The different flowers on the girls’ chests represented the months of the year, according to the journal. The girls in Duet, portrayed limbless, who sat facing each other kissing, arms and legs plaited and briered to form a girdle of thorns around their waists, were friends of Gemma’s. Jackie Hay and Lisa Shine. They’d disappeared while walking their Labrador.
You may guess how the paintings affected me. Viewing them in a public gallery would be one thing, but when you’re condemned to be in one of them, well … I had seen how he had used his scalpels on Gemma while she was still alive, how he would use them on me. I had seen how I would be represented in death.
I’d come to understand my role in this. My hand would lie next to the others. It would be labelled and that label would carry my name and the name of a flower he would carve in my chest.
I was to be December.
‘Hello, Lucille.’
Picasso was back.
RED DOCK
The time had come to deal with the Donavans, and to do that I needed to find Lucille. I no longer saw any point in trying to understand why she hadn’t gone straight to the law when Gemma was killed. To me, she hadn’t gone, she’d stayed in her cottage, and that was that. I will say this: kids ran away from orphanages in Ireland for decades. They went to the law for help, weren’t believed and the law brought them back. Lucille would know that. If she saw the laptop had gone from her car and didn’t trust the law, why go to them if the evidence had been nicked? From her viewpoint, she’d get her name and picture in the paper; she’d have to explain Clonkeelin. Picasso would see it. Would Lucille want that bastard trying to track her down? Leading him to those she thought were her family? Complicated. Who knows what’s in a young girl’s mind?
I was parked in a lane a quarter of a mile away looking down at her cottage through a pair of binoculars. There was no sign of her. But her car was in the drive and the bedroom curtains were still closed. She had to be in there. An hour later there was still no sign. There was an agricultural show on in the village. Maybe she’d gone to it, walked in. In her state of mind, I couldn’t see her going to it, but it wouldn’t take long to have a look.
Not the first show I’d ever been to. I won’t describe it. I’m sure you know what a field with a load of spruced-up farm animals looks like. Brother Conor was there, talking to a guy with a bull, a dopey rosette in its ear. Anne was showing a mare in what the programme I had to buy to get in said was the ‘mare in foal’ class. ‘Clonkeelin Lady’ she had it listed under. A big grey Irish Draught with a white blaze down its face. Lucille wasn’t to be seen.
I tried the bar – a beer tent with a counter on barrels.
My mouth was still dry from that wedding. A pint would cure it. I stood beside my two sisters at the bar. Not as much as a glance did they give me. Not even a ‘Here, don’t you look like one of us? The resemblance is amazing.’ I could’ve been a statue in O’Connell Street for all they knew. Anne came in and went over to them.
‘Now sure you know yourself, Amy,’ the man with them was saying. He was their age, late fifties with a well-trimmed tache.
I’d seen him with them many a time – he and Amy in particular were into going to dances – usually down the local after all the twos, all the sixes and eyes down for a full house. I’d spent long enough planning this to know all about them.
‘I do well, Cormac,’ said Amy, her auburn hair lacquered up like a crash helmet. ‘And what do you think, Edna? Cormac and meself always have a good time, don’t we, Cormac? Eh, and what do you think, Edna?’
‘Sure now,’ said big Edna. I doubt she was even listening. The Guinness to her lips and the cigarette lining up to take its place had her attention. She downed what was left of it and cocked her cabbage haircut at the barman, showed him her glass then waved a finger in the direction of the others for another round.
‘So we’re on, then?’ said the tache, palming his hair. A guitar has more strands to it.
‘I’d say we are,’ said Amy, and her with the blush. The hairdo was obviously for Cormac, her dance-hall Romeo. ‘Edna?’
Edna seemed to have the shout on this outing. But she was still thinking it over, a bob of the cabbage, a, ‘Hm, maybe’, a drag on her non-tipped.
‘Sure we’ll have a grand time, the three of us,’ said the guitar string.
‘Edna?’ Amy asked.
Edna replied with a big shrug, then, ‘G’on. Might as well. Nah. Maybe not. You two go on yourselves.’ Very decisive.
‘That settles it so,’ said Amy’s fancy man, ‘Saturday night it is,’ and had a drink. Amy smiled like a young girl who’d just been asked to her first dance, while Edna wondered ‘Where t’fuck’s that barman?’
Another waste of time. I already knew what my darling family did for kicks. Some guy squeezed in-between them and started asking Anne about her mare. A prospective buyer trying to
