Jack sighed and tried another number. All around him on this sunny day in Dublin, people were lying out on the grass of St. Stephen’s Green. Ducks were waddling around his bench, searching for bits of bread people had dropped while feeding them. They quacked, pecked, and hopped back into the glistening water, distracting him momentarily. After spending more than an hour trying to find his way around Dublin’s system of one-way streets, and then being stuck in traffic jams, he’d finally managed to find a parking space around St. Stephen’s Green. He had an hour to spare before his session with Dr. Burton, something he was growing increasingly nervous about. Jack wasn’t good at discussing his feelings with anyone at the best of times, never mind an entire hour of searching his brain for pretend worries with a psychiatrist, all just to find information about Sandy Shortt. Columbo he was not, and he was growing tired of trying to find indirect ways of getting answers.
He had been calling through the list on Sandy’s phonebook all morning, leaving messages with all those who had contacted her over the past few days and those she had made appointments with in previous weeks. He wasn’t getting anywhere; so far he’d left six voice messages, he’d spoken to two people who were extremely guarded about giving out any information, and he’d listened for far too long to her fuming landlord, who seemed more upset about not being paid yet that month than where Sandy was.
“Let me warn you now, sonny, before she breaks your heart,” he’d growled. “Unless you want to be hanging around for days on end, waiting for her, then I suggest you cut your ties with her now. You’re not the only one, I can tell you that.” He’d laughed heartily. “Don’t be fooled by her. She brings them back all the time, thinking none of us hear her. I’m right above; I hear her comings and goings, if you’ll pardon the pun. You mark my words; she’ll turn up here in a few days wondering what all the fuss was about, probably thinking she was gone for two hours instead of two weeks. She does it all the time. But if you do see her before then, tell her to get that money to me ASAP or she’ll be tossed out on her arse.”
Jack sighed. If he was going to give up, now was the time to do it. But he couldn’t. Here he was in Dublin, a few minutes away from meeting someone who, he imagined, knew more about what went on in Sandy’s head than anybody else. He didn’t want to pack it all in and head home to…nothing. His idea of Sandy was changing. Through their conversations on the phone he had painted a picture of her in his mind: organized, businesslike, in love with her job, chatty, personable. The more he dug around into her life, the more that image of her altered. She was still all of those things, but more. She was becoming more real to him. This wasn’t a phantom he was chasing; she was a real, complex, layered person, no longer just the helpful stranger he’d spoken to on the phone. Maybe Garda Turner was right, maybe she’d just had enough and was hiding from the world for a while, but that was something her counselor would surely know.
Just as he was about to dial another number, his phone rang.
“Is that Jack?” a woman asked quietly.
“Yes,” he replied. “Who is this?”
“This is Mary Stanley. You left a message on my phone about Sandy Shortt.”
“Oh, yes, Mary, hello. Thank you so much for returning my call. It was a peculiar message, I know.”
“Yes.” She was guarded, just as the others had been, unsure of this strange man who was looking for their friend without any viable reason whatsoever.
“You can trust me, Mary. I mean no harm to Sandy. I don’t know how well you know her, if you’re a relative or friend, but let me explain myself first.” He told the story of how he contacted Sandy, arranged to meet her, passed her at the petrol station, and his efforts since he had lost contact with her. He left out the reason for his meeting her, feeling that wasn’t relevant. “I don’t want to raise any alarm bells,” he continued, “but I’ve been calling people she seems to have maintained close contact with, just to see if they’ve seen or heard from her lately.”
“I received a phone call from a Garda Graham Turner this morning,” Mary said, and Jack wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. It was probably both.
“Yes, I contacted him, I’m concerned for Sandy.” Jack had called Garda Turner that morning and told him about discovering Sandy’s watch, hoping it would make him sit up and take notice. It obviously had.
“I’m worried too,” Mary said, and Jack’s ears pricked to attention.
“How did he know to call you?” Jack asked, meaning, Who are you? How do you know Sandy?
“Who else was on your call list?” she asked, ignoring his question, sounding lost in thought.
He flicked open his notepad. “Peter Dempsey, Clara Keane, Ailish O’Brien, Tony Watts-do you want me to keep going?”
“No, that’s enough. You got your hands on a list of Sandy’s?”
“She left her phone and address book behind. They were the only ways I could look for her.” Jack tried not to sound guilty.
“Did somebody you know go missing?” Her tone wasn’t soft but it wasn’t harsh either. He was taken aback by the question, asked so directly as though missing people happened all the time.
“Yes, my brother Donal.” A lump swelled in Jack’s throat every time he mentioned his brother.
“Donal Ruttle, yes, that’s right. I remember reading that in the paper,” she said, and was quiet again in thought. “All those you’ve mentioned are people whose family members have gone missing,” Mary explained, “including me. My son, Bobby, has been gone for three years.”
“I’m very sorry,” Jack said softly. It would make sense that all of Sandy’s recent contacts were work-related; he had yet to come across any friends of hers.
“Oh, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. So let me get this straight, we all enlisted Sandy to help us find our loved ones and now you’re enlisting us to help you find Sandy?”
Even though Jack was on the phone, his face blushed. “Yes, I guess so.”
“Well, whether the others have replied to you yet or not, I don’t care. I’ll speak for them. You can count us all in. Sandy’s very special to us all; we’ll do everything we can to help find her. The quicker we find her, the quicker she can find my Bobby.”
They were Jack’s thoughts exactly.
Unable to sleep for the remainder of the night, I lay awake pondering the whereabouts of my watch. My head was dizzy with possibilities, for after finding myself here, there were now a plethora of places I could imagine it inhabiting. Just as I was picturing a world where watches ate, slept, and married one another with grandfather clocks as heads of state, pocket watches as the intellectuals, waterproof watches that inhabited the waters, diamond watches the aristocracy, and digital watches the mere workers, Joseph’s creeping into the house stopped me. I had observed him for what I guessed was a further hour walking back up and down the road looking wide-eyed and fierce in his attempts to find my watch. I now knew what I looked like during my searches, focused and in the zone, completely unaware of all life around, particularly oblivious to a person hiding behind a tree not far away.
A half hour after I’d returned to my bed, Joseph made his way quietly, but not quietly enough, into the house. I pressed my ear to the wall as I tried to hear the mumblings between him and Helena in the room next to me. The timber was warm against my cheek and I closed my eyes, momentarily hit by a pang of homesickness and a longing for the warm heaving chest I used to rest my head upon in bed. Then there was silence and, feeling like a caged lion, I decided to slip out of the house before anybody stirred again.
Outside, the market stalls were being set up for another busy day of trading. There was the colorful sound of banter mixed with birdsong, laughter, and shouting as crates and boxes were being unpacked and stacked. I closed my eyes, hit by my second longing for home that day, and imagined myself as a child walking hand in hand with my mother through the organic farmers’ markets in the Market Yard in Carrick-on-Shannon, the scintillating smell of the fruit and vegetables, so ripe and vibrant, enticing everybody to touch, smell, and taste. I opened my eyes again and was back here.