confusion. As soon as they’d taken their first sip of coffee Helena threw off her blanket and rose to her feet.

‘Well, that’s enough hanging around now. Let’s go, everybody.’ She started folding her blanket neatly and packing away the utensils.

‘Why are you talking so loudly and what’s the rush?’ Joan held her messy bed head and whispered as though she was suffering a hangover.

‘It’s a brand-new day so let’s drink up and we’ll head back as soon as you’re all done.’

‘Why?’ Joan asked, sipping quickly.

‘What about breakfast?’ Bernard moaned like a child.

‘We’ll have that when we get back.’ Helena grabbed his mug from him, threw the remainder of the coffee over her shoulder and packed the mug in a bag. I had to look away out of fear of laughing.

‘What’s the rush?’ Marcus asked. ‘Is everything OK?’ He watched her intensely, still unsure of my presence.

‘Everything’s fine, Marcus.’ She placed a hand on his shoulder caringly. ‘Sandy just has some work to do.’ She smiled at me.

I did?

‘Oh, how lovely. Are you staging a play? It’s been such a long time since we’ve done a play,’ Joan said excitedly.

‘I do hope you give us notice of the auditions well in advance because we’ll need time to prepare. It’s been a while,’ Bernard said worriedly.

‘Don’t worry,’ Helena jumped in, ‘she will.’

My mouth dropped open but Helena held a hand up to stop me from protesting.

‘Have you ever thought of doing a musical?’ Derek asked, packing away his guitar. ‘There would be huge interest in taking part in a musical.’

‘That’s a very strong possibility.’ Helena spoke as though dismissing a child.

‘Will they be group auditions?’ Bernard asked, a little panicked.

‘No, no,’ Helena smiled, and I finally knew what she was up to. ‘I think Sandy will want to spend a little time with everyone alone. Well,’ she lifted Bernard’s blanket from off his shoulders and began folding it while he watched open-mouthed, ‘let’s get ourselves ready so we can show Sandy around. She’ll need to find a good venue for the show.’

How quickly Bernard and Joan got ready.

‘By the way, I meant to ask you,’ Helena whispered, ‘were you working when you arrived here?’

‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘Were you on a job or following the trail of somebody at the time you arrived here? It’s such an important question but I forgot to ask it.’

‘Yes and no,’ I replied. ‘I was jogging by the Shannon Estuary when I found myself here but my reason for being in Limerick was work-related. I had just taken on a new case five days beforehand.’ I thought back to the phone call that I’d received from Jack Ruttle late one night.

‘The reason I ask is because I wonder what it was about that person out of all the missing people you’ve searched for, that brought you here. Had you a strong link to him?’

I shook my head but knew I wasn’t quite telling the truth. The late-night phone calls with Jack Ruttle had been very different from all my other cases. They were phone calls I enjoyed receiving, he was someone I could talk with about other things besides business. The more I spoke to the likeable Jack, the harder I worked trying to find his brother. There was only one other person in my life who could allow me to feel similarly.

‘What was the missing person’s name?’

‘Donal Ruttle,’ I said, remembering the playful blue eyes from the photograph.

Helena thought about it. ‘Well, we might as well start now. Anyone here know a Donal Ruttle?’ She looked around.

17 (#ulink_db9d9546-7070-5592-9290-2d584f3158da)

Jack paced alongside the red Ford Fiesta, feeling a mixture of impatience, frustration and anxiety. Occasionally he would stop, stare in the passenger window and will the door to open so he could grab the file and hungrily scoff the information on the pages. Then he’d calm down and pace again. He looked around, not wanting to venture far from the car in case Sandy Shortt returned and drove off without him.

He couldn’t believe Sandy Shortt was the woman from the petrol station. They had passed by each other as though they were strangers but just as when he’d been speaking over the phone, he had felt something when he saw her, a bond that linked them. At the time he had thought it was because they were the only two in the place so early in the morning, but now he knew that connection was more. And now, here again, he had come across her in a hidden place. Something was drawing him to her. What he’d give to go back to that moment so he could talk to her about Donal. So she had come to Glin after all. He knew she wouldn’t have let him down, and she had driven through the night just as she’d promised. Finding her car in this desolate spot only raised more questions than he already had. If she was in Glin, where had she been on Sunday when they were due to meet?