She just turned away so she was facing the other direction: if I couldn’t see her tears, then maybe I would forget they were there. I wasn’t so easily dissuaded.
‘Come on, Annie. You and I are too good friends for me to fall for that one.’
I gently turned her back round, and held her there. Sometimes, because I saw her every day, and worked alongside her, I forgot just how beautiful she was. Even with tear-streaked cheeks and a runny nose, she was lovely.
‘Did you have a row with your dad, sweetheart? Is that it?’
She shook her head.
‘Not Daddy.’
‘What is it then?’
In a single motion, Annie collapsed against me, sobbing uncontrollably. It was as if her spine had suddenly been removed and she could no longer support herself.
If this had all been happening in a movie, I would have swept her up in my arms and carried her to a chair, but in real life, things are never as simple as that. Even though she was a slender creature, she still presented a fairly severe dead weight, and I kind of dragged her, still leaning against me, to the library corner and deposited her unceremoniously onto a beanbag.
Beth always ensured that there were plenty of tissues and baby wipes all over the room, as our group was rather prone to accidents involving the entire array of bodily fluids, and I grabbed a handful of tissues and brought them over to the girl, who was now making quite a racket. No one came near us. Getting upset was part and parcel of the Drumlin experience. Everyone did it from time to time, and the need for personal space was always respected – most of the group knew that you needed room to have a really good cry.
When Annie had settled a bit, I tried again.
‘Annie, do you want to tell me what’s up, or would you like me to get Beth or Millie? Sukie, maybe?’
Annie shook her head. ‘Shane friend. Good friend,’ she said.
‘Yes, I am your friend,’ I said. ‘You’re my oldest friend in Drumlin, aren’t you? If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have come here at all.’
‘L’il Liza Jane,’ Annie sang through her tears.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s what we sang, isn’t it?’
She covered her face with her hands, and cried again for a time. I just sat there. Sometimes, saying nothing – just being there – is the best thing you can do. I felt Annie would tell me what was wrong when she was ready. I would just have to wait until she had gotten enough of the pain out of her system to be able to find the words.
Suddenly she looked at me and said, ‘Charlie fuck.’
I blinked. I am well used to expletives. I work with people who often experience extremes of emotion, and swear words tend to be part and parcel of how they communicate their experiences. It is not unheard of for me to use the odd four-letter word myself. But I had never heard Annie swear, and I found the word ugly coming out of her mouth.
‘Did you have a fight with Charlie?’
Annie shook her head. ‘No. Charlie fuck.’
I felt a pit opening up inside me, and a terrible coldness beginning to creep up from my toes. ‘Did Charlie hurt you, Annie?’
She nodded. ‘Hurt inside of me,’ she said, placing her hand low on her abdomen. ‘He say it “fuck”. He say it good. Be like love.’
‘But you didn’t want him to,’ I said quietly. ‘Did you?’
‘No want,’ she said. ‘Charlie my friend. Walking and laughing and singing. Not like that. He was in me.’
And then she was crying again.
Tristan looked grim.
Two officers from the local garda station – a male and a female – sat opposite us in the small office at Drumlin. Beth had made up a kind of makeshift bed in the kitchen, and Annie was asleep. I wanted to kill someone, but I was trying to keep it together. Me losing the run of myself would not help anything.
‘We go through the correct channels,’ Tristan said. ‘There is nothing to be gained by going off half-cocked.’
‘Ms Kelleher is twenty-seven years old,’ the male guard was saying. ‘But you say she is intellectually subnormal.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet on the file you have just shown me, it says that she has an IQ in the low–average range.’
‘Those tests are not always a useful measurement,’ Tristan said. ‘Annie has what you might call a non-specific form of mental handicap – her functioning is very high in some areas, while it is like that of a small child in others.’
‘And she maintains that this cousin of hers raped her?’ the female guard asked.
‘She did not use those precise words,’ I said. ‘But she was quite clear that what happened did not occur with her consent. I am not sure she is even capable of giving consent.’
‘Yet she has a normal IQ,’ the male garda said again.
‘Are you going to investigate this matter or not?’ Tristan said sharply. ‘I have a very upset young lady on my hands, and there is no doubt in my mind that she has been sexually assaulted.’
The two gardaí looked at one another.
‘We’ll see what we can do,’ the woman said.
There was no way to contact William Kelleher.
‘They don’t have a telephone,’ Beth said. ‘Any time we need to get information to him, it’s by post, or we send letters home with Annie.’
‘He probably knew damn well what was going on with that perve,’ Valerie said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He loves Annie. There is no way he would allow this, I can promise you that.’
‘What are we going to do then?’ Beth said. ‘She can’t go home.’
‘She can stay with me until we hear back from the police,’ Tristan said. ‘The spare room can be made up.’
‘I’ll come too,’ Beth said. ‘She needs to have people around that she knows, just now.’
Tristan nodded. He looked tired and pinched. ‘That would be good, Beth.’
My phone rang at around eight that night.
‘The police called,’ Tristan said, when I picked up.
‘And?’
‘They said that there is no sign of William out at the old house. They did encounter our man Charlie, who swears that he never touched Annie, although he says she tried to have her way with him.’
‘That is so fucked up.’
‘I know.’
‘So what’s going to happen?’
‘Probably very little. I wish we could reach William.’
‘Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I said and hung up.
The door to the underground room was open and I went down it and through to the body of the house proper. The first room I came to was a kitchen, which was full of foul dishes. A smell of rancid milk pervaded.
‘William? William, it’s Shane.’
No answer. I flicked a light switch, which looked like it might have been fitted in the nineteen thirties, but it didn’t work. I moved on to the next room, which was where William and I had talked and drank. Charlie was there.
He was sprawled on the couch with bottles of William’s home-brewed liquor scattered about. He was dozing when I came in, but woke when he heard my footsteps. Long and skinny, he had dirty-brown hair, and ears that should have been clipped back when he was a child. He wore filthy jeans and a checked shirt which was open to the waist, showing a scrawny, hairless chest.
‘You’re Charlie,’ I said.
‘So?’
‘I’m Shane Dunphy. From the Drumlin Unit. I work with Annie.’
‘I know who you are,’ he said. ‘She’s told me all about you.’
I laughed bitterly. ‘She’s told me all about you, too.’