Perfectly Preventable Deaths

24 Yarrow

Catlin is furious with me for going off. Of course she is. Everything in the world is all about Catlin. Before anyone makes a decision, she must be consulted or everything will crumble into dust. It is the way of things. It was foolish to rock the boat by making choices. I understand this, but she’s also wrong.

‘You weren’t even around most of the night,’ I say. ‘You were hooking up with Lon the whole time.’

‘Not the whole time. Not while you were gone,’ she says, all pale and tense and doing that thing where she over-enunciates words to show how calm she is. How reasonable she’s being.

‘So it’s OK for you to go off with Lon and leave me alone, but it’s not OK for me to go for a walk with Oona?’ I ask, although it’s not a question. Not really.

Catlin glares at me, and wipes down the surface of a battered steamer trunk with a J-cloth. It looked pale grey, but it was really black. We’re cleaning out the unused rooms for Mam. To ‘surprise Brian’, when he comes back from yet another work trip. As if we need more secrets in this place. How much will Brian tell me, if we get the chance to speak before he’s off again? I wonder what he’s told Mam about it all. I spray some glass cleaner on an old foxed mirror. The veins and stains of ancient rotting glass. I peer at Catlin’s reflection. She’s sitting on a dusty ottoman, waiting, but I’m waiting too. For something.

I can’t explain myself. I am voiceless. Full of wanting things I cannot have. I don’t know what, but some of it is Oona.

The moon was fat on our way back to Donoghue’s. We didn’t speak. Outside of the water. But we held hands and everything was charged, and I could feel the distance between my body and her body, as though it were another part of me. A phantom limb.

As we walked in, she let go of my hand.

Catlin was bright with anger as we arrived, the others talking quietly among themselves. Clearing up. Fiachra and Cathal drained the cans before they binned them. Charley washed the glasses, Layla swept. They’re all so good, I thought. Even when they’re drunk, they tidy up. The grumpy man behind the bar was gone.

‘I rang and rang,’ Catlin yelled at me, performing her rage for an audience of everyone in the pub but mainly Lon. ‘Mamó is looking for you on the road. I thought you were missing, like those girls.’

I met her eyes.

Helen Groarke.

Amanda Shale.

Nora Ginn.

Bridget Hora.

Ghosts passed between us. And I could sense her almost move to hug me, but Lon put his arms tight around her. He met my eyes and smiled behind her back. I felt a hint of something dark in him. A little scare that ran right up my spine.

Her name was Helen.

‘You were wrong to scare your sister like that, Madeline,’ Lon scolded.

Because, apparently, he is my dad.

‘I’m sorry, Lon?’ I said, doing my best to pronounce his name the same way Mamó did.

I see you, Lon, I thought. For what you are.

I looked over at Oona. She was helping Charley tidy up the cans into a bin bag.

‘Where were you?’ Catlin asked.

I didn’t say. I think that I was waiting for Oona to say something. She was with me. It wasn’t all her fault.

That kind of thing.

And then a beep.

Our lift was waiting.

Mamó’s little red car carved our way home through the forest. The beams of light the only bright thing in the deep and dark. I played what had happened over and over in my brain. What it meant, and all that it could mean. And all it didn’t.

‘Aren’t you going to ask her where she was?’ Catlin spluttered.

‘No. I’m not her keeper,’ Mamó told her.

Our eyes met in the mirror, grey and green.

She wants to be.

We parted ways, and Catlin stalked in silence to her bedroom. I knew she felt betrayed.

And I did too.

By my own stupid feelings.

When we left, Oona didn’t look at me.

I don’t like this. This feeling in my gut like she might want me, but she might not want me. The lurch of that.

If I told Catlin about Oona, she’d forgive me. It would be bigger than the grudge she holds. I know this, but the silence stretches longer.

A cavern yawning wide between us both.

A crush seems like such a reductive word, but it is one. What I have.

And I am crushed.

Why would she ignore me like that? I feel my eyes well up. A tear drips on the hard pine attic floor.

I think of Mamó, her jars and bottles. The people piling in to ask for help. I wish there were a treatment for this sort of thing. A lure, so I could bring Oona near to me and keep her close. I want her head to nestle in the crook of my arm. I want her on my stomach, on my hips. I want her skin on mine. I want to fall asleep beside her, wake up smiling. I want, I want, I want.

I’m sick of wanting things I’ll never have. I’m sick of almost everything about me. I wish I were a ghost and not a girl. Then looking never acting would be fine. I spend so much time stopping my arms from reaching for the things I want and know I’ll never get.

I wish that I were good enough for Oona.

I wish that I were better than I am.

Catlin wraps her arms around my back. She presses her face between my shoulder blades.

‘It’s OK, Mad,’ she says. ‘It’s just you scared me. I amn’t used to being the sensible one.’

She smiles at me. I smile a little back.

‘You look so sad.’ She passes me a clean duster. It’s yellow and it’s soft. I wipe my face.

And I could tell her now, if I wanted to.

If I was feeling brave.

But I can’t, not yet. It’s like a stone I’m holding in my mouth and I want to spit it out but if I did it wouldn’t be my stone.

And so I say, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s fine, Mad, really,’ she says. ‘It’s just this place. It gives me the creeps. All this murder underneath the surface. The mountain where you were last night is where they found a lot of them, you know.’

I do know. But last night I didn’t think. My heart too full.

‘I dream about the girls sometimes,’ she tells me. ‘I’ve been reading about them, lighting candles, saying little prayers. It’s not that I’m being morbid. It’s just …’

She sits down on the floor beside me. Her fingers scratch a stubborn floorboard stain.

‘It’s the history of this place, I mean. It’s fascinating. But it’s also real. The fox we found. Those girls – they have stories, but they’re not a story. And I’ve been acting almost like they are, and then last night you were gone. And part of me knows that you were off with Oona, for whatever reason …’

She looks at me pointedly. I stare at my toes.

‘… and you being gone made everything feel real. And I was there with Lon – Laurent, I mean – but I didn’t want him near me. I thought of the fox. The body like that. I just wanted to run outside and find you and make everything OK. Whatever it was …’

I tell her that I get it and I say I’m sorry and I mean it this time. It must have been weird for Catlin, waiting for me. She’s normally the one who has adventures. The one who’s fun enough for both of us. But we won’t be living in each other’s pockets forever. We’ll go to places and we’ll build our lives. And that’s what I want, but I am worried about it too, that when it happens I will be bereft, missing the part of me that has friends. But I’m realising that’s not true.

‘Maybe that’s why I don’t like Lon,’ I tell her. ‘Because he’s taking you away. I mean, I see you all the time, but not as much.’

‘Laurent thinks that too,’ she says, and smiles at me.

Of course he does. The sly prick.

‘Did you tell him that you loved him?’ I ask.

‘I tried to,’ she says. Her hands gesture in the air, reaching for something I can’t see. ‘But the words just wouldn’t come. I looked at him and I thought iloveyouil‌oveyouiloveyou but I didn’t want to say it too soon, or have him see me as needy or anything.’ She looks towards the wall, twisting the red and yellow duster in her hands, wringing it as though it were heavy with fluid. ‘I want to make it easy for him to love me, Mad.’

‘It is easy to love you,’ I tell her. ‘You don’t have to say it to feel it. Maybe wait a while. Until he says it, or until there’s a perfect time. Maybe at the party, with other people there, it was too much pressure.’

She seems to take that on-board.

‘Catlin?’ I venture. ‘You know Lon’s ex? Helen.’

‘What?’ Her voice is sharp. ‘Where did you hear that name?’

‘Just at the pub,’ I say. ‘And … do you not think it’s a bit weird that she had the same name as the dead girl?’

‘Not really,’ she says. ‘It’s not an unusual name, I mean. Helen.’

‘Yes, but Ballyfrann is tiny.’

‘It is,’ she says.

I feel my guts tangle and stiffen, heavy like wrought iron.

‘Was the Helen his Helen, Catlin?’ I ask.

She looks at me. ‘How do you compete with someone who isn’t there any more?’ she asks. ‘I mean …’ She sounds wistful, sad, but I’m jarred into horror, and my voice is sharp.

‘You DON’T!’ I say. ‘If someone’s ex is dead because of murder, that’s what they call a red flag.’

‘She moved away, Madeline. Jesus Christ –’ she starts, but I keep going.

‘Catlin. She moved away, and then they found. Her. Body. You remember. You reminded me. And I left you alone with him last night. Jesus Christ.’

‘It wasn’t the same Helen, Maddy,’ she said. ‘He would have said. We spoke and spoke for ages. He really opened up to me.’

‘Yes, opened up his bag of murder tools.’ My voice is brittle, panicked.

‘STOP,’ she says. ‘This isn’t a thing to snark about, or make fun of. This is my life. I love him.’

‘What did he say to you, exactly?’ I ask her. ‘About Helen.’

Her face is very serious. ‘He told me she was kind, and she was beautiful, like me. And that he really fell for her, but she broke his heart, and soon after they broke up, she moved away. And it took him a long time to get over it. And he wasn’t sure he ever would, entirely. Until he met me.’

‘Catlin, that is terrifying,’ I tell her.

‘Madeline. I am telling you. It wasn’t the same girl. He would have said.’

‘Would he?’

‘Yes. He absolutely would have. I know not everyone likes him, I’m not blind. He knows that too. A lot of the people he went to school with moved away for college, and it’s lonely for him. He tries his best. Like, that’s why he runs the youth club. To try to fit in. And no one gives a shit. Like, he did so much work last night, organising the venue and the sound equipment and everything. And at the end of it, no one so much as thanked him …’

‘Does even a small part of you think …’

‘… that he had anything to do with it?’ Catlin finishes. ‘No. Absolutely not. I believe him and I love him,’ she says. ‘I wish you could talk to me about this like a normal person, without jumping to conclusions.’ She sighs, letting her hands flop down into her lap. ‘It’s very frustrating.’

‘Umm.’

‘Madeline,’ she says. ‘You can’t be stirring Mam up about this. Twisting things. She’d worry, and she’s got enough.’

‘Maybe she should be worried.’ I barely get the words out, before she cuts me off, her voice incredulous.

‘What?’ Her what has more syllables than normal, to fit in all the contempt. I shrink a little. I have a point. A sharp and shiny point. ‘Are you even listening to yourself?’

‘I mean, you were angry with me for going up to the mountains with Oona last night. And she’s, like, half the size of Lon … Can’t I just –’

‘NO. Lon wouldn’t hurt a fly, Madeline,’ Catlin says.

‘That’s LITERALLY what the man in Psycho says at the end of the movie Psycho. Did he actually say to you, in words, that it was a different Helen?’

‘He didn’t have to,’ she says. ‘I can’t do this. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Maddy,’ she snaps at me, and her voice is filled with spite all over again. ‘I’m going for a smoke.’

She turns on her heel and flounces out of the room, as haughty as a lady in one of the portraits Brian’s father bought to put up on the walls as pretend ancestors.

I sit cross-legged on the dusty floor, unpacking what just happened. Deep down in the shame-pit of my stomach, I’m conscious she’s right. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never loved before, or been loved back. But, all the same, I know enough to know where danger lurks. Not to blindly follow where your person leads you.

Unless …

I think of Oona, nose and eyes and face. Her collarbones, the way she says my name. If I were to find out … what would I do with that? But Oona’s not even a bit like Lon is. She scares me in a different kind of way. A safer way.

Telling her the way I feel.

There’s not enough salt in the world.

She let go of my hand. She moved away. Of course she moved away.

There is another heart inside her heart.

I sit on the floor, scared for Catlin, worried for myself, draw stars into the dust and wipe the cloth over them, dark night sky.

I’m not the girl that people fall in love with. I’m the girl you use to forget that girl.