Page 116 of 56 Days
Through the fog ofhalf-sleep, Ciara reaches for her bedside table where it’s always plugged in overnight, but there’s no phoneorbedside table.
When she opens her eyes, she finds an unfamiliar scene: a small living room filled with mismatched furniture, grubby white walls that could do with a fresh coat of paint, sunshine streaming throughpaper-thincurtains. And she appears to be lying in a bed in sheets she doesn’t recognize right in the middle of it, which doesn’t make any sense until... The last dregs of sleep leave her like clouds parting in the sky, and she remembers.
She couldn’t afford to stay in the hotelandkeep paying her rent back home, so she’d found a cheaper alternative via Airbnb. The owner was surprisingly agreeable, happy to take cash payments and to let the place out week to week; it was theoff-season, she figured, and he was probably happy with any level of occupancy. But then she’d collected the key, let herself in, and discovered the truth: the photos online had been taken at extremely generous angles and the guy wasluckyto have anyone paying any amount of money to stay there at all.
The ringing is coming from the tiny kitchen, tucked away on the other side of the room. Ciara throws back the sheets and hurries toward the sound, finding her phone vibrating angrily on the Formica countertop.
SHIV, the screen says.
Shit.
Ciara knew that, sooner or later, she’d have to explain herself to her sister, but she was hoping for more of thelaterbit.
“Hello?” Her voice comes out croaky and dry. She tries again, does marginally better. “Hello?”
“Oh, so youarealive,” Siobhán snaps. She’s outdoors; Ciara can hear the sound of passing traffic and whipping wind. “Get up and let me in. I’m downstairs. Is your buzzer broken or something? I’ve been pressing it for ages.”
Ciara can’t think of a single other Sunday when her sister randomly showed up at her front door, but ofcourseshe would do it today. The woman must have a sixth sense.
“I’m not there,” Ciara says. “Am I supposed to be?”
“Where the hell are you?”
“In Dublin.”
“InDublin?”
“I have a job interview.”
“Ajob interview?”
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say, Shiv?”
“Yes, until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
“An opportunity came up,” Ciara says carefully. She has practiced this but needs to avoid making it sound that way. “We have a new property opening up here in the summer and they were looking for someone from Events to be on the opening team. I applied for it months ago. I’d forgotten about it, to be honest, until they sent me an email last week. I can’t see myself taking it, especially not now, with Mam. But I figured I may as well go along. For the experience. It’s first thing tomorrow morning but I came up yesterday to, you know...”
“Abuse your employee discount?”
That doesn’t kick in until she’s worked for the company for twelve months, but since it’s an easy explanation, Ciara says, “Exactly. Yeah.”
A beat passes.
“Are you sure about thenot-taking-it bit?” Siobhán asks. “Because with Mam and everything...”
“I’m sure,” Ciara says. “Why were you calling over?”
“Because I made the mistake of drinking a liter of coffee before I left for my walk.”
“Go buy another one at the café on the corner. Millie’s. You can use the bathroom in there.”
“I think I’ll have to. It’s Situation Critical.”
Ciara ends the call and immediately feels terrible about lying to her sister. She wishes she could tell her the truth, which is that the truth is what she’s chasing.
But Siobhán doesn’t even want to hear Oliver St Ledger’sname, let alone that Ciara has been playing internet detective and has now temporarily moved to another city to see if she can accidentally on purpose cross paths with him and ask him questions about that day, the one that cracked open a fault line through the heart of their family.
To discover the full horror of it, whatever it may be.
