Free Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent Page A

rattily, ‘Yes, yes, of course he will.’ He gave me a manly playful punch on the shoulder. I tried not to wince, not from the pain but from the insincerity of it.
    ‘Cheers! Happy birthday!’ said my mum as she raised her glass, and we all clinked glasses.
    I met my father’s eyes and I could see that he was trying to look at me in a genuine way just for that briefest moment, trying to see who I was. I held his gaze. A moment of understanding passed between us in which I could see some decency and he could see his son beneath the layers of flesh. The moment faded though, when the phone rang. Mum went out to answer it.
    ‘It’s that girl!’ she called from the hallway. I could hear the heavy sigh in her voice.
    Dad threw his eyes to heaven in exasperation. ‘It’sChristmas
Day
!’ As if there was a law that you couldn’t use the phone on Christmas Day.
    ‘It’s my birthday,’ I reminded him. He remembered and smiled indulgently at me. I felt again the knot of anxiety in my stomach. He looked so damn benign, but I knew the truth.
    The phone call from Helen was brief.
    ‘Happy birthday! And Christmas! What did you get?’
    I listed the gifts I’d received.
    ‘Is that all? I thought you would get more than that.’ Helen thought that a big house equalled rich equalled extravagant. It is rarely the case.
    I could hear the yelling of her brothers and loud pop music in the background.
    ‘Mum looped the fucking loop and got Jay and Stevo a drum kit. The mad bitch.’ Jay and Stevo were six and eight years old respectively. Then all I could hear was a deafening clash of cymbals, and Helen and two other voices roaring, ‘Shut up!’
    My mother put her head around the cloakroom door and gave me her ‘Get off the phone’ look. Conversation was more or less impossible at Helen’s end anyway because of the cacophony, so I bade her farewell. As I approached the kitchen, I could hear the clatter of them clearing up in there. Dad said, ‘What kind of moron rings on Christmas Day?’
    ‘Andrew, I don’t like her any more than you do, but for God’s sake can you just try and be nice to him for one day? It’s his birthday!’
    ‘What does she even see in him? The size of him. She’s no oil painting but –’
    ‘He is your son! Can’t you please –’
    I coughed. I wanted them to know that I’d heard them. They both looked uncomfortable, and my father at least hadthe grace to be embarrassed. I had never heard him express his opinion about me so blatantly before. By now I felt hot and restless. I was all too aware of this scornful, sour, superior presence standing at the kitchen sink, looking out of the window, pretending Annie Doyle didn’t exist and wishing that I didn’t either. I hated him. I wished
he
were dead.

6
Karen
    AfterDa had reported Annie’s disappearance to the guards, we expected news within a day or two, but it didn’t happen quite like that. We went to the station that Friday night, the 21st of November. Detective Mooney seemed to take our concerns seriously. We gave him descriptions of the clothes missing from her wardrobe.
    ‘Any distinguishing features?’ he said. I pointed to her mouth in the photograph. ‘And she wears an identity bracelet that she never takes off.’
    ‘So her name is on the bracelet?’
    ‘No, it just says “Marnie”.’
    ‘Is this Marnie a friend?’
    Da glared at me. ‘Never mind about that. Marnie is someone she used to know. The name isn’t important.’
    I know that the next day they interviewed the girls who lived in the house with Annie. I went to Clarks’s Art Supplies to ask if my sister had bought a painting set on the previous Saturday. I showed the girl behind the counter a photo of our Annie. Annie was pretty drunk in the photo, but it was the best one we had. It had been taken the year before at my uncle’s fiftieth birthday party. In all the other photos she had her hand over her mouth, obscuring her most notable feature. The guards had