Lucy grinds out her smoke, picks up her glass but doesn’t drink. Now that we’ve moved back to the present, the carefulness is creeping back in.
She says, ‘Not as soon as she should’ve. Even after we left school, she stayed living at home – she felt like she couldn’t leave her mother, and even though I thought her staying was a terrible idea, I could see her point: without Aislinn there, probably her mum would’ve killed herself inside a few weeks. So right up until a few years ago, Ash was going home to that house every night, just like when we were kids. It kept her . . .’ She turns the glass between her hands, watching the light move on the surface of the water. ‘Like it kept her from growing up. She had a job, but it was the same one she’d had since we left school – she was the receptionist at this place that sells toilet roll and hand soap to businesses, which would have been fine except it wasn’t what she wanted to do. She didn’t have a clue what she wanted; she’d never had a chance to think about it. I was scared for her, you know? I could see us being thirty, forty, and Ash still doing this job she’d wandered into and going straight home to look after her mum, and her whole life just . . .’ Lucy snaps her fingers, hand lifting through a patch of pale sun. ‘Gone. And she could see it too. She just didn’t know how to do anything about it.’
‘So what changed?’ Steve asks.
‘Mrs Murray died. Three years ago. This is going to sound bad, but it was the best thing that ever happened to Ash.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘You mean, did she actually kill herself?’ Lucy shakes her head. ‘No. She had a brain aneurysm. Ash came home from work and found her. She was devastated, obviously she was, but after a while she started coming out of that, and . . . it was like that was when her actual life started. She sold the house and bought herself the cottage in Stoneybatter. She lost a load of weight, she got her hair dyed, she bought new clothes, she started going out . . .’ A sudden grin. ‘To really trendy places, even. I mean, this was the girl I had to drag out for one pint in some manky theatre pub, and suddenly she wants to go to some super-fancy club she’s read about in some social column – and when I said there was no chance the bouncer would let me in, she was like, “I’ll do you up, you can wear my stuff, we’ll get in no problem!” ’
The grin widens. ‘And we actually did. It wasn’t my scene – tossers in labels seeing who could yell loudest – but it was totally worth it just to watch Ash. She had a ball. Dancing, and flirting with one of the tossers, and turning him down . . . She was like a kid at a funfair.’
The grin is gone. Lucy grabs a big breath and lets it out in a hiss, trying to keep herself together.
‘She was just getting her chance to figure out what she wanted to do. Just starting to get enough confidence to even think maybe she was allowed to figure that out. Just starting—’
She was getting, she wanted, she was. Lucy has switched Aislinn to past tense. It’s sinking in. Any minute now she’s going to melt down.
‘She was going to quit her job – she’d never had much to spend her salary on, so she had a load of money saved up, and she was going to take a year or two out and decide what she wanted to do next. She was—’ Another grab for breath. ‘She was talking about travelling – she’d never been out of Ireland – about going to college . . . She was giddy about it. Like she was waking up after being in a coma for fifteen years, and she couldn’t believe how bright the sun was. She . . .’
Lucy’s voice fractures. She dives her head down and digs at another smear of paint, so viciously that she’s got to be gouging into her leg through the combats. Whatever game she’s playing with us, it’s used her up.
She says, down to her knees, ‘How did . . . ? Whoever did this. What did he do to her?’
I say, ‘We can’t give out details, for operational reasons. As far as we can tell, she didn’t suffer.’
Lucy opens her mouth to say something else, but she can’t make it work. Tears fall onto her combats and spread into dark stains.
The decent thing to do is leave, give her privacy while the first wave of grief smashes her down and pounds her black and blue. Neither of us moves. She holds out for almost a minute before she starts sobbing.
We give her tissues and refill her water glass, ask if she’s got someone who could come stay with her, nod sympathetically and stay put when she manages to say she just wants to be by herself. When she can talk again, we get her to make us a list of Aislinn’s exes – all three of them, including a two-week summer fling called Jorge when she was seventeen; the girl was a real player – and of everyone she remembers being at the book launch. We ask – just a formality, ticking the boxes, have to ask everyone – where Lucy was yesterday evening. She was at the Torch: arrived at the theatre at half-six, did various stuff within sight of other people till the show came down just after ten, went for a few in the pub, then came home around one in the morning with the lighting operator and two of the cast, who hung out doing the obvious until around four. We – meaning the floaters – will check her story, but we won’t find holes in it.
I’m about to bring up the formal ID when Steve says, ‘Here are our cards,’ and shoots a glance at me. I find a card and shut up. ‘Whenever you feel like you’re ready to make your official statement, you give one of us a ring.’
Lucy takes the cards without knowing they’re there. I say, ‘Meanwhile, please don’t talk to any journalists. Seriously. Even if you don’t think you’re saying anything important, it could do real damage to the investigation. OK?’ Creepy Crowley is still nagging at the back of my mind. If someone’s siccing him on me, it’s someone who’s gonna have access to Lucy’s details.
Lucy nods, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand – she used up the tissues a while back. It makes no difference; the tears are still coming.
She says – her voice has gone thick from crying – ‘Whoever did this . . . it’s like he killed a little kid: someone who never even had a chance to get her life started. He took away her whole entire life. Could you remember that? When you’re investigating?’
I say, ‘Don’t worry. We’re going to do everything we can to put this guy away.’
Lucy gives up and leaves the tears to drip off her chin. She looks like shite, eyes puffed half-shut, a smear of purple paint down one cheek. ‘Yeah, I know. Just . . . Could you just keep that in mind?’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘We’ll do that. In exchange, though, I want you to keep thinking about whether there’s anything else you can tell us. Anything at all. Yeah?’
Lucy nods, for whatever that’s worth. She’s not looking at either of us. We leave her staring at nothing, surrounded by the ashy leftovers of last night.