Northern Spy by Berry, Flynn (free ebooks for android .TXT) 📕

the start of her day, reveling in the hot weather, opening all the windows as she cleaned the Dunlops’ house, ruffling their labradors’ heads before taking them for a walk, and now she’s rigid, with pouches under her eyes. I’m still catching up with the idea that my mam’s not about to comfort me. She’s not going to say, as she always does, It’s all right, darling, you’ll sort it out.

I swish my hands in the warm water, making the toy boat rock on the waves. Finn heaves himself toward it and tries to fit the boat in his mouth. I smile, and he looks up at me, with both hands clutching the boat, his jaw wide.

I want us to leave. I want to get him away from here, but the decision isn’t mine alone. My ex-husband and I share custody. I might be able to petition the court, but then Finn would grow up without his father.

“Are you not scared of something happening to him here?” I asked Tom recently.

“No,” he said. “Look at the numbers. He’s in more danger in the car.”

The numbers change, of course. That’s the problem.

My mother holds up a towel and I lift Finn into it. He throws back his head and howls at the cold air. Even once he’s dry, he lets out a few last cries, like he wants to be sure his complaint has been lodged.

He maneuvers his arms out from the towel and reaches a hand toward my face. We consider each other. His skin is cool from the water, and he looks pensive in the dim room. His legs bicycle in anticipation as I lower him to my chest to nurse.

Finn is old enough to sit up on his own now. He has rosy feet and toes that appear double jointed, and dry creases at his wrists and ankles. He sometimes has a milk rash on his cheeks. He always ends his yawns by rasping, and he always sighs after sneezing. He hates being dressed, and has started trying to roll himself off the changing table. He likes having his pram pushed over gravel, he likes to grip the tag on his blanket, he likes to watch me cook from his carrier, and will stare down with fixed concentration at, say, eggs being whisked. The lines on his palm have the exact same proportions as mine, and though I don’t believe in palmistry, I am still glad he has a long life line. When someone new tries to hold him, he wails until they hand him back to me. He won’t sleep through the night, and at this point I’m convinced he never will, that I’ll always be this tired. “When did you feel rested again?” I asked my mam, and she laughed and laughed.

Six months. My cabinets are crowded with things I can’t bring myself to throw away. Lanolin ointment, prenatal vitamins, iron tablets, appointment cards. During the delivery, I looked at the scale across the room where the baby would be weighed at birth, a perspex tray under a yellow flannel patterned with ducks. It was impossible to believe that in a matter of hours a baby would be placed on that scale, and then carried back to me.

—

Once Finn falls asleep, I find my mother in the kitchen and pour both of us a brandy. After the Victoria Square attack, I gave Marian brandy from the same bottle, and the thought comforts me, like it means she can’t have gone far.

My mother says, “Who were those men with her?”

“I don’t know.” I might have recognized them if their faces had been in view, or they might be strangers.

“Why would they want Marian?” she asks.

“She might just be who they found,” I say. I can’t imagine an IRA unit making a list, and then choosing her from it. What would the criteria even be? Other paramedics? Other women her age?

“When did you last speak with her?” I ask.

“Yesterday, around eight.”

“Where was she?”

“A pub in Ballycastle. She was about to have dinner.”

They might have taken her at the pub, or while she was walking to her car, or once she was back inside the cottage. I can’t decide which is worse.

“Which pub?”

“The Whistler.”

Are there security cameras in Ballycastle, in a town that small? On the main street, maybe, but not out on the headland, not anywhere near the cottage. Even if they identify the men, though, the police might not find her. They have enough trouble finding actual members of the IRA. Hundreds of them are in Belfast, hiding in plain sight.

“Do you think they’re hurting her?” my mother asks in a thin voice.

“No, mam. They have no reason to hurt her. She cooperated with them.”

“If they do, I’ll kill them,” she says evenly.

“I know.”

My mother and I went to the peace vigil in Ormeau Park last month. We stood in the darkness with thousands of others, holding candles. But maybe we’re not actually pacifists, maybe we’ve just been lucky until now.

Having Finn has made me understand revenge. If someone were to hurt my son, I would rise up and find them. It has made sense of the conflict for me, and now I don’t see how it can ever end, with both sides desperate to avenge the ones they love.

“I can’t stand this,” says my mam.

“It will be fine. You know what she’s like.”

Marian will ask the men questions, draw them out, win them over. Chances are she already has.

I pour my mother another short brandy, and we begin to compare our conversations with Marian over the past week, everything she has said, every place she has visited. My mam tells me that Marian went swimming in Ballintoy yesterday.

“Good,” I say. I picture her following the cold, clear swell into the caves, and diving under the limestone arches. In the hours before they took her, she was free, and she’ll be free again.

—

Ilurch up in bed at the sound of crying and rush into Finn’s