“Don’t tell Marian you helped me,” he says. “She’d lose the plot.”
I think about the two cakes Marian had for her birthday last year. The one at my house, and the one on their surfing trip in Mullaghmore. I picture Marian in the dark rooms, surrounded by two completely different groups of people, leaning toward two round cakes, one pink, one yellow. She must have felt more at home with one of the groups. One of them must have felt like her true family, who love her the most, who love her wholly. All this time, I’d been so sure it was us.
30
ITAKE A BUS BACK to the city center. It’s only two in the afternoon. I don’t need to collect Finn from day care for a few hours, so I walk down the Lisburn Road, to Marian’s street. I stop on the corner, looking down the terrace of brick houses. A pub sits at one end of her road, and the railway line lies at the far end. When her windows are open, she can hear the cooks in the pub kitchen and the trees thrashing along the railway.
Marian has only been a few miles away. I wonder if she fantasizes about coming here to rest in her own bed, or take a bath, or drink tea on her sofa.
She must be tempted. At the safe house, Marian is surrounded by other people, which must grate on her, not having any time to herself. She needs solitude. “A day without solitude is like a drink without ice,” she once said to me, quoting an old-fashioned book.
Last Christmas, Marian disappeared from our aunt’s house, and I found her outside on the back step, bundled in her coat, watching icy clouds shear past the moon. “Too noisy,” she said. Though maybe she doesn’t need a break from her unit, maybe being with them is as undemanding as being alone.
I haven’t been back to her home in months, and it has taken on a different aspect to me, like the headquarters from which she ran her two lives. Marian was both a civilian and a terrorist while living here. She hosted dinners for her friends, and prepared for operations.
She must have been exhausted. It must have taken so much organization and energy to manage two identities. When I complained to her about being torn between work and the baby, Marian sympathized with me. She said, “It’s always hard to decide the best use of your time.” I’d thought she had no idea what she was talking about, but for years, she’d had to divide her resources, her attention.
I try to allow for the possibility that Marian is more tired than me. There are nights when I have to work on my laptop for hours after Finn falls asleep, there are weeks when I set an alarm for 4:45 a.m. and settle at my desk for a solid stretch of work before he wakes, thinking everything’s going to be fine, everything will get done, then a few minutes later he is up, too.
But I’ve only had Finn for eleven months. For years, Marian had to work nights both as a paramedic and with her unit. She once had to explain to Seamus that she couldn’t stay awake for three nights in a row. “Seamus doesn’t get tired,” Marian said. “He sleeps for four hours a night, like Margaret Thatcher.” Which could kill him, if his heart doesn’t.
From the corner, I look at the front of her flat, the painted door, the curtains in the windows. I want to go inside to check on the pipes, the boiler, the mail, but the police might still have it under surveillance.
I stop into the natural foods shop a few doors down on the Lisburn Road. Marian loves this place. She has a shelf in her kitchen of bee pollen, royal jelly, ginseng, echinacea, evening primrose. I make fun of her for it, but, then, she never gets sick, while I catch colds every winter. I fill a shopping basket with jars and vials, adding the mushroom powder, lion’s mane and ashwagandha, which she stirs into green tea every morning, and then a sealed packet of the tea itself. I’m not sure how much of this is done out of competition. I’m furious with her, but I still want her to love me best.
* * *
—
Marian is late to meet me. I sit rigid in the car. There is a chance that she won’t come. That I will drive home alone, and never know what happened to her.
I want to run through the woods to Mount Stewart, shout for someone to help me. Another twenty minutes pass, and her absence takes on the aura of an emergency. If Marian’s not here in ten minutes, I’ll contact Eamonn, and the security service will find her.
A movement makes me look in the side mirror, and my sister is walking up the lane. It feels like crawling ashore after being caught in a riptide. I want to pat myself down, to check that my body is intact.
“Sorry,” says Marian. “I had to drop a passport in Rostrevor.”
“Why is your unit working so much in South Down?”