‘She’s long gone,’ said Davy, and Brendan drew a finger across his throat and grinned.
‘Dog food. Davy and the twins have supplanted her.’
‘Are the twins living here?’
‘They were here on sufferance!’ said Davy. ‘And they can get their own lodgings when they come back.’
‘Does it have a toilet?’ said Ali.
‘It did when I left,’ said Davy, ‘but God knows.’
It appeared that the construction had been abandoned just before the final push. An open ditch ran around the outside walls, with pipes laid along the bottom. Near the front door a pillow of solidified cement stood on its end, the plastic bag that once contained it blowing in tattered ribbons around its base. The step up to the porch was knee-high.
‘Did they not finish the front steps?’ asked Davy.
‘Nothing to do with me,’ said Brendan.
‘They’re supposed to have done work in exchange for rent,’ Davy said as they hauled themselves up onto the doorstep. He opened an elaborate front door with patterned glass panes and held it wide for her, annoyance bringing a dark flush to his face.
Ali thought Davy had come to Dublin to make a new life in the city. It was odd he never mentioned this place. The walls and doors and brass-coloured light switches were all pristine, but the floor was a concrete screed, raked like corduroy. In the front room, an old sofa was complemented by a massive low table made from a sheet of chipboard propped on breezeblocks. The battered television in the corner stood on an empty cable reel.
Davy stopped in the middle of the hall, looking dazed, as if he hardly knew the place.
‘Toilet?’ said Ali.
‘Second door on the right,’ said Brendan, bringing up the rear.
She passed a bedroom furnished only with a mattress on the floor and glamorous mirror-fronted wardrobes built into the walls. The bathroom had a new suite but no toilet seat. The edge of the bath still had paper tape on it. Ali hovered over the cold porcelain to pee and hoped that no one would try the lockless door.
Brendan was in the corridor, waiting, when she came out.
‘Y’all right?’
‘Shouldn’t I go down to the farm?’
‘Don’t be fretting.’ He went into the bathroom and shut the door.
In the front room Davy was pulling out bottles from a six-pack of beer that must have come from Melody’s. He had an unlit cigarette in his hand.
‘You don’t smoke,’ she said.
He looked at it for a moment, wondering, put it behind his ear.
‘Sometimes I do, but it’s horrible.’
Ali sat beside him on the sofa, retrieved the fag from his ear and lit it herself.
‘Where are the twins?’
‘They got a job in a pea factory in England. Seasonal work. That’s why Brendan needs a hand.’
‘A pee factory? Is that a joke?’
‘A pea factory – P-E-A – little green yokes, canning them, eh, Brendan?’
Brendan edged around the table to join them on the sofa.
‘Give us a bottle there. D’you want one, Ali?’
‘I’m okay, thanks.’
‘But we only got Smithwick’s cos you like it.’
Davy put a bottle in her hand and gave another to Brendan.
Ali slumped into the couch and the boys talked over her, Brendan giving wandering updates about the local team and minor village scandals. They weren’t going to mention the baby. They weren’t going to mention the Late Late. It was good to come here, to escape it all. She leaned her head against Davy’s shoulder.
A sharp rapping shocked her awake. There was a strange figure pressing against the window, in a darkness that had gathered from nowhere. He wore a mackintosh and a cap; she couldn’t see his face. The boys exchanged guilty glances. Davy motioned the figure to come inside.
Her Uncle Joe had aged a good deal since she had last seen him, and his open mac framed an impressive dome of belly. He was wearing a vexed expression.
‘Una had dinner ready an hour ago. Did ye not think to bring her down? Hello, Ali.’
‘Sorry, Da,’ said Brendan, ‘lost track of the time.’
Joe looked pointedly at the bottles and the butt-strewn saucer. With a push from Davy, Ali got to her feet and went over to kiss her uncle on the cheek.
‘I’m sorry, Uncle Joe. I’ll come down with you now.’
‘You coming too?’ he asked the boys.
‘Later. Few things to sort out here – about the business, like,’ Davy said.
Joe gave a little snort and lifted Ali’s rucksack lightly onto his shoulder. She followed him out, stepping carefully off the front porch into the darkness.
They followed a path through trees that widened into a dirt drive. She could sense the bulk of the barn looming to her right – darker and heavier than the gloom about. Up the hill on the left, she saw the roofs of the pig sheds, a dull gleam of iron. They walked around the corner of the barn and the lights of the farmhouse appeared, the kitchen window spilling a buttery glow into the dimness.
Ali caught her breath. She could see the corner of the big range, the table with its faded oilcloth, the dresser stacked with delft. Caherbawn. Nothing had changed; it was like stepping out of the dark and into the past. Sensing her pause, Joe stopped too and for a moment they stood wordlessly, looking on as Aunt Una appeared like a figure on a stage, passing through the lit square with a stack of plates in her hand.
‘I’m sorry’ were Ali’s first words of greeting to her aunt.
She wondered if there would ever be a time in her life when there would be no need to apologise. Una stood with her back to the range, a thinner, more worn-away version of her own mother. Her face was plain, and her short bobbed hair was pushed firmly behind her ears. It was a lighter colour than Ali recalled, a kind of faded blonde. Una came forward to press her dry cheek to her niece’s.
‘Your dinner’s in the range.’
‘She was kidnapped,’ said Joe.
‘Is Davy not with you?’
‘He’s up in the bungalow with Brendan,’ said
