The Rosary Garden by Nicola White (best books to read now TXT) 📕

a suggestion of a smile on her face now. ‘I didn’t come to trouble you, Joan. I’m sorry if I have.’

‘I can’t believe where the time goes,’ said Joan. ‘I lose track.’

‘Why are you in here, Joan?’

She looked around the room and back at Ali. ‘I needed to feel safe. And then they needed me.’

‘Things can change.’

‘Will you do something for me?’

‘Sure,’ said Ali.

‘Take me out.’

That wasn’t what Ali had been expecting. ‘I don’t know if … I wouldn’t be allowed.’

‘It is. We could go on a jaunt – just for an afternoon.’

‘Okay. If they let me.’

Joan’s smile was broad now, and she brushed Ali’s hands away from her. ‘We’ll have a picnic.’

‘Let me ask at the desk if that’ll be okay, first, Joan.’

‘It will, it will.’

‘All right. If it’s allowed.’

Tony was on the reception desk when she came down, and he said it would be fine for Ali to take Joan out on Thursday. For however long she wanted. It all seemed rather casual. It wasn’t that Ali was scared of Joan, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to be responsible for her. It served her right for walking back into her life.

16

Swan drove along the north quays, then headed over the river towards Ranelagh. He wanted to drop in on the Hogan girl again, make sure she’d no more media appearances planned. Perhaps she’d still have that mortified look about her, the one she wore so well on the Late Late. That slimy doctor who spent his time teaching twelve-year-olds the facts of life – something creepy about that. If he ever had a daughter, he wouldn’t want her taught by him. A daughter. Elizabeth’s voice cut into his thoughts: If we don’t try again, we’ll never know.

He braked as the car in front of him slowed. The traffic looked knotted all the way up Camden Street. The radio news was talking about the recession and unemployment, but it didn’t seem to stop people buying cars.

Eventually he parked on Sandford Road and walked up the narrow passage to the Hogans’ front door. He’d been taken aback on his previous visit by the scruffiness of the place, forced to revise his notions about St Brigid’s girls and their cushy backgrounds.

It was the kind of house he often had cause to visit: tall old terraces divided up badly into bedsits, usually home to the young and the transient. A line of plastic doorbells hung to the side of the door, the names in the little plastic windows faded to sepia scratchings, cut wires hanging below. He knocked on the blistered paint and waited some time before he heard approaching steps.

‘Who is it?’

He recognised Deirdre Hogan’s voice. As soon as he announced himself, she opened it, all smiles.

‘You’ve good timing. Coffee’s on.’

He followed her down to the kitchen. She seemed to still be dressed in nightclothes, but she’d mentioned before that she was some kind of artist, so perhaps she wafted around like that all day.

‘Is Ali at home?’

‘She’s not,’ she said, leaning into a cupboard for mugs, ‘but I’m sure I can help you with whatever you want.’

Swan took a seat at the big table. Mrs Hogan reached over his shoulder to put the coffee down and a layer of silk brushed his cheek. Sometimes he found the attentions of women uncomfortable, like now – the way Deirdre Hogan was smiling at him, her head tilted away while her eyes slid back to find him. She took a chair directly opposite and leaned forward on the table so that her crossed arms framed her cleavage. It would be easy to misread the situation.

The coffee was strong and slightly gritty.

‘I can guess why you’re here – it’s the Late Late, isn’t it? I’d be annoyed if I were you. I told her so, but she was determined to go on.’

‘I take it you tried to discourage her.’

‘What powers have I against Mary O’Shea? Ali’s only young. Think of the excitement, the attention.’

‘She didn’t seem too excited by the end of it.’

Deirdre Hogan looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about it any more. She’s had enough attention to last her for years.’

‘I thought she might. Where is she?’

Mrs Hogan opened her mouth to speak, closed it again and smiled. She gave him a look that seemed to convey a great intimacy, as if the two of them were beyond simple whys and wheres.

‘You know, when Ali’s dad died, my life fell apart. A heart attack. He was playing rugby at the time, only forty-two. How could you expect something like that? My sister down in Buleen took us in and I stayed there, licking my wounds, for quite a few weeks. I was so wrapped up in my own grief, I couldn’t see what Ali was going through. She was only six – she acted normally, played, laughed; I thought she hadn’t taken it in. But now I see it wasn’t the right place for her.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

‘Well, a farm is a harsh place, you know … Ailing lambs by the cooker, crows strung up on the barbed wire, baby pigs rolled flat by their sow. More dying.’ Mrs Hogan wiped a single tear away with the side of her palm. ‘And then that bloody box. It had to be her that found it.’ She sighed. ‘Ach, I’m indulging my own guilt, Detective.’

‘I just needed to have a word with her.’

‘That’s what I’m getting at: she’s gone down to stay with my sister.’

‘Right now? We’re in the middle of an investigation.’

‘She’s refused to go back to the farm for twelve years, wouldn’t even go into the house after her granddad’s funeral, made me drive straight back to Dublin. Now she’s somehow found the strength, and that could be a good thing. Sure, didn’t you want her out of the limelight?’

The mother had a point. Surely the girl would cause less trouble down there. He took down the address and phone number. Caherbawn Farm, Buleen,