The Last Lost Girl Read online

  Listening to her sister it occurred to Jacqueline, not for the first time in her life, that she had inherited her mother’s woeful housekeeping gene. It was probably just as well that her own rented house in Donegal did not have nets. She promised Gayle that she would wash the nets.

  “And the heavy curtains in the sitting room need cleaning too, but they can wait until my next visit. I’ll be over as soon as the baby is out of Intensive Care and Alison doesn’t need me so much. I just can’t leave her right now while she’s still so anxious.”

  “How are they both?”

  “They’re fine. Alison is doing well and the baby is the most adorable little scrap you’ve ever seen. I think she looks like … well, never mind, I know you’re not a baby person, Jacqueline. So anyway, you’ll need to do a good shop. Frozen vegetables – fill up the freezer with frozen vegetables – Dad would live on onions and tinned peas if you let him. Oh, and this time of the year I always check to see if he needs new underpants and vests for the winter.”

  “Do you really?” Jacqueline mentally baulked at the idea of rootling through her father’s underwear drawer.

  “I have to,” said Gayle. “He’d wear them until they fell apart if I didn’t. And make sure to check the towels. There’s a stack of new ones in the airing cupboard but Dad just goes on using the same old worn-out rags.”

  Jacqueline promised to check the towels.

  “And you’ll stay for the three weeks, won’t you, Jacqueline? Dad will expect you to, the same as I always do, at least until after …” Her voice trailed into silence.

  “You can say it, Gayle: at least until after the anniversary. I already told you there’s no problem.”

  “I know you did – it’s just that I’ve always come home in July – I’ve never missed a year before.”

  “Well, except when Alison was born.”

  “Right, of course, except that year … sorry, I’ve lost my train of thought. So you’ll be able stay for three weeks … that’s great, Jacqueline.”

  “No problem,” said Jacqueline. “I’m long overdue a trip home. I didn’t make it this Christmas after all.”

  “Nor the Christmas before that …”

  “Well, yes, but that was because of the snow, Gayle.”

  “It’s three years since the snow now, Jacqueline.”

  “It can’t be.”

  “It is. I remember because that was my year to stay in England for Christmas, so when you couldn’t make it down Dad had to go and have his Christmas dinner with Auntie Carol at the last minute. And the year after that, I came home and you were supposed to come too, but you didn’t. But never mind all that!” Gayle’s tone lifted a couple of notches as though to indicate that she, for one, was determined not to mind all that. “The important thing is that you’ll be with him until after the … anniversary.”

  Jacqueline agreed that that was the important thing.

  The hall smelled of roasting meat and cabbage. “You must be starving,” he said. “I got you a bit of lamb.”

  “A sandwich would have done, Dad.”

  “You’ll need more than a sandwich after travelling from the wilds of Donegal, but it’s probably cremated by now anyway. I was expecting you earlier.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I hope you had your own dinner?”

  “Don’t you worry about me.” He started up the stairs. “How long did it take you anyway? Best part of four hours, I’d say.”

  “You can do it in three now, Dad.”

  “Isn’t that marvellous? I must take a spin up there one of these days.”

  It was a time-honoured routine and Jacqueline played her part as she always did. “You should, Dad, I think you’d really like it.”

  On the landing, he pushed open the door ahead of them and stood aside. “There you are, I made up the bed for you.”

  Jacqueline blinked at the bright-green walls, the duvet with its enormous lime flowers, the green velveteen curtains. “You’ve had it done up,” she said.

  “Just a lick of paint and some new curtains. Is it a bit green?”

  Jacqueline thought of her mother saying, “Your father can only see two colours, red and green.”

  She smiled. “No, it’s lovely, Dad. And you took up the carpet.”

  “That’s been done these two years now – that oul’ carpet held the dirt. Right, well, get yourself settled and I’ll go and get your dinner on the table.”

  “Thanks, Dad, I won’t be long.”

  Jacqueline waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps on the stairs. She went out of the room again and looked at the door at the farthest end of the landing. For a brief moment, it was as though the sign was there again, written in her sister’s bold hand: STOP THE WORLD, I WANNA GET OFF!

  Jacqueline walked to the door and turned the handle. Here, too, the carpet had been taken up and the floorboards stained. Otherwise, everything was as it had been the last time she had looked: a double bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a chair. Just a room.

  “It doesn’t make sense to have two growing girls stuck in there together, Stella, not now when there’s a room lying empty.”

  “Empty? How can you say it’s empty when it’s full of Lilly’s things? All her clothes, the bed where she slept? It’s Lilly’s room, do you hear me, Frank? It’s Lilly’s room and it will be Lilly’s room until the day I die.”

  Jacqueline’s eyes went to the ceiling. Gayle had mentioned that the roof had leaked during the last heavy rainfall of winter. Jacqueline thought of all those things bundled into bags and boxes: cheesecloth tops, Tshirts and flared jeans, the shoes and the posters, the bundles of Jackie magazines, the schoolbooks in their flowered-wallpaper covering – all of them mildewed now, as likely as not, and smelling of damp. She shuddered and shut the door.

  He was waiting for her in the kitchen, his sleeves rolled up, a tea towel over one shoulder. He had a glass of wine in his hand and he knocked it back when she came in. Behind him on the windowsill there was a whiskey glass, its bottom thinly lined with amber liquid; Jacqueline wondered where he had stashed the bottle of Jemmy. He pulled out a chair for her and she sat down; the table had been laid for one.

  He poured some wine into a glass. “See what you think of this stuff – it’s made in the Vatican – they say the Pope drinks it. It’s not a bad drop in my opinion.”

  Jacqueline sat down, sipped her wine and nodded her approval. “That’s grand, Dad.”

  “Good stuff,” he said, smiling. He pulled the tea towel from his shoulder then bent down and took a plate from the oven. It was covered with a saucepan lid. “Mind now, it’s red hot,” he said as he set it on the table before her.

  Jacqueline lifted the lid and they surveyed the ruin of lamb, cabbage and mash.

  “Cremated,” he said cheerfully, “and that was a grand bit of lamb. You always liked a bit of lamb.”

  For no reason she could clearly identify, Jacqueline felt like crying. “I’m sorry I haven’t made it down for so long, Dad,” she said.

  “Not at all, love – sure you have your own life.”

  “Even so, I should make more of an effort …”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “You’re here now, aren’t you? Eat up your bit of dinner, or is it too dried up?”

  “No, it’s fine, Dad.” Jacqueline smiled fiercely and picked up her knife and fork. “You went to so much trouble. And tomorrow it’s my turn to make you a lovely dinner.”

  “No need for that.” He pulled out his chair at the top of the table, next to the cooker. “But maybe one of the days we’ll pop over to your mammy’s grave.”

  “Of course, Dad,” said Jacqueline.

  He sat with her while she ate, topping up her glass and his own, talking a little ramblingly, his eyes straying from time to time to the window and the garden beyond.

  Afterwards, they sat in the sitting room. He opened another bottle of wine and spent a long time flicking from channel to channel until he found a film he thought she
would enjoy. Before it was half over, he fell asleep in his chair by the window. Jacqueline smiled when he began to snore. It’s like I never left, she thought. She looked around her, at the dull gleam of Gayle’s plaques from the china cabinet in the corner of the room where the sun never reached. At the row of brass elephants marching along the mantelpiece; she was sure that Gayle would say they needed a polish. Her eyes went to the curtains – they looked fine to her, but maybe they were only “man-clean”. She really must wash the nets.

  When she got up to go to bed, he jolted awake.

  “There you are, pet, sound as a trout.”

  He locked up while she went to get some water.

  Starting up the stairs, she saw him standing on the wide landing, gazing through the window. He looked down at her and smiled. “Your mother always said it was bad luck to pass someone on the stairs.”

  Jacqueline came up and stood next to him.

  “There’s a moon for you now,” he said, “whole as a host.”

  “Isn’t it bad luck to look at a full moon through the glass?”

  “Ah, that bad luck will get you every way you turn,” he said.

  “Goodnight, Dad,” said Jacqueline and kissed his crinkled-paper cheek.

  “Goodnight, pet,” he said.

  Chapter 3

  1976

  The Quinn kitchen smells of gravy. Regina Quinn’s mother is at the cooker stirring a saucepan with a wooden spoon. Jacqueline wonders if it is the same spoon she uses for slapping the Quinns. The Quinn baby will not stop crying; it has lost its soother and is waving its short fat arms above the top of the pram. Regina says her baby brother is pop-eyed but Jacqueline cannot see its face to make sure.

  Suddenly, Mrs Quinn puts down the wooden spoon, spins around three times and says: “‘Please, Saint Anthony, look around – something’s lost that can’t be found.’” Then she goes back to stirring the gravy.

  Jacqueline can hardly remember when she last tasted gravy – her mother says it is too hot to cook these days. They have “tea dinners” instead of real dinners, which means no potatoes, just cold ham, hard-boiled eggs, bread and salad. Jacqueline does not like salad and Daddy says cucumber is not even a proper food. He says he agrees with Samuel Johnson: “Cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out as good for nothing.”

  He says the same thing every time they have a tea dinner. The last time he said it, Jacqueline’s mother told him she was sick to death of Samuel Johnson. “If I want to know what Samuel Johnson has to say, I’ll read it for myself,” she said.

  Jacqueline has only come home with Regina so she can read The Lives of the Saints, because Regina says it is “full of sex and stuff and people gettin’ their diddies chopped off”.

  “It’s not ‘diddies’, Regina,” Jacqueline told her for the millionth time. “It’s ‘chests’.” Jacqueline is not interested in sex and stuff but Lilly and Goretti whisper and giggle about it so much she thinks she might as well find out what she can.

  “Yeah, but diddies grow on your chests when you get big,” Regina said. “Oh, God, Jacklean, imagine if your diddies didn’t grow! Some girls’ don’t. I’d just die if my diddies didn’t grow!”

  Jacqueline decided to move away from the subject of diddies. “Can’t you just borrow The Lives of the Saints and we can read it in the orchard?”

  “No way – my ma won’t let it out of the house,” Regina told her. “She makes us wash our hands before we can even hold it. She’ll make you wash your hands too, wait and see.”

  “Why do I have to wash my hands?”

  “Because my ma says it’s a sacred book and all about God’s holy saints.”

  “If it’s all about God’s holy saints then how come there’s stuff in it about sex and didd– chests?”

  “I don’t know, there just is,” Regina told her.

  The Quinn baby is getting louder and louder. Jacqueline peeps into the pram, but his face is all scrunched up and purple with anger and his eyes are shut tight so she cannot see if they are popping or not.

  “Shouldn’t we try looking for the soother?” she whispers to Regina.

  “No need,” says Mrs Quinn. “Saint Anthony will find it, he always does.”

  Regina says her mother has bionic ears and Jacqueline thinks it might be true. She watches as Mrs Quinn goes over to the pram and gives it a shake.

  “Hush now, Pius! Saint Anthony is looking for your soother.” Pius’s roars grow louder and angrier.

  “How long does St Anthony usually take?” Jacqueline whispers, quieter this time.

  “It depends,” says Regina. “Sometimes a few minutes, sometimes hours.”

  “Then how do you know it’s Saint Anthony at all?”

  Regina shrugs. “Because my ma says so.”

  “That’s right,” says Mrs Quinn. “Saint Anthony never lets you down. Praise the Lord!”

  “Praise the Lord” is one of Mrs Quinn’s favourite sayings, and she has a lot of them: “The Lord is mighty” – “A whistling woman makes the Virgin Mary cry” – “When you think you’re flying, it’s then you’re only fluttering.”

  Jacqueline watches Mrs Quinn sprinkle pepper into the bubbling gravy then cover it with a lid.

  “Now you two wash your hands and keep an eye on the baby,” she says, “and I’ll go and get The Saints.” She smiles at Jacqueline. “I suppose you want to read about your namesake? Though I have to admit I don’t think I’ve ever come across a Saint Jacqueline.”

  She pronounces it Jack-a-lean, and Jacqueline thinks that it would be nice if just one person would get her name right.

  “I’m not called after a saint, Mrs Quinn,” she says. “I’m called after Jacqueline Kennedy and my second name is Caroline, after Princess Caroline of Monaco.”

  “Princess Caroline of Monaco!” Mrs Quinn rolls her eyes. “Janey Mack, you’re very swanky! But your mammy is all into the fashion, isn’t she? I saw her the other day, all out in her figure. What I’d like to know is how she manages to keep herself looking so nice and still get her housework done.”

  Jacqueline opens her mouth but closes it again. How to explain to Mrs Quinn that her mother is more interested in practising her flower-arranging and listening to Glen Campbell records than doing her housework? Harder still, how to explain that housework is not something Jacqueline’s mother thinks of as belonging to herself especially? In her head, Jacqueline can hear her mother’s voice saying: “Five people dirty the house so five people can clean it.” Somehow, Jacqueline is sure that Mrs Quinn would not understand. Mrs Quinn wears overalls and slippers and ties her hair up in scarves. She has a row of safety pins on her chest that looks to Jacqueline like some kind of badge and she smells of milk and casseroles. Jacqueline’s mother wears flowery dresses and white patent-leather sandals and her skin smells of Imperial Leather soap and Tweed perfume. Something about the way that Mrs Quinn is looking at Jacqueline stops her from even trying to explain all of this.

  “Make sure you two girls wash your hands properly,” says Mrs Quinn. “I’ll be checking them carefully.”

  “Yes, Ma,” says Regina.

  “Yes, Mrs Quinn,” says Jacqueline.

  “Told you,” whispers Regina.

  “Next time I’ll bring gloves,” says Jacqueline.

  The Quinns’ kitchen sink is so shiny that Jacqueline can almost see her face in it. The soap is smelly and yellow and it slithers from her hands under the running water, bounces off the edge of the sink and falls to the floor. Bending down to pick it up, she sees something blue under the table.

  “I think I found the baby’s soother!”

  “Well, would you look at that!” says Mrs Quinn, coming back with a book in her hands.

  She bends down and picks up the soother. She sticks it in her mouth then pulls it out and jabs it in a jar of honey that is standing open on the kitchen table. Then she shoves the soother into the baby’s mouth. There is silence in the kitchen.

&
nbsp; “Praise God,” says Mrs Quinn. “Saint Anthony never fails.”

  That’s not fair, Jacqueline thinks, Saint Anthony didn’t find it, I did.

  They move into the sitting room and the girls sit side by side on the sofa. Mrs Quinn leaves The Lives of the Saints open on the table before them.

  The Quinns’ sitting room is very neat and tidy and smells of lavender polish. In the winter, it smells of the nappies that Mrs Quinn dries on the fireguard. It is also very small – the very first time Regina brought her home, Jacqueline wondered how all fourteen Quinns could fit in it at the same time. But somehow they do, along with the baby’s pram, and somehow everyone finds a place to sit. They even manage to make room for Jacqueline.

  The Quinns live in a house in Beechlawns Estate. Jacqueline thinks that maybe there was a time when beech trees grew here, but there aren’t any now. The only green things to be seen are the tiny front gardens and the single cherry tree in every fifth garden. All the houses look exactly the same except for the different-coloured front doors and Jacqueline is almost certain that nobody has an orchard. Children play chase and Red Rover in the road, the girls chalk hopscotch squares on the paths and the boys go speeding past on go-carts they’ve made themselves from old bits of wood and rope. Lilly says she wishes she lived in Beechlawns because there is always someone to hang around with there. Jacqueline thinks she means boys.

  “Will we start with Saint Dympna?” Regina leans over the book.

  But Jacqueline is not thinking about Saint Dympna now. “What did your mother mean when she said my mam was all out in her figure?”

  “Don’t ask me.” Regina is turning the pages of the book. “Here – I found it. Saint Dympna is the one that had her head cut off by her da because she wouldn’t have sex with him.”

  “Your mother doesn’t like my mother, does she?” says Jacqueline.

  Regina looks up and shrugs her shoulders. “No, I don’t think she does – she thinks your ma is stuck up.”

  Jacqueline is angry. She is angry with herself for having asked the question when she already knew the answer. She is angry with Mrs Quinn, but mostly she is angry with Regina Quinn, who never seems to understand that there are times when lying is the only thing to do. Lying comes naturally to Jacqueline, like reading or breathing, and she can never understand why Regina should be any different.