The mother watched me leave. As I got back into the car, I saw her scooping up the fire truck under one arm and the kid under the other and taking them both inside.
I sat in the car for a long time, looking out at the road and feeling that I would be able to deal with this a lot better if only my hangover would go away. At last Peter's door opened, and I heard voices: someone was walking Cassie down the drive. I whipped my head around and pretended to be staring in the opposite direction, deep in thought, until I heard the door close.
"Nothing new," Cassie said, leaning in at the car window. "Peter didn't mention being scared of anyone, or getting hassle from anyone. Smart kid, knew better than to go anywhere with a stranger; a little overconfident, though, which could have got him into trouble. They don't have any suspicions of anybody, except they wondered if it could be the same person who killed Katy. They were sort of upset about that."
"Aren't we all," I said.
"They seem like they're doing OK." I hadn't been able to bring myself to ask this, but I did want, rather badly, to know. "The father wasn't happy about having to go over it all again, but the mother was lovely. Peter's sister Tara still lives at home; she was asking after you."
"Me?" I said, feeling an irrational little skip of panic in my stomach.
"She wanted to know if I had any idea how you were doing. I told her the cops had lost track of you, but as far as we knew you were fine." Cassie gave me a sly grin. "I think she might have sort of fancied you, back then."
Tara: a year or two younger than us, sharp elbows and sharp eyes, the kind of kid who was always ferreting out something to tell her mother. Thank God I hadn't gone in there. "Maybe I should go talk to her after all," I said. "Is she good-looking?"
"Just your type: a fine strapping girl with good child-bearing hips. She's a traffic warden."
"Of course she is," I said. I was starting to feel better. "I'll get her to wear her uniform on our first date."
"Way too much information. OK: Alicia Rowan." Cassie straightened up and checked her notebook for the house number. "Want to come?"
It took me a moment to be sure. But we hadn't spent much time at Jamie's house, as far as I remembered. When we were indoors, it was mostly at Peter's-his home was cheerfully noisy, full of brothers and sisters and pets, and his mother baked ginger biscuits, and his parents had bought a TV on installments and we were allowed to watch cartoons. "Sure," I said. "Why not?"
Alicia Rowan answered the door. She was still beautiful, in a faded, nostalgic way-delicate bones, hollow cheeks, straggling blond hair and huge, haunted blue eyes-like some forgotten film star whose looks have only gained pathos over time. I saw the small, worn spark of hope and fear light in her eyes when Cassie introduced us, then fade at Katy Devlin's name.
"Yes," she said, "yes, of course, that poor little girl… Do they-do you think it had something to do…? Please, come in."
As soon as we got inside the house I knew this had been a bad idea. It was the smell of it-a wistful blend of sandalwood and camomile that went straight for my subconscious, setting memories flickering like fish in murky water. Weird bread with bits in it for tea; a painting of a naked woman, on the landing, that made us elbow and snicker. Hiding in a wardrobe, arms round my knees and flimsy cotton skirts drifting like smoke against my face, "Forty-nine, fifty!" somewhere in the hall.
She brought us into the sitting room (handwoven throws over the sofa, a smiling Buddha in smoky jade on the coffee table: I wondered what 1980s Knocknaree had made of Alicia Rowan) and Cassie did the preliminary spiel. There was-of course; I don't know how I had failed to expect this-a whacking great framed photo of Jamie on the mantelpiece, Jamie sitting on the estate wall squinting into sunlight and laughing, the wood rising all black and green behind her. On either side of it were little framed snapshots and one of them had three figures, elbows hooked around one another's necks, heads tilted together in paper crowns, some Christmas or birthday… I should have grown a beard or something, I thought wildly, looking away, Cassie should have given me time to-
"In our file," Cassie said, "the initial report says you called the police saying that your daughter and her friends had run away. Is there any particular reason why you assumed they'd run away, rather than, say, getting lost or having an accident?"
"Well, yes. You see…Oh, God." Alicia Rowan ran her hands through her hair-long, boneless-looking hands. "I was going to send Jamie to boarding school, and she didn't want to go. It makes me sound so horribly selfish… I suppose I was. But I truly did have my reasons."
"Ms. Rowan," Cassie said gently, "we're not here to judge you."
"Oh, no, I know, I know you're not. But one judges oneself, doesn't one? And you'd really…oh, you'd have to know the whole story to understand."
"We'd be glad to hear the whole story. Anything you can tell us might help."
Alicia nodded, without much hope; she must have heard those words so many times, over the years. "Yes. Yes, I see that."
She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, eyes closed, over a count of ten. "Well…" she said. "I was only seventeen when I had Jamie, you see. Her father was a friend of my parents', and very much married, but I was desperately in love with him. And it all felt very sophisticated and daring, having an affair-hotel rooms, you know, and cover stories-and I didn't believe in marriage anyway. I thought it was an outdated form of oppression."
Her father. He was in the file-George O'Donovan, a Dublin solicitor-but thirty-odd years later Alicia was still shielding him. "But then you discovered you were pregnant," Cassie said.
"Yes. He was horrified, and my parents found out the whole story and they were horrified. They all said I must give the baby up for adoption, but I wouldn't. I put my foot down. I said I would keep the baby and raise her all by myself. I thought of it as a bit of a blow for women's rights, I think: a rebellion against the patriarchy. I was very young."
She had been lucky. In Ireland in 1972, women were given life sentences in asylums or convents for far less. "That was a brave thing to do," Cassie said.
"Oh, thank you, Detective. Do you know, I think I was quite a brave person, back then. But I wonder if it was the right decision. I used to think-if I had given Jamie up for adoption, you see…" Her voice trailed off.
"Did they come round in the end?" Cassie asked. "Your family and Jamie's father?"
Alicia sighed. "Well, no. Not really. In the end they said I could keep the baby, as long as we both stayed well out of all their lives. I had disgraced the family, you see; and, of course, Jamie's father didn't want his wife to find out." There was no anger in her voice, nothing but a simple, sad puzzlement. "My parents bought me this house-nice and far away; I'm from Dublin originally, from Howth-and gave me a bit of money now and then. I sent Jamie's father letters to tell him how she was getting on, and photographs. I was positive that sooner or later he would come round and want to start seeing her. Maybe he would have. I don't know."
"And when did you decide she should go to boarding school?"
Alicia wrapped her fingers in her hair. "I…oh, dear. I don't like thinking about this."
We waited.
"I had just turned thirty, you see," she said eventually. "And I realized I didn't like what I had become. I was waiting tables in a café in town while Jamie was at school, but it really wasn't worth it, with the bus fares, and I had no education so I couldn't get any other job… I realized I didn't want to spend the rest of my life like that. I wanted something better, for me and for Jamie. I…oh, in many ways I was still a child myself. I'd never had a chance to grow up. And I wanted to."