Only We Know (27 page)

‘One more thing, and then I will leave
you in peace.’ Drawing her attention to the map once more, he says: ‘This is
where they were playing the game, yet this is where Cora’s body was
found.’

She follows the movement of the nib of the
pen from one careful spot to the other.

‘It’s a distance of ten or
twelve metres.’

She looks at him, unsure.

‘Why do you suppose the body would
have moved so far from where they were playing?’

He holds her gaze, and she feels momentarily
staggered,
confused as to what to say. Sweat
breaks out anew on her back, and she swallows, leaning forward to look at the page.
‘Isn’t it possible that it floated away? The drag of the river …’

‘But the body was found upriver from
where the children were playing.’

She frowns and pulls at her lower lip with
her thumb and index finger. ‘Maybe the children had moved upriver to play
–’

‘No. Amy Gordon says they remained at
the original spot. There is a knotted blue rope hanging down from a tree that their
father had hung there for them. He always insisted that they stay there when they were
in the river.’

‘Are you sure? I mean, children say
all sorts of things, especially when they’ve been disobedient. And that little
girl – Amy – seemed very young. Only four or five …’

‘Five. But I’ve spoken to her
and I would say that her evidence is reliable. She is an intelligent little girl, and
quite eloquent, despite her age.’

Sally, flustered now, struggles for an
answer. ‘Perhaps an animal pulled her upriver. Some creature hidden in the
water.’

‘There was no evidence of any animal
marks on the body. Besides,’ he says in a silky tone that she doesn’t like,
‘didn’t you just say that part of the river was safe?’

‘Yes. But I suppose –’

‘There were leaves in her hair. And
twigs.’

‘So?’

‘When I went back to the place she was
found, I saw other leaves and branches heaped there along the bank. The same kind that
had been tangled in her hair.’

‘I
don’t understand.’

‘Those sticks and leaves did not
arrive there by themselves. It looked to me like someone had put them there. To conceal
the body.’

‘But the drag of the water, the trees
nearby, surely …’ Her voice drifts into silence.

He holds her there for a moment or two and
Sally knows she has failed. She has failed this test but, more than anything, she has
failed her sons. Fear grips her heart and words come to her lips, words that she had had
no intention of saying.

‘The driver …’ she begins, and
watches his eyes narrow, a new curiosity entering his gaze.

‘What about him?’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘Yes.’ He spreads his hands wide
– large hands, she notices. ‘There was not much he could tell us, seeing as how he
was asleep in the van for the duration. Drunk, I believe.’

‘Yes,’ she says, but the way she
draws it out slowly, speculatively, makes him sit up and lean forward a little.

‘Are you saying he
wasn’t?’

The question is put to her softly, easily,
and just as easily the lie comes.

‘I was putting away the tents. My
husband had gone to the village and my friend had followed after him. The children were
down at the river. While I was packing the tents away, I looked into the van to check on
the driver. That’s when I noticed he wasn’t there.’

‘He wasn’t there?’

‘No.’

‘You’re
sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘Did you see him anywhere?’

‘No. I didn’t look for him. I
assumed he’d gone to find a cooler place to lie in – the van would have been very
hot. But now I wonder …’

Her voice drifts into silence. The lie is
out there.

A beat. He considers this new information.
It sits between them – the seed she has planted. And, for just a moment, Sally can
almost convince herself that it is true. That it really happened. Later she will tell
herself it was a white lie – told to deflect attention from her sons. She will tell
herself that it will come to nothing anyway – that she will not swear to it in
court.

He frowns, as if this new evidence troubles
him, writes something in his little notebook. All the while, Sally holds herself steady,
wills him to leave, for this interview to be over.

Inspector Atabe gets to his feet and downs
the rest of his iced tea in one gulp, placing the empty glass on the table beside hers.
He tucks his notepad and pen back into his jacket pocket and she stands up to see him
off. At the bottom of the steps, he turns back to bid her goodbye, and as he shakes her
hand, he says to her: ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps something did pull her
under.’ He looks her squarely in the face, his eyes plain and searching.
‘There are all sorts of creatures lurking in the water.’

Just like that, the decision is made.
Rather than feeling panicked in the aftermath of Inspector Atabe’s visit, a kind
of calm comes over her. After all the turmoil, the indecision,
the sleepless nights, the endless prevarication and
discussion, in the end the decision is arrived at swiftly and definitely, her mind made
up by forces beyond her control.

Calmly, she picks up the phone and dials the
number. In even tones, she tells her husband what has happened.

‘Did he say if he’s going to
return?’ Ken asks, in a voice kept low so that his secretary in the next room
cannot hear. Sally hears the note of alarm in it anyway.

‘No, but he will,’ she says
softly.

‘Sally –’

She is there before him. ‘We’ll
be packed by the time you get home.’

One more phone call. She keeps it short,
imparting only the most basic and urgent of details – that she loves him but her boys
come first. There is no discussion: she will brook no argument. Her mind is made up.

Then, quietly, she goes about it – moving
from room to room, packing enough for her and the boys. They will go ahead; Ken will
follow in the coming weeks. He spoke of it briefly on the phone and she had agreed: he
would see out his contract, and arrange for the rest of their belongings to be packed up
and shipped home. But Sally and the boys would go now, as soon as they could get
flights. They would tell no one – not even Jamil. The risk was too great. But still she
had called Jim. She owed him that much.

By the time Ken’s car pulls through
the gates that evening, she has the bags packed and is waiting for her husband to join
her so they can tell the boys together. Watching him mounting the steps, his briefcase
in one hand, his jacket slung over his shoulder, she notes the weariness in his posture.
He hasn’t seen her yet, and in that brief moment,
there is something about him that is so defeated she wants
to take him in her arms. The impulse passes, and instead she opens the door, takes his
briefcase from him and briefly touches his arm, an unspoken resolution passing between
them.

‘It’s all booked,’ he says
quietly. ‘I’ve got you seats on an Air France flight to Paris, with an
onward connection to Dublin. It leaves in the morning.’

She nods, the shadows gathering now as
evening draws in – their last night together in Kenya as a family. Something inside her
is coming undone.

They tell the boys together. Luke cries, but
Nicky doesn’t say a word. They hug their sons, telling them how much they love
them, how this move back to Ireland is for the best, a new adventure in their lives, but
however hard they try to reassure them, Sally cannot help but hear the hollowness of
their voices, the tinny music of their forced enthusiasm.

They eat in silence, picking at their food,
a collective loss of appetite in the wake of the decision made. And it is as she folds
her knife and fork across her plate that Sally sees the swing of headlights across the
windows, hears the screech of brakes outside. Ken swivels in his chair to follow her
gaze, then gets to his feet. Already, Sally can see the apprehension in his face, the
sudden loss of colour in his cheeks as he moves swiftly to the door. The boys look at
her and she holds herself very still, straining to hear who it is. A car door slams, the
click of the screen-door, and Ken’s footsteps on the terrace, his voice raised in
greeting. Another voice – a man’s – low and gravelled and she knows it
immediately.

‘Go to your
room,’ she tells the boys, hearing the urgency in her own voice.

They shuffle away and she hurries to the
screen-door, her heart beating high and light in her chest.

Jim is at the foot of the steps, and from
where she stands, hiding, she can see his face lit from above by the lamp over the door.
There is something unsteady in the way he is holding himself, his shirt untucked and
hanging over his jeans, hands on his hips and a kind of wildness that seems barely
contained within his body. He has been drinking. Ken stands with his back to her so she
cannot see his face, only the line of his shoulders, hands by his sides, as he waits on
the bottom step, looking down at Jim who speaks in a low voice: ‘You can’t
do this, Ken. It’s folly – a complete overreaction.’

‘Thank you for your concern, Father
Jim,’ Ken sounds stiff and formal, rigid with suppressed anger, ‘but we have
made our decision.’

‘Please just think about it – sleep on
it. Don’t tear the boys away from their home like this. Don’t you see? After
all they have been through, surely what they need now is the security of familiar
surroundings, rather than being uprooted and plunged back into a life they have no
memory of.’

‘Please, Jim, I know you mean
well,’ Ken says, and she hears the strain of temper in his low voice, ‘but
your concern is unhelpful at this time. We need to be left in peace.’

She holds her breath, willing her lover to
leave. In that moment, she sees how dangerous he is to her, brought to the brink by the
decision she has made. In her head, she pleads with him to go, uncertain as to whether
she should
go outside and attempt to defuse
the situation, or whether that would only fan the flames. Meanwhile he continues to
stand there, hands on his hips, facing Ken.

‘If you send them away, it will only
make them appear guilty. Don’t you see that?’ he implores, tilting his head
to one side, his face caught in the ghostly light of the lamp, a pale bewildered moon,
eyes desperate. ‘By making them go, you’re fingering them – condemning them.
Your own sons …’

Ken, a hand held up in warning, says:
‘You’ve said your piece. Now you should leave.’

But Jim is rooted to the spot, as if
stepping away would leave him coming apart at the seams.

‘What about Sally?’ he asks
desperately. ‘What about what she wants?’

Sally stiffens.

‘She wants to protect her
sons.’

‘She’s just doing this because
of the pressure you’re putting on her.’

‘You’re overstepping the mark,
Father.’

‘Am I?’

‘Don’t presume to lecture me
about my wife.’

‘Why not?’

Consternation rises in Sally, like something
hard in her throat.

Recklessly, Jim goes on: ‘I know her
better than you think, what she wants, what she desires –’

It happens quickly. Ken steps down, places
his hands on Jim’s chest and pushes him. Her lover staggers backwards, shock on
his face. Ken pushes him again and, moving quickly now, Sally comes out onto the veranda
and down
the steps while the two men grapple
and grunt, trying to gain some kind of purchase on the other. Wild swipes that barely
connect, an awkward dance of grabbing and shoving, and she is there at the edges, trying
to pull them apart, an ineffective plucking and pleading. A gap opens and she puts
herself between them, her back to her husband – a protective pose – the two of them
breathing heavily while they face Jim down.

A moment to catch her breath. Behind her,
she hears Ken say: ‘Get rid of him.’ All the fight gone out of him, he turns
away.

At the top of the steps, he stops to look
back down at them. A searching gaze, full of pain and confusion. It is not for her, but
for Jim, as is the question he asks.

‘Tell me this much, Father. How will I
ever forgive her?’

She feels the heat of it scalding her.

Everything is changed.

The screen-door slams behind him leaving
Murphy and Sally outside.

For a moment, they stand there, looking at
each other. In the lamp-light, she sees his face is white with shock, despite the
scuffle with Ken.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says,
composing himself. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out that way –’

‘Don’t,’ she says, her
voice barely controlled.

He heaves in his breath, his eyes imploring,
but she doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything.

‘Don’t you see?’ he goes
on. ‘I couldn’t just let you leave. Not after everything … I couldn’t
just let you go.’

‘You don’t have a choice.
Neither of us has. The boys –’

‘I’ll take care of them.
I’ll take care of all of you.’

She stares at him,
aghast. ‘You can’t protect them. What they did –’

‘It was an accident. Anyone can see
that. They’re just children.’

‘This country can be harsh. It can
demand that children be treated as adults. That policeman who came today … he frightened
me.’

‘We’ll find a way, Sally. God
will help us.’

Still, he speaks of God, as if he retains
that authority.

‘Please, Sally. You can’t go.
You can’t do this to me. I know you won’t. You can’t.’

‘I have no choice. It’s too
risky for the boys to stay.’

‘Then let them go!’ he bursts
out. ‘Let their father take them home. But you and me,’ he comes forward,
takes her hands in his, ‘we need to be together. How I feel about you … how we
feel about each other …’

She is bewildered. ‘I’m their
mother. They need me –’

‘
I
need you.’

He pulls her towards him so he is staring
straight at her, close enough for her to catch the wildness in his eyes. How to explain
to him the difference between his need for her and the all-encompassing pull of
motherhood? She looks at him now, the shadow of stubble running over his jaw and neck,
how deeply set his eyes are, startlingly blue beneath brows that are thick and dark and
a little unruly. Such a serious man, capable of volcanic anger and extraordinary
tenderness. She sees the yearning in his eyes – and the fear – and with it, she feels an
answering disappointment inside herself. This man, whom she had always considered so
strong, now veers towards desperation, and their bond is coming undone.