Page 61 of 56 Days
Everything is happening so, so fast.
She thinks if she can just have some time to herself, outside, each day, those hours will act as speed bumps and slow it all down.
Just enough to make her feel like she’s in control again.
For today, though, this will have to do.
Ciara does one loop around the railings of Stephen’s Green and then starts back toward the apartment.
She hears the voice before she’s even put her key in the front door.
It’s male and angry and has the amplified, disembodied quality of coming from a speaker. She can’t make out any words but she can instantly identify the emotion: frustration.
Anger, even. Maybe.
Ciara shakes the keys and closes the door behind her with athumpin an attempt to signal her presence, but the voice continues, uninterrupted.
Oliver must be on a video call in the spare bedroom, whose door she can see is standing open. He probably wasn’t expecting her back this soon. The other voice is older, and as she advances down the hall she hears it say, “I thought we’d agreed you wouldn’t hide things from me.”
She goes to the door of the room to pull it closed, to afford Oliver and this man some semblance of privacy. But Oliver is seemingly still unaware that she’s even come in. He’s sitting at their makeshift desk with his back to her. She can see that the screen of his laptop is filled with the face of a man withwhite-grayhair and a tanned, lined face, his webcam positioned at that awkward and always unflattering angle of just below the chin and straight up the nose.
The man is shaking his head as if in disbelief, and Oliver’s posture—shoulders slumped, head down—seems to be communicating some kind of shame or defeat.
“You can’t—” the man on-screen starts, then stops to frown at something over Oliver’s shoulder.
Her, Ciara realizes on a delay.
Oliver whips around, his face a question.
Sorry, she mouths at him, and swiftly pulls the door closed.
She doesn’t hear any more.
Oliver doesn’t come out for another fifteen minutes.
By then, Ciara has made an executive decision and started lunch, which, in keeping with her cooking ability, ischicken-and-cheese toasties ready to be shoved under the grill, served with the limp remains of aready-madesalad bowl that’s been sitting in the fridge since Friday. She has made an effort elsewhere, though, setting two places at the breakfast bar, complete with neatly folded squares of kitchen paper and glasses of iced water sitting on mismatched coasters she found in a drawer.
“Sorry about that,” Oliver says when he emerges. He looks sheepish.
“Is everything okay?”
“Not really, no.” He sees the layout on the breakfast bar. “What’s all this?”
“Day-oneenthusiasm.”
He smiles weakly. “How long before we’re standing at the counter absently eating fistfuls of dry cornflakes straight from the box, do you think?”
“I’d guess Friday.”
She lifts the sandwiches onto a baking tray and slips them under the grill.
“How was your walk?”
“For some reason they’ve locked up Stephen’s Green, which is annoying.” She turns to face him, folds her arms. “What was all that about? Who was that guy?”
Oliver runs a hand through his hair.
“That was my boss,” he tells the kitchen floor. “And that was about...”
