Page 108 of 56 Days
“Why did you do it?”
“Ciara, youknow me. I am who you think I am, who I’ve been these last few weeks.Thisis me. The real me. And I wanted you to see that, to know that, before all this—”
She jerks her hand away, takes a step back.
“Why did you doit? Back then? Why didn’t you put a stop to it? Why didn’t yousavehim?”
She’s crying harder now, cheeks glistening with tears.
“I don’t know,” Oliver says. “I really don’t know. I’ve thought about it so many times... For years it wasallthe time. But I can’t explain it. It just happened, I wasn’t thinking... A therapist told me once that when you’re that age, you have no sense of permanence. It’s hard for you to intellectualizeforever. You understand the difference between right and wrong, and yousortof understand that your actions have consequences, but you don’t really accept that those consequences can’t be undone. It’s not an excuse, but... that made sense to me. And things like this, Ciara, they’re not about good and evil. I wasn’t somepsychopath-in-training. Things happened, a series of things, that created this moment in time when Shane and I made a decision we shouldn’t have and, you know what? That happens all the time. But in our case, the stupid thing we did had the worst consequence imaginable.”
Ciara starts moving toward the bedroom door. “I have to go.”
“Please don’t, just stay, for—”
“You don’t get to ask me foranything,” she spits at him.
She goes into the bedroom, pulls her suitcase up onto the bed and starts throwing her things into it.
He watches, helpless, hanging back at the door.
“Where will you go?”
“Back to my place,” she says.
“For how long?”
“I don’t fuckingknow, Oliver.”
“I’m just trying to figure out—”
She reels on him. “You’ve just told me youkilled a child.” It comes out as a scream whose volume seems to surprise even her.
He nods, acknowledging this.
“When Iwasa child,” he says quietly.
This freezes her in place for a second, and hope rises in his heart.
But then she turns back to the bed and zips up the case. Lifts it by its handle and plonks its wheels on the floor. Turns around and waits for him to step aside so she can get out of the room without having to touch him.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I don’t know—”
She pushes past him and leaves.
64 Days Ago
The man Ciara thought could be Oliver St Ledger worked on the fourth floor of a glossy new office building that loomed over all the other, older, smaller ones on Baggot Street Upper—according to what she could glean from Google Street View. The firm of estate agents who’d been tasked with finding tenants for it had made a slick video showcasing the building’s interior and posted it to their website. Inside were four floors’ worth ofglass-boxoffices, a reception desk large enough to accommodate three gatekeepers in the lobby, and electronic turnstiles protecting access to the stairs and elevator.
You couldn’t just walk in and wander around.
She’d need a reason to be there.
Pretending to be a client, she figured, would be the quickest way to get found out; she would have no idea what to say or who to ask for—and what were the chances that, even if she managed to keep up some kind of pretense for a while, the firm would choose Oliver Kennedy to meet with her? Going by the website, he seemed like a junior member of staff.
She’d thought about impersonating a courier who was delivering something that had to be signed for, but almost immediately that plan revealed itself to have two flaws. One of those three receptionists would probably insist on taking it off her hands and, even if they allowed her upstairs to deliver the package in person, what could it possibly contain that wouldn’t immediately set alarm bells ringing for the recipient? If Oliver KennedywasOliver St Ledger, he’d spent his whole adult life protecting his real identity. Someone else might dismiss it as amix-upor mistake, buthewouldn’t. And then he’d be on high alert.
Which just left one option, as far as Ciara could see: apply to work there.
