Page 117 of 56 Days
So that their family—what’s left of it—can maybe find some peace.
But lying, it turns out, ishard. She’s told her boss at work that she needs to take a few personal days because of her mother’s worsening health situation, and now Siobhán that she’s come to Dublin to interview for a job that doesn’t exist. She hasn’t even approached Oliver St Ledger yet and already it feels like there are multiple threads to keep hold of, to keep straight in her head.
She won’t be able to do this. She’s just not cut out for this sort of thing.
Ciara goes back into the main room and to the assortment of items laid out on the couch. She’d only packed a bag for an overnight stay but returning to Cork to collect more things was out of the question; there was the expense of another train ticket, but mostly it was Ciara’s absolute certainty that if she left Dublin now, she would never come back.
She’s just about got the nerve to stay.
She knows she doesn’t have enough to travel all the way back here, again.
So she had to go shopping, on an extremely tight budget. The huge Primark on O’Connell Street had provided extra clothes and underwear, toiletries, a notebook. She takes the notebook now, opens it to a fresh page, and scribbles down in bullet points what she told Siobhán.
Just in case.
She’d had to go elsewhere to find the other things she needed. Eason’s for the blue lanyard and compact laminating machine. The Three store on Grafton Street for herpay-as-you-go phone. The stationers next to Oliver’s office for printing her new ID.
There’d been a guy of about eighteen or nineteen working the counter at the time, and he’d handed over the envelope very slowly, staring at her with a weird look on his face. “It’s for a costume party,” Ciara had said to him, at which point he’d tried—and failed—to act like he had no idea what she was referring to.
And then to one of the charity shops on South Great George’s Street for the thing she didn’t know she’d needed.
She’d just happened to be passing by on her roundabout way back from O’Connell Street when she’d seen it in the window, artfully arranged as part of a themed display. There must have been a rash ofspace-themeddonations lately, and the shop was taking advantage. There was a LEGO Saturn V rocket, already built but standing next to its pristine box; a stack of astronaut biographies; and a blanket, mug, andT-shirtsporting NASA logos.
And a little tote bag, showing the space shuttle flying over skyscrapers.
It was stamped with a logo that said “Intrepid,” which, when Ciara googled it on her phone, turned out to be a museum on an aircraft carrier in New York.
Ciara knew absolutely nothing about who Oliver St Ledger was now, and only very little about who he’d once been. If she had to make a list of things that interested him she’d have to guess, and she could only really do it twice.Rugby, based on a photo from nearly two decades ago in a school newsletter—which, she’d have to presume, they didn’t offer the opportunity to do much of in Oberstown, the juvenile detention center. Andspace, based on theT-shirthe was wearing the day of the murder, the one that had ended up covered in someone else’s blood.
It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t likely that either of those things still played any kind of role in Oliver St Ledger’s life. But it was all she had, and she knew absolutely nothing about rugby. She could at least fake the space thing a bit. Read a few Wikipedia pages, rewatchApollo 13.
And just because you were interested in it didn’t necessarily mean you knew every last detail about it. You didn’t have to be obsessive. You could just be the kind of person who was interested enough to have bought yourself a souvenir after a visit to a museum.
Something practical, easily carried around, put on display without looking obvious.
A conversation starter, maybe. Hopefully.
Ciara makes herself a cup of tea and picks up another one of her purchases: the newspaper she bought yesterday that she ended up feeling too sleepy to read when she got back. She spreads it open now, across the piles of things on the couch, and scans thefront-pageheadline.
first irish coronavirus case confirmed.
21 Days Ago
Oliver wills himself to get up from the couch and go into the kitchen, where he stands at the sink and gulps down several glasses of water without turning on any lights. His stomach is growling and upset, but he has no appetite. He can’t imagine eating. He fills his water glass again and goes into the bathroom to get a pill.
There is a moment then, in the bathroom. In front of the cabinet, holding the blister pack in his hand.
The pills are lethal, deadly if you don’t follow the dose. They’re what you do when you’ve exhausted all other options because they’re so damn strong. It’s why he only takes them, at the very most, once a month, and nevereverexceeds the dose.
He counts the pills now: seventeen between the two blister packs.
He doesn’t know how much time passes, but—
Oliver shoves them both back into the medicine cabinet and firmly closes the door. It’s not an option. He’d tried it once, not very hard, and was glad when it didn’t work.A permanent solution to a temporary problem, is what Dan says. Usually right before he says,This too shallpass.
But willthis?
He goes into the bedroom and sees the bed is made, which at first he can’t figure out. But then he remembers: he hasn’t been in it since Wednesday morning, and Wednesday morning Ciara was still here. She must have made it. He spreads his hands across the sheets, trying to detect some trace of her decaying presence, but there’s nothing there.
