Page 43 of All Our Missing Pieces

‘Thanks for telling me,’ he said. ‘That must’ve been hard.’

I blew my nose. ‘I bet when I said let’s go for a walk, you weren’t expecting that.’

‘I’ve got to admit…’ He grinned, and I half-laughed. ‘But you did want to talk about something else. What’s up?’

‘There’s something going on with Beatrice. Her and Orla. Something weird.’

Hesitantly, I spilled out the story of what had happened when I’d discovered Beatrice in Orla’s bedroom going through her things. It had been impossible to tell him at the time, with Beatrice’s open bedroom window overlooking the garden – she’d have heard everything. Besides, I’d been blindsided by guilt at my own unwitting complicity in what she’d done.

‘So I felt like I couldn’t say anything to her,’ I finished. ‘If I tell Orla, I’d be a snitch and also… I don’t want to worry her. And I don’t… I mean, what if there’s some totally reasonable explanation?’

‘Like what? She dropped an earring and it fell into a suitcase under the bed in a room that’s not hers?’

‘Okay, so there isn’t a reasonable explanation,’ I agreed. ‘But what do I do? What if I tell her and she asks Beatrice to leave? Or I tell her and she doesn’t ask her to leave, but Beatrice knows I grassed her up and hates me more than she already does?’

‘She doesn’t hate you. Come on, Liv, don’t be overdramatic.’

‘Sometimes,’ I said tentatively, only realising the truth of what I was saying as the words came out, ‘I feel like she hates all of us. But mostly Orla.’

‘You know what I think?’ Luke said slowly, as if he too was only just beginning to realise it himself, ‘I think they’re too similar, and that’s why they get on each other’s nerves.’

‘Too what?’ I asked, startled. Two people less similar than cool, steely Orla and spoiled, tempestuous Beatrice I could barely imagine.

‘Yeah, I know. But there’s things about them. They both like things their own way. They’re both stubborn as hell. They’ve both got this way of holding their heads – I drew a thing yesterday, just a sketch, of Orla and I realised it could have been Beatrice, until I filled in the features. And there’s another thing too.’

‘What’s that?’

‘They’re both hiding something,’ he said. ‘It’s like that house is full of secrets and I sometimes wonder when I’ll be clearing stuff out for the skip and I’ll discover them.’

We sat in silence for a moment.

Then Luke said, ‘And I can’t say I’m looking forward to that happening.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

Beatrice was perched on the stairs that led up to the floor above her bedroom. Below, she could see right the way down through the house to the ground floor hallway, so she would know if anyone came in through the front door or up the stairs. And above – above were the attic rooms, with all the secrets they might hold.

She was reluctant to venture there for fear of broken glass, dead pigeons and spider webs. Sometimes, though, she wanted to. It felt almost as if the house was calling her, luring her, promising answers to her questions. Was she the great-grandchild of the mad Irish couple who’d bought this house back before the Second World War? Was Orla connected to them or had the house since been sold and bought by another couple, whose granddaughter Orla was? Would she ever find out the truth?

Not today. Today she was on the stairs for a more prosaic reason: this was the only spot in the house where the internet connection was even halfway decent and the call she was about to make would be difficult enough without it cutting out midway. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to it but, after what she had learned from Neil’s grandfather the previous week, she was determined to go ahead with it.

She checked the text messages on her phone, her fumbling fingers making her realise how much her hands were trembling. Then, taking a steadying breath, she opened Skype on her laptop. The familiar acoustic modem handshake buzzed from her speakers, followed by two familiar voices.

‘Hello, honey.’

‘Hello, sweetheart.’

The screen stayed blank for a second then flashed to life. Beatrice couldn’t suppress a smile. Her mom and dad were sitting at the desk in her dad’s study, beaming into the camera. Her dad was in his wheeled, high-backed leather chair, her mom presumably perched on a stool next to him, because her head was several inches lower than his.

Her mom’s gleaming dark brown bob looked freshly styled and even though it was early Sunday morning and they wouldn’t need to leave for church for another hour, she was wearing bright pink lipstick.

Her dad was wearing a pale blue and white striped button-down shirt and she could see his linen sport coat slung over the back of the chair. His smiling face was handsome as ever, the hair that had once been blond now silver and carefully brushed. It wasn’t just the chairs that accounted for the difference in their height – Beatrice’s mom was petite and birdlike while her dad was tall and stocky.

When Beatrice’s friends at college noticed the photo of them on her nightstand, they’d invariably look at it and say, ‘Wow, you take after your dad.’ If she liked them, she’d smile and say, ‘I know,’ but if she didn’t, she’d say, ‘Actually, I’m adopted,’ and wait for them to cringe.

‘How are you, honey?’ her mom asked. ‘How’s London?’

‘Have you been to the National Gallery yet?’ her dad asked.