Page 53 of All Our Missing Pieces

She stepped out of the kitchen and tiptoed to the door beneath the stairs that led down to the cellar. Since she’d discovered it, it had been in the back of her mind – something to be investigated, but not now. Later, when there was an opportunity.

And this was that opportunity.

She lifted the latch and eased the door open. The same breath of cool air she’d felt when she’d first noticed it greeted her now, along with the smell of cold dust and old things.

Through the opening, Beatrice could see a steep, narrow flight of bowed wooden stairs leading downwards.

She’d expected to have to manhandle the cat down with her, but that wasn’t necessary. Maud approached the gap quite readily, her tail low and her whiskers bristling. She placed a paw on the top step, then another, then began to walk downwards, switching to bunny-hops as she neared the bottom.

‘Good girl,’ Beatrice whispered. ‘Now don’t let any rats near me, okay?’

She herself descended the stairs backwards, like a ladder. Each step was too shallow to fit the full length of her foot and worn so smooth with time that the wood was as slippery as glass. The air was cool and smelled horrible – musty and stale and just the way Beatrice imagined a place where rats lived would smell. The floor was flagstones, smooth but uneven beneath her feet, and the floorboards above just higher than her head.

A cobweb brushed her face and she suppressed a scream, forcing herself to take a steadying breath of the dank air and shining her torch cautiously around.

The space was huge – way larger than she’d expected. Probably, when the house had been built, it had been intended to store wine and perhaps even fresh meat and cheese, rather than coal. The walls were brick, gleaming damply in the beam of her torch.

Piled against one wall, Beatrice saw a stack of plastic tea crates, their sides black, their lids a brighter colour – orange or yellow; she wasn’t able to tell in the pallid torchlight. She could no longer see the cat, who had padded off somewhere into the gloom.

She approached the stack of crates, holding her torch between her teeth, and reached for the top one. The plastic was rough beneath her fingers, embossed with an even, nubbly texture. The lid was made up of two halves, interlocking at the centre like fingers.

Carefully, she prised them apart and opened them. At once, she was met with a different smell – the smell of paint. Not the emulsion Luke used on the walls, which was so familiar to her now she barely noticed it when she stepped into the house, but oil paint, like an artist would use.

So Orla did paint, after all – it wasn’t just talk.

The crate was stacked with canvases and sheets of cartridge paper that looked like they’d been torn from a pad, their edges serrated from the spiral binding. She leafed through them and picked one out at random, holding it up to the light of her torch.

She could see the outline of a girl’s face, fine-boned and wide-eyed, dark hair falling to her shoulders, but the light was too bad for her to make out much more. Frustrated, she replaced the page and took out another, seeing the same face, this time painted in watercolour, smiling. The girl’s cheeks were perhaps a little fuller, the hair shorter, the collar that framed her face rounded like a child’s blouse. But it wasn’t the identity of the sitter that caught Beatrice’s eye – it was the style of the work.

There was real skill in the little painting. The areas where blank paper showed to indicate highlights were perfectly placed. The colour was intense in the background, yet as smooth as rose petals on the skin of the girl’s face. Her eyes seemed to meet Beatrice’s as she looked at them, as if she was saying, Oh, it’s you. Here I am, too.

Beatrice would have bet her bottom dollar that it had been painted by the same artist whose landscape of Clonmara hung on the landing.

Then she heard a sound that made her drop the portrait to the floor. A scraping scurrying, like small, clawed legs, and then a high-pitched squeal.

Beatrice felt perspiration break out all over her body and adrenaline galvanising her. She didn’t pause to close the crate – she simply bolted, her feet slipping on the damp floor, and clambered up the stairs on all fours, emerging gasping into the clear air of the ground floor.

Then she turned and pulled the door closed behind her, barely caring if it made a noise.

She stood in the silence, gasping and terrified. Only when her breath had settled back to normal did she creep back upstairs, shutting herself away in her bedroom again.

THIRTY-FOUR

17 AUGUST 2005

I am writing this at the kitchen table, my hands sweaty and trembling and my body still tingling with the aftermath of fear. I was woken this morning not by anything present, but by an absence. There was no Maud on my chest. No claws tentatively, then more persistently, pricking my face, the campaign for breakfast service getting started.

Once I realised she was not there, I knew there could be no more sleep this morning. Of course, she is a cat and like all cats she sets her own agenda, but also like all cats she is a creature of habit, her daily rituals varying only slightly depending on the weather, my movements and her mood. So I got up and came downstairs, calling her, but she was nowhere to be seen.

I looked out in the garden, but she wasn’t slinking through the undergrowth or perched on the wall being taunted by squirrels. I looked outside the front door and walked around the square, terrified I would find her small, broken body hit by a car, but I saw nothing. Then I heard her muffled cries and knew, straight away, with absolute certainty, where she was and what had happened.

And I was right. As soon as I opened the door leading down to the cellar, she dashed up the stairs, protesting furiously at her captivity although I dare say she’d had a wonderful time down there, decimating the mouse population. I fed her and then went down there myself, knowing full well what I would find. It was just as I’d anticipated: the topmost of my pile of storage boxes open, the portraits I’ve painted over the years scattered on the floor.

Beatrice. Beatrice’s nocturnal exploration of the house inevitably led her downstairs, where she hunted through my things, discovering my secrets.

I didn’t stop to think. I didn’t consider what was the right thing to do – the mature, adult thing. I regret that now. I stormed upstairs and knocked on Beatrice’s door, barely waiting for her muffled response before pushing it open and going in.

She was still in bed, sitting up under the covers, her eyes bleary with sleep. She looked so young – almost like a child – and I felt my anger fade slightly. Slightly, but not enough.