The Last Lost Girl Read online

“What happens now?” said Jacqueline. “Do I have to do something, phone someone? Mam died in the hospital and things just happened …”

  “When you’re good and ready,” said Dr May, “I can call the undertakers for you. They will take it from there. But what about you, who do you have?”

  Who did she have? “I’m alright,” she said. “My sister will be here first thing in the morning. It was too late for her to catch a flight tonight.”

  “Poor Gayle,” said Dr May. “She’ll take it hard.”

  Of course, thought Jacqueline – he knows Gayle so much better than me.

  Dr May called the undertakers on her behalf and stayed with her until they came. She found his quiet presence comforting. Father Tom stayed too, but, kind and earnest as he was, she found herself wishing he would go. Twice he said the words “mortal remains” and each time it made her flinch. He kept asking her questions too, about “Frank”, his life and tastes and habits. Getting his facts straight for the funeral, thought Jacqueline, because he had never known her father in life.

  But in the end she was glad of him.

  “Daddy’s going now, Gayle. You said to let you know when the time came.”

  On the other end of the phone, Gayle made a sound Jacqueline imagined might qualify as keening.

  “No, don’t let him go, Jacqueline!” she wailed. “I don’t want him to go – please don’t let him go!”

  Glancing up, Jacqueline found the priest watching her, “My sister Gayle,” she said, “she’s very upset. Could you …”

  Father Tom nodded and Jacqueline got up, handed him the phone and left him to it. Outside she stood and looked at the sky. The moon was only just less than the perfect whole they had admired together a few days ago. The air was sweet with the scent of his roses and she thought of how carefully he had tended them. All those years of pruning and spraying and feeding, and now he had gone and the roses went on being beautiful without him.

  When she went back inside, Father Tom was still on the phone, his head bent forward. His voice was so low and gentle that it was impossible to overhear what he was saying to Gayle. His legs were crossed at the knees and his trousers had rucked up so that Jacqueline could see his black socks. She wondered if that thing from Father Ted were true, that priests’ socks were blacker than ordinary socks, and then she wondered if there was something wrong with the way her mind worked.

  “Gayle would like to speak to you now, Jacqueline,” said Father Tom and Jacqueline took the phone from him.

  “I’m sorry, Jacqueline.” Gayle’s voice was calm and steady. “I lost control of myself for a while but I understand now that Daddy has to go. Father Tom made me feel so much better.”

  Jacqueline met the priest’s eye. What secret did he possess to have given Gayle such comfort? And why didn’t it work on her?

  “Is Carol there yet?” said Gayle.

  “Not yet.”

  “That’s a pity. I think she’d have liked to see Daddy before he … but the traffic is probably bad. But don’t worry, Jacqueline, Father Tom promised me he’ll stay with you until Carol comes, so you won’t be on your own. And Carol will just have to go and see Daddy at the funeral home when – when he’s ready.”

  As the tears threatened once more, Jacqueline finished the call as quickly and gently as was possible.

  They carried him from the house to the hearse. It moved away so slowly that Jacqueline was able to walk behind it halfway down Blackberry Lane. She stood at the gap for the yellow field and watched until it disappeared from sight. He came on his bicycle, she thought, and he’s leaving in a box. Her vision blurred and she wiped her tears with the back of her hand. When she turned, the priest was behind her. She had not heard him coming; perhaps priests had special shoes too. He walked back with her to the house but she stopped him on the steps.

  “There’s no need for you to stay, Father Tom. I appreciate you offering, but I want to be on my own. Please don’t phone my sister – it will only worry her and I won’t change my mind.”

  He argued gently as he followed her into the house and collected his things. He was still arguing when she closed the door on his earnest and troubled face.

  Jacqueline went straight to the kitchen and took the half-full bottle of Jemmy from the cupboard under the sink. She poured a large measure into a glass and raised it: “Here’s to you, Dad!” She drank it back and it caught at her throat – she had never liked the smell of whiskey, let alone the taste. She poured another glass. “And here’s to me.”

  When the bottle was empty, she hunted until she found another full one, pushed in behind the jugs and cups on the kitchen dresser. She took it into the sitting room and drank herself into oblivion, woke with vomit in her throat and only just made it to the bathroom.

  Afterwards she rinsed her mouth and staggered to her room and lay on the bed. She intended to stay only a minute, rest her eyes. When she opened them again, a blonde-haired giant was standing over her, watching her from gentle blue eyes.

  He smiled at her. “Hello, Auntie Jacqueline.”

  “How could you, Jacqueline? Auntie Carol, for God’s sake! I asked you to phone her and you let me think you had.”

  “I’m sorry, Gayle, I meant to, but I fell asleep.”

  “You mean you got blind drunk,” said Gayle. “How could you forget something like that? Poor Auntie Carol – when I called her, she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Daddy’s only living sister and you didn’t even bother to tell her! Can you imagine how I felt?”

  Jacqueline thought she could imagine if she really tried, but her head was too painful for trying. “I said I’m sorry, don’t keep going on about it.”

  “Fine,” said Gayle. “Then tell me again what happened with Daddy.”

  “Ah Gayle, how many times have I told you!”

  “Tell me again!” Gayle’s voice was shrill and rising.

  Behind her, the blonde giant who was her son Roy looked up from his phone. Jacqueline was not sure exactly how old he was – twenty or twenty-one, she thought. He had been born so many years after Alison – blonde and quiet and grave, as unlike his sister as it was possible to imagine – that Jacqueline could not remember having paid any particular attention to him. But, according to Gayle, he was very fond of his Auntie Jacqueline. Jacqueline had no idea why. When he was very small, she remembered harbouring a vague notion that Roy was a little slow. Perhaps it had something to do with her father, who had never been able to see the boy without remarking on the size of his head: “That’s not natural, there’s something wrong with that child. Mark my words, there’s something wrong there somewhere.”

  At any rate, Roy’s head matched his body now and for some reason Jacqueline found his silent presence comforting.

  “Alright, Gayle,” she said, “I’ll tell you again. I made Daddy his dinner and I gave it to him in the sitting room. I wasn’t very hungry so I went out for a walk.”

  “What time did you go out?”

  “About six o’clock, I think.”

  “And there was no sign, nothing at all?”

  “I told you there wasn’t – I wouldn’t have left him if there had been. He was fine, he was eating his dinner and I was only gone for about an hour. And I told you what Dr May said: Daddy’s heart just gave up, Gayle, and he died, he just died.”

  Gayle began to cry and Roy looked up from his phone again and patted his mother’s arm.

  Later Jacqueline stood with him in the doorway of her father’s bedroom while Gayle agonised over the choice of burial clothes. Should they go for a blazer and slacks or should they just buy him a new suit? What did Jacqueline think?

  “Whatever you think, Gayle.”

  “I don’t know.” Gayle laid the dark suit out on the bed and examined it minutely. “I bought him new socks. I got them at the airport.”

  “That’s nice,” said Jacqueline. She could not think of anything else to say.

  Later, in the funeral parlour, Gayle began to wail. “
Oh Daddy, what have they done to your beautiful hair?”

  Jacqueline looked at her father laid out against the white satin, looking like himself, but in the new suit that Gayle had finally decided must be had, and with lipstick on. His hair did look shorn.

  “He needed a haircut, Gayle,” she said.

  Gayle put her face in her hands. “I should have been here – if only I’d come home!”

  Roy said, “Don’t, Mam,” and Auntie Carol looked at Jacqueline and tightened her lips.

  They all think it’s my fault, thought Jacqueline.

  In the evening Roy sat in the chair where his granddad had died, playing games on his phone.

  Gayle fretted aloud about the condition of the house. “There’s no way we can bring everyone back here after the funeral – we’ll just have to organise food in The Shilling. They do a nice hot meal. Daddy would prefer a hot meal.”

  He would if he was around to enjoy it, thought Jacqueline, but she held her tongue. Levity had no place in the face of Gayle’s visible grief and she wished now that she had washed the nets.

  Later, when the doorbell went and Gayle hurried to answer the door, Jacqueline slipped out to the kitchen. There was an opened bottle of white wine in the fridge and she took it and a glass up to her bedroom. It was still light outside and she sat on her bed with the curtains open and finished the wine and then fell asleep.

  When she woke the room was dark and the house was quiet. She checked her phone: it was just after midnight. She switched on the bedside lamp, drew the curtains and carried the empty bottle and the glass downstairs to the kitchen. She rinsed the glass and left it on the draining board and disposed of the bottle. Her head was thumping so she poured herself a glass of water and sat at the table to drink it.

  “Is it alright if I get some water, Auntie Jacqueline?”

  Jacqueline turned. Roy was standing in the doorway. His hair was tousled from sleep and he was dressed in a short-sleeved black T-shirt and green-and-black shorts that came down to just below his knees. His legs were pink and very hairy.

  “Work away,” said Jacqueline.

  He came into the room and lumbered about looking for a glass. When he turned on the tap, the water spat and sprayed his clothes. He jumped back, “Shit!” He turned and smiled. “Sorry, Auntie Jacqueline.”

  The smile transformed his humdrum features into something else completely and Jacqueline smiled too.

  “No worries,” she said, and watched as he carried the glass carefully to the door. “Goodnight, Roy.”

  Roy turned. “Auntie Jacqueline, do you really live in a cave?”

  Jacqueline put her glass down on the table. Perhaps her father had been right after all. “No, Roy, of course I don’t live in a cave. What gave you that idea?”

  “Granda told me you did, when I was little. He said you lived in Donegal, in a cave, in the middle of nowhere. He said you were a hermit crab.”

  “Did he now?” Jacqueline smiled, but it hurt, so she took another drink of her water. “Well, I don’t. I live in a cottage. In the middle of nowhere.”

  “Aren’t you ever afraid, living all on your own?”

  Jacqueline thought about the small shut-up house with the curtains drawn. The small bedraggled garden with the grass growing too high, the wild roses and the currant bushes, and behind it all the hulking hills – and the Donegal sky. Right now it was probably raining or it had rained or was about to rain and the letterbox was probably flapping in the wind. Perhaps it had been one of those rare days when the sun shone, the sort of day when if she had been there, she’d have worked with the windows open wide, the day flooding in, yellow and smelling of warm grass. And no-one to call and disturb her, all the livelong day. Was she afraid? When she had first moved in, she had lain awake at night listening, starting at every leaf fall, every gust of wind.

  “I’ve grown used to it,” she said and thought that what she meant was that now her fears were rational, no different than those she would have in a town or a city. “There’s another house just down the road and it’s not a long drive to the nearest village.”

  “I knew you didn’t really live in a cave,” said Roy. “Only, you know, when you really believe something it stays with you, doesn’t it, even when you know it isn’t true?”

  Jacqueline took another sip of water. “Yes, Roy, sometimes it does.”

  “And anyway, Mum explained to us that you went there on your holidays years ago and then you decided to stay because you were thinking of writing a book. Are you still writing a book, Auntie Jacqueline?”

  Jacqueline looked down at her hands. Was she? “I’m still thinking about writing it,” she said.

  He nodded. “Goodnight, Auntie Jacqueline.”

  “Goodnight, Roy.”

  Chapter 7

  1976

  Lilly’s radio is playing “Shake Your Booty”. Jacqueline can hear them in Lilly’s room laughing and singing along to the music. Jacqueline has no idea what booty is, but she wishes she could be in there with Lilly and Goretti Quinn. Instead she is outside, staring at the sign on Lilly’s door: STOP THE WORLD, I WANNA GET OFF!

  When Lilly first put it up Jacqueline asked her what it meant.

  “It means mind your own business!” said Lilly.

  But Jacqueline thinks it is her business – as long as she can remember, she has been allowed to go into Lilly’s room when she likes. While Lilly read or did her homework, Jacqueline used to lie for hours on Lilly’s bed, stroking the silky eiderdown and staring at the little blue flowers that grew up Lilly’s walls. And sometimes Lilly let her take down the dolls that sat in a row on the windowsill and dress and undress them. But that was before Lilly started calling Jacqueline names, like Little Big Ears, Creep, Spy, Little Freak. That was before Lilly stopped caring about anything except washing her hair and whispering to Goretti Quinn about stupid boys. Now Jacqueline has to keep out of Lilly’s room while Goretti Quinn goes in to laugh and sing with Lilly, and dance and play stupid records.

  Sometimes, when Lilly goes out, she forgets to lock her door. Then Jacqueline goes in and lies on the bed. The eiderdown still feels just as smooth and silky but the dolls have gone from the windowsill. The little blue flowers have gone too. The walls are painted red now and covered with posters from Jackie magazine. Most of the posters are of the same boy. His name is David Cassidy and Lilly says she’s going to marry him. Jacqueline thinks he has hair like a girl. She cannot understand why Lilly likes Jackie – it never has good stories like the ones in Bunty, just stuff about boys and hairstyles and beauty tips.

  “How to make the most of your figure! If you don’t like your arms, wear bright long-sleeved tops! Choose a slimming skirt if you love your legs!”

  Jacqueline does not understand why anyone would love their legs or not like their own arms. The onlygood things about Jackie are the free gifts: the stickers and badges and combs and once a bracelet with a pretty blue stone.

  The song comes to an end, and Jacqueline can hear Lilly squealing, “Oh no, I’ve got another conker!”

  “Where, where is it?” says Goretti Quinn. “I can’t see it – you’re imagining things, Lilly.”

  “I am not. Look, there it is, right in the middle of my chin. Don’t pretend you can’t see it – you can’t miss it!”

  Jacqueline imagines Lilly standing at her dressing table and staring at her face in the mirror. Daddy says Lilly thinks far too much about the way she looks and pride comes before a fall. Daddy says they need two bathrooms in the house, one for Lilly and one for everyone else.

  “God, I look like Eddie Sexton.”

  Goretti Quinn squeals, “Oh God, Lilly, imagine having as many spots as Sexy Sexton!”

  Lilly laughs. “Did you see that carbuncle on his forehead the other day? It looked like a third eye. And what was that white stuff he had all over it?”

  “Toothpaste. I think he uses it to suck out the pus or something.”

  “That’s disgusting,” says Lilly. “An
d anyway it doesn’t work – even his spots have spots.”

  They squeal with laughter.

  “Did he ask you to go with him again, Lilly?”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “Did you say no?”

  “Of course I said no! As if I’d let that long streak of paralysed piss near me!”

  “Yeah – which would you rather – run a mile, suck a boil, eat a bowl of snot or kiss Sexy Sexton?”

  And they burst out laughing again.

  Jacqueline can hear someone thumping up the stairs and she jumps away from Lilly’s door and pretends to be just going down the stairs. She knows she will be in big trouble if she’s caughtlistening at doors again. Gayle pushes past, her face pink, her plait flying out behind her, and Jacqueline thinks that only Gayle would run in this heat. Gayle never walks when she can run.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Jacqueline picks up her book. She is reading The Riddle of the Sands. It has a lot of fog in it and people who say things like “The dinner is execrable, and the ventilation is a farce”. They spend a lot of time dredging and kedging off, and half the time Jacqueline cannot understand what is happening but she doesn’t mind. The two things she loves doing most in the whole world are reading and cycling her bike. It is too hot to cycle now, but books are always ready and waiting. Sometimes she reads two at a time, one in the morning and the other at night and the stories jumble themselves together in her dreams.

  She takes her book to the orchard and reads for a while.

  She hears her mother calling her now, but does not answer. It is too hot to answer – it is too hot for anything, even reading. The air feels fat and puffy with heat and Jacqueline closes her book and puts it down. She lies back and stares up at the leaves of the twisted crab-apple tree. It is the oldest tree in the orchard and her favourite one. The leaves are green on top but pale and creamy underneath and the apples are very, very sour and quite small. But the tree does not smell sour, it smells of sugar. In the spring, the pink-and-white petals fall to the ground like crashed butterflies. Today the leaves are quite still because there is no wind at all. Jacqueline likes windy days in the orchard best of all. Then, the leaves shiver and the wind sweeps the light across the grass like a giant invisible broom. Jacqueline used to believe that the wind was a living creature, that when it wasn’t blowing everything about, it slept in a cave by the sea, curled about the rocks like a grey cat’s tail. That was when she was very small and believed impossible things.