Liz Nugent: Lying in Wait

When I called to her flat on Saturday, I’d decided not to bring Dessie along. I wasn’t all that surprised when she wasn’t there. That evening I rang her, and the girl who answered the phone in the hall said she’d take a message.

At Ma and Da’s on Sunday, Annie didn’t show up. Lunch after twelve-thirty Mass was the only family ritual we held on to, and Annie still turned up most of the time.

‘Did she ring you, Ma, to say she wasn’t coming?’

‘She did not, the strap,’ said my da, who took her feckless behaviour as a personal insult. I played it down.

‘She might have the flu – the flat was freezing when I saw her on Thursday.’

‘Did she not have the gas fire on?’

‘She did, but you know she always opens the window when she smokes.’

‘She gets the smoking from you,’ my mother said to Da.

‘That’s all she got from me, Pauline, I can tell you.’

I changed the subject, asked Da if he was going to the greyhounds on Thursday.

The next day, Monday, I called round again with Dessie and there was no answer from her flat but I caught another girl on her way out. There were three bedsits in the two-storey house with a shared bathroom. I asked her if she’d seen Annie. ‘Not since Thursday or Friday, now that you mention it. I thought she was away. It’s usually her radio that wakes me.’

That was the first time I felt a bit worried. Annie wouldn’t have gone away without telling me. Besides, where would she have gone?

‘With some fella?’ Dessie suggested, but clammed up again when I gave him a sharp look.

We’d usually be in touch twice or three times a week, but on Wednesday I still hadn’t heard from her. I called to Ma’s, but she hadn’t heard from her either.

‘Did she say anything to you about going away?’

‘Not a thing. It’s weird.’

I was still there when Da got home from the bakery.

‘She’s probably off on the piss somewhere. She’ll turn up.’

‘She’s never disappeared for so long before. It’s been nearly a week.’

‘When last did you see her?’

‘Last Thursday. She told me to call round on Saturday. She promised me she’d be there.’ I didn’t tell him about the painting set. There was no point.

‘She promised, did she?’ he said sarcastically.

On Friday when we still couldn’t contact her, we all knew something was wrong. Da and me went to her flat together while Ma rang round her friends and some of the girls she used to work with. At Annie’s flat, one of the other tenants said she hadn’t been there all week. We called the landlord from the phone in the hall and he came round, a large sweating man with a big nose, complaining about being disturbed after 6 p.m. He let us into her bedsit with his enormous set of keys. Everything was as neat as a pin as usual, but all the clothes I knew she had were still in the wardrobe, except her grey herringbone coat, the woollen sleeveless dress Ma had bought her for her birthday and the knee-high purple boots. I didn’t want to go rifling through all her stuff, but a quick glance told me she hadn’t gone on a trip. Her long holdall bag was still under the dresser. A single mug sat in the sink with a spot of mould in the bottom of it.

‘She’d never have left that there, Da, if she knew she was going away. Maybe for a few hours, but that’s got to have been there for days.’

The landlord said, ‘Her rent is due next week you know. I won’t be left out of pocket.’

‘Would ya shut up!’ said my da, and inside I cheered because he was standing up for Annie and it was a very long time since I’d heard him do that. The landlord told us to leave, and said that if he didn’t get his rent the next week, he’d be putting Annie’s stuff in a bag on the doorstep.

When we got home with our news, Ma was worried sick. None of Annie’s friends had seen her in over a week, and said she hadn’t turned up for two cleaning jobs in the city centre. That alone would not have rung alarm bells, but my timid mother had bravely gone into the Viking after dark. The regulars there all knew Annie, but they said she hadn’t been in for over a week.

‘Do you think she got herself knocked up again and went back to St Joseph’s?’ said Da, a tone of concern creeping into his voice.

‘She’d never go back there, Da, not in a million years. I know she wouldn’t.’ Ma agreed with me. ‘And even if she was pregnant, why would she go anywhere without her clothes, or a bag?’

‘I’m ringing the guards,’ said Da on Friday the 21st of November 1980.

I heard him say it quite clearly.

‘The weekend of the 14th of November? Let me think… hold on now… let me see – ah, yes, I was here with my wife. Why do you ask, Garda?’

‘The whole weekend? You didn’t leave the house?’

‘Yes, well, I got home from work on the Friday about six o’clock and didn’t go out again.’

It was a lie.

‘And was it just you and your wife here? Nobody else?’

‘My son was out that Friday. But I think he was home before midnight. What is this about?’

‘Well, sir, it’s just that… a car was seen visiting the home of the missing woman over recent months, sir… Like yours, sir… the old Jaguar.’

The guard’s tone was nervous, subservient. Too many ‘sir’s. It was clear he had drawn the short straw when sent to question my dad. Or Judge Fitzsimons, as he was more recently known.

‘And may I have your name?’ my father asked, and although I couldn’t see him, I could hear the air of superiority in his voice, coupled with a strange tremor that was new. The kitchen door behind me was only slightly ajar, and I strained to hear what followed on the doorstep.

‘Mooney, sir. I’m sorry to be having to ask, like—’

‘And what exactly is your rank, Mooney ?’ He lingered on the ‘oo’ in Mooney.

‘I’m a detective, sir.’

‘I see. Not a detective sergeant or a detective inspector, then?’

I knew that tone. Dad could be rude or dismissive with strangers and he could fly off the handle. He intimidated me sometimes. I’m not sure that he meant to. He just did.

At the other end of the table, my mother was looking at me quizzically.

‘Is that your fifth potato, Laurence? Go on, quick, while your father isn’t looking.’

I hadn’t been counting.

My mother got up, muttering about the draught. She closed the door behind me and turned on the radio and began to hum along tunelessly to the song playing. I said nothing, but now I couldn’t hear what was being discussed at the front door.

My father had just deliberately lied to the guards. I admit I was taken aback by his lie. He was being asked about his movements almost two weeks earlier. I remembered that Friday night very clearly indeed because I was having my own adventure. I had also lied about my whereabouts. I had told my parents that I was going to the cinema with school friends, when actually I was losing my virginity to Helen d’Arcy, who lived in Foxrock Park, just twenty minutes away.

I had not intended to have sex with Helen on our first real date. I did not find her physically attractive. She had very nice silky blonde hair, but her frame was both wide and too thin. Her face, which was unnaturally big, sat on top of a scrawny neck. My own skin was flawless in comparison, perhaps because it was stretched.

I went to Helen’s house simply because she invited me. I did not get many invitations.

She had caught up with me as I was returning from school a few weeks earlier. It was raining, as usual. School was awful. I had only started in St Martin’s Institute for Boys the previous January because of Bloody Paddy Carey. I tried very hard not to let my parents know how much I was bullied in my new school. There was a particular group of four or five boys, all brawn and no brain. They did not often attack me physically after the first month, but my books were stolen or defaced with disgusting slogans, and my lunch was taken and replaced with items too revolting to mention.