Not that I knew this, yet, about how large the search had grown. The Leeches didn’t keep newspapers at the hotel unless guests requested them. Time at the spa was meant to be time away from the troubles of the world, Mrs Leech said.
My breath gusted out in front of me. The air felt wonderful. It reminded me that Christmas was approaching. When my sisters and I were little we used to wait outside together, staring up at the sky for a glimpse of Father Christmas before our mother bustled us off to bed. ‘If you girls are awake, he’ll pass our house right by.’ We’d eat chestnuts roasted over the fire and go to sleep with sticky fingers, smiles on our faces. It had been the time of year I most looked forward to, more than anything in the world, before summers in Ireland began, and Finbarr.
Just as his name formed in my mind he emerged from the shadows, hands in his pockets. I stepped forward and threw my arms around his neck. He hugged me back, three beats.
‘Walk with me,’ he said, in his hoarse, whispery voice.
I put my arm through his and we walked away from the hotel, down the road, into the kind of darkness that scarcely exists anymore. Electric lights weren’t yet a matter of course out here in the country, and cars didn’t often rattle down the road after dark. We had gone a little way when a dog ran out to menace us. Finbarr kneeled and within seconds the giant beast – half collie, half something monstrous – was in his lap, getting his white mane ruffled, shaggy tail wagging joyfully. We continued walking and the dog followed us a while, until Finbarr commanded, ‘Go home.’ The dog lowered his ears, dejected but obedient, and trotted off in the direction from which he’d come.
‘Have you got a dog of your own now?’ I asked.
The question couldn’t help but burgeon with memories of Alby, so that’s how Finbarr answered it. He told me the man who’d bought Alby had joined the IRA. He used the dog to deliver explosives to an RIC barracks and Alby had been blown to bits along with his target. ‘Remember how I taught him to crouch so still and not move for anything, no matter what? That was the death of him, Nan. I swear I’ll never train another dog so well.’
The pain that erupted in my chest was unbearable, so desperate was I to ‘unknow’ what Finbarr had just told me. From that moment, for the rest of my life, I’d dream of Alby crouching, watching our tennis games in controlled stillness, only to burst into flames before we could call him back to life.
‘It all feels like a long time ago,’ Finbarr said. ‘But it’s not. Eight years since the war ended, twelve years since it started. It’s only that the world’s changed too much, in ways it shouldn’t. And so it’s changed how time passes. The trenches were yesterday, or an hour ago. They’ll come back again tomorrow. You and me and Alby and Ireland; that was a hundred years ago, and also every day since.’
‘And Genevieve?’
‘A thousand years ago and just this morning.’
‘But not tomorrow?’
‘No, Nan. Not tomorrow.’
The tears Miss Armstrong had wanted from me gathered in my eyes. We kept walking, so far that I knew I wouldn’t make it back to the Bellefort Hotel this night. Who would even notice? Inspector Chilton, with his sad, watchful eyes and one working arm? What did he think he knew about me? Nothing that could matter enough to change the magic of walking beside Finbarr. When I left the convent, all I’d wanted to do was walk. I would have walked the length of Ireland, and then England; I would have walked from Land’s End to Thurso. Not knowing where to look but only that there was nothing in this world for me to do but search and search and search.
Finbarr did not walk with me the length of England, but to a long drive leading to a manor house, the trees on either side so bare that I could see it up ahead in a patch of moonlight. Waiting for us. It was grand but not cavernously so. The country home of some wealthy Londoner, most likely.
‘How did you find this place? Do you have permission to stay here?’ Even as I spoke I knew he’d found it the same way he’d found our room in the midst of the Armistice celebration. Finbarr magic.