Page 88 of 56 Days
He thinks of one in particular now, from back in London, from last July.
A group of them, crowded around a picnic table at afood-truckfestival in Shoreditch, with a canopy of string lights strung above their heads. The bulbs grew a bit brighter for every inch the sun slipped lower in the sky.
He thinks of the exact moment he realized that Lucy, sitting beside him, had draped her arm casually across his thigh, and how he waited for her to realize and remove it, but she didn’t, and instead she’d turned and met his eye and told him silently that she knew it was there, that she’d put it there on purpose, and that she’d done it because she wanted him in a way that she didn’t want the others.
He’d felt a heat start to spread across his chest then—and not the kind he was used to. Not the burning, dangerous, panicked kind that tightened his windpipe and made it difficult to breathe, but a warm glow of happiness, of belonging, ofsafety.
But unbeknownst to him, even then, at that moment, everything was already falling apart.
And now, it’s happening again.
With Ciara, who makes him feel like thatallthe time.
And even more so.
Oliver walks in the direction of Georgie’s with the envelope shoved in his back pocket, so acutely aware of its presence, it may as well have a pulse. Halfway there, he stops at an empty parking lot into which a neighboring coffee shop has moved a couple of picnic tables. The coffee shop has been closed since the start of lockdown, and the entire spot is in shadow. Oliver goes to the table farthest from the street and sits with his back to it.
Pulls out the envelope, rips it open.
There’s a single piece of paper inside: a white sheet, folded horizontally into thirds.
He takes a deep breath and unfolds it—
And blinks in surprise, because the paper is completely blank.
He turns it over, checks the back. Nothing there either. He goes back to the envelope and looks inside, looks at the underside of the flap. Blank there too. Why on earth would someone send him—
To see if he really is him, he realizes.
Which means he’s just made a terrible mistake.
It would’ve been so easy to neutralize this threat. He sees it all the time: other residents receive mail in error, usually for former tenants, and they leave these envelopes and packages sitting on top of the letterboxes with things likeNot at this addressandReturn to senderscribbled across them. All he had to do was the same, only he didn’t even need to write anything. Just leaving the envelope there would’ve communicated that he wasn’t him, that that wasn’t his name, and without an apartment number he didn’t know who itwasintended for. Yes, other people might have seen the envelope as they collected their own post, but his name wasn’t in the public domain. It was illegal to put it there. All he needed to do was let the person who’d thought they knew it know they were wrong.
But instead, he’d taken the bait.
And in taking the envelope, confirmed for whomever had sent it that their search had led them to the right door.
That heisOliver St Ledger, Boy B from the Mill River case, notorious child murderer.
He crumples up the paper and lets it fall.
He puts his head in his hands and cries.
23 Days Ago
Yesterday morning, Oliver had been what he told her is calleddoomscrolling—mindlessly browsing bad news stories on his phone—when he’d come across an article that said movies likeContagionandOutbreak,virus thrillers that had come out years before, were rocketing to the top of streaming and rental charts all over the world. When Ciara said she’d never seenContagion, Oliver had snapped his fingers and said, “That’s tonight sorted, so.” She’s reminded of a scene from it now as she leaves the midday sunshine behind and enters the gaping entrance of Stephen’s Green shopping center. She’d been surprised to see it open; shopping centers, as far as she knows, are supposed to be closed.
The last time she was here, the entrance was a bustling meeting place with steady streams of shoppers going in and out; today, it’s just her and the masked security guard making sure she avails of thehand-sanitizerstation and follows the newly implementedone-waysystem once inside.
After passing through the dim of the entrance, Ciara emerges into an enormous atrium of glass, light, and iron girders painted white. Storefronts line the balcony levels, which rise two stories above her head. Even though she can’t immediately see every corner, it’s obvious the place is deserted, lights off, shutters rolled down. Her footsteps squeak on the linoleum floor and the background music, playing from unseen speakers, echoes around the space.
The shops on the ground floor are all closed too, it looks like, and access to the higher levels is forbidden, the stairways roped off and the elevator locked. A handwritten sign warns that the public toilets are closed, which immediately makes her feel like she needs to go. She’s wondering why on earth the place is even open at all when she turns a corner and finds out: one of its tenants, Dunnes Stores, is too.
Ciara feels elated, almost giddy, at the thought of being able to walk around a department store, to potentially shop for things that aren’t edible—or even just tolookat them, since she can’t really afford to buy. She makes a beeline for the door where two female staff members stand in plastic visors and latex gloves, wearing tense expressions. They point her to a small line inside waiting patiently in front of a down escalator.
“Grocery,” one of the women says when they see Ciara’s confusion.
She doesn’t need to buy any food and she knows that Oliver wouldn’t love to hear that she’d done an extra, unnecessary trip on her own. But she’s here now, she thinks, and if she just goes down for a look, for a walk around, who’s to know?
