It’s funny how often I forget that divorce in Ireland is relatively new. We didn’t get it until 1995, only ten years before I was born. Mum had three kids by then.
I move on. Now I’m on 1989, and Harriet is my age. She has the glowing confidence of a senator, her wide shoulders are back, her chin jutting out.
“SCHOLARSHIP GIRL WOWS WASHINGTON IN INTERNATIONAL ESSAY CONTEST
“St Bernadette’s scholarship winner Harriet Evans, sixteen, has another win under her belt – only this time, she’s going stateside! The talented student has won the UN’s ‘Together for Change’ contest with her essay on divorce in Ireland. ‘I wanted to highlight the sheer number of people affected by this issue,’ explains Evans. ‘I did a huge amount of research on women living in refuges, almost all of whom believe that their lives would be different if the 1986 referendum hadn’t failed.’
“Evans is set to present her essay at the ‘Together for Change’ youth conference in Washington, DC, at the end of the month. Are her parents proud? ‘My mother and sister are over the moon,’ Evans says.”
At this point, I’m actively trying not to resent Harriet Evans. A politically active genius who wins essay competitions? Also, who says “all of whom”, like she is a grammar book? Give me a break. Still, it’s weird that with all the impressive students that St Bernadette’s has had, Sister Assumpta has chosen to focus on Harriet Evans. I mean, there’s been some actually famous pupils. We have an Olivier Award-winning actress, and she doesn’t have her own velvet jewellery case. I wonder if Fiona will ever get her own one.
The last thing in Harriet’s file is a school photo from 1990. It’s her graduation photo, A4-sized. She’s lost a lot of weight since the essay competition win, as well as her Greek statue shine. She looks huddled and inward, not like the screaming girl in the divorce referendum photo, or the proud one in the competition win.
I stare at the photo for a long time, feeling dissatisfied. I’ve just lived through this entire girl’s school career … but why? What’s the ending? Why is it here?
And then I turn the photo over, to find the Housekeeper staring right back at me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
HARRIET’S DRAWING STYLE IS NOTHING LIKE LILY’S, BUT IT’S undeniable that she has talent. This Housekeeper is in watercolours, dusky yellows, deep greys and murky greens. But it’s definitely her. The dog at her feet looks bruised but protective, his head lolling against her thigh. The Housekeeper is as expressionless as she always is in my dreams, human-ish but not truly human. I remember again what Sylvia said about how people manifest spirits and ghosts when their emotions have nowhere else to go. That’s what the Housekeeper in Harriet’s drawing looks like. Like a pool where hate gathers, but not where it originates.
My hands shake as I begin to realize: I have Harriet’s Walkman. I have Harriet’s tape.
A stone hits the bottom of my stomach like it’s being flung down a well.
I have Harriet’s cards.
Harriet summoned the Housekeeper in 1990. Harriet’s conjuring brought about the 1990 cold snap and the runaway cats; mine brought the snow, the rainbow trout, the surge in public aggression. Harriet was a sensitive, too. Maybe even a witch. Two sensitives, thirty years apart.
Harriet must have done something to end it. And Ireland got divorce eventually: not for five years, but it happened.
I can’t wait for Lily for five years, though. I need her now. Or, at the very least, by the new moon on Saturday night.
I put the jewellery boxes full of memories back together, carefully slipping Harriet’s one into my school bag.
I finish cleaning the car as quickly as I can, then bring the buckets back to the basement. This changes everything, I keep thinking, sometimes whispering it out loud. “This changes everything.”
Even as I’m making my way out of the basement, I have one hand on my phone, googling Harriet Evans. Maybe she’s on Facebook. If she was seventeen in 1990, how old is she now? Forty-seven? Definitely on Facebook, then.
My blood is bubbling with excitement. Maybe she still lives in the area. Maybe I could walk right into her living room and ask her how to lift the curse. I start searching the Facebook app for Harriet Evans. My heart sinks. There are thousands. I’ll have to enlist Roe and Fi to help me message them, but we could do it. Then, there’s always the possibility that Harriet got married and changed her name. Suddenly, the job doesn’t seem so simple.
With my head still in my phone, I end up colliding right into Sister Assumpta, leaving her office.
“Oh,” I say. “Sorry, Sister. I didn’t see you.”
She blinks at me behind her owl glasses, her pupils huge, her skin puckered and thin, like wet tissue. Intellectually, I know that no one is born old. But looking at Sister Assumpta, I find it impossible to imagine her as anything other than the doddering old founder, keeping herself busy at the school because she has nothing else to do. I remember the newspaper clippings: I force myself to confront the fact that Sister isn’t just a cardboard cut-out of a person, but a real person. A person who knows Harriet Evans.
“Sister,” I say, as respectfully as I can. “Would you mind if I asked you something?”
“Skirt lengths must fall no higher than one inch above the knee,” she says sharply. “And strictly no trousers. I don’t care how many signed petitions you have.”
We’ve had optional trousers as part of the school uniform for about four years, but I don’t correct her. No one wears them, anyway.
“No Sister, I have no problem with the uniform. I was wondering if I could ask you about a former pupil.”
Her face softens. “I always knew Anthea Jackson would win the Olivier for Streetcar.”
“No, Sister, not Anthea Jackson. I’m
