As we walked in, she let go of my hand.
Catlin was bright with anger as we arrived, the others talking quietly among themselves. Clearing up. Fiachra and Cathal drained the cans before they binned them. Charley washed the glasses, Layla swept. They’re all so good, I thought. Even when they’re drunk, they tidy up. The grumpy man behind the bar was gone.
‘I rang and rang,’ Catlin yelled at me, performing her rage for an audience of everyone in the pub but mainly Lon. ‘Mamó is looking for you on the road. I thought you were missing, like those girls.’
I met her eyes.
Helen Groarke.
Amanda Shale.
Nora Ginn.
Bridget Hora.
Ghosts passed between us. And I could sense her almost move to hug me, but Lon put his arms tight around her. He met my eyes and smiled behind her back. I felt a hint of something dark in him. A little scare that ran right up my spine.
Her name was Helen.
‘You were wrong to scare your sister like that, Madeline,’ Lon scolded.
Because, apparently, he is my dad.
‘I’m sorry, Lon?’ I said, doing my best to pronounce his name the same way Mamó did.
I see you, Lon, I thought. For what you are.
I looked over at Oona. She was helping Charley tidy up the cans into a bin bag.
‘Where were you?’ Catlin asked.
I didn’t say. I think that I was waiting for Oona to say something. She was with me. It wasn’t all her fault.
That kind of thing.
And then a beep.
Our lift was waiting.
Mamó’s little red car carved our way home through the forest. The beams of light the only bright thing in the deep and dark. I played what had happened over and over in my brain. What it meant, and all that it could mean. And all it didn’t.
‘Aren’t you going to ask her where she was?’ Catlin spluttered.
‘No. I’m not her keeper,’ Mamó told her.
Our eyes met in the mirror, grey and green.
She wants to be.
We parted ways, and Catlin stalked in silence to her bedroom. I knew she felt betrayed.
And I did too.
By my own stupid feelings.
When we left, Oona didn’t look at me.
I don’t like this. This feeling in my gut like she might want me, but she might not want me. The lurch of that.
If I told Catlin about Oona, she’d forgive me. It would be bigger than the grudge she holds. I know this, but the silence stretches longer.
A cavern yawning wide between us both.
A crush seems like such a reductive word, but it is one. What I have.
And I am crushed.
Why would she ignore me like that? I feel my eyes well up. A tear drips on the hard pine attic floor.
I think of Mamó, her jars and bottles. The people piling in to ask for help. I wish there were a treatment for this sort of thing. A lure, so I could bring Oona near to me and keep her close. I want her head to nestle in the crook of my arm. I want her on my stomach, on my hips. I want her skin on mine. I want to fall asleep beside her, wake up smiling. I want, I want, I want.
I’m sick of wanting things I’ll never have. I’m sick of almost everything about me. I wish I were a ghost and not a girl. Then looking never acting would be fine. I spend so much time stopping my arms from reaching for the things I want and know I’ll never get.
I wish that I were good enough for Oona.
I wish that I were better than I am.
Catlin wraps her arms around my back. She presses her face between my shoulder blades.
‘It’s OK, Mad,’ she says. ‘It’s just you scared me. I amn’t used to being the sensible one.’
She smiles at me. I smile a little back.
‘You look so sad.’ She passes me a clean duster. It’s yellow and it’s soft. I wipe my face.
And I could tell her now, if I wanted to.
If I was feeling brave.
But I can’t, not yet. It’s like a stone I’m holding in my mouth and I want to spit it out but if I did it wouldn’t be my stone.
And so I say, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine, Mad, really,’ she says. ‘It’s just this place. It gives me the creeps. All this murder underneath the surface. The mountain where you were last night is where they found a lot of them, you know.’
I do know. But last night I didn’t think. My heart too full.
‘I dream about the girls sometimes,’ she tells me. ‘I’ve been reading about them, lighting candles, saying little prayers. It’s not that I’m being morbid. It’s just …’
She sits down on the floor beside me. Her fingers scratch a stubborn floorboard stain.
‘It’s the history of this place, I mean. It’s fascinating. But it’s also real. The fox we found. Those girls – they have stories, but they’re not a story. And I’ve been acting almost like they are, and then last night you were gone. And part of me knows that you were off with Oona, for whatever reason …’
She looks at me pointedly. I stare at my toes.
‘… and you being gone made everything feel real. And I was there with Lon – Laurent, I mean – but I didn’t want him near me. I thought of the fox. The body like that. I just wanted to run outside and find you and make everything OK. Whatever it was …’
I tell her that I get it and I say I’m sorry and I mean it this time. It must have been weird for Catlin, waiting for me. She’s normally the one who has adventures. The one who’s fun enough for both of us. But we won’t be living in each other’s pockets forever. We’ll go to places and we’ll build our lives. And that’s what I want, but I am worried about it too, that when it happens I will be bereft, missing the part of me that has friends. But I’m realising that’s not true.
‘Maybe that’s why I don’t like Lon,’ I tell her. ‘Because he’s taking you away. I mean, I see you all the time, but not as much.’
‘Laurent thinks that too,’ she says, and smiles at me.
Of course he does. The sly prick.
‘Did you tell him that you loved him?’ I ask.
‘I tried to,’ she says. Her hands gesture in the air, reaching for something I can’t see. ‘But the words just wouldn’t come. I looked at him and I thought iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou but I didn’t want to say it too soon, or have him see me as needy or anything.’ She looks towards the wall, twisting the red and yellow duster in her hands, wringing it as though it were heavy with fluid. ‘I want to make it easy for him to love me, Mad.’
‘It is easy to love you,’ I tell her. ‘You don’t have to say it to feel it. Maybe wait a while. Until he says it, or until there’s a perfect time. Maybe at the party, with other people there, it was too much pressure.’
She seems to take that on-board.
‘Catlin?’ I venture. ‘You know Lon’s ex? Helen.’
‘What?’ Her voice is sharp. ‘Where did you hear that name?’
‘Just at the pub,’ I say. ‘And … do you not think it’s a bit weird that she had the same name as the dead girl?’
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘It’s not an unusual name, I mean. Helen.’
‘Yes, but Ballyfrann is tiny.’
‘It is,’ she says.
I feel my guts tangle and stiffen, heavy like wrought iron.
‘Was the Helen his Helen, Catlin?’ I ask.
She looks at me. ‘How do you compete with someone who isn’t there any more?’ she asks. ‘I mean …’ She sounds wistful, sad, but I’m jarred into horror, and my voice is sharp.