Page 30 of The Altar Girls

‘This is going to be difficult for you, Ruth, but I’ll be with you.’

‘The Lord will be with me.’

22

The tea that Boyd sipped was cold, and he raised an eyebrow at Maria Lynch across the table. Zara Devine sat at the end with her silent three-year-old daughter on her knee.

‘Can you run through yesterday morning again for me, Zara?’ Boyd thought she might refuse, but she seemed anxious to be saying something that might help.

‘I dropped Willow at the school lane. I would have walked up with her, but it was snowing heavily and Harper was having a meltdown in the back of the car. She was trying to unlock the buckle on her car seat. The last conversation I had with Willow was a shouting match. I told her to hurry up and get the hell out of the car.’ A tear slid down her cheek. ‘What kind of a mother talks to her child like that?’

Lynch said, ‘We all have those days. I know I shout at my three all the time.’

‘Do you? It’s not just me then?’

‘No, and I have my husband to help me. You’re all alone with two little ones. Where is their father?’

‘God only knows. He fecked off. He went to Australia for a year to work in the mines. That was maybe four years ago. We get the odd FaceTime from him, but I see little of the money he has to be making and my landlord is not one to wait for his rent.’

‘It must be very hard for you.’

‘It is hard. But I try to manage, despite an eviction threat hanging over me. Why can’t you find my daughter?’

‘We have everyone out searching. After you dropped her off, what did you do?’

‘I came home and spent some time scolding Harper.’ She rubbed the child’s hair, and the little one squirmed as if she didn’t like being spoken about. ‘Then I checked my phone. I’d left it charging in the kitchen. The first thing I saw was the text from the school.’ She paused as if to reprimand herself internally. ‘I bundled Harper into the car and went back there. I looked all around, and drove around the town, but it was a whiteout by then and there was no sign of her anywhere.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I drove home in case I’d missed her and she’d walked back. But she wasn’t here. I made a cup of green tea while I tried to figure out what to do. I didn’t panic. Not then. I called the few parents whose numbers I had and no one had seen her. I still thought she’d come home or had gone to someone’s house and would arrive when the snow stopped. But the snow didn’t stop, and by one o’clock I was out of my mind with worry, so I bundled Harper into the car and went to the garda station.’

‘Can I have those phone numbers?’ Boyd asked.

‘What numbers?’

‘The ones you called when you were looking for Willow.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Did you phone Ruth Kiernan?’

‘No, I didn’t have her number.’

‘Was Willow friends with Naomi?’

‘They were in choir together, so they knew each other. That’s all I know. I can’t begin to think what Mrs Kiernan is going through and I don’t want to be in that situation. You have to find my daughter.’

Boyd rose. ‘I will do my best. I promise you that.’

As he walked by the table, little Harper looked up at him, her dark eyes like deep pools of fear. They shouldn’t have had this conversation in front of the child, but it was too late now. As she squirmed in her mother’s arms, he wished he could relieve her anxiety by bringing her sister home safely. In that instant, he wondered if he would ever have his son back in his arms again.

* * *

Jane Dore, the state pathologist, had prepared Naomi’s body for viewing and moved her into a small room off the main mortuary. The child lay with a sheet draped over her.

Lottie felt emotion swell in her chest and settle like a balloon somewhere close to her heart. Ruth, meanwhile, stood steady on her feet, her face a mask of indifference, and Lottie wondered how much that was costing her. She spied a rosary wrapped around her right hand, the glass beads biting into flesh.

A colleague of Jane’s whom Lottie had not met before stood at the little girl’s head and said, ‘Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll gently lift back the sheet so you can see her face. If it is Naomi Kiernan, you just have to say yes.’