‘What happened there?’ His truculence was replaced by curiosity when he saw the blackened walls of the barn.

‘Arson,’ Jake replied. His hands, he realised, were clenched into fists.

He paid the driver and removed his luggage from the boot. At the front door he stopped. Something was wrong. He could not name it or, even, define what he was experiencing but it trembled through him. He seldom used the back entrance since Sea Aster had been made whole again but he quickened his pace and hurried around to the side of the house. His feet crunched on pebbles as he walked towards the parking bay. She had parked her car where she always left it when she came to see him.

He leaned against the wall, his legs weakening, and imagined sliding slowly, spine against stone, to the ground. To coil into a shell of nothingness. He remained upright, breathing deeply as he inserted his key and unlocked the back door. The first thing he saw when he entered the breakfast room was her blue pashmina, neatly folded and draped over the back of a chair. He lifted it to his face. The scent of her perfume still clung to the cashmere. She had made coffee. The cup was cold, scum on the surface. The purple imprint of her lips against the white rim. She had curled on the sofa, as she had done so often in the past, her arms clutching a cushion to her chest or luring him downwards to lie beside her. One of the cushions had been thrown to the ground, the other still bore the indent of her body. Nadine said her comatose state had been like a disjointed dream, like music played off-key, like words that tangled together and made no sense. In her confused recollections she believed her father and Karin had been together in the ward. It was an uncertain memory, one of many that made no sense to her. But, now, it made sense to Jake. That was the only way Karin could have acquired a key, made a copy. How many times had she come here with Eoin? She would have flattered him, stroked his ego… and what else? Jake closed his eyes against the sudden image of them together. But, no, she would have kept him at bay, expressed her reservations about married men. A breed conditioned to lie and cheat.

In his bedroom he straightened the ruffled duvet cover, aligned a pillow that was slightly askew. His legs finally buckled under him and he sank to the bed, unable to move. One of his shirts lay across the bed, the one she had worn on the night she revealed the truth to Nadine. She had left a bottle of perfume on the bedside locker. He opened the top and sniffed, remembering the bed linen he had stripped from his bed, the tantalising scent of her body on the pillow cases.

She had climbed the stairs to what was once Nadine’s apartment. Even though nothing was disturbed in the bedroom he knew she had been there. She had opened empty drawers that were once filled with Nadine’s clothes, trailed her fingers over shelves that had held her hats and shoes, left fingerprints on the dusty dressing table.

His thoughts slowed as he walked across the landing, his heart lurching painfully with each step he took. The sun shone through the narrow landing window, as if the winter solstice had come early to illuminate a new beginning. Dust mites danced in the glare, a translucent swirl that moved with an even more frenetic energy when he coughed, his throat so dry he found it difficult to swallow.

The folding stairs descended from the open maw of the attic. He set his foot on the first step and listened for a sound from beyond the trapdoor. The air seemed thicker, suspended in the viscid fear seeping from him. Only his harsh breathing broke the stillness. The slats were steep and the frame of the folding stairs shook as he climbed. He hesitated when his hand touched the trapdoor. For an instant longer he could believe his imagination was running amuck. He could believe that everything would be exactly the same as he had left it four days previously when he locked the door to Sea Aster and drove away.

The truth forced him forward. He climbed the final steps and entered the attic. When he called her name his voice had a detached fierceness, as if it belonged to someone else. Only echoes answered him. His eyes, drawn towards the wall on his right side, closed instinctively as the shadows separated. They formed a tableau, frozen, delineated, eternal. He fell to his knees. It was no longer possible to pretend. To imagine another scenario, a love story with a different ending, a tangled thread realigned into a perfect skein. He could mark the pathway of their journey towards this moment in all its fervour and its flaws. Unintended circumstances, inevitable consequences.

She could have been sleeping except for the twist of her body, the rigid tendons on her hand, her grip still on the microphone. He pressed his hands over his eyes but sightlessness would allow no mercy. He must bear witness to what lay before him.

His old electric guitar had been pulled from its stand and lay face downwards beside her. He reached out but drew his hand back before he touched the marbled slab of her cheek. He stepped backwards until the rim of the trapdoor edged his foot. He slipped once on the slats and grazed his shin as he climbed down. The pain hardly registered.

A squad of garda cars arrived quickly. Two guards climbed before him into the attic. The younger of the two, obviously new to the job, put his hand over his mouth. The older guard’s voice was clipped with authority when she demanded to know where the fuse box was located. The fuse was removed and the inaudible but deadly hum of live electricity was silenced.

When the investigation was completed and Karin’s body had been removed, he stumbled outside. Night had fallen. The gates slid open without a squeak. He hunkered down beside Cora’s cross. Tomorrow he would lay fresh flowers beside it. Stars glimmered coldly on the water. Karin’s fingernails had been mauve-tipped, a chilling colour that suggested time had passed since her heart became a conduit between two electrical charges. A bruise marbled her forehead, blue and waxen as the feathers of a kingfisher in flight.

Chapter 76

Nadine

Canoeists cut through the Broadmeadow estuary, paddles zipping towards shore. Their brightly coloured safety jackets remind me of exotic birds sighting land. A swan takes to the air in an ungainly rush, wings spread. Suspended against the sky, its body is as sharp as a woodcut. The main bevy cluster close to shore. I’ve also heard them called a lamentation. A lamentation of swans seems appropriate.

Three months have passed since Karin Moylan’s body was discovered in the attic of Sea Aster. I didn’t go to her funeral. Even if I’d been able to walk unaided, it would have been unfitting to bring my hatred to the graveside. Death has not lessened its force or softened her memory. Jake stayed with me in Mount Veronica while the ceremony took place. He looked older, his cheeks caved in, his eyes still reflecting the shock of his discovery and the questioning he underwent from the police about his relationship with ‘the deceased.’

Death due to misadventure was the coroner’s verdict. Faulty wiring. Case closed.

Did Jake suspect what he would find when he returned from Berlin? This question haunts me in the small hours. I want to shake him awake and ask him. Not only did he know the intimacy of her body but, also, the obsessive nature of her personality, her unbounded desire for revenge. Did this understanding make him culpable? Or did free will determine the course of action open to her? Perhaps, someday, we’ll be able to talk about such things… but for now I’m content to hold him when he moans and awakens from his own dreams. I comfort him then, as he comforted me when I was helpless and locked into my own terrors.

Can I forgive her? I hope so. Otherwise, what is the difference between us? If I am to heal fully I must not harbour a festering wound.