Ruthless - [9]

No, they could not trace her here. Everyone would go on thinking her missing, dead like Redmond. So she would stay here. Why not? There was nothing else left for her in life.

Her mother was delighted when she said she would stay. Then Pa wandered into the kitchen.

‘Look, Davey, our Orla’s home,’ said Ma.

But Davey Delaney just stared at his daughter, not a hint of recognition in his face.

‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

‘I told you, it’s Orla.’

‘Oh.’

Ma cast an apologetic look at Orla. ‘Take no notice.’

‘Dinner ready yet?’ asked Davey.

‘It’s only an hour since you had breakfast.’

‘I want dinner!’ shouted Davey, and thumped the table, making both women jump.

Orla’s mother stood up, her mouth set in a long-suffering line.

‘I’ll help,’ said Orla, and Ma gave her a grateful smile.

‘Will you tell him about Redmond?’ Orla asked her later in the day, when Pa was napping.

‘I will. But he probably won’t understand – or even remember who Redmond is. Was. Oh my poor boy…’ The tears started again.

A cleaner came in once a week. The woman brought a few groceries with her, did a bit of ironing, and pottered around chatting and moving the dust from one place to another. Orla kept out of sight and got her mother to sack the woman. A milkman called, and a baker. Orla hid away from any visitors to the farm – thanking God there were few – and started tidying the place up. Shattered by Redmond’s death, she found solace in creating order out of chaos.

Then the Garda called. She was chopping wood when she saw the car coming up the track to the farm. Heart thumping, she ran and hid in one of the big disused barns at the side of the house until they left a half-hour later.

Only then did she go indoors.

‘What did they want?’ she asked her mother.

‘They were asking if you or Redmond had been here lately,’ said her mother.

‘And what did you say?’

‘Don’t worry, I said neither of you had. And then they said I had to prepare myself, that there had been a flight out of Cardiff and that you both were on it, and the flight had vanished so we must fear the worst.’

So the British police had liaised with the Garda, as she had known they would, asking them to call by the house after the plane went missing, to check if either she or Redmond had shown up.

Now that was out of the way, Orla began to relax a little.

Her mother was watching her face closely. ‘It must have been hell for you, that plane crash.’

‘It was.’

‘And poor Redmond…’ Her mother crossed herself and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Ah, God rest him.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ asked Davey, wandering into the kitchen, his eyes bright with curiosity.

‘Redmond,’ said his wife.

The old man looked at the two women in bemusement. ‘Who?’ His eyes fastened on his daughter. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

Orla stayed on, living in a dim twilight world of cooking and cleaning, exhausting herself so that she fell into bed at night unable to think, unable to do anything other than sleep. Her mother was sharp as a tack – although clearly ground down and aged from the burden of caring for her husband – but Pa’s dementia had left him with no interest in the daily business of living. He would subsist on bread and water if you let him. Baths were things he had to be reminded to take on a fortnightly basis – Ma had to run his bath for him, then wash his reeking clothes.

Someone had once told Orla that grief had its passage of time. Nothing could hurry it. Two to five years was normal to grieve, going through all the processes of anger, guilt and acceptance.

Five years passed. The Garda, despite her fears that they might, never returned. The farmhouse came slowly back to life under her care. And still she longed for Redmond, for the presence of her twin at her side. And she felt plagued by guilt because she had lived, and he had not.

With so much time to think about it, she’d become convinced that the crash had been orchestrated by Annie Carter and her Mafia pals. She could never forget Fergal tapping that fuel gauge, wondering why it was showing empty when it should have been full. And now the only person she had ever loved in her entire life was gone. The one consolation was that she and Redmond had settled the score with that Carter bitch before they’d fled England. They’d finished her good and proper – there would have been nothing left of her but blood and guts. It pleased Orla so much to think of that. If the police had ever found the remains of her, God alone knew how they would have identified the cow.

The days dragged on, the skies sitting in a grey repressive bowl above her head as she went out to hang the washing. It wouldn’t dry much today, but later she’d bring it in, hang it on the clothes horse in front of the fire.

Her life was dull too, dull like the sky. She was wearing an old cotton dress of her mother’s, pulled in tight with a belt because she was terribly thin these days, as if the grief had eaten her from within. Over that she wore a faded quilted jacket – her father’s – and Wellington boots that belonged to him too. They flopped around her feet, acres too big.