Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

Through a lull in the kitchen mayhem he caught the last taps of a half-hearted knock on his front door, and he rose. Too feeble for any of the kids’ friends, and far too gentle a sound for anyone trying to flog a leather three-piece suite.

He opened the door to a young woman blatantly pregnant.

Without protection from the rain, her hair had sprung into a wiry halo; she clasped one hand to her forehead and squinted.

‘Tony?’

‘That’s right.’ He thought she might be a new caseworker. They had a habit of shapeshifting, though he’d never had one come to the door wearing her incompetence on her head before.

She was dressed in a denim jacket and some measure of patterned tent, befitting her fecundity if not the miserable weather.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to say this but… Do you know Robbie O’Donovan?’

The name pushed past Tony and into his hall, wheeled around his head, clung to and coloured his walls, a shadow for every letter.

‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Sorry, what’s this about?’

‘My name’s Georgie,’ she said. ‘I was told you knew Robbie O’Donovan. I’m sorry, this is… Do you think I could come in?’

‘I don’t know any Robbie O’Donovans,’ he said.

‘Maybe if you think back? He was my boyfriend, and he went missing a couple of years ago… Look, if I could come in? I’m pregnant, you see.’

‘After a couple of years?’

‘I’m tired. And it’s raining. I’m really sorry to ambush you like this but I think maybe if I go through a few bits with you, you might remember him?’

‘There’s a lot of kids in the house.’

‘I’m only six months gone,’ she said. ‘I won’t be adding to them.’

Behind him, the kitchen door opened and Niamh’s dark head popped out to pry. Over his shoulder, he said, ‘Get back in there a minute.’

An offended tut from his nine-year-old busybody and the door was closed again.

Outside, the young woman stood, pained and wringing.

Tony moved aside and she accepted the invitation gratefully. He gestured towards the living room and she stepped in and sat at the edge of the sofa.

‘D’you need a towel?’ He nodded at her hair.

‘Oh! That would be so great.’

He climbed the stairs and retrieved a towel from the hot press. The break didn’t provide time enough to think. Robbie O’Donovan — how do you know him? Drinking buddy? Gambling buddy? You don’t know him at all? Jesus Christ, Cusack; pick one .

Who’d think he knew Robbie O’Donovan? Had the lass gone sniffing out bones in the pub they used to drink in? Had Maureen Phelan sent her?

His blood fizzed. The balls of his feet found dips in the carpet beneath him.

He’d given J.P.’s mother the gift of a name and she’d accepted it like a child accepts a mound of sweets and the promise of sticky hands. Had he thought, in the months of eerie silence that followed, that she’d forget his slip-up, or clutch it jealously? No. Sure why would she?

Stupid fucker, Tony. Stupid. Stupid .

He closed the hot press as the door next to it opened and his firstborn gawped out at him.

‘Who’s that, Dad?’

‘Just someone looking for someone. It’s nothing.’

‘Looking for who?’

‘No one, Ryan.’

Back in the living room the sodden visitor accepted the towel and attempted a smile. Tony stood by the fireplace and said, ‘Georgie who?’

‘Fitzsimons. I don’t think I’ve met you before.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re looking for some ex-boyfriend?’

‘Robbie O’Donovan. I know this sounds very strange. He disappeared just over two years ago now. I reported him missing at the time but the guards have had no luck. He was kinda hard to miss, though. He was around six foot two, red hair, really skinny.’

‘I don’t know anyone like that. Someone’s after telling you I do, though.’

‘Yeah, there’s a girl that lives up around here, she said that you might be the man to ask. Her name is Tara. Tara Duane?’

Tony bit his cheeks and rubbed his palms off his thighs. Georgie turned the towel over and ran it through her hair again.

‘She’s my next-door neighbour.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’

‘Why the fuck would she tell you I’d know where your ex ran off to?’

The expletive hit hard. ‘I don’t know… I met her in town the other day. She flagged me down and said if I was still in the dark as to where Robbie went that you might know.’

‘She flagged you down?’

‘Yeah…’

‘I don’t get along with her. Suppose she neglected to mention that. She’s trying to drop me into something. She’s a vindictive bitch.’

Georgie clutched the towel.

‘Drop you into something? No, she just said you were a mate of his, and I thought maybe…’

Too late, Tony found the meagre details in the girl’s few statements and concluded she had little reason to be suspicious before he’d opened his mouth. He sagged and the mantelshelf pushed into his lower back.

‘Look,’ stammered Georgie. ‘I’m not usually in the habit of annoying strangers over something as dodgy as one of Tara Duane’s notions. I wouldn’t have come up here, not in a fit, but it wasn’t like Robbie to run off. If I told you half of it you wouldn’t believe a quarter—’

‘Listen, girl, I don’t know any fella called Robbie O’Donovan. I’m sorry but there you go. I do know a woman called Tara Duane and I’ve had my run-ins with her. I’m thinking maybe she’s stitched you up to stitch me up or something but I had nothing to do with your fella going walkabout. I’ve enough of me own problems!’

‘I just want to know where he is,’ she whimpered. ‘I would have been grand but only a few days ago this started up again. Someone told me he was dead…’

‘Duane?’

‘No, not Tara. Meeting Tara was a coincidence…’

Tony thumped his fist on the mantel. Coincidences followed Duane like rats after the piper. Once he tore through the conspiracy he’d tear through her, consequences or no consequences.

‘Well ask whoever told you, then!’ he barked.

‘I can’t. You don’t understand…’ Georgie’s countenance had changed; her chin was quivering. ‘I can’t bring it up with them again, I can’t go to the guards… Tara just told me you knew Robbie. I really didn’t think I’d be upsetting you like this, or I’d never have come here… Oh God!’

‘Here,’ Tony said, desperate as the tears intensified and the hubbub from the kitchen died down. ‘I feel for you, girl, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know the fella you’re on about, and I’ve a house full of kids and a working pair of ears on all of them. You’re going to have to take this up with Duane.’

The girl wiped her cheeks with the flat of her hand. She was short and raven-haired, pudgy around the cheeks, and, it seemed, in the process of completely losing it right there on his couch. Tony endeavoured to make sense of her fit. Tara Duane’s name rose a fog in him. He sank into the armchair across from the crying woman and blinked.

How the fuck would Tara Duane know he had anything to do with Robbie O’Donovan? How the fuck, how the fuck… He found himself mirroring Georgie’s actions, pinching the corners of his eyes, running his hands over his head.

The girl’s chest heaved in an exaggerated hiccup and she knotted her hands over her belly.

‘You’re going to have to leave,’ Tony tried, but she sat up straight, mouth open under her shining eyes, and said, ‘Shit, you’re Ryan’s dad.’

‘What?’

‘You’re Ryan’s dad! If Tara Duane lives next door to you… I knew I knew you from somewhere.’