There was no need to go overboard here: it was just a book and the shed was secure. He could leave it sitting in the open if he wanted to. No one came into the shed but him. In the end, he lifted the seat cushion of the armchair and slid the book underneath.
For old time’s sake.
Jim was turning to leave when his eyes landed on something on the open shelves.
The rat poison.
Jim lay awake in the dark, hands crossed on his chest, waiting. All around him the house was silent and still. Since the clock on the bedside table had ticked past midnight, he’d been struggling to stay awake. Exhaustion was pulling on his limbs, weighting his eyelids, slowing his breath. His curiosity was the only thing keeping him from slipping into slumber. The hours of darkness were his best opportunity to read more of The Nothing Man. He had to stay awake.
Dinner had been about as tasteless as he’d come to expect. The only highlight was the little tub of shortbread biscuits Katie had brought: her roommate had made them. She’d talked animatedly about college, which she seemed to be enjoying. Katie had always been active, but now things had kicked up a notch. She had joined a rowing team and a daily running group. When Jim hugged her goodbye, he felt the sharpness of her shoulder blades through her clothes. That was new but also showed that she was working hard.
Of course, Noreen had had to mention it as soon as the door was closed. How thin Katie had got, how she should start eating properly and resting more, wondering why she hadn’t eaten the biscuits herself. Jim told Noreen she could stand to learn a thing or two from their disciplined daughter and that had been the end of that.
Noreen was sleeping beside him now. Her breaths were deep and regular, her body settled. She slept on her back and made wet nasal sounds in her throat. One hand was over the covers and even in this almost-dark, Jim could see the ripples of mottled, ageing skin loosening itself from the back of her hands. The crêpe-like surface of her fingers. The swollen flesh threatening to swallow the gold band of her wedding ring. Noreen was so much younger than him and yet, due to her complete refusal to take care of herself, these days she looked like the older one.
At 1:00 a.m., she hadn’t stirred in half an hour. Slowly and stealthily, Jim extricated himself from their bed.
They had lived in this house all their married life, so Jim knew the exact location of every creaky stair and whining door hinge. As he moved silently through the dark house, he couldn’t help but marvel at the weirdness of the situation. How many nights had he done this very thing on his way out into the dark? How many times had he slid the front door lock open, silently, expertly, wondering if tonight would be one of those nights, if he would find circumstances to be just right? And now here he was, years later, making the very same journey so he could sit and read a book someone else had written about what he’d done. It was weird. It was thrilling. By the time he got outside, he didn’t need the shock of the cold to make him feel awake.
Jim was in his pyjamas and slippers and a coat he’d lifted from the rack in the hall. He would be an odd sight if anyone happened to see him. He paused by the front door and scanned the street. Theirs was the second-last house in a row of identical pairs of semi-Ds, which faced another row of houses that looked just like it. He scanned their windows but found only drawn curtains and darkness. A couple of porch lights had been left on but that was it. This was a housing estate of young kids, nine-to-fivers and mature couples like him and Noreen. At this time of the night, everyone was already asleep in their beds.
Satisfied, he walked around the side of the house and let himself into the shed. He checked the blackout blind was covering the entire window before switching on the lamp. He pulled the book out from under the armchair’s cushion and then sat down.
It seemed colder in the shed than it had outside and he thought maybe he should invest in a little heater or bring a blanket from the house. A cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss either, but kettles were noisy. Maybe he’d get a flask he could fill earlier in the day.
Jim opened The Nothing Man, found where he’d left off and read on.
– 3 –
Dreamcatcher
In the summer of 2000, Christine Kiernan was twenty-three years old and living alone for the first time in her life. She had inherited a property from her grandmother, a two-bed unit in a complex called Covent Court, off the Blackrock Road in the suburbs of Cork City. It would have been called a mid-terrace house were it not for the fact that Covent Court was famous. The development had been designed by a Northern Irish architect named Paul Berry and was considered an especially fine example of 1960s modernist design. Groups of college students still travelled from abroad to behold it, sketching its elevations while sitting cross-legged in the central courtyard, while curtains twitched and residents rolled their eyes, long bored by the attention if not secretly still pleased about their residence’s hallowed status. A little plaque by the vehicle entrance even noted that Covent Court had won the RIAI Silver Medal for Housing in 1972. Whenever any of its number came up for sale, the listing would invariably describe it as a ‘townhouse’ and the assigned estate agent would quickly tire of correcting prospective buyers on the name. Actually, it’s cov-ent. Yes. No, there’s no ‘n’ in it.
Christine hated the place. When I visited there on a dreary April day, it wasn’t difficult for me to see why. Many of the features that had made Covent Court a cutting-edge construction six decades before – flat roofs, aluminium sliding doors, cedar-clad ceilings and exterior sliding – now looked decrepit and crumbling, a poor choice of materials left to be weather-beaten by the rain. If the complex reminded me of anything, it was of the swathes of social housing built elsewhere in the city around the same time, where costs were cut at every opportunity and things had started to fall apart before they were even complete.
Inside, Covent Court had more in common with the set of an old James Bond movie or a Life magazine photospread of astronaut wives. The interiors were a series of strangely shaped rooms hostile to modern furniture that I imagined must be dim on even the brightest days. The exposed brick, the cladding on the ceilings, the huge slabs of polished concrete that made features like fireplaces, kitchen counters and stairs – they all snatched at the daylight and swallowed it down whole.
The estate agent who showed me around the unit for sale near the entrance suggested painting everything white and hanging mirrors. It was the middle of the day but I noticed he’d turned on every lamp and ceiling light.
Christine’s unit at Covent Court was hers to sell, but it was also the last connection between her and her grandmother, and between her grandmother and the rest of the wider family. Mary Malloy had died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of sixty-four, the pedestrian fatality in a car accident, and the entire Kiernan clan was still reeling. It seemed cruel to dispose of what had been the woman’s home so quickly, to obliterate this house of memories, to sell it on to strangers. Christine didn’t want to be responsible for doing that and, anyway, she suspected that her mother, Mary’s eldest daughter, wouldn’t let her.
So she redecorated. She put photos of faraway places in brightly coloured picture frames and hung them around the house in little galleries. She changed the couch, opting for a modern design in emerald velvet that she snapped up in an ex-display sale. She put a hanging basket of petunias just outside the front door and a dreamcatcher outside the rear one, the one that led through her little back garden to the alley that offered a shortcut to the main road. The dreamcatcher had wind chimes and whenever they caught in a breeze, it made a soothing, tinkling sound, soft and gentle enough not to get on anyone’s nerves. In the hope that it would let in more light, she wondered about taking down the net curtains.