As I left the house, I heard the woman guard say ‘Fucking psycho’ to the man, but he noted that I heard and shushed her. She turned to look at me and I was able to read disgust on her face.
I don’t know why she was disgusted. The house was spotless. As I walked towards Angela’s car, four patrol cars arrived through our gateway and people started putting on white plastic suits over their clothes. They set up these huge light beacons pointing towards the house and barn. Angela said they were treating it as a crime scene.
I was feeling a little drowsy but I wanted to stay. In lots of dramas, police planted evidence or contaminated the scene. I needed to make sure that wouldn’t happen. Angela assured me that it wouldn’t.
We didn’t say much on the drive to her house, but I looked at her then while she watched the road. She was a nice rounded shape. Like grannies in old TV shows. She had curly grey hair. She wore a check shirt and a denim skirt and black ankle boots. I liked the way she looked. She glanced over at me and smiled and frowned at the same time. Dad always warned me about mistaking people for how they look with how they act, but we both liked Angela.
7
I woke up in a strange bed in a strange house, although my own blue blanket was on the bed. I had packed it last night. I opened my mouth to scream, but Dad had always said that I mustn’t do that unless I was in danger. Was I in danger? I would shortly have to explain again why I had disposed of my dad. I shut my mouth and didn’t scream. I remember Mum saying that if you tell the truth, nothing bad can happen to you.
I heard some commotion outside the bedroom door. ‘Hello?’ I called.
‘Sally, I’m leaving some green towels inside the bathroom for you. The shower is easy to use. We’ll see you downstairs for breakfast in about twenty minutes, okay?’
It was Nadine’s voice. Nadine was Angela’s wife. I had met her around Carricksheedy several times. She was younger than Angela and wore her long blonde hair in a ponytail. She walked their dogs and tended to their chickens and designed furniture for her job. I didn’t like the dogs and always crossed the road. ‘We’ve put the dogs outside so you don’t have to worry, okay?’
Dad went to their wedding. I was invited too but I didn’t go. Too much fuss.
Their bathroom was like you’d see in a hotel in a film, or in an ad for bathrooms. I sat on the toilet and then washed my hands and brushed my teeth before stepping into the large shower stall with one glass wall. We had one family bathroom at home and a separate toilet, and the shower was a rubber hose attached to the bath taps. Because of the electricity bills Dad didn’t like us to take baths, except for once a week, so we made do with the shower. Angela and Nadine’s shower was great. When I was finished, I combed out my hair in my room, pinned it up and got dressed, made the bed and went downstairs.
It was bright. The sun streamed in through glass doors and it was open plan. Modern. Every wall was straight, corners were sharp. I’d seen homes like this on TV in the ‘afters’ of a home-improvement show. Dad loved those. He always laughed at the homeowners. ‘More money than sense!’ he’d say, or ‘Notions!’
Angela stood at the grill, flipping sausages and bacon. ‘Will you have a fry, Sally?’
I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten the beans on toast the night before because I’d been so disturbed.
‘Yes, thank you.’
Two dogs were outside the window staring up at Angela as she turned the rashers once more.
‘The boys look hungry,’ said Nadine, and she grinned and waved at them. They barked in response.
‘What boys?’ I asked.
‘The dogs, Harry and Paul.’
‘They’re funny names for dogs.’
Angela grinned, ‘We called them after our ex-husbands,’ and then they both laughed. I grinned too even though I thought it was a bit rude to their ex-husbands.
I was seven hours and fifteen minutes in the garda station. They took my photograph and fingerprints. They left me in a room by myself for the first forty-seven minutes and then two women came in, wearing suits, Detective Sergeant Catherine Mara and Detective Inspector Andrea Howard, shortly followed by a grumpy man who introduced himself as Geoff Barrington, my solicitor. Howard turned on a tape recorder and they introduced themselves for the tape. I didn’t want to look at them, so I looked at the wooden table and the scratches in it. Someone had engraved the word ‘cunt’ into the table in spiky capitals. That was an extremely rude word.
They asked me three times to tell the story of my dad’s death, and I got a bit annoyed at having to say the same thing over and over again. Geoff sighed deeply and said the best thing for me to do was to answer their questions. They asked me why I didn’t know that a domestic incinerator wouldn’t be hot enough to burn human remains. I shook my head. And they asked me to speak out loud for the record. I said I didn’t know because we burned everything else that wasn’t plastic.
Then they asked me about the letters and why I hadn’t read them. One of them laughed when I said I’d been considering waiting for my birthday. I got angry then. ‘Why are you laughing?’ I shouted. Geoff put his hand on my arm, and I shook it off.
‘Sally, do you wait for your birthday to open all of your mail?’
‘I don’t get any mail,’ I answered.
He scribbled in his notebook again and asked them to refrain from laughing as it triggered his client. I stared at him then. He looked as tired as I felt.
Mara asked me my date of birth even though I’d been asked that twice already. They asked me about my real date of birth, and I wasn’t sure what they meant. Then they asked me about my adoption and if I knew who my birth parents were and I was surprised because I didn’t understand how this was relevant. I told them that Mum and Dad had adopted me from an agency when I was six years old and that I knew nothing about my birth parents. They asked me what my earliest memories were and I told them that it was when I blew out candles on my seventh birthday. They asked in several different ways if I remembered anything before that and I said no, and then they asked me to try to remember and I told them that my dad had always told me that I didn’t have to remember things I didn’t want to.
‘But,’ said Howard, ‘you must remember something from early childhood?’ I shook my head. They asked me to speak out loud for the record. ‘I don’t remember anything before my seventh birthday,’ I said. Geoff asked to speak to them outside the room.
Shortly after that, Angela came in with a burger and chips from Supermacs. Another guard stood in the corner of the room. I offered him some chips but he refused. ‘You’re all right,’ he said. I liked him. He looked a little bit like Harrison Ford when he was young. I would have liked to talk to him. But he went back to saying nothing, and looking at his shoes. I look at my shoes when I’m uncomfortable too.
Angela told me that the police would be at my house for a few more days and that I might be charged with a crime.
‘What crime?’ I asked.
She didn’t answer. ‘Let Geoff do his job. Honestly, he has your best interests at heart.’
8
I spent five nights in Nadine and Angela’s house. Geoff talked mostly to Angela and ignored me, which most of the time suited me, but all the time, they were talking about me. Angela would check occasionally that I understood what was being said, but he didn’t address anything to me, except the last time when we were in his office in Roscommon town, and he tried to shake my hand as he said goodbye, and I snapped mine away. It’s easier to look at someone when they’re not looking at you. He was handsome and I suppose he did his job properly because he said that the charges of Illegal Disposal of Human Remains would most likely be dropped under the circumstances. Angela said it was because of my condition.