Chapter 5
Susan
Wednesday
I text Greta, but she’s out and can’t babysit.
I rarely ask her—she has Long Covid, which means good days and bad days, so I keep requests to a minimum.
Her text is brief—“sorry, can’t, am out”—which isn’t odd in itself, Greta can be terse, but it’s strange that she didn’t mention anything when she was leaving my house earlier—I’m nearly sure she’d said she was going home to do paperwork?
Maybe the call she got when she was leaving pulled her away to something.
I figure I’ll ask Leesa instead. Unlike Greta and me, Leesa doesn’t live in Oakpark.
She lives all the way across in Rowanpark, a ten-minute walk away.
Meaning the three of us are back living where we grew up.
Our twenty-year-old selves would have balked at the term “home birds,” yet here we are.
Leesa’s not starting work till two today, I think, as I text.
She has the best work–life balance of anyone I’ve ever known.
Made redundant from her IT job three years ago, she now contracts for the same company that let her go (with a very good pay-out) doing however many or few hours she likes, for an eyewatering hourly rate, and always from home.
With all this post-pandemic work from home going on, I’m starting to regret my career in teaching.
Leesa replies “of course” to my babysitting request, so at eleven, I drop Bella into her and go to see my counselor.
· · ·
Two hours later, emotionally drained, I collect Bella from Leesa’s and walk home along a route that takes me past Celeste Geary’s house.
I’m not sure why. Maybe the likes-to-be-liked side of me is hoping for forgiveness.
That Celeste might pop her head out the door, tell me it’s all a fuss over nothing, and wave absolution.
If only. Hers is one of the bigger homes in Oakpark—a five-bedroom double-fronted house with room for three or four cars in the driveway, though right now there are none.
Twin camellia trees bookend granite porch steps that lead up to a heavy sage-green front door.
The blinds on each window are drawn three-quarters way down and I get the sense nobody’s home.
Celeste will be at work, of course, and Warren too.
My mind goes back to the last time I saw him.
His secret dalliance at the opening of Bar Four.
Not so secret now, thanks to me. My cheeks heat up and I push the pram toward home.
As I reach our driveway, I have the sudden sensation that someone is watching me.
My head swivels side to side. I’m still the hot topic of the neighborhood, so maybe someone is looking out their window right now, judging me.
That’s not it though…it’s more than that.
I pick up my pace to get Bella’s pram up the driveway.
The broken upstairs window gleams in the sun and I wonder now if that’s what’s causing it.
Because, last night, somebody was actually watching, right here, in our driveway.
As I fumble in my bag for my key, unnerved and eager to get inside, a shadow falls over me. I jump, and spin around, heart racing.
Right behind me, there’s a man; tall, bearded, with a cap pulled low over his forehead. He nods a greeting.
“Jon Mullane live here? Called looking for a glazier?”
I nod, give a shaky smile, and let out a breath.
· · ·
When the glazier leaves, I tip my half-eaten lunch into the bin and settle on the couch to feed Bella, thinking back over all of it. One thing jumps out now: Greta’s comment just before she left this morning.
There’s something else about Nika Geary.
What did she mean? I know Nika; I’ve taught her over the years.
She’s confident, glossy, popular, polite.
Polite with a hint of…fake. A sense that behind the beaming smile, she’s quietly laughing at you.
I text Greta to ask her, but she doesn’t reply.
It’s three, though; she’ll be out on the pitch at the camp she runs.
I send a second text, asking her to call in on her way home.
On Google now, my face heating up as I imagine anyone seeing me, I type Nika Geary’s name.
All her socials are private, and part of me is glad—snooping on a pupil’s Snapchat or TikTok feels like a step too far.
She comes up on our school website, for Student of the Year in first year, Spirit of the School in second year, and Sportsperson of the Year in third year.
No prizes in fourth year or fifth year; maybe her halo slipped.
Other mentions for hockey wins, but nothing that tells me what Greta meant.
The next search result is from Hollypark, her primary school, the same one my nieces, Aoife and Maeve, used to go to.
I click into a sixth class graduation photo and spot Nika in the front row, and something snags at my memory—something familiar about her in that uniform…
It hits me now: not often, but occasionally, in Leesa’s house, Nika was there.
Of course. She was friends with Maeve. Not any more though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them together in secondary.
Does that mean something? Greta will fill me in later, I’m sure.
· · ·
Just after five, Leesa calls in to see how I’m doing, followed soon by Greta.
Leesa chatters while she makes tea, wondering about the mood in the Geary household, reassuring me that it will all blow over, raving about a film she saw, then speculating that Samir, her husband, might divorce her for watching it without him.
Samir travels a lot for work and sometimes Leesa goes to the same film twice rather than confessing that she’s already seen it.
Greta is unusually quiet through all of this.
I ask her if she’s OK and she grimaces, shaking a bottle of pills. Code for bad day.
“Greta, what did you mean earlier when you said, ‘There’s something else about Nika Geary’?”
Greta and Leesa exchange a glance so fleeting I almost miss it.
I look from one to the other. “Come on, spill.”
Greta’s eyes meet mine. “Nika is part of the group that was bullying Maeve at school.”
“Oh.” I wonder briefly how Greta knows more than I do about who was bullying our niece, but she’s always been extra close to Leesa’s elder daughter. The first grandchild, though there were no grandparents to meet her, so Greta took that mantle. Aunt, godmother, stand-in grandparent, all in one.
Leesa nods. “I didn’t tell you because I knew Nika was in your form class and, no offense, but I didn’t think you’d manage to stay neutral.”
“Too right, I’d have given her detention every time she so much as moved in class.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you.”
This makes no sense. “Why are you protecting Nika Geary?”
“I was protecting you. You wouldn’t have been able to stay impartial and then you’d have ended up in trouble.” She bites her lip. “Hopefully nobody will think your message last night was a deliberate attempt to target Nika…because of Maeve, I mean…”
“Most people won’t know Maeve is my niece or about the bullying. It’s fine.”
It probably isn’t fine. Then again, if Nika was involved in targeting Maeve, I don’t feel so bad about calling her “bratty.”
“Maeve’s doing OK now, right?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I don’t think she’d tell me if she wasn’t.”
“Aoife would tell you,” I reassure her. “Like last time?”
My niece Aoife, Leesa’s younger daughter, is thirteen going on thirty.
She’s no nonsense in a way you don’t always see with thirteen-year-olds, which doesn’t necessarily win her friends, but she doesn’t seem to care.
Long may it last, I always think, wishing I could have been more like that at her age.
It was Aoife who realized what was happening to her older sister and told Leesa about it.
“Yeah,” Leesa says without any conviction at all.
I hit the kettle to make more tea and that’s when it happens—a Google Alert pops up in my email:
Google Alert—“Susan O’Donnell”
Murder in Oakpark, Susan O’Donnell dead
Blood rushes to my ears and the room sways. I reach for the counter to steady myself. What the hell is this? The words swim as I try to focus on the next line:
The woman found dead in Oakpark this morning is a secondary school teacher who sent a defamatory message last night that went viral. Her name is Susan O’Donnell.