Hanging out with the lads has changed. Trey feels older than them, and separate. They’re having a laugh like always, while she’s watching and measuring everything she says; she feels the heft and ripple of every word, where they hold everything lightly. Before the cider is finished, she heads home. She never gets drunk, but she’s tipsy enough that the dark mountainside feels loosely bounded and hard to gauge, as if the spaces outside her line of vision could be closing in on her or expanding faster than she can picture. When she gets in, her dad smells her breath and laughs, and then gives her a slap across the head.
Maeve goes out too. Maeve has mates down the village, or about half the time she does; the rest of the time they’ve had some massive complicated fight and aren’t speaking. “Where you going?” Trey asks, when she catches Maeve doing something stupid with her hair and checking different angles in the bathroom mirror.
“None of your business,” Maeve says. She tries to kick the door closed, but Trey catches it.
“You keep your mouth fuckin’ shut,” Trey says. “About everything.”
“You’re not the boss of me,” Maeve says.
Trey doesn’t have the energy to get into it with Maeve. Sometimes these days she feels like her mam, scraped so empty she could fold in half. “Just keep your mouth shut,” she says.
“You’re just jealous,” Maeve says. “Because you made a balls of helping Daddy, and now he’s sending me to find stuff out instead of you.” She smirks at Trey in the mirror, rearranges a strand of hair, and checks her profile again.
“What stuff?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Go on outa that bathroom,” Johnny says, appearing behind Trey in T-shirt and boxers, rubbing his face.
“I’m going out now, Daddy,” Maeve says, giving him a big smile.
“Good girl,” Johnny says mechanically. “Aren’t you Daddy’s great helper?” He aims a vague pat at her head as she nudges for a hug, and guides her past him into the hall.
“What’s she finding out for you?” Trey asks.
“Ah, sweetheart,” Johnny says, scratching his ribs and pulling out a half-arsed laugh. He hasn’t shaved, and his fancy haircut lies lank on his forehead. He looks like shite. “You’re still my number-one right-hand woman. But our Maeveen needs something to do as well, doesn’t she? The poor wee girl’s been feeling left out.”
“What’s she finding out?” Trey asks again.
“Ah,” Johnny says, waving a hand. “I like to keep an ear out for what way the wind’s blowing, is all. What the place is saying, what the detective’s asking, who knows about what. Just keeping myself well-informed, like a sensible man—information is power, sure, that’s what—” Trey has already tuned out his babble by the time the bathroom door shuts behind him.
Maeve comes back that evening looking smug. “Daddy,” she says, shoving herself under his arm on the sofa, where he’s staring at the telly. “Daddy, guess what.”
“Now,” Johnny says, snapping out of his daze and smiling down at her. “There’s Daddy’s little secret agent. Tell us everything. How’d you get on?”
Trey is in the armchair. She’s been putting up with her dad’s smoke and his channel-flipping because she wanted to be there when Maeve got back. She leans over for the remote and switches the telly off.
“It’s all totally grand,” Maeve says triumphantly. “Everyone says their dads are going mental ’cause there’s detectives calling round talking like they killed your man. And Bernard O’Boyle punched Baggy McGrath in the head ’cause the detective said Baggy said Bernard was up here that night, and Sarah-Kate isn’t allowed to hang out with Emma any more ’cause the detective asked Sarah-Kate’s dad does he hate the Brits and Sarah-Kate’s mam thinks Emma’s mam said it to them. See? That detective doesn’t think it’s you.”
Trey stays still. She can feel victory rocketing like whiskey through every vein of her; she’s afraid to move in case her dad and Maeve see it. Nealon is doing the work she set him to, plodding obediently along the path she laid out for him. Down at the bottom of the mountain, among the pretty little fields and the neat smug bungalows, Ardnakelty is ripping itself to pieces.
“Well, God almighty, wouldja look at that,” Johnny says, rubbing Maeve’s shoulder automatically. He’s gazing at nothing and blinking fast, thinking. “That’s great news, isn’t it?”
“Serves them right,” Maeve says. “For being a shower of bastards to you. Doesn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Johnny says. “You done a great job, sweetheart. Daddy’s proud of you.”
“So you don’t need to worry,” Maeve says, wriggling closer to Johnny. She gives Trey a smirk and the finger, close to her chest so he won’t see. “Everything’s grand.”
After that Johnny doesn’t leave the house any more. When Maeve presses up against him and asks stupid questions, or Liam tries to get him to come play football, he pats them and moves away without seeing them. He smells of whiskey and stale sweat.
Trey goes back to waiting. She does what she’s told, which is mostly housework and making her dad’s sandwiches, and when there’s nothing to do she goes out some more. She walks the mountains for hours, taking breaks to sit under a tree when Banjo ups his panting to melodramatic groans. Cal told her to be careful out and about, but she’s not. She reckons most likely her dad killed Rushborough, and he’s not going to kill her. Even if she’s wrong, no one else is going to do anything either, not with Nealon buzzing all through the air.
The drought has stripped back undergrowth and heather on the mountainside, revealing strange dents and formations here and there among the fields and bogs. Trey, scanning every dip, feels for the first time a chance she might spot the marks of where Brendan’s buried. The bared mountainside seems like a signal aimed straight at her. When something laid Rushborough in her path, she accepted; this is its response. She starts leaving Banjo at home, so she can walk herself to exhaustion without having to take him into consideration. She finds sheep’s bones, broken turf-cutting tools, the ghosts of ditches and foundation walls, but nothing of Brendan. Something more is required of her.
She feels like she’s somewhere other than her own life; like she’s been coming loose from it ever since the morning her dad strolled back into town, and now the last thread has snapped and she’s drifting outside of it altogether. Her hands, cutting potatoes or folding clothes, look like they belong to someone else.
She doesn’t think about missing Cal; she just walks on it all day long, like walking on a broken ankle, and lies down with it at night. The feeling is familiar. After a day or two it comes to her that this is how she felt after Brendan went.
Back then she couldn’t live with it. It ate her mind whole; there was no room left for anything else. She’s older now, and this is something she chose for herself. She has no right to complain.
—
Cal waits for Trey. He has a fridge full of pizza toppings, and a tin of the best wood stain mixed and ready to go, like she’ll somehow sense them and come to their call. He imagines by now she must have heard about him and Lena, although he can’t begin to guess what she’ll make of it. He wants to tell her the truth, but in order to do that, he’d have to see her.
What he gets instead is Nealon, tramping up the drive with his suit jacket over his arm and his sleeves rolled up, blowing and puffing. Cal, with Rip to warn him, is waiting on the step.