Only We Know (12 page)

‘You don’t think …’ she
begins ‘… you don’t think this – Luke’s disappearance, I mean – you
don’t think it has anything to do with what happened back then? In Kenya, when we
were kids. Do you?’

‘The past is the past,’ I
say.

‘It makes me uneasy, Nick.
Luke’s missing, and now you’re back.’ She spreads her hands in a
gesture of futility. ‘It’s the three of us again, isn’t it? And then
when Julia gave me that photograph –’

‘I think Luke’s overstretched
himself,’ I say in a rush. ‘I think he’s taken on too much and
it’s all got to him. I think he’s still grieving for our mum and needed to
get away for a while to be by himself. It’s all just got him down. That’s
what I think.’

‘That’s a big speech from
you,’ she says wryly, and I know that she’s teasing me but, still, I see the
doubt in her eye.

She has almost finished her pint, and stares
at the dregs in the bottom of her glass. Her voice so low, I can hardly hear her, she
says: ‘Do you ever think about it? About what happened?’

My heart gives a
dull thud of fear. The dread that always lies at the pit of my stomach, like a sleeping
dog about to stir.

‘No,’ I say, my voice thick with
fatigue and stout. ‘No, I don’t.’

I don’t ask her whether she does – I
don’t want to – though she seems to be inching towards talking about it. Then my
mobile buzzes – a text – and I busy myself with checking it, grateful for the
distraction. ‘It’s Lauren,’ I say. ‘She’s
awake.’

Katie smiles and drains what remains of her
pint. ‘Best run along then,’ she says, turning to get her things.

When I get back, Lauren is not in the room.
Her latest text says:
Need fresh air. Gone for a stroll in the park.

I climb into bed and fall into a deep sleep.
I sleep all night and wake early, feeling dazed and weary. At first I don’t know
where I am. The bed sheets feel strange to my touch. I open my eyes and reach for Lauren
only to find that I am alone. I sit up and call her name but there is no answer from the
bathroom.

I reach for my phone on the bedside locker.
There’s a missed call from Julia. As I swing my legs out and get to my feet, the
door opens and Lauren enters. As soon as I see her I know that something has happened.
She’s agitated and there is an urgency to her movements that is foreign to me.

‘Look,’ she says, holding a
newspaper up to me. I feel a sudden plunge of dread as I take it from her, steeling
myself for the news I’ve been waiting for.

But when I study the paper, the headline and
photographs,
there is nothing about Luke,
nothing at all. Instead, it’s a piece about a terrorist attack.

‘It’s in Westlands,’ she
says. ‘They don’t know yet how many are dead.’

‘Nairobi?’ I say, confused, as
she crosses the room and switches on the TV, flicking rapidly through the channels until
she finds Sky News.

‘A gang of terrorists armed with
AK-47s and grenades have taken over a shopping mall.’

I try to arrange my thoughts, clear them of
the fug of sleep, picturing in my mind’s eye that part of Nairobi with the
nightclubs and shopping malls, an area of opulence and excess.

‘God knows how many people
they’ve got in there,’ she says, concentrating on the words flashing across
the screen. ‘Nick? Honey, are you okay?’

I sit down on the bed, spots dancing in
front of my eyes, and let the paper fall to the floor. A needling sound rises in my ears
– a sharp tinnitus – and with it comes pain.

‘Jesus, Nick, you’re white as a
sheet.’

‘When you came in just now, the paper
in your hand, I …’

Her arms wrap around me, and she pulls me to
her. ‘Of course you were thinking of Luke. I should have realized.’

I draw away from her embrace, take hold of
her wrists and tell her I’m okay, even though I’m still shaking with
nerves.

‘Let’s get out of here,’
she says.

‘All right. We should call over to
Julia, I suppose.’

‘No,’ she says, with a degree of
force. ‘You need a break,
Nick – we
both do. Let’s get out of the city. I want you to show me where you grew
up.’

‘Really?’

‘Come on. We’ll hire a car, take
a picnic, make a day of it. It’ll be good for you.’

There’s a hesitation within me, but I
feel I have something to make up to Lauren. And maybe she’s right – maybe it would
be good for me, for us. So I dress quickly, and by the time we’re having breakfast
and the coffee has kicked in, I’m feeling like it’s a good idea. It will
take our minds off the search. It’s been a hectic week; we need the break. The
hotel arranges a rental car and, in no time, we’re on our way.

Lauren’s mood lightens as we leave the
city and head towards the Dublin mountains and beyond to the Wicklow hills, and so does
mine. Even with the nagging urgency I feel to find my brother, it’s a relief to be
leaving the city.

The traffic lightens as we pass
Harold’s Cross, drive through Terenure and begin the climb up the Grange road
towards Kilmashogue. As I drive, Lauren busies herself sending emails and texts to our
friends in Nairobi, trying to find out if anyone we know could be caught up in the
siege. The responses are jittery and panicked; a sense of the shock that has taken over
Nairobi drifts through the car. On the radio, a talk-show host is discussing the end of
the bail-out, the forthcoming budget, and some changes to inheritance tax at which I
zone out.

Then, after an ad-break, there is a piece
about Luke.

‘He’ll turn up,’ says one
of the jaded pundits. ‘He’s like Houdini. He’s always been able to get
himself out of a fix.’

The host laughs. ‘But where is Luke
Yates and what has
happened to him? He was
on with us, listeners, if you remember, only two weeks ago to talk about the wonderful
work his charity ALIVE does in Kenya, building homes for the less fortunate.’

Before I get a chance to, Lauren switches
the channel. She doesn’t say anything, just stares resolutely ahead. The sound of
stringed instruments fills the car. A violin lifts the heavy mood into some
other-worldly trance.

We reach the outskirts of south Dublin and
Ticknock where the road steepens. The engine strains, and the tyres bite into the ground
beneath us. I stop at a junction on the Tibradden road.

‘Take a peek,’ I say to
Lauren.

From here you can see the whole city; you
can see from Howth Head all the way into the city centre where the Spire gleams, like a
shining needle. You can see the red-and-white twin-stack chimneys of Poolbeg standing
out like two sticks of candy rock. You can see Dublin in all its beauty.

Lauren takes it in with a deep breath of
pleasure.

I keep on into Wicklow, past Bray, heading
south towards the place I had once known as home. As soon as the house comes into view,
I feel pressure building in my inner ear – the bubble of air threatening to burst. My
tinnitus, pinging on a high, shrill note, makes me want to turn the car around. Coming
here was a mistake, I want to say. I don’t want to reveal the secrets that lie
behind these walls. I don’t want to disturb the sleeping ghosts.

But Lauren is expectant and full of
excitement. Her wonder at seeing the house I grew up in makes me feel a little sad, but
I can’t bear to disappoint her.

‘It’s
beautiful,’ she says, taking in the elegant sweep of the drive, the high walls,
the grandeur of the eaves.

‘It was once,’ I say to her.
Then I explain that it was sold to a developer after my father died. ‘He was going
to knock it and the neighbours’ houses down and build a bigger estate, only he
went bust.’

She places a warm hand on my thigh as I
drive. She is trying to reassure me, but all I feel is a dull panic. Lauren wants to
invest this moment with too much significance. Tiredness creeps over me, and with it a
confusion of emotions. I’m worried for my brother, but there’s a whisper of
anger too – at the senselessness of his disappearance, at his dragging me back here when
I wanted to stay away – and with the anger comes a clinging shame.

Some of the stones in the driveway have come
loose, weeds growing among them, making the surface crooked and uneven. The splendour of
the sash windows remains hidden, plywood hammered over the frames. The garden is
overgrown, bindweed choking everything. We’re far from anything. The idyllic, once
bustling family home is gone.

I park the car and turn the key to kill the
engine.

‘Come on,’ Lauren says, stepping
out.

She approaches one of the boarded-up
windows, stands on a couple of stacked blocks, attempting to peer in. My eye is drawn
upwards to the eaves where gaps have appeared, ripe for nesting house martins. I notice
the holes in the woodwork and the fissures in the walls and think of the draughts
whistling through the house, and feel a shiver of loneliness.

‘What now?’ I ask.

‘Let’s
go inside.’

‘Lauren,’ I say patiently,
‘the place is all locked up. There
is
no going in.’

She doesn’t seem to hear me. Instead
she walks around the side of the house and I trail after her, through the overgrown
kitchen garden, a gnarled mess of shrubbery, nettles and weeds, and round to the back
where the door into the scullery has been blocked off with two planks nailed across it.
I watch her pulling at them, one half of me concerned at her insistence, the other half
curious. All at once there is a rending sound as the wood gives way and she pushes the
door open, turning to me with a grin of triumph that I can’t help but laugh at,
her excitement is so infectious.

‘Congratulations,’ I say,
following her as she ducks in under the remaining plank and enters the dark space.
‘You’ve a shining career as a house-breaker ahead of you.’

There’s a dank smell of rot and damp.
Lauren is one step ahead of me.

‘Look at this place,’ she says,
her voice hushed with wonder, and I can see the thrill in her face – the thrill of the
illicit, the forbidden. I’m full of warnings and words of heed, like a good
husband, but she doesn’t answer. In the kitchen, someone has built a small
bonfire, which has gone out now. The walls are charred black in one corner. The picture
of the Sacred Heart still hangs on the far wall, faded now. Somewhere in the cavern of
my memory, I hear the ghostly echo of voices calling to me from the past.

‘Oh, wow, check this out,’
Lauren says, reaching the staircase, which has retained its elegant sweep despite the
decay.
I watch her climb, her hand recoiling
at the grimy touch of the banister.

‘Be careful,’ I tell her,
worried that at any moment the wood under her feet might give way and she could crash
through the stairs.

I watch her until she disappears, but I
don’t follow her. Instead, I step through into what had been the living room. A
murky half-light fills the space. I can see that the fireplace has been ripped out and
carried off, along with all the other furnishings. There is a stripped-out, forlorn
quality to it, as if the room itself is in mourning for its past glory. A swarm of
voices ghost through my head. They seem to echo with warning. I didn’t think
coming here would affect me so deeply. A well of emotion rises in me and I feel dizzy,
as if I’m standing at some great height and looking down.

Lauren calls my name but I don’t want
to go up there. I’ve seen enough. I shout up to her that I’ll wait for her
outside. She calls me again. This time I hear a shrill note of panic in her voice. I
take the staircase two at a time and follow the sound into the front bedroom.

She turns to me, her face pale with shock. I
look past her to the quiet and stillness of the place.

The dimness is broken by a beam of light
that has escaped through the cracked boarding of the window.

The light catches his feet and ankles –
black patent shoes, socks with a diamond pattern, the cuffs of his black tuxedo
trousers.

‘Oh, God,’ Lauren says quietly
to herself, over and over.

I stand still, ears ringing painfully,
pricked by a thousand stinging needles. If there are words to say, I cannot say
them. Not here, not now. I feel
Lauren’s hand on my back, but I can’t look at her. Instead I stand in my
parents’ house, transfixed, staring up at him: my brother, the beam above him
creaking as he swings gently from the end of a rope.

‘I don’t like him,’ she
says.

They are in the office in Kianda, the two of
them. The driver has just left. Sally stands at the door, watching the small figure
oiling his way down the alley, the casual roll of his step.

‘Why not?’ Jim asks, and she
turns to see him looking up at her, surprised.

‘I don’t trust him.’

He laughs, returning to his paperwork, one
hand tapping out a rhythm with his pen. ‘You don’t trust anyone,’ he
says softly.

She turns away and looks out of the door
again. The driver – Mackenzie – has paused at the corner to light another cigarette,
shoulders hunched forward in his denim jacket. The whole time he was in the office he
kept puffing away, cigarette pinched between stubby fingers, grime around the
fingernails. Sally has a sudden glimpse of a lurching journey in a tin-can minibus, the
stale smell of that cigarette smoke making her nauseous.