steered the conversation away from himself by asking her about her course.
‘I’m putting together a portfolio at the moment,’ she told him. ‘We’re having an exhibition in a few weeks’ time.’ She paused and then jumped up from her stool. ‘In fact, if you’re really interested, I can show you the shots. I have them saved to a USB. It should be in my bag.’
‘Great, I’d love to see,’ he told her. ‘You go get it, and I’ll take the tea into my office. It’s just through here.’ He took the two mugs, placed them on the desk and booted up his computer. Joanna went out to the living room to retrieve her bag.
They were standing side by side in the small room watching the slide show of her photographs when the phone rang.
‘Aren’t you going to get that?’ Joanna asked him.
‘No, let them ring back,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t wait.’
He closed the office door on the ringing lest the answer machine should kick in.
Joanna arrived home to an empty house. Her mother had not yet returned from her shopping expedition with Pauline. She decided that she would process the film on which she’d taken the canal bank shots that afternoon, but it was just as she had that thought that she remembered she’d left the USB stick containing the photos for her college presentation in Oliver Molloy’s laptop. She looked at the clock. She needed that USB for her class the next day. She had two choices: she could either scan the photos again, which would take a lot of time, or she could go back to Oliver’s for the stick. She didn’t have his home phone number so she would just have to take the chance on his being home.
Joanna drove slowly past the row of terraced houses until she came to Oliver’s. There was a light on in the front room, but it went out just as she turned off the engine. Perhaps she had just caught him before he went out, she thought.
She was about to get out of the car when the front door opened and a woman stepped out. The woman pulled the door behind her and walked swiftly down the path and crossed the road just in front of Joanna’s car. She couldn’t say why but, instinctively, Joanna shrunk down in her seat. She didn’t want to be seen sitting in her car outside Oliver’s house, even though she was doing nothing wrong.
She’d had a clear view of the woman as she’d crossed in front of the car. She was dark-skinned and dark-haired, and definitely didn’t look Irish. She wore a leather jacket, a short skirt and knee-high boots. If Joanna had had her camera, she’d have felt compelled to take her picture, but she’d left it in the darkroom back at the house. She continued to watch the woman until she grew small in the distance, then she vanished altogether. Joanna wondered if she’d hailed a cab at the side of the road.
She looked at Oliver’s house. There was a single light on in the hall, but otherwise no sign of life. She wondered if the woman was his girlfriend and was surprised that with that thought came a pang of disappointment. For some reason, she had assumed that he was single. She supposed it was his quip earlier about ‘a man alone tending to let things go’. She wasn’t his wife, then; but he was an attractive man and she shouldn’t have been surprised that he might have just as attractive female callers.
After a sufficient time had passed since the woman’s departure, Joanna got out of the car and made her way up the driveway. She rang the bell, a musical ding-dong, and waited. There was no sound within. She rang the bell again, but still there was silence. Oliver must be out, she thought, and in that case, the woman she had just seen leaving had either been there when he left, or she had her own key. Joanna sighed and traipsed back down the driveway. As she did, she saw a glove on the path. She leaned down to pick it up. It was a red wool glove that the woman must have dropped on her way out. Joanna put it back where it was, closed the gate behind her and got back into the car.
She wondered what to do. She could wait, but there was no telling what time Oliver might return. And what if the woman returned instead? She didn’t want to make trouble. She would just have to wait until tomorrow to get the USB back. There was nothing for it but to go home and begin scanning her photos again.
Joanna gathered her collection of photos and took them up to her room to scan. Her mother had still not returned home. The landline rang when she was about half an hour into the work and she went to her mother’s room to answer the extension. It was her mother’s friend, Pauline, asking to speak to Angela.
‘Mum? No, she said she was going shopping with you. Oh really? Maybe I got that wrong, then. She said something about going to buy a dress for a wedding, that wasn’t with you? Okay, Pauline. No worries. I’ll tell her to give you a call.’
Joanna put the phone down, puzzled. She was sure her mother had said it was Pauline she was meeting. A few minutes later, she heard her mother come in. She went into the landing and shouted down the stairs.
‘That you, Mum?’
‘No.’ It was her mother’s customary reply.
Joanna went downstairs. ‘Pauline just called,’ she said. ‘Did you not say you two were going shopping together today?’
Her mother looked up. ‘What?’
‘Pauline, I thought you said you were meeting her today but she’s just been on the phone.’
‘No, I said I was meeting Helen.’
‘Really? I was sure you said Pauline.’
‘Oh, maybe I did, I meant Helen.’
Joanna looked at her mother’s lack of shopping bags. ‘Did you not see anything you liked?’
Her mother shook her head. ‘I wasn’t really looking for anything – I just tagged along. Did you get yourself something to eat?’
‘No, I was out. I was thinking of maybe ordering something in. Do you fancy it?’
‘No, I’m okay, I grabbed a bite with Helen earlier. Get yourself something.’
Joanna nodded. She wasn’t sure she believed that her mother had mixed up the names of her two friends. Certainly, she knew she hadn’t misheard. But if she hadn’t gone shopping, where had she been? Rather than confront her about it Joanna decided to let it go. Maybe it was something and maybe it wasn’t; her mother’s lies had broken all trust between them. She missed the closeness they’d shared before Rachel had dropped her bomb. The distance wasn’t helped, she knew, by her own omissions. She would have liked to tell her mother about the afternoon she had spent with Oliver Molloy, about him taking her to see the place where Vince’s body had been found, but she wouldn’t. She would hide the fact and the photographs she’d taken from her mother because she knew that if she told her she wouldn’t understand.
Oliver’s meeting with Patrick Arnold, supposedly for old times’ sake, came to a sudden close when he said that he couldn’t take the job. Oliver excused himself on the pretence of a heavy workload that wouldn’t permit him to take on even the most insignificant case. And insurance companies, as Patrick knew, could be sticky. Arnold had brought a copy of the policy with him, and he insisted that Oliver take a quick look to ensure that the document itself was in order. There was one thing of note that Oliver observed, and which he continued to think about on his walk home. There were two beneficiaries to the policy; the first, as expected, was Rachel Arnold, but the second was the dead man’s daughter, Joanna, who was set to inherit fifty thousand euro. Oliver wondered if the girl knew about this. He suspected she didn’t, nor was she likely to find out until the result of the inquest came through – provided they found that Arnold had died a natural death. Would she welcome the money as some form of acknowledgement, albeit too late, or