Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

I thanked them for their hospitality and hugged Bridget, arranging to meet her before I got the bus back home. I set off on my quest to find Annie. I told the shopkeepers, pub and café owners that I had found this silver-framed photo at the bus station and wondered if they knew the girl in the photo. It was the only story I could think of. Because of the harelip, people might remember Annie. Her photo hadn’t featured in the press for more than a few days after the initial investigation. Other young women who had gone missing all over the country sparked annual appeals and renewed press coverage, but I guess that because of her background Annie’s case was never reopened.

A few of the people I asked thought she looked familiar, ‘except for the mouth’, but most didn’t recognize her at all. In a hairdresser’s, I suggested that it was probably an old photograph, that she could have changed her hair colour. The salon owner looked at me suspiciously and I realized how weird my story sounded. The receptionist at the Prince of Wales Hotel advised that she could be from anywhere, as Athlone was a bus changeover spot for travellers from Cork, Limerick and the West.

Athlone was a pretty small town, and after four hours I had visited every single business premises, including the ones out on the Roscommon road and the Galway road. At a petrol station on the outskirts of town, I was showing the photo to people when one of them pointed out I’d already been into her jewellery shop with it that morning. ‘You’re going to an awful lot of trouble to track down a stranger,’ she said with a hint of mistrust in her voice. At that stage I didn’t care.

I went to the garda station and baldly asked if anyone knew the face in the photograph. The guards shrugged but insisted on keeping the framed photograph. The frame was worth something, they said, so whoever lost it would report it lost to them. That was stupid of me.

At three o’clock I met Bridget in a café.

‘No luck?’

‘None.’

‘I’m sorry, but it’s a needle-in-a-haystack situation. She could be living miles out of town in a quiet place, nearer to Mullingar or Ballinasloe. She could be anywhere.’

My fury with Annie had not abated. Hours of tramping around the rain-sodden streets, holding Annie’s photo in my hands, had given me time to think about what I would say to her if I came face to face with her. I couldn’t even imagine myself being pleased to see her, even if she was safe. I wanted to smack her for everything she had put us through.

I rang home from a phone box and told Ma and Da the bad news, but I said I was going to cover another part of the midlands next week. I’d cover the whole country if I had to. I was going to find Annie. She owed us an explanation.

When I got home that evening, I had dinner with my parents. None of us said much. Da was annoyed that the guards now had his silver photo frame. We had loads of photos of Annie. We’d had hundreds printed at the time of her disappearance. It was the frame that bothered him.

‘I bought it specially, after she…’

‘Ran away?’ I suggested.

‘Yeah.’

The next morning Yvonne rang in a state of high excitement.

‘I hope you’re feeling better. Because guess who’s going to Rome?’

‘I’m much better, thanks, but what’s this about Rome?’

‘It’s a new perfume – Gilt. They want you as the face of Gilt!’

‘Guilt? That’s a weird name for a perfume.’

‘It’s Gilt. Without the “u”. Gilt. And they want you in Rome next Saturday. I knew you were going to be the one. I knew it all along! Do you realize how big this is?’

It was exciting but I had planned to go to Mullingar. And then I realized how foolish I was being. I had the chance to go to Rome, and I was thinking about not going because of Annie? I could wait. Annie could wait. She’d waited six years to tell us she was still alive.

‘That’s fantastic!’

‘Is your passport in order?’

Dessie and I had been to the Isle of Man the previous summer, so my passport was up to date. Yvonne said I should call to her office and collect all the details.

When I left there later that day with all the information, I had an urge to ring Bridget and tell her this great news, but maybe it would be rubbing her nose in it. I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to tell Laurence.

I rang him in the office. I updated him on the futile search for Annie. His voice was comforting, concerned. I told him about my trip to Rome.

‘Wow! That’s fantastic. Rome.’

‘Have you been?’

‘No, never. My mother doesn’t like to travel, so we never did foreign holidays, or even domestic ones for that matter.’

I said it before I even realized it had come out of my mouth. ‘Come with me.’

There was a slight pause and then he said, ‘OK. I will.’

Malcolm was one of my psychiatrists during my confinement in St John of God’s. He had seen me at my very worst, semi-comatose and unresponsive. I had one-to-one sessions with him. He knew of my reluctance to mix with others, my miscarriages, and that I had been desperate to have another baby. He did not, of course, know how desperate. Even in my weakened, drug-induced state, I had never told him about Annie. It would have been a betrayal of Andrew. However, I trusted Malcolm. I think Daddy would have liked him. I had even told him about Diana and how I had drowned her on our ninth birthday. It’s funny, because I had never told Andrew those details, just that she had tragically drowned. Malcolm insisted that I had been a child and that I should not feel responsible for something I could not have understood at that age. Malcolm could not accept that I had wanted to kill her. He wanted to believe the best of me.

So when I met him at the florist one afternoon four years later, he greeted me cautiously and remarked how well I looked and seemed. He invited me to go for a coffee. I’m sure it was against some patient/doctor rule, but I didn’t mind. I like to be admired. And besides, he was no longer my doctor. Nowadays, I only saw my GP from time to time. Menopause had come and gone, and medication kept my moods stable and my thoughts calm.

Malcolm’s German wife had died some years previously. We were both single. We started to date tentatively. He would make love to me and I would close my eyes and imagine that he was Andrew. He came to the house sometimes when Laurence was out. I wanted to keep him a secret from Laurence. I needed Laurence to know that there was nobody I loved as much as him.

But the problem with Malcolm was that he never stopped trying to fix me, even when I did not need to be fixed. Outside of our earlier therapy sessions I never spoke of Diana, and yet, when we were dating, Malcolm would bring it up from time to time. When he was in Avalon, after dinner one evening, he asked where the pond was. I thought my freezing silence would stop his curiosity, but he was oblivious to my iciness.

‘You really are one of the most interesting cases I ever had. The fact that you kept all this guilt hidden away from your own husband for what, twenty-odd years? I think it’s quite unhealthy to keep these things bottled up. You should be talking to someone about this. Not me now, obviously, but you would be amazed the difference it could make to your sense of freedom if you were able to talk about it. It might give you the liberty to leave the house overnight, to go on a holiday. I’m sure it’s at the root of all your issues.’

‘One of your cases? Is that all I am?’ I said, trying to ignore his comments. I went to prepare a tray for coffee, but when I returned to the dining room, he wasn’t there. The front door was wide open. I found him in the back garden.