Before the bridge was built, it took an hour to get to Dublin in a car. Now it takes forty minutes.
‘That’s nearly four hours a week,’ said my husband, the mathematician. ‘Think of what someone could do with that extra time.’
I wanted to say ‘build bridges’ but it was early on in the relationship. It was at a time when I thought my safest response to everything he said was a nod, a yes, or a smile.
It was early on in my pregnancy too. I was happy, at last. This was my chance for a normal life. To take back what I’d lost. Marrying Conor would be the best thing I could do. He proposed as soon as he heard I was pregnant. And now that we were committed to one another, Conor wanted me to meet his mother. Nervous wasn’t the word. Mothers and I hadn’t gone well up to now. I spent most of the journey to Ballycall worrying about what would happen if she didn’t like me. I tried to prod Conor for some information.
‘What’s she like?’ I had asked him when he called to finalise the details of when he’d pick me up. I had no car at the time, I didn’t need one. Imanage was a ten-minute walk from my apartment. No bridge required.
Conor had answered like any other man. ‘Smaller than me. Dark hair. I think she has blue eyes.’
But that’s not what I had meant. I wanted to know if I was likely to be licked by a kitten or mauled by a lion.
As it happened, Maggie was somewhere in the middle. A litten. Very nice at first. She congratulated me on the baby and assured me I’d have everything I needed. She admired my clothes and reminisced about her own pregnancy, showing me photos of Conor as a baby as I twiddled with the dessert. My stomach was full to capacity having just finished off his mammy’s version of Sunday lunch – a huge plate covered with beef, gravy, roasters and veg. Some people never forget the famine.
Everything was going well. Conor was relaxed and I had managed to relax too. It was only when she asked me about my own mother that I saw a shift in her attitude.
‘I don’t talk to my mother,’ I said.
The room fell silent. Maggie stared at me like I’d just insulted her cooking, before getting up from the table and taking some empty plates to the sink. Conor had quickly changed the subject.
Nod. Yes. Smile. I should have said she was dead.
* * *
After bathing and dressing Shay, I lie him down in the crib. The nurse is due to call at eleven so we both have to look shiny and happy. No complaints. No questions. In and out with her and hopefully that will be the end of it.
After showering, I dress in my finest ‘coping well with motherhood’ clothes. A pair of black jeans and a freshly ironed pink shirt. Happy with my costume, I practice my smile in the mirror. Laura, you look the part.
Out on the landing the sound of gravel crunching gets my attention. Is that a car? I rush to the window at the front of the house and pray the nurse isn’t here already, I haven’t had a cup of coffee yet.
A car approaches but it’s not the nurse. My heart stops. Everything blurs, but I can still make out the police vehicle moving up the driveway.
‘Fuck.’ I rush into the bedroom, scrabbling for the phone with trembling hands.
‘Conor. Quick.’ I can barely breathe.
‘What is it? What’s wrong, Laura?’ His voice is panicked.
‘Come home, quick.’ My words are barely audible between gasping breaths.
‘Is Shay okay? Did something happen to Shay?’
‘The police are here.’
With the phone still in my hand, I return to the window and see one of the two investigators assigned from Dublin to the Vicky Murphy case getting out of the car with Detective Fintan Ryan. Where are they going? Why are they walking past the door?
Pat. They must be walking down the side of the house to Pat’s place. Back in the bedroom I wait for them to appear on the pathway leading to the forest. My heart is thumping, my phone gripped tightly in my hand. Where are they?
Then I see them, walking away from our house and down towards the forest. I close my eyes and urge my body to relax. They’re not here for Conor. Not this time anyway.