Chapter 22: The Video

The padded envelope came on Thursday morning, by courier, with a Boston law firm's name on the label.

I put it on the kitchen table and did not open it.

Finbar came at eight and Celia at ten past, and neither of them said anything about it.

Padraig stood in the hall.

He had not been asked into the kitchen, and he did not come in.

"It's a memory stick," I said, when I had cut the tape. "Her lawyers picked the worst of it."

"You don't have to watch it," Celia said.

"I do. She's going to post it on Friday at noon, and I'd like to know what I'm posting before she does."

"You're posting it?" Finbar said.

"Yes."

I plugged it into Finbar's laptop and pressed play.

I watched for half a minute.

A white room, a camera high in a corner, a narrow bed with straps at the wrists.

A thin girl in a grey smock with her hair cropped short.

She was saying a man's name over and over, in a voice I knew was mine.

I shut the laptop.

My hands were cold, and they were steady.

"That's me," I said. "That's the room."

Celia's eyes were red.

Finbar had turned his back and was studying the kettle.

Padraig, in the hall, had put one hand flat against the wall, and he did not make a sound.

I did not look at him.

I knew that if I looked, I would be comforting him, and this was mine.

"I'm putting it up myself," I said. "Today. With my own face on the same page."

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