Chapter 12: Year Three

I wrote back one line.

"Friday, four o'clock, the café on Mercer Street. Come alone."

Then I went upstairs and knocked on Malachy's door with wet hair and my phone in my hand.

He read the texts standing in his doorway in a towel.

"You're going to go," he said.

"I'm going to go."

"She said in front of whoever you like." He handed me back the phone. "So who do you like?"

On Friday the café on Mercer Street was full of history students with laptops and nowhere better to be.

It had a long wooden counter, a chalkboard menu and big windows on the street.

I took the table in the middle of the room.

Malachy sat on my left with a coffee and a paperback he wasn't reading.

His three sisters sat at the next table pretending to share a muffin.

The youngest had taken the afternoon off work.

"I'd have taken the week," she'd said.

Keira came in at ten past four.

She'd dressed for it, in a short white dress under a white coat, too thin for March.

Her platinum hair was blown out big and her lips were pink and glossy.

Her eyes went to Malachy, then to the sisters, then round the full room.

She hadn't come alone either.

She was holding her phone up in front of her, already filming.

"Hi, everyone," she said to the screen in her small sweet voice. "I'm here to meet my boyfriend's ex-wife. I'm so nervous."

The youngest sister got up, walked over, and stood beside her.

She held up her own phone, screen out, so it was in Keira's shot.

On it was Keira's selfie from the night of the fire.

"Keep filming, sweetie," the youngest sister said. "I'll hold this up the whole time."

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