‘It’s Hannah.’
The stain is real.
Or at least organic matter is present. Isn’t that what the guys said at the Murder House Club meeting? That if you pour that stuff on a stain and it bubbles, it indicates the presence of material from a once-living thing.
My stain is bubbling.
And it’s in the shape of a person. Specifically, a body lying on the floor with a misshapen halo of something spreading out around its head. It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that something actually did happen in my house.
But what?
And to who?
The who seems like the easier mystery to solve. If there even is a who. Without a body, Bob said, a stain is just a stain. That he wouldn’t take much notice unless he had a stain and he knew that someone had died in the house or that someone—
A wave of dread washes over me.
Or that someone who used to live there is missing.
The horror of a new possibility starts clawing at my skin.
I back away from the stain. I walk out of the room. I go back to shut the door behind me. But it’s not enough; I can still smell the chemical stuff, feel it stinging my eyes. I hurry down the stairs. Down the hall. Into the kitchen. There’s no air in here.
I open the patio door and step outside, gulp down a succession of deep breaths.
Then I take out my phone and call Nicole.
‘Hello?’ she answers uncertainly.
‘It’s Hannah.’
‘Oh, Han. I’m so glad you called. I wanted to—’
‘Erin,’ I say, cutting her off.
A brief silence. ‘What about her?’
‘You said she was MIA. That after they went to Australia, she cut off contact with her friends and family.’
‘So?’
‘So did you mean that? You weren’t just, like, exaggerating? Is that true?’
‘From what I heard, she didn’t actually have any friends and hadn’t been close to her family since they moved away from Cork, but yeah. That’s what I heard. Why?’
‘I’m just wondering if she’s … if she’s all right.’
Silence on the line.
‘Han, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to contact her. Not after—’
‘I don’t want to contact her. I’d just like to know that she’s OK. Do you think you could find out if anyone has been talking to her recently? Or seen her? Maybe someone visited them in Australia?’
‘I suppose I can try to find out,’ Nicole says doubtfully.
‘Can you do it today? Now?’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Probably nothing.’
‘Probably nothing?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Fine,’ she sighs. ‘I’ll call Niamh now. But, listen. I was going to call your mother today to try and get your phone number. Have you seen Jason’s Instagram?’
I nod, forgetting she can’t see me.
I say, ‘I know. He’s in Dublin.’
‘Have you seen what he posted today?’
‘No?’
Do I want to?
‘I took a screenshot,’ Nicole says. ‘I’ll send it to you.’
I listen to a rustling noise on the line until I feel my phone buzz with a new message, and then I pull it from my ear to look at the screen.
A screenshot, as promised, of Jason’s Instagram. But in it, the Dublin Airport sign has been relegated to the second-most-recent thing he’s posted, because the latest one is a photo of this house.
My house.
With a vehicle blocking my front door, a yellow van that says LOCKMASTER LTD on the side.
That’s how I know it was taken this morning.
‘Hannah?’ Nicole’s voice is tinny from the phone. ‘Are you there?’
‘I’m here,’ I say, putting the phone back to my ear. ‘Ah, look … don’t worry about this. It’s fine. Listen, can you call back as soon as you find out about Erin?’
‘Well, yeah, but I think maybe we should worry about—’
‘I’ll talk to you later.’
I end the call, then go back inside the house I now desperately need to get out of.
I grab my coat, my battered handbag, what’s left of my cash.
I check three times that I’ve locked the patio door.
I go to open the front one and stop, wondering what I’ll do if, when I pull it back, I see Jason.
I turn, go back to the patio door, and check whether I can lock it from the outside.
I can. I leave the house that way, hurrying out of my yard and into the lane that runs behind the terrace.
I follow the backs of the buildings until I find a gap between them that will deposit me on to Main Street.
At the corner, I turn left and walk blindly, because Sips is to the right.
I just want to get away.
My thoughts are racing, but I’m trying my best to let each one pass without following it down a rabbit hole of horror.
Jason hurt Erin. But why would he? He chose her.
Any minute now, Nicole will call to tell me she’s fine.
Jason is threatening to hurt me too. He’s just messing with me.
He’s annoyed about me getting to keep the house, that’s all.
And I was in prison until a couple of weeks ago.
Why would he even assume I’d be on Instagram, let alone looking at his?
Someone died in my house. Based on what evidence?
Do I really trust the Murder House Club?
They’re a bunch of idiots who don’t know anything about anything – and what they think they know, they got from YouTube.
My phone is tight in my hand but I keep checking it anyway, in case I’ve somehow managed to miss Nicole’s call or text.
Nothing yet. I squint at the tiny switch on the side to make sure I haven’t accidentally flipped it to silent.
Just in case, I hold down the volume button until I’ve turned it all the way up.
I walk until I find myself outside Dundrum’s gargantuan shopping centre, a temple of consumerism built in steel and glass. I think that maybe the middle of a crowd is a good place to hide out for a while.
But as soon as I push through the doors, I hear children squealing.
I squint in the glare of too-bright lights.
A sickly vanilla smell turns my empty stomach.
And droves of people are walking towards me, at me, almost as if they’re aiming for me.
The more I try to avoid them, the more I seem to end up walking directly into them.
Feeling dizzy, I turn around and leave again.
On the plaza outside, cafes and restaurants ring a manmade pond.
There are people here, too, but not as many.
I drop into a seat at a table outside an Italian place, right beside an outdoor heater.
A waiter is already approaching. I order a coffee.
I wait for him to understand that I only want a coffee and go away again.
Check my phone. Still nothing from Nicole.
What’s taking so long?
Australia. The internet informs me it’s nearly 10 p.m. in Brisbane. That means if I don’t hear something back from Nicole in the next couple of hours, I might not hear anything until tomorrow.
It’s a torturous prospect.
Two chatty women carrying an array of fancy shopping bags bustle on to the terrace and choose the table right next to mine; the heater is a people magnet.
I angle my body towards the pond, away from them, but of course I can hear every word.
There’s a big occasion this weekend. At first I think they’re talking about a birthday party, but then I hear references to the brand and media list and a champagne welcome.
After they order their lunch – with a carafe of wine – one of them says to the other, ‘OK, so. What do we actually need to do after this?’
What do I need to do?
What can I do, now?
Annalise. When I strip away everything I can’t be sure of, she’s all that remains.
It’s an indisputable fact that she snapped a photo of my trashed kitchen and tried to send it to someone with the message Was this you?
Too far! We need to talk. I may not know who had been in my house that night or why, or what Jason’s intentions are, or if Erin is alive or well (yet).
Or what foaming bubbles on the person-shaped stain on my floorboards mean or if they mean anything at all.
I don’t know what’s going on, what’s been going on, or when or how it will end.
But I do know that Annalise knows something about it.
I need to talk to her. Confront her. But I doubt she’ll answer if I just go and knock on her door.
The party. The Dundrummed get-together. This evening, in Sips. Everyone will be there, Sophie promised.
Does that include Annalise?
She wouldn’t be able to avoid me and it’d be difficult for her to ignore me. And – hopefully – she’d share my aversion to making a scene. We could have an actual conversation, in a safe space. Get it all out in the open.
End this, whatever this is.
The women next to me have lit cigarettes; that’s why they’ve sat outside. Their wine arrives and I feel a stab of envy.
If I’d been allowed to stay on my path, if Jason had never spoken to me at that bar the night of the Chambers event, where would I be now?
At a wine-soaked business lunch just before the launch of something?
Still in my store, but a bigger one? Would it be one location of many?
Would I live in the house I’d dreamed of buying, all picture windows and natural light, contentedly working at a desk from which I have an uninterrupted view of a vast, shimmering sea below me?
Would I be happy?
It will never be mine now, that life. Not with a criminal conviction, not with my past. Irish people don’t forget things.
There’s no such thing as reinvention here, no fresh starts allowed.
The best you can hope for is to lie low, to stay off people’s minds, to fade out of the collective consciousness.
To approximate a forgetting, if you’re lucky.
The lump that’s formed in my throat is big enough to hurt. But behind it now surges a hot, tight rage. The usual frustration and anger, dialled up higher than I should let it go. No good comes of feeling it, but sometimes it arrives, suddenly, with more power than I can keep at bay.
Because, while it was my fault I lost my freedom, Jason was the reason I’d already lost my life. It was long gone before I even saw the inside of a cell, infected by him, destroyed by him. All I left behind was a pile of burning ruins.
And here he is now, doing it again.
I’m letting him.
Well, fuck that. And fuck him.
I download Instagram and set up a new account with a gobbledygook password I won’t have to remember; this is going to be a one-time thing. I find @shreddr_jay and tap on the photo of my house. Then I tap on the heart just underneath it, filling in the outline with red.
Now, he’ll know that I’ve seen it.
And he’ll get a notification saying @hannah82saysFU liked your photo. Childish, but I don’t care. For good measure, I leave a comment too. Have screenshot for the Gardaí.
Satisfied, I drop the phone on to the table, misjudging the distance a little so it inadvertently lands with a loud smack. I’m dimly aware of the two women turning to look at me. I feel giddy, almost manic. Like I’ve had too much coffee and not enough sleep. Like I’m not fully inside my own lines.
I haven’t felt like this in a long time.
The last time was that night.