The Last Lost Girl Read online

  “Lemon soap?”

  “Shaped like shells,” said Dot Candy. “I bought them as a job lot at the market and put them in all the rooms. The man who sold them to me told me they were handmade with real lemon juice. I think he told the truth because the place stank of lemons for about eighteen months.”

  “I suppose you haven’t kept the old guestbooks?” said Jacqueline.

  “They’re in there somewhere,” said Dot Candy. She indicated the counter with a tilt of her head. “If there’s something in particular you’re looking for then just say so.”

  “No – there’s nothing,” said Jacqueline. “Thank you. I’ll just be off to bed now.”

  “I hope you’re comfortable in your room? I left you a jug of fresh water. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “Thank you, Dot. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” said Dot Candy.

  Jacqueline was sure she was watching her walk away.

  She couldn’t sleep; her body felt exhausted but her mind wouldn’t rest. She wondered if it was because she hadn’t had a drink all day. At two-thirty she got out of bed, put his cardigan on over her T-shirt and shorts and went downstairs in her bare feet. The countertop creaked when she lifted the flap and she froze. She stood without moving for a few minutes and listened, but nothing stirred in the house. She slipped in behind the counter and switched on an old-fashioned table lamp on its top. Dot had said the old guest books were somewhere here. She dropped down on her hunkers and began rummaging through stacks of files and papers on some shelving under the counter.

  “Which year are you looking for?”

  Jacqueline shot to her feet.

  Dot Candy was leaning against the staircase. The light was too dim to read the expression in her eyes.

  “1983,” said Jacqueline. Then a thought struck her. Why not start at the beginning, just in case? “Actually, no – if you don’t mind I’ll take a look at 1976 first.”

  “That would be one of the first ones. We only opened the house to guests in 1974. Come out and let me in – I’ll find it quicker than you will.”

  Jacqueline slipped out and Dot took her place and disappeared under the counter. Jacqueline waited; she felt like a creeping thief. Dot reappeared with a wine-coloured leather-bound book in her hand.

  “There you are – that covers the year you want and the next three or four as well. If you don’t find what you need in there, feel free to look through the rest of them tomorrow. Only, I’d take that to bed with me if I was you – your feet will get cold.”

  Jacqueline reached out and took the book. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no right. It’s just that I have reason to believe someone I knew once stayed here. Only I’m not sure when exactly, so I didn’t know which one I needed.”

  “You only had to ask,” said Dot Candy. Again there was no evidence of judgement or chagrin in her face or voice. She came out from under the stairs and closed down the flap. “Fancy a nightcap?”

  “No, thank you,” said Jacqueline. “I won’t. It’s a bit late and I’d really like to get a start on this …”

  “Okay, night then.”

  “Goodnight, Dot, and thank you.”

  Jacqueline crept back up the stairs. Why hadn’t she just asked earlier when she’d had the opportunity, when Dot had caught her with the book in her hand? Why did she have to go creeping around in the night? She felt like a weasel, she felt like a worm, she felt like a “little sneak”. And why hadn’t she accepted the offer of the nightcap?

  She had reached the second landing when she thought she heard the front door opening. She peered over the rail into the hall below and saw the top of a woman’s head. Another smaller head was resting on the woman’s shoulder. Dot Candy came toward them and reached out and stroked the child’s hair. Jacqueline carried on toward her room.

  Chapter 17

  1976

  Something is wrong but Gayle won’t tell. Jacqueline can hear them whispering in the kitchen. “Don’t mind him, Gayle, he’s nothing but an old creep,” says Lilly. “Everyone knows that. He’s always saying stuff like that to girls – just don’t let it upset you.”

  “Who said what? Why is Gayle upset?” Jacqueline wants to know.

  “Get lost!” Lilly says. “Mind your own business, Little Big Ears!”

  Later, Goretti Quinn calls and Jacqueline hears them arguing in Lilly’s room. She goes to the bathroom, flushes the toilet and turns on the tap, then leaves the water running and sneaks back to Lilly’s door.

  Goretti Quinn is shouting. “My da never said that! She’s making it up!”

  “Are you calling my sister a liar, Goretti Quinn?”

  “Well, why is she saying those things about my da? She’s making out that he’s some kind of weirdo!” Goretti Quinn sounds like she’s nearly crying.

  “So you are calling my sister a liar,” says Lilly. “Then you can get out of my room and don’t come back!”

  Jacqueline makes a run for the bathroom. She is just in time. Lilly’s door bangs shut and Jacqueline listens to the sound of footsteps thumping down the stairs. The front door bangs and Jacqueline smiles. Maybe Goretti Quinn will never come back.

  Jacqueline wakes to the sound of shouting from downstairs. Gayle groans and her bed creaks as she turns over.

  On the landing, Jacqueline leans over the banister. Lilly, Daddy and her mother are in the hall. Daddy is wearing his pyjamas and her mother is in her blue nightdress. Lilly is all dressed up in her tight purple-velvet bellbottoms and a lilac tank top. In her platform sandals, she seems to Jacqueline to tower over her parents.

  “It’s twenty to one in the morning,” says Daddy, “and I’ll ask you again, where have you been?”

  “There’s no need to raise your voice, Frank,” says Jacqueline’s mother. “Lilly, your daddy’s been sitting up for hours worrying about you.”

  “Well, I didn’t ask him to sit up and I didn’t ask him to worry either.”

  “Now, Lilly, don’t give back cheek,” says her mother.

  “You were with some young fella, weren’t you?” says Daddy.

  “I was with Goretti.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Lilly! I saw you.”

  “Ha!” yells Lilly. “Did you hear that? He WAS spying on me – I knew it!”

  “Frank,” says Jacqueline’s mother.

  “What?” says Daddy. “I waited up for her, I saw her out of the window and she was with some rock ape.”

  “He’s not a rock ape,” says Lilly. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  Jacqueline decides to make herself comfortable. She creeps down three steps and sits on the step above the little landing. It’s the perfect place to peep around the corner and see without being seen.

  “I’ll decide if he’s your boyfriend or not,” says Daddy. “Who is this Romeo anyway?”

  “For God’s sake, can we leave Shakespeare out of it?” says Lilly. “You don’t know him so what does it matter?”

  “So how old is this joker then?” says Daddy.

  “Seventeen.”

  “Has he got his Leaving Cert?”

  Jacqueline can’t help smiling. Daddy always wants to know if people have their Leaving Cert.

  “He’s left school,” says Lilly.

  “So he hasn’t got his Leaving Certificate?”

  “Alright, he hasn’t got his Leaving Certificate. Are you happy now? No Leaving Cert – quelle horreur!”

  Jacqueline smiles again. Daddy hates it when Lilly talks French at him.

  “Don’t get smart with me, I’m warning you, Lilly.”

  “I’m not being smart,” says Lilly. “You’re always telling me to learn another language, so now I’m speaking French.”

  “Never mind what language it is,” says Daddy. “Cheek is cheek. So if he doesn’t go to school, what does he do?”

  “He has a job, if you must know.”

  “What sort of job?”

  “What does it matter what sort of job?”


  “That good, is it? Well, you can stay away from him from now on.”

  “Frank, can you not just –”

  “Don’t side with her against me, Stella,” Daddy says, his voice risen even further.

  “I’m not siding with anyone – and don’t start shouting at me, Frank. I just think you’re being a bit too hard on her.”

  “And you’re too soft on her! She has you wrapped around her finger. If it was up to you she’d be out walking the streets every night of the week!”

  “What am I supposed to do?” says Lilly. “You don’t like it when I hang around in a crowd, but you won’t let me go out with anyone either. You just don’t want me to have any friends, do you?”

  “You have your sisters, don’t you?” says Daddy. “And the Quinn girl –”

  “Yeah, and you don’t like her either,” says Lilly.

  “And you have your school friends, or are they not the kind of friends you had in mind?”

  “So you’re saying I’m not allowed to go near a boy, is that it?”

  “What about that nice chap who called here around St. Patrick’s Day?” says Daddy. “I gave you permission to go to a dance with him, didn’t I?”

  “Who? You don’t mean Sexy Sexton?”

  Jacqueline puts her hand to her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud.

  “Don’t be vulgar now, Lilly,” says her mother.

  “Edmund Sexton is a lovely young fella,” says Daddy.

  Jacqueline thinks of Lilly calling Sexy Sexton a long streak of paralysed piss. She wishes she could see the look on Lilly’s face.

  “He’s a drip,” says Lilly. “He wanted me to go to some stupid céilí with him!”

  “What’s wrong with a céilí?” says Daddy. “At least he had the manners to come to the front door and ask me to my face if he could take my daughter out.”

  “Yeah, like it was the 18th century!” says Lilly. “My God, I’m like a prisoner in this house. You won’t even let me go to the marquee and everyone else I know is allowed to go.”

  “There’ll be plenty of time for marquees when you finish your schooling,” says Daddy. “Or maybe you’d prefer to throw the towel in and just get a job in a factory?”

  “Don’t be silly, Frank,” says Jacqueline’s mother. “Of course she wouldn’t.”

  “What’s silly about it?” says Daddy. “If she wants to streetwalk, then what’s the point of sending her to school? What’s the point of that pile of new schoolbooks you spent all that money on?”

  Jacqueline thinks about the stack of brand-new, sweet-smelling books piled high on the sideboard in the sitting room, just waiting to be covered. Lilly is the only one in the family who does not have to have second-hand books. Gayle has to use Lilly’s books and, by the time Jacqueline gets them, they have both Lilly and Gayle’s names written on the front page, and marks and scribbles all over them.

  “Of course there’s a point in sending her to school,” says Jacqueline’s mother. “Lilly has a good mind.”

  “Then she’d better use it,” says Daddy, “and forget about boys and dances until she gets her exams.”

  “Mam, did you hear him?” says Lilly. “He’s saying I’m not allowed to go out with anyone now. Until I’m seventeen! It’s not fair – he’s mean and he’s a big spy and I hate him! I hate him!”

  Before Jacqueline has time to move, Lilly is thundering up the stairs. She almost falls over Jacqueline and stares down at her.

  “Oh my God,” she says, “this house is full of spies. Get out of my way!” The toe of her shoe nudges Jacqueline hard in the side and Jacqueline crouches against the wall.

  Lilly pushes past her and Jacqueline hears her bedroom door slam shut.

  “What’s going on?” says Gayle, when Jacqueline goes back into her own room. Gayle’s voice is full of sleep.

  “Nothing,” says Jacqueline. “Gayle, what did Slinky Quinn do to upset you?”

  “How do you know about that?” says Gayle, and her voice does not sound sleepy anymore.

  “I just do. What did he do?”

  “He didn’t do anything,” says Gayle. “Just go to sleep, Jacqueline.”

  Jacqueline pulls the sheet over her head. She has no idea why she is crying. The kick hardly hurt at all.

  Chapter 18

  Afterwards

  It was too early to be awake but Jacqueline knew she would never get back to sleep. The yellow room cupped the sunshine and dazzled the eyes. She got out of bed, opened the window and surveyed the day. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and the sea was bluer – she had come to the seaside, so what did she expect? She turned and glanced at the guestbook in the chair where she had left it last night – she should have just started with the book from 1983. The chance of finding Lilly’s name in the 1976 book had been almost non-existent and she had known it was. But while it lasted, it had been a hope, however slender, and now it was gone.

  She picked up the small kettle and went to fill it from the bathroom sink. When it had boiled, she fiddled with the miniscule UHT milk pods, the teabags and paper sachets of sugar and made her tea in the exquisite china cup. She drank it sitting in the window seat with the sun-warmed glass at her back.

  After she had showered and dressed it was still only seven-thirty – she had asked for her breakfast at nine. She read for another half an hour then picked up the guestbook and carried it downstairs. The hall door was open again and she left the guestbook on the countertop and went outside into the bright sunshine.

  A movement caught her eye and she turned in time to catch a puffed-up marmalade cat sloping round a corner of the house. Moving slowly, so as not to spook it, Jacqueline followed. But the cat slunk with ease through the narrow bars of a gate and threw a look over its shoulder at her.

  “Okay, Skinny Malink,” said Jacqueline. “No need to be so smug about it.”

  She unlatched the gate and let herself into a small walled garden, sketchily planted with herbs. There seemed nowhere to hide, but the cat had disappeared. In the far wall there was a second gate. Jacqueline walked toward it, opened it and went through onto the terrace at the back of the house. The cat was nowhere to be seen here either and she stood for a moment, taking in the beauty of the garden. Something winked in the sunlight and she crossed the terrace, walked down the flight of steps and crossed the lawn to a side wall.

  The bicycle looked like it had seen better days. Jacqueline touched the handlebars and made to ring the bell, but drew her hand back at the last minute and walked away, following a zig-zag path through a belt of shrubs. It led her under an archway, skirted a scummy-looking ornamental pond and ended at a small stone enclosure. Two of the lichen-freckled walls had collapsed and the interior was choked with weeds and nettles. On the ground, seven aluminium bowls were laid out close together. An eighth bowl was set apart. The air smelled of cat. From here, the garden narrowed and sloped to a high boundary wall.

  Jacqueline turned back. Under the archway, another cat sat watching her approach. It was entirely white but for one peculiar small black marking on its chin.

  “Pretty puss,” said Jacqueline.

  The cat laid back its ears then hissed and bolted.

  “Unfriendly lot of felines,” said Jacqueline.

  She retraced her steps to the house and went back to her room where she killed more time by washing her hands and checking her emails on her phone. At five to nine she went downstairs again.

  She stood in the doorway to the dining room. It was not a particularly attractive room. The walls were covered in a reproduction Victorian paper the colour of overripe plums; the furniture was mahogany and ugly. On the plus side, it was a quiet and peaceful room. A single table had been set in readiness in the window, presumably for her. A band of sunshine lay across the pristine white cloth and made the silver appear to quiver. Jacqueline thought about the leather-bound book she had scanned from cover to cover before falling asleep last night. She needed to talk to Dot Candy. She sighed then turned
her back on the peaceful room and followed the twin smells of frying fish and bacon to the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” said Jacqueline.

  Dot, who was at the stove, spun round, a spatula in her hand. “Has anyone ever told you that you move like a cat?” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jacqueline. Little Sneak.

  “Well, never mind,” said Dot. “You decided to keep me company then?”

  “If it’s alright with you?” said Jacqueline. She thought, I should have gone to the dining room – she didn’t mean it when she said I could eat here – she doesn’t want –

  “Wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t,” said Dot. She waved the spatula in the direction of the table. “Sit down. I’ll just open the doors and let some sunshine in, then I’ll bring you your food. Have you changed your mind about a cooked breakfast?”

  “No, just tea and toast will be fine, thanks,” said Jacqueline.

  She went to the table and pulled out a chair, hung her bag over the back of it and sat down.

  Dot crossed to the door and flung it wide. Sunshine falling in a wide band across the flagged floor made a flame of her thin red hair. Today she was dressed in tight black leggings and a black, bat-winged T-shirt whose scooped neckline showed the sun-weathered skin of her neck and chest. Jacqueline wondered how old she was – early sixties perhaps.

  “That’s a good-looking day,” said Dot.

  She brought a pot of tea to the table and toast in a silver rack.

  “I know,” said Jacqueline. “I’ve been up a while. I had a walk around the garden. How many do you have for breakfast this morning?”

  “Just yourself.”

  “Really?” Jacqueline’s eyes strayed to the cooking food.

  “That’s for the cats,” said Dot.

  “Oh – actually I met them earlier. They don’t appear to like me very much.”

  “How many did you meet?”

  “Two. Why, how many are there?”

  “More than two,” said Dot. She placed a butter dish on the table, then a dish of marmalade, one of jam and one of honey.