Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

‘But there is absolutely no proof she is dead?’

‘Not that I know of, but one of the guards thought that Dad—’

‘Never mind about that. Did she have a bank account or a post office savings account, do you know?’

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘Because we can bring her back to life. Send the mother a letter from her.’

‘What?’

Even as I said the words, an idea was forming. Annie was not dead. Perhaps she decided to clean up her life and get off drugs and move away where nobody would know her, start afresh. She was living a normal life down the country but did not want to be contacted and reminded of her old life. It was alarmingly simple. When Laurence calmed down enough, he saw the wisdom of the idea, although he said it was cruel. Not as cruel as what Annie Doyle had done to us.

‘But, Laurie, won’t it be so much better for them to think that she is alive? It will be such a huge relief to them. We will be giving them back their daughter. It’s an act of mercy. She will write to them.’

I changed my mind about Laurence befriending the Doyles. Keep your enemies close, isn’t that what they say? I encouraged him to engage with them, gain their trust, find out as much as he could about Annie before we put our plan into action, and in the meantime he could feed them misinformation. He had already agreed to look up death notices in the Irish Times office for the weeks after 14 November 1980. He could conveniently omit Andrew’s name from the list of his findings. He should take control of Karen’s investigation, be sympathetic, but not too enthusiastic. Perhaps he could pretend to develop a personal interest in Karen.

But he seemed uncomfortable at the suggestion.

‘I can’t do that. She’s Bridget’s friend. And Bridget keeps asking me when she’s going to meet you, and when I’m going to Athlone to meet her parents.’

‘Athlone? God help us.’ And then it struck me. ‘Actually, I think you should go. You can post the Annie letter from there! Athlone is perfect – a letter posted from there could have originated anywhere. It’s slap bang in the middle of the country.’

He winced at this. I was terribly excited. This was a project that Laurence and I could work on together. It could only bring us closer.

Over the next few weeks, Laurence and Bridget and Karen met up regularly to go over all the information she had about Annie. I encouraged Laurence to bring home whatever he could so that we could combine our wits to decide how best to use it. As I suspected, Annie had no savings accounts in which money might have remained untouched if she was dead. There was no proof at all that she hadn’t picked up her life and moved away. We had to make it look like she’d gone in a hurry. One of the most crucial things Laurence brought home was an old diary in her appalling, childlike, semi-literate handwriting. I could see Annie had entered the payments from Andrew, which she listed under J, presumably for Judge. The little bitch had probably known all along who he was. Karen had entrusted the diary to Laurence so that he could check out the addresses and phone numbers. There was a letter in it to a child that she gave up for adoption, and when I saw that, I lost any sympathy I might have had for her. She had been pregnant before, by accident. She knew Andrew and I were desperate and willing to pay for a baby, and she had already given one away. What a truly pathetic creature she was.

But that book gave us everything we needed to construct the new Annie Doyle. I started to write the letter from Annie, using her typing and grammatical errors, but found I couldn’t get the shape of the words convincingly. With a heavy sigh, Laurence took the pen from my hand. Laurence was an excellent forger, it turns out. He said that Karen referred to her mother as ‘Ma’, so assumed Annie must have done the same. I dictated the note.

Dear Ma,

I am really sorry if you wore wurried about me over the last few years but I got in a bit of trouble with a lone shark and druges and stuff and I had to get away in a hurry to a kwite place to start my life agan. I know the cops was loking for me and all but I was in a bit of trouble with them too. So I bin laying low for a few years now but I have my act together ma and im living a good life and youd be proued of me if you saw me. I was to sad after the baby and all and I tried to ferget about her but you now What it was like with da. he was ashamed. I hope hes all rite. Tell him not to worry about me now and that im sorry for all the hasel. tell Karen I love her too. i love you all but my life is bettur her. dont come loking for me couse theres no pont. Im not coming back ma but im very happy here.

Love from your Annie

I have a diffarant name now.

Laurence baulked at some of it. He was dead set against the reference to her father’s shame, but it had to be realistic. The loan shark references were my idea. It would suggest that the large sums of money noted in the diary were sums owed rather than payments to her from Andrew. The guards had apparently made lewd suggestions that a client could have paid her large amounts for perverted reasons. Laurence wanted the letter to be written to Karen, but that didn’t make any sense to me. Every child is closer to his mother than to anyone else. He wanted more about Karen in the letter, but I pointed out how illiterate Annie was, how much of an effort writing must be. She wouldn’t write a word more than she needed to. A declaration of love should be enough to satisfy the sister.

I could tell that Laurence was quite stressed by all of this. I reassured him and told him that we were doing a very kind thing and that he was a good man. He had turned into the most handsome young man one could ever see, like a younger version of his father. Everything was going to be fine, I told him. This was just another of life’s hurdles that we would have to get over.

I was in love. For the first time, head over heels in love. I will never know if it was because of her relationship to Annie. I’d like to think I would have loved Karen anyway. The very first time I saw her in Scanlon’s with her father, I felt a lurch deep in my chest as if my heart had swung out of position. She did not at all resemble the girl I knew well from the press cuttings, hiding behind a veil of unkempt hair.

She was delivering bad news about Annie to her father, as it turned out. I was struck by the way she spoke to him so tenderly, concern in her eyes. I sat beside Bridget in the corner of the pub, watching this amazing woman, wondering who she was.

When Gerry introduced her as his daughter, my insides lurched again. How much suffering had my father caused her? She looked up at me and smiled, and I have no idea what we said to each other. That night I followed them home to Gerry’s house and was nearly caught by Karen, staring up at her through a window.

Karen and Bridget quickly became close friends and that made it harder. I had constant news of Karen – where she was going, what she was doing. Bridget was incredibly flattered that Karen took an interest in her, and I was jealous. Of Bridget. I found it impossible not to compare the two women, and while I stayed with Bridget, the true reason was that, without her, I wouldn’t have seen Karen. But I became short with Bridget, impatient with her, though never in front of Karen. When Karen was around, I was the perfect gentleman. I hung around them like a lapdog, knowing full well what caused flashes of pain to occasionally cross Karen’s face. I understood her hidden grief; I recognized her loss.

I discovered from Bridget that Karen found her own modelling career faintly ridiculous. She was grateful for the income, but didn’t feel beautiful. That was so strange to me. She was stunning. When Karen and Bridget were sitting side by side, I couldn’t help thinking of Beauty and the Beast. Karen had no airs and graces about it at all. She had recently separated from her husband, Dessie, but still used her married name. I was surprised that a girl my own age could already have an ex-husband. According to Bridget, Karen thought she had married too young. She didn’t resent her ex-husband, but wished he would stop calling her and trying to rekindle their relationship.