Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

‘How can you tell?’

I thought that was a bit much. Coming from a girl who could potentially be my girlfriend.

I was sick into a hedge on the way home. My watch registered five past eleven as I hobbled up the driveway to Avalon, and I knew I was in for some sort of inquisition. The lies I had prepared about Herbie Goes Bananas and my ‘friends’ seemed feeble now. I hadn’t anticipated explaining vomit stains on my trousers and a busted ankle.

To my surprise, the garage doors were wide open and there was no car in the driveway, which meant that my father must have gone out after all.

When I let myself in the front door, the house was silent and in darkness. Mum had obviously gone to bed. Relieved, I pulled off my clothes in the laundry room and stuffed them into the washing machine with the rest of the pile from the basket, then stopped for a full glass of water in the kitchen. I climbed the stairs as quietly as I could, crept past my parents’ bedroom door and crawled into bed.

As I lay there, I wondered if this was how I was supposed to feel, now that I had had sexual intercourse. I had expected that I would feel strong, masterful and virile. In fact, I felt tearful, resentful and sick. Maybe it was the gin. I’d never had that before either.

Anyway, that’s what I was doing on Friday the 14th of November 1980, the night my father murdered Annie Doyle.

The eleven days after the girl’s death were the most stressful, waiting for the axe to fall. We bought all the newspapers and listened to every news bulletin, waiting for a report on her disappearance, but nothing happened. Andrew went to work, and I did my exercises, went out to the shops, made dinners, tended to our son and the house, and from time to time I would lock myself into my bedroom and put on my mother’s scarlet lipstick. It had been decades since I had used it, and though it had completely dried out, the pigment was as vivid as ever and I would use some Pond’s cream to smooth it on to my mouth, and look in the mirror and see her peering back at me.

Sometimes, I would wake and wonder if Annie’s death had all been an awful nightmare, but every night when Andrew came home, one look at his increasingly grey face told me that it was no dream and that we would never wake up. From the kitchen window, I could see the freshly dug grave. I had asked Andrew to buy some plants to take the bare look off it, and now, at the end of a cold November, it was an obscene riot of colour.

I hoped, though.

‘Nobody is looking for her,’ I said. ‘Maybe she won’t even be reported missing. I mean, if Laurence went missing, we’d be calling the guards within a few hours, wouldn’t we?’

‘ You would,’ said Andrew. ‘I’d be inclined to let him have some breathing space.’

‘But… this girl. Obviously, nobody cares about her.’

‘It’s only a matter of time until the alarm is raised. You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise.’

On Tuesday the 25th of November, our doorbell rang during dinner. Andrew went out to answer it while I took over carving the ham. I heard the beginning of the conversation and realized that it was a guard. I could see Laurence was listening intently, so I closed the door and turned up the radio while forcing myself to remain calm.

When Andrew returned to the table, I could see that his face was ashen. I didn’t dare ask him what had happened in front of Laurence, so instead I engaged him in a conversation about the boiler in the hot press that needed lagging. He nodded curtly and withdrew behind the Evening Herald . Laurence was staring at his father’s hands. Large hands, more weathered than one might expect for a member of the judiciary. Andrew snapped the paper to smooth the pages, which momentarily startled me. He put his newspaper down. ‘What time were you home, that night you went to the cinema with your friends?’ he said to Laurence.

‘Oh, em… before twelve anyway. You said I could stay out till then…?’ Laurence said, and I noticed his cheeks flushing.

‘Good, good, never heard you come in. We were fast asleep, weren’t we, Lydia?’

I didn’t know what to say. What had the guard said? Had we been seen on the strand after all? Andrew was clearly lining up Laurence as an alibi. It was a clever move, but he was being too obvious.

‘I suppose—’ I said.

‘Fast asleep,’ Andrew repeated.

Laurence looked baffled. I winked to reassure him that everything was fine.

He was not reassured.

‘What did the guard at the door want?’ he asked.

‘Oh, was it a garda?’ I said, keeping my voice casual. ‘Is there something wrong, Andrew? Something to do with a case?’

As a judge in the Special Criminal Court, Andrew had presided over a trial of IRA members two years previously. He had even been subject to some non-specific death threats. There had been talk of a sentry box being installed at the end of our driveway for a security guard, but Andrew wouldn’t countenance it. ‘I refuse to live in a fortress,’ he had said, and I agreed. Senior gardaí visited us on a semi-regular basis to discuss his safety and protection, but were usually invited into the library to talk matters through with my husband in private. Andrew rarely mentioned his work to us.

He paused before answering. ‘Nothing to do with any of my cases. A young woman has gone missing. The guard was just making routine enquiries. I told him I stayed in that entire weekend, two weeks ago.’

I was watching Laurence’s face and I saw flickers of confusion.

‘Oh, that’s dreadful! Where was she last seen? Around here? Why was he making enquiries here ?’ I feigned concern, but I needed to know. Why did they come to our door?

Andrew took up his paper again, obscuring his face while he said, ‘They think a car like mine was seen recently near the girl’s home.’

That car. A vintage navy Jaguar, and Andrew’s pride and joy – he insisted on doing all the running repairs on it himself – it drank fuel and cost a fortune to run. He had been trying to sell it since Paddy Carey had sunk us, but couldn’t find a buyer. Why hadn’t he been discreet enough to park it away from her door?

‘Well, isn’t that just ridiculous? They had the nerve to question you ? You need to have a word with someone about that, Andrew. The nerve. ’

‘Well, it is an unusual car, Lydia. They’re just doing their job.’ There was a hard edge to his tone.

Laurence was looking from one to the other of us. Andrew excused himself from the table and left the room.

‘Mum… was Dad… didn’t he go out that Friday night? His car wasn’t in the driveway when I came home.’

I was surprised that Laurence had such a good memory about a night nearly two weeks previously, but he was right. I didn’t want to have to contradict him. My poor boy was so confused. ‘No, darling, it was there.’

But I had to protect myself too. ‘I had a migraine on Friday and went to bed very early, and your father must have come upstairs before you came home, I suppose. You just heard him yourself – he was home and so was the car.’

‘But were you awake when he came to—’

‘Laurence!’ I laughed now. ‘Why all the questions? Would you like another slice of brack?’ I knew how to distract my son.

The phone rang in the cloakroom. I was glad to get out of the room and desperate to talk to Andrew to see how much the guard knew. I answered the phone to a girl who asked to speak to Laurence. I was surprised. Nobody had rung for Laurence in months, and certainly no girls.

‘It’s for you,’ I told him, ‘a girl called Helen.’ He blushed to his roots as he went to take the call.